8° Below
Posted on July 4, 2017 by Ching under Food and Drink, Reviews.
Ice cream is another great way to beat the heat. There’s a new shop that opened up at Union Station just down the street from my work. I got to check it out with a couple of coworkers, Tony and Theresa, a few days ago.
It was actually Theresa’s idea. We had planned to go as a group but, when the day came, some people backed out so it ended just being the three of us. Theresa originally wanted to drive over but Tony and I talked her into walking. It’s really not that far of a walk from work.
We walked to Heroes first for cheap lunch. Friday is .99 cent tacos day. Then we walked over to 8° Below for dessert.
We have many ice cream shops in town and there’s plenty of good ice cream to be had. What’s novel about 8° Below is that they serve rolled ice cream. It looks really pretty but it does take forever to make.
Let me show you pictures and then I yak at you some more.
You can pick from the signature flavors or create your own from the vast array toppings, mix ins, and drizzles.
Then you get to watch them make your ice cream. That is, if the store is not too crowded. The shop isn’t very big.
Here’s a picture of Theresa, Tony, and me that was taken while we were waiting for our ice cream. There wasn’t a line at lunch but it still takes a while to get your ice cream because they make it to order.
That was definitely a down side for me. Rolled ice cream is cool and all but I’m not a fan of waiting. I prefer the places that have the ice cream already made so, when I tell them what I want, I have my ice cream in my hand within a matter of seconds.
I had the mango tango. Theresa had the thanks a latte. Tony had the brownie mix, which I believe is what is pictured above. I didn’t take pictures of all of our ice creams because you’d only be disappointed. The ice cream was tasty but the presentation never looks as good as it does in the pictures.
The verdict? I didn’t like the wait and I thought the ice cream was overpriced. I suppose you are paying for the experience and novelty of watching your ice cream be made and rolled right before your very eyes. If you don’t care either way, then it’s pretty pointless. Just go where they have delicious ice cream at a cheap price like Braum’s or Baskin Robbins.
I probably won’t go back unless Brian just absolutely wants to go.
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Summer Heat Relief
Posted on July 3, 2017 by Ching under Community, Free Stuff.
Pictures from our free fan giveaway at the Salvation Army a couple of weeks ago.
I only volunteered to help with the one in Wichita, but we’ve distributed free fans in Topeka, Newton, Salina, and a few other cities. I think work still has a bunch more fans to give away so they may be visiting a town near you here in the next few days. Be on the lookout!
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Brian’s 43rd Birthday
Posted on July 2, 2017 by Ching under Events, Family, Food and Drink.
There were a ton of things going on this year and multiple birthday celebrations. Brian and I started out by having a quiet dinner at Granite City (East) on Friday, June 9. He wanted a “just the two of us” dinner.
Well, the two of us and his giant beer.
Pics of our dinner…
The next day was Symphony in the Flint Hills. This was more for me than Brian but he was a good sport about it. His reward and birthday present was a deluxe massage with Johnson Nguyen at Sveta’s. I got to try Johnson a couple of months ago when he first started doing massages at Sveta’s and I wanted Brian to experience his style of massage because my massage was very good. Brian said it was a great massage but Mindy Nuce is still his number one choice. He said Johnson is now his second though, for those times when Mindy isn’t available.
He didn’t get a big present this year like he did last year but we had that trip to Alaska that we’re still recovering from. Trips are not cheap!
Fast forward to June 13, his actual birthday. I actually ended up double booking because I promised to keep the PowerGEN trivia night thing going for work and we agreed on Tuesday night trivia at the Pumphouse on June 13 as our next trivia night. Then Jimmy Washington, who is on the board of directors for the Wichita Orpheum, offered us tickets to the Celebrity & Chef Cook Off.
Since it was Brian’s birthday and I was completely hijacking it with work events, I figured that I should at least let him choose what he wanted to do. He picked the Celebrity & Chef Cook Off, naturally. It’s one of his favorite fundraising events.
Lucky for me, Ryan Muzzy (one of my coworkers and fellow PowerGENer) was more than happy to take charge of trivia night. That freed us up to attend the Orpheum benefit.
The Lexus parking lot was open that night but we got a hangtag anyway because we are nerds. As we were walking to the arena, we were stopped by this couple who asked if they could park there and I would have said yes because no one was there to check tags anyway and the gate was open but Brian told them they had to have a hangtag and made them park somewhere else. He’s mean like that. But it’s his birthday so he can do whatever. LOL.
Here are some pictures of all the amazing food. As with every year that we’ve been, we don’t really get to try everything. We usually give up before we’ve even sampled half of what’s there.
I had to take a pic of their sign because I enjoyed this immensely. I may have Brian take me there this weekend because now I’m craving it.
I may or may not have gone back a few times for this dessert. You know I went at least twice because I got a couple of photos.
Brian and I ran into our friend Bill Ramsey at the event.
Here’s a picture of our handsome group.
Usually we stay for the whole thing but I felt bad for bailing on the trivia night so I talked Brian into stopping by the Pumphouse on the way home.
We arrived just in time for the final two rounds. The PowerGEN team just went by “PowerGEN” and didn’t come up with a clever name this time.
That’s Leo and Tammie’s team, the Oatmeal, at the next table. You can see Leo in the pic above with Tammie next to him. She has her back to the camera. I think that might be Scott to the right of Leo. He’s been going to Tuesday night trivia religiously. Their team always does really well. I think they were in second place when we got there.
Here’s Ryan, Teresa and Ted. PowerGEN was doing pretty well. They hadn’t breached the top three yet but they were close enough in score to be in the running.
PowerGEN was in fourth going into the final round, which is a really good place to be because you have a great shot at placing depending on what happens with the top three teams. The final round is where you get to wager some of your points, up to a maximum of 20 points. This is why I say that fourth place is a good spot. Obviously, if you’re close to the bottom, 20 points isn’t going to make much of a difference but if you’re within the top five and the spread is not that vast then you could really pull off an upset.
I was super excited when the trivia master announced “movies” as the final round category. We would have been hosed with sports but Brian and I know a lot about movies so I was like, “We got this!”
They gave us four Charlize Theron movies in random order and we had to list it in order chronologically. The movies they gave us were:
- Mighty Joe Young (1998)
- The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)
- Monster (2003)
- Aeon Flux (2005)
I’m a huge Charlize Theron fan so I was pretty familiar with her filmography. I knew that Mighty Joe Young was the oldest and Aeon Flux was the newest. However, I wasn’t so confident about the two movies in the middle. I was very familiar with Monster though because, besides Charlize Theron being made to look ugly, that had one of my favorite Journey songs it: Don’t Stop Believing.
Brian was convinced that Monster was after Aeon Flux but I felt so sure that Aeon Flux was released after. Anyway, Alex was with me so the two of us overruled Brian. LOL. In the end, we went with The Legend of Bagger Vance after Mighty Joe Young and that’s what we submitted. I was very confident about our answer but I was nervous about the wager.
Ryan, who was a fantastic leader, finally put his foot down and said, “We didn’t come here to take third!” We ended up wagering the full 20 points.
I think everyone else got the final question wrong because all the point went down but ours. PowerGEN ended up taking first place that night.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Everything lined up perfectly. The right people were there and the right trivia questions were asked but, ultimately, I think it was Ryan’s leadership that made the difference.
Brian’s actual birthday was Tuesday but we’ll fast forward to Friday because not much happened between his birthday and Friday. Well, stuff happened but it wasn’t birthday related.
Anyway, April Padgett from the Wichita State University Foundation reached out to me to tell me that Brian’s picture with Dr. John Bardo and Elizabeth King that was taken at the Society of 1895 luncheon back in April was finally ready and she could drop it off. It was printed just in time for Brian’s birthday. How perfect!
We met up for coffee at Mead’s Corner and she gave it to me then. I texted Brian to tell him I had his special luncheon photo and it was in a neat little holder so he could display it at his desk but he said he had no room so he let me keep it. It has been on display at my desk ever since.
Brian took the day off work on that Friday because that was the day of our big family celebration. We were having a BBQ in honor of Brian’s birthday, grandma’s birthday, and Father’s Day weekend. We were actually expecting a visit from his parents who live in Oklahoma but their plans fell through. At first his mom was staying home but his dad was still making the drive up for the weekend. But then his mom got really sick and his dad couldn’t leave. We were bummed when we found out a few days before the event that David wouldn’t be able to join us but we understood. Luckily, we didn’t have any major presents — just gift cards — and those are easy enough to mail so that’s what we did for him instead.
The party still went on though because Brian had already bought all of that food and everyone else was still coming. Everyone else being Brian’s cousin/nephew Zach, my sister Jenni, my mom and dad, and of course grandma.
Brian got a Boston creme cake. Yes, like his favorite donut.
Mom made Filipino spaghetti. She made a ton so we had a bunch left over. I ended up refreshing it on Sunday night by adding another jar of meat sauce and I shared it with Faith and her kids when I went to work on Monday. She said they loved it.
Brian grilled three full slabs of ribs.
They ribs don’t all look the same because he couldn’t fit the third rack in our small charcoal grill so he had to start those in the oven and then finish them off in the grill. Those actually turned out the best. The meat literally fell off the bones and melted in your mouth.
We also got a pan of our favorite mac n’ cheese from Costco.
We also had other BBQ-type foods like baked beans, green beans, and corn on the cob. And then had Hawaiian sweet rolls, which are our favorite. I didn’t get to take pictures of everything but you get the idea.
One of the milestones we celebrated was grandma’s birthday. She turned 95 on June 19. Can you believe it?
We just got gift cards for her and our dads so they could get what they wanted. Grandma’s was to Dillon’s where she gets groceries and other things. Dad’s was to Lowe’s because home improvement is kind of his thing. For Brian’s dad, we got Cabella’s so he could get more ammo. It’s way easier to mail a gift card than ammo.
I wanted to play some Uno but some people were party poopers. We ended up playing heads up. Just me and mom and Jenni because no one was really interested in playing games.
Anyway, that was the conclusion of Brian’s fun birthday week. Can’t wait to do it all again next year. I’m thinking of throwing a nautical themed birthday party because it’s going to be his 44th, which in poker-speak is sailboats.
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Symphony in the Flint Hills 2017
Posted on June 30, 2017 by Ching under Events, Things to Do.
Here are a few pictures from our fun volunteer day at Symphony in the Flint Hills…
Krystee and Faith talking to Ben, THE Green Team guy…
This is Ben.
Krystee, Faith, and I were super excited to help.
We went on Wednesday and not all of the tents were up yet.
Faith and I played with taking some panoramic photos while we waited for Ben to return with gloves.
Retiree Bill Heins had the master plan gave us our instructions.
Bill Heins.
Some of the volunteers worked on the hay bales.
The rest of us worked on the tables. Over 200 of them.
We worked hard but took some breaks also.
This is my friend Mo.
There were volunteers from various areas of the company.
People from Wichita and Topeka came together to help.
I carpooled with Krystee and Faith.
Shane, also from Wichita, drove up separately with his daughter Claire.
We took advantage of breaks from working to take some fun photos.
Here’s Krystee, Faith, and Teresa with the official company gator.
It’s pretty fancy. 😉
Faith and Teresa taking a break…
We finished setting up the main tent just in time for lunch.
Lunch was provided by the Tasty Traveler, a food truck from Manhattan (Kansas, not New York). It was pretty tasty.
I had the Philly cheesesteak and cheesy hashpuppies.
I also ordered a thing of brownie bites to share.
The brownie bites were just okay. The Philly cheesesteak sandwich was just okay, too. The highlight of the meal was definitely the cheesy hashpuppies. They were delicious! I could eat those all day long!
Ben gave us a little briefing while we enjoyed our break and lunch.
Of course, break time means selfie time.
I took a couple of me and Shane, and me and Shane and Claire.
We worked a couple more hours after lunch before calling it a day.
We walked from the parking area to the work site that morning but in the afternoon Ben was nice enough to give us a ride back to Faith’s truck in the gator.
While the Green Team’s portion of the work was finished, I wasn’t quite done because I volunteered to help at the ticket gate on the day of the event. Brian and I went back on Saturday and worked for another six hours. We arrived at the Symphony in the Flint Hills site at 12:30 PM, well ahead of our 1:00 PM shift.
Of course, since Ben is a rock star, he was already there when we got there.
Brian and I got the opportunity to work with this lovely young lady from Council Grove. Kara happens to know my friend/coworker Amy who moved from Valley Center to Council Grove not too long ago. What a small world, right?
My job wasn’t too hard. We were at the regular ticket gate so I just had to take general admission tickets and, if I came across any guests with patron tickets, send any patrons to the patron gate so they can get all of the special treatment and services that they are entitled to as patrons.
It wasn’t a tough job but, man, we were busy!
Brian’s main job was to install the official Symphony in the Flint Hills gray wristbands. Yes, I said install. I said it all day long. People got a kick out of it because it sounded like I was installing software or something. Wristbands are kind of flimsy. I suppose it works. LOL.
Anyway, our gate stayed open after they closed down the other ticket gates so then we really got flooded. And then one of the guys carding people and installing yellow alcohol wristbands left because his shift was over. So then Brian ended up having to do that part and I ended up having to both take tickets and wristband people. I was really slow at installing the wristbands at first but I got pretty efficient toward the end. I was cranking them out like a pro after a while. It just takes practice.
Our shift officially ended at 7:00 PM but, by the time our gate was closed and we grabbed our stuff, it was fifteen after and the concert had already been going a half an hour. There was no point going back to the car to get our lawn chairs.
The walk from the parking are to the concert site is the shortest that it’s ever been but it’s still quite a ways away. There was no point sitting with the crowd anyway because by then the lawn chairs were parked all the way back to the food tent. We just ended up hanging out at the food tent instead. We weren’t getting that much closer with chairs.
I’m not sure what the final attendance numbers were but there were a lot of people this year. I even recognized a few people who came through our ticket gate.
Here’s a panoramic photo to give you a better idea.
Brian and I were both grateful for the volunteer opportunity and were glad that we could help but we’re thinking next year we are just going to attend the event and not work that day. I really would have liked to have been able to watch the concert from beginning to end and get a good spot.
We also couldn’t bring a picnic dinner because we had to work for six hours so we ended up spending $40 on dinner that wasn’t that satisfying. It supported a great cause so we didn’t mind chipping in but for the same amount of money we could have packed a really nice picnic!
Working at the ticket gate was a great experience, though. We got to see some Symphony in the Flint Hills pros with their wagons loaded with stuff. We have a really good idea of what to bring and not to bring and how to bring it so that walking from the parking lot to the concert site isn’t a big ordeal. We will be ready for next year. That’s for sure.
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Heartspring Recognition Breakfast
Posted on June 29, 2017 by Ching under Community, Events.
I attended the inaugural Heartspring Recognition Breakfast a few weeks ago and look who I ran into! What a happy coincidence!
That’s not even the best part. The best part is that Jarrica and I were wearing the exact same Lularoe dress (the Amelia, which is my favorite LLR dress style) just in different prints. Oh, and her friend between us was wearing a Lularoe dress too. She’s wearing the Julia style.
Another nice surprise was seeing Jenn Canare, a girl that my sister went to school with, receive several awards. I thought that was pretty neat.
I had no idea that she’s a huge supporter of Heartspring.
Brian was by himself at the office that week so he couldn’t attend. Since he couldn’t go, I recruited my coworker/friend Faith to be my plus-one. However, something came up and she couldn’t go either. She felt bad for bailing on me but I told her not to worry. I was sure that I’d run into some familiar faces.
Besides running into Jarrica, I actually ran into another coworker who was seated at the same table as me. This is my coworker/friend Kristen. She recently joined the Heartspring board of directors and was a late addition to the event. As luck would have it, there was an empty seat at our table and we got to sit together. That worked out nicely. I didn’t have to be alone after all.
The event was very nice. Heartspring President & CEO David Stupay provided an update about the organization and then they gave out several awards (a bunch of them to Jenn Canare and her team – LOL).
At the end of the event, all of the guests got to take home coffee that was specially blended for Heartspring. That was a really nice touch. I took Faith’s back to the office for her at Kristen’s suggestion. The coffee smelled delicious but I ended up giving mine away. I don’t really drink coffee and Brian is allergic to blueberries.
which reminds me. I should ask Matt, my coworker that I gave my bag of coffee to, and Faith how the coffee was!
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