Ben's Blog

NINJA HAULER: 2005 Nissan Xterra – $12900 (Ronan / Lake County)

 

This video makes me want to move deep into the woods in Northern Michigan and develop my own self-sustaining farm.  I will power my computer with potatoes, lots of potatoes…like the clocks from elementary school. Seriously though, this video may make you question the way you (and I) accumulate stuff and in turn participate in an an ugly cycle that hurts all consumers.

This past weekend centered around Holly’s birthday and all things Christmas.  I attended the GVSU University Relations division holiday party Friday night with co-workers to start things off.  The party turned out to be better than I had expected, fueled by good drinks, food and conversation with friends.

Holly’s birthday was Saturday and after giving her a couple gifts in the morning I headed to the mall to return something at Dunham’s before picking up a Christmas tree.  I hate shopping and I hate returning things even more…luckily Centerpointe mall wasn’t busy so I was able to walk right up to the returns desk.  A heavily pierced teen asked for my license and I begrudgingly obliged to speed the process up as much as possible.  Next the clerk asked for my phone number – I told him I didn’t have a phone.  I wasn’t trying to be an a**hole – I just didn’t want him to have more of my info.  He told me that he had to have a phone number to complete the return so I asked him to just enter his phone number, then asked him if store policy prohibited people without phones from shopping in his store.  Finally I just made up a number (sorry 616-242-1234) and he was happy to get me out of the store.  I should have had some coffee before going to the mall…  I stopped at Menard’s to pick up some sidewalk salt and 900 pounds of sand for the back of the truck.  Thankfully, this transaction went much more smoothly.

This weekend also brought a ton of snow which made driving a big rear-wheel drive truck quite an experience.  Holly and I decided to get a fresh cut Christmas tree from the Lenderink Tree Farms in Belmont, MI after having an artificial tree for years.  I debated whether or not a real tree is more or less sustainable than a fake tree, but in the end I just wanted to go cut down my own tree and drag it home and into the house.  My family always had a real tree growing up and I remember going to the tree farm every year to cut it down with my dad – I must have been sheltered from the part where you had to pay for it as I had a bit of sticker shock when I had to pay $50 for my tree.  This was even more shocking when we passed other tree farms where pre-cut trees could be had for under $20…so I did all the work and paid the tree farm $30 for my labor and the use of their saw.  Good times.  In the end it was a lot of fun and the overall experience was well worth the money.

To round out the day Holly chose to have her birthday dinner at the Beltline bar on Division and 28th street.  Both of our dinners were enormous and very good, but we had to take a fair amount home with us for another day.  After dinner we decorated the tree and finished the night with a piece of birthday cake.

Sunday was a nice and lazy day…I watched football and simultaneously saw my fantasy football team (in my office league) have the worst week ever when it mattered the most.  So disappointing!  The big accomplishment of the day was hanging 75 feet of Christmas lights on the front of the house…we’re getting into the Christmas spirit at the Rapin house!

I’ve had a lot of close calls with my table saw – always out of stupidity, and I even went to the med center once after a run in with my miter saw.  I really need this new saw:

Today was my first day back in the office since last Wednesday – Thanksgiving always provides a nice break but this year was a bit more hectic, but relaxing all the same.  Most of the madness centered around hosting my family for a couple days at the house.  I underestimated how much work is involved in preparing such a big meal; had I known this I probably would have opted to cook one turkey instead of two!

Here are some of the highlights:

Wednesday afternoon, evening, night, Thursday early morning and almost all day was spent cooking.  Really, I don’t think I left the kitchen for more than an hour at any given time.  Aside from cooking I played some cards and some Wii.

Thanksgiving started for me at 2am – after going to bed around 11pm.  I set the alarm for 2am thinking I would be able to quickly get up, take the turkey out of the brine, soak the wood chips and then go back to bed.  After I got the turkey squared away I realized I didn’t have any wood chips left so I had to go to Meijer to pick up more.  Thank God for stores open 24 hours a day!

After soaking the chips it was now after 3am and the smoked turkey needed to be started around 5am so I just laid down on the couch for a quick nap.  5am came too soon and it took about an hour to get the smoker setup and that turkey started – the time I was done with that I had to start the homemade stuffing and the other turkey!  All said and done I finished the second turkey by 8ish, just in time to whip up some cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  Making these from scratch took two hours!

I slept a bit more after breakfast and then sat around until it was time to make the rest of the fixings for dinner.  I passed a lot of this on to my mom and sisters as I was just burned out in the kitchen.  I watched the Lion’s game or lack thereof and then relaxed the rest of the day.  I went to bed early but Holly and my sisters went to Meijer around midnight to camp out for the black Friday sales which started at 5am.  They probably went earlier than necessary but they came home with 4 Wiis, 3 to keep and one for me to sell on Ebay (hoping I can make a buck or two on some last minute shoppers).

Friday
Friday was the most relaxing day of all…everyone left, including Holly, by 4pm so I had a whole night to hang out at home.  Seriously, I can’t point to one productive thing I did all day other than making a quick trip to the mall and washing/filling up my mom’s car.  Wait, is watching 3 western movies from the 50′s and 60′s productive?  Sure it is…

Saturday
I woke up late with just enough time to make it to the Laker’s football game – this was my last webcasting engagement for a while.  The game was terrible, it was like the Laker’s that we saw all season, or at least the offense/QB were replaced with a shabby high school team.  Needless to say UMD won, and it shouldn’t have taken double OT for them to take the game.  Saturday evening I drove to the cabin to shut off the water and to winterize the place for a couple months.  I didn’t get there until 9pm, but I spent a couple hours chatting with my uncle who was up there for one more hunting weekend with his son/my cousin.

Sunday
Winterized the cabin and drove home through the first bad weather of the winter season.  Nothing notable to speak of.  I made it home in time to watch some football and bask in my fantasy football wins.