The Ever-Expanding Collection Of Hulkbusters

Rish sent me this text about a month ago.

Get thee behind me, Satan. As if I needed temptation to buy a Hulkbuster. Though I did hold out for nearly a month before I finally broke down and bought it today.

Toys like this stay around forever. There's no rush to buy it before the other collectors do, because the vast majority of collectors think they are too good to buy a toy that was made for a kid.

Sometimes it's nice to have an option that I can buy any time. It's like when girls shove a guy in the friend zone. He's there, and they can give in to him whenever they want and he'll be ready and waiting, but for the time being they can hold out for something better.

There always comes that day when you went from store to store to store, and didn't find anything even remotely interesting. Well, that day was today, so I finally broke down and bought that Hulkbuster.

It's supposed to be a suit that you can put the Iron Man figure inside of, but they didn't make any place for his arms to go. The suit's arms aren't hollow. You can't put them in there. They left a hole open for arms to just stick out the side. I tried putting them back, so you don't see them as much, but that's pretty weird.

If I take Iron Man out, the suit could stand on its own, but it would have an unsightly hole in its side.

Then again, if I just make it facing forward, you probably wouldn't ever notice.

Yeah. I think I'll give the Iron Man figure to my son, and just pose the suit without its occupant.

Rish wants me to paint it all up like this Titan Heroes figure I upgraded.

I suppose I could probably do that at some point. There is a lot of unpainted detail even in this kids' figure that could be enhanced with a good paint job. Then again, the Titan Heroes guy is a kids' figure too, so that shouldn't be a surprise at all.

I've got a lot of other Hulkbusters to upgrade with a new paint job before I ever get to this one, though. I've got way too many Hulkbusters to be honest. And now I've added another one.

Comedy Is Hard

Over on the Rish Outcast, Rish and I got together to present his story, "Dying Is Easy," to his adoring public.

It's one of Rish's stories that I've always liked. It's about a guy who has always considered himself the funny one. Now that the aliens have conquered earth, however, that skill is less useful than it used to be. He's in a pen for captured humans, and every now and then the aliens come and grab a human to entertain them while they feast. And now it looks like our main character's lot has been drawn. How does his comedy routine go? Do human jokes play well with an alien audience? Find out when you listen to the story.

Afterwards, he and I talk for, well, for a while. You can listen by following the link over to the Rish Outcast blog page, or I guess you could just right click HERE and download the episode now if you're one of those types. Speaking of those types, you know the ones, those types can just click the play button below and listen right now.

Father's Day

I was really excited about Fathers Day this year, and it was all for one reason. As Fathers Day approached, My wife asked me what I wanted to do for dinner. I've been on track with my fasting and carnivore way of eating recently, bringing my blood sugar down from astronomical to a normal level...

Before

After

So, I wasn't about to blow it by having some kind of dessert like cheesecake or fudge, as much as my addiction to sweets makes me want to. It's hard to celebrate sometimes when you can't have sweets. That's all my celebrations have been about for all of my life, changing that paradigm is going to take some work.

This Fathers Day was the first step down that road, however. There are things I've long wanted to eat, but never have. For example, this:

That is a tomahawk ribeye steak. It's a massive piece of meat, nearly two pounds, almost two inches thick. If you zoom on the label, you'll see why I've never gotten it before. It was very expensive, but a good way to celebrate on rare occasions.

We bought the steak at Costco on Saturday morning, and the rest of the day and all of Sunday morning I was looking forward to it. Unfortunately, it wasn't for breakfast, it was for dinner, so I had a while to wait.

My wife made a nice carnivore breakfast for me to eat, though, with bacon, eggs, and ham...and some banana pancakes for those of us in the family who just can't handle going a meal without carbohydrates. It was a great meal, not a two-pound tomahawk ribeye steak, but still pretty good. We'd get there. 

Next they gave me some presents. They started with this card.

No, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. It is actually comically large. They probably got it for me because I've gotten so darn fat that a regular card would look miniature and silly in my hands. More reason to double my efforts on that carnivore eating.

Next I got a flag pole and mount.

Jeez that's a terrible picture of me. Do I look like that? I don't even recognize myself. I miss the skinny me from 2019. Another reason to double my efforts staying away from carbs.

I love flags. I got a bunch of flags from the kids for Christmas this year, now I have the pole to be able to fly them outside. I'm going to attach it to one of our trees (a lot of people do that here, because everyone's house is made of brick, so it's very difficult to mount it to the house). In fact, I'll include a picture of how it came out.

Ooh, looks pretty cool, huh? I love it.

Last present was this shirt:

It's a fun shirt, and very carnivore-centric, so I love it. This whole post has been really carnivore-centric...and there is, of course, more to come. We still haven't made it to the tomahawk steak.

We spent the afternoon watching the new Pixar movie on Disney+ together. I used to be one of the world's biggest Pixar fans. I loved everything they put out. Sadly, their golden age has passed, and their movies are much more hit and miss than they used to be.

This new movie, Luca, wasn't bad, but it wasn't that great either. Too bad. I hope Pixar can rise to greatness again someday. What I wouldn't give for a movie that speaks to me as much as Wall-E or Finding Nemo did.

After the movie, it was finally time for dinner. Because my steak was so thick, we decided to cook it with the reverse sear method. You put it in the oven at a low temperature for a while to make sure the middle isn't left raw, then sear the outside so that it has that crust that you're looking for on a steak.

After it had been in the oven for a while, I took it, and the steaks for the rest of the family (they got plain old sirloin), out to the barbecue. I put them on, and came in for a moment while they cooked. When I went back out, I was alarmed to see smoke coming out of the barbecue.

I pulled the lid open, and a huge gout of flames poured out. Nothing was wrong with the barbecue. It was just that the ribeye steak had much more fat in it than the usual steaks we buy, and that fat had melted and dripped down into the barbecue. The fat ignited, and was burning as much as if there were several extra burners in the barbecue. My steak wasn't ruined, but it was more cooked than I wanted it to be.

I grabbed the spatula and quickly flipped it, along with the rest of the steaks, then only a moment later, pulled them off the grill. All was not lost, but this steak wasn't likely to be as perfect as I had dreamed, unfortunately. It still looked pretty good, though.

Looks amazing on that plate, doesn't it? It takes up the whole thing. Crazy.

We all sat down to eat, and I did my darnedest to eat that whole thing.

I didn't succeed, however. I nearly did. I'd say I managed to eat about 2/3 of the steak, maybe 3/4. I'll have to eat the rest as leftovers later this week. It was pretty darn good, but I do think I managed to overcook it out on the barbecue...or possibly in the oven before it even went out to the barbecue. It was my first time with this thick of a steak; I'm definitely not an expert.

All the same, it was a wonderful day. I felt appreciated as a father, and got to celebrate in a healthy way that wasn't going to send my blood sugar back into the stratosphere like the cake that the rest of the family ate would have.

Family In Town

We're so far away from everybody in the family, so we don't get very many visitors out here. But two of my sisters have purchased motorhomes in the last few years, and they had decided to make a big trip southeast...not to the southeast, just southeast of where they are. Turns out that's a direction that includes Houston, so on their trek east, they decided to drop in and hang out with us for a while.

It was a bit of a challenge getting each and every one of them a place to sleep at night. One sister has two kids and the other one has five. Adding eleven people to your sleeping arrangement takes some doing, but we eventually got it all worked out.

The next morning, we headed off to San Antonio, because they wanted to see the Alamo. 

It was nice as usual. At this point, I have been to the Alamo four different times, so it's become old hat for me, but I did my best to impart any knowledge or interest that I had to the rest of the family that was there. There were plenty of tour guides willing to answer our questions as well, and that was nice.

The day was hot as could be, so we were happy to be inside whenever we could be. The church itself is air-conditioned, as is the gift shop, so we spent our share of time in there. We watched the movie that they show on the patio, and I pulled them over to the live oak so that they could marvel and gasp at its beauty and size.

After everybody was ready...and sweaty, we went back out of the Alamo complex and onto the streets of San Antonio.

It was time to head down the stairs to the River Walk, probably my favorite place in San Antonio.

We didn't get far, though. As soon as we made it down all the stairs to the river, the first request for a bathroom came. 

There are no public bathrooms on the River Walk. It's like the Hollywood Walk of Fame. If you want to pee, you must pay. Not sure why that would be. In Hollywood, it's because there's literally hundreds of stoned homeless people who will make your bathroom their new home if you allow them inside, but there's no homeless people on the River Walk. I guess it's mostly just poor planning. Nobody ever thought to save space for a public restroom.

The second, third, and fourth request for a bathroom came hot on the heels of the first request. We'd only been on the River Walk for about a minute. Funny thing is that every time I've come to the River Walk, the whole time has been spent in search of a bathroom.

We found a map of the area with a bathroom marked on it that wasn't too far from where we were. We just needed to go up a staircase, across the street, around the block, and take a left. We did, and found that we were right back where we began in front of the Alamo.

We went into the San Antonio Visitor Information Center which both had a bathroom and air conditioning. This turned into a major pit stop. Everybody went to the bathroom. Everybody bought cold bottles of water. The toddler got a diaper change. More souvenirs were bought. When we finally all came out the of the building, nobody wanted to go back down to the River Walk any longer. One minute was enough to have satisfied them.

Some folks wanted to go to the San Jose Mission because it was a national park and they wanted to stamp their passports, but when we looked it up on our phones we found that it closed in ten minutes and took fifteen minutes to get there. We threw up our hands and decided to go for dinner and then head home.

My wife had found a good barbecue joint online, and that was one of the things everybody wanted to try was some Texas barbecue. Our group was so big they wanted to make us sit out on the porch, but we were not having that. It was way too hot to sit on the porch and eat. We offered to be broken into three separate parties and sit at different tables, but they changed their minds and pushed tables together for us. We were quite the group.

It's been a while since I've been in such a big family group that we could overtake a whole restaurant with just our party. That has been such a constant for all of my life. I miss that.

Anyway, the barbecue was great, and we all ate our fill, then got back in the car and made the long trip home.

The next day, which was our last full day together, we had planned to go to the Johnson Space Center and then, once we were done with that, continue on down the freeway to Galveston for some beach fun.

The space center was fun.

There is a tram out to a place called Rocket Park, where they have a few smaller rockets from the early days of the space program set up outside.

 And inside a big building next to those rockets is an entire, unused Saturn V rocket.

The Saturn V is the vehicle that took astronauts to the moon and back in the Apollo program.

It is massive, taller than the Statue of Liberty. They have all three stages, as well as the top part that went to the moon. 

Except this one didn't go to the moon. This one was for a future mission that was canceled, so it's in perfect, pristine condition for us to look at.

The tram dropped us back off at the Space Shuttle replica, and we walked through that tour.

Then we all piddled around for a while, looking at exhibits, getting drinks at the food court (it was under construction, so there wasn't much beyond vending machines to buy from), and going to the gift shop.

After everybody drained their wallets as much as they could, we decided we needed to go out to my sister's motorhome and make us some lunch. The younger kids were starting to get cantankerous. Some of the older folks as well...

We made lunch, and ate it together, and after we'd been out in the parking lot for about an hour, we realized that we weren't interested in going back in and doing any of the other stuff available. Instead, we decided to head to the beach, and get on with that.

Truthfully, we should have done that from the very beginning. I think everyone would have been happier if we'd just gone to Galveston first thing in the morning and stayed all day. I've never seen anybody so happy and content to play in the waves and stay in the waves.

They all went out into the water and never came back in. Even my own kids did that, and most times we come to the beach they're lucky if they even get in the water at all. I guess it makes a difference if you have someone to play with.

The whole time, I was really nervous. There were red flags at every lifeguard station warning us of possible rip currents that could suck even the best swimmer out to sea if he wasn't careful. They advised us not to go in too deep, and to keep our feet planted underneath us as much as possible. With that in mind, I never sat down in my beach chair for more than a couple of minutes. I spent the whole time out in the waves keeping an eye on any kid that might have slipped behind the back of their parents.

I don't even go to the beach very often, but I think I've become a little jaded by its proximity. After an hour or two, I was ready to go. But I think I was the only one. No one else wanted to leave. They stayed far longer than I thought anyone's stamina could last, and when we finally did decide to leave, we had to chase after each and every kid twice as they ran back out into the waves again.

That was our last hurrah. The next morning, we ate breakfast together, and then they got in their RVs and drove off to Louisiana. They were done with Houston and ready to see New Orleans.

We did tell them all the fun stuff to do, just like we'd done when we'd gone before. The visit from family was over, and it was time to get back to our regular lives, but I have to say that it was really nice while it lasted. We just don't get to see our loved ones much any more now that we moved away. It makes us feel comfort when we get to have them around, even if it's only for a day or two.