We're a few short hours away from the end of 2011 here in the GMT-5 zone, and I can say that it's really been quite the year. In 2009 and 2010, I wrote retrospective summaries of the year, so here we go again in much the same vein. Looking at the calendar on here, I've only written five journal entries for the entire year so far. This is of course ( Read more... )

A couple folks have recently asked for some recipes from me, so here they are for posterity's sake.

Caesar Salad a la Brooks

• 3-5 whole cloves garlic (depending on how awesome you are. Go for 5 if you can.)
• 1tsp salt (coarse fresh ground seas salt if possible)
• 1/2 tsp pepper (coarse fresh ground if possible)
• 1 tsp worcestershire
• 1 tsp soy sauce

I can't seem to live without a mound of projects and to-dos. I don't do nothing very well ( Read more... )

Today, I did something I didn't think I'd ever do. I paid somebody else to shovel snow for me. A neighbor of mine let me know about a guy down the block who owns a bobcat and who came out to help him, and suggested that we look into using him as well. A few dollars later, and the heavy roadslush at the front of my house is all taken care of. ( Read more... )

We just got hit with a pretty sizable snowstorm here. I went out around 11:30 this morning to clear out what I could, and came back in over two hours later after having shoveled a good foot and a half of snow. Even lugging around a snowblower is exhausting with that much to toss about. It was still coming down the whole time I was out there, too, ( Read more... )

And before you know it, 2010 has come to a close. I really liked the retrospective I posted last year, so I figured I'd do another one here. I should take time to blog a bit more regularly, but with all the tweeting and facebooking, I guess I never feel like I've got enough built up to make a post. It's as if my internet catharsis release valve got ( Read more... )

Seems that we've made it to December again. Even though it's 50 degrees and raining outside today, winter is still noticeably on its way. If it's reasonably dry and unfrigid this weekend, I'll even have a chance to finish cleaning up the yard for the season. Thankfully we managed to get a windstorm this year that took down most of the oak leaves at ( Read more... )

Just like last year, I've gone and put together a Psycliq Christmas album, free for the taking. You can even listen to the whole thing right here:

Each year, I've tried to make a new song for it, and this year I'm featuring a mellow electronic arrangement of "In the Bleak Midwinter ( Read more... )

This week has given me opportunity to shuffle a few things in my life that will have some major impacts over the next year or so. The two main things are tangentially related, in that they're about managing my time and commitments to different things ( Read more... )

Ever since we both traded in our ancient chevys, both Deb and I have had pretty good luck with our cars. Mine even has a sensor in it that tells me when I'm supposed to change the oil, and that hasn't gone off yet. But in the last couple weeks we've had a few things creep up on us. Deb's exhaust has a little hole in it that makes a big noise, not ( Read more... )