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I thought something fried would be nice to eat while watching the Super Bowl a couple of weeks ago. I looked through the refrigerator and saw a kielbasa, actually a Hillshire Farms smoked chicken sausage, but either way… My first … Continue reading
Pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report to spring training in just a couple of weeks. When talking baseball, it seems inevitable that someone will say “If I was successful only 30 percent of the time, I’d be fired!”
A batter is generally considered good if they get a hit 3 out of 10 at bats. That is true. What is missing is all the other elements that go into the success of a batter. It’s short-sighted to only look at those 3 hits to determine that person’s effectiveness.
I don’t want to turn this into some giant statistical analysis, but stay with me here. Batting average is determined by taking total number of base hits divided by total number of at-bats. 150 hits in 500 at bats is a .300 average. Here’s the problem. You can help your team when you don’t get a hit. You can also reach base without recording an at bat.
On to the real topic… I posit that it may be of value for your goal to be successful closer to 30% of the time than 100%. If you’re not failing and failing often, chances are you aren’t stretching yourself enough. You aren’t far enough out on that limb.
Most of the battles we face at work and at home are against unnamed enemies. Sometimes it’s the clock, sometimes it’s our own motivation. Baseball players know the enemy and choose to face him repeatedly, knowing success isn’t guaranteed. They keep trying. Swing the bat and see what happens.
We are surrounded by other people doing other jobs that all need to get done, but most of us aren’t on the edge. We’re somewhere behind the front lines with protection all around. Move to the edge. Impact happens, both positive and negative, on the edge.
Sports is one of the few arenas where people are literally pushed to their limit. We all know how well someone performed by the headline in the sports section. We talk about who is past their prime. Who to cut, who to send down to the minors. We can see potential. We can see rising stars.
Are you a rising star in your life or are you stuck in your own little bubble? You’ll never know how far you can go until you step up to the plate and swing the bat. Sure, you’ll swing and miss sometimes. You’ll foul some pitches off. You’ll even strike out once in a while. You’ll also get some hits. Maybe you’ll get out, but at the same time help a teammate score. Get back up there and take your pitches again. It’s just another at bat. You’re bound to hit one out of the park at some point, right?
What do you think? Are you playing it too safe?
Red Bull came back to Saint Paul this year for their second edition of Crashed Ice in 2 years. There are 4 competitions every year and the last one is always in Montreal, the home of Ice Cross Downhill. I was surprised to hear that Red Bull was coming back since they were here last year.
Last year’s course was the toughest and most technical to that point. It looked tough, it played tough. The world’s best ice cross downhill competitors had trouble with it. It was built to show off to the spectators. With all the extra lights and good sight lines, it was quite a spectacle.
This video shows the 2012 course from top to bottom.
The course this year had some changes to it. This one was built for speed. The course was narrower, making it more difficult to pass other skaters. The course maintained more of a downhill slope compared to last year, where there were several increases in elevation, slowing the competitors.
Here’s what the 2013 course looks like.
One of the tradeoffs of this course design is that it was much more difficult to get a good view of the action. Much of the course was overhead. This was partially remedied by having several large screens showing the action, but if I wanted to watch it on TV, I would have gone to one of the many local restaurants streaming the event.
They introduced a new team competition this year. The first round was time trials. Teams of 3 cruised down the course with the time of the second finisher’s time being the team’s time. The best times in this round took less than 40 seconds to make it down the 400 meter course. The top 16 teams advanced.
The next round consisted of 2 teams going head to head. I didn’t figure out the scoring, but it appeared as though each finisher received a number of points based on the order they finished. For example, it is better for your team to finish 1st, 3rd, and 4th than it would be to finish 2nd, 5th, and 6th. Either way, the top teams moved on and competed again, eventually getting to a winner.
The finals on Saturday work much the same way, except it’s individual skaters competing in heats. Top finishers move on and bottom finishers go home until they get down to the final 4.
The finish was the closest in Crashed Ice history with Canadian brothers Kyle Croxall and Scott Croxall finishing first and second. Lakeville, MN’s Cameron Naasz finished third. This is the first time an American stood on the podium at the end of a Crashed Ice event.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted a baby update. Thankfully, there really hasn’t been much to report. Everything has gone as smoothly to this point as possible.
We’ve officially entered the third trimester. I don’t think I’ll call this the home stretch just yet, but I time is speeding up. The house projects countdown has begun. I hope to have much of the punch list completed by the end of the month, but there are a few line items that will move into February — Hopefully not into March. 
We attended a childbirth class on Saturday. The class was informative and made me more comfortable with what to expect. I think Liz feels better about it too. There seem to be some stark differences between reality and the movies.
This weekend was the first time that I was able to feel Timothy moving around in Mom’s belly. Liz has been able to feel his movements for a while now, but every time she said to come feel, he would stop until now. That was very cool. It makes the whole thing seem real (not that Liz’s growing belly wasn’t an indicator).
Yesterday I had my hands on her belly and Liz was tapping to see if we could get any reaction and then there was one big punch and we cracked up. It was our first family game!
I had a dream last night that this pregnancy ended like our first one did. I know the situation this time is completely different than with Samantha and there are no signs of problems or distress. This is the first indicator of any what-happened-last-time anxiety for me. Rationally, I’m in a good place. I wasn’t expecting it much anxiety over it since everything has been smooth, but I suppose it is to be expected from time to time.
Less than 3 months to go!
When did you have your first realization that your child was really on his or her way? What did you do to alleviate your anxiety?
I have LOTS of cookbooks. Some are pretty to look at. Some are merely informative. Few are both. This is one of them. Smoking Meat: The Essential Guide to Real Barbecue
Jeff Phillips, known as Tulsa Jeff, first received a bullet-style smoker as a gift a few years after he got married. He went to the local library and read every book they had about barbecue. He was determined to figure out how to get high quality results from a low end smoker. He studied and practiced, looking for any excuse to fire it up.
He was asked to cook for anniversaries, parties, church events and holiday gatherings. After some prodding from his wife Abi and others, he began putting all that he had learned into a website that now has over 300 pages of barbecue content. And out of that grew the forums.
The next logical step after you’ve built a nearly 40,000 member website about barbecue and have a newsletter with 140,000 subscribers is to write a cookbook, right? Here it is. It is full of great short tutorials about different types of smokers, building a fire, tools, techniques, food safety, and some more advanced topics.
It has a general guide for smoking temperatures, finished temperatures, estimated cook times and other notes for many different types of foods, some of which you’d never think of smoking until now.
The fun part of this book for me is that many of the recipes featured in the book came from forum members. These recipes have been tried by dozens, maybe hundreds or even thousands of people before making it into this book. You know they are good. Well, I know they are good — because I made them.
My favorite part of this cookbook are the pictures. I’m not going to take the time to verify, but I’m pretty sure I ate a few pages straight out of the book because they looked so good.
So now that you’ve bought the book (and if you haven’t, you can do it right here
This book has earned its spot on my cookbook shelf. It’s a great cookbook first and foremost. It also might be our little guy‘s favorite picture book — if I have anything to say about it.
