The Moose Factory - Virtual Bar and Grill - Version 3

[catty-cb 4,412]

9 hours ago, NMUSpidey said:

How is everyone's funemployement going? I'm wondering if we're going to be extended into May.

Curry sounds nice

We have four lockdown levels currently at the most restrictive (L4), in a weeks time we will be moving down to L3, brother is looking forward to it as he can return to work, I'll still be working from home and then all being well in another two weeks we will go down again to L2 at which point I may be able to return to work but it's still recommended to work from home if you can .... so its fingers crossed at this stage.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

17 hours ago, NMUSpidey said:

How is everyone's funemployement going? I'm wondering if we're going to be extended into May. I hope not, it'd be nice to go back to normal, but the way things are, oh well, whatever's fine. I'm not in charge, I don't have to make these high-pressure decisions.

I'm working, so that's not a problem. Matter of fact, I'm digging the "no traffic" around here. What is bothering me is that I need dental work and all the dentists are closed down. Real pain in the bicuspids.

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

We'll cook up some Chinese food for tonight: wonton soup, egg rolls, crab rangoon, fried rice, white rice, sweet and soup pork (which is what I'll be having), bell peppers and beef, broccoli and beef, General Tso's chicken, all the your favorite Chinese takeout dishes available for your eating pleasure tonight.

 

I've spent a lot of time rewriting a lot of stuff I wrote many years ago, and today got a call from the local newspaper for another article, so my days have been spent pretty much how I wish I could spend them for the rest of my life. Stay home/stay safe orders suit my introverted patootie just fine. It does not give me much to talk about, unless you want to hear about my kids. I'm teaching them geography, after which we'll move on to history. The geography will give them an idea of where the places in history are located, and hopefully give them a bit of a notion of what's actually there. It seems like they don't get many chances to look at maps at their actual school.

[catty-cb 4,412]

The chinese food sounds great well apart from the broccoli.

Was the 25th of April here today ... otherwise know as ANZAC Day, its the day New Zealanders and Australians remember our war dead, we normally have dawn services at the cenotaphs and war memorials and as the sun comes up the ode to the fallen is read out and the last post is played.

Couldn't have that this year so instead we had .... Stand at Dawn ... where everyone stood at their letter boxes and watched the sun come up.

It was nice to do something together even tho we can't have any contact with anyone outside our families.

[vw_oklahoma 308]

Curry sounds great. Actually, anything I don't have to cook or clean up after. Don't get me wrong, I'm a decent cook, but it gets tiresome coming up with a different, exciting meal night after night after night. 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

Grrrrrr-y Sunday

 

If Adolph and Eva had pursued a musical career instead of that whole "world domination" thing:

 

 

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

We've made it! Another week is behind us, and a fresh one is ready to start tomorrow! So you know what day that makes today: CURRY SUNDAY!

 

For tonight's curry, we're going to prepare slow-cooker Indian-style curry, with mutton, potatoes, and onions. We'll serve it with either basmati rice or naan, whichever suits you, and I highly recommend the Darjeeling tea to accompany it.

[catty-cb 4,412]

Nice curry thanks for making it.

Here in New Zealand we moved from L4 (only doctors, pharmacies, supermarkets and petrol stations could be open and they had to adhere to the 2 meter social distance rule) to L3 yesterday which means a lot more businesses can open as long as they can keep to the 2 meter rule or only one customer in the shop.

Its lead to some creative thinking on how to serve customers while staying 2 meters away from them .... one coffee shop was on the news as they had set up a toy train running along the counter with customers at one end and shop staff at the other end of the train track.

I think most of this will be temporary till they can get the plastic screens the supermarkets had installed to protect their staff

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

Plexiglass is everywhere at the supermarkets around here. We're recommended to wear masks, but up here in isolated Upper Michigan I'd say half the people or less wear them. Of course, there aren't enough people who live up here to fill anything to capacity, which is kind of the reason I live up here.

 

I'm going to whip up some grilled cheeses, grilled to a perfect golden brown, and we'll serve it alongside green salads with your choice of dressing, and fries: we have skinny french fries, fat potato steaks, waffle fries, curly fries, deep fried mushrooms, deep fried zucchini (served chilled), and that's it. Enjoy!

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

It's......................................................................................................................... CLERGY SUNDAY

 

 

 

 

but I'll have nun of it!

 

 

 

 

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

Well, our governor decided to let my sector of the economy return to work this week, so unfortunately that is what I had to do. I really regret it. I was doing so well under lockdown, writing so many words, getting so far ahead in my stories. Another week or two I could have finished my novel and gotten another query letter ready to send off to start a new agent search. Alas, it is not yet to be. At any rate, I'll still have free time to work on my books and send it out, and maybe in the summer or fall or next year's winter or spring or summer I can sell it and start making my living doing what actually matters to me instead of working for blithering, short-sighted idiot. If I've learned anything over the past month, it's that I should be making a modest living selling my stories, not keeping that moron from bankrupting himself.

 

Today was a very cold day and we got a couple of inches of snow up here. So I'm making chili. We'll serve it with oyster crackers and saltines if you want some of those to dump in it, and shredded cheddar cheese, too. I'm going to prepare some garlic bread, too because that'll help take the edge off my current discontent with my life situation.

[catty-cb 4,412]

Shame about having to return to work and not being able to carry on with the writing, we have to wait till next week to find out if the director general of health is going to give the ok to the government for us to go down to L2 .... still L3 hasn't been too bad have enjoyed being able to go to KFC and get dinner, was getting a bit fed of the only place you could go out to was the supermarket when we were at L4.

The chili sounds great we are well into autumn here so the nights are starting to get quite cold .... when this whole thing started the government rounded up all the homeless people and moved them into motels cos at L4 everyone had to be inside and not moving around, hopefully they are going to be able to stay in the motels now winter is almost here.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

 

BLURRY SUNDAY

 

Tonight's dinner: Grilled Telapia, crab cakes, garlic-sautee'd asparagus, black rice and a 20 year old...single malt scotch(sigh!). And then, it's back to work...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

Yo man, you forgot this one:

 

Tonight is CURRY SUNDAY! For tonight's curry we're going to sweeten things up with BUTTER CURRY, with chicken served alongside copious amounts of naan flavored with copious amounts of butter (of course) and garlic. Served alongside Darjeeling tea and green tea (because I'll be drinking green tea because it's my favorite). NAMASTE

[catty-cb 4,412]

Much as I'm tempted by the butter curry, I think I'll go with the

Quote

Grilled Telapia, crab cakes, garlic-sautee'd asparagus, black rice

and I think the Darjeeling tea to go with it.

Government announced at 4pm that we are going to start moving out of L3 and going down to L2 from Thursday onwards, so it looks like I'm finally going to be going back to the office next week (was last at work mid-march) ... thru the boss says that working from home is still going to be the preferred option, which I've sort of got used to, but I do miss talking to my work colleagues, emails, etc are just not the same thing.

https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/

NAMASTE

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

Welcome back to the working world! My job reminded me of all the reasons I hate it (well, not the job itself, but the company and the idiot who runs it) today. I get to be on the road nonstop the next three days but I get a long weekend on the other end of it. Honestly it's wonderful driving around up here, so unless I get any stupid phone calls it should be a few good days.

 

Tonight I feel like putting some brats and other assorted sausages on the grill. How do you like them? Stick them with a fork and just bite into them? On a hot dog bun? Topped with sauteed onions and green peppers? Chili? Mustard? Ketchup? Relish? Whatever it is, we'll be sure to have it ready for you. I'm going with a Bell's Oberon to accompany my sausage on a bun topped with green peppers and onions, that beer is a local Michigan summer special, even through it's still winter-y cold outside.

[catty-cb 4,412]

12 hours ago, NMUSpidey said:

Tonight I feel like putting some brats and other assorted sausages on the grill. How do you like them? Stick them with a fork and just bite into them? On a hot dog bun? Topped with sauteed onions and green peppers? Chili? Mustard? Ketchup? Relish?

After much internal debate .... I think the sausage on a hot dog bun and topped with sauteed onions and green peppers and ketchup (had to look that up to see if it was the same as tomato sauce .... looks very similiar)

[vw_oklahoma 308]

Brats sound great, more so with a cold bottle of Shiner Bock. But I'm hungry and everything sounds good now.   ETA: Also, a nice slice of watermelon. And some Cheesy Ruffles potato chips. 

  Edited May 12, 2020 by pink77punk  
added more info

[catty-cb 4,412]

On 5/9/2020 at 3:19 PM, catty-cb said:

.....when this whole thing started the government rounded up all the homeless people and moved them into motels cos at L4 everyone had to be inside and not moving around, hopefully they are going to be able to stay in the motels now winter is almost here.

The government put out the budget for the year on Thursday, to be honest I think most of us were hoping they were going to do something similiar to the American government and give us all some spending money, but instead they .... am not sure how other countries do this, but here in New Zealand we have something called "State Houses" which are built and owned by the government they are low-cost rentals so people who are on low to moderate incomes can afford them, the government currently has 69 thousand of them and in the budget they are going to build an additionally 8,000 new state houses and 2,000 of them will be something they are calling transitional homes for all the homeless people they currently have staying in motels, this is on top of the the normal building program.

They are also spending some serious money on other things

• $4bn for business, including a $3bn extension to the government’s wage subsidy scheme.

• $3.3bn on core spending as part of the Budget, primarily on health and education.

• $3bn on infrastructure, focused on job creation, including the building of 8,000 more public housing places.

• $1.6 billion for trades and apprenticeships training.

• $1.1 billion for “nature-based jobs”, including in pest control (not to happy about this one cos I like wallabies) and conservation.

• $400m to support tourism, New Zealand’s largest export industry

In addition the government owns the entire rail and ferry operations in New Zealand and they are planning on spending 1.2 billion re-vamping the entire network including replacing the old RORO ferries with rail-enabled ferries .... which means they are also going to have to upgrade the ferry ports as well

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

I always have mixed feelings about government spending like this. Sure, it's good that they're trying to be proactive in saving our economies, but at the same time this is all deficit spending, at least here in America it is. The $4 trillion-with-a-T they just spent on us was all added as government debt. That's an unimaginable amount of money, and no one is ever paying that off. Maybe it's a different story for you guys, I have no idea how taxes work and government spending work over there. We received a nice amount of money from the government, but a lot of people were complaining that most of the money went to big businesses and corporations. I think they might have been too generous, they were so generous that I'm making much less being back at work than I was when I was unemployed, but that unemployment boost is set to run out after June, and I anticipate still being alive at that point so I guess I still kind of need my job.

 

Public housing conjures up images of dilapidated and neglected tenements full of garbage with feces smeared on the walls. In my town the income-based housing looks like income-based housing, although not nearly as bad as the tenements in places like New York City because there are far fewer people here. I hope the situation is a little better than that in NZ.

 

I drove 1500 miles (something 2500 km) the past three days all over the northern parts of Michigan in one of the worst cars I've ever had the misfortune of driving. It's so loud, and it vibrates uncontrollably, not because the wheels are out of balance but because no part of that car wants to remain on it, the pieces all want it to end the same as I do, every bump is like a punch straight into my kidneys so it felt like I was physically beaten up for something like 42 hours in that three-day stretch. I'm so glad it's over. Next week I have another long trip to make, but it's at the end of the week and it will ensure another 3-day weekend like this one so I'm pretty pleased about that. Actually, no next weekend will be a four day weekend because of Memorial Day! And if the weather gets nice like it looks like it will, we'll have some mighty fine days to go outside and play.

 

We had salmon for dinner today! Broiled with lemon and garlic and served alongside green beans and bacon bits, garlic bread, and spinach salad, it was the healthiest dinner we've had all week. Grab an Oberon and take a filet of fish, it's delicious!

[catty-cb 4,412]

10 hours ago, NMUSpidey said:

We had salmon for dinner today! Broiled with lemon and garlic and served alongside green beans and bacon bits, garlic bread, and spinach salad, it was the healthiest dinner we've had all week. Grab an Oberon and take a filet of fish, it's delicious!

Sounds lovely

Quote

I always have mixed feelings about government spending like this. Sure, it's good that they're trying to be proactive in saving our economies, but at the same time this is all deficit spending, at least here in America it is. The $4 trillion-with-a-T they just spent on us was all added as government debt. That's an unimaginable amount of money, and no one is ever paying that off. Maybe it's a different story for you guys, I have no idea how taxes work and government spending work over there.

Our government has to by law obey the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1994, its 15 pages long but basically states the government can't spend more than it earns and if it does borrow money then there has to be a very good reason and a plan for how the money is to be paid back, the last time the government spent more than it earned was back when we had the Christchurch earthquakes in 2010-2011, according to the experts as long as the government doesn't have to borrow anymore money or something else happens then we (New Zealand) should have the loans paid off by 2028 or thereabouts

Quote

Public housing conjures up images of dilapidated and neglected tenements full of garbage with feces smeared on the walls. In my town the income-based housing looks like income-based housing, although not nearly as bad as the tenements in places like New York City because there are far fewer people here. I hope the situation is a little better than that in NZ.

This is the first state house built in New Zealand in 1937, the government of the day put out a range of building plans as they didn't want cookie-cutter houses, so a different sizes, layouts, number of bedrooms, single or two-story, stand alone or duplexes and they were usually sitting on quarter acre sections so the tenants could have vegetable gardens and fruit trees

Times change no more quarter-acre sections

but they are still building duplexes

and big change is they are also building apartment blocks

 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

 

Murray Sunday

 

I've been eating too much Italian food lately, which has caused me to post some music from il maestro Ennio Morricone:

 

 

 

 

 

[vw_oklahoma 308]

Lee Van Cleft was a great actor. Always enjoyed a good western with him in it. 

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

Fun fact about Lee Van Cleef: In the scene in The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly where he slaps that lady they used a stunt double because he refused to even pretend to hit a woman.

 

As we stare down another week, let's prepare ourselves for it with another CURRY SUNDAY! Tonight we'll whip up some fish curry in a brown curry straight out of India and serve it alongside either a stack of naan or a bowl full of basmati rice. I'll be drinking a tall glass of iced barley tea, but whatever you want to drink I'm pretty sure we'll be able to serve it up for you.

[catty-cb 4,412]

10 hours ago, NMUSpidey said:

 I'll be drinking a tall glass of iced barley tea...

Like the sound of the iced barley tea, think I will pass on the fish curry

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

Fun fact about Lee Van Cleef:  He lost the tip of his finger while assembling a doll house for his daughter. It's on display at the climax of GBU(director Sergio Leone never let a physical oddity go to waste).

 

Another western veteran and occasional Van Cleef co-star, Jack Elam had a rather trademark lazy eye. This was the result of being stabbed in his eye with a pencil when he was in grade school(before it became fashionable to shoot up your school over disagreements, children were forced to utilize sticks and rocks and such to make a statement). He said it was the luckiest thing to ever happen to him, as it gave him a career in films.

 

 

But Elam was in full possession of all his digits as he proves below.

 

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

There's a station up here called Grit (I'm pretty sure it's not just up here, but whatever) and their programming consists entirely of old westerns. We've seen some great movies on that channel, like The Good The Bad And The Ugly, Two Mules For Sister Sarah, True Grit, every western that ever starred Randolph Scott, some *VERY* early John Wayne flicks where they did all their own stunts (some pretty incredible, and incredibly dangerous ones, too) and even one called White Comanche (Grit shows some real cheese sometimes, too hahahah) that starred none other than William Shatner! Anyway, it's a great window into a beloved genre full of legitimate classics and hilarious farces alike.

 

Let's barbecue up some ribs for dinner tonight. We'll serve big, juicy racks along with pasta salad, potato salad, grilled corn on the cob, Texas toast, and big, hearty glasses of beer. Mine will be another Oberon.

[vw_oklahoma 308]

NMUSpidey that menu sounds delicious. I'll bring some peach cobbler. 

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

We're in the middle of a holiday weekend here in Upper Michigan, as it is Memorial Day tomorrow! I threw a temper tantrum at work on Wednesday and got myself Friday off, too, so this is a 4-day weekend for me, although I'm really not that proud of myself for how I accomplished it. Oh well. This holiday weekend is a big one as Northern Lower Michigan and us here in the UP were given permission from the governor to open up, so now non-essential shops and manufacturing, restaurants, and bars are allowed to open once again. In a week or two we'll see if it was a good idea, but I think it was. If I have to go to work and be miserable, then so should everybody else.

 

Anyways, this is a patriotic holiday, and what could be more American than grilling steaks? Okay, hot dogs, maybe, but whatever, for the unofficial start to summer we'll prepare some steaks, and since this is also Curry Sunday, we'll curry them up to add a little zest. Paired with grilled corn on the cob, a steamed vegetable medley, and all-American Bell's Oberon beers and we'll have ourselves a good-looking dinner. Don't mind the cold lake breeze, though. It's still May, and you may want a jacket.

[catty-cb 4,412]

Food sounds great and am looking forward to the steak as it's been a while since I've had a steak dinner.

We are still L2 lockdown, but in the last eight days we have had only one case of covid-19 so the government is slowing starting to increase the things we can do and how many people we can have contact with, in four weeks time if things continue the way they are going then the government will decide whether to shift us down to L1 at that point apart from the fact that all people coming into the country will be in quarantine for 14 days ... life will return to normal.

Still going to be a lot of people out-of-work, but hopefully that will start to sort itself out .... and the government is going to give anyone who lost their job after the 1st of March $490 a week till November so they have time to hopefully find another job while still being able to pay their rent or mortgage.

We have a holiday next monday, but as our work is only letting us go into the office on a monday and we have to work from home the rest of the week, my first thought when someone reminded me it was a holiday was oh blast I can't go to work 

  Edited May 25, 2020 by catty-cb  
added a bit