EAA AirVenture 2022

Vintage.

WWII warbirds.

Modern military planes.

COVID cooking

With COVID and retirement, I've had more time to take care of myself and learn some cooking. Most of my cooking experiments have been American comfort food, June Cleaver type stuff.

Slow cooker chicken sausage gumbo. I think this was Crock Pot Chicken, Sausage, and Shrimp without the shrimp.

I like the slow cooker - you cut stuff up in the morning and put it in, then clean up and putter around all day while the smell fills the house. The slow cooker's also good for pulled pork sandwiches, spare ribs, chicken burritos.

Spicy chicken stew. I've made this one a lot, it's like hearty lumberjack food and another slow cooker recipe.

Now I lean toward curly noodle chicken soup though.

Blueberry pie and whiskey.

Chicken pot pie. The recipe suggests a store crust but I make it with the same double crust from the blueberry pie.

Roasted sausage and potatoes. It's easy - mix the stuff together, bake at 450 for 20 minutes, then at 500 for 20 more minutes, mixing occassionally. Perfect with scrambled eggs or an omelette.

Creamy ham and potato soup. One surprising thing I learned here is, there's such a thing as too much ham. Don't double the ham.

Ham bone soup. This one photographed well, but the taste was disappointing. I made a ham and bean soup like this one that was better, the flavor and the texture from the beans get into the broth.

Coming up I want to do more soups - corn chowder, seafood chowder, wedding soup, better chicken stews - and good homemade breads and hot sandwiches to go with them. I also want to learn some Indian cooking and pho.

Silicon Valley Comic Con 2018

Pictures from Silicon Valley Comic Con 2018.

The high point for me was seeing the panel discussion with Michael Moorcock (creator of the classic fantasy antihero Elric) and his book signing.

Laguna Seca

Last weekend I went to the Ferrari Challenge at Laguna Seca, with friends/teammates Jason and Prateek.

Here are some of the cars lined up on the straightaway.  A sign gave their speed as they exited the straightaway, typically 130-140 MPH. Here’s a video.

The "corkscrew" is the most unique feature of the track at Laguna Seca; Wikipedia calls it "...one of the motorsport world's most challenging turns, due to the drop in elevation as well as its blind crest and apex on the uphill approach," and we did see one car get turned around on it. Here are the cars going through it, and here's a video.

We also got to see a lot of new and classic Ferraris, and the garage tents where mechanics worked on the cars.

Brewers @ Giants, Brewers @ A's

The Brewers played the Giants in San Francisco and the A’s in Oakland one week apart, so I went to see them. I haven’t been to a game since the 80s, and I was surprised how meditative it was.

The Giants play at AT&T Park on the east side of San Francisco, on the bay. The park is pretty. The Giants have won 3 World Series since 2010, and they beat the Brewers 3-2.

The A's (and the Raiders) play at Oakland Coliseum, which is right next to the Golden State Warriors' arena. The Brewers hit two home runs and won 4-2...my second pictures shows Scooter Gennett rounding the bases after his.

2016 NBA finals

Game 2:

Game 5:

Game 7:

Shakespeare

2016 is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. Over the last several years I've put together my own outlines of his most important plays, here. Enjoy!

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco