So I bought a pedal steel. Yep. More on that later. First I’d like to let you, my rock and roll insiders, in on some sweet deals:
1 pair of Mackie 624’s – $425
audio buddy 2 ch. pre-amp $60
pre sonus tube pre – $75
Danelectro Nifty Seventy – $50
Fender Princeton 65 – $130
contact me for more info/pictures. nate. 612.269.9023 or nate at natehouge dot com
I often make the communion bread for our church and I really enjoy doing this. Usually I make small round wheat loaf. I think this reflects my view of Jesus for the most part – simple and good for you. But since today is the first Sunday of Easter I thought I’d make a more celebratory loaf so I searched for Easter breads and sweet breads and found this recipe: http://bread.betterrecipes.com/easter-braid.html. I left out the raisans and mace and didn’t glaze it. As tasty as that sounded I thought it was probably enough of a theological leap to through in the lemon zest. So tonight as we gathered around the table we broke the bread. Our’s is a chuch with an open table – meaning all are welcome to take part in the bread and wine/body and blood. And generally if there is bread left over after church it is consumed at the weekly pot luck. So the kids that come up to the table, like my 2 year old daughter Elsa, apparently don’t realize the difference in the meal as part of the service and the potluck after the meal. I say apparently because Elsa kept sneaking back up to the table and grabbing more bread. And more bread. And more bread. My wife Jodi was busy with serving communion, and I was playing guitar and I don’t think we realized it right away. (As I’m writing this I realize I haven’t really ever blogged about the church we go to – it’s called Humble Walk, Jodi is the pastor and I often help lead singing – there’s your context for this story – if you want to know more about the church you should come and see – sunday nights at 4:30, potluck at 5:30ish – randolph and w. 7th in the Pilney building in St. Paul MN. There, I’ve blogged about our church. Done.) Anyway, this story just got long and boring, sooorrrrrry. So we sang accapella, I picked up Elsa, she put up a fight, but it all worked out.
Point of the story? Passive reader: huh. long boring story. Practical reader: Don’t make the bread too good, or people will get all 1 Cor. 11 on you. Emergent Theologian Reader: What is the difference between the meal during the service and the meal after the service? Should the two become one? Let’s deconstruct it! Better yet, Betray It! And rather than ‘Emergent Theologian Reader’, could you please refer to us as “an (un)named group struggling to understand this god thing in a time of highly valued skepticism and doubt using literary means in the context of a pre/post variant model of (on)going antiquity?”
Justin, why’d you have to turn me on to Rollins? That dude’s too smart for his own (brit)ches. And I thank you.
Okay, I’m a little preachy. So let me say a few kind words for the conglomerates.
One thing I love about the big boxes is the free rental plan. Examples:
Somebody I knew was doing a little bathroom remodeling with PEX. PEX is cheap and easy to work with if you have the 95 dollar crimping tool. But what this person found out was if you held on to the reciept Menards would view it as less of a purchase and more as a borrowing and when I was done… I mean when that somebody was done they were able to return the tool and get their money back. Not unlike borrowing my neighbor’s edger. It only makes me like them more.
Another somebody I traveled with once got tired of lugging 6 saw horses in the back of his truck from AZ to CA and back. So, since we were done with them in CA we stopped by Home Depot and returned them. He returned them without a reciept. You tend to lose reciepts after 8 months of use. No questions asked. Thank you Home Depot!
And my favorite are the two folks I know who have purchased thousands of dollars of gear at Guitar Center for gigs and returned it the next day. One was a huge amp, the other was huge drum set. Way to support starving artists.
So thank you corporations, we’ll remain anonymous if you do!
The thing is, I may be in the camp that says, €œLet the economy burn.€ I think that the macro-economics that this glutenous country of ours are obsessed with are antithetical to a healthy community.
Here’s what got the finite hamsters in my head running. (In the interest of full disclosure I should point out it was more of a jog.)
I heard a guy on the radio (Wow Nate, way to kick things off with a credible source!) saying that a consequence of shopping locally is that you will drive the prices up. He was a professor of economics and so I’m guessing on paper he’s right. And I’ve seen this to be true. I can buy a drill bit at Menards for a buck or I can go to my old employer at S & S hardware and get the same drill bit for $1.69. S & S isn’t buying them by the gross, maybe not even by the dozen. They don’t get the discounts. And so because we hold the success of our economy over the success of our community we go to Menards. We drive further, we walk around forever, we ask where the drill bits have been moved to since our last visit, and we save our .69 cents. It only took an extra 45 minutes of our time and an extra four miles of driving. We didn’t see anybody we knew, though after 10 years of home ownership I admit I do recognize a couple faces back in the lumber department. But you get where I’m going with this. When I walk into S & S chances are Mark will be working there. He’ll talk about the glorious Republican party to which his allegiance is sworn and then talk religion. I mean football. He’s a Packers fan so you understand it’s a blurry line. Once when I was working there on a slow winter night a guy came in with some gas line questions. My coworker went to his house and helped him connect his new stove. Nobody at Menards is going to do that. That .69 cents is worth it to me.
Although I will admit, I’m more likely to go to Mitch’s Hardware Hank. It’s a few blocks closer and I can pick up a two pack of 3/32€ bits for $1.59.
Today Lydia and I bought a pink Schwinn Pixie. Pretty much identical to this photo I found online, except Lydia’s has the front fender also. An early 80’s model. Lydia is crazy excited to have an ‘old school’ bike like Mom and Dad (a lot of our neighborhood jaunts are on our Schwinn Suburbans). We got home and started cleaning it up. I’m going to try and get the internal stuff up to par tonight and tomorrow we should be ready to start working on training wheel free living. It’s going to be a good summer.
You should have pizza night. I myself could have pizza night every night, provided I had plenty of bean burrito lunch options. I think I could feasibly live on bean burritos and pizza for a very long time. Until I was 80. Than I’d probably want to start introducing more into my diet.
We at Operation Houge have adopted a Friday night pizza night policy for the last who knows how long and it’s been good. Sometimes we pick up pizza from places like Papa Murphy’s or Papa John’s. We used to order from KNX up the street but they kept switching hands and I’m not sure what the place is called anymore or how to get a hold of them. We’ve got the Pizza Factory around the corner at Skinners which is pretty good, they don’t skimp on the cheese that’s for sure. If I’m out of town Jodi will sneak a frozen pizza into our oven. But generally 90 percent of the time we make our own pizza. I think making your own crust is the most intimidating part so let’s talk about that.
Proper Nate’s Pizza Recipe.
1 1/2 cups warm water (put your finger in it, if your finger’s happy it’s probably about right)
1 tsp. yeast.
1 1/2 Tbl. Olive Oil
1 1/2 Tbl. Honey
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups wheat flour
2-3 cups white flour
Before I bore with details, allow me to sum everything up:
Combine. Knead. Rise. Flatten. Top. Bake. Eat.
Or in more rambling detail: Dump everything except for the white flour into a bowl. Mix it up. Add white flour 1/2 cup at a time until you get a nice not to firm dough. If your mixing it up with a wooden spoon and it’s all stuck to the spoon and no longer to the sides of the bowl you’re probably pretty close. At this point toss some flour on your hands and on the counter, dump the dough out and knead it for 5-8 minutes. If it’s getting crazy sticky try adding more flour to your hands before adding it to the dough, only because I think a wet dough makes a better pizza crust. I could be wrong. You could be the one to prove me as such.
All right. Let it rise for about 45 minutes. Generally I clean out the mixing bowl, put a little olive oil in it, put the dough in there, turn it over to coat it, cover it with a towel or plastic wrap and stick it in the unheated oven. Then I put a bowl of hot, straight off the boil, water in the oven with it. That usually works well in our drafty kitchen.
Okay. Your dough rose. Good job. Take it out of the oven and preheat the oven to 425.
Now punch it down and divide it into four pieces. Roll each piece into a ball. Flatten the ball, toss it up in the air, use a rolling pin, work it out on a cookie sheet. Any of those or combinations of those seem to work to make your crust. It’ll be about 12″ round. One tip I’ve appreciated: When you get to the part where you’re working it out on the cookie sheet put a wet dishrag between the pan and the counter to keep your pan from wiggling all over the place.
I have two round pans so what I do is make the first pizza – usually just sauce and cheese to appease the youngins – and put it in the oven on the upper rack for 6 minutes. While that gets going I get the second pizza ready. When my 6 minutes is up I slide the top pizza off of the pan onto the lower rack to get a nice crispy crust and put the next pizza on the top rack. From sliding that first pizza off of its pan I can get the next pizza going. Watch the times on this because every oven is different and because all the opening and closing of the oven door does a number on the consistency of heat. For the most part though this becomes a pretty fluid process. I actually set my timer (which I recently discovered also works as a cellular phone) for 5 minutes to account for the transfer time and to make sure I don’t burn anything. Too much. Also if you’re pizza doesn’t want to slide off the pan onto the bottom rack don’t force it, it needs more time. If you do force it you’ll end up with a big clump of pizza ingredients dripping through the rack onto the bottom of your oven. At least that’s what I’m guessing would happen….
See how simple that was? Tune in next time for tips on topping.
That’s me a couple weeks back at the Victory Muse show. There are more and better pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/micahtaylor/sets/72157615602779470/
Rachel Kurtz and I did the song ‘bootstraps’ for the first time in 8 years (it’s on the rare and hard but not hard enough to find boy.girl CD ‘cheaply painted barns.’) Jonathan Rundman joined in on accordian and Lars Carlson played along for the closer – I’m Troubled and I Don’t Know Why. The Victory Muse house concerts have been awesome and this Saturday Rachel Kurtz will be playing with her husband, the legendary guitarist, Michael May. For those of you with the Mysterious Kung Fu…. CD, Michael is responsible for the rock and roll solo on Get In the Tub. So check out the Victory Muse and check out the show.
1. I got stopped at security at the airport on my way out. They wanted to check my bag. As the security personal started looking through it she said – “do you have a teapot in here?” I correctly assumed she was referring to my ceramic coffee cup and said, “Yeah, it’s right under here…” and reached over and began pulling my socks and underwear out of the way. She quickly moved the bag away and said curtly. “You can’t touch this.” Keep in mind it was 4:30 in the morning so my judgement was a bit off as I immediately started humming the rest of the chorus to this MC Hammer classic. She wasn’t ammused. Or at least on the outside. Inside I think she was cracking up. Or deciding whether or not to turn me into the feds. Of course in the end the lingering question remains, so what if it was a teapot? Whatch out for that guy, he’s already had 3 mugs of chamomile this morning. Dangerous.
2. I led a songwriting workshop on saturday morning and the group came up with an awesome gathering song that we used for Sunday morning worship. My favorite part was they used the simile of hot chocolate as the warmth and comfort we find in gathering together. It fit the context of camp, but also of being filled, of being a vessel, not to mention comfort. A lot of us are used to all the old church language in hymns. It’s good to break out and use new imagery. This group did it way better than someone like myself, stuck in my ruts, usually does. Good work!
3. sheesh, what’s number three? Could be running in warm weather, or the hanging out before and after the event, could be the group singing, or… Oh here’s a good one. Sunday night walking out of target we heard a weird sound. Looking up in the air at a distant trail of smoke Chad pointed out that we had just heard the space shuttle launch. Sure enough there was a little light zooming out into space. We saw the space shuttle. Sweet.
Finally, this Friday Micah and I will be at the bean factory here in St. Paul up on Randolph. 7-9. if you want to sing a few songs bring an instrument. we’d love to have you.
Who doesn’t love Morrissey?
And what’s up with Aunt Sam?
One of my favorite Morrissey songs is a little number called Hairdresser on Fire. I’ve pretty much loved it since 1994 when I picked up viva hate on cassette at Vintage Vinyl. I think it’s the chorus: Really busy/busy clippers/Oh, hairdresser on fire/ all around sloane square.
Maybe it goes back to my fear of haircuts. Or maybe it’s just quirky and catchy. Anyhow, it’s been in my head a lot because I have been kind of busy myself as of late. But I can’t complain. Sure I could use a bit more sleep, and yes I need to start getting our taxes in order but really I’m thankful that I get to make music as much as I do.
I remember reading a session player’s blog describing his days in and out of studios lugging all his gear around. Basically he was pointing out that the only working musicians out there are hard working musicians, the rest of ’em have to get behind a desk. So I’m thankful that I have a supportive family and friends that allow me to play 8 shows a week like I did last week with everything from house concerts to preschool groups to the wonderful folks at Immanuel Lutheran School outside of Mankato that invited me to play for the school in celebration of National Lutheran Schools Week. It’s been really great. So what’s next? Well I got a last minute gig to go to Florida with Justin Rimbo and play for an ELCA synod event down there. Then I’ll get some rest and do dishes for about a month out of gratefulness to my wife and all her single parenting in the last 2 months. Saint Jodi full of grace, have mercy on me a musician.
I’ve been upping my running regime for the past few months with the thought of running the Fargo Half Marathon in May. Last weekend Jodi and I watched Run Fat Boy Run which was right up there with Saint Ralph as far as running movies go. This was also the closing week of a get skinny contest Jodi and I were a part of. So on Tuesday I went for a 6 mile run on the treadmill at our neighborhood rec center. By the time I jogged my cool down I was up to 6.7 miles so I thought I’d just keep going for awhile. I am proud to say I ran 10 miles. I’m embarassed to say I was rewarded with a blister on each foot and two very chafed nipples. You read that right. All you lactating women out there – I am with you. Hmmm… that actually sounds kind of creepy. Never mind.
That’s why God invented mole skin and band-aids right?
So on Wednesday running was out of the question but swimming was doable so I took Lydia to the pool. When I took my socks off Lydia asked what the mole skin was. I explained about my blisters. Then I took off my shirt to get in the pool. “Is that why you have those too?” She pointed at the two band aids I had totally forgotten about. That was a wee bit embarassing.
The thing is, I don’t care because Thursday morning we weighed out and I won the get skinny contest. And just now I tapped into the spoils to pay my entry fee for the Fargo Half Marathon. If anybody wants to join me, let me know. I’m sure there’s plenty of room on my brother in law’s floor.
Bring your own band-aids.
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh
Sorry Bonny.
Bonnie
Bonnie
Bonnie
Bonnie
Bonnie
Bonnie
Bonnie
Bonnie
Next time I’ll get a gig in Pittsburgh and save you the drive!