Inherited Preferences

Isn't it odd how we inherit certain preferences from roommates and coworkers?

Example #1: Pizza in Mystic, CT

When I reported to the Submarine Officer Basic Course (SOBC) in Groton, CT, I thought I would just live in the BOQ (Bachelor Officer Quarters) on base. It was cheap. I didn't spend anything on gas because I could walk everywhere I needed on base. I was going to a boat out of Groton, so I could stay in the BOQ indefinitely if I wanted to do so.

Then someone explained to me that if I moved out of the BOQ before I detached from sub school and reported to the boat, then I would get paid per diem for the entire time I was temporarily living in the BOQ. That amounted to about $3,000 cash back then. So I said, to myself, "Self, let's just see what's available out in town."

Low and behold, a couple of bubblehead JO's who lived in an old house in Mystic were looking for a 3rd roommate and posted a note on a bulletin board at sub school. I answered the ad, and to make a long story short, moved into the old house in the historic district of Mystic.

We were just a few blocks north of the main drag through Mystic that went over the draw bridge, and there were two pizza places to choose from practically across the street from each other - Mystic Pizza and Pizzaworks.

The very first time I went out to get pizza with my new roommates, they insisted that Pizzaworks was the better of the two and that Mystic Pizza was just hyped up because of the movie with Julia Roberts. I took their word for it and just ALWAYS went to Pizzaworks, even when my roommates weren't around.

It took me about two years or so before I ever actually broke that habbit and TRIED Mystic Pizza for the first time, and ya know what? They have DARN good pizza! I especially LOVE the Greek pizza at Mystic Pizza.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that Pizzaworks wasn't good. I still loved Pizzaworks and would alternate between the two shops after that. I was just sorry I had ignored Mystic Pizza all that time because of the opinions of my roommates.

What brought this up you ask?

Example #2: Sandwich Shops in Crystal City

I reported to my current job, and my predecessor and my new coworkers all walked me through the choice of sandwich shops across the street from our building. There's a Quiznos, and then there are three other non-chain shops to choose from. The lunch rules according to the guys in my office were:

- If you want a sandwich, go to Jefferson Cafe. All the guys in my office swear by the Jefferson Cafe as being the best sandwiches in the building.
- If you want a salad, go to the SoHo salad bar. They have a lower price per weight than Jefferson and the same types and quality of stuff on their salad bar.
- If you want soup, go to the Soup Nutsy. They have four different soups to choose from each day.

Well, like the good little conformist lemming that I am (ha ha), I just took their word for it.

Don't get me wrong! I do LOVE the sandwiches at Jefferson Cafe, but I didn't go there very often because they aren't the most healthy and not very condusive to keeping in shape. A sandwich from the Jefferson Cafe is reserved for once-in-a-while special occasions for me. Plus, they have these wicked coconut brownies that I find hard to resist - all the more reason not to go to Jefferson. I do like soup though, so I tend to go to the Soup Nutsy a lot and do the half-sandwich and soup combo.

For some reason though, last week I decided I needed a change. I wanted to try something different. So I went to SoHo to see what they had on their deli menu.

I have to tell you that my new favorite thing for lunch is the West Village wrap at the SoHo deli. Chicken, avocados, lettuce, pico de gallo... It's sooooo good. I think I've had three or four in the past two weeks.

It gets better though. I was having a craving for some saccarine a fountain soda, so I went to get a soda while waiting for my wrap.

First, they have Diet Coke. Cha-ching! I'm lovin' this place.

But then... wait for it... two words...

CRUSHED.

ICE.

I have two deep philosophical questions for all three of you who are still reading this:

1) Why is crushed ice so much better than ice cubes? I mean, why would it matter? Somehow it just seems to make fountain soda taste even better. Maybe the extra surface area of the smaller pieces of ice somehow makes the saccarine sweeter???

b) Since crushed ice is CLEARLY so much better than ice cubes, why do so FEW places serve crushed ice? Do the ice crusher machines cost more in operations and maintainance costs?


So what about you dear readers? Any personal preferences you learned from a friend, roommate, or coworker and later discovered you didn't necessarily agree with?

Happy Mother's Day

This was the day my wonderful wife became a Mom.

Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP)
May 2001
(Can you believe ES was ever so small???)

I hope all of the mothers in both my real llife and those who just read my blog had a wonderful Mother's Day.

My wife said for Mother's Day she wanted to make a road trip to IKEA, so yesterday we made the 45 minute drive down to Woodbridge, VA.

We got lost in IKEA. It was one of those, "Wait, didn't we already walk past those storage bins once before?" moments when I realized we had gone in a circle and never actually happened upon the exit. Luckily, just then we ran into our friends W & L. Actually, W ran into me - very literally, with his shopping cart to get my attention. :-) Thank goodness they found us. They guided us out of the wilderness light fixtures section to the cash registers and then to Fuddrucker's for lunch.

Last night my wife and I watched the movie Fireproof on DVD, and it was really good. In case you haven't heard of it: Fireproof is a Christian movie about a fireman in a struggling marriage and a 40-day love dare his dad puts him on to save his marriage. In comparison to other Hollywood type movies, okay, it wasn't a mega-blockbuster. However, for a movie put together by a church organization, I thought it was really quite good. Plus, my wife stayed awake for the entire movie! (That doesn't happen often.)


Mother's Day Recap

Our boys have a tendency to come into our room at night when they have a bad dream or need a drink of water or they want their music turned back on or they can't find their stuffed animal du jour or they're too hot or they're too cold or they feel sick or they're not sleepy or they're too sleepy or there was a weird noise outside or there was a weird noise inside or they want to know if we set the DVR to record iCarly or the economy is tanking or property values are down or the pirates are being a general nuisance off the coast of Somalia or...

Anyway, rarely does a night go by that at least one if not both of them get up in the middle of the night. Sometimes it's more than once in a night.

Unfortunately for my wonderful wife, you could set a tactial nuclear weapon off in our bedroom and I wouldn't wake up, so the boys always go to my wife's side of the bed and wake her up.

Last night before bedtime, I begged the boys to PLEASE not wake my wife up in the middle of the night. Granted, I would prefer they didn't get up AT ALL in the middle of the night, but if they did, I told them to PLEASE wake me up instead of Mommy. They said ok.

Okay, so all that was a long lead-in way to tell you about our Mother's Day here at the Blunoz household.

First off, the boys kept their promise and didn't wake anybody up in the middle of the night, so my wife and I BOTH got a good night's sleep last night.

I got up with the boys and tried to convince them to come with me to Dunkin Donuts. They were more interested in playing video games, so I told them to remain quiet. I ran out and got my wife's favorite French Vanilla coffee and donuts from DD along with some roses.

The boys were super helpful and cooperative today. When I told ES it was time to get dressed for church, he said, "Okay," and saved his game and went upstairs to get dressed. I was floored.

After church, we went to one of our usual lunch spots, the Spicy Pickle, then got haircuts and went to the Leesburg outlet mall. Again, the boys were AWESOME and cooperative and didn't whine or moan or groan about shopping.

It was a gorgeous day out... 72 degrees, sunny, and early enough in the season that the bugs aren't out yet. We grilled a steak on the barbecue grill and had a very nice dinner out on the back deck. This was the first time we have eaten out on the deck since we moved into this house.

Dinner on the Deck

The "You Are Special" red plate was a tradition of my friends Chris & Cathleen that we sort of adopted, although we don't use the special plate nearly as often as we could.

Again, the boys were AWESOME and didn't whine about eating their dinner or taking a bath or getting ready for bed. After I got the boys bathed and in bed, I made a run over to Maggie Moo's and got some Happy Mother's Day ice cream for my wonderful wife.

While I was there, I got some for me, too, of course. :-9

So overall, I think it was a pretty darn good day and I'm overjoyed at how good and cooperative the boys were.

I hope you had a Happy Mother's Day, Sweetie!

$1 Fares for Military on JetBlue!!!

FLASH TRAFFIC! MUST ACT FAST!

JetBlue is offering $1 fares to Active Duty military for non-stop flights from Dulles or Richmond in the month of May.

You have to purchase the tickets before May 7th, and some of the destinations like Long Beach, CA have already sold out of the $1 fare deal.

Just thought I'd pass this on for those in the DC area who might want to take advantage of it. My JOs are booking weekend trips home as I type this.

For details, click here.

He's too smart for me

Man, I can't wait to go through the teenage years with ES. (Just a little bit of sarcasm there.)

He turns 8 years old this month.

He's already started to call me out when he knows I'm wrong. I suppose I brought this upon myself though. I have a tendency to be very sarcastic and say things just to get a rise out of him, so he has learned over time to question the things I say and determine if what I said was true or if I was teasing him again.

I suggested we go out for Mexican food tonight in honor of Cinco de Mayo. Not because I have any reason to celebrate Cinco de Mayo mind you, only because I love Mexican food and will use any excuse I can to go eat Mexican food. ES responded that we shouldn't go out for Mexican because all the Mexican restaurants would be busy because it's Cinco de Mayo.

Did I mention he's almost 8?

Yep, you're right. You got me there, son.

So we went to Bluz Brothers Barbecue for dinner instead and they had an awesome lineup of tunes playing from Sirius satellite radio. As we got ready to leave dinner, they started playing R.E.M. "Stand." I was singing along as usual when we left the restaurant. We got to the part about, "Now face North," and I hopped and spun and landed facing one direction. After I landed, I said to myself, "Self, that's not really north you're facing, but oh well." We continued walking toward the car, and I got to the "Now face West," part and I hopped and landed - this time actually facing west.

ES immediately threw a flag on the play.

"Daddy." He said it dead-pan, matter-of-factly. "If you're facing west now, then you weren't facing north back there the first time you hopped."

Yep. He caught me alright. (I bet if I had asked him to figure out which way really was North there in the parking lot, then he would have figured it out pretty quick).

Then there are the questions he asks...

It's great when he asks these questions when we're out on a hike or driving somewhere together and have time to talk about it. More often than not though, he asks me these questions right at bedtime. Every night, I tuck him into bed, we say his bedtime prayers together, I kiss him and say, "Goodnight," and then it begins...

"Daddy?"

"Yes, son?"

"You know how Russia used to be part of the Soviet Union with a communist government? What type of government did they have before they became communist?"

or

"Why are some countries poor? Why can't the poor countries just print more money?"

or

"Why is President Obama going to move all our troops from Iraq to Afghanistan?"

or

"Why do we have copyright laws?"

or

"What type of government did India have before they became a British colony?"

or

Update 5/15/09: "What does force majeure mean?"

Did I mention he turns 8 this month?

I need to bring my laptop with me to tuck ES in to bed at night because I'm running out of answers to his questions. I should just prop my laptop on his night table with wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook queued-up ready to answer the question of the evening.

I can't help but wonder how much longer it will be before he thinks he's smarter than me - or actually IS smarter than me (gulp!).

What then?

Wiipairs Follow Up

Okay, so disregard my previous praise for Nintendo customer service.

As you surely already know, my wife is much smarter than I am, and she didn't understand why we had to PAY to have the Wii Balance Board fixed since it's less than a year old.

So I looked up the Wii Balance Board user manual (click for PDF file) to read what the warranty said. On page 12, it says...

"HARDWARE WARRANTY
Nintendo of America Inc. ("Nintendo") warrants to the original purchaser that the hardware product shall be free from defects in material and workmanship for twelve (12) months from the date of purchase. If a defect covered by this warranty occurs during this warranty period, Nintendo will repair or replace the defective hardware product or component, free of charge."

I said to myself, "Self, how long have we really had the Wii Balance Board? I think your Lovely Wife is right and it has been less than a year." I checked my blog, and sure enough, LW bought it on 22 May 2008. So we were absolutely within the 12 month warranty on the hardware and should not have to pay for the repairs, right???

I called Nintendo customer service back to point out the error. The customer service representative claimed that the Wii Balance Board is an "accessory" not "hardware," and the warranty on page 12 goes on to state...

"GAME & ACCESSORY WARRANTY
Nintendo warrants to the original purchaser that the product (games and accessories) shall be free from defects in material and workmanship for a period of three (3) months from the date of purchase..."

I threw the BS flag on that.

This is the user manual for THE WII BALANCE BOARD. What other HARDWARE came with the WII BALANCE BOARD???

NONE!

The WII BALANCE BOARD IS THE HARDWARE!!!

Saying that the Wii Balance Board falls under the accessory clause of the Wii Balance Board User Manual is like saying the Will Balance Board is an accessory to itself. Where's the beef I mean, hardware?

An accessory to the Wii Balance Board would be the silicone cover or the rechargable battery pack my wife bought for it. If Nintendo didn't want to give a 12 month warranty with the balance board itself, then they shouldn't have printed that in the HARDWARE section of the manual for the BALANCE BOARD.

The customer service rep said that it is a standard warranty blurb they print in all their manuals and the intent was the 12 month "hardware" warranty was on the Wii CONSOLE. I said then they should WRITE that in the warranty because I consider the balance board to be "hardware," especially when this is the Wii Balance Board Manual I'm reading, not a a Wii Console manual.

When I spoke with the customer service rep's supervisor, the supervisor pointed out a sentence on page 1 of the user manual, "Please carefully and completely read the Wii™ Operations Manual - System Setup before using this accessory." (emphasis mine) and declared therefore it is clearly an accessory. He stood his ground based on that sentence on page 1 and insisted the Balance Board is obviously an accessory and therefore only has a 3 month warranty.

I don't think I'm totally crazy here folks. It just doesn't pass the "average Joe" / common sense test in my mind.

In fact, I challenge Nintendo to do a study of random people on the street.

I challenge Nintento to walk up to a hundred random people on the street, hand them the Wii Balance Board User Manual, and ask them, "How long is the warranty on the Wii Balance Board?" I bet MOST if not all of them will flip to the warranty on page 12, read it, and say, "It's hardware, so the warranty is for 12 months." (Oh, and no fair asking 100 "random" people on the Nintendo campus or at a law school where they nitpick stupid stuff like this.)

For a single data point, I approached one of my coworkers in the office this afternoon. I handed him a print out of the manual. Without telling him why I was asking, I asked him how long he thought the warranty was good for on the Wii Balance Board. He flipped through to the warranty section, he read it, and he said, "it says the hardware is covered for 12 months."

What do you think? Am I crazy?

Yes, yes, I said myself up above that this is nitpicky stupid stuff. That's why I stopped arguing with the guy on the phone - I wasn't getting anywhere with him. It feels good to vent though.

Kailee's Run

Sunday morning was Kailee's Run - a 5K fund raiser to benefit Tracy's Kids who have helped Kailee, a member of our church, in a battle with cancer.

It turns out that walking 7 miles around DC sight-seeing yesterday was a pretty good warm up for running in the 5K this morning. I set a new PR at 29:16 - nowhere near the front of the pack, but a darn good time for me.

Segway into related topic... you'll see the connection in a few minutes.

I think maybe I'm just cursed when it comes to electronic gadgets.

You don't have to scroll back very far in my blog to find a couple of common themes - an obsession with high-tech electronic gadgets... and an element of frustration and banging my head against the wall when said high-tech electronic gadgets don't work right.

No, I'm not going to regale you with more stories of my BlackBerry woes. Although I will say that my wife got the same BlackBerry that I did the same day that I did (buy one get one free promo). We use pretty much the same applications on them, too, and she doesn't seem to have the same problems I have with her BlackBerry. Maybe it's just me.

Okay, so yesterday we went to do our sight-seeing trip around DC. I wore my Garmin Forerunner GPS watch to keep track of the mileage we walked. When we got out of the car at the Iwo Jima Memorial, I looked at my watch to see what time it was. The watch said 9:16:50... I said to myself, "Self, I coulda sworn we left the house about 9:15, did we travel back in time?" In the time it took me to ask myself that question, I noted that the seconds didn't budge.

Yep, my super-whamodyne fancy high-tech GPS watch read 9:16:50 the ENTIRE day.

I tried looking for a reset button somewhere but found none. I tried pushing and holding one or both buttons for multiple seconds to see if that did anything. Nope, nada, zip, no response.

When we got home from sight-seeing, I went on the Garmin website and looked up the trouble-shooting guide. In order to do a factory reset, first you have to hold BOTH buttons for 6 seconds then LET GO of the TOP button for 3 seconds. Gosh darnit, why didn't *I* think of that???

That worked.

Then it beeped at me and told me the battery was low.

Nice.

No, it didn't really matter by that point, it just seemed to add insult to injury. No worries, I put it on the charger last night to get it fully charged before the 5K this morning.

Everything started out fine on the 5K, but it was sprinkling rain. Over the course of the run, it grew to a deluge of rain and I was SOPPING wet by the end.

Kailee's Run in the Rain

The Garmin Forerunner uses a cool touch-screen type of display where you touch the corners of the bezel to activate different functions.

Well... it doesn't work so well in the rain.

The water pretty much shorted out all four corners of the bezel. The entire run, the watch was beeping at me as the rain was causing it to go into all sorts of different sub-menus and activating all sorts of obscure work-out programs and options. I had NO control over it. When I actually touched anywhere on the bezel with my finger, it didn't respond at all.

The RAIN was in control.

Normally, my watch tells me how far I've run and what my pace is. This morning, I couldn't get it to go back to the display that told me how far I ran or what pace I was running, so I had no clue for the duration of the race.

So I just ran.

No idea what my pace was. I just ran at what I thought was a comfortable steady pace that I could maintain to the finish line.

It still recorded the data though, and I was able to download it when I got home. When I got home and looked at my pace and my time on the computer screen, my jaw dropped. I routinely jog 3 miles around Ashburn on my own, and I usually finish in about 30-33 minutes or so. Today I hit the 3 mile mark at 28:27 and I finished the 5K at 29:16. That averages out to about a 9 1/2 minute/mile pace, which is pretty darn good for me.

I still think maybe I'm just cursed with (a) an obsession with electronic gadgets and (b) very bad luck with getting them to work right.

Sight-seeing around DC

We have friends visiting from out of town and did some sight-seeing around DC on Saturday. We grabbed some donuts at the Fractured Prune and then headed in to town. Our first stop was at the Iwo Jima Memorial.

Blunoz self-portrait at Iwo Jima Memorial.

(It's too bad our guests didn't come in June-August so we could attend the Sunset Parade by the USMC band and drill team).

Then we went to Arlington National Cemetery. I've been wanting to take the boys here for a while, so I was glad our guests wanted to go there this weekend.

ES at JFK's Eternal Flame.


ES walking toward Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

ES watches Changing of the Guard

Panorama Shot of LW, S, C, & the boys.
(Click on photo to enlarge)

YB at Arlington National Cemetery

Oh, and it's not everyday that you get to see General Lee walking up to his old house in Arlington. (Photo by LW)

Next, we grabbed some lunch in the food court at the Pentagon City Mall and then walked over to see the Pentagon Memorial. This was my first time visiting the Pentagon Memorial since we moved back to DC seven months ago. It was a really nice memorial and I was very glad we went to see it. There is a lot of symbology here in the way the memorial was designed.

(Disclaimer: Although there are signs that say "no photography" all around the Pentagon, there are signs at the entrance to the memorial that state photography IS allowed INSIDE the memorial.)

YB at the Pentagon Memorial


Panorama shot (click to enlarge)

Another Panorama Shot (click to enlarge)

There is a reflecting pool under each bench.

So a little bit about the layout of the memorial... There's one bench for each person who died in the Pentagon or on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. The benches that point away from the Pentagon are for the people who were in the Pentagon looking out. The benches that point toward the Pentagon are for the people who were on the plane looking in. The name of the person is on the end of the bench, so as you look at their name, you see where they were that day (in the Pentagon or in the sky). For example, LTC Taylor's bench above shows that he was killed in the Pentagon that day.

The birth years of the victims marked in a timeline on the side of the memorial.

The benches are organized by the age of the individual. On the far right (south side) of the pictures above, are the youngest, and on the far left (north side) are the oldest. One bench forms the first row for a three year old, then there was like one eight year old and a couple of 11 year olds, then there was a big gap between there and the first adults.

Trying to get creative with the panorama feature in my camera.

Next we hopped on the Metro over to DC and walked the Mall.

Me and YB on the escalator down into the Metro.
(Photo by LW)

ES on the Metro

S, C, LW, YB, ES on the mall

ES & YB at the WWII Memorial

Graffiti on the WWII Memorial (not really graffiti)

Walking toward the Lincoln Memorial

There were a LOT of baby ducklings in the reflecting pool.
(Photo by LW)

Once again, our timing was perfect. We arrived just in time to hear this AWESOME park ranger tell us all about the Vietnam War Memorial. Hearing his description of the meaning behind the memorial and the symbology used by the architect really gave THIS visit to the memorial much more meaning to me than previous visits.

YB at the Vietnam Memorial

Tired Mommy & YB on the Metro ride going home

We stopped in Tyson's Corner for dinner at CPK on the way home. Man do I love their carne asada pizza! :-9 It's been a while since we've been to CPK. There aren't any conveniently located to our house here, but it was on the way home from DC and our guests expressed a desire for CPK since there aren't any in Indiana.

Overall it was a great day. I used the route feature on the Buckeye Outdoors website to figure out how far we walked. We walked at least 7 miles. My legs and feet were pretty sore. The boys did a great job through the day, although they got several piggy back rides and rides on the shoulders along the way.