the company had a halloween potluck last week. i dressed up as a disgruntled employee instead of being the usual happy employee that i usually am. or was it that i told people that i dressed up as a happy employee instead of the usually disgruntled employee? hmmm, tough call. =P

one of my co-workers brought in dry ice to put into apple cider. i asked him if it was food grade dry ice and he looked at me like i was on crack. dude, there is such a thing! and they make it because the normal dry ice isn’t meant to be consumed. right??

i think christi’s new goal in life is to get as many other people addicted to guitar hero as she is. i think that i’ve pretty much gone as far as i can in the game, but i’ll give it another whirl. i still have to 5 star the songs, most of my attempts are in the 3 star area. what does it all mean? it just means i have a lot more to play.

we had a few friends come over for a volleyball review/coaching session. after watching the video of the games that i had recorded, guitar hero was broken out and a good time was had. the above picture is aimee rocking it out, complete with head banging goodness.

after reading an article on how to turn cheap choice steaks in gucci prime steaks, i knew that i would have to try it out.

it’s easy to do: super salt your steak for about 15 minutes, rinse, and cook. i got 4 costco steaks, cooked two in the normal way that i would normally cook them and two in this way. the instructions require you to use sea salt or some other coarse salt, but i didn’t have any, so i decided to really oversalt my steaks, hoping that the table salt would be enough to encourage the moisture from the steak to come out.

the results? the super salted steak really did seem to be more tender than the control group! pretty amazing. i think i waited too long after i had salted them, though. i think next time a 10 minute salting will be more than sufficient. i will also marinade it with other seasonings because it was just salty, good, but i can definitely see the potential for it to be GREAT.

the lesson learned here is that when using a dry rub, let the rub work its way into the meat at room temperature. 10 minutes can make a huge difference!