A big congrats goes out to the New York Giants fans that might have read my post a few weeks ago after they beat the Cowboys. While I might still feel the Cowboys were the better team in that game. The Giants surely just proved themselves to be the Championship team with the Super Bowl win. I am dumbfounded at the fact that they were able to win the Super Bowl. But, they did. So, congrats. I will enjoy watching the Cowboys beat your asses next year….

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Well, I finally got around to making up a MySpace profile. I’m not sure what it is about MySpace. But, it has always left a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it is just my anti-social nature that makes me feel that way about a social networking site.. Who knows… In any case, I jumped in head first and got things set up. I will work on a little bit and make it look better in a few days. I have been busy with a few other projects the past week which has kept me from doing much of anything for this site as well. Here is the link: Built Big XL.

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Four emotions I am feeling right now. I haven’t made it any secret that football season has been one of my week points this past year. Every time a Cowboys game was set to come on I was planning bigger and better spreads. More beer, more food, more everything. I was living it up watching my favorite team, America’s Team, kick some ass this year. The way the Cowboys played through the first half of this football season made me remember the days of 10+ years ago when Troy, Emmitt and Michael ran the offense and the team was next to unstoppable. But then as the season wore on, they started to show some weaknesses and things started to get shaken up a bit. I figured, ahh.. no big deal , they will get their stuff together and get back in the groove.

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Well, I have been looking for ways to expand my horizons and reach out to the rest of the world. My first step in that process was to set up a profile at Technorati. For a person who works with the web to make a living, I am a slow adapter when it comes to using technology like this for myself. The family dog has a MySpace account, but not me. It was only recently that I set up an account at YouTube. I dunno what to say. I’m just slow about that sort of thing. I think it is mostly a time factor. But, I figured maybe it was time to break out of that habit and start exploring all the networking sites that exist. Here is my Technorati Profile.

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As I was poking around here in my word press admin panel, I noticed an old post I had started that was about a Hike I took with my son at Ricketts Glen State Park. When I initially started writing the post, I had been editing it and deleted about 3/4 of the post and saved before I realized what happened. I had just left the post figuring I would rewrite it at a later time. I never did get around to rewriting it and figured I would just post it now so I could share the pictures. We went camping at Ricketts Glen State Park back in August and we were both just blown away by the waterfalls. So when he had a day off of school in October. We went back. Here is the post, with some of the picture we took along the hike. The pictures we take next time should be even better since I bought my wife a much better camera (Canon Digital Rebel XTi) for Christmas and plan on slipping it into my bags when we take our camping trip this year

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I have been working on my homemade bread stuffing recipe for well over 10 years. Way back then in a previous life I was a cook at a local family restaurant for several years. During that time I learned a lot of good recipes. Some of them I have held on to and made better over the years. Others have kind of faded into oblivion. One of the recipes I have held onto is homemade bread stuffing. I make this once, maybe twice a year which is probably good considering the high number of calories it contains. I figured I would share the recipe. If you are looking for a low calorie, low fat Thanksgiving. I would not suggest trying this recipe.

This recipe makes a very large batch of stuffing. You might want to alter it to fit your needs. This will give you enough to stuff a 20 pound turkey to the point where it is spilling out (the only way to stuff a turkey) and then have some leftover to bake separately.

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Well Thanksgiving has come and gone. We tried to keep things on the smaller side this year. My Wife’s daughter was with her dad for the week so it was just the three of us and we invited my mom for dinner. We had a traditional turkey packed full of homemade stuffing (A recipe I have been perfecting for well over 10 years. Each year it seems to get even better.) and all the good stuff you would expect for a tasty thanksgiving dinner. Things like mashed potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, kielbasa and a few other things. I won’t say that I didn’t eat a lot, because I pigged out. But, I did eat less than in previous years which was good.
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Lately I have had an interest in discovering new wines. With weekly trips to the liquor store resulting in 3 or 4 new bottles. I have been finding my increased alcohol consumption a real big factor in my lack of focus and ability to say no to other things. I have been trying to leave the wine for weekend dinners. Splitting a bottle on Saturday and Sunday with my wife and maybe another throughout the week. Some small bottles, some not so small bottles. An open bottle usually results in my drinking 3/4 of it, something that I need to put an end to. At least on a weekly basis. I have fond myself looking forward to the weekends, which can be a good thing. But, I have also found myself eating more and more on the weekends as well. Looking for a nice dinner to make and enjoy with the wine. Not a bad thing in itself, but when I make a nice dinner, I tend to go overboard. Making more and more stuff for the 4 of us each time.
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Here comes a rant! I have been holding back on this one for awhile. But, I have come to a point where I need to vent. It is hard enough to find decent clothes when you are built big. I can’t go down the street to the local shopping center because they just don’t have the sizes. I think there is one store locally that sells clothes and is generally way overpriced and most places just don’t sell anything over 2XL. As much as that sucks, it isn’t really a big problem. A few years ago I found a couple of places to buy from online. One being Casual Male and the other Being King Size Direct. Each one had different products that I liked. King size had some shorts and jersey knit pants that I really like wearing. They were built well and very comfortable. Casual Male sells shirts that I like as well as casual khakis. For the most part, the products from Casual Male have stayed the same. The quality is pretty good. But the stuff from King Size has had lower and lower quality each time I place an order.
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I took my son on his very first camping trip this past summer. It was a great opportunity for the two of us to spend some quality time together and we both had a great time. I wasn’t sure how things would go seeing it was my first time camping in well over 15 years and my first time tent camping since I was a kid. I bought a bunch of gear over the past two years. I had planned on going last year but, I just didn’t feel up to it at the time. So, I put it off until this year. We bought the Wenger Lugano 16- by 10-Foot Two-Room Eight-Person Family Tent with Canopy. We also picked up some good quality air mattresses and tons of other essential and non essential gear. I decided to make it a short mid week trip since this was our first outing. I wanted to see how things went before taking any extended trips. We made a reservation at Ricketts Glen State Park for 4 days during late August. Ricketts Glen is about an hour or so north of us. I wanted to go to a place close enough to home that if something went wrong we didn’t have to drive far to get back home; yet far enough away that it felt like we actually went somewhere. I also wanted to go somewhere that would give us plenty of options for activity during our stay.

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