The overly sensitive rubber duck

    Bathtime's tough. So, to help out, we got a duck that lets us know when the water is too hot! We've been informed, though, that those things are pretty much useless. I swear, this duck tells us it's way too hot when it's right around tepid.

     So, we came up with a few alternatives that would mean just as much for this touchy ducky!

DanPar, improver of memes!

Ancient Aliens Guy!

Sudden Clarity Clarence!

Grumpy Cat!

Ridiculously Photogenic Guy!

Dadmaster Bistro #2: Fiesta Chicken Kiev

Let's get cooking!

     Once again, I have taken the challenge of cooking a meal using only the microwave? Why? Because I used to be incredibly lazy. My idea of a meal was a quick quesadilla and two packs of ramen noodles. All in the microwave. I'm not going to say that these skills were at all unique. But are they useful? Yes. And I'm proving it AGAIN.

     So, once again, we return to "The Microwave Guide & Cookbook", an ancient tome that still refers to this household device as a "microwave oven" and tells you to use a "power level" that is not just the highest setting. (Which is probably somewhere upwards of NINE THOUSAND!!!!!!! "What, 9000?!" )

Let's cook

Fiesta Chicken Kiev!

Isn't Kiev the capital of Ukraine?

     This was gonna be good.  Because it seemed a little lacking in veggies, I made a nice salad to go along with it, with hardboiled eggs.  "But Woody," I hear you saying ALL THE WAY FROM WHEREVER I AM RIGHT NOW, "I thought you were only allowed to use the microwave!  And now you're saying you hardboiled eggs?"
     Yep.  10 minutes on high, covered in water, with a tablespoon of salt.  Let sit 2 minutes, put in cold water, and peel.  HARDBOILED EGGS IN THE MICROWAVE WHAT NOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW???

*~*~*~*~*~*

The Recipe:

So, looking at this recipe, it calls for monosodium glutamate. Apparently, it hadn't fallen out of fashion to call for this questionable ingredient. Luckily, I just so happened to have some "steak seasoning", where the first two ingredients are salt and msg!

*~*~*~*~*~*

The Result:

I know. It looks ugly as sin. I know. This is just a picture of the leftovers. But trust me, it didn't matter. The entire dish resembled orange lumps with lumps on them.
So, cooking meat in the microwave makes me nervous. Especially thick meat. Especially chicken. But I checked it several times, just to make sure that I wasn't going to foodally poison Jessi and myself.
Also, if you haven't crumbled Cheez-its (or some generic version of it) on chicken, you are missing out. This is a strategy that I knew about in college. Oh yeah.
But!  How did it taste???

*~*~*~*~*~*

The Reaction:

     This time, I was unable to hide the fact that the chicken was cooked in the microwave. "This is completely ridiculous," Jessi started, but finished with, "but this is really good."
     The hardboiled eggs also turned out perfectly. I know, I know, I'm not sure it counts as boiling them either. But in the microwave, it's timed for you! You don't need to worry that you might accidentally forget about them and ruin your college roommate's saucepan by boiling away the water and cooking incredibly hard hard-boiled eggs in their shell! (Sorry, Curtis!)

What say you, old picture of Bachelor Woody?

Being an optimist kicks ass! (Mostly.)

     Holla to all my optimists out there! Why? Because yesterday I spilled water on my computer. Remember, this is Ivan, the inanimate machine, but still one that took a lot more work on my part than the formation of Daniel.

     Naturally, my first reaction was to pull out the plug, while stammering out, “Darn it, dang it, doggone it, shoot, shoot, shoot.” (I may have PG’ed my words a tad.) And after I’d set everything to dry, I felt pretty good. I had unplugged the computer immediately, so I felt awesome knowing that I knew what to do. I still had my phone and my crappy old laptop Cooper, so it wasn’t like I was now unable to do anything. I was no longer able to play my videogames (except for Space Cadet Pinball), but building upon my chicken pit and pumpkin farm in Minecraft wasn’t entirely the best use of my time, anyways. And all my photos and important documents were on Dropbox, Google Drive, and the Amazon Cloud Drive, so I wasn't worried at all. And I had just ripped American Gods and put it on my iPod, so I wasn't inconvenienced there. And besides, only a few drops got inside the case. I set it to dry, and decided to wait a few days.

     I'm not a worrier, most times.  And that's why being an optimist kicks ass.

     However, I do believe there's a small downside to my optimism. Because I already have the notion that everything's going to come up roses, I'm not the most ambitious person. The books I'm writing? Yeah, those are picked up about once a month. The platformer I'm making? The way I see it, I have until DanPar's going to school full-time before it really needs to be done. That weight that I want to lose? It's actually not too bad.

     This is one reason why I need my wife.

     Without Jessi, I would be working at a bookstore, living with some other people with about as much ambition as me. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I take a look across the wormhole at that parallel dimension and think, "Maaaaaaaan, I could be playing Smash Bros instead of doing dishes" or "Maaaaaaaan, I could be buying a PS9 instead of baby gates" or "Maaaaaaaan, I could be cleaning the meat off of thirty hot wings instead of cleaning baby vomit out of the carpet."

     But I believe that my life means a lot more now. I was a teacher for two and a half years, until I became a dad. Now I'm raising a kid. And I think it means even more that I'm NOT an ambitious person, because it's made me combine two parts of my life that seemed to exclude the other. My classroom, the Batcave, involved 80 kids coming through those doors, playing board games to defeat villains, not even realizing the language skills they were building. My passive story-writing has found an outlet in my DnD game, where I only have a few weeks to create a new adventure. My lazy cooking strategy has inspired me to make gourmet meals in the microwave (next post)!

     So yeah. I'm a big lazy dude, who finds himself in situations where being lazy is not an option. And the result is, currently, a dad writing in his blog at Panera, editing his friend's story, while taking care of his seven month-old son, wearing matching Batman shirts.

     Life is good.
     :)

Also, because nothing in this post allowed me the chance to show off my adorable son, here's two photos for the hell of it!

So cute!

So happy!

Cups of Coffee, 7/9/15

     So, I get a lot of questions. Such as, "Looks like you're on baby duty, eh?" or "I bet your wife appreciates a day off, doesn't she?"

     But the question I get all the time is, "Man, you are such a cool guy. Can you tell me the three coolest things that you've done recently?"

     Yes. Yes, I can.

Cup of coffee #13:  I made a Pac-Man dungeon!

The center ghost is Namco, an evil warden of Arcadia.

        Have you ever noticed that Dadmaster and Dungeonmaster both have the initials DM? I have. In fact, that's probably how I thought up the name Dadmaster. In any case, last Monday, our heroes used a coin to descend into a dungeon named Arcadia, where they had to pick up all the pages to reassemble a magical ritual book. It was possibly my favorite gaming experience ever. Let me tell you; DMing is such a rush.



Cup of coffee #14:  Joined Weigh and Win!

Now that's portion control! He's done eating, so he just pours it all out!

Colorado's got a pretty badass program to help people achieve a healthy weight. Now, even my wife has told me that I looked crazy hella good when I got back from a ROTC course at Fort Knox. I weighed around 185 pounds then, and I had a good amount of muscle. So my goal is 185, which, from my current perspective, is about 33 pounds in the not-as-fun direction when it comes to body weight. But I feel like I can use any incentive I can get. And hey, if I reach that, I get 45 bucks! YOU'RE ON.



Cup of coffee #15:  Started work on a platformer!

That's right. I remembered that I actually know a thing or two about programming (but no more, I swear), and started working on a Flash game. As you can see, there's me, with my Dadmaster DM shirt on, punching in the general direction of a red dot. (SO AWESOME.)

There wasn't nearly enough DanPar in this post, so here you go!

Good News Bad News DanPar!

My quest to show the world how cute my little baby DanPar is continues, in meme form!

My brothers told me that if he turned out to be a redhead, they would take his lunch money themselves.

Not to mention the 15.5 years until licensure!

This one goes out to his GranPar Joe.
P.S.  mfw = "my face when"

And of course, the Oh! exploitable that you all were going to ask for.

Have a suggestion on how I can caption this? Let me know!

Dadmaster Bistro #1: Zippy Zucchini!

Let's get cooking!

     Once upon a time, I didn't have a kid.  I wasn't married.  It was just me.  That meant that I had no one to impress at home.  I swore that the only kitchen appliance I needed was a microwave.
     Today, I am going to prove that Bachelor Woody and Dadmaster Woody both belong in the kitchen.  I am going to impress the world with my cooking skills, using only a microwave.

     So, first things first, I dug up a ridiculous book someone gave me, and found one of the most ridiculous-sounding recipes.  And I made it for dinner, to see if my wife would enjoy the most gourmet of bachelor cuisine!

Let's cook

Zippy Zucchini!

A zucchini... casserole... quiche... thing.

     Now, that was only a side dish, so I decided to go easy on the main course, and cook some thinly sliced steak in the microwave, too, for sammiches.  (I'm not talking about the sammiches, but trust me, they turned out well!)

*~*~*~*~*~*

The Recipe:

My friends.  When a book ten years older than you tells you to microwave something for seven minutes, you have to take that advice with a grain of salt.  But believe it or not, that actually steamed the zucchini and onions very well!
Also, I don't know what pimiento is, other than the pepper stuff in olives.  I didn't use that.  Sounded expensive.

*~*~*~*~*~*

The Result:

Now, one thing that wasn't called for was a tornado warning in the area.  So before we retreated to the basement, I popped my zippy zucchini in the oven, so that when Jessi came home, I could take it out of the oven, and NONE WOULD BE THE WISER!!!
It looked close enough to the picture in the book that I felt like I must have done well.
But!  How did it taste???

*~*~*~*~*~*

The Reaction:

     Ever so nonchalantly, I asked my sweet wife (who hates vegetables), "So, how was the zucchini thing?"
     She shrugged, nodded, and gave in, "Yeah, it was pretty good!  It made zucchini bearable, which," she added, looking at the stuff, "is saying a lot."
     When she looked up, I was gesturing with excessive flourish, towards the microwave.  She knew about the microwave cookbook, and thought it was ridiculous.  But with a little help from my past self, Dadmaster Woody prevailed!

What say you, old picture of Bachelor Woody?