Sophie at 3
Originally uploaded by joetron2030.
A brief post from me...
Sophie turned 3 over the weekend. We had a fun little party for those gathered. We went bowling and had lunch. It was mostly family, another family who's girls are the same age as ours, and a couple neighbors.
Three, already. I don't know where the time went.
Mosaic is courtesy of fd's Flickr Toys.
On Saturday morning, my friend D* picked me up at 8am to head off to the 2nd annual Surly Open (disc) Golf tournament. It was held out at the Hyland Hills disc golf course. Hyland Hills also double as a ball golf driving range during the summers and as a ski and snowboard area during the winters. The Minneapolis Ski Club's ski jumping facility is located close-by, too.
It was a very non-competitive event. But what do you expect when you're gathering to celebrate a mighty awesome local brewer with awesome tap prices? We met up with my friend J* (a good friend of Surly owner Omar) and signed up to start at the 14th hole. It basically runs straight up a ski slope. After finishing holes 14 through 18, on our way to the 1st tee, we stopped in to get our first Surly of the day ($1 taps!). I had my first taste of Coffee Bender. It was very good. We chatted a bit with Omar before we headed back out. Since the three of us managed to finish our first beers before we headed back out, we each grabbed another Coffee Bender ($1 taps!!!) and headed out for the first tee. I should mention that my breakfast consisted of a PB & J sandwich and a couple cups of coffee that morning. I'm not exactly a heavyweight drinker either. So, after two Coffee Benders (all before 11am), what was left of my round of golf got pretty loose.
We managed to finish our round by 11am. Hung out while they got lunch set up, ate lunch (which included my first taste of Surly's "Cynic Ale"), hung out for the raffle for the morning participants (I won a Surly t-shirt), and then headed home.
Did I mention that they had Surly on tap for $1? They did!
Here's what my disc golf bag looks like
That was before the addition of my complimentary commemorative disc (a 174g Discraft Force ESP with a 2.0 stability rating). I don't have too many discs in my bag these days which is a reflection on often I play (or don't).
I got home around 2 and was wiped out. Mostly due to drinking beer before lunch. But, managed to keep it together sufficiently enough to survive the afternoon. Shelly had plans to see the "Sex and the City" movie that night with some friends so I took the girls over to J*'s house for some grilling and hanging out. I also got to finally meet D*'s second son, Mikko. Cute little thing at 3 months. The kids played very well together (at least they did after their initial shyness wore off). Sophie really liked petting Bo-Ghee (the dog).
We're getting rid of the living room furniture that Shelly's had since even before I'd met her. And the futon in our living room that acts as our sofa is moving to the basement. We'd been taking our time doing this. Trying to get rid of the old stuff before getting the new, but a forgotten visit by a cousin this week sped up the schedule a little bit. So, at the last minute, we decided to head out to Ikea on Sunday afternoon to buy that new couch we'd talked about. We got an Ektorp sofa with a tan cover. We'd already bought two of the Ektorp Jennylund chairs with the "Kareby multicolor" covers.
As is usual for a visit to Ikea, we dropped Julie off at "Småland" (the kid's area at Ikea). Julie loves playing in the ball pit or watching whatever they're showing on the TV. Sophie is (a) too small and (b) not potty trained so she's not able to join Julie yet. So, Sophie comes with Shelly and I as we shop. Here's Sophie and I hanging out while we waited for Shelly to track down an Ikea employee to get our sofa stuff...
Which reminds me... I had assumed that the sofa wasn't in the self-service warehouse but that the cover for it was. It turned out to be the exact opposite. The sofa was in the self-service warehouse and we had to wait at the furniture pick-up area for the cover. Too bad that between waiting for it to come out, loading the furniture into the minivan and picking up Julie, we completely forgot that we never got our sofa cover! Shelly is going back for it today.
So, I spent last night
- Putting the middle row seats and car seats back in the van.
- Disassembling the futon in the basement and hauling it out to the garage.
- Vacuuming the area of the basement where the futon sat.
- Disassembling the futon in the living room and hauling it down to the basement (with Shelly's help)
- Assembling an Ektorp Bromma ottoman (beige). It required more effort than I thought putting the cover on.
- Assembling the sofa.
- Assembling one of the Jennylund chairs.
We had already hauled out the other living room furniture into the garage earlier that afternoon.
It didn't take as long as it could have because Shelly helped out by breaking down all of the cardboard and hauling the living room futon down to the basement. Yet, it still took me a good three hours just to do that much. Plus, it meant my ironing got neglected for another night.
Hopefully, we'll get the other Jennylund chair assembled and the cover on the sofa.Then we'll see if it looks OK or if we need to look at a different color for the sofa. Maybe I'll even get some ironing done tonight...
Shelly made a yummy pancake breakfast and Julie gave me a picture of herself at her summer school in a very fancy frame that she made. Then Shelly and the girls "gave" me my father's day present. I say "gave" because I had ordered it a week ago and it's been sitting in my office since I arrived last Monday. I got a very cute card from the girls and proceeded to open the box for this
But, not only did they give me this lovely gift, Shelly even gave me a few hours alone in the afternoon to rearrange my desk and get the monitor set up!
I should have taken a picture of my desk before and after. I actually took the opportunity to remove some of the excess cables that were behind my desk, too. Though, there is still a pretty scary rat's nest of cords and cables. Someday I'll really go through and clean up that mess. But, for now, things are set up very nicely. I now have to also clean up the junk that got pulled out. Right now it's all just sitting in a pile on the floor in my office.
It really is a great looking monitor. I have a 20" lower-end Viewsonic panel at work and this 22" one trumps it. As it should since it's nearly twice the price. I do notice a bit of back light bleeding from the top and bottom but I never notice it when I'm actually using the panel. The webcam is a nice feature, too. VGA, DVI-D and HDMI inputs. It's got the glossy finish on the panel versus a matte finish. But, that hasn't been a problem either.
Today is our seventh wedding anniversary. I can't believe we've been married seven years already. It doesn't seem like it's been that long and yet it seems like it was ages ago. That summer of 2001, we had several friends get married, one friend had his first child, and then Sept. 11th happened and the world changed (for the worse in some respects).
In any case, what can I say about my wife? She's a great cook, a hard working and caring mother to our kids, and she puts up with me. Can't ask for more than that. We're going to the Melting Pot for dinner tonight. My folks are coming over to watch the girls and (if we're lucky) put them to bed.
Happy anniversary, Shelly!
- Mood:
chipper
Also, in reference to those videos... That first one was apparently a "good day" for Julie at dance class. She actually managed to follow along for the most part to what her instructor wanted her to do and was willing to do it. When Shelly showed me that for the first time, my comment was, "It's a good thing you're the one who takes her to class because if it were me, we'd be leaving early every week due to her inability to follow along well enough to what the teacher wants."
I have a very low threshold when it comes to the kids and listening to directions. Patience is something I have in very short supply. It usually takes everything I can muster to let a lot of things slide. Yes, they are four and two. Still... It's something I try to be conscious of regularly.
By my own account, last Thurs. was a bad day. I know I spent too much of my time yelling at the girls. After the girls went to bed, as I reflected on how the day went, I realized that I needed to loosen up a bit or else neither I nor the girls were going to survive the weekend. I resolved to not be so uptight the remainder of the weekend. It worked for the most part.
Friday, I took the girls out to the Minnesota Zoo for what was left of the morning and early afternoon. We'd just gotten to the zoo and were headed towards Discovery Bay when I thought I spied someone I knew out of the corner of my eye. I did a double-take and there was my cousin's daughter! A very unexpected coincidence. I assumed she was there with her preschool/daycare program. I said hello to her and so did the girls. We went off to explore Discovery Bay. Unfortunately, the dolphin show was on temporary hiatus due to the introduction of two new dolphins to the existing pair. I felt bad for the girls because they LOVE the dolphin show.
Then we headed over to the Tropics Trail. The girls had fun wandering through there. Though, I kind of freaked as two male gibbons proceeded to tussle with each over territory and dominance which happened to include dry humping each other along with slap fighting and chasing. Thankfully, the girls didn't ask about the dry humping because I have no f'in clue how I would have answered that question.
After the Tropics Trail, we headed to the food court for lunch. We had just sat down for lunch when I saw my cousin. That explained why her daughter was at the zoo. So, we had lunch together (with her friend and her friend's kids). It was a very nice coincidence. Completely unexpected.
We spent a little bit of time playing in a room where the kids can dress up in animal costumes and whatnot. While we were in there, two zoo volunteers came in with a rabbit that the girls got to pet and stuff. Then we went home.
Saturday was pretty mellow. Shelly had a class to teach so I took the girls to Chipotle (surprise! Not!) for lunch. When we got back, Sophie took a nice long nap and I let Julie try out the "Moon Sand" castle playset that we bought for the girls. Though, again, I think I was too tough on her about getting sand out of the inflatable sandbox and onto the floor. Might explain why she said she was done much earlier than I expected.
Sunday was kind of a gloomy day. We spent it mostly indoors. I got a brief break from home in the afternoon and went over to St. Paul to check out Familia Skateshop. I've been getting their email newsletter for awhile now and finally got around to checking out the store itself. Nice little shop. I managed to avoid buying another pair of shoes. (Those Adidas Stan Smith Skates in navy, "running white", and "sun" were so tempting!) I guess they're also one of the shops (or maybe the only shop) in the area to get US-bound limited edition Nike SB stuff, too. Not sure if it's good that I know that or not.
We also had another Skype video chat with my brother and his fiancee. That was nice too. They got to see the girls a little bit (even if the girls were total goof balls).
One thing about the past few days. Since Shelly was taking it easy, it meant we ate out more often than we usually do. Mostly because I wasn't going to do much cooking. I think the girls liked that.
I think we should be back to "normal" around the house now. Hopefully, that also means I get back to playing more video games, too.
It was two years ago today that Shelly and I wandered off to the hospital to bring the above person into this world. Scary to think it's already been two years.
Unfortunately, she is apparently spending her birthday morning throwing up. Sounds like maybe she got whatever she had a couple weeks ago. I wonder if she got it again after Julie had it last weekend. Shelly's going to take Sophie in to the doc's office to make sure it's not anything worse.
I'm not sure how much I'm at liberty to disclose regarding the incident as it was told to us. So I'll err on the side of caution and disclose none of it. Sorry.
What I feel safe telling you is that he's doing as well as can be for someone who was shot by a rifle. Apparently, he doesn't remember much immediately after he was shot. His next recollection starts with his friend's son giving him CPR until the paramedics arrived (about 40 minutes). He was taken to the nearest hospital and then, once in a more stable condition, was airlifted to a Fargo, ND hospital. That's where he is now. Once at the Fargo hospital, he went into surgery. He was in the ICU until his condition improved and he's now out of the ICU and in a regular patient room.
In the end, we're all thankful that he's doing as well as he is. He came very close to dying this past weekend. He feels that receiving CPR as quickly as he did probably made all of the difference in the world.
It's pretty scary to think about.
- Mood:
relieved
First off, my friend Jonathan gave me a disc golf driver disc from the first Surly Brewing Co. disc golf tournament. I had hoped to play in it but we were at camp that weekend. I will most definitely make it for the next one (schedule permitting). The disc, if I remember correctly, is a 168g Discraft Elite Z Surge driver. I think he gave it to me as a birthday present. He said it was $10 but then said "Happy birthday". But, by that point I'd had 3 of Surly's Furious ales and another home-brewed brown ale. So... Yeah. That's at least what I remember.
The capper was last night. I came home from work early so Shelly could go back out to the MN State Fair and spend some quality time in the Creative Activities building. On her way out the door, she said that my birthday present was sitting in the box on our dinner table. I resisted as long as I could and then plunged my hands into the packing material to see what might be in there. What I found was pretty much everything that was on my Newegg.com wishlist (minus the motherboards listed there). I was stunned.
Now, I just need to decide on a mobo and get it ordered. A new rig is on the very near horizon!
Plus, the Q6600 that I got came with a free copy of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. But really, I think the first thing I'm going to play when I get the build done is BioShock.
So far, my mom called and sang "Happy Birthday" over the phone and then Shelly and the girls called and did the same.
- Mood: happy
My parents came over so I could help my dad "re-master" a chorale performance CD. That took longer than expected so we ended up going out to dinner with my parents as well.
Saturday was our 6th wedding anniversary. The traditional anniversary gift material is "iron" so the clubs were a perfect gift in multiple ways. We were able to get one of Julie's pre-school teachers to babysit for us so we could go out for a celebratory dinner. We went to the Oceanaire Seafood Room. I am not a fan of seafood, but I wanted Shelly to have a chance to have some yummy seafood since we don't tend to go to those types of restaurants regularly. I did eat a bit of a crab cake appetizer (yummy enough) and something with raw salmon on it. But, that was the extent of seafood that I ate. I opted for a 14 oz. grass-fed NY strip steak from the Thousand Hills Cattle Company in Cannon Falls, MN. The steak was perfectly done (medium) and was one of the best steaks I've eaten recently.
Other than that, I've been sweating out the current heat wave here. Highs in the 90s in mid-June doesn't happen often. But, out of pure chance, I did find out that the A/C in my car is working again. I'll enjoy having it while it lasts since I have no idea how long it will continue to work!
It was finally time to head home. Most of us got up around 7:30 or so. Here's Sophie keeping me entertained so I don't cause trouble
Most of us were up, one person slept in a bit
We met up with my parents, my brother and his fiancée for breakfast. We had dduk guk. It was actually very tasty breakfast! Here's my brother showing off his eating style
Here's Julie countering with hers
After breakfast, my parents piled into our rental car. They were on the same return flight as us. That was nice because it meant we would have extra help in getting everyone and everything through the airport.
Unfortunately, at the airport, we found out that our flight was delayed by an hour and a half or so. I later found out that the plane that was supposed to fly into LAX from MSP had mechanical problems. Otherwise, the flight home was uneventful.
It was supremely nice to get back home!
The 11th was a Friday. In the morning, we packed up our belongings, loaded them into our rental, and checked out of the Econo Lodge. The place was fine enough for the price, though, I was bothered by the spots of mold on the ceiling over the shower. Ewww.
No matter, we would be checking in elsewhere later in the day.
After a 4th consecutive breakfast at IHOP in Glendale:
we headed off for Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Pier. We wanted to take the girls to the beach even though it might be too cold for them to go swimming.
Here we are at the pier
We let the girls ride one of the coin operated rides by the arcade:
And then we decided to let Julie ride a few more because we had time to kill
until Julie got sick of it
We took the girls down to the beach and ate a lunch that Shelly had packed. Then I took Julie down to the water to test it out
while Sophie looked on
It was pretty windy that day on the beach. The water was cold! And yet, there were people swimming! Crazy, I tells ya!
We hung out for a bit, waiting for my brother and his fiancée to arrive. Well, it got later and later and we started to leave because we had to check in at our new hotel and get the girls cleaned up for the wedding rehearsal that evening. Of course, that's when my brother and his fiancée show up! So, we left the beach and got back on the freeway to go to the Hilton Garden Inn.
We got to the hotel, checked in, and got up to our room. Shelly said that the person at the desk mentioned a "mountain view". This is what we got
Not bad.
Here are the girls dressed and at the wedding rehearsal
The rehearsal ended but it was getting way too late for the girls. We weren't going to make the rehearsal dinner. So, back to the hotel room. We ordered room service. Always a fun little perk when travelling.
Not sure if you can tell in that picture, but Julie is very tired.
After dinner was over, it was off to bed!
The best thing about the Hilton over the Econo Lodge, no noisy in-room AC unit making it harder for me to sleep!
Sweet, sweet sleep!
So, I frantically paged through our LA guide books the night before to find things we could do that would be entertaining to Julie. We chose two: a trip to Allied Model Trains (a model train store) followed by a trip to Storyopolis.
We figured that we could do these two things and then head on over to Sawtelle Blvd. so we could make a brief shopping trip to the Giant Robot stores before we met up with Giant Robot magazine co-editor Martin Wong for dinner at gr/eats.
We set off for Allied and, due to a missed exit on the 405, we got lost temporarily. We righted ourselves and got to the store to find that they were in the midst of a giant sale because they were moving to a new location. Pretty much everything was gone. There was only one big model train display that was still setup and working. I think, had the store been in its normal business state, Julie would have loved seeing the model railroad setups. Plus, the store appeared to have had a sizeable Department 56 display that was dismantled and gone by the time we got there.
Lessons learned: Call ahead to make sure there isn't anything "out of the norm" going on and get directions from store staff.
Because we got lost, I decided to bite the bullet and pay the $3 fee to use Verizon Wireless's GPS navigation program on my enV for a limited time. I think it was for two weeks. This was the "cool discovery". I have never used a GPS navigation device before. The VZW one was very good. It turned out to be just what we needed.
Luckily, while we were lost, we passed by a park with a playground that wasn't too far from the store. So, we decided to take the girls there and let them run around for awhile. They played for awhile and then we had a nice picnic lunch.
After lunch, we loaded the girls back into the car for the trip to Storyopolis. We consulted our guide book for the address, plugged it into the navigation program and were off. The nav. program got confused between North and South Robertson over by the 10. I had to basically make a guess as to the general direction before it sorted itself out. We got to Beverly Hills, parked, and were headed to Storyopolis ... which we soon found out had MOVED.
Lesson learned: Our guide books were OLD!
Thank god we both had web-enabled mobile phones. A quick search on Google and a brief phone call, we were headed to Storyopolis in Studio City. Julie was already at the end of her car-riding rope. But, she put up with our poor planning valiantly. After a nice drive through Laurel Canyon, we got to Storyopolis. As an apology for the excessive car riding, we bought Julie an autographed copy of an "Angelina Ballerina" book and a stuffed animal (she chose a rabbit).
I managed to buy something at Storyopolis too:
Yippee!
After this stop, it was definitely time to head over to Sawtelle and GR. We met up with Martin at GR1. I bought a GR baseball cap. Shelly bought some cute stickers and other little things. We bought Sophie a little Big Toe Uglydoll. Here's Sophie later on that night with her new pal:
Martin took us over to GR2 where a really cool Deth P. Sun exhibit was up. it's over now. Shelly bought a new Yoshitomo Nara tee to replace the "Harmless Kitty" one that I'd given her years ago. She bought the "Pup King Sleeping Dog" one
Then it was on to dinner at gr/eats. The food was yummy. It was nice to see Martin again. He was great with Julie. I was bummed that Eric wasn't able to make it but they were under deadline and Martin explained that he was off working on a story. Eric's mom was super nice, too!
Pictures from gr/eats:
Martin doing/showing something to Julie
A nice picture of Shelly and a very cool Ai Yamaguchi piece
Julie and Sophie liked the food, too
Mayan Chicken (after)
Excellent food at gr/eats.
Here's a pic of Martin and I
Like I said, it was at turns a frustrating and fun day. We survived it though. Plus, it was our last night at the Econo Lodge. The next day we were moving into fancier digs at a Hilton for the wedding weekend.
We drove out to the museum which is located across the street from the USC campus in an area called Exposition Park. The park contains not only the museum, but also the California Science Center and Imax theater, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (aka the 1984 Summer Olympics' stadium), and several other attractions. It's nice that so much is located in close proximity to each other. The only downside was that they were in the middle of constructing a new wing for the science museum so some roads were closed and there was dust flying everywhere.
We passed by the Pavilion of Wings on the way in. Tickets were for visits on the half-hour so we bought a ticket for 1pm and headed into the main museum building.
Julie is still really into dinosaurs so she loved all of the fossil collections
I thought she would enjoy the other dioramas of animal habitat but she seemed less interested in that. Maybe she's still a bit too young for some of the stuff there.
Sophie decided she was ready to push the stroller and not be a passenger
We made it through the first floor's exhibits and then headed downstairs for lunch. While eating lunch, I spotted someone who looked familiar. It was Gary Takeuchi (Curatorial Assistant). The reason I recognized him was because of this piece he was featured in for the PBS program Dragonfly TV. We asked him if he was who we thought he was. He answered in the affirmative. Unfortunately, he was in the middle of the phone conversation, so that was the most we were able to do.
By the time lunch was done, it was time to head over to the Pavilion of Wings. But first, we stopped in at the Discovery Center and Insect Zoo. Julie was more interested in digging for fossils
than anything else in the room. Though, I must admit, the insect zoo was pretty cool even if some of those bugs gave me a serious case of "the creep".
So, on to the "Pavilion of Wings". Julie really likes butterflies. Probably goes back to that visit to the butterfly house at the MN State Fair last summer. Unfortunately for her, this one doesn't allow you to touch the butterflies. But, Julie did well nevertheless to keep her fingers away from the butterflies.
Here's Julie being good about keeping her fingers away and checking out the butterfly doing its thing
And here she is putting up with me taking a picture of her
Here's a couple pictures of butterflies that I took with my LG enV:
We were all pretty wiped out after that, probably because of the heat and the sun. I don't quite recall what we did that afternoon. Though, I think we tried to use the hotel's pool (too cold). We ended up eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant that was directly across the street from our hotel. Good food. Pretty inexpensive.
We managed it just fine. We landed and managed to get our bags and us from the airport to the car rental place. As I was being taken by a golf cart over to our (gasp) minivan, the driver pointed out the smoke and said that there must be a pretty big fire. I agreed. As we drove from the rental place towards Glendale, your eyes were constantly drawn to that plume of smoke. It looked like this
Turned out to be the fire in Griffith Park.
We got out to Glendale with only one turnaround. Not bad. Went to bed at 8:30 or so because that's when we put the girls to bed.
(Next time, I swear, we're going to bite the bullet and rent a suite. Going to bed at 8:30 sucks. Though I did catch up on a lot of sleep.)
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