Random Act of Kindness

I was the recipient of a random act of kindness yesterday on the bus to work.

Our bus is sort of like an airliner - not a lot of leg room in most rows, but there are two rows in the middle of the bus that have extra leg room. On the airplane they're the emergency exit rows, and some people like me call them "poor man's first class." They're actually intended as handicap seats on the bus, but I used the same PMFC phrase to describe these extra leg room seats on the bus.

So yesterday morning, I got on the bus to ride to work, and most of the seats were already taken. I sat down in a row with an open seat and crammed my backpack between my feet and the seat in front of me. The guy in the PMFC one row behind and across the aisle from me saw me cramming into the seat, tapped me on the shoulder, and told me I should sit in his seat because I needed the leg room.

Wow, thanks dude!

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Family Movie Night

We frequently try to pick up some dinner to go and a rental movie for a family movie night on the weekends. Most of the time it ends up being pizza, but last night we did something different.

After I got off the bus, I stopped at Pei Wei to pick up some dinner.

In case you aren't familiar with Pei Wei, it's run by the people who own P.F. Chang's, but it's an order at the counter and sit down type of place instead of a full blown restaurant. According to their website, they're "a faster, more casual take of our parent company P.F. Chang's... and feature an entire menu priced under $10."

Random Aside: Why is it that every P.F. Changs in CONUS is always packed and has a long line of people waiting to get in, but in Honolulu they're always half empty? It always blew us away to go to P.F. Chang's in Honolulu and NOT have to wait in line and to see half the tables empty.

Anyway, the food at Pei Wei is delicious and I haven't gotten any MSG headaches there. I was pleasantly surprised looking at their nutrition information, too. I remember from WeightWatchers that Chinese food is absolutely EVIL and to be avoided at all costs. But the Mongolian Chicken at Pei Wei is only 6 points on the WW scale, and the brown rice is only 3 points. That's pretty darn good, especially considering how good the food tastes. I have found that things that are low in WW points generally taste like corrugated cardboard, but that is NOT the case at Pei Wei.

Plus they give out these fun chop things for the kids. They're a simple little plastic doohicky that holds the chopsticks so the kids can use them like a big set of tweezers. Our kids love them.

Anyway, I brought the food home and we had family movie night while we ate our chinese food.


Last night's family movie night selection was Cool Runnings. I dare say it was even somewhat educational for the boys. In order to set the stage for them before we watched the movie, I asked them where Jamaica was. We talked about Jamaica being an island in the tropics and that meant warm weather and palm trees like Hawaii.

I asked them if there was any snow in Jamaica, and they said no. Then I told them this was a movie about Jamaica entering a bobsled team in the winter Olympics, and ES let out a guffaw.

During the movie we talked a little about Jamaica once being a British colony. After the movie, my wife and I talked with the boys about the morals of the story, namely that (1) you can be whatever you want to be if you put your mind to it, and (2) winning isn't everything. It's a good movie for talking about sportsmanship, too.