A shot to the knee

It's been a while since I have talked about my knees.  The last time around I was having some work done on my right knee to clean up an old meniscus tear.  It was thought that the tear was the cause of the swelling I was having in my knee.  Unfortunately when the Doc was in there cleaning things up, he found extensive degenerative arthritis issues throughout my knee - grade 3 to be exact.

So after I was up and running again after the meniscus cleanup, my swelling never subsided.  We tried hyaluronic acid, which didn't help and we just decided to just monitor the swelling and manage my activity level.

Here we are 3 years later and I'm still on the 'manage my knee' plan.  I went in to see the Doc again today to see if there had been any developments in treating my knee, especially after I overdid my activity a couple of weekends ago and really set off the inflammation.  It has gotten to the point of keeping me up at night due to the level of swelling I have.

Since there is nothing new in the world of treatment (stem cell treatment is still too new for insurance to be accepting of that kind of treatment) we went the route of a cortisone injection.  He took a nice long needle, numbed the point of entry with some cold spray stuff and injected me.

We'll see what it does.  I already feel some relief from the injection, but that is mainly due to the anesthetics that were in the cortisone mixture.  Hopefully it provides me some relief in the near term and lasts a few months.  I can get injections 3 times a year if this proves to be successful.

Love me some brisket

Twice a year, the guys I play volleyball with at work and I put on a 2's tournament to get together and just have a good time.  We always make it a potluck kind of an outing and this past event, I decided to bring a brisket.

I have done a few briskets on the Big Green Egg now, so I would say I'm getting a bit better at it.  I picked up a 9 pound hunk of meat from Costco and went to work.  Tammy was so gracious to help prep the food while I fired up the Egg to save on some time.  This is the first time I've tried to make a brisket with mustard as the base of the rub.  We used a Boar's Head mustard and just slathered the piece of beast before adding the rub.

Got the rub from:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/beef-brisket-rub-1-recipe.html

Which consists of:
2 tablespoons kosher or coarse salt
2 teaspoons coarse black pepper (use fresh cracked pepper)
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon oregano leaves (dried)
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon granulated garlic

Once I got the Egg up to temperature of 225 (using the BBQ Guru of course) I added chunks of soaked Hickory and Apple chips to get a good smoke going. I put the place setter down and on top of that had a foil tray with a couple of chunked yellow onions in a bath of apple cider.  Transfer the meat to the Egg - insert the thermometers (I always use two in case one thermometer location is not as ideal) and let it cook.

This was probably the most consistent cook I have had with the Guru, as it pretty much stuck at 225 with no flare ups and gave a good clean cook for over 12 hours.  Once the meat hit 190, I pulled it off the cooker, wrapped in foil and a couple of towels and threw it in a cooler for transport to the tournament.

I probably let the meat sit for about 2 hours before I opened it up and sliced up little morsels from heaven.  Probably the most tender and moist brisket I have made yet and it was a definite success as there was probably only 2 slices left when the day was over.

The next challenge is going to be beef ribs.

Home Theater adjustments

I've always been into keeping a good entertainment system going to enjoy movies at home.  I've had my tried and true Klipsch RF setup for a while with the floorstanding speakers and furniture to keep things organized.  You kind of get to the point where you are tired of seeing the wires sitting around and the constant work to keep the area clean.  Instead of complaining about it, why not do something about it!

I decided to dive into doing another round of cleanup.  This time following through with the idea of moving all of the components out of the room and into the closet underneath the stairs (yes the Harry Potter closet.)  I picked up the gamut of Klipsch in wall speakers and started to work.  This required a bit of wire moving, cutting holes in walls and things wouldn't be complete with a good cuss word here and there.

I mounted the TV on the wall and fed all the wires to the closet.  I would have to say things turned out pretty well.

The family room looks quite a bit bigger now, and I think it's fitting to have a cleaner installation look where there are a bunch of people moving in and out.

Of course, I will never be done with the additions and enhancements that go on in this house.  But I'm pretty happy with the current state.  From streaming all of my movies from my NAS to being 4K ready.  The real task is when we install the Home Theater upstairs!