New Year's Eve 2005

New Year's Eve at Mixx Bistro in Kona.

Continuation

Continuation
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

10:30pm at Mixx Bistro

Golden Ale

Golden Ale
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

7:30pm start at Kona Brewing Co.

Ramblin'

Heading to Honokaa.

Bam!

Before blending.


After blending.

Looks like this batch of salsa is gonna be hot. Good things I'm making it a day in advance so it can possibly mellow a little. You can eat only so many sweet things during the holiday season. From the recipe a few posts back.

Have a Merry Kal-Bi and a Happy Soju

Glennon gets ready to dig into some Korean food at Club Korea (aka the former Koreana 2).


We almost cracked this open the bottle of Jinro Soju to drink, then we found out it was gonna cost us $50 for that bottle. We drank beer.


Mike and I try to find some Eagles songs in their karaoke books.


How do you say Life in the Fast Lane or Desperado in Korean? Most of the book was written in Korean, we finally found some sections with English, and even some Eminem. *update* I've been informed by Maile that the writing on the top is in Korean the song titles below Chinese. WTF?



Katherine (sp?) and Brendan discuss the virtues and monetary values of celebrity barf photos.


After an aborted attempt at a lame Eminem redition by the karaoke laser disc Mike gets it going on another song.


G-Man playing Darth Vader next to his ride.

A video from a previous outing to Koreana 2 a couple years back with Brian. Poor video quality since it's so dark in there.

R.I.P.

Dominator
1994-2005

My cat finally passed away in the night after being sick for a month, the last week being the hardest. The vet pretty much called it as he said she wouldn't make it to the end of the year. She passed peacefully, I was sleeping and thought I heard a meow. I woke up, went to check her out and she was gone.

As a funny aside I also caught a rat in the apartment later in the morning. Gave it the deep freeze with an upside-down can of Dust-Off after I had it cornered. It's funny because I can just imagine the rat scampering through the pearly gates...with my cat waiting on the other side. She always was a good ratter, I'm sure she continues to do so up there.

Salsa - Fastest growing condiment in the USA?

One more recipe. A favorite of mine and my friends seem to agree, yet it's so simple. It's a rip-off of Chili's salsa. Once you try this salsa you're unlikely to ever buy pre-made salsa again. I just keep a couple cans of diced tomatoes handy in the 'fridge to make this.

Salsa

14.5oz. Can of diced tomatoes
1/4 Small or Medium Onion
3 Tbsp Sliced Jalapenos
1 Tbsp White Vinegar
1/4 tsp Cumin (ground)
1 tsp Salt

Combine everything together in a food processor and run until tomatoes are nearly pureed yet still chunky. I toss everything into a container and use a hand blender, makes cleanup a breeze as the salsa is stored/served in the container.

Le Secret: Use at least another tablespoon of jalapenos for that extra punch. And I usually use no-salt canned diced tomatoes and leave out the tsp of salt. There's enough salt in the jalapenos and chips.

Roasted Garlic

Garlic is good for your health and someone asked me via email for my roasted garlic recipe. It's pretty simple so here's the recipe for how to roast the garlic and how to use them in mashed potatoes. Better make a double batch if you have guests as it's pretty yummy. And vegetarian too.

Fluffy Garlic Mashed Potatoes

The roasted garlic is also good to spread on pieces of bread or just mix it with any plain leftover mashed potatoes to jazz them up. I did that with some mashed potatoes from KFC once, pretty good. Or whip with softened butter to spread on crusty French bread.

Tiki Bar TV Exposed

The good doctor is interviewed about Tiki Bar TV, one of my favorite podcasts. This is a link to a flash movie of the TV interview.

Be all that you can be

Riding in a five-ton army truck during a live fire field exercise at Pohakuloa Training Area. They required me to wear a flak jacket and kevlar helmet since they were using real bullets.


The driver in the convoy practicing what to do when coming under attack, a very real scenerio in Iraq. Pretty crowded in these vehicles, dusty and a very bumpy road.


My view of the passenger firing upon some targets out in the lava fields.

See the Tuesday, Dec. 13th West Hawaii Today for another photo and the story. Or go to my SportsShooter.com page for more photos for awhile.

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 2005...oh wait...it is!

Actually the theme for the company Christmas party was 60's and 70s if folks braved to dress accordingly. The food was good and so was the music which played a bunch of 60's and 70's covers. Click on the image above for the gallery which is unedited so you'll note redeye and out of focus photos.

Batteries Not Included

Batteries Not Included
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

More like NeverStart battery. My battery pretty much died today, probably killed by an overuse of my iPod connected to the cigarette lighter plug. Had to get someone to give me a jump-start in Waimea. Lucky for me I was able to start it again after stopping at our office up there for awhile. Bought a new battery and I'm good to go. This is the battery before I went into Wal-Mart to buy a new one.

Can't stop

Okay, you probably read in the above post that my car battery died and I was lucky enough that it started for the drive back to Kona. It almost didn't start but had just enough juice to get the engine going in Waimea.

So anyway, I'm on my way back to Kona when I see how beautiful the sunset is (actually it looked even better through my sunglasses which are tinted golden). So I saw a spot on the side of the road and I pulled over to stop. Just when I was about to turn the engine off and rush out with my camera gear the alarm bells went off in my head...whoop....whoop...whoop...don't turn the engine off you dummy, your battery is dead! I quickly took my hand away from the key, revved the engine and started heading back to Kona again. That was a close call!

So on the drive back I held my little PowerShot camera up and shot this photo through my car window. Actually I shot about a dozen photos and this is about the only one that came out. It's hard to shoot photos while driving and not looking through the viewfinder, after all the priority is on the driving.

Oh yeah, we got our first snowfall last night on the mountains. Mauna Kea was snowcapped on my drive to Waimea in the morning.

Spot the Spoof

Got a spoof (faked email) from some crooks trying to get me to type in my eBay name and password. If you want to see it ABSOLUTELY DO NOT TYPE IN YOUR EBAY INFO then go here: http://sing.in.co.go.ro/Questions_Member_eBay_com.html

That's the page you get if you hit the Respond Now button in the email.

I refuse to hotlink those jerks, you'll have to copy and paste their URL. And feel free to hit their website and kill their bandwidth all you want. Those jerks. Beware people crooks are out there. And eBay doesn't even have a good way to report this stuff to them, they just have a walk-through menu to let you know, yeah, it's a spoof email.

Over the river and through the woods....

On assignment today in the Kohala Mountains following a group of middle school kids in a program called Project Venture. Went through pasturelands up to the rainforest area where we hiked then took a break at a lo‘i (taro patch) that has been restored by Hawaii Forest and Trail. The kids kept saying the water was freezing, probably by Hawaii standards at this time of year.

Click on the above image for the video *warning: 8MB filesize*


Almost forgot to post this image of this praying mantis on the bridge during the hike.