RSS FeedFamily Dinner at Captain Kidd’s
If you know me even a little bit, you probably know that my family owns a fish market / restaurant in Redondo Beach, California named Captain Kidd’s and, despite the fact that I worked there for over 11 years, it is still my favorite place in the world to eat. Every time we head to California to see family, our first stop is always Captain Kidd’s.
We left Vegas about 2pm and arrived at Kidd’s around 6:30. My grandma was already there, and my sister showed up a few minutes later with her three kids. My mom and dad would show up a while later. We are in California pretty rarely, so it’s always nice to meet up at the restaurant with the family for dinner.
Dinner was awesome, as usual. My wife had a Pacific lobster and I had shark, scallops and shrimp. Oh, that’s after I had a bowl of clam chowder. Yum, it was so good.
After dinner we exchanged Christmas gifts and took a bunch of pictures. After a couple hours at the restaurant the kids were all getting pretty restless. We headed back to my sister’s place. With the 200 mile distance between us, my kids don’t get a lot of chances to play with their cousins, so it’s nice that they get to spend an evening playing games with them.
Tomorrow we’ll head back to Captain Kidd’s for lunch. The rest of the day is sorta up in the air right now. As for dinner plans, I’ll see what I can do about getting us back to Kidd’s one more time.
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Family get together
Last night we had an early Christmas celebration with my mother-in-law and both brother-in-laws and their families. One of the B-i-Ls is going out of town for the holidays so this was going to be our last chance to see them before Christmas.
As soon as they got here, Rock Band was in full effect. It is such a great party game. The funny part was that before anybody had tried it, they all kept saying that they weren’t going to sing. But, as soon as one person did it, everybody else wanted their turn at it. Who cares how bad you sing? Just get up there and belt it out. Have fun. And that’s what we did.
I was pretty stoked because after everybody tried the drums, most people decided to stick to guitar or vocals. That meant I got to stay and play drums on almost every song. Damn, Metallica’s Enter Sandman drives me nuts. There is one section on it that just confounds me. Even on the easy level. Though, I did move up and play on Medium for a bunch of the songs.
Only the B-i-L that is going out of town and his wife opened gifts. Mainly because we forced them to. They are basically newlyweds, so we thought it would be a lot of fun to give them a book I found called “Position of the Day“. It has diagrams for all sorts of interesting sexual positions to try during the year. One is called the “YouTube” and the picture shows both people holding video cameras. If they try that one out, I would rather not receive a link to the results. I shot video of them opening the gift. You can see it here.
Good times.
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Secret Santa day plus company gifts
Today at the office, a group of us all swapped Secret Santa gifts. I have to say that the gift I was given is absolutely perfect for me and I will DEFINITELY put it to use. It’s a desktop charging station. You put a power strip inside it and then there are 3 spots on top, plus a tray in the front where you can set items like cameras and cell phones when they need to be charged. The charging cords are all out of the way and kept neat and tidy. I currently don’t know who my Secret Santa was, but I thank you very much (whoever you are).
I was happy to see the reaction from the person for whom I played Secret Santa. We picked up a gift set from Bath and Bodyworks. It came with a purse plus 3 full-size bottles of lotion, bath gel and one other item. I got an awesome deal on it, so she was convinced that we went way over our $20 limit. Not so. I’m just that good of a shopper. OK, fine. I got lucky.
Today was also the day that our company handed out some other gifts. Each employee was given a list of 9 gift packages that we could choose from. I decided on the iPod Nano 3rd Gen. Yes, I already have a Nano, but not one of the new ones that plays videos. My Son has already asked if he can have my old one. We’ll see how it goes.
Speaking of the family, tonight was pretty cool. I got to play Rock Band with both of my kids. I played drums, my Son played guitar and my Daughter sang. We performed Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive. It was so much fun playing with both of them. We then switched it up to let my Daughter play drums. That didn’t go so well and we ended up quitting. I tried to get her to go back on vocals, but she didn’t know any of the other songs on the list and didn’t want to play anymore. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Hopefully we can talk her in to playing again.
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How to talk to your kids about pregnancy
Recently on CNN.com I read this article about Jamie Lynn Spears (little sister to Britney Spears) announcing that she’s pregnant. While I could care less about her being pregnant, but they were talking about how parents are going to explain to their children who may watch Jamie’s show Zoey 101 on Nickelodeon. Since I have two teenagers at home, this is definitely a topic I wanted to follow up on.
I consider myself very lucky that I have two fantastic children who are respectful of others, don’t get in to trouble at school and have zero interest in drinking or drugs. Seriously, with that stuff out of the way, anything else that comes up with the kids is pretty small potatoes. Sure, I can’t get my son to clean his room to save my life. But if it’s a choice between a clean room and having to worry that they are out doing drugs or shoplifting, I’ll take the messy room.
Last night while we were out shopping, I brought up this subject with my wife. I explained everything I had read on CNN.com and how some of the parents who had responded to the article had said that they would use this news as a way to talk to their kids about making smart choices and waiting until they are older to experiment with having sex.
This morning, after my wife dropped off the kids at school, she came in to the room while I was getting ready for work and tells me that she spoke with the kids this morning on the way to school. I asked how it went. She says the following:
I asked them if they knew who Jaime Lynn Spears was. Our son said, “Yeah, she’s pregnant.” I said that I know I have good kids who make smart choices and I am very proud of them. I realize that you are teenagers and that you may be starting to have questions about sex. So, if you do have any questions, ask your Father.
She sold me up the river. Damn her!
OK, actually, she told me that they all three got a big laugh out of it.
Not only am I lucky to have two great kids, I have an amazing wife who knows how to talk to our kids about sensitive topics without turning them in to embarrassing situations. Be setting a light-hearted tone she opens the door for the kids to ask questions in a non-threatening environment.
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Rock Band and xBox 360
After all the delays waiting for the PS2 version of Rock Band, not to mention all the features that I would have been missing had I got the PS2 version to begin with, I went ahead and bit the bullet tonight. I went out and bought an xBox 360 and Rock Band. I’m so stoked.
The store was out of the middle of the road sized xBox 360, so I ended up getting the Halo 3 Special Edition. It comes with a couple games (not Halo 3, which I thought was odd) a battery charger and the unit itself is green and has some Halo 3 markings. I doubt it was worth the extra bucks I plunked down, but I was on a mission… they had me by the short and curlies.
After getting home with the goods, it took roughly an hour to unbox, unwrap and hook up all the pieces. The first thing I did was set up the video camera to capture the first time I played drums. I played on the easy level and I wasn’t entirely horrible. 92% playing Celebrity Skin by Hole.
I then played a few songs with my son. We switched back and forth between drums and guitar. I tried hooking up the microphone, but it didn’t seem to be working. Turns out, if you read some instructions once in a while, sometimes they have valuable information. I didn’t figure that out early enough, so I haven’t sung any songs yet. But, there’s always tomorrow.
I asked my wife if she wanted to play the drums. She played a couple songs and enjoyed it. She even mentioned playing some more in order to get better at playing. This makes me happy.
I sure hope I’m not too sick tomorrow and not able to make it in to work… That would be a real shame. OK, fine. I have 9 days off in row starting Saturday… I guess I can wait until then to rock my face off.
We’ll see.
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