Ben Benner’s Blog

It seemed like only yesterday, that I was roused out of bed with shouts about how I needed to grab a camera and run down to the dock, that was two years ago (almost to the day). My Father-in-Law had caught himself a 40-inch Muskie, with the record on the lake being 42-inches.

Well, unless someone managed to catch something bigger than a 44-inch Muskie in the last two years, my Father-in-Law, Tom Coscarelli has broken the record with his 44-inch Muskie catch that happened this morning. I was already awake and was making myself some toast.

And with almost the same level of excitement it was proclaimed that my wife, Gina needed to bring her camera down to the beach immediately as her father was coming back with the fish that had his lure. A few days back, Tom lost a lure (antique I was told) and he had been searching the lake everyday since.

I was really, really impressed that he managed to hook the same fish that had stolen his lure a few days before.

However, it turns out that the fish in question, did not have the lost lure. Tom explained that the fish in question was hooked really well and that he had called asking for Charles (Gina’s brother) to come on the wave-runner to come help with the removal of the lure (which apparently is a smaller version of the lost lure).

Tom is pretty certain that he did not lose the antique lure to a fish, as the smaller version of the lure had prevented the 44-inch Muskie from diving.

Regardless, it is an impressive catch. The previous Muskie was too small to keep, but this was is above the 42-inch required size. Tom was planning to release this monster of a fish back into the water, but upon first release into the open water, the beast went belly up.

Not a good sign for the fish, so Tom began to use all the tricks he knows to try and revive a stunned/shocked fish. Moving it back in forth in the water as to move the water through it’s gills to allow it to breathe. However, after about an hour and a half, and Charles’ (soon-to-be) Father-in-Law attempting to aid Tom in reviving the fish, they called it quits and began to determine who would clean the fish, as later today we will be having fish steaks (or possibly in the morning, either way, I will let you know if Muskie is good eating).

I need to get back to coding.

bdbenner vacation fishing, lake, muskie, up north, vacation

Just a quick update.

The 4th of the July part over at the Wights (which was also a surprise 40th birthday part for Tim “Timmy” Wight) was really great. They had a keg of Labatt’s tons of good food, including this buffalo chicken dip that my father-in-law created. I will have to snag the recipe from him, but let me just not that it includes one whole bottle of Frank’s Red Hot sauce (12oz size I think).

I fell asleep on the couch watching The Soprano’s and when I awoke to the 4am infomercials I decided it was time to crawl into bed. I managed not to wake Gina.

While I slept, Gina and her parents made a run into one of the nearby cities, Gaylord, there they hit Meijer’s and Wal-Mart. I sort of remembered telling Gina to pick up some flour and what not but overall I didn’t remember too much of the conversation that we had.

As soon as they got back it was time for breakfast, Tom (my father-in-law) started cooking bacon, eggs and hashbrowns. My mother-in-law, Brenda’s laptop needed the drivers for the Belkin wireless adapter that is part of the DIY wi-fi extender kit that I have left up here. I booted up my laptop, which I must not have shut-off properly as the battery was completely drained, and downloaded the drivers.

I transferred the drivers to her laptop via my handy Jaduka branded USB memstick. After getting her online, I sat down and scarfed up breakfast.

I don’t remember how much time went by, but I mentioned to Gina that I needed a couple more things. A few minutes later we were in the Vibe and heading to Gaylord. Gina took the backroads and got us there much quicker than the 52 minutes that Google Maps had predicted.

We did the bulk of our shopping at Wal-Mart, given that Gina had already scoped out both Meijers and Wal-Mart earlier that day. However, Wal-Mart did not have my PBR, Pabst Blue Ribbon. I know it is an old-man beer, but I just really like the taste it gives the chicken that I marinate in it. Furthermore, I have started to like the taste.

It was a little weird having to pay ‘deposit’ again, so the 30 pack of beer cost an extra $3.00, the nice part of that though is you get back $0.10/can.

A batch of caraway-rye is sitting there rising, at least another hour before it can go into the fridge. I needed to boot up the laptop to figure out how much chicken broth goes into the dog treats, I promised Curly and Killer I would make a batch while I am here. Therefore, I figured i would do a quick blog post before turning the machine off.

Time to make the dog treats.

Laterz

bdbenner baking, vacation baking, beer, Dogs, shopping, vacation

I could have sworn that I left the blue sweater up here, but I cannot find it. It likely is back in Tejas.

Curly is loving it up here already. He has already marked just about every tree in the yard, drank from the lake, run on the dock and played with Killer (my In-law’s dog).

We got in early, early this morning about 1:30 (am) local time. I brought in the luggage and left the coolers out in the car. We brushed our teeth and went to bed.

The morning came early, we were up and about around 9:30 am. My mother-in-law was already starting to work on her macaroni salad for the party later today. My father-in-law has brought some new dock pieces in the trailer.

I was requested to boot up the laptop and begin searching for a recipe as there was a scare that a page was missing from the recipe book.

I made a couple of new wi-fi extenders (metal colanders with holes cut in them), I was hoping to garner another bar of signal with the different designs that these have in them. However, there has been no signal boost. There however is an upside to having more than one wi-fi extender, I also happen to have an extra USB wi-fi adapter, meaning that Gina and I could use the wi-fi at the same time.

I need to get an additional USB extender cable before we can use both of them at once. I will keep an eye out for one when we hit up Meijer in Traverse City.

The lake looks absolutely beautiful. This is a shot from the dock looking out into the water about 10ft out. The water is so clear you can easily see the bottom and then the darker area is the ‘drop-off’.

A shot of from the dock, looking out across the lake. You can see the transition between the bottom and the ‘drop-off’.

I should probably shut down and get ready, Gina has talked about going into town and getting some stuff. I need to grab some PBR and some flour, going to be baking some bread while I am up here.

Laterz

bdbenner vacation intermediate lake, lake, up north, vacation

My wife has recently become addicted to technology, one might go so far as to call her a TechnoSnob. I just got off the phone with Gina a few minutes ago, she is in Florida for the next few days on vacation with her mom and a few of her cousins. They are all in town for Bubba’s wedding, one of her cousins from Lansing who has since moved to the Florida (somewhere in the Ormond Beach Area).

Well, apparently there is no Wi-Fi in the vicinity of their hotel. Gina told me that she was not able to find any available networks when she booted up her macbook earlier.

NO INTERWEBS!!!!

Whatever is she to do?

Apparently, the correct course of action is to text me and ask for locations that are nearby that have wifi access. I found a couple of places, the one that actually looks pretty neat is 15 miles north. I didn’t bother to send her the link for the BeachHouse Beanery. Maybe if she gets online and reads this post, she might think about heading 15 miles north for some wifi and coffee on the beach.

The only time that I have ever really been without access to hi-speed Internet access was up at the cottage and well I kind of found a way around that as well.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

UPDATE: I was looking over the hotel website and it says “We also offer our guests a lobby business center with complimentary high speed internet access.” I read this as them offering wi-fi in the lobby, it could just mean they offer a computer that is hooked to the Internet. I have yet to hear from Gina as to what form the “complimentary high speed Internet access” comes as.

bdbenner Technology, gina, travel, vacation florida, gina, travel, vacation, wifi

I am not sure exactly why, but I felt like using that quote to make the announcement that Gina and I are going to hit up Seattle this year for a real vacation.

We are not sure exactly when, but we want to hit Seattle before July, because well we go home to Michigan in July to lounge on the edge of the lake. We have talked a little bit here and there over the last couple of years about taking a “Real” vacation, a cruise or something. I believe it was on New Years day that I looked at her and said that we should take a real vacation in 2009.

We discussed where we might want to go for a trip, places that we have been wanting to go to. Florida, California, New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Seattle and Alaska were all part of the first round of discussion. We widdled down the list to just three, New York City, Seattle and Chicago.

I have been to Chicago briefly (not including the O’Hare airport) and have never really done anything touristy there, Gina on the other hand has and wanted to go back. I would not mind going there, but in the end Chi-Town didn’t win the race.

Now, Gina has never been to New York City, I have been there several times for business and notably one time where I got to spend the weekend (doing non-business stuff). I love NYC, I wish I could afford to live (comfortably) there. As one might guess, NYC was the most expensive of the three and likely wouldn’t be some place we could visit and enjoy before July. Another one that we will have to hit in the years to come.

That left Seattle. Now, I have spent I believe a total of three days in Washington state. Back in 2001, I flew into Seattle with a couple of sales guys for a trip to the Douglas Country PUD, in Wenatchee, WA. Fun, Fun!

While the business relationship never panned out, that trip showed me some of the most majestically beautiful forest scenes that I can remember, if only the N95 had been around back then I would have some truly stellar pictures, vs the ones I took with my Mavica.

Gina has become quite the fan of Amazon.com lately, for those of you that don’t know she has become addicted to the Kindle E-Reader. She takes it everywhere and can be found reading it whenever she becomes bored (including while standing in line).

So we are going to try to get some sort of visit or tour of Amazon.com. And in a somewhat odd twist, she is excited about visiting the Microsoft campus. The reason this is odd, is that well she has recently become quite the Apple “FanGirl”, because of the brand-new 13.3 inc aluminum MacBook she bought a couple of months back.

I am sure that if we were going to San Francisco (which came up in conversation, as we loved it the last time around) we would be going to the Apple campus.

I want us to rent a car one day and drive out into the country, to try and find this one particular place that I took a picture of along the way. It is this old wooden bridge that when you cross it and look back at the road, it frames up perfectly with the mountain in the background.

That image was the background on my computer desktop for quite, quite a while indeed. Other than that, I want to see some museums, eat some great and extremely fresh seafood, and enjoy the local culture.

I will post updates on the travel plans as things move along.

Laterz.

bdbenner travel, vacation chicago, planning, seattle, vacation, washington state

Now, some of you may or may not know this term. I just learned it myself, from my father-in-law.

It is the hole or break in the bad weather (or clouds) that gets folks to think that the weather is finally shaping up and is going to be just fabulous, therefore they get their swimsuits on, they load up the boats or jet-skis and head out onto the lake. Then it hits you, the clouds roll in and most likely the rain starts.

Ummm, so we were all packed up (I mean the car was completely loaded and we were like five minutes from loading dogs) and then it got sunny and the weather turned nice, so very nice.

You guessed it, we stayed another day. I even got the silver floating lounging blow up thing and was in the water, I borrowed the anchor and tied to the lounging thing (don’t worry Tom I returned it to the boat when I was done, right were I found it).

However, the weather was only nice for about an hour or so, then it started to get cloudy and about five minutes after that, it started to rain, about 10 minutes after that it started with the thunder and lightning.

Major suck.

The storms blew threw after about two hours, resulting in only a mostly cloudy situation. We went back out onto the dock and hung out for a bit. I was too cold (seeing as my shirt and shorts were still wet from lounging in the lake earlier. Gina on the other hand stayed out there for several hours.

We had dinner at The Club in Central Lake, they have by far the best burger I have had in Michigan (there are a couple of contenders down in Texas for Best Burger Ever).

I woke up and let the dogs out and found the lake covered in a pea-soup like fog. An hour later the fog had burned off, the sun was shining and there was not a cloud in the sky, the lake was crystal clear and calm. Gina jumped in and had a quick swim and began the debate on whether or not we were going to stay up north just one more day.

I told her we should probably head down state today and remember the lake being beautiful rather than staying and possibly being sucker holed again, though I am sure with our luck it was gorgeous all day long.

Well, we are back in the Lansing area. We have done our shopping for MSU gear and had the chance to  hang out with Joe Kursch at Buddies in Okemos (or whatever town is out near the Meridian Mall).

Tomorrow morning we are having breakfast with my mom and then lunch with my pops down in Pleasant Ridge (near Detroit).

I need to wrap this up and get to bed, morning is going to come too early and breakfast is at 8:30.

Laterz

bdbenner travel, vacation summer 2008, travel, vacation, vacation 2008, weather

After breakfast I took a “30 minute nap” (it is in quotes because in real world time it lasted about two and a half hours), I woke up to find Gina outside sunning herself. The weather had turned out to be quite nice. It was still a little chilly but had gone from being mostly cloudy to just slightly cloudy, so in the sun it was quite nice.

I managed to get a wee bit sun burned, even though I had sprayed myself with some SPF 30 misting sun screen. I suspect that I did not spray enough on.

I sat out there for about three hours or so, we listened to the radio and read books. I am just about done with Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae. There was probably another hour left of sun, but both Gina and I were feeling a little crispy, therefore we decided to head into town for dinner.

Gina wanted Pizza from Short’s Brewing Company, the Pizza was good. I had the Bellaire Brown, which in the past has tasted really good to me, this time around it was a little bit harder to finish the pint, I think I should have gone with their Chocolate Stout.

Gina checked her email and had a pint of their Locals Light. From what I overheard Short’s is doing really well, apparently they have started distributing their beer to restaurants and they are expanding their operations from 7 barrels to 30 barrels.

We had been hoping today would be nice. However, it is looking like it will actually be a windier day than yesterday. The wind opened up one of the screen doors to the cottage.

We are packing up and are definitely going to head down state today, though the sun is tempting us even now breaking through the clouds, urging us to stay one more day here at the cottage by the lake.

I am going to grab a slice of leftover pizza and start packing up.

Laterz

bdbenner travel, vacation bellaire, short's brewing company, summer, summer 208, summer vacation, travel, vacation

I only sort of wish I had a kite. It would be interesting to try to fly a kite off the end of the dock. It certainly has been windy the last couple of days.

I think the temperature on the thermostat here never read over 69F yesterday, today It hasn’t broken 65F.

Gina made breakfast this morning. I have to do the dishes, right after I finish this post.

We are pretty sure that we are going to head down state later today instead of Wednesday. I think we will be heading back to Texas on Friday morning.

The sun is peaking out from behind the clouds here and there while I am posting this, but the temp is just not hot enough to sit out and get a tan. Bummer.

We saw Hancock on Friday, it was pretty good. I really liked the first half of the movie, it felt very original but just as the storyline was getting good they started wrapping it up, they managed to keep the movie to an hour and a half, but in doing so the whole ending felt rushed.

The little theatre in Bellaire is really great. It has two screens. They had just done a fresh batch of popcorn so I had to get some. I have gotten into the habit of buying the kid’s packs, that way you get a little bit of popcorn, a small drink and some candy. Normally the candy is something really small and not always that great. However, the Bellaire theatre offered you a selection of candy from the bottom row, which was cool. They had a good assortment to choose from. I got peanut M&Ms.

I found out that the family that owns the Bellaire theatre, also owns the theatres in Gaylord and Petoskey.

The BBQ on Friday turned out really well, everyone really enjoyed the pork, coleslaw and chicken. Mary Wight brought over her famous spaghetti salad, it was very, very good.

Well, I better get the dishes cleaned up.

Laterz

bdbenner bbq, food, travel, vacation bbq, movies, summer 2008, summer vacation, vacation, vacation 2008

“See the bay and buy a Wii!”

So last year Gina and I saw that the Traverse City Meijer’s had several Nintendo Wii video game systems. We didn’t buy one when we saw it, stating that we were planning to be back in Traverse City the next day and if they still had some we would buy one then, because then it would be kismet.

However, we did not make it to Traverse City the next day, and therefore did not purchase the Nintendo Wii at that time.

This past Monday, we went to the Traverse City Meijer’s with the intent of purchasing groceries for the bbq tomorrow and some other foodstuffs. Before we set out on the trip north Gina and I had stated that we would need to check to see if that Meijer’s in Traverse City had a Nintendo Wii available, as there have been NONE available in Austin. (They sell like hot cakes, or are secretly diverted off to eBay.)

Well, they did have a Nintendo Wii available, two of them in fact. We purchased one, it is still in the box. Since they were having a sale we also purchased a second Wii-mote, that came with the latest Wii-Sports game disc.

I asked the clerk if they get regular shipments of them (Wii systems) delivered. She told me that they get a delivery about every 3-4 weeks, and that they usually get 20 units. However, this last time they got 50 units.

From what I have been able to get out of some (ToysRUs, GameStop, etc) clerks down in Austin, they get a shipment every 1-2 months and only a handful of units (5-10). So 20 units being shipped to a Meijer’s in a town that is a decent size, but known for being a resort town seems to be a little off.

But as I tried to say with a straight face to Gina, “It is a by-product of attempting to have an equal distribution of product across a chain of stores without taking into account the the regional demographics.”

I said that mouthful before I found out that the latest shipment had 50 units, of which they had already sold 48, err 49 with our purchase. So regardless of Traverse City’s reputation for being a resort town, that Meijer’s can sell some video game systems. The clerk informed us that one lady purchased three systems. Leaving the store and returning each time, therefore fulfilling the “limit one per purchase/visit” policy.

So I definitely think that given the trouble the tourism industry is having in northern Michigan, that Traverse City should do a promotional campaign and promote the fact that the Traverse City Meijer’s has Nintendo Wii’s available (fairly regularly) as a way to bring in more visitors to the city to have them see the Grand Traverse Bay.

Ok, time to shutdown and go to bed.

Laterz

bdbenner Wii, travel, vacation, video games meijer's, nintendo, nintendo wii, traverse city, vacation, video games, Wii

I am waiting for my brine to cool down enough to put it with my pork shoulder (also known as a Boston Butt).

I made a nice spinach salad tonight, consisting of spinach, carrot, celery, green bell pepper, onion, and cherry tomatoes. The salad went nicely with the chicken thighs that I grilled. After dinner Father Anthony asked me to make some stove-top popcorn. I burned the first batch just a little, like prolly 15 seconds too long. The second batch was pretty much perfect.

I made the coleslaw for tomorrow right after eating dinner and before I made the popcorn. The coleslaw is from this Texas BBQ book Gina bought her dad a while back, the slaw is pretty much the same as the slaw you get at the Salt Lick. Only difference I think is that the Salt Lick uses more vinegar in theirs.

I am going to be smoking pulled pork, chicken and some sausage (which reminds me, we need to buy some sausage).

All for now.

Laterz

bdbenner bbq, food, vacation bbq, summer 2008, travel, vacation, vacation 2008