Jessica’s Favorite Chicken

Jessica liked it when I made this – she said it tasted like ‘Restaurant Chicken’.
This means I’m a chef now – I could work at a restaurant.
Stop laughing, that’s not nice.
Hey, quit making cracks about me working at McD*n*ld’s.

Ingredients

Chicken

  • Chicken Breasts

Marinade

  • Some Kraft Italian Dressing – not the light stuff, but the full flavored, fatty kind.
  • Some Honey

Preparation and Cooking

The Pre-grill stuff

  1. Prepare grill
  2. Throw the chicken into a container (most likely not cardboard) that will hold
    liquid, preferably one that will allow you to submerge the chicken in the
    Marinade.
  3. Squeeze/pour the dressing into the bowl.
    Make sure you shake it first – the bottle, not your money-maker.
  4. Squeeze in some honey.
    Not too much, but in Goldilocks tradition, just the right amount.
    This is a subjective thing, so I can’t tell you how much, but don’t make it more than 12% of the marinade.
  5. Let the bird sit in the sauce for at least 30 minutes or I’ll say you did it wrong.
  6. Grill the chicken.
    You could use a George Foreman grill for this too, if you’re really feeling like a lighter dinner.
  7. Serve with a nice salad, because mean salads aren’t worth eating.

NOTE: We have actually marinaded the chicken for ~24 hours before and had great results – try this at home.

Balogna Blog

sung to the tune of the Old Oscar Meyer commercial

My friend Tony has a first name.
It’s F-r-a-n-k.

OK, stop singing, I think I have successfully lodged that song in your mind.
You’ll thank me in about 4 hours when its still running through your brain.
Like a nightmarish merry-go-round.

Anyway, Tony’s got a blog.
It will more than likely be filled with similar stuff as mine.
Similar in the since that he puts the fun back into Texas.
He’s coming up this weekend with his family and I’m stoked to see him.

Resting in Him,

Randy “has a last name” Peterman

Women of Walmart

This is almost as frustrating as anything I’ve ever seen.
Two companies I really abhor, Playboy (for its horrible effects on
society) and Walmart (for its horrible effects on society), are
somewhat in bed together.
Playboy has managed to get 6 Walmart employees to pose at least partially nude.
I don’t know, I haven’t seen the pictures, and don’t plan on seeing them.

In the end it matters very little who those six people are – Walmart
will now do things to them to make their lives miserable.
Those things of course will not be as miserable as the feeling they’ll
have when other strange men see them somewhere in public and make
gross remarks to them because they’re not just ex-employees, they’re
whores.
I know there are those out there that disagree, but adultery, no
matter the form, leads to degradation of some relationship, even
if its a relationship with someone you don’t know.
You can’t tell men, who are visual by nature, that they can look at you
naked (for the price of a magazine) that you’re not just out there
to have sex.
I apologize if this is not the normal fair for this site 🙂

Anyhow, I just thought you might want to know that.
Or, maybe I should just say I needed to vent and tell someone (you)
that I find this repulsive.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Persnickety” Peterman

Happy BIrthday Clair!

Today one of my father-in-laws turned 5 followed by a zero.
That is to say that if he were a dog and he lived this long he’d be in the Guiness book of whirled records (at what point will they upgrade to CD or MP3?).
But he’s not.
Clair is a neat guy and a fabulous father-in-law.
He likes golf and despite that he still works long hours.
This is quite a feat since most people sho like golf work fewer and fewer hours.

This is not quite a surprise since when I first saw him I was pretty darn scared.
I was sitting in a low seat (the cusions had been shot on that chair for a good 15 years, I’m sure) and Clair walked into the room and towered over me (I think he’s about 6′ 1″).
I was also scared because frankly, any guy named Clair has probably knocked at least one or two people down for making fun of his name.

Then, the first time I went over to their house I had to go to the bathroom and ran out of toilette paper!.
Clair graciously got me a new roll.
I think he thought that was pretty funny because I remember being super embarassed and hearing him laugh as he walked down the hallway to get some more paper.

Clair and I also have had quite a few good talks, and I’ve been glad to have him as a dad (thats another cool thing about marriage, you get at least one new dad – without any of the biological unless you live in Louisianna).
If it weren’t for Clair I think I would have never learned all sorts of things – one of the primary lessons was do not park in his parking spot on the driveway.
While I deserved a good chewing-out he kindly asked me never to park there again (since I’d been told not to park there previously) ;).
Clair also has taken lots of time to drive Jessica and I (and later Abby) around the Pacific Northwest.

Not only that, but Clair is a Christian – and despite frustrations at time he’s been a dedicated brother in Christ.
He’s got a pretty cool wife too 😉

H@ppy 8irfd@y Cl@ir!

Randy “Son-in-Law” Peterman

DaVinci Code

This morning I was watching some television (briefly) and they showed
a segment about the DaVinci Code.
It’s a book that purports (in a fictional format) that Christ was Mary
of Magdalene’s husband.
While the work is fiction, the author’s belief is that DaVinci along
with many throughout history believed that the two biblical
characters were married.
The proof?
An argument from silence.

The argument is that the Bible does not say they aren’t married.
That’s weighty isn’t it?
You could equally say that Abraham Lincoln was a cross-dresser.
When people try to refute it with various arguments you simply retort,
“Lincoln wouldn’t have wanted it known, and so it wasn’t recorded
in any mainstream sources.”
Then, because its truly an argument from silence you can proudly
purport the bizarre behaviors of your imaginary Lincoln without
any contest.

Fundamentally this is rooted in those who do not take the Bible as
the inspired word of God.
If you don’t have God’s word as your final authority then you’ve got
plenty of room for other impressive texts and authors, including
DaVinci.
But don’t ask me to abandon the Texts just to (attempt to) prove a
point.

This is similar to one argument that I heard that tried to explain
away Jesus Messiahship in favor of a political motive.
His idea was that Christ saw that the people of Israel needed a
leader and he tried to be a leader, but later the people who
liked him so much added His claims of deity and manipulated the
facts to make Him the Messiah.

The person telling me this idea was completely ignorant of the
scriptural text because that’s exactly what the pharisees
wanted.
Had Christ been more political the pharisees would have accepted Him
and been more inclined to revolt against Rome rather than
reject Christ and later push for his crucifixion!
Any claim that is extra-biblical or outside of the text stands
directly against the dispensational hermeneutic, something which I
espouse.
Truth is absolute.
God revealed His truth to mankind.
We can know what truth is.
I believe God’s truth.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Fiery Theologian” Peterman

Pishdurs

Today we went to get pictures taken at J.C. Penney’s.
The appointment was at 9:20 AM – the store didn’t open until 10:00 AM.
So we went to the door thinking, “Surely the wouldn’t schedule us
for an appointment earlier than the store was open.”
We were wrong.
However, we were able to get in through the hair salon’s door and
then on into the studio.
At the studio we sat for nearly 45 minutes waiting to be shot.
Our appointment being when it was we were flashed at 10:15.

Abby was pretty upset by this and opted to play ‘hard-to-smile.’
Eventually we got 5 reasonable shots of her doing various things and
barely eeked out a semi smile from her for the family pictures.
Furthermore they offered us, for a mere $5.00, the opportunity to
receive digital pictures via email.
We declined since the last time they got my $5.00 the JPEG images
they sent were of such low quality that one may have confused us
for an impressionistic piece.

You Are Now a Number

I coded some bits and pieces in my PHP to do some minor tracking
of site readers.
Not a lot mind you because I’m not interested in the numbers
themselves, I’m working on a statists package for fun.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I enjoy the idea of doing up charts and what
not.

Dinner for 5

For dinner we went out with Mike and Louanne Mason, our good friends
and owners of Best Basket
, a fabulous gift basket company.
Mike also took the pictures of Abby that are currently up on the site.
It was fun and Abby did multiple firsts, including saying ‘thank you’
(in ASL).
Mike always tries to have Abby play with him, but sometimes she’s
been a little shy.
Not tonight.
Abby laughed and played and colored with Mike on her placemat.
Which reminds me, I should have her ‘draw’ some things so I can scan
them and get them up on the site.

Loose Ends

Sojo Site

I finished up the first phase of the Sojourner
Site.
I’ve got more things I’ll add for phase 2, but it will be good for
them to have a fresher look and some updated content.
I’m excited for them to be able to have a modern site (in coding)
and some updated content since the last site had content from
2 or more years ago.

Holes in Your Head

For my birthday our friends the Cobb’s gave me Holes, the
movie.
It’s a kick in the pants and weaves all sorts of fun fiction together
for a great family oriented movie.
Although I do think that John Voight is secretly related to Christopher Walken.
The flash file shown here doesn’t do it justice, but I suppose you’ll just have to see the movie to see what I mean.
You need flash.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Big Brother” Peterman

Heroin

Last Friday was Halloween.
We didn’t celebrate it because we’re fundamentalist killjoys.
However, we did go up to Sherman where Jessica’s cousin’s family did
celebrate it, and it was great fun watching the little ones get
excited.
It was not fun to see the 14 year old’s doing Halloween.
I think their parents should have said, “No, you’re not 8 any more.
Plus the odor from your body is going to cause the people answering
their doors to pass out. And I know you, you’ll steel their candy.”

I did have fun with one slightly older kid though, because when he/she
(hard to tell with the gory makeup on) came to the door I said to
Morgan,
“What a nice ballerina costume.”
To which Morgan replied, “That’s not a ballerina!”
Of course it wasn’t a ballerina, it was a kid dressed up as a mauled
white kid who was feeling creative, just like all of the other
mauled white kids.

What happened to the good old days when there were 300 supermen
running around with 600 princesses behind them?
What happened to the day when your parents went with you and
made you say, “Thank you.”
And who wouldn’t let you eat all of the candy before you got home
because they wanted to check it for small weapons of mass
destruction embedded in the center of a chewy caramel candy.
I remember those days, my mom was the one handing out raisin
boxes (98% of which were thrown away).

In fact, my brother and I made it a policy to warn the other kids in
the neighborhood that mom was going to be giving away the candy.
It was our public service announcement.

“This is a test of the emergency broadcast system.
The following is a warning, if you do not heed the warning you may
find yourself the recipient of non-candy objects.
Non-candy objects in this case refers to Raisins.
Eat them at your own risk…”

To make matters worse, we would get our candy picked through, and
anything mom didn’t want us to eat was given out to costumed kids
later on in the evening (this was 100% of the candy that had food
coloring, particularly anything red).
We were sorry that we couldn’t eat all of the candy at once, too.
I imagine that I might have died, become diabetic, or simply wet my
pants and forgotten my name for a half an hour (which would have
made www.icantremember.com my domain).

Saturday and Sunday

Saturday we kicked into full gear and started working on the kitchen.
Doug and Amanda’s kitchen is in the process of a complete remodel.
We stripped it down to the sheetrock (and replaced some of that) and then,
shortly after that (Sunday) Amanda and Jessica took the rented snot
blower (my name for the spackling device with compressor) and spackled
the walls and ceiling.
No animals were harmed, but the kids were pooped and cranky.
The house was pretty trashed since the kitchen was emptied of all of
its guts with few exceptions.

Choose Your Own Debenture

Or Stewardship, the Biblical model for Living and Giving

With the economy in turmoil, and the Stock market in a spin, it can be
hard to gain a biblical perspective on our financial lives.
“What if?” questions abound, and investment advisors are all
over the map, giving advice everywhere from “wait” to
“sell it all.” In this time of turbulence it is
important to remember several biblical principles. The first
principle to remember is one of abiding – remembering who God is, and
your relationship with Him. The second principle is God’s
commands on finances and temporal prosperity. The third principle
is scriptures command for wisdom in all things. With each of these
principles firmly in your mind, and a heart in God’s Word, the
economy can die, soar, or stay right where it is and you will be
contently where you should be!

Continue reading

What is All of This Stuff?

RSS Minnow

Unlike the skipper and his slow shipmate, Gilligan –
RSS has nothing to do with the
ocean.
However, if you don’t know what it means, you could be just as lost.
You’ll need a News Aggregator, which is a program that collects RSS files from across
the internet and without much work turns them into viewable bits of text with links
to full articles.

This is quite nifty, especially if you think about how many sites you might look through in
a day.
Lets say that you check out www.randypeterman.com every day and you think to yourself,
“Golly, Randy doesn’t put up news stuff that often, I wish there was a way I could
be notified when he does put some new news up.”
Well, with RSS and an aggregator (I recommend
FeedDemon)
you could just open up the aggregator and you’d see if I did or not.
You’re smart, so you say, “I can do that now with a browser, why not just do that?”
Well, I’ll tell you what, if you check enough sites in one day this could really save
you time, assuming that they have RSS feeds.

The bottom line is that if you’re a busy individual, you can save a lot of time by simply
adding an RSS aggregator to your computer-lifestyle.
I check FeedDemon every morning with my email, so I know if some of the websites I read
regularly have been updated.
I can also get the news and other fun information, all with this handy-dandy little file
format.
Yes, file format, because RSS is
just a file.

CSS? What Does that Mean?

It means Cascading Style Sheets.
Its a nice way to make the pages look good without loading them down with extra
HTML so that the page
gets super heavy, making dialup connections unbearable, and older browsers
cough and hack on nested tables..

I use stylesheets to make the page have multiple styles.
Find the “Pick a style” links and test it out.

What Are Access Keys?

Do you use Microsoft Access?
Good for you.
Accesskey’s don’t have anything to do with MS Office Access.
But they do have to do with handicap accessibility, or just plain quick shortcut keys.

If you are using Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher on windows you can use accesskeys by
pressing Alt + whatever the accesskey is.
For example, on this site, the news link accesskey is the key number 1 (one).
So, using your super sleuth mind, you probably already put Alt and 1 together and came up
with an algebra equation.
Once you’re done with your algebra, try pressing and holding the Alt key and then
pressing the ‘1’ (one) key.
Nothing happened did it? In Internet Explorer you have to then press the enter key because
the accesskey only moves the cursor’s focus to the link associated with the accesskey.
However, if you want to use Mozilla you’ll find the accesskeys trigger the links as well.

If you’re on the Macintosh I’m told you should use the Ctrl (Control) key.
I don’t have one, so I’ll just take the word of the professionals who passed on that tidbit
of information.

Abigail Ruth Peterman

A special message from Abigail:

mk lkni iuurtetrtt j h

Abigail (Abby) is one cute toddler, she’s a real treat, except for when
she’s grumpy, or wakes up at some odd hour of the night. Her mom and dad
love her so much. To her credit her birth more than tripled the number
of hits this site gets a month.

Abby is walking all over the place and running too.
She is able to say Cat, Shoes, Daddy, Mommy and Apple Juice.
She also can make the sound of a sheep (ba) and a lion (raaaaaaaahhhhhh).
What a gal, we love her a lot!

Abigail Ruth Peterman