Chuck Smith's Blog

In spite of not blogging about it, I’ve been steadily chipping away at my 101 Things List. Along the way I’ve also found a few new things I want to do and dropped a couple others. Here are the updates on what I’ve done.

Enter the Bulwer-Lytton contest

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a tribute to bad writing. It’s an annual contest to see who can write the worst opening sentence to a novel. The contest’s namesake was the author of Paul Clifford, which began, “It was a dark and stormy night…” I guess that was enough to launch a whole contest.

When I was young I got a hold of the early compilations of contest results and could not stop laughing. It was one of the early motivators for my interest in literature. Ever since then I’ve been wanting to force my own atrocious sentences and enter the contest. This year I did just that with the following two entries, emailed in right before the April 15th deadline.

As I lathered my pelt of auburn chest hair with the Asian Pear body wash I found behind my occasional girlfriend’s shaving gel, the fragrance conjured forth a childhood memory of overdosing on pear Jolly Ranchers, eating cookie dough, and spending the night curled up with a stainless steel mixing bowl.

My bride-to-be looked like a hooked spotted bass as she weaved towards me down the church aisle, her legs wobbly from the shots of bourbon, her wedding dress shimmering like iridescent scales, her mouth gaping at the lipstick on my collar.

Two hours after I submitted these I got an email back from contest director Scott Rice:

Only two submissions from a person with your powers of invention?

I guess that’s a good thing?

Finish state quarters map

I always think other countries’ money is so much more interesting than our own, so I’ve been overjoyed (well, as overjoyed as one can be about such things) as the U.S. has introduced colorful $5, $10, and $20 bills, not to mention the state quarters map. Well now that all the quarters are in the wild it was time to buckle down and finish the map.

I don’t pay cash for much, so really I had to rely on Amanda’s mom who sent us a consistent supply of the quarters over the past few years. But it was tough work pressing the quarters into the map.

Go to a winemaker’s dinner

Amanda and I attended the Reynold’s Family winemaker’s dinner at Wine Vault & Bistro. Everything was excellent: the wine, the food, and the pairing between them. The portions of food are small, but you get a really good variety of dishes. The main critique I have of the venue is that it can get very loud when filled to capacity. But otherwise this is a great experience at a place only a short distance from home.

Make a carne asada burrito at home

Carne Asada burritos are my benchmark for Mexican restaurants. I get one at pretty much every new Mexican place I try so that I have some basis for comparison between them. That being said, I had never tried to actually create one at home.

I roughly followed the recipe from Rick Bayless, who is apparently one of the most authentic white-guy-cooking-Mexican-food out there. I used skirt steak (a.k.a. flap meat) from Northgate Gonzales (awesome Mexican grocey store in San Diego) marinated in a combination of lime juice, garlic, ground chile pepper, salt, pepper, and oil. After a couple hours this was grilled up and sliced into bits.

Since I was looking to mimic what I encounter in restaurants, to that I added a simple Salsa Mexicana (tomatoes, onions, cilantro, jalapeno, lime) and guacamole. This got wrapped in that traditional burrito wrapping: the flour tortilla (also from Northgate Gonzales). The result was pure bliss, although my version was a lot less greasy than what you’d find in a restaurant. I think this is because they heat up the meat on the griddle with oil, whereas my skirt steak was merely grilled.

Read a Stephen King novel

I read Stephen King’s It, and now understand why clowns are scary. Actually I found the book to be a mixture of well-written and cheesy plots. Some of the scenes and dialog were cringe-worthy. Others were compelling and addicting. The whole “losing childhood innocence” theme has been done to death (quite literally in the case of Stephen King) so that was somewhat less engaging.

Take a boat ride

When we were in Vancouver at the beginning of May we had to a take a ferry to get to Granville Island. I feel guilty using this as my boat ride but hey, it was floating on water.

Visit a new San Diego Brewery

One Saturday after a trip to the Wild Animal Park we made a side trip to Vista to visit Back Street Brewing at Lamppost Pizza. I was quite impressed. The pizza was a delicious example of hand-tossed pie, and the beer selection was good. They didn’t have anything to crazy-exotic, but tasty nevertheless. Definitely recommended if you’re in the area.

Try meat from a new critter

Steven at work was kind enough to share with me a stick of his OsTrim High Protein Snack. Since this has Ostrich in it that I’d never had up until that point, it counts as a new critter!

Play Vikings game

This was a board game Amanda had bought me for a gift a little while back so I wanted to finally sit down and play it. The instructions were mildly complicated but once we got a hold of it we had a great time. It had a good mix of luck and strategy. Having multiple ways to score allows the player to develop their own tactics to use.