Wednesday, July 30, 2008

FunnySauce -- Ellie Wins Again! And Again!


After each of our kids were born, they each basically slept on my chest listening to daddy's heart beat at night for about six weeks. After about six weeks, it is usually time for Mom and Dad to recaputure some privacy in bed and the baby is moved to the basinette. With Madison, Katie and Jonathan, we were also very strict about them sleeping in their own beds at about 6 months old. While I have a California King size bed, I do not believe in a La Leche League family bed. I have always been very strict about this.

Our youngest daughter Ellie is now six years old (not six months old!) and still manages to sleep with us most nights. And I admit it is my fault. Shelley did everything right. But you see Ellie is a sly and masterful cuddler. When she climbs on my lap, she lays her head on me, smiles a smile of extreme cotentment, coos a little , tells me that she loves me, lays her hand on her face and closes her eyes. She's got me! She will also come cuddle me while I watch sports, even golf.

And get this evil trick of her's -- while Ellie is sound asleep, if I whisper in her ear that I love her, she smiles, just briefly, and then her little freckled face settles back into expressionless slumber. And to top it all off, she only smiles in her sleep when she hears my voice. You see what I mean, she is a little evil genious. She has destroyed all my defenses and I am powerless against her. So when she comes in at night, slips under the covers, kisses me on the cheek, lays down and wraps her little arm around my neck, (even though I know she is going to elbow me all night, steal my covers and make my back sore in the morning), I am happy she is there.

I mean what would you do?

Review: Oyamel

Oyamel is absolutely the best Mexican restaurant in the DC metro area. I have eaten at many, many Mexican-style restaurants in DC and Virginia because I love authentic Mexican food that reminds me of my youth. I search for that wonderful taco platter with crispy, freshly made corn tortillas and shredded beef that I would order when I went out for dinner with my Aunt Jovita in Chihuahua. I hope and pray to find lobster, fish or shrimp tacos with finely shredded cabbage and spicy pico de gallo like my dad and I would eat at roadside shacks along Baja California. For me, corn husk wrapped tamales are a comfort food. Rich dark brown mole was a treat my mother would make, trying to prepare it just as she remembered from her youth growing up in northern Mexico.

I generally expect to find my "fix" at a small mom-and-pop type restaurant, the so called "hole in the wall." I will even drive over to the local nursery in the morning where a catering truck serves up delicious south-of-the border treats. But then I found Oyamel.

Oyamel captures all the authentic tastes of Mexico that I crave and packages them nouveau style. The fare is not tex-mex or Americanized, but refined Mexicana.

If it is your first time to Oyamel, you must start out with "real" guacamole that is mashed table side and mixed with cilantro, tomatoes, salt and red onions. It is perfect and served with thick corn chips that remind me of the corn chips I would be served on butcher paper in a basket in Tiajuana.

Next, if you love ceviche, Oyamel usually has five or six varieties on its menu and it even has a ceviche bar. I am not kidding! You can sit at the bar and watch the chef prepare all the creative dishes of ceviche. The most traditional ceviche is the ceviche huachinango, which is red snapper marinated in lime juice and mixed with avocado, tomato and cilantro. My favorite is the ceviche atun, which is tuna ceviche with a delicious cilantro sauce. The last time I was at Oyamel, I tried the salmon ceviche because I had never heard of or seen it made from salmon. It was delicious, but it was more of a salmon tartar with chopped vegetables and a sweet mild chili sauce.

If ceviche does not suite your palate, then the menu has several unique and delicious salads, such as the cool and tangy experimental baby cactus salad with lime dressing. My favorite is the "Gazpacho" estilo morelia. It is a sweet, spicy, crunchy and juicy combination of jicama, mango, cucumbers, jalapenos and Mexican oranges. The problem with Oyamel is that all three courses so far are delicious and hard to pass up, but you can be seriously full by now if you are not sharing. So you have some difficult choices ahead of you because Oyamel serves small plates ("tapa" style with selections of seafood, meat or vegetables), soups and an amazing array of single serving tacos, and we have not even discussed the entrees.

My advice? For dinner, exert self-control and jump right to the entrees. The seared red snapper served Veracruz-style or the braised short ribs in a mole pipian sauce of pumpkin seeds, green tomatillo, chili and cilantro are both are cooked to perfection! You will not be disappointed.

If it is lunch time, order a couple of the tacos and tapas. Stay away from the lunch time specials, which are way too Americanized for me (i.e., grilled catfish on a spicy bun, meatball sandwich with chipotle sauce, Cesar salad with seared salmon). The corn tortillas at Qyamel taste like the hand-made tortillas that I remember at home that were flattened and cooked individually over low heat on the stovetop. The tortillas are so good you could eat one by itself as a treat and each taco is made with these hand-made corn tortillas. The tinga poblana or pescado mexicano tacos are examples of taco art. The tinga poblana is stewed chicken, with chorizo (Mexican sausage), potatoes, chipolte (smoked red jalapenos) and red onions. Frankly, all the tacos are great. If you are brave, even try the lengua (beef tongue) taco or sautéed grasshoppers taco. I did!

I have not tried all the tapa-style plates, yet. But here are my recommendations: (1) steamed mussels with tequila (yum!); (2) braised short ribs are delicious, but even better as an evening entree; (3) pollo con mole poblano is a good sweet and light introduction to mole, but I like mine spicy and dark; (4) quesadilla huitlacoche, but try it first without the hot salsa verde it is served with or you will miss out on the subtle sweet and savory truffle flavor; (5) queso fundido con tequila (add the chorizo for an extra $1 for the full experience) and (6) pass on the papas con mole poblano, which seemed like a gimmicky play on chili cheese fries. Sorry I cannot describe these in fuller detail, but this review would go on forever.

I do, however, have two last notes. First, if you don't drink alcohol (like me) or are there at lunch maybe, Oyamel has great non-alcoholic drinks that add to the authentic Mexican experience. My favorite is the watermelon aqua fresca. For a very Mexican experience, also try the horchata or atole de maize. Second, Oyamel has a large variety of vegetarian dishes.

Buen Appetito!

Oyamel is located in the Penn Quarter
401 7th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004

Two blocks from the red line Gallery Place Chinatown Metro Station or the Archives/Navy Memorial exit on the green/yellow lines

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Review: The Sweet Life Cafe




The Sweet Life Cafe is located in the historic district of the City of Fairfax. It fronts on Chainbridge Road just across the sreet from the newly completed Old Town Village town center. In contrast to the new ''chain" restaurants filling Old Town Village, The Sweet Life Cafe is in the historic Moore House (circa 1840) and the exterior appearance is of a chic little cafe surrounded by a wrap-around porch and quaint garden. However, as you walk in you encounter more of a country creamery with an ice cream and coffee counter. From this main part of the restaurant you can order scoops of handmade ice cream or gelato, shakes, sundaes, coffee, expresso, sodas and a variety of traditional and herbal teas. The large wrap-around porch provides abundant outside seating that is perfect for enjoying an ice cream cone, sundae or selected beverages with your family or friends. In a side wing, there is also a small dining area inside that offers informal table service with mainly deli-style food.


To start, you should know that I love, adore and sometimes even dream about great ice cream. I enter a new ice cream shop with adventurous anticipation of finding a new "treasure." The ice cream at The Sweet Life Cafe is handmade by the cafe owners and delivers the extra-creamy richness of handmade ice cream that I expect to only find from a mom-and pop owned creamery out in the country.

If you are looking for new, bold or exotic "flavor of the month" ice cream, I did not find any. The cafe offers many "child flavors" like bubble gum, cotton candy, dreamsicle, etc. I did not try any of the kiddie flavors, but savored, smaked my lips, paused and evaluated a small spoonful of the six additional flavors. The cinammon, carmal and banana each attracted my attention. It was the cinnamon ice cream that first hit my palate, but it had such a slight flavor of cinammon that I could hardly taste it. After I finished my tasting experiment, I was forced to surmize that the ice cream is made by a sweet and talented, but lite-handed, vanilla lover. So I ordered the vanilla. It was scoped into a deep glass ice cream dish with a really long spoon. It was old school delicious.


Before sampling the ice cream, I actually ate lunch in the cafe with Madison and Katie. I must warn you that aside from the main menu, the cafe has totally separate drink and dessert menus. We, unfortuantely, were not provided by our server with the drink menu detailing the available virgin mixed drinks such as a "shirley temple," "charlie brown," "blue lagoon" or cherry coke or the variety of available iced herbal teas. We simply ordered diet cokes. We were also not provided the dessert menu with the molten chocolate cake, apple-cinammon pie and carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting. I noticed both these menus on the coffee counter as we were leaving. So be sure to ask if these menus are not provided. I would have preferred an iced Raspberry Zinger tea with my lunch. Oh, well.
I ordered a sandwich descibed as baked turkey and gouda on a pretzel roll. I have had two types of pretzel rolls: a long, firm baguette-shaped roll and a round roll that is actually braided like a pretzel. Both types are firm like a pretzel and baked golden brown with coarse salt sprinkled on top. My sandwich came on a kaiser roll. I admit that the baked turkey was nice sliced breast meat and the gouda had a rich flavor, but for me the kaiser roll deligated it to a decent deli sandwich, instead of a hip cafe sandwich. The sandwich was accompanied with boring ruffled potato chips and a red cabbage cole slaw. While I was not thrilled with the sandwich platter, I was very happy with the price of my lunch -- $7.25 for friendly table service and a decent deli sandwich with potato chips. It is certainly a place where I can take my whole family to eat without breaking the bank.


MADISON: Hi guys, it's great to be here today. My dad has asked me to say what I thought of my experience at the cafe. I ordered a coffe ice-cream flavored shake that was really good and very creamy. The hamburger that I ordered was good but also a little strange. For starters the patty was in the shape of a flower. Don't get me wrong, it was cute, just also a little strange. Then there was the fact that there wasn't any lettuce, it was spinach and red onions. But in the end the burger was good and the side order of fries we ordered where very nicely done. The only disapointment I had was that at the end of the meal there was a drink menu and a dessert menu that had not been offered to us, which caused my dad and I much grief. (Also there was this really annoying face on a tree in the front of the restruant that really bugged me.)


KATIE: The Sweet Life Cafe....hmm. I pretty much think it was an average reseraunt, kind of mediocer. It had no vegitarian meals. So I ordered the omlet with no ham. It was good, but pretty much just an average omlet: eggs, peppers, tomaoes, . . . nothingg special. The coffee ice cream milk shake was amazing. The cafe had very good ice cream! The atmosphere was alright, but the hot waiter that served us made it even better. He messed up though, when we asked for drinks he didn't give us the drink menu which we later found out that they had, there was also a dessert menu that had some very good looking desserts on it that he decided not to give us! Out side on one of the trees was a very stange face that I don' think really added anything to the restraunt. All together though it was okay, but I wouldn't recomend it if you asked for a good place to get food, but I would recomend it as a very good ice crean place!

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

FunnySauce: Church Basketball


Last night I played church basketball. I admit it, I love church basketball right now! That fact must be apparent in my face when I arrive home because Shelley continues to encourage me to go play every Wednesday night. She has even started calling me "white magic," which I admit I like.

To put church roundball in perspective, you must understand that I grew up playing mostly street basketball in school playgrounds in Los Angeles. I played on blacktop courts with rims that had shredded chainlink nets at places like Bud Carson Middle School in Hawthorne or Jane Adams Park in Lawndale. In those games I only called a foul if I had someone with me that was big enough to back it up. I am only 5'7", which in any street basketball dictionary is considered "elbow level." Driving the lane was always a dangerous plan. I could do it, but I would usually be "punished" by a hard foul. For some reason, the lane was always someone else's "house." Which is why I love, I mean I absolutely love, to watch my fellow Hoya alumn Allen Iverson play. In the NBA, he is a little man, but he drives the lane fearlously, and I've seen him take the hard hit.

Church ball can also be tough if some big (ex-community college player) egos show up. Other than the day of my birth, the only time I have been hospitalized overnight was from being "clothes-lined" in a church basketball "scrimage" game in Laramie, Wyoming.

So you can understand that I generally have some trepidation playing round ball with a new crowd.

The group I play with right now, though, is awesome. We just have fun. I drove the lane last night several times and made some fun shots. I know my drives are not pretty. I mean I am one of the "old" guys and my feet do not actually leave the floor much anymore. But nobody is going to "teach me a lesson" for driving the lane in their house, because we are in the Lord's house. Everyone actually calls his or her own fouls, and we get along. Amazing!

We also had a short intermural season at the beginning of winter. For those games, Shelley and my kids actually come to watch. So the pressure is on Dad to perform! I mean, Madison played freshman round ball in high school last year, so she is sitting in the small crowd with her arms folded thinking "let's see what you got, Dad." And I did okay! I am not one of the best players, but I sub in and I hit a three pointer at the beginning of the the game. I also drove to the basket twice and finished wih 7 points. I mean it wasn't all pretty. There was the incident when I scooped up an offensive rebound right under the rim and as I went up excitedly for an easy put back, my shot was brutally swatted out of bounds. But that's what happens when your short and can't jump anymore. The important thing? --my family was all proud of "white magic" -- he'd done good.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

2 for 1 Special -- Stop Junk Mail and Save the Environment

Remember when the "do not call" list came out? I immediately went online and signed up. To my astonishment, it worked! Solicitation calls became a thing of the past.

Today I signed up with GreenDimes to make JUNK MAIL go away!

  • The service is totally free;
  • No credit card information was required; and
  • GreenDimes is even going to plant a tree, on my behalf, to improve the environment.

With the free service, the company sends me the information for me to perform a DIY scrub from mailing lists. If money wasn't tight right now, I probably would have signed up for the pay services and have GreenDimes do the scrubbing for me.


I think this service is so great that I put the GreenDimes banner at the bottom of my blog. Scroll down and check it out! This is some real JiggyIntel!

This is fun. You get to help the environment, stop your junk mail and have a new tree planted on your behalf -- all by GreenDimes.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Review: O'Faolian's Irish Restaurant

O'Faolain's delivers great Irish comfort food. My wife and I drove out to the restaurant after a movie at Reston Towncenter. The drive to Sterling was a bit long, but worth it.

We started out with steamed mussels in a white wine sauce with garlic and chili flecks. The sauce had not been simply pour over boiled mussels. You know what I mean? Instead, you could taste that the mussels had really simmered in the sauce and were permeated with flavor. The dish was so good that we asked the waiter for the recipe. Unfortunately the chef said it was a secret.

I ordered the corn beef and cabbage with parsley boiled potatoes. I had had a "hankering" for good corn beef for a while now, and this dish had the perfect portions of protein, carbohydrates and even a serving of vegetables (because I am on a Body-for-LIFE challenge right now). What made the corn beef and cabbage particularly good was the selection of imported mustard from Ireland. I can't recall the names on the labels, but one was an extra sharp mustard and the other, which was seriously "to die for" good, contained whole mustard seeds in a whiskey sauce.

Other dishes I was tempted to order included the Guinness stewed beef , the beer battered fish and chips or Shepard's pie. My wife ordered the chicken pot pie and it was perfectly delicious.

The decor was Irish, but not my favorite. It had green walls, dark hard wood trim, and some hanging cut glass designs. The patrons eating next to us were drinking, laughing and speaking with Irish accents. However, from the black tiled ceiling to the mid-height walls, I felt like I was in a strip mall property dressed up as an Irish pub. Which is what it is, but it is fun to step into another world, even in an all-American strip mall.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Review: Lounge at The Source by Wolfgang Puck

The Source, is Wolfgang Puck's newest addition to his chain of high end, highly successful restaurants. The restaurant is located in the recently completed Newseum. The decor is modern with very clean lines and seating that includes traditional table seating, but also offers booths, lounge seating, bar tables, and seats at the bar itself. The crowd was made up of the typical DC business professionals from around the Capitol, who were hobnobbing and enjoying themselves.

A rare pleasure presented to Shelley and I this week: an entire day to ourselves, no kids. So we went to one of our favorite spots -- The National Art Gallery. When the gallery closed at 5 pm, we decided to just scoot across the street to The Source. When we arrived, we found out that seating for dinner upstairs did not begin until 5:30 pm. We were starving after a grueling intellectual workout at the galleries and decided to eat downstairs in the Lounge. (We were probably also a little under dressed and the dining room prices for entrees were in the $25 to $45 dollar range. We both know that either the Lacquered Peking Duck with Bing Cherries or the "American Style" Kobe Short Ribs would have sent me to the $45 side of the menu.) The fun thing about the Lounge is that it serves a Tour de Puck snacking menu with classics from his other restaurants, such as the Kobe Beef Sliders from Cut, his Beverly Hills Steakhouse or wood-burning-oven pizzas from Spago's in LA.

Shelley and I love cheese, so we had to start with the Artisinal Cheese with Honey Comb and Quince Paste.




The dish has a very nice selection of traditional cheeses (brie, blue cheese, white cheddar, hard goat cheese and soft goat cheese). The blue cheese was a nice mild blue-green veined cheese, I do not know its name. My favorite cheese was the soft goat cheese with a vein of aromatic vegetable ash. Shelley's favorite was the brie spread on a candied walnut. Served with cranberry wheat bread, quince paste squares, apples slices, candied walnuts and honeycomb, the dish was definitely a dessert. The honeycomb was fun, but we received just a tiny square and I really wished for a tad more. While the plate was nicely crafted, it really lacked color because all the cheeses where white. I would love to have seen a rich orange English cheeder and a carmel brown Norwegian goat cheese, to give the plate more depth in color and flavor.

Next, we had the Kobe Beef Sliders. The Kobe beef was mouth watering. However, neither Shelley nor I were fans of the bread and butter pickle in the slider. Once I removed it, I think the flavor of the Kobe beef was nicely highlighted with a mix of caramelized Vivaldi and fresh red diced onions.



To finish, we had the Pork Belly Dumplings. The plating was pretty, the pork filling was nice, but it was, well, a pork dumpling like at any Chinese restaurant. I was hoping for something special. It wasn't.
The service at the Lounge is, well, bar service -- even if you are sitting at a traditional table. Our cheese plate took forever to come, and then the sliders and dumplings arrived in just a few minutes after we order them before we had finished the cheese. But the bar staff was nice bar staff.
Overall, the Lounge at The Source is a fun and casual way to taste some classic cooking from one of America's most famous chef's.

The Source (Sixth and C sts., NW; 202-637-6100; http://www.wolfgangpuck.com/restaurants/finedining/the%20source/dc/index.php) is open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday. Plates on the downstairs menu range from $8 to $15. In the upstairs dining room, entrees are $25 to $45.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

FunnySauce: Ellie on the 2008 Presidential Race

I love hearing Ellie tell people all about life as if she were the all-knowing expert. For example, tonight we are driving home from her play date and she askes me who I am going to vote for in the 2008 Presidential election. Instead of telling her that it is complicated, I selected John McCain.

Ellie then said, "Is he for making it go up or down?"

"Make what go up or down?" I responded.

"You know, how much they are going to spend on stuff!" she shot back as if I was bullheaded for even having to ask.

I paused, then told her that I hope he makes it go down.

"Me too," she said. Maybe she understands more than I think!

Barnacle Butt Is Offically Indexed on Google -- I'm Jealous

Last night www.BarnacleButt.WordPress.com was officially indexed into Google's amazing search engine. Those little crawlers alogrithimed over and deemed her worthy of this honor. I did a couple searches related to Shelley's past posts, and her blog actually came up on page one for a couple searches.

I am so proud of her (and jealous, of course), her blog is growing so quickly.

Officially Upset with Blogger.com -- Already

JiggyIntel is not supposed to be all about blogging, but the time required right now to do simple tasks is killing my time for other posts.

So, I am officially upset with Blogger.com's available posting and layout features! I have my documents that I want to post as part of my blogs in JiggyIntel and www.my-body-for-life-blog.blogspot.com, but Blogger only permits pictures. So I spent time converting the documents to tif. format and Blogger still would not upload them. Next, I saw that Microsoft Publisher would convert docs to html format, so I uploaded the documents into Publisher and converted them to html. I pasted them in and still nothing.

WORDPRESS.COM on the other hand lets me upload many more types of documents under the "media" upload button. It was simple, of course. I uploaded the document as a pdf, and Wordpress stored the document and inserted a link into the post. SIMPLE! CURSE YOU BLOGGER.COM!!!

The good news is that I have created an upload blog at WordPress and I can copy the links created by WordPress and past them into to the Blogger blog. So I should be able to at least move on and post some fun and interesting, non-complainy post. THANKS WORDPRESS.COM!

Also, maybe someday when my blog is finally indexed by Google someone will read it and tell me the simple solutions to my problems. Until then I will continue as the blindfolded newbie making his way in through the blogsphere, one blog at a time.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Comparison of Blogger, WordPress and Google Page Creator App

Trying to figure out where to host this new creative outlet was no easy task. But blogging is definitely great fun, and if you are thinking of starting a weblog, here is the process I went through and what I learned.

My first requirement was that the hosting site be free. So all the blog hosting sites I discuss below are free.

I started out at WordPress.com because that is were Shelley's blog is located, but I need more gadgetry. So I tried Google's Page Creator which has a zillion "fun" gadgets, but (as explained below) found it too complicated for a newbie like me to install the basic necessities like comments, RSS, Blogroll, etc. without searching the internet of pastable HTML code. I next moved on to Blogger.com, which I found to be a realatively good compromise for my needs. Here is what I discovered during my techno blogging adventure:

WordPress.comBlogger.comGooglePageCr
TemplatesTemplatesTemplates
1-4columns2columnsmax1-3columns
Custom headerNoCustom header
Auto comments widgetAuto comments elementNo
Page Bottom Widgets with Select TemplatesPage Bottom Widgets AvailPage Bottom Widgets Avail
Separate Linked Pages with Parent Pages and Password ProtectionNo, must create Separate Linked BlogsSeparate Linked Pages
One Click Installation for Most Standard WidgetsOne Click Installation for Limited Number of WidgetsMany Fun Gadgets
Automatic/User Friendly Blog StatisticsNo Blog StatisticsNo Blog Statistics
No Advertising PermittedOne Click AdSense Set UpOne Click AdSense Set Up

I would say that WordPress.com was the most user friendly for a newbie who still demands all the bells and whistles. WordPress gives many customization options and includes most "must have" widgets like Comments, RSS feed, Archives, Blogrolls, etc. in a list of easy add on widgets. WordPress also has great blog statistics trackers and absolutely the most user-friendly help pages. However, WordPress.com does not permit any advertising. So if you want play around with Google's AdSense, you are out of luck.



I choose to use Blogger.com because it lets me play with AdSense. For some reason the lure of learning more about Google's online ads was just too much for me. The fact that the standard Blogger templates only permit two columns drives me crazy. And I am still trying to figure out a work around for creating subpages. Creating a subblog every time I want a link to documents or pictures that are not part of a post is crazy. I did see one site that was working around it by categorizing its archives. The archives page element does create a feature like separate pages for each archived post. Lastly, I had to insert html code from Statcounter.com to obtain stats on my blog. The positive side of this is I did learn about coding html. For example, I coded the entire table for the information above. Not bad for a newbie.


Before this post gets way too long, let me say that the Google Page Creator is not for Newbies, unless what you are looking for is a very simple blog with lots of great gadgets. I had to find code to include comments, subscriptions, blogroll, etc. It was just too much work. I imagine if you want max customization, it is a great place with Google Apps and Google Labs putting out the latest beta products, but that was not for me. The one cool thing about the Google blog hosting was that you could select to use your domain name (i.e., http://www.example.com/) instead of http://www.example.google.com/. But I guess why you would want that is an entirely different post.


I did not try out TypePad or LiveJournel, I just did not have the time. If you have any suggestions or articles about those, please include them in a comment below.


I hope that is helpful for anyone who wants to start a new blog.


Good luck!



Sunday, July 13, 2008

FunnySauce: Dog Pile on Daddy

Sunday is family time. But do you ever find that it is work to get the whole family together, and that your family-time plans can dissolve into disaster?

Tonight we decided to play Attack Uno. This is not a version of Uno our family made up. It is an actual game we received as a Christmas gift and it comes with an electronic button-controlled beeping card shooter. When you would usually be required to draw a card, you instead push the button and a random number of cards, from 0 to 7, shoot out. It is always a relief when zero shoot out. But tonight the shooter was "hot" and everybody had a lot of cards and the game was taking too long. Ellie (who's six years old) had selected the game for tonight, so when she quit, threw down her cards, climbed on mom's lap and closed her eyes, we should have known it was time to end the game.

In an effort to hurry the game along, we started adding helpful comments like "come on!", "go!", "push the button!", "tonight please", etc. We also had to wait through a time out for Jonathan to go through his new breathing exercises that help him to not cry. (Which we all did amazingly well because we are appreciative and proud of his efforts, he is a very kind-hearted kid and it is quite interesting to watch a ten-year-old in the middle of Attack Uno close his eyes and go into a meditative state.) Of course, these feelings of frustration and hostility did not deter us from finishing the game. Finally, Madison called out "Uno" for the first time in the game at about the 37th minute of play time and to everyone's relief was able to lay down her final card on her next turn.

Shelley then asked that we gather around for family prayer before going to bed. A that moment, Ellie announced that she was not tired, Jonathan then knocked over Madison's balancing act on the couch, Madison punched Jonathan and I began my lecture I learned from my dad on not hitting younger siblings. Obviously, the "family time" tension had mounted too high for my sweet wife, because as we all knelt down to pray, instead of praying she started laughing. Her laughter popped the bubble of tension and everybody started laughing hysterically. I was laughing so hard that I was lying of the ground trying to catch my breath when Ellie yelled, "dog pile." All four of my kids jumped on top of me and pinned me down. Riley, our Airedale terrier, thinks this is great fun and places his mangled stuff cat on top of me and begins to lick and slobber all over my face.

After Shelley finally convinced the kids to roll off me, Jonathan had a beaming smile on his face and declared, "Now that was the funnest thing we did all day!"

Blog is Born

I admit it! The main reason I am creating this site is because I am jealous of my wife's blog (http://www.barnaclebutt.wordpress.com/) and all the fun she is having. Wow, I just had to get that off my chest so I could move on!
On my 4th of July road trip with Paul, I was also very inspired by his amazing amount of insite into the whole weblog/webcasting scene. He even explained one of the great mysteries of the internet to me -- how google makes money! So I really hope he will help me out with this new techno stuff.
I am also looking forward to writing about some of the fun and crazy things that my family and I do to entertain ourselves.
My main activity right now is looking for a job. I unfortunately left a very stable big law job and invested all my time and money in three real-estate related companies. With the incredible downturn in the real estate market, I have had to close shop(s) and start looking for a real job. I HATE LOOKING FOR A JOB! I've read "Rites of Passage" and know my "guerilla tatics", I just have a hard time with all the self-importance of it all -- "Well, when I worked on the divestiture of [insert name of Fortune 100 Company]'s publically traded subsidiary, I . . . . blah, blah blah. It feels like a lot of impersonal bragging. I really try to ask questions to see what type of people they are, but I feel like it is hard to understand someone in half an hour. I recently went to a law firm in San Francisco and interviewed for 7 hours, with the final interview being with the head of the recruiting committee. I admit I liked the attorneys there, but it is still just a leap of faith.
My secondary goal right now is to complete another round of the Body-for-Life (BFL) Challenge. My first Challenge was very successful and I lost about 25 lbs, until I injured myself. In my second Challenge I injured myself quickly and put myself out of my misery. So why would I proceed to a third challenge? First, nothing else has worked. Second, I have a new strategy. You see the program states that we are suppose to hit a 10 out of 10 in our work outs, but I do not think the program took into account ultra-competive idiots like myself who think "10" means a near death experience. So my strategy is to only hit a "9." Brilliant, I know!
I have also just finished reading "You, the Owners Manual" which provides medical explanations and advice for living better head-to-toe.
So I am going to post this weekend my embarrassing before picture, my less-than healthy vitals, work out schedule and meal plans in an attempt to better my life and embarrass myself into completing the program. I will start this Monday and have posted my count down clock gadget and other BFL info at http://www.my-body-for-life-blog.blogspot.com.
Wish me luck!