On long car rides and paddling excursions, the boys like to play their version of 20-questions. They just don't like limiting it to only twenty. They prefer to keep asking questions until they figure out the answer.
Poor 6-year old YB's turn never lasts more than 3 questions. He always picks something he saw immediately before playing the game. For example:
[Eagle flies by.]
Me: "Oh, look! An eagle!"
YB: "Okay, I'm ready."
ES: "Is it an eagle?"
YB: [exasperated] "Yeeeees" [tone of voice interpretation: how do you ALWAYS know what I'm thinking???]
ES has been throwing me for a loop lately. During our Monocacy River kayaking trip on Saturday, he stumped me. After what seemed like a hundred questions, I had figured out it was a previous ruler of Germany, but my level of knowledge of German history isn't all that great. ES gave me a hint: "Unification." Still stumped, I finally gave up, and ES said, "Otto von Bismarck!"
ES likes to play the video game Civilization - a sort of grand-strategy, global domination simulation game. I guess Otto von Bismarck is one of the characters / leaders you can choose to be in the game, and ES didn't know who that was, so he looked him up on Wikipedia and read about him.
Friends of ours asked for us to compare and contrast the Wii Fit and the new My Fitness Coach that my wife just picked up. Both have good points and bad points - it'd be nice if there was a combination of the two.
Based on my VAST knowledge of ONE session on the My Fitness Coach, here's my totally subjective, non-scientific opinion and observations.
In a nutshell: - My Fitness Coach is like an interactive version of an exercise video, you just follow along with what Maya tells you to do (after you've told her what your goals are and what you want to work on). - Wii Fit actually measures your actions and your progress with the Wii Balance Board and the Wii Remote, but the personal trainer doesn't really give you a full workout. You have to choose each exercise you want to do, so you pretty much make up your own exercise program.
Detailed Comparison and Scorecard:
Monitoring performance and improvement: - Wii Fit uses the Wii Balance Board plus the handheld Wii Remote to measure your weight and your balance, as well as your timing and rhythm in the aerobic exercises like step aerobics and boxing. During the exercise, your personal trainer will tell you good job if your timing and balance are good, or will comment on your balance being off or your leg wobbling a little and giving you pointers for focusing your exercise and how to improve your balance and strength. - My Fitness Coach relies on the user to obtain the data such as body weight elsewhere and then manually input the data into the program. During the exercises, Maya gives you encouragement and tells you that you're doing a good job, but she has no way of knowing. You could be sitting on the couch eating a tub of Ben & Jerry's for all Maya knows. Importance: High. I like the one-stop shop of Wii measuring you and telling you how you're doing. It provides a sort of accountability. Score: +3 for Wii Fit
Leading you through a complete workout: - My Fitness Coach asks you how much time you want to spend working out and what you want to focus on (upper body, lower body, core, flexibility). After telling it I want to work on flexibility for 15 minutes, then Maya leads me through 15 minutes of exercises designed to improve my flexibility - some stretching, some yoga, some calisthenics, some aerobics. - Wii Fit leaves your fitness program entirely up to you. It's sort of like exercises a-la-carte. Each exercise lasts 2-5 minutes or so depending on the exercise, but you click on one, then click on another, then click on another... It doesn't give you a recommended program or plan of what exercises to do today. This has been my primary complaint about Wii Fit and the primary reason why I was interested in trying My Fitness Coach. Importance: High. Like I said, this was my primary complaint about the Wii Fit. Score: +3 for My Fitness Coach
User Interface: - Wii Fit doesn't require you to aim the handheld Wii remote at any particular target on the screen. You can just use the cross-pad or the +/- buttons to toggle between options and click the A button to select. - My Fitness Coach requires you to precisely aim your handheld Wii Remote at very small buttons on the screen and push the A button to click on the up or down arrow on the screen. This is tedious and frustrating when you've been exercising hard and your arms feel like jello and you can't aim the Wiimote all that accurately. Importance: Medium.Wii fit's use of the cross-pad is a lot easier to use. Score: +2 for Wii Fit
Choice of Trainer: - Wii Fit lets you choose whether you want the male or the female personal trainer. It's kind of funny to see their hair get longer over time. Every once in a while the other trainer will show up on the screen and say that your trainer is "out" today but he/she will be glad to work with you today. - My Fitness Coach gives you a choice of Maya, or Maya, or Maya. Maya's okay, but I like working with the guy on Wii Fit better. Importance: Low, it's a minor issue Score: +1 for Wii Fit
Graphics: - Keep in mind, the Wii game system was NOT developed for high definition graphics. Nintendo put all their R&D money on this one into the motion-sensing equipment in the Wiimotes. - That being said, Wii Fit didn't try to make anything super fancy graphics-wise. They made the graphics to fit what the system was capable of. - My Fitness Coach appears the designers tried to bite off more than they could chew. They tried to make a game with better graphics than the system is capable of. The result is that Maya looks freaky on my big screen with visual artifacts (random pixels turning on and off) all around her teeth as she talks. I found it distracting and kind of annoying. Importance: Medium, the visual artifacts were annoying me Score: +2 for Wii Fit
Scenery: - My Fitness Coach offers a variety of backdrops for your exercise routine. You could be in a garden or a city apartment or a cruise ship. - Wii Fit doesn't offer any sort of backdrop for most of the exercises. If you do the jogging in place, it takes you on a tour of a Wii-cartoonish island, but that's about it. Importance: Low, I can do without the scenery Score: +1 for My Fitness Coach
Music: - My Fitness Coach offers a variety of genres of music to choose from while you work out. - Wii Fit uses the same music all the time. Importance: Low, I can do without the music Score: +1 for My Fitness Coach
Summary: Monitoring Performance: +3 for Wii Fit Leads you through workout: +3 for My Fitness Coach User Interface: +2 for Wii Fit Choice of Trainer: +1 for Wii Fit Graphics: +2 for Wii Fit Scenery: +1 for My Fitness Coach Music: +1 for My Fitness Coach
Bottom Line Wii Fit: 8 My Fitness Coach: 5
Now, my scoring above is weighted based on my preferences. If you put more value on different criteria than I did, then feel free to modify the scores to see how it adds up in your book according to your preferences.
It's very cutesy-cartoonish with exaggeratedly short knights and exaggeratedly large weapons (in comparison to the size of their bodies). It's pretty fast-paced action with some cartoon gore. Although not what you would think of in terms of "hi-def," the graphics are detailed and flow really smoothly on the big screen. The music is a mix of techno and action-movie-theme-song. It really gets your adrenaline pumping as your fighting off the bad guys with swords, battle axes, maces, bow & arrows, and magic. You can play up to four people at the same time.
Warning for parents: In addition to the cartoon gore, there are some pretty silly but gross elements. The authors of this game had some sort of obsession with animal poop. The forest animals in the background (owls, deer, bears) get scared of the battles and leave poop behind them as they run away.
You can download the game for about $12 on the X-Box Live Arcade.
In case you didn't know, the makers of Halo are making a new version of the game, Halo Wars. You can download the free trial version on the XBox. It's pretty darn cool.
Unlike the original Halo, Halo 2, and Halo 3 which were first-person shooter (FPS) type video games (you run around with a gun in your hand shooting at the bad guys), Halo Wars is a real-time strategy (RTS) game. In RTS games, you have an eagle's eye view of the battle field, and you command groups of units to move and attack. You can gather resources that enable you to construct buildings, and the buildings will give you the ability to construct new military units or research new technologies to make your military units more powerful.
Anyway, if you like RTS games and have an XBox, I highly recommend checking out the free download version of Halo Wars. Now I can't wait for the full version of the game to be released.
I looked for a trailer of the new game on YouTube to show you what I mean about the game, but it seems like all the trailers for "Halo Wars" are totally useless. They make it seem like you're watching movies of people playing the first three installments of the the Halo FPS shooter games and don't give you ANY feel for what the Halo Wars RTS game is really like.
Oh, here we go, this trailer on the XBox website was a mixture of fantasy FPS footage and some glimpses of what an RTS game is like.
2. Battlestar Gallactica
Okay, alright, I'm ready for the barrage of I-told-you-so's from the peanut gallery. The "new" Battlestar Gallactica came out while I was on sea duty. Since I figured I would miss a bunch of it, I didn't see any point in trying to watch it when it was playing new on TV.
Yes, yes, yes, I know they started in 2003 and they're in like season 5 now, so it's not exactly "new" anymore. By "new" I mean NOT the Battlestar Gallactica I used to watch when I was a kid a couple of decades ago.
Many friends of mine have raved about how awesome the new BSG was though, so when I saw Blockbuster had the first season available on HD DVD, I put it in my Blockbuster queue. I've watched the first three episodes now, and WOW. What an awesome show! I'm really putting my new surround sound speakers to use and making the family room floor reverberate, too.
Oddly enough, even though the "new" BSG doesn't have any real sort of a theme song, I keep getting the OLD BSG theme song running through my head all the time now. Bizarre. I can think of worse songs to get stuck in my head though.
So is getting sucked into BSG going to raise my score on the Geek scale?
Recap of Weekend Entertainment Part I: Blasts from the Past
1. Family Movie Night
I'm always looking for movies for us to watch on Family Movie Night. We've exhausted most of the recent movies, so I've been digging back through the archives for movies that are fun to watch and "safe" for the family.
I dug waaaaaay back (1977) and found a Disney movie that I really liked when I was a kid: Candleshoe. I was surprised LW had never seen it before.
It's pretty weird seeing Jody Foster as a teenager, but it's a good fun movie. Both my wife and ES were laughing throughout the movie. It was a little over YB's head, but he sat through the whole movie (usually if he gets bored with a movie, he'll get up and go play in the play room). So if you're looking for a family movie night recommendation, add Candleshoe to your Blockbuster and/or Netflix queue.
2. Video Game Flashback
I was on the X-Box looking for the new maps to download for Halo 3, and I happened upon the download for R-Type. R-Type was one of my favorite video games back in the late 80's. I downloaded it, and sure enough the copyright date was 1987.
It's pretty cool though. They've spiffed it up. If you hit the Y button, it toggles between the old 1987 graphics and newer, cooler 3D graphics. The boys and I had some fun playing that on Saturday this weekend.
They gave it an "infinite" mode, too. It was a pretty challenging game to try and get as far as you could on just 3 lives. Now, you can put it on infinite mode and it just lets you keep playing, although each time you die you loose all your weapon power-ups.
More to follow on weekend entertainment, but figured I'd break it up into two posts.
I've had two new video game addictions lately. Being the nerd that I am, I like brain-teaser puzzles. Here's a quick review of the two games that have been burning some of my spare time:
Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo DS. My lovely wife ratted me out. Yes, I probably would have blogged more the last couple of weeks if I hadn't been completely absorbed in playing Zelda through to completion.
Many moons ago, I loved the original Legend of Zelda video game on the Nintendo.
This game is very cleverly put together. If you follow the story line, it will take you through a series of quests for various tools you need to defeat Bellum, the monstrous beast at the end of the story.
The tools include a boomerang, bombs, a bow and arrow, bombchu's (which are like programmable mouse-bombs that will crawl to where you tell them to and then blow up), a grappling hook, a hammer, and a shovel.
I really like the puzzle aspect of this game. Each time you get a new tool, it will present you with a simple task to accomplish with that tool so you understand the basics of how the tool works. Then, as you progress through the story, you will have to figure out what combination of tools and in what manner you need to use them in order to make it through the obstacles and challenges that impede your quest.
You can play multi-player via WiFi, too. ES and I have been played two-player in the car on the way down to Williamsburg last weekend.
The other new video game addiction I've had is Portal. I've been playing it on the X-Box 360, but it's also available on the PC (for a whopping $9.99). It's also now available as a download on the X-Box 360 for something like $15 but it has a bunch of bonus levels to play.
This started out as a loaner from our friend Vince (thaaaaanks, Viiiiince...). He came over to our house for dinner one night. He handed me this disk with a sadistic grin on his face and said, "Here, you need to try this."
I asked him, "Is it a multi-player game we can play together?"
He smirked and said, "No, I just wanna watch you play it."
"Ummmm, oh... uh... okay... I see."
He watched me discover the rules of this new universe through trial and error - no doubt similar errors that he made in his initial excursion into (and out of) the Portals.
In the game, you are some sort of participant in an experiment. You work your way through these mazes while some computer generated voice offers you warnings and advice. The computer generated voice is actually very funny in the silly legal disclaimers they offer throughout the game.
The game involves using a device that can creat these magical portals in walls. Let's say you had one of these devices in your house. You could create a portal in your basement wall down cellar, then walk up the stairs to your bedroom and place another portal in your bedroom wall. Then you could walk through the portal in your bedroom wall and come out the portal in the basement. Make sense?
You have to figure out where to place the portals and move objects around in order to make it past obstacles and moving platforms. Sometimes, in order to overcome some obstacles, you have to use momentum going through one portal in order to shoot out the other portal. "Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out."
Actually, I went to see if I could find something with a demo video to show you, and I found this on YouTube. This is an excellent introduction to what Portal is all about, and it's only a little over 2 minutes long:
Vince ended up loaning me the disk for the weekend. I managed to finish all 19 levels that weekend and got the disk back to him.
It was actually something both good and bad for doing together with ES. Good in the sense that with puzzles, sometimes two heads are better than one. There were a few times that ES figured out what pieces to move where in order to solve a level. Bad in the sense that anytime I let ES take the controller, I found myself quickly getting dizzy and starting to feel motion sick.
Poor ES didn't get to see the end of level 19 though because I finished it after he went to bed. I promised him we'd get our own copy so he could play through to the end, too.
My awesome wife found out it was available as a download on the X-Box and it came with BONUS levels beyond the first 19 levels. So the addiction was back again this weekend. ES and I spent this afternoon working our way through the first 19 levels again and then played a few of the bonus levels.
So, if you like brain-teaser puzzles and you've got either a PC or an X-Box, then I recommend picking up a copy of Portal and giving it a try.
Except for my poor wife being sick, I declare today a resounding success.
A) We spent over 5 HOURS OUTSIDE the house NOT playing video games or legos.
B) Although they protested before we left the house, the boys actually thought it was really cool. I was absolutely floored when YB said at lunch time, "I want to come back here TOMORROW!"
Where did we go?
Well... a really cool place with a three-letter acronym.
Sorry I don't have any personal photos to show you, but cameras weren't allowed.
At the visitor's center, they issued the boys these cool visitor badges.
According to this open source website, we might also have gotten to see a robotic dragonfly (insecto thopter), a robotic fish ("Charlie"), and a spy pigeon with a camera strapped to its chest among MANY other really cool gadgets. SO many, in fact, that we looked at about half the museum before we stopped and took a break to eat lunch in the cafeteria. The food in the cafeteria was delicious! When asked if his chicken sandwich with honey mustard sauce was good, ES replied, "No... it's AWESOME!!!" After we ate lunch we went back and checked out the other half of the exhibits and the gift shop.
After we left there, I also took the boys by my office today so they could see where I work. Nothing terribly exciting there, but at least they can picture in their minds where Daddy is going when he goes to work.
As for the rest of our New Year's Eve festivities (if you can call them that), the boys and I played some Mario Kart on the Wii (the intro video at that website is cute). I like that we can play four people at once on Mario Kart - it devides the screen up into quarters just like XBox games do. After that, I went and picked up a pizza and some chinese food, and we had a family movie night and watched Horton Hears a Who on Blu-Ray. It was pretty darn amazing in 1080p (high definition video in case you don't speak "1080p").
Now the boys are in bed and my wife and I are watching TV in front of the fireplace. The winds are howling and rattling the house outside. We're the types who won't usually last until midnight on New Year's Eve. We would normally at least have some champagne, but my poor wife is sick today, so I don't even think we'll partake of the bottle of champagne I picked up at the Henderson Hall package store.
Looking back on 2008, I think it was a pretty darn good year for us. I had trouble picking out what picture to put on our Christmas card this year because we had so many great family pictures from all sorts of different places - snorkeling at Oahu, snorkeling at Maui, snorkeling at the Big Island, Volcano National Park and the black sand beach on the Big Island, hiking Makapu'u Ridge, hiking Diamond Head, hiking to Manoa Falls, swimming under Waimea Falls, kayaking around Chinaman's Hat, the Submarine Birthday Ball at the Turtle Bay Resort, Dave & Jess' wedding in Oregon, Crater Lake National Park, the Humbolt Redwoods State Park, Sequoia National Park, Legoland, hiking in Utah, Grand Canyon National Park, the Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City, seeing the B-2 bomber at Wightman AFB, and our new home in Ashburn. (You can see pictures of all of the above if you just scroll back through my blog posts over the past year). We successfully finished the decommissioning of the Mighty MSP on schedule and without any major problems.
Yes, 2008 was a very good year for us. We certainly needed it to make up for the tough year we had in 2007 though.
I offer you all my warmest wishes for much joy and happiness in the coming new year.
My junior and senior year in college, I lived in a small two bedroom one bath apartment in PB (Pacific Beach). I had a computer in my bedroom, but I shared it with my roommate, Ryan.
While Ryan was on his summer midshipman cruise on a gator freighter (a.k.a. amphibious assault ship), someone introduced him to this game called Civilization. He ended up bringing the game home and installing it on my computer.
Many a night thereafter, I would awake in the wee hours of the morning and say to my groggy self, "Self, where is that bright light coming from???" I would lift my head up from my pillow and peer through my squinting eyes to see Ryan's butt firmly planted in my computer chair and his fingers on the keyboard. His face would be in a zombie-like trance, illuminated by the glow from the computer monitor as he played Civilization for hours on end.
"Dude. You. Need. Help. Go to bed."
I don't remember how long I resisted trying the game, but at some point, it sucked me in, too. I would waste HOURS upon HOURS playing Civilization. (You can imagine the STELLAR social life I enjoyed then, too).
There came a time though, when I had finally learned to beat the game and I got bored of it. Done. Fini.
Then the sinister powers-that-be declared, "Let there be Civ II." ...and it was good. And it did wasteth many more hours of my life.
I did learn an element of self control while playing Civ II though. I realized that hours would pass without my even noticing, and then I would be pissed off at myself for wasting the entire Saturday playing a useless video game. So I learned to set a timer. When the alarm would go off after an hour of playing, I would stop wherever I was and say, "That's enough, it's time to do something productive with my day."
No, really.
I hear you snickering. Seriously though, I really did set an alarm to limit my video game time, and I really did stop and save the game and move on with my life.
Believe it or not, LW also liked to play Civ II. After I installed our first home LAN, we used to play multi-player games of Civ II together back in Monterey.
Then we started having kids.
Civ II went by the wayside. Sleep was more important.
So what brought all this up, you ask?
It's amazing the things you find when you're moving. I happened upon the Civ II CD. It was calling my name like a siren's song. I couldn't resist. I had to play a game for old time's sake.
It sucked me in.
I didn't even hesitate to play the game in front of the boys. I thought it would be over their heads. There's no shooting or real action. You move pieces around on a map. You have to pay attention to food production and tax rates.
ES saw me playing and immediately there was a gleam in his eye.
"What's that?"
"Civilzation."
That was it.
No further explanation required.
It's as if that single word was explanation in and of itself of something magnificent.
The next thing I knew, I could hear the soft whispering noise of wood legs on carpet as ES dragged one of the dining room chairs over and sat down next to me. He just watched me play for a little bit. Then he started asking questions.
Now, we're in the midst of playing our first multi-player game together. I figured it wouldn't hurt to let him try it out. I reassured myself, "Self, he's QUICKLY going to see how incredibly boring the game is and he's going to give up and move on to something else."
That hasn't happened yet.
He keeps asking to continue playing our game, and we've been playing a bit every day for the past several days.
I'm not a terrible parent, am I?
Looking on the bright side:
a) It's time we're spending together. b) It's not just mindless time, it's interactive. c) He puts on his very best behavior routine, butters us up, and is super cooperative in doing things like taking his bath if he thinks we'll let him play Civ II. d) He's been reading a lot. I have it set on the lowest difficulty setting with the tutorials turned on, so it keeps popping up windows explaining the rules of the game and how things work, and he's reading them all. e) He's learning about different forms of government, taxes, and how to balance limited resources between defense, education, and building city improvements, etc.
I might need to start setting a timer for myself again.
*Footnote: Yes, I know they eventually came out with a few more sequels. LW actually really liked Civ III, but they changed too much of the game and I didn't care for it. Neither of us have tried Civ IV yet.
Friday for Family Movie Night, we broke our habit of getting our pizza from Boston's North End Pizza across the street and drove over to Pearl Ridge Mall to get pizza from CPK instead. We had a Santa Fe Chicken pizza that was really good.
Our movie selection for the evening was The Princess Bride. We had been talking about watching it for a couple of days, and I was pretty excited. Before we watched the movie, I kept saying things to ES like, "My name is Inego Montoya. You keeled my fadder. Prepare to die." and "Incontheivable!" ES thought I was crazy, looked at me like I had three heads and said, "What?!?!" The boys really enjoyed the movie, and now ES has been going around saying, "You keeled my fadder. Prepare to die." and "Incontheivable!"
I think given how well ES took to this movie and memorizing one-liner sound-bites from the movie, I may have to break out Monty Python and the Holy Grail next. Man, if I get ES quoting Monty Python, LW will go absolutely NUTS. :-)
Lazy Saturday
Saturday for me was one of those lazy days you need once in a while to just sit around and do nothing. In the morning, we happened upon Mr. Bean's Holiday on TV and got sucked into it. The boys and I really enjoyed it. None of us had watched any of Mr. Bean's stuff before. There wasn't a lot of dialog - just a lot of slapstick, physical type of comedy.
Then we watched the new episode of Battle 360 on the DVR. In case you haven't seen Battle 360 yet, here's a segment on YouTube:
LW was actually much more productive with her day, to include sneaking a car load of stuff off to Good Will (she has to do it in stealth mode so the boys won't throw a fit over the toys she takes).
Both our neighbors' husbands across the street were out of town and didn't feel like cooking, so we invited them to join us for dinner on the lanai. LW made up some awesome mini-cheesesteak sandwiches for dinner, some sort of frozen margarita concoction to drink, plus some downright sinful pots-de-creme from this PW recipe.
Mmmmm... Pots de creme (We forgot the whipped cream though)
Sunday
My favorite song on the radio right now is Song of Hope by Robbie Seay Band (click the song title to give it a listen). I'm sad though, because it has been elevated it to that ultimately popular status where they play it like once an hour and I know I'm going to be sick of hearing it by the end of the day. As much as I love KLOVE, I wish they wouldn't do that (play good songs so repetitively that they run them into the ground and make you sick of them).
When we went to church, they started off with one of those songs that in all reality is a pretty good song, but the radio stations have overplayed it so much that it's just like scraping finger nails across a chalk board to me (Heaven by Salvador). Luckily, they made up for it though and played one of my favorite and NOT overplayed songs after the sermon - I Can Only Imagine by MercyMe.
El Mariachi Mexican restaurant
For lunch, we made our third attempt to find the Mexican restaurant in Kaneohe that one of my JO's recommended (oops, sorry, I mean DO's - we're not supposed to call them JO's anymore). The first two times, we tried to find it just by using the address in the GPS receiver and had no luck. Today we actually called the place and asked for directions. The lady on the phone explained to us that they were tucked back behind the Aloha Gas Station on Kam Highway, across the street from the bank. If you happen to go looking for this place, that's an important point to remember because there are two Aloha Gas Stations right across the street from each other, so you need to go behind the one ACROSS the street from the bank.
El Mariachi Mexican restaurant is a very nondescript little hole in the wall. The fact that all the tables were full in a place so hard to find is a pretty good sign their food is good though, eh?
Atmosphere: Once you get inside, you'll find about 8 tables crammed into a small place with some Mexican music playing softly in the background. Most hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurants share the same decor - paintings of Mexican countryside scenery, a Mexican flag, etc. This place had some of those typical wall-hangings you would expect, but added a coat of textured red paint and some faux-brick wainscoting for a nicer appearance. Plus, it was cleaner than your average hole-in-the-wall type of place.
Food: Although they didn't have my favorite mole poblano on the menu, they did have a good variety of other Mexican dishes that I love like carnitas, chili verde, and carne asada. LW had the carne asada burrito - I tried a bite and it was excellent. I had the carnitas and it was also superb. The meat was tender, flaking apart, and flavorful. The guacamole was the smooth consistency of the processed stuff you get at other Tex-Mex chain restaurants (i.e. not made from fresh avocados), but it was alright. The drinks are served from a fountain (as opposed to selling you cans of soda). While it wasn't the BEST Mexican food I've had on the island, it was certainly a very tasty meal that I enjoyed very much.
Service: When we got there, all the tables were full, but we only had to wait like 5 minutes for someone to finish and leave for them to clear off the table for us to sit. Have you ever played that addicting game Diner Dash on the internet? I felt like I was in a real live version of that game. There was one waitress serving all 8 tables, but I thought she did an excellent job. Given how small the place is, she was never far away from any of us and easy to get her attention. She was working her butt off, but she did a great job.
Lego Sculptures at the Mall
After lunch, LW went to get a pedicure with the neighbor ladies from across the street. I had wanted to take the boys for a hike, but it was drizzling rain off and on with some heavy black clouds looming overhead. I didn't want to get a mile out and have the heavens open up, dumping buckets on us and turning the trail to mud (not like that's ever happened to us before).
The boys check-out the hanging-man. That gray tower he's hanging from is all made out of legos, too.
ES and J check out the Parthenon.
Man! How do I sign up for THAT job?!?! I wish someone would pay ME to sit around and make sculptures out of legos all day. I couldn't do what he does with the curves of human forms, but I could totally do the parthenon and the other balanced shapes. Maybe when the Navy is done with me we can retire to Legoland!
This afternoon, I tried to be at least a little bit productive. When we moved the furniture around last week (when we thought we were staying in Hawaii for shore duty), I took down all the pictures hanging on my "me wall" because we wanted to put the entertainment center along that wall. Now that we're NOT staying in Hawaii and we have company coming at the end of this week, LW made up a new honey-do list for me, and the first item was to rehang the pictures. Normally, I wouldn't mind so much, but the aluminum frames in these houses make hanging pictures a pain in the arse. At least I got that item crossed off the honey-do list.
I started to write about wine-tasting tonight, but I'm going to save that for another post. This one has gone on long enough. If you've actually made it this far and read all of my rambling above, then please leave a comment - I'd love to know WHY??? :-)
I'm surprised I've gone so long without yet writing about Lego Indiana Jones. ES got it for his birthday from Grammy. It came in the mail just before we left on our vacation to the Big Island, so we got to check it out before we left.
Now that we're back home and the kids are on summer vacation, that's almost all the boys have wanted to do all day everyday is play Lego Indiana Jones. LW has had to ration them and kick them out of the house to play and make a disaster area of our yard building forts and whatnot.
Lego Indiana Jones (LIJ) is AWESOME. Much like Lego Star Wars (LSW), it does a similarly hilarious job of telling the story of the movie without any dialog - just grunts and gestures and physical comedy. Through exploring LIJ, it dawned on me one of the reasons I liked LSW so much was the puzzle aspect of it. You have to figure out which pieces go where to unlock or remove the obstacles and progress through the game. LIJ has continued that puzzle-solving aspect and even improved on it a bit more. For example, there are more tools that you have to find and use in LIJ. Sometimes, a monkey will be sitting up on a wall holding the tool you need, so first you have to find a banana. If you throw the banana to the monkey, then he'll grab the banana and drop the tool.
Like LSW though, LIJ is very forgiving and playable by small children. You may not unlock all the bonuses or get the highest score, but you can still progress through the storyline just fine.
You can check out the trailer for the video game on my previous post here.
The new secret codeword: JUNIOR
Both boys had been outside playing with the neighborhood kids. ES and our neighbor J decided they wanted to come inside to play LIJ. They didn't want to say it out loud so YB would hear, because then he would want to come in and play, too, and unfortunately it's only a two-player game. So instead, they made up their new secret codeword for LIJ. They came in the house and declared they wanted to play "Lego Junior."
LW and I were perplexed by this and didn't know what the heck they were talking about. (The secret code worked then, right?) Can any of you figure out how they came up with that name?
In The Last Crusade, Indy's father (Sean Connery) calls Indy, "Junior." So instead of saying Lego Indiana Jones, they replaced "Indiana Jones" with "Junior" and called it "Lego Junior." I thought that was pretty clever.
O... M... G... We're sitting here watching a silly movie on TV (Deck the Halls), and Matthew Broderick tries to back his car out of the driveway and gets his car doors ripped off by the trailer hitches on the campers parked on either side of his driveway. Do you know what my 7 year old son said? "Uh-oh! Better call Geico!" Whatever ad agency handles the Geico account deserves a medal, because that was most definitely the result of an excellent advertising campaign.
Things like this really scare the crap out of me...
We went to the NEX so that ES could spend his birthday money on a new webkinz dog. (He needed another webkinz like I need a hole in my head, but I'm sure you could say the same thing about half the stuff I collect, too). They were having a buy-one-get-one-free special, and ES very generously allowed YB to pick out the second webkinz instead of taking both for himself. Off we go to the car, each son carrying their new webkinz in an NEX plastic shopping bag. We get buckled in the car and start driving away. My sensitivity threshold for plastic bag noises in the back seat was turned way down due to the rustle-rustle-rustle of them getting in the car with their bags and then taking their new webkinz out to play with them, etc, etc, etc.
My threshold was suddenly reset and alarm bells went off in the back of my head when all of a sudden ES yelled, "No YB!!! Take that off your head!!!" Almost immediately after he said that, I could hear YB's muffled voice say, "Look! I'm a snowman!" Yeah, he was pretending to be a snowman by putting a plastic bag over his head. THANK GOD ES saw him and KNEW that was BAD and told him to stop. LW and I each talked to YB subsequently about not putting things over our heads. It just really freaks me out and makes me worry what might happen to one of our kids one day when someone ISN'T watching. I pray the Lord will always watch over and protect my family from such simple dangers that are around us every day.
On a positive note, I've noticed ES maturing a lot lately and taking on more of a big-brother role, watching out for his little brother and helping him out. Sometimes it results in a hissy-fit from YB when he doesn't WANT the help, but still - it's nice that ES is genuinely trying to HELP.
Case in Point: Yesterday I took the boys to Ala Moana Center to run an errand and have some dinner at Islands. We had a birthday coupon for ES for Islands that had to be used in the month of his birthday, and yesterday was the last day of May. LW wasn't feeling well and stayed home. As we were walking through the mall on the way to our errand, YB complained of his foot itching. ES very kindly led YB to a place to sit down, asked him very nicely to sit down, took of YB's shoe, scratched his foot (resulting in much giggling from YB), and put the shoe back on. I was flabbergasted.
ES scratching YB's foot at Ala Moana Center. (Yes, that's the new Webkinz dog.)
The other highlight of our trip to Ala Moana (besides the AWESOME dinner we had at Islands) was a trip to the family restroom in the mall. We see more and more of these "family" restrooms wherever we go, and it's nice to have a restroom large enough for the three of us to fit in and take care of business without me having to cram into a stall to help YB with his pants while ES is getting in the way of other people in the restroom by the sink.
This, however, is the first time I've seen a family restroom with a YB-sized toilet.
There were two toilets in the room, one regular size and one tiny version.
There was even a second sink that was the perfect height for YB, too.
More Wii Adventures
Before we got Wii Fit, I always thought of people who did yoga as human pretzels. I never would have even tried yoga if Wii Fit hadn't invaded our home, because I don't think of myself as one of those human pretzels.
Up until today, I have rather enjoyed the basic yoga exercises on Wii Fit for stretching and flexibility. However (comma) as I have progressed through the exercises, I have unlocked some of the more advanced positions, and today I felt like I was trying to twist my body in directions that my body wasn't designed to do.
I've been doing the tree for several days now, but today was the first time I fell over while trying to do the tree. It gave me flashbacks to another embarrassing episode of similar body-orientation and physics.
Some of the new yoga exercises I tried today were...
Triangle. It looks so simple doesn't it??? It's the turning your head and looking up at the ceiling and pointing your hand to the ceiling while keeping your balance on the balance board that really makes it challenging.
Dance. This one was the end of me today. I think I pulled a muscle in my palm and my forearm, and pulled or pinched something around my right collarbone. Human pretzel indeed!
I picked up ES from school yesterday afternoon. In the car on the way home, he told me he didn't have to take a lunch to school on Tuesday. In my typical silly-daddy mode, I tried guessing why ES didn't have to take a lunch to school. After guessing he was going to starve and not eat anything, I took a guess that they would be feeding him fish heads at school. "Fish heads?!?!" he said giggling. Then I started singing the chorus of the fish heads song.
I only sang the chorus once and then stopped and waited for a response from the back seat. ...Silence... Snicker... Giggle... Hee-hee-hee... Haw-haw-haw... He laughed the entire way home. He kept trying to sing the fish heads song himself, but he could only get one and a half words into it (fish he...) before he would spontaneously combust in fits of little boy giggling laughter. You'd think that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard in his life.
Wii Fit Update
LW is kicking my butt. She holds the #1 spot in most of the exercises on the Wii Fit. She likes to gloat a little bit, too. I was doing the pushups exercise and I thought I did really well. It gives you a score based on your balance, and I got a really good score. I was SURE I was going to get the #1 spot. After it shows you your score, then it goes to a screen at the bottom of the rankings and scrolls up the rankings so the last thing you see is who's in the #1 slot. I watched it scroll up... and LW was in the #1 spot. I heard a snicker from the direction of LW's chair behind me.
Right across the street from the Pacific Aviation Museum and the old air traffic control tower (you know - the one where Ben Affleck valiantly charges up it and tries to single-handedly stop the attacking Japanese planes with a shotgun).
My Eng and ex-Nav recommended this place, so we went to check it out. When we first drove up, I was like, "Ugh... THIS is a RESTAURANT?"
Looks can be deceiving. This place is pretty old, dilapidated and not fancy, but it's clean and the food and service are excellent. There are a variety of things on the dry-erase board hand-written menu, but there's a heavy Mexican food influence. I had the New Mexico Pork Burrito and it was AWESOME. Bread from Commissary
I don't remember if I wrote about this before, but this organic garlic bread they have for sale at the commissary is REALLY good!
John Adams
LW recorded the John Adams miniseries on our DVR a while back, but we didn't get around to watching the first episode until last night. (Primarily because we missed the first episode and we had to wait a while for the DVR to catch it on a rerun). It was REALLY good. Paul Giamatti (John Adams) and Laura Linney (Abigail Adams) are excellent actors and passionately brought the story to life. Aside: I also highly recommend David McCullough's book John Adams (nonfiction) and Jeff Shaara's pair of novels about the Revolution, Rise to Rebellion and The Glorious Cause. The books and the miniseries go very well together. Everybody's Moving
I'm having flashbacks to Monterey. As a student at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, one has a tendency to forget that you're in the military. You wear civilian clothes to school so as not to let rank interfere with the free exchange of ideas in the classroom. Once a quarter though, you would get a reminder as all the moving trucks descended upon the military housing with big wood crates to take household goods overseas to the graduating students' next duty stations.
Anyway, it's not hard to remember you're in the military here, but usually the moving trucks are a little more evenly spread out across time. Lately they've been really busy on our street. There are four houses already in the progress of moving. Come September when we leave, I think our street will be a completely different neighborhood.
It must be genetic
Friday morning I went to the end of year "graduation" ceremony at YB's preschool. It amazed me to sit and watch as his entire class of cute little pre-schoolers sang a song about "ohana" and "family" and did all the clapping and hand gestures to go along with it... and YB stood there like a stone statue not singing or doing any of the hand movements.
We're making progress though. When LW and I went to the Christmas pageant at his preschool, he didn't even stand up there with the rest of his class. He got down off the steps and hid in the first pew of the church. Periodically he would peek his little head up above the edge of the pew and look at us, then lower his head and hide again. So at least this time he didn't hide, right?
I just don't understand why ALL the OTHER kids will stand up there and do the song and dance, but OUR kids won't. ES was the same way in pre-school. He refused to participate in any of the performances, but the result was he stuck out like a sore thumb because he was the ONLY kid NOT participating. I remember one performance where he wouldn't even stand up with the rest of his classmates until I gave him my cover to wear.
ES's Preschool Thanksgiving Show Sterling, VA 2005
Note that all the other kids in ES's class above wore their cute little pilgrim and native american hats, but ES is wearing my khaki combination cover because that's the only way we could get him to go up there with the rest of the kids.
For any of you who would like to watch YB's statuesque performance yesterday, I uploaded it to YouTube. Sorry it gets a little shaky in the middle because LW didn't have a very good angle and passed the camera off to me, so it wobbles around a little bit while I get settled in a new angle. YB is the one in the red polo shirt in the middle of the shot NOT DOING ANYTHING.
My latest internet game addiction is the Travel IQ on www.tripadvisor.com. In the basic version of the game, it shows you a world map. It flashes up the names of capitals, major cities, and major landmarks (like the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower). You have to use your mouse to point where it is on the map. You get points for both accuracy and speed (more points for accuracy than for speed). There is a time limit on each name, so you can't go off looking it up on Google Earth. With each round, the cities and landmarks get more and more obscure and harder to find.
I keep scoring in the 141-145 range, then Loping Squid took it and got like a 161 the first try. Thbbbbt! :-P Sorry, I don't mean to be a poor sport. Good job Loping Squid!
They provided the html on the website to insert the game into your website or blog, but it comes up too big to fit into the blogger window, so I took it out. You can try playing the game here.
My user name is Blunoz708 on the TripAdvisor website if you want to add me to your Traveler Network.
We haven't even picked up the new Lego Indiana Jones video game yet, and now I see Lego BATMAN is coming out in September! Turn my blog music off at the bottom of the page and then click play on this trailer:
Aside: Of course, before we can play Lego anything, we need to get our X-Box fixed. We got the "three blinking red lights of death" that all the X-Boxes have been experiencing. I was pleased to read that X-Box will repair this problem even if your X-Box is out of warranty. I called the repair number and they sent me a box via UPS. All I had to do was open the box, put my X-Box in, tape it shut (they even provided the tape!) and slap on the return UPS shipping label. Hopefully it comes back quick.
Getting back to video game reviews...
One of the reasons Lego Star Wars was such a big hit in our house was that it's very easy to control and it's very forgiving of mistakes. You may not get ALL the bonus features or the top score if you aren't playing it with the precision of an experienced hand, but small children can play and have fun and progress through the basic story line without dying and starting over at the beginning. If your character does "die" then you just pick up right where you left off.
A new game we found for the Wii that YB really likes is the Go Diego Go! Safari Rescue. Like Lego Star Wars, Safari Rescue is very forgiving. It won't let you jump off any cliffs or into any danger. When you paddle your boat on the river, you're supposed to dodge the alligators and hippos, but if you bump into them, they just say, "That's okay, Diego" and you keep moving along.
Before this, YB hasn't played much Wii because he doesn't really have the motor skills or understanding of the controls to do much besides play Wii Boxing. In addition to being a forgiving of mistakes type of game, Safari Rescue really helps YB understand the Wii motions by the little orange window in the lower left hand corner of the screen that shows him how to hold the controller and what direction to move it. YB just has to immitate the motion of the character in the orange window and it guides him through each stage of the game.
YB in his cockpit playing Safari Rescue. (Notice the little orange character in the lower left corner showing him how to move the controller.)
A couple of other cool things worth checking out:
My Dad sent me a couple of pretty cool videos this week. The first one (click here) is of a local newspaper reporter riding in a Blue Angels F/A-18 and passing out multiple times. It's pretty funny to watch. The second one (click here) is a Natioanal Geographic special on USS TEXAS (SSN-775). It's pretty long (45 minutes), but it's fairly well done. I like how the oxygen generator is "revolutionary" as if it was something NEW built JUST for the TEXAS. Actually, we've been using oxygen generators on our submarines for decades, but... It's still a pretty cool show.
From September 2007 to September 2008, this blog started out as a journal of my family's adventures around Hawaii. Then from 2008 to 2011, we lived in the Northern Virginia (NoVA) suburbs of Washington, DC. From the spring of 2011 to 2013, we called the Pacific Northwest "home." In June 2013, we moved back to the DC suburbs again. I like finding cool things for us to do that get us out of the house, so I will continue to blog about our adventures around the DC area, as well as periodic musings about whatever else strikes me as funny or odd. Note: These are my frank and honest opinions. Nobody is paying me to write anything in my blog.
Gouge Index (a.k.a. Links to Common Topics in My Blog)
My name is Kevin. I'm 40-something. I have a lovely wife (LW) and two great little boys, Eldest Son = ES and Younger Brother = YB (in older posts, I previously referred to him as Youngest Son or YS). I'm a submarine officer, and I've been in the Navy for 21+ years.
I started this blog to document our family adventures around Hawaii for family and friends. After that we moved to DC and then to Bremerton, WA. We have since moved back to the DC suburbs and I continue blogging about my random observations of life.
If you would like to contact me, you may email me at blunozblog at hotmail dot com.
Geocaching!
My wife refers to me as a "crack addict" when it comes to geocaching. Geocaching is like a scavenger hunt with a GPS receiver. People hide stuff in the woods and post the GPS coordinates on the geocaching website, and techno-gadget geeks like me go hiking in the woods looking for them. My wife calls it "Geek-meets-Nature."
It's the only magazine I have consistently kept a subscription to and read every month. Although I don't agree with the magazine's recurring theme of agnosticism / anti-religion, I skip those articles and soak up all the cool electronic gadgets and technology articles.
Outside Magazine is another new favorite of mine. One thing I really like about Outside Magazine is the photography. The pictures are absolutely amazing, but there's more to it than just the picture. Outside Magazine includes a short description of who the photographer was and how he/she got into position to capture the shot at just the right moment.
What I'm listening to...
KLOVE - contemporary Christian music
or First Wave - 80's alternative music on Sirius channel 22.
Where'd I get the name "blunoz" from?
On my first deployment as a junior officer on USS PROVIDENCE (SSN 719), I had the awesome experience of going north of the Arctic Circle. The Navy has many customs and traditions, and when you cross a significant invisible line in the ocean like the Arctic Circle or the Equator, you have to go through an initiation ceremony. When I returned from that first deployment, I got a new license plate on my car, but had to fit it into 6-letters, so I condensed blue nose into "blunoz."
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