Twisted 3 Meat Pasta with Bacon & Berryweis

This recipe turned out so good I thought I’d post it while I remember what was in it so I can make it again… and if by some chance you are reading this and you make a million dollars from this, hit me, I’m open…

You’ll need:

brown the 1/2 lb ground beef, drain, set aside

Boil Linguini noodles, drain, then add tbsp evoo and 1/4 tsp garlic salt, mix through and set aside

mix the following items together in a bowl:

ground beef
1 slice ham diced
3 strips bacon, crispy, chopped
3 mushrooms sliced thin and halved
3 tablespoons diced onion
1 tablespoon diced bellpepper
1/4 tsp Garlic Salt
1/4 tsp Grizzly Joe’s Seasoning

add a small amount of Olive Oil to a sautee pan, when hot add your meat mixture and sautee, then add:

1 can italian diced tomatoes
2/3 cup thick marinara

simmer for 10 minutes, add to pasta over medium low heat add:

1/2 bottle berryweis
1/2 cup grated parmesean

heat until combined, stir, and serve w/ garlic bread

        In 2008 my wife and I bought a restaurant in Woodland Park, Colorado and have been working 1oo hours a week, each, with a skeleton crew, to keep it going through a tough time in our economy, which happens to fall during Winter, which was/is always a harder time in our mountain community. We didn’t buy this place thinking that we wouldn’t have to work, and we didn’t think it wouldn’t be hard. We did it because it was something my wife and I had always wanted to do, work together, run a restaurant, working at something that would be for us, for our family, but also in service to others and at the same time giving us a way to share our faith through witness of who we are in our daily lives. We currently live on an amazing 20 acre horse ranch on the west side of Pikes Peak, in a rehab project house that is an hour away from our business, a business that still demands our attention 7 days a week and will continue to do so for more than another year, if it still exists at that time. 2008 was a hard year, with the loss of three of our pets, including V’s horse Glory, in a freak accident. We have decided that this year, 2009, we will shed those things in our lives that no longer fit, that no longer further our future, that don’t support where we are heading now, almost six years into our Colorado faith walk. Going on year ten since I quit working “for others” and have worked “for myself” I’ve come to understand that no matter what business I am in, I will always work for someone else, but the degree of control they have differs from business to business. I may own a restaurant now, but I still work for my customers every day, beyond my preparation of each of the 200 – 400 meals I hand make six days a week. It’s exhausting, when you add 2 hours of driving back and forth to live in a house with single paned glass, no heat, no one to collect wood to run the stove, no one to start the fire…  We will, in the next month begin to transition from the ranch to a rental home in town on about 3 acres, and most importantly it’s about 5 minutes away from the restaurant. It’s not an unfamiliar, scary place to be going as God has provided us with the opportunity to rent the home where we stayed while evacuated from fire this past Summer, which it turns out, is owned by our doctor. We will miss our dream of keeping and rehabbing this place, but at the same time, it’s just not even a possibility anymore. We are so exhausted at this point, we drive the hour home, sleep, get up, shower, drive the hour back and pay twice what it will cost us, plus needing the Prius, which we will get rid of as well. I wish that all of you had a chance to visit our ranch, but for those that did, you know we wouldn’t do this if we could avoid it.

 I wanted to test the idea that a child, if given a laptop and no instruction, will learn to use it and use it to teach themselves. I have been very interested to learn how he believes things should work… He wants to play media, so he grabs a folder and drags and drops it on the Windows media player icon… not a bad idea, but not really how it works… After giving him a day or two to just play, I noticed that’s all I saw him doing, he didn’t even respond to my emails when I sent them to him on his freshly set up email account. I couldn’t figure out if he didn’t know how, or just didn’t care to respond via the keyboard. Tonight, after installing AIM and getting his screen name and mine setup, I found that he loves talking via Instant Message, that old charm of having the things you say get an instant response, no “I’m busy right now, give me a minute…” or other put offs parental units are known to espouse… just easy, loving conversation between a father and son. I got to thinking about how I hope that it continues this way through out the rest of his life. I know that so many children end up at odds with their parents, even good parents, through their teen years. I’m hoping that if he and I learn to communicate through simple, but effective high tech means, it will keep his interest and teach us to be better to each other. I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson in all of that, did you find it too?

‘Comedy is like yer in a mine & yer digging 4 nuggets & I just want 2 get as much gold out as I can in the time that I have left.’

I wanted to thank you for the support you gave while I was writing my life out a number of months back. I want to apologize for stopping the telling of the story, but I’m hoping that in the next couple of weeks that we’ll finally be through with the stress that’s kept me from feeling overtly like writing. I’ve wondered, like many who blog I imagine, what it would be like to make a living as a writer, to depend on  cranking out a 1000 or 2000 words per day while weaving a cohesive story… what I found is that people who can make themselves write, pull that from their very soul, while they themselves are tormented by daily life, and having that commitment is a very hard one to keep. Computers have made it easier to write as we don’t have to stay chained to a desk, I’m very glad to have a laptop that I bought myself for my last birthday, my first laptop (a nice reconditioned Dell D600 w/ a warranty from ebay) since 1999.  Anywho… the point was, we’ve gone through a very tough 6 months, heck the last three years have been tough, but in a good kind of teaching and learning and re-learning life kind of way… I haven’t seemed to want to be in the past, recounting and retelling it to you (and me) because I’ve been in the middle of the fire, in the testing, and in the moment. I have a great desire to jump to the end of the life I was recording w/ you all as witnesses, and tell you how it ‘ends’ or at least get caught up to real time, but I don’t want to ruin the story for those who’ve taken the time to read it either. So I’ll leave this post up for now, just to let you understand where I’ve been, sort of. And just to let you know I intend to come back soon, and pick up where I left off.

“…They offered to keep me on, but it was part time sales and it wasn’t enough to support us, so I started looking around again…”

Since they couldn’t get a store open and I was still practically driving to my old La Jolla store each work day, this wasn’t working either. I went to a temporary agency to see if they could find me something closer to home. They set me up in San Marcos with a job working for a flexible molding company. The kind of molding that one would find in fine homes… homes such as Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf’s home… at least that was the “big name” they through around while I was working there. My job was to match the patterns (if they existed) that were sent in for quotes, to existing patterns in the system… the “system” at that time was a giant book the size of any major cities yellow pages… I thought at the time that my falling asleep at work had to do with being bored out of my skull… I would later find out that was not the case… My days consisted of answering phones, finding patterns, sending non-matching patterns upstairs for a new quote and contacting said customers with pricing information. I was alright with it, it was boring, but it was paying the bills and I had a job, something I’ve always been grateful for when I had it… During the Christmas party, my boss approached me, saying that the girl doing the bookkeeping was being fired and they’d like to move me into her job… So right after Christmas, she was gone, and I was doing her job, a job I hadn’t been trained for, but hey, it wasn’t that hard… I got about two weeks into doing it and I guess someone felt sorry for her, and they re-hired her to do her job… I went back to patterns for a week or two then they got rid of all the temps working for them. No explanation. Out of work again… It was the end of August and we decided that we needed a vacation, a break from all the drama, so we went camping up in one of our favorite spots… Cuyamaca, prior to it’s recent fires, was a truly beautiful spot in the Sandy Eggo mountain area, we had had many successful trout fishing trips there and the nights were always clear and filled with stars. We even managed to talk my folks into bringing my Grandma and coming up to our campsite. We stayed for 10 days, fishing and hiking and camping… V had recently turned 40 in May and when she did, I prayed, “Lord, it’s now or never, if you want us to have a child, it had better happen soon…”  We joked about V being pregnant, since we’d never used protection and we’d been together off and on for 6 years and nothing had ever happened… we’d never seen that fertility specialist for her problem as we were told we should… so, when we got home, and V was still late we stopped off and got a pregnancy test… she used the test and left it in the bathroom… then made me go look as she couldn’t stand another disappointment in her life… So off I went into the bathroom to see if the joke was still funny…

Until next time… Thanks for reading!

“…I had a lot of customers who loved me, and I loved them right back, some of that love was about to come my way…” 

My store in La Jolla wasn’t my store anymore, that was okay with me for a number of reasons… For the past couple weeks prior to the little VP’s visit, I’d been talking to one of my customers, Bob, about his line of work… He thought I might like to come work for him, he and his crazy Russian partner sold Leather Furniture to the public from their retail store on Mira Mar Road, a famous place to shop for furniture in the Sandy Eggo area. He always had money, he lived a life of leisure, I figured, “…yeah, that’s a guy I should learn from…” He was looking to open a new store in San Marcos, which would be a good half an hour closer, maybe even more because the traffic wasn’t bad until after San Marcos… I told him I was interested and we went out a couple times looking at different retail space, out to lunch… he was a nice guy and all the people who worked for him were great… Once I had no further commitment to my La Jolla store, I told him I was ready to come over and start training, so that’s what I did… I sold leather couches, chairs, recliners, etc. to a public that believed that they were buying them at such great prices because they were left from large orders for hotel chains… not true, but it was an excellent way to market their furniture. They actually had a factory in downtown Long Beach making them special order, but their business model was such that they made great profits on each piece and the public got a good product… 100% leather, well, that was extra… most of the time unnecessary too, as most folks have their furniture up against the walls of their homes, a nice faux leather works just fine in those situations and saved people money… I had gotten a computer when I lived in my mobile home, I had taught myself everything from the ground up again, including that mysterious new service “AOL” which seemed at the time, to be the bees-knees, how did anyone live without a computer? I started experimenting making “web pages” and I even made one for the Leather furniture store, I hid Max in a picture on a couch, it made me feel good that people were seeing his cute little face again… I was being trained as a salesperson and as a store manager, working four days a week, but the most important thing I would take away from this experience was from the Russian, Peter… he gave me a book… It was a book about changing one’s perception of what “a lot” of money is… The concept was this, whatever the highest amount of money that you can imagine yourself having, that’s your cap, that’s it for you, unless you push that boundary… I took that to heart, I realized that I was stuck with my beliefs of what a “large sum” of money was, that if I ever truly wanted to be a breakout success, that I would have to expand what seemed like a lot of money, in my mind… The old saying of, “…it takes money to make money…” really hit home… I remembered all the times I’d dreamed as a kid, of being a millionaire someday… It wasn’t until that book that I did the math… making a million dollars, just one million, if I retired at the age of 30, at a rate of $33,000 a year, it would all be gone, assuming I did nothing with it, in about 30 years, leaving me old and broke… I’m pretty sure teachers make more than that in most places these days… so, I woke up to the reality that a million dollars isn’t a lot of money…  I upped my minds personal banking cap higher… I didn’t have any money to make anything happen with at the time, but that principle really stuck in my head. I wish that the job had stuck better… We kept looking for a suitable retail space in San Marcos for four months, but none of them worked when the numbers were done… They offered to keep me on, but it was part time sales and it wasn’t enough to support us, so I started looking around again… 

Tune in tomorrow, see how the words “Schwartzkopf” and “Molding” fit into my life story… 

“…Work went on, life went on, but other than the occasional car break down and engine blow up, life was bland and tasteless without Max around…”

My poor little $500 Jetta, that was meant for in-town driving, the kind I did when I lived in the middle of the Avocado groves in my hometown… the kind that I did when I worked in that same small town in Sandy Eggo County… It was not, I repeat **not** intended for driving over a hundred miles a day, sometimes simmering in traffic jams for hours at a time… But, it was all that we could afford, so it’s what I drove. It was a rugged little beast, hauling me up and down the I-15 five days a week, and only broke down on me a few times… Once the alternator died, leaving me to limp my way up north, to Escondido, a couple of jumps and a battery recharge along the way… where a friend replaced it for me, on the side of the freeway, in the dark… The others were due to engine failure, the first happened one morning as I was driving to La Jolla to open my store… threw a rod right through the oil pan… For some reason our mechanic put in a junkyard engine, somehow thinking that’s what I wanted him to do, when I had specified a rebuilt engine with a warranty was what I wanted… and it ended up blowing up a month later. Needless to say, we worked it out that he would replace it at no charge… but the writing was on the wall, I couldn’t keep driving that distance and even though I’d been given a raise, it wasn’t enough… Opening shifts were great for getting work done… the problem for me, is that since I was 14 years old I’ve gotten up nauseous just about every morning, and if you’ve ever had the pleasure of gut wrenching vomiting, you know that a morning bout can set you back a minute or fifteen, sometimes more. I’ve seen doctors, I figured out what it is, and we’ll get into that part of my life later, the point here is that when one has to drive for an hour (or more if somebody’s Elvis hitch-cover comes off in traffic and all four lanes of people have to slow down and gawk) the added inconvenience of having to be sick prior to that leaves one much more anxious about getting to one’s store and opening on time. There was no way we could afford to live in La Jolla and, besides, we loved where we lived, so I did the driving. At the same time, I was always looking for something closer to home, if they had opened another store, I would have loved to have transfered… It was about this time that the company President decided to turn over store operations to the Vice President… This particular VP had run three previous companies into the ground, but I’m sure he’ll do better this time, right? Maybe not… I’d had numerous prior visits to my store, from the President of the company down the line to secret shoppers, and none of them had had a bad thing to say… When this little fellow arrived, apparently with a chip on his shoulder, it was “New Release” day.. the day when I got to prep and put out all the new releases for my paying customers, usually at least 75 titles that can’t be rented until they are prepped and entered into the system… I was at that task when the VP arrived… He spent his(my) time questioning me about why the improvements (the ones I had submitted to Corporate that had been shelved without implementation) weren’t done and why certain things looked the way they did… Rather than kiss his ass, I told him, all of those things had been submitted and have had no action… apparently he didn’t like my “attitude” and by the end of the day, I was fired… He made my poor area manager, a great boss and a great lady, cry, telling her that either I was gone by the end of the day or she was… I was a bit surprised, but with the long drive, long hours and figuring out that I was actually making less than my employees, I turned in my keys with my only regret being that I wouldn’t get to see my customers and say goodbye to my staff… My store got a new manager within the month and went on to lose revenue like it was hemorrhaging money and then close down completely five months later. It is now the area that Ralph’s sells it’s outside plants, chairs and tables… The company went on to bankruptcy within 2 years… Still haven’t figured out why companies seem to like to put their well running company in the hands of those with previous failing track records… personally, I’d give over control to an innovative newcomer before giving a proven loser a chance, but I guess that’s just me… I had a lot of customers who loved me, and I loved them right back, some of that love was about to come my way… 

Tune in tomorrow when you’ll hear me say, “…100% leather will cost you…” 

“…and I had promised to protect him… to be his claws when I had them removed…. The guilt… the loss… the heartbreak… was overwhelming…”

Work went on, life went on, but other than the occasional car break down and engine blow up, life was bland and tasteless without Max around…

Tune in next week when things get better… They have to don’t they??? 

“…I gave the mobile home back to the park owner that I’d bought it from and let them deal with the eviction and as for me, I headed for bankruptcy court… “ 

Now, I had been brought up being taught that when you make a promise, you keep a promise… It’s what I believed, it’s what I expected from others… still do. So, this bankruptcy thing, it went against everything I believed in, but there really was no other option at that point. The financial burden was killing us, both money-wise and new marriage-wise… I still remember that day vividly, the day I headed to downtown Sandy Eggo for a meeting with an attorney… He told me that bankruptcy laws were created for situations just like mine, as one of the biggest reasons people got divorced was money and this route could alleviate that burden. I paid the fee, gave him the info, and waited for my hearing… The day of my hearing, again, downtown, I went the wrong way on a very long Blvd, and ended up getting to my hearing late… luckily the judge didn’t hold it against me… the lawyer did his thing, I did mine and it was over… Time for drinks in the bar and about 6 years of credit problems… Other than that, the burden of the lying welfare mom was no longer ours… except emotionally… It took a very long time and a lot of life going by before I could forgive her and move on from that. My new store was a huge hit with the locals. I had hopes to expand the customer base by hitting up the local extended stay hotels for some kind of advertising to be included in their welcome materials… I had hoped to put up a large banner on the blind side of the store so that customers who didn’t venture to my side would know about my store… I had hoped to upgrade some of the signage in and around my store… All of these requests were made and quickly shifted to the back burner by HQ… fine, I just work here, I’ll make due with what I have. Aside from that, my store had very good numbers, excelled in promotions and we helped create a program where B titles were brought into their own section and labeled as “New Arrivals” not “New Releases” mind you… this program basically consisted of scouring our PVT (Previously Viewed Tape) sale items, most with price points no higher than $9.99, for movies with eye catching titles and/or cover art. We then pulled them from sale stock, put them in “New Arrivals” and rented them out for $3.00 per rent. After a month or two of the title renting (usually resulting in around $60 to $90 in added revenue per movie) the title would then return to the PVT sale stock at it’s original price. People’s perception was that we had a larger selection to choose from, and proved our long held belief that the average renting public likes crap. As long as it’s “New” it must be “good” is the mentality of most customers coming in to rent movies… I loved my store, loved my customers and loved my employees… what I didn’t love were the 50+ hour work week requirement coupled with the additional hours added due to covering for sick/absentee employees and the multiple hours of driving each day. Once every 90 days we were also required to perform a complete inventory of our store. That meant closing the store an hour early, staying very late,  and having all of my employees show up to help. It wasn’t a bad deal for them, kind of a work party, wherein they got paid and I brought in a ton of food and drinks and fed everyone… Every piece in my store had to be counted and then the losses were totaled up… June 21st of 1996 was one such night… Rather than driving home I had been invited to stay over at one of my employees homes. I took her up on it, I was tired and even a couch looked better than an hours drive. That night as I tried to sleep, back at my home, V’s dogs had managed to open the sliding glass door so they could get out… this was after she had fallen asleep… Now where we lived, while it was So Cal, it was rural So Cal… where the coyotes roam the darkened streets looking for tasty morsels on which to dine at night… As a matter of fact, a few months prior Toonces had refused to come back in one night and had gotten nabbed, I found a piece of her pelt, so I knew what had happened… The night of my inventory, my sweet Maxxy-cat, my buddy through all the emotional turmoil I’d been through with V, got out of that open sliding glass door… V woke up in the middle of the night, that sick feeling that something was wrong creeping over her… as she noticed the open door and no sign of Max her heart sunk… She took the dogs and a flashlight and began walking where she felt the Lord lead  her… down into the undeveloped part of the property under the trees… there she saw my sweet little one torn in half… She ran back to the house to call my mother, asking what she should do… my Mom suggested that she collect the body so that I could grieve properly and have something to bury for my closure… but when V returned to the site, there was nothing there, not even a single drop of blood remained. When I came home the next day, no one was home… I wondered where Max was too… I called over to my folks house and my Mom told me the news… V had gone there afterwords to stay over and just didn’t know how to tell me… I’m sure some who read this will think “What’s the big deal? It was just a cat…” but to me, one who’s father was an abusive alcoholic, one who’s true love had bounced back and forth like a tennis ball for five years, one who’s often felt alone, even in a group of people, my friend Max was a Godsend. He greeted me when I came home, he followed me around, he always wanted to be in my lap, even when that space wasn’t available, he loved me totally and unconditionally and I him… and I had promised to protect him… to be his claws when I had them removed. 

The guilt… the loss… the heartbreak… was overwhelming…