Quickies

Been a while since I've blogged, so I'll slap a few random quickies on here.

Cristina's dad is expected to briefly visit here soon, probably this week. Cristina's mom will have a quick stay with us before heading out to Seattle for Trip's wedding. And my mom will be flying to Phoenix in April for a 3 week stay. So the next 2 months will be delightfully full of family. The grill will get a good workout!

Tonight, the Gator basketball team plays Arizona State in the NIT tournament...right here in Tempe. It's not too often that the Gators (football or basketball) play in Arizona, so I'm seizing the opportunity. Luckily, tickets for tonight's game aren't anywhere near the prices for the football team's last game here. I got my ticket for $17.




Sofia and Alex just finished their Spring Break. Mine was the week before theirs. During my spring break, my Uncle Doug and Aunt Lynn came to Phoenix for a funeral and spent a couple of nights with us. Great to visit with them. And Sofia had her huge presentation at school, which was about Hatshepsut, the female Pharaoh of Egypt. The presentation is a major focus of their spring semester and a large part of their grade. She practiced a lot and worked hard and it came out really well. We're very proud of her.

I'm still tutoring after school a couple of days a week, attending an after-school (paid) teacher training 4 times a month, and taking classes at South Mountain Community College. I interviewed my mom yesterday for a storytelling class and one of the questions was "what's the hardest you've ever worked." Sometimes I think this is the hardest I've worked!

A Man With a Plan

Cristina's cousin Trip (John Rogers III) is a captain in the Army. Even though he's a Florida State fan (always gotta give him a hard time about that) he's always been a great guy. He served in Iraq and recently came home. He's in the crazy home stretch of planning his wedding in Seattle, but somehow found the time to write this article for the Washington Post. There are several people on both sides of our family serving in the armed forces, so I feel it's appropriate to share one family member's feelings and conclusions about a war that is, to say the least, controversial.

Trip's Article

My First Grill

When we bought our house 2 and a half years ago, I always imagined having a gas grill on the back porch. I've never owned a grill, not even a cheap little charcoal grill. My parents had a gas grill when I was in high school, but that doesn't count. Now that I had my own house, I wanted to complete the package by grilling food for the family and friends in my own back yard.

Yet, two and a half years after moving into our house, we still had no grill. It was just too extravagant of a purchase. There was always something else we needed more, needs that were more pressing (for example, if Sofia is going to take piano lessons, we need to get her a keyboard).

With our new focus on debt reduction, it seemed even less likely that a grill would be in our immediate future. But then I got an idea.

In May, the government will be mailing out checks. The Economic Stimulus Package. The injection of cash intended to jump start our sagging economy. When I first heard about it, I thought we'd just put it towards our debt. But then I realized that it was my patriotic duty to spend at least some of it! After all, saving it or paying a credit card with it will not help the economy. So I decided (with Cristina's okay) to spend a quarter of the "free money" on a grill.

After extensive research, I made my choice. Monday, I picked up my Blue Ember.


I know what you're thinking. They don't mail those checks till May. Why did you get the grill now? Well, by May, it's starting to get pretty hot here. Right now is prime outdoor time. Highs in the upper 70's/low 80's. It would be a shame to wait until May and miss out on these 2 months of beautiful backyard grilling weather. It just so happened that the grill I chose is sold at Home Depot. I have a Home Depot credit card. If you make a purchase over $300, you get 6 months of no payments and no interest. Bingo! I can charge it now and when the check comes in May, I pay off the card.

I chose the Blue Ember by Fiesta for a few reasons. For one thing, it had all the features I could possibly want plus some bonus stuff that was just icing on the cake. I mean, it even has a bottle opener mounted on it. But more impressively, it's made with 304 quality stainless steel, which is better than you get in most grills of this relatively low price.

I decided to buy one in the box instead of one that was already assembled. Something about putting it together myself was more appealing. You get intimate with your stuff when you assemble it yourself. You know how it works, how it's built. I like that.

The only problem I had in assembly was in taking off the big stickers that they put on it for demo-ing all the features. They didn't come off cleanly and I had to use my fingernails and Goo-Gone. It was very anticlimactic to the whole assembly process.

I inaugurated it Tuesday night with some boneless chicken breasts and a big thick ribeye. It worked great and I didn't do too bad considering my lack of experience with grilling. I even got the cross-hatch grill marks down pat. Today I tried out the rotisserie and cooked a whole chicken. It also came out very nice. I grilled some zucchini and squash, as well as some garlic bread. Sofia made a comment about how I almost cooked the entire meal on the grill. Aww yeah.

My aunt and uncle arrived tonight for a short visit. Tomorrow I will grill some brined boneless pork chops. I can't wait!

I intended on taking lots of pictures of me building the grill, grilling my first meat, etc. But I couldn't find the camera for a few days (Cristina finally found it in my jacket pocket. Oops!). So for now, I'll just stick on some stock photos so you can at least see the style of it.

And if you want to come over to my house, I'll grill you up something to eat.

For any gadget freaks out there, click here for a list of the features!

Sofia's Duet Recital

This morning, Sofia performed a piano duet at her school. Luckily, due to a weird testing schedule at my school, I was free to attend with the family. Sofia did great, but don't take my word for it. Check it out:

Be Kind Rewind

I went to see Be Kind Rewind last night with my movie buddy, Peter. Ever since I saw the trailer, I've been eagerly anticipating this movie. I like Michel Gondry's offbeat style, I like Jack Black and Mos Def, and the story sounded especially appealing since 1) I once worked in a movie theater, where, like the guys in the film that work in a video store, you get to know movies way too well for your own good, and 2) my friends and I used to make our own little no-budget movies for years, sometimes with the participation of our friends and family who enjoyed seeing themselves on the screen when we would debut our films. In short, I could identify with the premise of Be Kind Rewind pretty strongly.

And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I laughed more than I usually laugh at movies. And the movie had a sweet heart to it, which I wasn't really expecting. It was almost Capra-esque. Was it light fare? Sure. Was it funny? Yes. Was the story improbable? Most certainly. But the film asked for a willing suspension of disbelief fairly early, with the camouflage scene. That moment said "this is kind of a different world these guys inhabit, so please go along for the ride." I have no problem with movies that run this way, and Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind asked for the same suspension of disbelief. What I have a problem with is movies that aim to be real to life, like snippets of our actual lives, and then whack us with a situation so ridiculously unreal that we can't buy into it or relate to it...that's when they lose me. But Gondry let us know early on what we were in for, and I got it.

Warning: there be spoilers in this paragraph. But the movie stayed realistic in some areas, just enough to make it not seem so removed from reality that we felt detached from the story. For instance, even though Mike and Jerry make enough money to save the building (improbable that so many kooky misfits would be lining up to rent homemade ripoffs of Hollywood movies..and paying enough to net $60,000 in a few weeks) their plans are thwarted by the Hollywood lawyers (bringing the almost "magical realism" of the story a little more down to earth). And even though they band the community together to create their own heartfelt epic, they still ultimately lose the building. When you look at the grand scheme of the storyline, what would have been more realistic? The classic Hollywood ending would have had the community saving the building and they all live happily ever after, perhaps transforming the video store into a little low-budget community production house. Instead, the inevitable happened. The building was lost. But the main characters, and the community, gained something even better. That's Capra, isn't it?

I don't know. I just like this kind of movie now and then, where a departure from reality doesn't have to be conveniently explained with something logical, like "it was all a dream" or "it was actually one character's mental illness imagining such and such." It's a departure from the norm, which is probably why the movie will not do well at the box office. In fact, as the credits rolled, I asked Peter if he liked it and he said it was the worst piece of trash he'd ever been subjected to. He continued his strong condemnations until I mentioned that I liked it. It was interesting (and unusual) to have that wide of a gap on our take on a movie.

I haven't read any reviews yet, on purpose. Dom once said that he didn't read reviews before he saw a movie, because then his natural response to the movie would be tainted. I agree with that. So if there's a movie I want to see, I avoid the reviews until after I've seen it. Now that I've written some of my thoughts, I'll check out what others are saying.

But regardless of what the critics say, I wholeheartedly recommend this movie.

Little Twelvetoes

Bella was just watching Schoolhouse Rock (or "Schoolrock House" as she calls it). We were watching some of the math songs together and I just had to blog about the one for the 12 times table. It's called Little Twelvetoes. And it's possibly the weirdest, most abstract Schoolhouse Rock video of them all.

You would think 12 would be an easy one to write. Eggs. Months. A dozen. But no, the Schoolhouse Rock writers decided not to go the easy route. They came up with a "what if" scenario that would have even Einstein scratching his head.

For those who don't remember their Saturday morning cartoons in the 70's, let me refresh you. It goes like this:

What if instead of 10 fingers we had 12? We'd naturally then have 12 toes as well. And then our entire number system would be based on 12 instead of 10 (which subtlety but brilliantly theorizes that our number system grew from counting on our own hands and feet). Here's where it starts to stretch your mind. This number system based on our 12 fingers and 12 toes wouldn't be 1 through 12. It would still end in 10, but we'd have 2 additional digits in there. Hey, let's call them dek and el. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, dek, el, and doe.

This trippy revelation is posited by an overgrown farm boy as he contemplates the starry sky (I think we know what they're growing somewhere on that farm...this is the 70's). Then, he imagines that somewhere out in the universe is a being with 12 fingers and 12 toes who must enjoy the benefit of easily learning his 12 times table, and soon the song about Little Twelvetoes swings into high gear.



Something tells me after writing brilliance such as "Unpack your Adjectives" and "Conjunction Junction," the writers were a little burned out. I can picture them, late at night, deadline staring them in the face, maybe imbibing a little in the studio. Hey, I think I've got it! And Little Twelvetoes is born.

To my Valentine

Some people know a lot about wine

I hear Pinot Noir is the rage

But the one thing I know about wine (I’ve heard)

Is that it improves with age.

Which got me to thinking about my wife

And how we were young when we met

And how we’re both different 14 years later

We’re responsible adults, and yet,

It’s hard to remember the way that we were

When barely out of high school

When we spent our last dollars on CDs and movies

And talked through the night by the pool.

But now I can see the woman she’s become

She fascinates me more and more

She’s softer and quieter and wiser and still

Has the laugh and the spirit I adore.

And as much as I typically try to avoid

Dewy-eyed love poems that rhyme

I just had an urge to be a big sap

To praise my best love of all time.

Love you, honey!