Eat Your (Overpriced) Heart Out, Part 2

So, I wanted to build something for my extremely cute niece:


I talked to her daddy, and he suggested something like one of these:

This one is $79.99


This one's $250.


And this one's $725!

Being the engineer that I am, I modeled it up using some 3-D software (that I use everyday at work) and came up with the plans:


And this was the final result:

Meet My Niece!

Miss Kinley Rae English was born on Monday, August 16, 2010 at 12:45pm. She weighed in at 6 pounds, 12 ounces and is 18.5 inches long.











This is how much she looks like her big brother:

Hawaii - Day 6

My sixth day in Hawaii was supposed to be my travel day back to the continent. Hotel checkout was 11:00am and my flight scheduled for 7:30pm, giving us several hours to kill. We started the morning with a trip to the International Market Place for souvenir shopping.

They had LOADS of hawaiian shirts and sarongs and swimsuits as well as handmade goods. After picking up a couple gifts for the folks back home, we strolled up and down Kalakaua Avenue, which runs along Waikiki Beach and has several high-class hotels between it and the beach (like the one I got to stay in) as well as many super-fancy stores.




There were even some nice views of the beach.


Since that didn't use up all of our time before the flight, we decided to drive the coast looking for places to take pictures.


We left Honolulu and headed East. Here are some of the sights we saw:




As we rounded the eastern tip of the island, we were greeted with this beautiful sight:


During our roadtrip, we found out that our flight for that evening had been overbooked (we couldn't confirm our seats) and it was already 3 hours late. We called back home to the wonderful lady who handles our travel arrangement (at this point the time in Waco was about 8:00pm on a Friday) and she tried to get us on another flight. There weren't any available seats on Friday or Saturday, so we were forced to stay in Hawaii an extra two days. The hotel we had been staying in didn't have any rooms available for the weekend, but after much searching, we ended up at the Embassy Suites. And here are some views from my room:



I guess I'll just have to suffer through 2 more days in Honolulu.

Hawaii - Days 2 thru 5

I worked 44 from Monday thru Thursday, so the days kinda ran together. I didn't get back to the hotel until after dark, so that made taking pictures of the beautiful scenery a little tough. Here's the view that greeted me when I got home each night:


The only scenery shots I got on these days were on the drive to work...

It's hard to not see a rainbow in Hawaii:

That's probably why it's the on all of the Hawaii license plates.

The mountains were amazing:






I got to have a little fun in the evenings. The Hawaii Jitterbugs have weekly dances on Tuesday and Thursday at the Ong King Art Center in Honolulu's Chinatown. Unfortunately, I ended up working until 9:00 on Tuesday and Thursday, so I was only able to go to about 45 minutes of each dance.

Here are some pictures from the dances:

Hawaii - Day 1

I'm back from blogging limbo, and have I got a story to tell. My company sent me to Hawaii for this week to do some training with the Navy, and I got a sweet deal. I got to fly FIRST CLASS to Hawaii, and I'm staying at the Outrigger Waikiki (on Waikiki Beach) for the whole week.

Here's the hotel looking from the beach:


Here's the view from my balcony on the 15th floor:


And here's what I see when I look to the left from my balcony:


Waikiki Beach:


We ate dinner at the Hula Grille, and here's the view from our table:


Sunset at Waikiki Beach:


Here are some pictures from the plane as we made our approach into Honolulu:
The first land that I had seen in about 4 hours:


Some Navy ships anchored in Pearl Harbor:


The USS Missouri and the USS Arizona Memorial (in about the center-right of the picture):


More pictures are sure to follow!

77 Degrees on Sunday, and then Two Days Later...

Front Yard


Back Yard

I shall call him... Mini-Pie

Two weeks ago, I got a 5-lb bag of grapefruit for free from HEB for buying 12 oz of salad (makes sense to me). Since I don't normally eat grapefruit, I had to find something to do with them. After some searching, I came across a recipe for Grapefruit Meringue Pie. I tried it out last weekend, and it tasted pretty good. I still had half of the grapefruits left to use after the first pie, so I thought I would make it again for my Super Bowl party tomorrow. Taking inspiration from a catered company dinner last year, I thought I would make miniature pies. Here's the result:


Here's what it looks like on the inside:


I made the pies by pressing the pie dough into my 12 muffin pan. To make extraction easier, I greased up the pan and then laid a strip of parchment paper into each of the cups. Here's what it looked like:


I was surprised at how well it worked. (Un)fortunately, one of the mini-pies didn't come out cleanly, so I had to destroy the evidence. The recipe for the filling was more than enough for the 12 pies that I made with the muffin tin, so I probably could have made more. I'll just use it as an excuse to buy another muffin time the next time I make the mini-pies.