I didn’t post a pictures this week because they were posted over here. We just got back from an event. Click here to see photos of my week!

I just got back from a great chinese restaurant on rte 18 in New Jersey. Now I must commence the post Chinese food bloat! It was worth it! :D

It is getting really cold here in New Jersey. I’m not liking that part of things. I’m kind of bummed out because my feet collapsed when I was a baby. This means that I had them operated on to rebuild them (unsuccessfully) and now I am walking on dislocated bones. This cascaded into my knees not tracking properly. It feels like my knees are being ripped apart when I walk. The therapy for this is orthotics, but the last doctor I saw was unable to make them work for me due to a fused bone causing worse pain when I wore them.

I am at the point that I am very tired of going to doctor after doctor just to have them shrug at me. I want to believe that there is some relief from this chronic pain, but it doesn’t seem that there is. The cold weather makes it much worse. When it comes to wearing formal clothing, it is a serious issue for me because I really just cannot wear women’s dress shoes. I spend most of my evenings in the fetal position in hot bath water.

I have considered pain management, but I also insist on being athletic. I am nervous that if I don’t feel it I will literally rip my own body apart.

If anyone out there knows of a NJ local doctor that isn’t as likely to just shrug at me and marvel at my high pain tolerance, please let me know. It’s not easy focusing with this much pain.

Yep. :)

Hey gaiz!

If you use Facebook, please “like” the following pages. I’m posting behind the scenes photos and art over there.

My Annoying Life

Stupid and Insane Defenders Against Chaos

Intervention

If you want to listen to my foul-mouth escapades, you can friend me as well.

If you are on Twitter, don’t forget to follow me and Intervention there, too. I’m not one of those people who posts the same stuff everywhere – I actually put fresh and different content in each place.

Today is the last day that Jaws will be in operation in Universal Studios Florida. I, and a lot of other people think this is bullshit. Yes, the ride was dated, but other rides in the park are in a far worse state. For example, there is no reason whatsoever that anyone would want to ride broke-ass Twister and Disaster again unless they were really drunk. They are nasty, falling apart, dirty, boring, and old.

Out of all of the rides in this park, Jaws is not the one that should be kicked off the Island. Most other parks retain historical rides (and in many cases renovate them to be more up to date). USF just seems to be erasing its history here.

At the very least, I think it was disrespectful to announce a permanent ride closure only a couple of months before it closed so that non-Florida natives can’t make plans to pay their respects on their next family vacation.

The word on the street is that Jaws was chosen to make room for a second Harry Potter expansion. Personally, I’d rather see all of Islands of Adventure into a Harry Potter park over this. It’s kind of sad going into that park and seeing that the entire park is dead but a billion people are crammed onto that on Harry Potter island. Still, I understand that if you have 2 parks, you can charge people twice.

Here is some history of Jaws, Universal, and the construction wars between Disney and Universal Studios.

So, I had the most brilliant idea ever. I decided to make Feuerzangenbowle (“foy-er-zangen-bow-leh” or Fire Tongs Punch. Or Fire Punch. Whatever you wan to call it. :) ) for New Year’s Eve. Feuerzangenbowle is a traditional German mulled wine that involved spices, juice, sugar, and FIRE. I thought, “Hey, I’m half German. I like fire. This is a great idea!”

Since Feuerzangenbowle supplies aren’t readily available here in New Jersey and all of the German stores were sold out of them, we had to make do with what I called a “Feuerzangenhoopty”. A lot of times fresh spices and fruit are used, but we substituted ground and juice.

- Crock Pot
- Metal Strainer

- 1 bottle Bacardi 151 Rum
- 2 bottles of dry, red wine

- 250g (half a box) sugarcubes
- 1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
- Half teaspoon Ginger
- Pinch of Cloves
- 3-4 cups of fresh squeezed orange juice
- 1/3 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice

- A fire extinguisher
- A long kitchen lighter
- A long metal ladle

1. Turn Crock Pot on medium. Pour red wine into the pot. Pour the juice and spice in there, too. Leave it heat up until its really warm.

2. Put the sugar cubes into a shallow dish. Cover with Bacardi. Let it absorb for about 15 minutes.

3. Put Bacardi sugar cubes into the metal strainer. Place the strainer on top of the crock pot, and light it with a long lighter.

4. When the sugar starts to turn brown/black, add more Bacardi or just let it burn out and dump it into the pot, mix and serve in mugs.

Step 3 is where things went downhill for us. XD

At first things went well:

Water and Onezumi Mugs set up with glow cubes:

Cupcakes and fancy table candle:

Setting up the table with all of the nice food we bought:

It was all going fine until right after this photo was taken:

Harknell was surprised that the ladle of Bacardi 151 that was to be ladled onto the sugar cubes became flaming. Ideally what you do in this case is to hold the ladle out and the alcohol will burn out on it’s own. It’s normal.

We kind of didn’t realize this, so he went to put it down. Unfortunately he accidentally put it down into the plastic Tupperware that was holding the rest of the Bacardi 151. This lit up.

So hmm. HEY GAIZ. Our table is now on fire.

In retrospect, we could have probably covered the fire with something and put it out, but there were so many people in the room that we became confused as to where to get something to do that with. Eventually, we just took the nuclear option and used the nearby fire extinguisher…on the entire table of food. My friend happened to be recording video during this time. Errr:

This video my friend took is circulating around facebook.

@_@;

Result? Food covered in chemicals and this:

So at about 8PM all of our party food was gone. We went out for burgers. Gloria, who does Guest Relations for Intervention happened to be a bartender. She arrived later, brought more wine and we did it right.

Soaking the sugar cubes in the Bacardi 151:

Fire! In the pot, NOT on the table:

Success:

I win for most memorable NYE party! The only way I can top this one is to incorporate leprechauns and explosives at the next one.

And BTW, the wine was delicious. If you make it, just take care not to do what we did. D: