adventure time

Spring Blurbs [1] – Sand, Snow, Scotch, and Pig

April 22, 2019 by Taco

Greetings and welcome to Dinosaur Bear!

It’s been a bit since last time, so as usual there’s been a lot happening around the ole’ Taco household since then. As such I feel like we have some catching up to do! I’ll be doing that very thing via a series of “Spring Blurbs” posts where I briefly(ish) recap some of the adventure and silliness we’ve been up to. Right now I have three such posts planned, but that number isn’t set in stone. With that said, let’s get started!

First up, spring has bought with it sand, a lot of sand.

This is not my photo – but it is where I live and that’s what happened.

We’ve never lived someplace with sandstorms before and I can’t say it’s something super fun and exciting. Of course we also had a small amount of late snow to go with our sand – something which made Valentino quite happy.

Mixed in between the sand and the snow has been some cloudy days with a bit of rain – not that the cacti seem to mind very much.

Though on the whole we’ve definitely had more sand than snow or rain. On the plus side sunsets with sandstorms can be pretty in their own special way.

But, we still are fortunate to deal more with sunny days than we do with cloudy ones – though the spring days have been very windy (even on the sunny days), thus the sandstorms. Lawrence hasn’t been too pleased with the wind as it tends to blow away his acorns, but he has still managed to continue amassing his collection regardless.

It’s actually much bigger now than it was when that picture was taken.

He isn’t the only one hording things though, as yours truly recently went through yet another round of beer bottle cap organization. The big bunch toward the top of the photo are all unique caps, not a single repeated cap. The pile below is being processed, while the bag with Xs on it is duplicates.

Spring also brought with it jolly ole’ Saint Patrick’s Day, which not only reminded us of Ireland, but also allowed us to expand on our waffle tradition by making them (sort of) green.

There was, of course, also green beer – both of which were Irish, but we didn’t even try to color the Guinness as that would have been a waste of coloring. 😛

One big surprise was the arrival of my own handmade guitar! This was the “mystery box” from the end of the last post and I’ve now been given clearance to reveal the contents.

My grandfather used to make instruments and I had wanted one for a long time. I thought one was getting made for me, but then sort of forgot about it as that was many moons ago – however, as soon as the big box showed up I had an idea what it was! The reason for the initial secrecy was because Daryl 1 was also getting one, so I had to hold off until his surprise was also revealed (since, you know, anything posted on Dinosaur Bear gets read and disseminated by millions of people). Of course I have no idea how to play a guitar and aside from ensuring it was in a good shape (after the case had somehow locked itself mid-transit) I haven’t done much with it, but now I have a guitar to learn with should I choose to!

But back to the topic of spring, it does come much earlier here. Little flower blooms started popping up during the time period where I’m still used to seeing snow on the ground.

Plus the trees really started turning green early (that little tree on the left is now much greener than it was when that photo was taken).

With the awoken trees have come reinvigorated bird friends. We have some quails that live near us that bring us great joy (and are friends with Felicia) and another pair of smaller birdies has built a nest in a tree near us. I love having little baby bird cheeps outside, so I’m excited about that. The one thing that has been a problem with that is that one of the birdies is stealing our window screen for the nest. 😀

I had to end up taping a big chunk of the screen as they really worked on it while we were traveling (that trip will be covered next post) but I’ve since scared them away enough that they seem to have given up on our screen and are instead “eating” a big hole in our neighbor’s screen, lol. Either way, it looks like they recently finished the nest, so here’s hoping for some baby birds soon!

Another thing that was finished here was SB and I’s long run of Adventure Time.

We’ve been watching the series since 2013 (the series itself started in 2010) and so it feels kind of weird to not have it there to watch anymore. SB and I really liked the series and I really can’t recommend it enough. I might write more about it at some point, but for the purposes of this post I just wanted to share that we’d completed it and also to post our stack of DVDs as that is the only series will still purchased physical media for.

Switching gears to the “manly” beverage of choice for Tristen: scotch.

Tristen and I have continued our scotch exploration – to mostly positive results. The scotch above, Laphroaig 10, was our first really peaty scotch (described by some as “drinking a campfire”) but it also made us landed gentry. Yes, Tristen and I now own land in on the Isle of Islay, Scotland. Sure, it’s only one square foot, but it’s still land. Bow before us you peasants. Aside from the Laphoraig 10, we’ve been working through quite a variety of bottles. This is my most recent line-up, listed with the first one I tried on the left, and newest on the right.

I realized after writing the draft for the post that this photo is actually missing my newest addition: The Balvenie 12, as that was acquired after this picture was taken. So here’s a photo of that as well.

An intellectual scotch-drinking “manries” man needs some good literature, so I’ve also started working my way through Inferno (or as I usually hear it referred, “Dante’s Inferno”). I had quickly read the first part (Inferno) of Comedia when I was younger, but I only read the base poem with no commentary and plus I was younger and more stupid. So now I’m re-reading it along with commentary and with a more finely tuned eye.

I’ll try share more thoughts on it once I’ve completed it, but so far I’m very much enjoying the read.

Finally, to close out the post, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention the fact that spring brought us Pig’s 4th birthday! Yes, our quintessential “spring baby” – Pig turned 4 this year. We started off his birthday with some incense overload, and I do mean overload.

Looking at Pig’s face I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t a “special” kind of incense.

Later we had some McAllister’s (a birthday classic for us!) and Pig’s most-favorite dessert in the world: dirt pudding!

We ended his day with some Buddha beer, and I do mean Buddha beer – as in the bottle was Buddha.

While the beer itself was just average, the bottle was right up Pig’s alley and he seemed to really enjoy it (and since it’s Pig, he was also happy to share it – unlike some denizens of the Taco household 😛 ).

Anyways, that’s all I have for the first of these Spring Blurbs. Be sure to look for at least two more blurbs – these a bit more focused on adventure! – in the coming weeks.

Until next time,
-Taco

A Birthday and an Ascension

January 14, 2019 by Taco

Greetings and welcome to Dinosaur Bear,

While the holidays might be behind us now, I feel like it’s important to pick up were we left off in the last post as there was a bit of a cliffhanger regarding dino #2’s hatching process.

What could it be?

But first! Let’s discuss a few other things as well in the spirit of keeping that suspense building. 😛 For starters things have been pretty chilly here lately. As I’ve discussed before a lot of the temperature variance here is related to whether the sun is out. Yes, “duh” you are thinking – but it’s more pronounced here than anywhere else I’ve lived in my life. Plus our light snow has continued since the last post, or at least it had continued. We haven’t gotten much super recently, but what we did get lingered for more than 5 minutes which is saying something. I think our roof even maintained a small dusting overnight once.

Most of the time the snow is gone by the next morning, though especially shaded areas do maintain small snow clusters from time to time.

That said, a couple of mornings have been.. well, bonafide winter mornings complete with lots of frost if not much in the way of snow.

Even Felicia was not spared Mr. Frost’s efforts – which led to the comical realization that ice scrapers are not easy to find here (not even Walmart has them).

Of course I can’t complain too much as this is all still pretty mild compared to the winters I’ve grown used to in the past. Plus we almost always get really nice sunsets, save for the most overcast of days.

Of course on the flip side, one of our palm tree friends (we have two, Pauly and Paulina) got a major New Year’s trimming and now doesn’t block nearly as much late afternoon light as it used to. The previous shading was really nice as the sun tends to shine straight in your eyes when you sit on the couch unless you close the blinds, which we don’t like to do most of the time.

Anyways, that winter has kept a grip on us isn’t surprising considering that it’s, you know, still January – but it’s also been fitting since a few more holiday cards have trickled in!

Yes, they are of course for the Boys, not us. 😛

Lawrence has begrudgingly accepted winter’s embrace, though I am also pretty sure that his pile of acorns keeps growing as opposed to shrinking.

Anyways, back indoors we’ve (sort of*) moved on from tamales and instead ventured into the realm of sweet potato and black bean enchiladas.

Pig, as usual, is a big fan of anything with beans and/or sweet potatoes, so I have an inkling that these were the result of duo meal planning by SB and Pig. Speaking of Pig, he has resumed teaching his yoga classes to his online friends.

Mountain pose with the Barley Bros and Bonsai Buddy Jr.

He had been in a hiatus with his online classes for a bit but he and SB have decided to get back into it. Plus, when you have delicious Chakra chocolates to look forward to it makes it a bit easier. 😉

So, at this point you might be wondering about the “Birthday” in the title of this post. Yes, it seems like we’ve had a lot of birthdays lately! Intriguingly all of our dinosaurs have birthdays within a 1 month period, not sure how that happened exactly, but the result is a bunch of dino-birthdays around this time of year. This time Pigsten was up to bat and boy a lot has changed since his last birthday. Pigsten is turning 3 this year, though of all the Boys Pigsten is probably the one whose age is most disputable. This stems from the idea of “self.” In actuality, the dinosaur that would become Pigsten came to live with me in Denver in 2015. Yet, while Pigsten and his other tiny-dino siblings resided near the window of my lofty Denver apartment it wasn’t really Pigsten yet, just a tiny t-rex. Pigsten became Pigsten in Santa Fe in 2016 and if it wasn’t obvious his name comes from a combination of “Pig” and “Tristen” (this was Pig’s idea as he wanted a buddy for our New Mexico adventure). So, with that explained, Pigsten is now 3 and since it was his birthday Pigsten would probably want me to remind you about his construction site post (a project which is still ongoing).

Pigsten and friend Broli atop Pigsten’s birthday “throne.”

As a celebration of Pigsten reaching the age of tres años we treated him to our usual forms of celebration: food, sweet food, and alcohol!

While not Pig’s birthday, he was rather fond of Pigsten’s birthday scotch bottle.

Now, Pigsten is awfully small to get an entire bottle of scotch to himself – this is true. However, he specifically requested scotch because that is what Tristen got for his birthday and we can’t let Tristen get ahead of us now can we? 😛

As for those delicious looking cupcakes – and they were very delicious – those come from a local bakery that SB found!

Pigsten’s birthday package included four different varieties of cupcake. From the back left clockwise, we have: carrot cake, cherry cream, ice cream sundae, and chocolate peanut butter chip!

Despite Pigsten’s (and really all the Boys’ protests) we wouldn’t let them start with the cupcakes and instead made them eat an actual dinner first. For that we decided to get Jason’s Deli (our second time doing so). Pigsten wanted something “that Broli would like too” so we got him a salmon salad which resulted in a very difficult to deal with Valentino, but we managed.

After our proper dinner we broke out the cupcakes and gave Pigsten the ceremonial first bite of the sundae cupcake!

After that we did what we also normally do during a celebration – watch Adventure Time!

We’re nearing the end of Season 7, but there’s 10 seasons in total so we’ve still got a decent amount of adventuring left to do. A bit later on in the evening we decided to have a bit of a scotch tasting party that even SB joined in on! This time we were comparing Glenlivet 12 and Pig’s Nose.

Pig after Pig’s Nose.

Unlike Glenmorangie 10 vs. Glenlivet 12 (where I had a preference for the 12), this match-up was a bit less clear. On the whole I think I preferred the 12 over Pig’s Nose, but these two were also quite distinct. For instance, the Pig’s Nose was more smooth with a big of spiced sweetness to it, but the overall feel and taste of the 12 was “better.” So this is probably an apples and oranges situation. I didn’t dislike either of them, nor did I dislike the 10 for the record. In fact I’ve yet to have a scotch I disliked, though much of that can probably be distilled down to doing my research in advance. For his part Pigsten liked Pig’s Nose, if only because of the name and because he got a bottle of scotch just like Tristen did.

Since it was Pigsten’s birthday weekend he and Broli also got the coveted position of being able to go out with SB for Saturday adventures in Felicia.

Though Pigsten, being Pigsten, had to be very ornery about the whole affair:

After they had gotten some out of the house things accomplished (in spite of Pigsten’s dashboard escapades) we had some homemade tamales for dinner. This is why I put the “sort of*” in there earlier. We had intended to put a pause on the tamales for a bit (and had frozen the other half of what we did have) but then one of SB’s coworkers brought in actual 100% homemade tamales to give to SB after SB had asked about a good place to get tamales (which resulted in the brand we had gotten at the store for last post).

These things were amazing. Maybe not for the ole’ bowels, but definitely for the taste buds. Easily the best tamales I’ve had. Plus, we still had 2 of the cupcakes left over from the night before so with Pigsten’s permission we busted out the carrot cake and chocolate peanut butter chip cupcakes!

Pair all that with some more Adventure Time and it makes for a good second day of birthday celebrations. 😀

In addition to all of Pigsten’s birthday fun, there was the ongoing hatching process of dino #2 that we should get back to. It was right around Pigsten’s birthday time that dino #2 really started to emerge from its shell.

We became somewhat infatuated with its cute little arms.

It was also around this time that I realized it was a Parasaurolophus and not too long after that Tristen decided it was time to help release it from the egg – a process that Pigsten and Broli assisted with.

Once dino #2 was free from its egg we skipped the second pitcher-tube incubation period and took dino #2 directly to the bathtub to chillax with dino #1 who was still growing in there.

And that’s where they still are as I type this: just growin’ in the tub.

I think they’re very near their maximum growth potential at this point, but who knows. If you hear about an apartment exploding due to giant dinosaurs, that was me.

With Pigsten’s birthday shared and dino #2’s identity revealed, it’s time to move on to the “Ascension” portion of the post’s title. If you are a really diligent reader of Dinosaur Bear and have a good memory for fantastical/mundane details, you probably already know who ascended: Thomas V.

Yes, like Thomas IV (and III, and II, and I) before him, Thomas V has transcended from the mortal plane into the great eldritch pumpkin cosmos of the beyond. Unlike say… Thomas III, Thomas V was one of the quicker (if not the quickest) Thomases we’ve had to ascend. Part of this might be due to the fact that he was physically a different kind of Thomas from those who came before, or, more likely, because Thomas V was just a fast-paced Thomas. Thomas V was starting to get a few soft spots on him and rather than have him secretly mold into the spot he is sitting on (which Thomases are wont to do) we decided to go ahead and take him to a more suitable location for ascension. Since we are located in a desert, it’s not as easy to find a satisfactory Thomas transcendence location since a lot of what is around us is rock – and I mean quadrillions of little red rocks. Even sand is preferable to the rocks, so we sought out such a location. This involved SB and I carrying Thomas V around looking for a good spot, a journey which took us to new areas of our neighborhood. The plus side of that was that we saw a bunny on the way!

Eventually we found an old gate which led out into an open desert area (and spotted another pumpkin on the way, no less!) and there we found a suitable location for Thomas V to begin joining the cthulhuian Great Pumpkin who lurks beyond the perceptions of mortal men.

Come to think of it, Thomas V has probably got to enjoy the most scenic spot for transcendence of all our Thomases so far.

His bush is the one to the left there.

So, there you have it – a birthday (Pigsten), a hello (dino #2), and a temporary goodbye (Thomas V). I say temporary because Thomas is very much part of the wheel of Ka, and as such we will see him again someday in this life or the next. Also, Thomas V wasn’t the only resident of Dinosaur Bear that we recently sent off on an adventure – but that is a story for next time.

As I mentioned before I’ve recently taken up a new case which is keeping me a bit busier than expected. So I’m somewhat doubtful I’ll maintain a Monday-to-Monday schedule for Dinosaur Bear, but I have at least one more post mentally planned (but not written) after this one and then I still have a much larger post simmering on the back burner as I continue to gather information for it – though that one is looking to take much longer than I originally anticipated. In the meantime, you can expect more juicy Dinosaur Bear weirdness, so keep an eye on those inboxes.

Until next time,
-Taco

Giving Thanks (2018)

December 3, 2018 by Taco

Greetings and welcome to Dinosaur Bear!

Another year, another opportunity to give thanks. This is SB and I’s first Thanksgiving since returning to the U.S., though we still celebrated it while abroad so it doesn’t feel especially different. What does feel different this year is the weather. If you’re new to Dinosaur Bear or have a short memory (Taco understands) then you may not know that SB and I recently(ish) moved to warmer environs. As such, rather than the weather we were used to in say, Iceland or Boston, we now have this.

Indeed, the transition over to deep Fall has not been something that was made immediately obvious by the weather itself. For example, on the day I write this the high for tomorrow is 70 degrees. As a result we’ve lost a good deal (but not all) of the visual cues we were previously used to as Fall creeps onward. So, without much change in weather, the decorations started to shift from pumpkins (Thomases):

To Christmas:

Note, however, the continued presence of Thomas Eggs.

In case you were curious, neither of those are our decorations. We lack the motivation to do much decorating – and besides our doorman (Lawrence) has very strict standards for the entryway.

Now, that is not to say that we’ve been entirely devoid of cooler, more Fall/Winter-like weather. Most nights are cold here, being a desert and all, and I know it’s gotten down into the 20s a couple of times at night. During the day we even had some snow – though I thoroughly stress the word some in that statement. Yeah, compared to our previous years, I don’t think we’re in for much if this is what it is going to look like on “snow days.”

You can see the tree featured in this post to the left.

Naturally that didn’t stop a certain polar bear from embracing the snow during the short period it was falling and before it nearly instantaneously melted.

Still, given SB and I’s tendency to break weather records when we move I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up having to put my foot in my mouth over those last few statements.

But aside from the changing seasons (if not weather) life was flowing pretty much as usual in the lead up to Thanksgiving 2018. We’re pretty settled in at this point, and have gotten used to our new acquisitions – namely Phil, who we can “cast” things to without having cable, as seen below during the primaries.

We’ve also continued to explore more of our new city with Felicia, with the Boys vying for the coveted shotgun seat during each outing.

“Exploring” also means getting exposed to new places to shop and get food, with the bulk of our current groceries coming from Albertsons.

Those big funny looking things are “jackfruit” and we recently tried it for the first time. It was interesting.

We’ve even revisited an old favorite, Papa Murphy’s, which we hadn’t had in probably 5 or 6 years after being obsessed with the place circa 2009/2010.

If you were wondering why the gap, it’s because there were no locations near us.

Needless to say exploration has extended to new beer, and while we initially stuck to the bigger stores we have recently added a local liquor store to our shopping list.

Interestingly enough, beer hasn’t been my major “adult beverage” focal point lately. Instead I’ve been doing more research into Scotch as it’s something I’d like to learn more about after some positive experience with it in Scotland. Sadly, even “newbie” Scotches tend to be above our price range, so for now I look and read and wait for SB to get me some for Christmas. 😛

A “less adult beverage” that I have recently returned to drinking is V8, particularly low-sodium V8 these days as the regular stuff might as well be a cylindrical piece of salt in a can. My Dad drank a lot of it when I was younger and so I have lots of memories of drinking it between my Budweiser-stealing escapades of yesteryear. What’s nice about V8 is that you can (literally) spice it up in a lot of different ways. A recent favorite of mine has been to combine some jalapeno sauce and garlic powder into the V8.

It’s just asking to have alcohol put in it, but I ~~can’t~~ shouldn’t drink alcohol all the time.

Beyond V8 we’ve continued to embrace actually being able to afford things again, with some Ben & Jerry‘s “pint slices” (i.e. sandwiches) and seasonal cereal offerings, such as Gingerbread Spice.

Lest you think everything we eat comes prepackaged, we can’t afford quite that much, so we also make roughly 6/7 of our meals. For instance, homemade seitan and mushroom tortilla pizza rather than Papa Murphy’s.

The 7th non-home meal is generally our Friday nights, which while we’ve drastically downgraded them over the past few years to nearly universal “stay-in” evenings, they still include something special we get from the store, etc. Another tradition that has cropped up several times over the years and which returned full swing in Iceland and now here is our “pancake/waffle” Sundays.

These involve yours truly making pancakes or waffles (depending on the mood) for the family – though recently I have been forced at claw-point to use nothing other than Kodiak Cake mix. 🙂 Seeing the cold brew coffee next to the waffle reminded me of something neat that happened with my coffee that day. When I poured the cold brew into the almond creamer it formed a really cool pattern that looked like a snow-covered patch of woods against the sky.

With the compression and my failure to adequately capture it (and I tried, many times – arguably more to do with me than the camera) you’ll likely have to just use your imagination and trust me. However, if you want to try to see it then look to the middle part of the class (where the coffee and cream are mixing) and imagine that as leafless trees in winter which are covered by snow. Then progress downward until you get to the snow covered ground (bottom of the glass). It was cool in person, no idea how it will translate to a compressed and size-reduced photo.

That same day we were also playing around with our phones a bit as they had recently received a camera update. I was quick to return to playing with my hamburger bro friend:

In addition I found a little Shiba Inu (or at least I think that is what it is) you can “drop” into the photo that will move around, etc.

I also started messing around with the light angles and found that the sun friend could work well in such conditions.

SB found some animated stickers you could add to photos. These are a bit more basic than the 3D animated objects I was playing with, but they are still neat.

Tristen is most definitely not sure he agrees.

The biggest aspect of the camera update was the release of the “Night Sight” mode for the phone. This was something I was pretty excited about, especially since even without a night mode my new phone was still scores better than my old one. Now that I’ve had a chance to play around with Night Sight mode, I have to say that I’m both impressed and ignorant all at once. I’m ignorant in that the focus mechanisms of Night Sight are still foreign to me.

I’m also still learning how to deal with direct light sources in a dark room.

But I’m also impressed by the phone’s ability to generate imagery even in the near complete absence of light. Take this photo for example:

While grainy and having the appearance of an early 2000s internet creepypasta, this photo was taken in our bathroom with no light. As in, I closed the door and there were no lights on. If I were to have posted this photo from my old phone (which I can’t do since I sold it) it would have just been a giant black rectangle on your screen. I realize that might seem like malarky, but there was truly no light in that photo – ok you got me, there’s almost always light, but I mean “no light” in the normal usage of the term. It was friggin’ dark and the camera still captured something. I was impressed, especially since this is a tiny camera in a phone.

Now, on a completely unrelated note our shower cleaner in that last photo made me thing of an oh so lovely experience I had before Thanksgiving: cleaning our dishwasher. Here I have to say that me and our dishwasher are quite familiar with each other. When we first moved in that thing was nasty. I’m talking food clogged in the vents, black stuff in the bottom, hairs (yes hairs) clinging to the inside of the door, you name it, it probably featured it. Honestly it looked like the thing had never been cleaned. It was weirdly in contrast to the other appliances which seemed very clean. The oven, for example, was probably the cleanest oven I’ve ever seen in an apartment. But this dishwasher, whew, it was filthy.

So I went about cleaning it with specific dishwasher cleaning agents, inspecific cleaning agents, cleaning agents that probably assured my eventual mutation into something nonhuman, and physical tools like a screwdriver. Yep, when you are taking a screwdriver to the crap inside your dishwasher you know you are leading the good life. Now, to its credit, I will say that despite being disgusting the dishwasher at least worked – unlike our refrigerator which died within two weeks (though to the landlord’s credit they replaced it with a new one the same day). Or, perhaps “work” is too strong of a word, the dishwasher “functioned” – I think that’s more accurate. It left loads of black stuff (more on that in a moment) and also it leaked. A lot. While I wasn’t about to ask the landlord to come clean the dishwasher (though it was filthy enough I probably should have) I was more than willing to make them come fix the leak.

Fortunately for them I generally try to repair/fix anything in my apartment up until the point it costs money. Sometimes SB’s gets a bit exasperated by my endeavors to fix things when we pay someone to do that for us, but I generally view such repairs as a learning opportunity for when I own my own things (as an example I haven’t paid anyone to fix anything electronic for me in 12 years). So, when the dishwasher started leaking and the refrigerator started to die, I did my own research and disassembly to try to at least figure out what the problem was, if not fix it. While I have a pretty good idea what the problem was with the fridge, I’ll never know as they took it and gave us a new one. The dishwasher, however, I figured out exactly what the issue was and thankfully the maintenance guy followed my suggestions (unlike the asshat at our place in Boston who was continuously ass-blasted about a mistake he made and took it out on me) and fixed it in less than 10 minutes. I’m not saying he needed me, I’m saying that I gave him info that took out the entire troubleshooting process and expedited things – and in the meantime I learned how to fix it myself if I ever own a dishwasher that breaks in the same manner. Further, when poking around under the dishwasher I learned that the entire thing was woefully off balance and probably had been since the day it was installed. So I fixed that with some basic tools and elbow-grease and now our dishwasher no longer sets lopsided in the cabinet (which was causing its own issues).

Anyways, way off track there. Though the dishwasher had been repetitively cleaned, had its leak fixed, and had been balanced, it was still leaving small bits of black stuff which looked suspiciously like mold or mildew. Having cleaned underneath the thing and having had it apart for various stages of deep cleaning, I knew that there was one more place left to clean – the drain. Now you’re probably wondering why I waited so long to clean the drain when it’s generally one of the first things recommended. Honestly I was hoping to avoid it because the drain cover used non-standard screws and I knew it would be a pain in the ass to get off, and, sure enough, it was. And…

..sweet merciful God almighty the drain was one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen.

Not only did it smell rancid, some of that.. “waste” was so old it had turned into freaking titanium and chemically forged itself into the plastic cover. This, coupled with the food from the 1920s stuck in the upper vent, all but confirmed by presumption that the dishwasher had simply never been cleaned. It took me 45 minutes to clean that. I used Lime Away, vinegar, toilet cleaner (yes I know how bad that stuff is, but when your dishwasher looks like the aftermath of Passchendaele then you’ll understand), and things like good ole’ soap and hot water and a knife. Yes, a freaking knife, because some of that stuff you could not scrub off: you had to engage it in mortal combat because it was alive.

Anyways, after nearly an hour of struggle and near-death experiences I was finally able to start a cleaning cycle on the dishwasher. We only use it about 1 or 2 times per week, but when new strains of typhus are growing in there and plague doctors are gathering outside your house you need to deal with it.

Now, having shared that lovely bit of imagery, that seems like the perfect time to segue into Thanksgiving and food! 😀

SB and I had decided to do Thanksgiving with just us and the Boys this year, so we had complete control over the menu – or so we thought! While were musing what to do for the main course, SB found out that her work gave out turkeys for Thanksgiving! She had been able to start just in time to sign up for one, so she did (not that Tristen would have accepted any other outcome). Turns out that this was a full 15lb turkey… for two people. 😛

One happy boi.

For reference that’s 3-3.5x the size of our usual birds. However, not a group to waste much of anything, we quickly began formulating our plan of attack on Turkey (while Tristen and Valentino gnawed on the frozen carcass). I decided that we’d go with slow cooking it in some beer!

Oddly enough the beer we had on hand was from the two breweries we visited in Ireland!

Since we had 4 big cans of Guinness that was the logical choice to cook with.. and drink. 🙂

Tristen claimed a can for himself as he assumed the “supervisor” position on the bar where he overlooked the toils of the filthy peasantry beneath him.

Valentino, for his part, was very anxious to help out with the homemade cranberry-plumb-ginger sauce!

Pig alternated between checking the yams (yam-yams for the ham-hams) in the oven and fiercely guarding the sweet potato rolls we’d gotten.

And I do mean fiercely guarding.

None shall pass.

To Tristen’s credit, he did join his brothers in assisting us, but mostly only when he thought he could sneak a bite of the “ricken” (turkey).

Tristen also kept SB company while we cast the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast (long after it was over, we were in no rush to wake up that day, lol) to Phil. The highlight of the parade for us is always Sinclair, (no not that Sinclair.. well, sort of that Sinclair, more like that Sinclair’s older sibling) and this year was no exception!

The turkey ended up taking about 45 minutes longer to cook than I had anticipated, which I think is excusable considering my lack of experience cooking anything more than 5lbs in the past. More importantly, it turned out really good.

The seasoning and Guinness worked really well together. It was a good centerpiece for our 2018 Thanksgiving meal.

Our dishes this year included: the aforementioned seasoned Guinness turkey, homemade cranberry-plumb-ginger sauce, sweet potato pecan puree, southwest style green beans (with, interestingly enough, vegan bacon and also some local green chile!), and sweet potato rolls.

For desert we had a pumpkin-pecan-cranberry pie. Yes, pumpkins, pecans, and cranberries – all in one pie (and the second of such amazing pumpkin pie variations in just one month).

Photo is a little blurry as I cropped it out of a larger one and compressed it, but I think you can see the deliciousness.

Our Thanksgiving evening also included a mini Adventure Time marathon – and with us any Adventure Time day is a good day. 🙂

Afterward, well… afterward I think this photo of Valentino and Pig is best indicator of how we all felt. 😀

But, as is usual for Thanksgiving, the pompousness was only just beginning. With only the tiniest of dents in our turkey, we went on to have leftovers for several days – and the turkey lasted even longer (it’s only like half gone as I type this). The first thing the turkey got turned into was a cheesy green chile turkey tortilla soup.

It was, in SB’s words “amazing” – which is saying something since it was also quite spicy and SB’s heat tolerance is much lower than mine. We turned the turkey skeleton/corpse and fatty-bits into a yummy broth which we will use for various other recipes, mostly recently maple-chile turkey chili. But yeah, the moral of story is that a 15lb turkey lasts us a long while.

In the days after Thanksgiving (Black Friday off, woo!) we largely just spent time together. SB did go out a bit on Black Friday, and then I went out for a bit when SB locked her keys in the car and I had to walk all the way to Target to bring her the spare keys. If you’re wondering why I didn’t take a Taxi/Uber/Lyft, well it was quitting time on Black Friday, that’s why – so there was a triple surge going on. On my walk (which was 15 miles) I was attacked by rattlesnakes, coyotes, and rabid roadrunners. When I finally arrived, haggard and near death, SB berated me for taking so long.

The plus side of SB’s outing is that she found some local sodas to try, so we tried two of those over the weekend.

But, aside from a massive (for us turkey), beer, wine, yummy food, Adventure Time, and 150 mile forced marches (for me, not SB – she got to just sit) our Thanksgiving and the following weekend was pretty uneventful, which is exactly how I like it!

So, with the story of our 2018 Thanksgiving told, I’d like to share a few things I am thankful for.

I am thankful for SB, Tristen, Valentino, Pig, Clifford, Pigsten, and Broli – as well as all the other buddies. I am thankful for all our plant friends – speaking of which the barley bros are doing very well.

I am thankful for Phil, for my Playstation, for my computer headset, my 12 year old iPod, my 13 year old slippers, and wool socks. I am thankful that I am no longer a law student. I am thankful I have people looking out for me in the legal profession (even if we don’t always see eye to eye). I am thankful for all my “Secondary Cast of Characters” family. I am thankful that I will soon have (non-terrible, though still not great, freedoms) insurance again. I am thankful for earplugs. I am thankful for the developers who made Red Dead Redemption 2. I am thankful that I did not go hungry on Thanksgiving or any other day. I am thankful we had a second key I could carry for 1500 miles across the desert to SB. I am thankful for Dr. Doom. I am thankful for reusable water bottles and for the fact that I have water easily accessible to me.

I am also incredibly thankful for all the animal friends in the world. To say that they are often the highlight of my day is no exaggeration.

I am especially thankful for Alfred – who made a late November appearance!

Except chiggers. Chiggers can die in fire. Also poison ivy plants, those too.

I am thankful for many things, far more than I can list here – but as a closing note I’d like to once again, say thanks to Meem for helping me start this blog (over 6 years ago) in the first place. Without her you’d all never be able to listen to me whine about things – and what a sad, sad world that would be. 😛

Until next time,
-Taco

9th Anniversary Festivities (Plus a NM Update)

November 19, 2018 by Taco

Greetings and welcome to Dinosaur Bear!

[Administrative Note: This is the first post I am writing after a recent slew of back-end updates and changes here at Dinosaur Bear. One part of the update was to change how internal links work on the blog, so if you notice some links on this post (or others) not working correctly, please let me know in the comments for the relevant post! Also, if anything else seems wonky it might just be a work in progress sort of deal as I am playing with a lot of behind-the-scenes gadgets that are either newly installed or new to me.]

So, aside from that phone post, when we last left off SB and I had just departed from our ABQ Adventure with Meem. Prior to that we were in the process of settling into our new home. This post picks up with a bit of an update on our NM lives, as well as celebrates our 9th Anniversary Festivities! I originally intended for this post to come out at the end of the string of posts I have already written (five posts waiting in the hangar as of me writing this), but I ended up producing a lot more content than I anticipated so I’m inserting this one in front of two already written posts for timeliness purposes.

Anyways, as to the continued process of us settling in, we’ve made quite a bit of progress and I think the apartment is pretty much settled at this point! We’ve gotten everything organized and put away and have made all the new acquisitions we’ll need. We even downsized a bit more than we already had, which is something SB and I are really trying to keep doing (which can be difficult when you need to reacquire basic things like a table). Pigsten for his part did not downsize, but he did organize!

In fact he helped me clean his entire rock collection (plus a few seashells) because they needed a good scrubbin’ (especially one, ehm.. slightly radioactive one whose origins will be revealed in a future post!) – and then we placed them all in his brand new Rock Box!

The small wooden box on top is his original box – you can see how much his collection has grown!

Pigsten got a bit dirty while going through his collection – as did Broli. In fact all the Boys had gotten a bit dirty from all our recent traveling, that or they just were messy eaters in all the excitement of new food (*cough* Valentino *cough*).

So, with much ado, all the Boys got a long-overdue bath.

Valentino was, as usual, incredibly excited for bath time (in fact I often think he purposefully gets dirty to expedite the bath process).

Pig was also really chill about it as bath time is a nice zen time for him. However, after the bath is over he gets a little… uh.. excited?

Now, the one boy who always gives us a fit about bathing is – you guessed it – Tristen (if you thought Pigsten or Broli they are easy-peasy).

Tristen “sitting” on the surface of the water rather than bathing.

He bites and roars and claws and thrashes and, eventually, gives in and just lets it happen.

Part of why he hates it so much is because bathing removes his precious “manries” (e.g. dirt, grease, and other manly things) but also because I think he gets cold afterward. The good news on that front is that since the weather has been pretty amazing here the Boys all got to do the majority of their drying outside rather than just sit in front of a fan for hours.

In other Boys-related news, they have continued to amass a large number of online friends and pen-pals, so many in fact that every couple of weeks it seems like they are getting mail!

Valentino showcasing a postcard they got – with Rosita being her typical model self.

They definitely get more good mail than I do that’s for sure. I get bills, information from the bar (I’ll let you guess what kind of bar), and that’s about it. Also bills. On the friends note, the Boys have even made some local friends, such as this T-Rex lamp Tristen found when I was meeting a professional associate for coffee, this is not Tristen’s first T-Rex lamp friend either!

I think Tristen has struggled a bit with the move – not because he doesn’t like it here (in fact he much prefers it here to say… Iceland in winter), but really because he is like me any change makes him anxious. So we’ve been keeping him pretty busy with activities (and also bribes, they work well with that Boy – read on for one such bribe). Despite normally being a “Dad’s boy” he has even ran some errands with SB lately.

Though that might have more to do with Co-Pilot status in Felicia than it does Mom time. Speaking of being odd parents, we recently acquired this year’s Thomas, Thomas V!

Yes its crazy to think about the fact that we’ve had five reincarnations of Thomas now. Thomas has proven to us that he is not limited by the usual aspects of mortality or linear existence. He has been small, had his own security guard, been large, and is now white.

We decided to mix it up with a different style of Thomas this year (and SB didn’t even have to lug him back from Bónus on foot either!) and picked up a white one, or rather the seeds that Thomas I, II, III, and IV implanted in our brains commanded us subconsciously to pick this Thomas to be Thomas V. I hold no illusions of control over the Thomas Empire.

Thomas chillin’ on the balcony.

Oh, you may be wondering about our other plants – you know, the ones that aren’t part of a massive cosmos-devouring Pumpkin God. They are doing well too. The Barley Bros and Bonsai Buddy Jr. are getting along quite nicely in their new spot in the office.

And yes, I open the blinds for them, it’s just that sometimes the sunshine turns the office into an inferno. As proof of their well-being here is a later photo (with open blinds) where you can see how big the Barley Bros are getting.

If you need a primer on what makes two Barley plants in New Mexico somewhat extraordinary then read this post again, that post also mentions the unfortunate “death” of Little Friend. The good news is that our cacti are doing well, especially Little Friend who could really only go up from his “deceased” status.

It’s hard to tell from that photo but he is actively growing! He seems quite at home in New Mexico.

Pancho continues to be huge, Nacho struggled a bit with his repotting and I had to do some surgery on him, same for Quixote (which really surprised us). However, they are all stable now and Pig is doing lots of “cacti yoga” with them to help them heal.

That Pig-healin’ must be seeping into all the plants in the house, because even the office plants seem to benefit from it.

The Barley Bros now dwarf Bonsai Buddy Jr.

Oh, and if you were curious (you weren’t, but that’s an easy way for me to change course), yes – we did buy both the stand and the bench just for the plants. I’m talking like $65 spent on these plants while we eat canned beans. 😀 Priorities dear reader, priorities.

Speaking of expenses, we made another large expense as part of our “settling” process – we got a TV. Yes, aside from Felicia the TV was the biggest expense we’ve had in.. well.. about five years. If you’ve read Dinosaur Bear for a while you’ll know that we parted with our beloved former TV, Philip, prior to leaving Boston. Philip was, in his day, a nice TV. He was a 2008 model but we purchased him in 2009 with the ole’ “Last Year’s Model” discount from Sam’s Club. In fact we purchased him on June 17th at 3:33pm using my Dad and Stepmom’s Business Account at Sam’s Club. Yes, I kept the receipt, Philip was my child. We then put Philip’s MASSIVE box into the back of SB’s Lumina (where it did not fit), tied it up with rope, and then slowly drove back to our apartment while consumed with terror that it would fall out of the car, etc. Philip was 47″ – a big TV for 2009. Philip was also expensive, even with the discount and all the research I had done (and if you know me, you’ll know I do an obsessive amount of research before spending anything above probably $100 – SB says that I sometimes do a little too much research, in fact 😛 ). Some people gave me crap for buying Philip when SB and I made very little money, some people’s opinions didn’t matter. 🙂

Philip was, more importantly, a good TV. He was SB and I’s first big purchase, and aside from getting sick once (a Dr. came and fixed him up – thankfully he was still in warranty), he was a solid performer. Philip was the last of his species to be made in the United States, and we moved him and his big box three times (Philip was also very heavy compared to current-gen TVs). However, when it came time to leave Boston behind we decided we needed to sell Philip for space purposes. Fortunately Philip went to a good home, and while it rained on the day he went to his new home (thankfully I’d kept all his packaging) because even God was sad, we got him on his way with no issues and I honestly got a pretty good price for him.

We had a second smaller TV that my Dad and Stepmom had gotten for us (a first-gen smart TV from Vizio) but we sold that around the same time as Philip. After that we had no TV for about 14 months – and while we didn’t really miss broadcast television that much, we did miss Philip and watching Adventure Time and Jeopardy together. So, with Tristen basically eating us alive over the lack of a TV, I started doing research into current-gen TVs after we’d settled into our apartment. After a lot of research and some bargain hunting and actual haggling (yes, legitimate old-school haggling) that took nearly 25% off the list price, we purchased a new TV.

Meet “Phil” 😀

Phil, despite being larger than Philip, weighs way less. Phil is also a smart TV, whereas Philip was not, so we’re still getting used to a TV that we can interface with (Phil uses Android TV and we have Android Phones – so they can make digital babies). I would also be remiss if I didn’t inform you that Phil is fiercely guarded by a one Tristen, T-Rex.

Tristen originally wanted to set Phil up so that the Google Assistant only listened to him, but we vetoed that proposition. Since Phil is a Smart TV and easily links up with our phones and computers, one of the first things we did was “cast” a bunch of photos of the Boys to him and watch YouTube.

During our first big evening with Phil SB went out to Church’s Chicken (much to Tristen’s euphoric jubilation) and we watched YouTube videos of Jenna Marbles’s dogs while enjoying our fried chicken.

We don’t have broadcast TV (i.e. no cable) and we aren’t going to get it. It costs too much and streaming is much more cost-effective for us (I, for one, don’t really watch anything and what SB watches is stuff like YouTube or Netflix). As such we don’t get any sports, etc. but we do have Adventure Time – though we get those on DVDs (not even Blurays, just DVDs – because it’s a cartoon, lol) and we didn’t have a DVD player when we first got Phil (a fact Tristen later used to his bargaining advantage).

Despite our fried chicken TV fest, SB and I haven’t been eating much meat lately and no longer keep any in the house aside from events like Church’s “Ricken” night. That said, despite less meat we’ve honestly branched out our diets more than we had in Iceland (though that was largely due to cost, in fairness) including some yummy frozen watermelon-mint treats SB made us.

It’s also fall, meaning pumpkin-craziness is in the air (something Iceland did not share, in fact SB’s friend had to bring us Pumpkin Spice all the way from the U.S.)

So, in addition to the usual pumpkin stuff (which is to say coffee, always coffee) SB also made us some pumpkin fudge which had no added sugar and was AMAZINGLY good!

It had a really good texture and was way less sweet than usual fudge (which I find to be too much anymore) and went really well with our pumpkin coffee! 🙂

Fudge + coffee/tea + snuggle-time = a very good night indeed!

The Boys are all big fans of pumpkin anything, though they are generally pretty easy to please, especially in regards to coffee. Lately we’ve been on a big almond creamer kick with our coffee.

Pig loves him some almonds, so he often sneaks extra coffee while his brothers are distracted.

For my part I’ve been celebrating beer that doesn’t cost a small fortune by buying, well, a lot of it. 😀

I’ve picked up more 12 packs in the past couple of months than I had in over a year and a half.

Hamburger bro courtesy of my Pixel 3.

SB has also been exploring some more wine – again because of how much better the prices are here.

And because a lot of alcohol isn’t enough to make you sleepy (lol) we recently picked up some deliciously good “Relax” coffee. Yes, I realize how backward that sounds, but its decaf coffee blended with lavender and chamomile and it is freaking good.

I’ve been trying it with Kava to see if it helps me sleep, and while results have varied, it’s a nice alternative to melatonin (which I have honestly been taking for far too long but at a certain point you just gotta’ sleep). The good news on the sleepy-time front is that Fall has brought with it much cooler (but not cold) temperatures, so we’ve been able to turn off the A/C (except for the very end of October) and enjoy the fresh air (which I tend to sleep better with). Of course Fall isn’t super prevalent here and it doesn’t even begin to compare with Fall in New England. However, as luck would have it we do have one tree out in front of our apartment that does change – and when I say one I mean one, the rests are various succulents and palms.

Interestingly enough, we got to see the tree slowly change from right to left – which was really neat. When it first started it went fast, so fast in fact that SB and I woke up one day were like “Wow, the tree, uh, changed!” After the first 1/3 or so it slowed way down, but it continued to only work from right to left – the left side never moved inward. Pig kept a close eye on the tree as it changed, likely in search of any grubs eating the leaves.

If you look closely you’ll spot a Pig-leg.

Since the Fall weather has been wonderful aside from a couple of rainy days we’ve used the weather as an opportunity to get outdoors. One of the first places we checked out was the Veterans Memorial Park which we had driven by the very first day we arrived here. While the Park is dedicated to New Mexican Veterans broadly, it has a special focus on the Bataan Death March of WWII because of the disproportionate number of New Mexicans who were forced into the march (where ~5,650 to 18,000 prisoners of war died).

The above statue, “Heroes of Bataan” is dedicated to both the U.S. and Filipino soldiers who were part of the march, and the space in front of them features footprints of actual survivors of the march.

What I did not know prior to visiting the park was that New Mexico had the highest per capita prisoner of war rate with the Japanese after the U.S. and Filipino forces surrendered in 1942 (and were subsequently forced into the death march).

They had a sign which shows how many New Mexicans from each county ended up as a POW in the Philippines which gives you a visual idea of just how many there were from a comparatively low population state.

In addition to WWII there are monuments and memorials to essentially every major conflict going all the way back to the Revolutionary War in the park (though obviously New Mexico has no known connections to that war for obvious reasons). One of the most visually noticeable memorials is for Vietnam, largely because of the Bell UH-1 Iroquois (or as I know them, the “Huey”) they have above the memorial.

You can get right up underneath it, which is really neat (though some asshat vandalized it in 2016, because a surefire way to be a cool person is to vandalize war memorials – fortunately all the damage was fixed).

Pigsten and Broli really liked the park, though Pigsten likes just about anyplace with a lot of rocks.

One of my favorite parts of the park was a stone tablet engraved with “The Battling Bastards of Bataan” by Frank Hewlett – which details the circumstances of Bataan.

We’re the Battling Bastards of Bataan,
No Mama, No Papa, No Uncle Sam,
No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,
No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces,
And nobody gives a damn!

While sad, I found it quite profound.

While the park has been our only real outing (aside from a yet-to-be-released adventure), that hasn’t stopped us from getting excited about one of the best parts of Fall – Halloween!

Halloween decorations designed to lure trick-or-treaters to their doom, or to give them candy, either-or.

Halloween has been a favorite holiday of mine for a long time, but since SB and I’s anniversary occurs at roughly the same time, that just makes it even better! Thomas V (like all his siblings before him) came to live with us in the weeks preceding Halloween and so he was, of course, excited as well.

In fact the last week of October is generally a pretty exciting time around the Taco household – and while SB and I have a long history of not actually getting to spend much time together on our anniversary, this year we did! I think the Boys were pretty excited about that, either that or the fact that they did their civic duty and voted early (or because they bought a lottery ticket, which alas, won us nothing).

Or, perhaps they were just excited because of Halloween treats. Like most people, we don’t restrict our treats to Halloween and instead we trickle them in in advance, kind of like this glorious Mummy Cake Pop!

Or Valentino’s army of zombie gummy bears!

I don’t know if they were really zombies or not, but it fits the theme.

Or maybe it was just because we got even more beer.

Or, perhaps in the case of Pigsten it was because he continued to acquire rocks.

Or, even still, maybe it was because it was bat week!?

Look at that smug, smilin’, silly boi!

Ok the bat week thing was probably mostly me, I love bats. While the good spirits of the Boys may have been the result of many things, I can say for sure that Tristen’s recent bout of blissful joy is the result of his recent acquisition: a Playstation 4.

Not just any Playstation 4 either, a Playstation 4 Pro with Red Dead Redemption 2 included (Red Dead Redemption 1 is one of my Top 3 all time favorite games, and so by proxy one of Tristen’s as well). Tristen was so excited about “his” new Playstation that I struggle to properly define it with words. To say he had waited for a Playstation 4 for a long time is not an exaggeration. He has wanted one for about five years now. Yes, despite having had a Playstation 3 from the first day he came to live with us (my PS3 was a beast and lasted from 2006 until I sold in 2017 – it was still working fine when I sold it too) he just had to have the Playstation 4. But he was consistently denied for years. Finally, as a reward for becoming lawlyurs we placed a pre-order for the PS4 Pro RDR2 Bundle while we were in ABQ, a pre-order which Amazon completely screwed up to the point we cancelled it and instead got it from Best Buy (my first purchase from Best Buy in probably 9 years). The upside of that is that because we pre-ordered it we were able to go do a “Midnight Release” (technically at 9pm) on the day before RDR2 actually released – a first in my entire life of gaming. So we got our PS4 Pro and RDR2 before most people could even get RDR2 at all – “manries” as Tristen would say.

As Phil is Sony, and the Playstation 4 Pro is made by Sony, the two of them got on real nice, real quick – in fact they recognized each other before I even powered on the PS4 for the first time, which was kind of freaky.

The one downside is that we found out that our shelf area in our TV stand doesn’t give the PS4 Pro enough fresh air and so it sounded like a jet-engine during 4K gameplay. It was so loud I even opened the Playstation up to make sure the fan was ok (and found out that you can’t go very deep into the PS4 without spending a lot more time than I wanted to).

Turns out the PS4 was just fine, it was just getting hot in the small space. So I changed the setup a bit, got the PS4 a vertical stand, and how it “hides” behind Phil and makes very little noise. So, a new TV and my first console purchase since the Playstation 2 in 2000 (I’ve owned consoles since, but those were gifted to me), plus our new phones, has resulted in quite the technological upgrade around the house in the past month.

Needless to say with all this going on there’s been a good deal of excitement lately (and some frustrating and annoying stuff, but that’s not for this post) – with some side items, such as the Boston Red Sox winning the 2018 Word Series just adding to the fun!

Tristen showing off his Boston pride.

With all that fun we slid into our actual anniversary in high spirits and with comparatively low stress to some previous years. As mentioned, we ALL got to spend time together this year, which was super nice – even our extended “buddy” family (such as our OG Gangsta Bear Friends) came out for our family party.

As part of our anniversary celebration we made a delicious homemade pizza, and may have snacked on some of those remaining zombie gummy bears in the process. 🙂

The real treat, however, was the dark-chocolate-espresso-pumpkin-pie I made. Yes, a dark chocolate, espresso, pumpkin pie.

Tristen, the ever diligent guardian of all things pie and beer.

As is usual for me I didn’t follow any recipe, I just took my own modified pumpkin pie variant (which is much lower in sugar, not flavor) and added in dark chocolate covered espresso beans and some shavings. It turned out very good.

We paired our pizza and pie with an Adventure Time marathon courtesy of the PS4’s disk drive and Phil – a nice treat since we hadn’t been able to watch Adventure Time in over a year! Naturally, despite the kid-friendly nature of pizza, pie, and cartoons we did also partake in ample amounts of adult beverages. While beer was to be expected, SB just so happened to accidentally on purpose have a giant box of wine arrive on our anniversary. 😉

We’d never done any mail-order wine before, but SB had (oddly enough) gotten a wine coupon from an eSATA computer cable I had bought (weird place to find a wine coupon, I know) which meant that the wine was only around $6 a bottle – good by any standards, let alone our budget-minded standards. So that night we had both beer and wine and in a rare event I had even more wine than beer!

While it was a relatively “calm” anniversary for year 9 (especially compared to some past years, which have included such fun events as a car breaking down in the middle of the highway), it was just the kind of anniversary I like: homemade dinner, homemade dessert, SB, the Boys, cartoons, and more alcohol than we can drink! 🙂

The next morning we worked off our pizza, pie, and booze with some time at the gym and some yoga.

We also enjoyed some of the new kinds of a coffee (mushroom based!) that we have been testing out.

Tristen with his morning joe and another postcard!

We continued to munch on the pizza and pie for the next several days (and the booze lasted even longer than that, surprisingly 😛 ). All in all it was a great few weeks in the Taco household. New friends, new electronics, new alcohol, new cartoons, new games, family outings, cleaner Boys (though Tristen wouldn’t agree with that being a good thing), and another year of SB and I’s silliness in the books. 🙂

All of this while Fall continues on around us. And I do love me some Fall, almost as much as I love my family. 😀

The culmination of the tree’s Autumn voyage.

So, there you have it – a decent update on our life in NM and the settling in process as well as a recap of our anniversary/Halloween festivities. While there have been some frustrating things going on in our lives as well, I didn’t want to focus on those in the is post, and instead I wanted to share some of the fun and (little) adventures that we’ve been having. Next week I’ll continue to focus on the “lighter side” with a fun post I’ve been thinking about writing for some time now – so check your inboxes next Monday for another round of Dinosaur Bear.

This isn’t what Fall looked like where I grew up – but I could get used to it. 🙂

Until next time,
-Taco

Spring Blurbs [1] – Sand, Snow, Scotch, and Pig

A Birthday and an Ascension

Giving Thanks (2018)

9th Anniversary Festivities (Plus a NM Update)

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