Okay, not really but barring a last minute text, I will be without the glory of hockey for over a week; nine days to be exact.  That's a long time for a hockey player.  Things got cancelled, friends backed out, and others went on vacation.  I really could find a way to play over the next week, but I've decided to take a breather.  I have a lot of aches and pains, so we'll see if they are hockey related.  Today, I weigh in at 178 pounds.  We'll also see what I do with the time.  It'd be nice to work on this site a bit but I've been really tied up with my new Hockey Apparel company.

Let's see how this goes.

Okay, story time.  In case you don't know, I was in a punk band for the better part of a decade called Twice Defeated.  We were no one to anyone but us.  But we had a great time, all the time.  We never recorded anything, except some live incidents.  We played very few shows.  I think the average was 1 every other year.  But we did practice every week.  We were very professional at every gig we played.  We had a cool website no one looked at and some nice merch no one bought.  Sounds rough but honestly, being in a band with my 2 best friends was glorious.  What wasn't glorious was our first show.

It's time for one of my favorite appetizers, Deviled Eggs!  This is one of those age old classics that never goes out of favor with party guests.  There are about a million deviled egg recipes out there, with anywhere from four to forty ingredients.  This recipe is relatively simple and while you can taste the bacon, it doesn't over power the original flavor of a true deviled egg.  Enjoy!

As 2015 comes to a close, it's time for everyone to look back and review the past year.  For me, it was a huge year as my Wife and I had our first child.  It's been almost six months and I thought it would be fun to recount the surprises I've experienced as a first time father.  I remember preparing for fatherhood in spurts.  I read one book and scoured tons of blogs and articles on the net, including many titled "The Surprises of Fatherhood".  But there were definitely some things that came out of nowhere.

Okay, you're going to need this for an upcoming recipe.  It's an answer to an age old question:  How do you hard boil an egg?  I found this recipe somewhere and it's so easy.  I wish I could reference where I got it from.  If you are going to make deviled eggs, I suggest laying the eggs on their side in the refrigerator the night before.  This helps center the yolk.  This recipe works for any amount of eggs, so there are no adjustments to be made from 1 to a million.  Follow these steps:

We all have spice collections.  Whether we built them ourselves or received spice towers as gifts, we all have an assortment of spices in our cupboards and on our counters.  A lot of those spices might be unnecessary and some might be your go to seasoning.  But one things remains true, they are all going to lose potency over time.  Dry, leaf spices, like oregano and basil, will start to get weak about six months after opening.  Dry, powder spices, like paprika and cumin will last a little bit longer but not much.  So that bottle of mint on your rack that you used two years ago and haven't touched since?  Yeah, it probably tastes like paper.

So, when managing your kitchen pantry, it's important to keep up the "flow of spice".  You need to use up your spices before they go 'bad'.  You can still used them when they get weaker but you're going to have to use more and it still won't taste as good as before.  You'll end up spending more money on spices but your meals will be better for it.  There are few things you can do to keep up your flow of spice.  First, use a Sharpie to date every spice after you open it.  Second, keep your spice collection small.  If you don't cook a lot, you don't need to have tumeric and saphron taking up space in your pantry.

Lastly, try new things with your spices.  One day, I found out how good nutmeg is in a tuna fish sandwich, just because I was trying to use up my nutmeg.  Don't be afraid to try new things.  I'll also be posting some articles about how you can augment your lazy cooking(canned soups, frozen pizza, etc...) with the spices in your pantry.

Ah, Chipotle, also known as Hipster Crack.  I haven't been to a Chipotle in over 15 years.  I have a handful of friends who work for and love this company to death and still I don't go.  Well, I figured it was time to see what the fuss was all about.  As I've said, it's been 15 years since I went to a Chipotle and I don't remember anything from the experience.  But I've had a $15 gift card in my dresser for almost 2 years now, so I figured it was time.  Hopefully, the card was enough to cover the bill.

So, there are a bunch of online companies offering to buy your old phone for cash.  I decided to try out usell.com and see how my experience went.  I went to their website to see what they were all about.  First off, their website is very user friendly.   It has big fonts and big buttons and everything is easy to navigate and find.  They mainly buy phones but also do other things like computers and cameras.  Anyways, so you just input your phone and carrier information and they give you a quote right off the bat.  Their quote is also based off of what condition you say the phone is in.  I would suggest telling teh truth.  I was selling my Motorola Razr Maxx HD.  I was going to try and sell some other phones I had laying around, but they were too old apparently.  So, my offer was $29.32.  Nothing great but it's a lot better than having my phone laying around doing nothing.  Plus, I had to be realistic, I had gotten my new phone about 8 months ago, so this one was pushing 3 years.  Next, you provide your information and they send you a packet.

My packet arrived 2 days later.  It had some bubble wrap and and a return envelope.  I packaged everything up and sent if it off to usell.  Keep in mind, I removed the sim chip and micro SD.  I also reset the phone to factory settings to protect myself.  Whether or not someone could get any info from the phone in that state, I have no idea.  It should also be noted that my identity was recently stolen again and we have been unable to figure out how.

A few days later, I got an email saying that my phone was received and checked in and that they would be mailing me my check.  They also do PayPal for those in need of funds more immediately.  A few more days later, I got an email saying that my check had been returned by the Post Office because of invalid address.  I told them to send it again, as the address they said it was going to was my address and I never had a problem getting mail there.  They did and the same thing happened.  The second time, I told them to send it to my work address.  One day later, I had my check.  My check had my address on it but not my apartment number.  Assuming they did the mailer off of the check, this is probably why they got the address wrong.

So, there you have it.  A good experience overall, unless of course their check bounces.

We're going to classify this under rant.  This topic has been bubbling in my brain for quite some time now.  I've never really written about it because I can't really call myself an authority on child rearing.  However, now I have a horse in the race, so maybe it's time to speak up.  A good portion of my generation had their kids  16-22 years ago and so all of  those kids have been entering the work force these past couple of years.  This brings a lot of them to my door, in the restaurant business.  The restaurant business, along with retail, is the easiest career path for youngsters to get into.  Whether it's the career they want to pursue for life or just to get them through school, this is where they start.  I get a lot of applicants at my restaurant and about 3/4's of them are between the ages of 18 and 22.  And I can say, without a doubt, that 4 out of those 5 applicants are braindead husks of human beings.

I don't know what my generation did but we raised our kids wrong.  Maybe I'm becoming a grouchy old codger and maybe the restaurant industry is just getting the scraps of the workforce, but the numbers don't lie; these kids are idiots.  And unfortunately, I have to hire some of these idiots just to keep my restaurant staffed.  Here are just some issues with today's new workforce:

They have no common sense.
They have no manners.
They do not follow instruction or retain knowledge.
They are completely self-centered.
They have no work ethic.
They are entitled.
They can't seem to let go of their phone for more than 15 minutes.
They have no social skills.
They don't actively listen.
They have no sense of loyalty.
They have no discipline.

I could probably go on forever.  But first, let me thank all of the 1 out of 5 parenting teams who raised their kids right.  Of course, there is no one way to raise a child but I'm going to say, that if your child has more than 3 of the qualities listed above, you didn't raise them right.  You didn't even give them a chance to survive.  The people I feel the worst for are teachers.  They have to deal with all of these kids.  And of course, no parent is to blame for their child being raised to be a braindead husk.

I hate to be the one to point out the problem and not offer a solution but I imagine it's too late.  We're screwed.  It all starts in the home and no one seems to care.  Broken homes, social media, government hand outs, over sensitivity in the media, teen pregnancy, drugs and whatever else is tearing apart society as a whole are things that just don't get fixed over night.  I'm starting my family late in the game and so are some of my friends, so hopefully the wisdom of our years will help us raise our kids right.  I know it's not impossible in this day and age because I do get applicants who are well adjusted, smart, hard working individuals and they come from all sorts of backgrounds.  So, there's no excuse for everyone else dropping the ball.  Take care of your kids, it's the least you can do.

Here I am, about to start a new company.  And my hope is that it becomes successful, brandwise and financially.  So, I believe it's important to reach back into the past and revisit the utter failure my first company was and still remains to be.  When I started Up to Zero Records, I had no idea what I was doing.  I just wanted to be involved in the underground music scene.  Armed with a list of suggestions from Mike Park of Asian Man Records, I felt my way along to failure and financial ruin.  It's been six years since I spent any money on the label but I still have a mountain of debt to call my own.  The music industry is fickle, so there are a million reasons for a record label to fail.  But I could have set myself up for success and probably not have incurred so much debt.  So, let's look at how to not run a record label, or any business for that matter.