As many of you know, I spend way too much money on cooking equipment. I’ve got knives that were made by the same guys who make Samurai swords–so well balanced that they make you weep with joy. But I digress…

…I don’t consider myself a cooking snob. I like good honest food. I like getting the most out of the least. I like seeing people get into cooking for the LOVE of it–not because they have a fat wallet.

And so, I come to my $3.50 cutting board. I’ve got nice cutting boards. Boos blocks and the like. They are great, but I almost feel bad for them–I don’t want to use them every day. Instead, I have my every-day-kick-ass solution: Chop & Chops and non-slip mats. You can buy Chop & Chops in packs of three, for about $10. They are thin plastic-like mats that you cut on. I love them because they are sturdy, cheap, and can be curled up (so you can pour ingredents into the pot). The HUGE downside is that they slip all over the place.

Slipping is a BIG problem because it’s extremely dangerous. (An aside: Always use the sharpest knife you have. So sharp it scares you. Why? Because a sharp knife uses less force and is less likely to get out of control. They end up being safer.) Okay, back to the slipping…I love the mats, but they slip around too much. So, I head to the dollar store and pick up some of those cheesy non-slip placemats. You might also find them as shelf liners. Those honeycomb things that you get 2 for a dollar. Put one of those cheapies under your Chop & Chop and go to town! No slipping, plus you get some nice padding for your knife. I use them every day.

Speaking of good, inexpensive, knives: Check out the Victroinox chef’s knife. Runs about $25. It’s stamped steel, which I didn’t “believe in”–but I’m a believer now. They are razor sharp and hold and edge. If you can’t find them locally, let me know, and I’ll hook you up.

 

 

The apartment is really starting to come together. We have most of the boxes unpacked and things set up. Hopefully we’ll be out of this “move” mode pretty soon. It will nice to be able to do stuff again instead of just packing/moving/unpacking. Once things are cleaned up a bit more I’ll post some pics of the apartment.

Man, it’s been a busy week. After the “nightmare” that was the move day, we’ve been hauling boxes the last couple of days. On Thursday I re-organized most of the storage units (to the tune of 12,000 pounds of boxes) and on Friday we completed the task. Horray! We now have all of our boxes and stuff (i.e. bikes) in one 10×20 unit–we originally had a 10×20 and a 10×15. All together our move was 14,500 pounds–about 550 pieces. If I never see another carton it will be too soon.

I have to plug North American Van Lines. It wasn’t cheap to move from Chicago to Austin, but every step was handled well. Our poor driver, Lou, was a saint. Trust me, if anything could go wrong, it did, but he was cool through the whole process. If you are looking to move stuff a long way, go with North American. Money very well spent. I highly recommend them.

So what happened on our move day, you ask? Well, it started out well. The local guys (2) and the truck got here on-time–around 9 AM. When I say truck, I don’t mean some U-Haul moving van–I mean a full size semi–80,0000 pounds worth. This is not a kiddie toy. They unloaded the furniture (for the apartment) without a problem–the problem was when the truck was trying to exit.

You see, we have two driveways at the apartment complex. One is more steep than the other. The “exit” is the steep one. Well, when Lou was trying to exit (in the pouring rain, I might add) he got stuck on the exit. And I mean stuck. Tracker’s wheels off the ground stuck. No grip because of the rain. We tried boards. We tried metal ties. Too slick.

A guy who has been doing telecom work in the area (and had a back-hoe) offered to help. He hitched up the back of the truck and put his Deere in 1st gear. Get ready for a tractor pull! He put everything he could, but couldn’t budge the semi. (Remember, it had about 30 TONS on board.) It was a sight to see, but he couldn’t even make it move an inch. Regardless, I give it to the Texans–a half dozen guys were trying to help out–just to help. Very nice.

Oh, during all this the Austin cops showed up. They took over traffic control from Evelyn–and got so pissed off by annoying drivers that they shut down the whole damn road. (Semi was blocking a lane.) Gotta say, I’m happy with the Austin cops. They were getting a kick out of it.

So, tractor and trailer are stuck. Big-ass Deere back-hoe can’t move it. But, a call is in to “The Wrecker”.

The Wrecker is a tow truck. On Viagra. This is the biggest tow truck you have ever seen. This is a tow truck that can tow 100,000 pounds. This is a truck that can pull a building off its foundation. This is not a toy.

The Wrecker pulls off it’s 1 1/2 inch steel cable. Hooks it to the back of the semi. Then, just because it’s a bad ass, it digs in some support into the asphalt.

Then it begins to pull.

At first it groans–then the supports grind into the ground–then the 80,000 pounds of semi move–scraping the ground.

This is one bad-ass truck.

(As an aside, this is why the human race, for all its fuck-ups, is wonderful. Just take a look at the machines that we meat puppets have put together. Pretty damn amazing. This is one  of the reasons why I think humans will survive all the fuckups of this world.)

And so it goes. The wrecker charges us $300 to move us 10 feet, but it’s worth it. Being a strong believer in karma, I pay the bill, even though it’s the driver’s problem. Word of advice: Never, ever, be cheap. If you are have a good gig, never–ever–forget the people who are just scraping by. 

You wanna know how I make good money? I give it away. 

 

 

Too tired to write much, but I’m pleased to announce that our Austin move is complete. All the furniture is in the apartment and the boxes in storage. I’ll write more when I have more energy, but let’s just say our day consisted of rain, obnoxious people, trucks bottoming out, police, police almost getting hit by cars, giant wrecker tow-trucks, steep driveways, everyone moving in one day, storage changes, movers helping other movers, self-centered morons, and other assorted mayhem. Regardless, our crew made it out alive. Too bad our video camera was packed.

We arrived safe-and-sound back in Austin this evening (Sunday, 6 PM). Unloaded all the stuff from the car and will be trying to organize and put things away. (We brought down stuff we had at my parents, mostly food things.) Won’t be able to relax much, since I work tomorrow. Ah, well. Gotta pay the bills.

After a very long day, I’m pleased to announce that all of our storage stuff in Chicago is safely packed onto a North American truck en route to Austin.

The NA guys did a really good job. It’s amazing watching them pack everything into the truck. (A typical semi-size moving truck can handle up to 4 households!) The guys had never seen so many boxes of books, and were very pleased to see them all loaded. As the one guy said “I’ll be dreaming about boxes tonight”.

If all goes as planned, they will be delivering everything next Wednesday (the 25th). The boxes will all go into Austin storage and the furniture into our apartment.

So, tomorrow (Sat) morning we’ll be heading out again. It’s the usual 10 hour drive down to Little Rock, spend the night, and then the final 8 hour drive to Austin. So, we should be back in Austin around 6 PM on Sunday.

We arrived in Chicago this evening (Wed) safe and sound. No accidents on our side, though there was a huge accident that shut down I-40, between Little Rock and Memphis. The road was backed up for at least 10 miles. So bad that everyone was parked on the interstate and got out of their cars. It looked like two big trucks had hit (probably due to bad fog)…one was carrying cotton, and it had pretty much melted to a pool of metal. Pretty horrible stuff.

This gets added to our list of accidents we’ve seen…. flipped over cabbage trucks, head-on semi crashes, dump-truck rolled down a 300 ft hill, and on it goes. I guess after 12,000 miles (in about 3 months) you end up seeing a lot.

Tomorrow (Thr) we head up to Arlington Heights to box up any remaining stuff in our storage units. We’ll then spend the night up there (since it’s a long drive from my parents house–on the south side of Chicago). We meet the movers at 8:30 on Friday.

Well, we’ve got our bag packed and will be heading out to Chicago tomorrow (Tue) morning. I know a lot of people would like to meet up with us. The trouble is that this is going to be a very in-and-out trip (two days travel, day packing, day moving, two days travel). However, we are planning on being in Chicago for at least a week around Thanksgiving, so hopefully we’ll be able to meet then.

Also, I’ve gotten a number of requests for games @ the Retro store. Once we get back to Austin I’ll take a look. For the NES fans out there, be sure to check out the Generation NEX from Messiah Entertainment. It’s new hardware that runs all the old NES cartridges. I plan on picking one up, now that I have a local source of inexpensive NES games. (It also has integrated wireless, so you can purchase wireless controllers. Pretty cool.)

Yesterday, in between checking out Chinese ingredients and running into Code-A-Thons, we stopped at a retro video game store. They have a number of old consoles for sale, from Intellivision to NeoGeo to Game Gear to N64 to everything in between. In addition, they have a pretty large selection of games.

From a quantity standpoint, they have a lot of NES games, but they also have quite a bit of Sega stuff. If you are looking for a Virtual Boy or other strange console or game, send me an e-mail and I’ll see if they have it. (Most of the games are at decent prices–many of the NES games from $3 to $10.)

Another example of a “weird” Austin-local store (they just celebrated their 1 year anniversary).

We’ll be in Chicago for two days next week, so that we can be there when the movers come. If all goes as planned, we’ll be in Chicago late Wednesday night. All day Thursday will be at the storage place, so we can do any late-minute packing. Friday is the move day, when North American comes to haul all 400+ boxes (and everything else) down to Austin. Saturday we drive back down to Austin, pretty much racing the moving truck down. It’s going to be an extremely tiring experience, I’m sure–2,500+ miles over 5 days.