Day Zero Project #92: Go to a NFL game

In my family we were raised with two important principles: 1) veggies are not good and 2) there's one thing above all others that you should dedicate your Sundays to. No, not church, but football.

And while I've managed to become the family rebel by learning to love all sorts of vegetables, my love for professional football remains.

Despite this love, I've only been to two football games in person, partly because they are ridiculously expensive, partly because football is best while watching 14 other games, eating fried food and drinking beer and, lastly, because I live in Tampa and I have no desire to see the Buccaneers.

But when a friend said that he had extra tickets to the Patriots / Dolphins game, I gladly accepted, threw on my lucky Pats jersey and made the four hour trip to Sun Life Stadium in Miami.

The view from the top. Literally, our seats were at the very top!

And for all my trouble I was treated to three hours of tailgating with a parking lot full of fans of the visiting team (fairly common in Florida), followed by a game that alternated between light rain showers and blistering sun (also fairly common in Florida).

The game. I really need a new phone with a good camera.

 The end result: a Patriots victory and a great day at the stadium

P.S. Dear NFL, is it necessary for everything to cost 15x what it would outside the stadium? I have no idea how the family of four in front of us managed to afford their trip. Second mortgage, perhaps?

This is what happens when Kate tailgates too long.

Day Zero Project #66: Participate in a charity run

I've been saying that I should run a 5k for about five years now, so I'm glad that this goal randomly showed up on the Idea Finder. This is one of the rare instances where something in my Day Zero to-do list is something that I would have actually put on there if I were picking my own goals.

A few weeks back a friend was talking about the 5k that his family runs every Thanksgiving called the Turkey Trot. I know how to take an opening when I see one, so I invited myself along. I went home that night, signed up for the race and began a very serious training regimen that involved Googling "How to train for a 5k in two weeks" and then ignoring those instructions completely with the misguided idea that I could run it in less than 40 minutes having not ran anywhere for any reason in years.

I thought no one would want to run Thanksgiving morning. I was wrong.

To highlight just how unprepared I am to exercise, I had to run out the night before to buy running shorts so that I wouldn't have to run in jeans.

Decked out in my brand new running shorts, I waited at the start line with over 10,000 other crazy people who thought that it was a good idea to wake up at 7:00am on Thanksgiving morning. The starting pistol sounded and I...waited. And then I waited some more. It turns out that it takes a few minutes for a mass of 10,000 people to get moving. By the time I crossed the start line over two minutes had already passed.

Eventually the crowd thinned and I was able to start my jog/walk alternating style of moving. To be honest, it was mostly walking.  It turns out that a person can't just run 3.2 miles without practice. Even so, I managed to finish the race in 42 minutes. It wasn't a great time, but not bad. And, hey, I finished, which is good enough.

We ran 3.2 miles. And lived!

Later that day I ingested some 8,000 calories and, because of the race, I didn't feel bad about a single one of them.

Seriously though, me and my wife both had a blast. And we're already signed up for another one in two more weeks. I think if I dedicate myself to running even one day before then I can break the 40 minute mark!

Day Zero Project #58: Play a round of golf

I am a businessman. Golf is a game for businessmen. Naturally, one would assume that I have at least an elementary understanding of how to play the game of golf, right? Wrong.

In my 32 years I've golfed maybe twice and both of those times I focused more on downing beers with my father-in-law than hitting that little white ball into a small hole some 400 yards away.

So when the time came to accomplish #58, I called up a buddy of mine who is actually good at the game and we set up an early enough tee time that I hoped would ensure that I wouldn't be thinking about drinking Bud Lights and racing golf carts. I figure that the best way to try and see if I'm any decent at this game is to start it early and hope for the best.

The approach to the infamous Hole Six

And for the first few holes my theory seemed to work. I started with 3 or 4 double-bogeys, which was my goal for every hole. And then something magical happened on the par 3 6th hole (they were all par 3s, by the way). My tee shot wasn't too terrible and landed just outside the green. And then, even more unbelievably, rather than chip it all the way across the green I managed to put it close enough to the hole to make a putt for par. I fist pumped like Tiger Woods winning the Masters and it was then that I realized that golfers put up with all the horrible shots for those one or two times per round where you actually hit a perfect shot. That rush of hitting a great shot can make you forget the last 14 drives that you shanked into that road that runs alongside the golf course.

Chipping? Not a problem. Except the other 17 times when it was.

And after that par? It was a blur of bad shots, bad putts and a few lost golf balls. All made worse by the fact that on the 9th hole I decided to give up playing golf sober and stopped by the clubhouse only to learn that they don't serve beer at this particular golf course. No beer on a golf course?!? That really messed my day up.

At the end of the round, I'd guess that I was somewhere around 60-70 over par for 18 holes. Not too bad considering that I had to play the whole round with exactly 0 beers.

The End.

Day Zero Project #6: Create a traditional dish from a different culture

To be honest, I didn't do a very good job of making a "traditional" dish. I had some matzo meal lying around that I needed to use, so I was going to make something traditionally Jewish, but with a twist.

First, I had some corn. My favorite way to eat this vegetable is fried. It's important to not start with a can. Get some ears of corn and cut the kernels off. It's easy stuff.

Then you throw all of that in a skillet with an amount of butter that would make Paula Dean happy. Also, you should scrape the ears of corn with a fork so all the awesome corn liquid (probably not the right term) is in the pan frying with the butter and the kernels

 

Then I mixed tall that up with matzo meal. It wasn't pretty and it smelled  bad and I was thinking that I should just abandon the whole project at this point.

But, like a trooper, I soldiered on and took this weird corn-filled, bad-smelling flour and turned it into little matzo balls which I boiled.

Most people might stop right there and have a soup, but not this guy. I took those matzo balls, rolled them in panko bread crumbs and baked them in the oven for a little while until they came out looking like this:

They were actually decent, but if I could do it all over again I would probably deep fry them instead of baking them in the oven because they didn't get as crispy as I would have liked.

The best part of the whole project was getting to spend a couple of hours in the kitchen. I love cooking, but with busy schedules and some general laziness, I don't get to do that very often.

Day Zero Project #82: Celebrate Oktoberfest

I realized last week that October was almost half-over and I had exactly one weekend open with which to accomplish #82, Celebrate Oktoberfest. Lucky for me, the German American Society of Pinellas heard my pleas and conveniently dropped an article into my web browser informing me that October 13th would be their final Oktoberfest celebration of the year.

With visions of Spaten and sauerkraut dancing in my head, I packed up the car and made the long trip to Germany (OK, not Germany, but Pinellas Park, FL).

What was great about this particular Oktoberfest is that it's hosted by a bunch of older folks who speak German and cook German food and even dress in a weird way that I can only assume is German. This translates into a festival that seems a little more authentic-ish and not just a reason for 23 year old males to get drunk and act like idiots.

That said, immediately upon my arrival I ordered a beer that is the size of a person's head and proceeded to work towards getting drunk and acting like an idiot. But I'm 31, so it's different.

Also, most young males at beer festivals will eat no food. I, on the other hand, ate some of the best potato salad and sauerkraut that one could hope to eat.

Bland looking, but delicious.

We mosied around, we watched a band play polka songs and couples who, amazingly, knew how to dance to said polka songs. And then we waited in line for potato pancakes. And waited. And waited. This things are so popular we waited about 40 minutes for them. Thankfully I had a beer the size of a milk jug to keep me company.

 

 

 

 

In the end, not worth the wait.

The craziest part of the whole night was the Stein Holding Contest in which contestants had to hold a full stein of water (I was told spilling beer would be wasteful) at arms length with elbows locked for the longest time. It gets pretty intense as you can tell by this picture of the final two.

In the end the guy with the cool mustache won,which made me happy because while everyone else was struggling he was using his free arm to drink more beer.

People love watching people struggle to do stuff

The best part was that while we were walking out, despite all the zaniness going on outside, the inner room of the hall featured a much more tame, but awesome party of Grandparents who have drank more beer in their lifetimes that you will ever hope to see. Don't even try to party with these folks, because you can't handle their party.

I can only hope me and my wife someday have a 2-person accordion band.

And this whole day was why I'm glad I am doing this list. I would have never made it out to this event, but ended up having a great time. Even if they ran out of Spaten Oktoberfest so fast that I didn't get any.

Day Zero Project #83: Attend a Beer Festival

We are beer snobs. I don't like it, but somewhere along the line we taught our taste buds that the only place for Coors Light is in a cup that you throw a ping-pong ball in to. If you are going to have a beer at the end of a long work week, it should be a good one.

Arriving early = more time to sample = good times

And for that reason, we really enjoyed the World Beer Festival in St. Pete last weekend. Where else but a beer fest can you pay a cover charge and then proceed to try about as many different beers as your tolerance allows. Sure, by the 20th beer I couldn't tell you the difference between a lager and a stout, but I enjoyed the the tasting experience of the first six or so samples and then I proceeded to enjoy the buzzed good times of the rest.

And what beers do I recommend to you? I have no idea. You try and sample two dozen beers and remember which ones you liked. I was fortunate enough to remember how to get home at the end of the night and, in a neighborhood where a wrong turn is sure to get you mugged, that's good enough for me.

Which beer was good? I took a picture of these, so they must be the ones.

Day Zero Project #15: Have a Board Game Night

You know what I say, why play one board game, when you can play all of them? With that in mind, we set about Day Zero Project #15, "Have a Board Game Night."

The idea was that we would play every game we have in the house and the winner would get... We didn't really think it through that far. Mostly, we just wanted an excuse to stay inside and not do anything for a little while. In hindsight, I wish we'd have bet something because I ended up winning (just barely), 10 games to 8.

The Games I Won

The Games She Won

The final results:

Dustin (10) - Ladder Golf, Jenga, Zigity, Scattergories, Yahtzee Texas Hold 'Em, Othello, Farkle, Boggle, Zombies!!! 4, Zombies!!!

Katie (8)- Life, Mancala, Cribbage, Phase 10, Sorry Revenge, Monopoly Deal, Yahtzee, Chez Geek