Dinosaur Bear

A Blog about Stuff and Things

The Reign of Thomas VII Begins

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All hail King Thomas, Seventh of his Name.


The celestial being known as Thomas joins us in the time of Rona.

Well then, it’s been a bit since I last posted here on Dinosaur Bear. I was thinking it was July or something, nope, turns out it was actually March. Time has gotten away from me in this year of the Rona pandemic (a pandemic Dinosaur Bear predicted back on January 17th for reference, no seriously). Of course regardless of what my own life entails, one must devote oneself to the greater powers that be, and in our case our most spatially proximate entity of omnipresence happens to be a series of pumpkins that manifest for us each year.

This year we find ourselves blessed with the presence of Thomas VII. He came to live with us (or rather, possessed our space for his own endeavors) on September 25th, 2020. He is preceded in house Thomas by Thomas I, Thomas II, Thomas III, Thomas IV, Thomas V, and Thomas VI. Thomas VII has a sticker which claims he is from California, land of Meem, but it’s a safe bet that this sticker was merely materialized by Thomas VII in order to better blend in with the mundane mortal pumpkins.


Sticker or mark of the beast?

As we are in a pandemic I find myself wondering what Thomas may have had to do with that, or, alternatively, if Thomas did not use its godly powers to invoke such death on humankind, then what does Thomas think of such affairs? As we of such simple minds cannot comprehend the glory that is Thomas, we can only wonder and ponder his righteous glory.


One possible scenario of how 2020 will end.

In the meantime, we have adorned the apartment with offerings to Thomas. As Thomas seems to be an aspect of Fall, we generally try to offer up Fall-based goodness in Thomas’s name. This time we offered pumpkin beer (Marble Pumpkin Noir) and a handmade pumpkin candle.


One cannot say if these offerings please Thomas, though as we have not been consumed by his corporeal form I hazard to guess that we have placated the spirit for now. Thomas is a merciful God.

Praise Thomas

Until next time,
-Taco

Beer Bottle Caps (January, 2020)

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Greetings and welcome to Dinosaur Bear!

As I sit here it’s about 67° F and sunny, which means that in the office it’s closer to 80°. Our office is a bit of mixed bag when it comes to the sun. You get a lot of it, but it also makes it the hottest room in the apartment and during certain times of the year renders a computer screen nearly unusable unless you close our 600lb metal blinds and as such make the room even more hot. Anyways, I’m not complaining since it’s January, but in addition to the thankful part of me, there’s also a part that begrudges the fact I need a ceiling fan in January to not be hot. Of course my boot is probably making matters worse. On the topic of my broken foot, it’s still broken, but I’m showing good healing progress and can hopefully ditch my crutches and just go boot mode in about four more weeks or so. Not sure of the length of recovery time after that, but having been on crutches for nearly two months at this point I’m more than ready to at least ditch those.

For today’s bout of randomness I’d like to display my most recent round of organizing my beer bottle cap collection.


Each one of those is a unique cap. You might think there’s a few duplicates, but there’s several from a brewery that have unique undersides, which makes them appear as duplicates from the top but they actually aren’t. However, to call myself out there is in fact one actual duplicate in the above photo that I didn’t catch until after I took it. There’s also several sodas and coffees in there, so while I guess it’s technically not a beer-exclusive collection, it’s 95% beer. This is of course not a display of all the caps I’ve possessed from consumed beers, these are just the unique caps – so if I get another cap of the same variety I just keep the better quality of the two and recycle or give away the other one. Further, there is obviously nothing to be done for the myriad of canned beers I’ve had. In truth my beer experience will never be completely documented even though I have older beer blurbs, the now (mostly) retired beer list, and Untappd there is always going to be that dead zone between the start of me recording my beers and Untappd (roughly 6 years). Regardless, I think the cap collection is pretty cool. There are a lot of them that are damaged from back when I was a heathen barbarian and didn’t have the tools to properly open the cap without bending it like a person of culture, but alas such is the cruelty of ignorance.

My beer consumption slowed drastically in 2018 and I mean like, dropped by 50% – and that’s because of this:


Not that bottle specifically, as that is the cheapest bottle of scotch I’ve ever purchased (about 1/5 as expensive as the priciest one), but scotch in general. Introducing scotch into my drinking profile naturally edged out beer’s undisputed dominance. Now, overall I still drink more beer than anything, but these days it’s definitely a battle of the alcohols between beer and scotch when it comes to what I’d like to drink. Wine has also had a reconnaissance with me since I went to France, but there’s still only a really narrow band of wine I actually like.

We’ve been restructuring our finances around the Taco household due to what would have eventually turned into bankruptcy, so I’ve diminished my drinking on the whole anyways. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, and if a cheap bottle of scotch lasts all the longer then it makes the good stuff taste even better.

Random change of thought (possibly get used to these as I revamp my blogging style). We got a new printer recently. For the record you can put down Dinosaur Bear’s stance on Epson products as “Worst printers in the world.” Yes that is an official company statement. We decided to ditch inkjet printers due to years of bad Epson printers and also the fact that inkjets tend to dry out when you don’t use them – and we don’t use our printer that much these days. So we went with a laser printer and boy oh boy has it been worth it so far. I had originally decided on a Brother, but it turned out to be morbidly obese even for a so called “compact” model, so we ended up going with HP – another brand I swore off long ago after several dozen near-Office Space incidents with the one HP SB and I used to own. However, knock on wood, so far this HP seems ok despite the fact that it was a headache to get on the wireless network, to the point I was having to modify settings in the router.


Pigsten and Broli approved.™

It doesn’t do color because color laser printers are way too pricey for us and we don’t need color very often anyways (I’d much prefer a good black printer that is reliable over a color printer that breaks 75% of the time you need to use it *cough* Epson *cough*). However, late last year I had to send to send some official correspondence to the U.S. Army over a semi-legal battle I am having with them and I had to send it in blue ink due to the Epson’s black port getting clogged after less than a week of non-use, so it was at that time that I decided something was going to need to be done. Meem was originally going to finance most of it as a Christmas pressie, but after I decided the Brother would crush our bookshelf we went to Target and got the HP, so now Meem’s gift has been converted into dozens of movie rentals from Amazon. 😛

That’s about it for now. Beer and printers, good combo. Oh and as a final note on the 61 degrees, Laurence is already starting to plant his spring garden (see the little plants above him). So at least someone is excited about that blazing sun.

~~~~~

The sign-off song for today is:

The Aviators – No One Will Save You

This song is inspired by a specific character in the Playstation 4 game Bloodborne – which is about one of the most bad-ass pieces of media if you love Lovecraftian horror, nightmares, vampirism, and generally all the things that go bump in the night.

Until next time,
-Taco

Spring Blurbs [3] – Into and Under the Wilds

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Greetings and welcome to Dinosaur Bear!

This marks my third 2019 Spring Blurb (here are Blurb 1 and Blurb 2 if you missed them). This time around I’ll be focused on a sort of localized adventure as SB and I explore southeastern New Mexico. So let’s get started!

For this adventure we knew we’d be doing a lot of walking on rough terrain so we finally invested in some proper hiking boots.


This was long overdue – especially considering that I once hiked up a snowy mountain using office shoes (not a great move in hindsight, but like most things I powered through it). We had planned a three day, two night trip and our first destination was the famous Carlsbad Caverns. Our trip began on an unusually cool and cloudy Friday (both Friday and Saturday would end up being mostly cool and cloudy) and in order to get to Carlsbad we had to first go into Texas.


Yes, you are correct, Carlsbad is in New Mexico, but logistically it made more sense for us to go into Texas first to get to it – and the trip was still over 3 hours even then. A lot of the drive looked pretty much exactly as you would expect it to.


Though at one point we did suddenly cross into a rather large salt flat, which was pretty neat.


After lots of driving we eventually made our way up into the Guadalupe Mountains.


That prominent peak you see is “El Capitan.”

From there we continued on to Carlsbad National Park. Now, you might have a mental image of what the above-ground part of Carlsbad looks like. If you are like me, this is not what you are expecting:


But yep, that’s it! The photo hides a massive cave entrance and over 30 miles of caves (and that’s just Carlsbad, there are 117 known caves in the park itself, one of which, Lechuguilla Cave, has nearly 135 miles of passages – though these are much smaller than those of Carlsbad and not accessible to the public). Fortunately there’s a nice big visitor center to keep you from getting to lost – well, that and the fact there is only one road out to it. 😛


The way Carlsbad works is a bit different than a lot of national parks. There is no “car gate fee” – or a car gate at all. Instead you pay per person if you want to enter the main part of the caves via self (or audio-guided) tour. Then there are additional Ranger-led tours that cost more (but not very much at all, we paid $7 a person) and are smaller/small groups led by a ranger. These secondary tours need to be booked in advance because they sell out really fast (we booked ours over 1.5 months in advance and some were already nearly sold out). Our booked tour only had one time per day and that single time only had 10 spots so it’s easy to see how they sell out.

On getting down into the caverns, you have two options. These can be very easily described as “on foot” or “via elevator.” One of which is far more difficult than the other. SB and I opted for the foot option.


The primary “Natural Entrance” route that nearly all people who don’t use the elevator will take – us included.

The trail down into the cave was pretty magnificent and we are extremely glad we did it as opposed to the elevator where you miss a huge percentage of the main cavern.


Along the path the National Park Service has set up some pretty badass lighting that really accents the cave well.


This is of course not only a cool effect, it actually becomes necessary as you quickly leave the waking world of light behind you.


Soon after that things start to get a lot more dark and a little bit spooky. 🙂


Fortunately the Natural Entrance Trail only had a few spots that I’d say were really dark, most of the time you have all the nice accent lighting to help guide you.


At one point the trail goes by the so-named “Iceberg Rock” because, well, it looks like an iceberg. It fell from the roof of the cavern and weighs over 400,000,000 pounds – almost as much as SB. [Tristen insisted we make that joke.]


A portion of the Iceberg Rock is that huge thing on the left – person for scale.

Deeper into the natural entrance you come across the “Boneyard” area. A Ranger later explained to us the scientific reasons for the formation, but I think it looks really cool even when you remain ignorant of how it formed.


Once you make it to the “bottom” (scare quotes because there is a whole lower cave system under the cave system us tourists can visit) you join into the “Big Room” area (main area) of the cave and just beyond that is the area where the elevators let out. Here is a little oasis of civilization, bathrooms, and food.


This area, effectively known as the “Lunch Room” deceives you into forgetting that you’ve just hiked (or elevator’d) down 750ft into the earth. At this point I made use the underground restroom (nicer than most gas stations) and then SB and I decided to take the elevator back up.


Pigsten highlighting the ascension monitor.

Now I really wanted to hike back out, for manries. However we needed lunch and we needed to be back up at the surface-level visitor center for our Ranger-led tour. Based on a bunch of calculations, time restrictions, and our will to sprint up very steep trails to the surface, we decided that in order to be most comfortable time-wise we needed to take the elevator back up. This was easy as the caverns were pretty quiet (apparently the queues for the elevators get long in the peak months) but more on that in a bit.

So we made our way back to the surface in a fraction of the time it took us to get down, had lunch at the visitor center, then met our Ranger for our small-group tour of “Left Hand Tunnel.” This tour was limited to 10 people – though 2 people didn’t show up so we were only 8 (9 including the Ranger). The main reason we chose Left Hand Tunnel was because the tour is conducted via lantern, and not electric lantern, not oil lantern, but candle lanterns (I had done a similar tour at Mammoth Cave, albeit not with candle lanterns, when I was younger).


Needless to say the lighting was not ideal for photos, especially when you consider that I had to keep moving to not get taken by the whatever monsters lurk in the blackness (at one point after we were done my Dad made a joke about The Descent via text message, and I’d be lying if I said hadn’t thought about that very thing – though I was kind enough not to mention it to SB who is, how do I put it, more apt to being a’feared than I am. 😛 ).

Still though, very dark conditions + movement considered, I’m pretty pleased with how our phones’ night sight mode worked out.


And if you were wondering what the area behind me looked like (I intentionally put myself at the very back of the group going in for better photos) this is what was behind me:


Exciting.

Fortunately there was no reason to worry, as trusty champion-of-all-things rocks, Pigsten, was with us the whole time (and Broli too).


After a wonderful tour of Left Hand Tunnel led by the awesome Ranger Laurel (who interestingly enough had started at Mammoth Cave) – I am sort of infatuated with Rangers, they are basically my most favorite people in the world – we headed out on our own again to explore more of the self-guided area of the main cavern.


Based on the time of day, it was starting to get very quiet in the caverns, and while we did met a few groups on the trail it was mostly just us and the spooky rock monsters.


The whole complex was pretty amazing and I’d never seen anything like it before.


Even though the main route follows a set loop, it’s still hard to convey via text and pictures just how massive that one single part of the caverns is.


At one point we came across the so-called “Bottomless Pit” which is actually “only” about 140ft deep (originally explorers tossed rocks into it and – never hearing the rock hit bottom – assumed the pit was bottomless, turns out that the bottom is just covered in a layer of soft dirt which muffles the impact). Here we found someone doing a controlled descent into the pit which was pretty cool to watch.


After that we started looping around back to the way we came, though the return trail is on the opposite side of the chamber so it’s mostly all new views.


We peaked our head into a few of the darker corners, as you never know what you’ll see.


There were even a few cave pools to cross over along the way.


After that we were nearly at closing time for the caverns so things were essentially deserted, so we made our way back to the surface world where the visitor center was still decently busy (point of note: the caverns close earlier than the visitor center).

From Carlsbad Caverns we made our way up through Carlsbad (city) to the small oil-town of Artesia. We’d chosen Artesia because it was far enough away from the national park to make lodging prices not be insane, but also because of the really good reviews we’d found for the Artesia Heritage Inn. After a bit of chaos and confusion over seemingly no-one actually being at the Inn (there was, it just took us a bit to get their attention) it ended up being a wonderful place to stay. For dinner we headed across the street to The Wellhead, a pub which really embraces the town’s oil culture (meanwhile Pigsten drove a truck carrying some sort of generator/device around the square seemingly dozens of times).


And I do mean it’s an oil town, as this was only a couple blocks down the street from our hotel (and so the whole town smelled like crude oil):


The next morning we headed north toward Roswell, and boy that drive was about as scenic as you could image: pure unadulterated natural beauty.


Majestic.

Now if you are wondering why we were going to Roswell, well, yeah, the aliens.


To be fair SB’s paternal family did once live in Roswell (so maybe they too are aliens?) but it’s a tenuous connection, so yeah, give me those ETs. So here I would usually recount the entire history of the the Roswell UFO Incident, and it’s a really fascinating story. But since I’m just trying to recap our trip, not turn this into a ufology blog, I recommend reading this article if you want a more skeptical take on it, and this article if you want something a bit more in the middle ground, but not quite in I WANT TO BELIEVE territory.

The museum in Roswell, fully titled the International UFO Museum and Research Center, is honestly not as cheesy as you might expect. I mean, there are definitely some bits of tangy-cheese to it (namely the photo-op props), but on the whole they’ve tried to make a respectable institution out of it. There are some interesting bits about “ancient aliens“:


A replica of a Mayan sarcophagus that supposedly tells the story of an ancient astronaut/alien.

And a bunch of stuff about UFOs in general and of course loads of material about the Roswell incident, including literal materials supposedly modeled from the crash itself.


After partaking of the museum (which is very reasonably priced at $5 a person) we made our way over to Pecos Winery + Bistro for some lunch and drinks. I had to get some UFO-themed beer (naturally) while SB went with some local wine (also alien themed) and she liked it enough she picked up a bottle for home (and I some beer).


After that we left Roswell behind and made our way west, back out into the open plains of essentially nothing unbridled God’s majesty.


However, before too long we found ourselves working our way into the foothills of the Sierra Blanca mountain range.


Our next destination was the infamous wild-west town (now unincorporated community) of Lincoln; hot-spot in the Lincoln County War of 1876-1879 and stomping ground of Billy the Kid.


The whole of Lincoln (which isn’t much) is now a historical district, so the “town” (which is honestly just as much a state park as an actual town) consists of a bunch of different historical buildings you can visit. There is also a nice nature trail which takes you down behind the town to the “Rio Bonito” – so SB and I were sure to check that out.


If you can’t tell from the photos, it was a quite chilly and windy day. Fortunately the weather had called for rain and snow (yes snow, we had gained a lot of elevation) and it ended up not doing much of that, so were lucky on the whole. The cool air didn’t stop the Boys (i.e. Tristen) from joining us on our hike though (toted in a Bónus bag no less).


One of the highlights of the town is the courthouse/(then) temporary prison from which Billy the Kid  (William H. Bonney) made his famous escape and killed two deputies.


This is the area in which the Kid (Bonney) was held – not much of jail now, and not much of a jail then either as the town had no proper jail at the time.

My personal favorite part of exploring the courthouse is the stairway where the Kid (Bonney) shot and mortally wounded Deputy James Bell.


If you look closely you can see the spot on the lower wall (bottom of the staircase) where the bullet hit after striking the deputy. In the process of his escape the Kid (Bonney) killed both deputy James Bell and soon after deputy Bob Olinger. There are markers were both deputies fell (Bell staggered out of the courthouse after being shot at the base of the stairs – though he died only a short way from the back door) which was really interesting.

After taking in a lot of wild-west history (and getting our first ever hand-painted magnet!) we continued our way up into the mountains and the Lincoln National Forest – and the sun even started to come out!


Our trip took us briefly through Capitan – which if you’ve read this blog post will help you understand why Valentino was so excited about that!


If you look very closely you’ll see the source of Valentino’s jubilation.

From Capitan we started heading southwest, further into the range.


Along the way we made our way through past signs of an old wildfire – quite possibly the Capitan Gap Fire which gave “birth” to the real life Smokey Bear (which is what Valentino was so excited about, if you hadn’t figured it out by now.)


Just a ways beyond that was our next destination and lodging point, Ruidoso. There we stayed at the super cozy Sitzmark Chalet Inn.


Ruidoso is apparently known as a “village” (which says something about my own hometown which has less than 1/3 the population of Ruidoso) that is well known for its mountain outdoor activities and skiing – lots and lots of skiing. We were a bit late for skiing (though the looming Sierra Blanca peak still had some snow on it) so things weren’t too hectic. We spent our first evening just chilling at the hotel and we went to the store and brought some food back to eat.


The Boys were a big fan of our coffee and pecan cobbler after-dinner treats next to the fireplace!

The next morning we headed out into town for a magnet (naturally).


We then made our way further up into the mountains to go on a hike, in particular the “North Cedar Creek Trail.”


This was a thickly wooded trail, and even though it wasn’t too warm up in the mountains it was still pretty toasty when you were in the direct sun and working your way up hill – so the trees (and their smells!) were a welcome site.


Along the way we saw lots of different plants and even a few animal friends (including animal friend traces, like poo! 😀 ) and Pig had a mighty hankering to eat some of the mushrooms we found.


The North Cedar Creek Trail is a “hybrid” out-and-back in that it’s partially a true out-and-back, and partially a loop. The steepest parts of the trail are toward each end, with the middle being the most flat. The hardest part of the trail is on the return, which takes you up to an old mining road.


Pigsten and Broli shall guide you.

Portions of that trail got pretty steep and rocky, but nothing beyond what I would call “Moderate” – though if it was really hot it’d be a lot more rough as that part is pretty exposed.


At the top of the “Mining Road” route there is a wonderful plateau area with some really good views of the surrounding range – and also lots of a photo ops.


After we’d made our way back down to Felicia we headed back into town for lunch and coffee at Sacred Grounds (I love the play on words) which had nailed the mountain town aesthetic.


After that we departed Ruidoso, though on the way out of town we spotted a big castle which caused Tristen to have a major freak out before he calmed and down and realized that because he saw it, it was now his.


If you were curious why a mountain village in New Mexico has a castle, apparently it was originally a theater (movie or otherwise), then planned entrance to a community, then storage, now empty(ish). So we’ll just have to remain curious about that one, especially now that it’s Tristen’s.

On our way down from the mountains we saw the trees fade away to lower-greenery, and then that fade away to desert shrubs. Eventually we saw the looming expanse of the white sands off in the distance, reminding us that we do, in fact, live in a desert.


Along the way we saw that at lot of the pistachio trees had started blooming!


Fun fact: there are loads of pecan and pistachio trees out here.

We did make one quick detour on our way home that took us back up into the southern area of the Lincoln National Forest.


We wanted to make a stop at the “Tunnel Vista Observation Site” which is exactly what it sounds like, a viewing area just before a mountain tunnel along Highway 82. It had some truly marvelous views of the area.


There is also some hiking to do there, but it was quite steep and SB and I were ready to get home and do those wonderful Sunday-after-trip chores and relax, so we passed on the hike. We were not, however, able to get away without Valentino first snagging a photo with the site’s Smokey Bear U.S. Forest Service sign. 🙂


After that we made our way back out of the mountains, into the vast desert, up into more mountains (Felicia didn’t like these as much, as the pass is quite a doozy), and then back down into the desert again to our home.

It was a great family road trip throughout southeastern New Mexico (and a small part of Texas) and we had a lot of fun getting to take in some natural beauty and local history. We also enjoyed all the yummy food and beer! One thing we were proud of on that note was how much we were able to focus on local businesses. With only one exception (Albertson’s in Ruidoso), essentially everything we supported was either a national park, a state park, or a local business – so that was pretty cool.

I hope you’ve enjoyed following along with our little adventure that took us into and under the wilds!

Until next time,
-Taco

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

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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

Holidays 2018 (+Tristen’s Birthday, lest we forget)

by

Greetings and welcome to Dinosaur Bear’s first post of 2019!

When we last left off I had just implored you to be a Lawrence for 2019 and that’s a recommendation that still stands. As for the real Lawrence, he is doing well.


And while Lawrence gets 2019 off to a good start, this post is going to jump back to the ancient time of 2018 to recap some holiday escapades in and around the Taco household. As is usual for us the first sign of the looming holiday season, even before the decorations, is the introduction of winter/holiday-themed beer sampler packs. This year was no exception.


So, with our “Snow Pack” beer box in hand (mostly mine, I cannot lie) we moved into the holidays. Another sign of the times was the influx of Christmas cards! Now, here it must be said that a sizeable portion of the cards weren’t actually for us but were instead for the Boys.


Christmas cards with waffles!

Yes, as if their popularity was even remotely in doubt the nearly continuous arrival of cards in their names removed any notion of that thought process.


The Boys (read: Tristen) did not let us forget this factor either. 😀


In fairness the Dinosaur Bear mailbox/front door got really busy for all of us. The big reason for that is that since SB and I decided to stay home for the holidays we had a lot of glorious pressies coming in the mail! In a funny turn of events, pretty much the entirety of these pressies arrived over a 48 hour period leading to some funny conversations with the UPS driver. USPS for their part did a wonderful job of not delivering things on time and with the finesse that only USPS can muster. 😉


So, with (most) of our packages accounted for we were all prepped for the holidays. We even had a Sinterklaas living in our freezer!


However, here it must be noted for the ages that Tristen’s birthday comes before Christmas – and while in years past his birthday has normally been punctuated by travel, this year it was all Tristen in his own domain. His sixth birthday got off to an especially dangerous start when we decided to let him have an energy drink.


It was, in hindsight, probably a mistake. A hyper Tristen is a crazy Tristen. As if the caffeine wasn’t enough, he had requested a “treat” for his birthday which is a fair request in and of itself. We had originally  planned on making him a gingerbread cake, but we couldn’t find the proper ingredients for it. So we opted for a gingerbread cookie-cake. We normally make green-themed things for the dinos in the house (and pink for Valentino and “mud” for Pig) and since I didn’t need a whole tub of icing for the top of the cookie, I mixed some into the batter. As a result we had a cream cheese gingerbread cookie-cake!


The green icing was a nice finish.


Tristen seemed to approve, though he is generally pretty accepting of anything sweet and green.


Tristen spent his evening with video games (of course) and reading; as he is also an intellectual.


Tristen also received a birthday present (which he begrudgingly shared with yours truly).


Of course once it was revealed what the present was, the need for him to share it was a lot more evident (not that Tristen didn’t dispute that fact).


While Tristen is pretty adamant about his birthday being distinct from the holidays, there is no doubting that he appreciates the blend of Tristen-centric and holiday-centric activities. One such example is our tradition of watching both It’s a Wonderful Life and The Polar Express around Christmas.


The Boys in their certified movie watching spot, a perfect viewing angle for despising Mr. Potter.

Though let’s not get too sentimental, Tristen still commands a lot of attention: be it “requests” (i.e. orders) for “manries” breakfasts:


Or being the first one to get to test out new toys:


All in all, it’s just a time of year where the boy’s head gets even larger than it already is. But that’s ok, we love him anyways. 🙂


In other dinosaur news, a couple of dinosaur eggs arrived at our house courtesy of MIL & FIL.


These “Hatchin’ Grow Dino” eggs are reminiscent of the little foam dinosaurs you used to buy in capsule format, except a little bigger and more grand. They also take much longer to hatch and fully grow than did the pill-dinos of yesteryear. Fortunately we had plenty of time on our hands for (and experience with) dinosaur rearing. Needless to say Tristen took over as the lead hatching expert.


We originally tried putting the egg into one of our mixing bowls, but that wasn’t big enough. In the end the only thing big enough was a pitcher, so we make a pitcher-tube-incubator.


We’ll return to the dino egg in a bit, as it took it a few days to start busting out of its shell. While dino egg #1 was submerged, we went into full on Christmas mode. Our Christmases were tiered over the course of a few days, which is the usual for us despite the newfound remote factor. One of SB’s big gifts was a new blender/mixing system, which we promptly put to good use in making smoothies.


I may have been tempted to add some “zing” to the smoothies, but I have yet to do so. 😉 That does not mean that I didn’t partake of some “zing” in a more distilled format though. 😛


In the realm of “zingy-ness” I received a super cool, yet super simple gift: a bottle opener.


You might be thinking, “what, its just a nail on a piece of wood.” Well you would be wrong in more focused sense, but correct in that that is essentially what this is. However, it’s a bit more nuanced than that. This bottle opener does two things very well that other openers don’t do. First – it doesn’t bend the cap. This is generally a non-issue for people who don’t care, but if you’re like me and you collect unique beer caps, then a bent cap is a ruined cap. Yes, there are methods that use lighters and quarters and I know how to do both. Yet this is so much more easy. Second, as you can see in the above photo, there is a built in magnet that catches the cap and keeps it from flying off. Sure, it’s probably an over-engineered way of opening a beer (insofar as a nail on a board can be over-engineered) but I love it.

So, between the smoothies, the scotch, the beer, and SB’s new oil infuser:


We were having a pretty good time of things as we continued to amass presents.


Even the boys got in on the action with presents from friends!


That blue dragon’s name is “Saffire.”

Before we knew it it was Christmas day – and that’s when we had our own small family Christmas.


It was a good day full of warm (to us) weather and sunshine, and while I am still in the process of adjusting to the change in climate from my past residences, the plants were all big fans of the sunlight.


Speaking of plants, we gained a temporary new plant resident over the holidays: Frida!


Frida (yes, named after that Frida) is an aloe plant that is going to live on SB’s desk at work – however she needed to be repotted first and now they are rearranging the office space so Frida is hanging out on top of our plant stand with Little Friend for the time being.

Anyways, back to Christmas day. The big highlight of the day was our Christmas dinner. It wasn’t anything super fancy and was very low effort, but it was scrumptious! The centerpiece of the meal was a vegan roast which I cooked with a coffee stout.


We paired the roast with mashed potatoes and dressing (both of which we brought premade from the store, so it was just a matter of warming them up).


Like I said, easy, and delicious – both of which are nice touches for Christmas evening!


While we had dinner we started watching The Polar Express.


While not exactly a shot of the movie, you can see it reflected in the window. 😛

Later in the evening we popped open the first of our two bottles of sparkling wine (something which required me going to France before I realized how much I like it, lol).


All in all it was a wonderful Christmas.

Now, I’m just sure you were waiting with bated breath and unrestrained curiosity to find out what was happening with dino egg #1. Well, life was finding a way.


Initially it was just some small cracks in the egg, but later a little dinosaur head started to poke through.


Eventually dino #1 went full on Xenomorph and completely burst out of the egg.


While Tristen had informed us that dino #1 “still had its baby gills,” he also decided that it was time to free the dino from its egg.


The thing is, once the dino is out of the shell the fun isn’t over yet! In fact it’s recommended that you return the dinosaur to the water so it can continue to grow even larger. So, after passing a Tristen inspection dino #1’s water was refreshed and then it was placed back into the pitcher.


Dino #1 then returned to stasis for a bit, but have no fear we will return to it shortly. Dino eggs #1 & #2 weren’t our only dinosaur acquisition. We also got a T-Rex 3D wood puzzle.


Size scale comparison with Pigsten and Broli.

Tristen and I went about putting the T-Rex puzzle together, a process which ended up with a completed T-Rex but a very sore thumb on the part of yours truly. Tristen celebrated the final product with a beer, which isn’t surprising given Tristen’s desire to celebrate nearly everything with a beer. 🙂


Beer – as always – provides a nice segue into the next bit of holiday season adventure: SB and I actually went out to eat! Yes, SB and I had not went out to eat a single time since we moved here four months ago. A big part of this has to do with finances, but we also are pretty content just staying in anymore. However, as a way of preemptively celebrating the New Year we had decided that we wanted to go out to eat. As such, Santa brought me a certificate to a brewery of my choice and I chose to invoke the certificate the Friday before New Year’s Eve. After perusing the local options I opted to try out Bosque Brewery because it’s right next to the university and I figured that the holidays might be a good time to try it given the fact that a large number of the students would be gone.

When we first got there we were a bit confused as the location has both a bar and a restaurant. We went to the listed location and found a fairly small and very crowded bar. We then realized that the restaurant was not one, not two, but three businesses down from the bar. Fortunately we decided to walk a bit further down (even though the suites were listed as being sequential) and spotted it – and I say fortunately because it was very good!


Since it was our first time there we opted for a 6-beer flight and it was definitely a good choice. Pigsten (as always) and Broli served as our personal beer attendants.


Since we had plenty of beer we decided to split two “smaller” plates and we went with the 4 tacos:


..and some green chile falafel:


It was a super yummy dinner and the beer was really good as well. After some good food, good beer, and good chatting we decided to make our way back home because an early dinner was about the extent of our craziness. 😉

However, not to discount us too much, we did veer off course on the way home – mostly at the insistence of Valentino – and got a treat out rather than eat any of the myriad of sweets we had back home. We’d been wanting to try Caliche’s Frozen Custard for a bit now, so we went for it!


So all in all it was a nice first “night out” for us – though as a testament to how much we both like just chilling at home we both agreed that we weren’t going to be in any rush to go out again. 🙂

From there on out it was just the final push to the New Year. While 2018 was in its waning hours, dino #1 was experiencing a huge growth spurt.


As an example of just how big dino #1 was getting, here’s a comparison it next to dino #2 which was still in its egg (dino #1 was formerly the same size):


It was about that time that we realized that dino #1 was nearing the maximum capacity of the pitcher. He’d bee horizontally crunched for a while, but now he was nearing the max water level of the pitcher as well. So we needed to ponder that one despite already having placed dino #1 into the largest container we had. Of course dino #1 probably wasn’t in a huge rush to get out the pitcher as it was also about that time that things got cold here – and I don’t mean “cold” in the sense of “oh it’s not 70 degrees in December anymore!” – but actually cold enough to snow.


Now, considering the amount of snow I’ve seen in the past I do have to say that this was very little snow (at least in the sense of accumulation, though we did get several hours of snowfall). That said, we did get accumulation that lasted for more than 5 minutes for the first time since we moved here.


The whole state had gotten a pretty big winter weather front and some of the more northern areas had gotten quite a bit of accumulation. For us the most substantial snowfall was (unsurprisingly) restricted to the mountains, but what a view that made!


Valentino was excited to go check out the mountains, though that probably has just as much to do with his tendency to collect snow in his satchel (and later store it in our freezer) as it did the wonderful views.


Photo credit for the mountain shots goes to SB and Valentino – they did a wonderful job!


The good news about the cold snap (aside from the nice mountain views) was that it made it even easier to just hibernate indoors and enjoy our new pressies and sweets/snacks. One of the most exciting of such sweets was something that Santa brought SB and Pig – a box of Chakra-themed chocolates!


These are some super fancy chocolates that you almost (almost) feel too guilty to eat. They have ornate pictures of the 7 Chakras on the chocolate and the flavors are themed to match the meaning of each Chakra. SB and Pig decided that they would design a weekly yoga practice around each Chakra and treat themselves to the related chocolate! Sounds like a good and yummy plan.


Another neat treat was some lollipops that Meem got us.


In addition to the intriguing flavors (Lemon Thyme, Lavender Lemongrass, and Sage Marshmallow) these lollipops are “seed-bearing.” Not only do the lollipops have the flavor of listed plant (e.g. sage), they also have seeds for that plant embedded within the biodegradable sticks. So yes, you plant the lollipop stick (after eating the candy of course!) and it will grow into that plant. Seems really cool. So far we’ve eaten 2/3 of them and we are planning on trying to plant the sticks once the weather has warmed up. I’ll update in the future if it pans out. 😀

That takes us up to the very end of 2018. While this year only had a smattering of fireworks (especially in comparison to last year’s war zone) we did repeat the same lofty goal of staying in all night – notice the pattern. 😉

Our New Year’s Eve dinner consisted of some tamales which had been heartily recommended to us by one of SB’s coworkers as well as some stuffed poblano peppers (which turned out to be the hottest poblanos I’ve ever had – even more hot than some jalapenos [but nowhere near the whole habenero a dumber version of me once decided to eat]).


In fact, so full of capsaicin were these pappers that the oil basically created an invisible fog of death in the kitchen that had both SB and I gagging and sneezing. It was both funny and annoying at the same time. It was a weird thing as we’ve had poblano peppers several times since moving here, but this one was especially “feisty.” We ended having to open a door (despite it being literally freezing outside) and we lit a nice candle Meem got us to help counteract the tingly pepper smell.


The good news is that all that spiciness aside, the dinner was delicious! The spice level was a bit high for SB, but I thought both the tamales and the peppers were piquant once I stopped asphyxiating. For desert we had an angle food cake I had tried to make. Heavy, heavy emphasis on the word “tried.” Between not having an electric mixer, not having the right pan, not having a big enough pan, and not calculating in some altitude changes the result was less of an angel food cake and more of a “monster” cake. Coincidentally, that is exactly what we decided to call it!


Layered Green Monster (not Monsta) Cake.

Despite looking well.. not at all like angel food cake, it tasted.. mostly like angel food cake. While not exactly the same, we all agreed that it was good – and honestly is that not the point when you stuff yourself with sugar bread? 🙂 We paired it with Cool Whip and some super good strawberries we got from Sprouts.

Along with our dinner we went on a big Adventure Time marathon. SB and I have worked up to Season 7 and had just hit a pretty pivotal story arch called “Stakes” which spanned 8 episodes and we ended up watching all of them. After our Adventure Time marathon Tristen and I played Bloodborne for a bit, which is to say that Tristen and I died repeatedly in Bloodborne – though Tristen will argue that he died far less than I did.

Later, one once our tamales and peppers and monster cake had worn off we busted out the snack bar which consisted of buffalo cheese, sweet potato chips, olives, jalapeno hummus, and crackers. Oh and beer, always beer!


Insofar as alcohol goes, the star of the evening was our second bottle of sparkling wine which we ended up not busting out until just like 7 minutes before midnight.


While sparkling wine/champagne is a New Year’s tradition I’m used to, SB and I also engaged in something that neither of had done before: eating 12 grapes in 12 seconds.


Now, this isn’t just arbitrarily eating 12 grapes – there is actually some history behind it. You make a wish for each of the 12 grapes (one for each month of the new year) and then you traditionally eat a grape with each chime of the New Year’s bell (which is honestly probably a bit slower than once per second, but we live in the digital age now, git gud). While SB and I had no town bell to listen for, we did make it super official and employed a stopwatch to ensure we conformed to protocol.


In order to make the challenge a bit more feasible, we planned our wishes for each grape in advance and then we race was on! Final result: Taco 12 out of 12, SB 8 out of 12. Not too shabby for our first time. As a personal thought, it starts off easy but then around grape 6 you realize that you have less than half the time left to consume 6 grapes. It’s certainly doable, but it’s not as laughably easy as you might think.

With a bunch of spicy food, monster cake, snacks, alcohol, and 12 grapes in our systems we retired 2018.

The next day – or rather the first day of 2019 – we were actually fairly productive. We took down the holiday decorations and not only did some apartment cleaning we also did quite a bit of downsizing (we generated more than an entire large box of stuff to donate). Part of the clearing out process involved taking down our holiday cards.


The Boys used this as an opportunity to showcase the fact that they got more than we did. 😛


As a celebration of our housework for the day we treated ourselves to some of the new tea we got for Christmas.


SB and Valentino definitely approved of the pumpkin spice tea!

The one member of the Taco household that wasn’t very pleased was Little Friend. With the exception of last year he has been decorated every holiday season for the past decade. Having little ornaments is one of his favorite parts of the year. In fact, so excited was Little Friend that he even started to grow little arms to hold his ornaments better!


We were pretty excited about this, as ever since Little Friend’s partial corporeal death earlier in 2018 we weren’t sure if this new part of him was going to branch off or just grow straight up. For lots of reasons we were hoping he would branch, and sure enough just before Christmas he started to! Now, in our excitement we forgot how ornery Little Friend is. Turns out that Little Friend wasn’t growing the arms to hold the ornaments up, he was growing the arms to hold the ornaments forever. In fact, he grew one of his arms so much that I thought I was going to have to cut the ornament to get it off of him. Then the string partially cut into one of his arms and he did his pouty-sticky thing and it was a very typical Little Friend moment. While he can be frustrating we are glad to see him getting back to his old (albeit much smaller) self. 🙂

After the 1st life started to return to normal. Our cold weather snap has continued and we got an even more “substantial” (relatively speaking) bit of accumulation than we had had before.


So the cold continues and our heater has actually had to, you know, run – something which it hasn’t had to do much of so far. SB is back to work and I’m back to working on a case I joined, so routine is the name of the game once more.

Well.. almost. There is a little fellow starting to poke out into the big ole’ world:


What could it be? Stay tuned to Dinosaur Bear to find out.

As for dino #2’s older sibling dino #1? Fret not. After determining that the pitcher was getting too small for it I moved the dino to bigger “pastures” so to speak. By that I mean I put it in our large bathtub in the second bathroom so it can continue to grow. 😀


Yep, dinosaurs just chilling in the bathroom. You never know what you’ll get at Dinosaur Bear and 2019 looks to be no exception.

Happy New Year and thanks, as always, for reading the blog!

Until next time,
-Taco

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