Happy (first) Father's Day

My very first Father's Day weekend was a pretty nice one. After getting up early on Saturday to watch two World Cup matches at Empire Espress (which is my new favorite espresso place in Columbia City), I pretty much lazed around back home and wathed los gemalos while Carrie went out shopping for my Father's Day dinner. Sunday we got up and had breakfast at Cafe Campange, one of the two French-style eateries in the Marketplace; Cafe Campange is more of a resturant while the seocond place, Le Pichet, is more of a cafe where food just happens to be served.


While we were in the area, we decided to head to Sur la Table in order to get a new nonstick griddle for eggs and pancakes and a wire mesh splatter guard. Carrie did want to get a nice wire mesh strainer, but I talked her out of it, reasoning that we would hardly ever use it. However, when we had gotten home, on the spur of the moment I decided to make Dulce de Leche (following Alton Brown's recipe). In making Dulce de Leche from scratch, guess what the final stage in the process is? And guess what I found myself heading downn to the Target in West Seattle to get?


Dinner was a real treat- home made Chicken Tikka Missala, a nice dark beer, and homemamde brownies and ice cream with my DDL sauce on top. For my Father's Day gifts, I recieved some primo e-Shave shaving lube and cream, and a mandollin slicer that will help me out a lot when it comes to food prep. But the best gifts that I recived can be found here!


Links:

• Empire Espresso
• Cafe Campange
• Alton Brown's Dulce de Leche redipe

Excuse Me!!!

Saturday morning, I went to the bakery to pick up coffee and treats for Carrie and myself. If you've ever been to Columbia City Bakery, you'll know that after 9 or so on the weekends the place is packed. The line for coffee and treats was almost going out the door, and all of the tables were full.


So, you would think that people, being cognizant of the fact that space was at a premium, would behave accordingly and not expect the sea of people to automagically part at their merest approach, wouldn't you?


Into the pictrure comes stereotypical passive-aggressive bearded slacker Seattle guy. He's taking his order of coffee and scones to the high-top where his generously smiling girlfriend is waiting for him. He is about to pass in front of the couple who are in line ahead of me. Does he utter those magical words that have served as the sociospatial lubricant for generations - "Excuse me"? NO! He simply waves his food in the general direction of the table, and, not even looking at the people that he's pushing his way past, proceeds to - push his way past the people whose mere existence he can't be bothered to acknowledge.


Time passes. The couple ahead of me is served. My order is taken. I stand to the side to wait for coffee. Meanwhile, Mr.Stereotypical passive-aggressive bearded slacker Seattle guy, along with his girlfriend, Ms. I'm obviously the better socially adjusted of the two of us, finish their meal. He, avoiding my gaze, pushes his way past me and seems genuinely puzzled as to both why he is tripping over my unmoving size 13 foot and why he needs to exert something other than a cursory amount of force to make his way past my mostly unyielding elbow. She, for her part, smiles as if to say “Yes, I am with him, please don’t hold it too much against me”, gives me a quick and quiet “Excuse me” as she works her way by, and I gladly stand back to accommodate her passing. He glares at me, as if mad that I dare to accede to her spoken request whilst not doing the same for his unspoken one.


So - they leave. But if you think that’s the end of the story- fear not! For here comes Ms. Stereotypical passive-aggressive I live in a trendy gentrified neighborhood and you are just a visitor here Seattle older woman! C’mon – didn’t you know that there’s a table open, and this gal has to eat? Sure, I may be 6’0 and 230 pounds, but be sure that she will make sure that all 5’6, 140 lbs of her will somehow find a way to attempt to violate the first law of physics with your self before she even thinks about giving you a dirty look.


*Sigh*


Since when did saying “Excuse me” become passé? Is it because saying those two little words could be considered being tantamount to admitting that you are not in total control of the space around you,? Or have people just become that damn lazy and inconsiderate? Okay, okay – I’ll not tar all of humanity with the same brush – it just seemed to me, on that day in Columbia City, that certain individuals were going out of their way to be rude.


At least that didn’t color my entire weekend. Since Carrie wanted to clean the house in preparation for my parents’ visit, I elected to take los Gemelos out for a ride. When I came back two hours later, the house was sparkling clean, and the mama was beaming, happy with her progress. Sunday, I went for a run around Green Lake (2.8 miles in 27 minutes 6 seconds), and then, meeting a friend for the Top Pot 5k, walked for 3.1 miles around the same body of water. I came home, tired, but feeling otherwise pretty good, and spent the rest of the day as a pretty quiet day with Carrie and the kids.


Two more days to go!

Yesterday...

Yesterday was one hell of a day.

I stayed at home so that I could watch over the kids for part of the night (allowing Carrie to get more than 4 hours of straight sleep), and had planned on working from home the rest of the day after a brief nap. So, as planned, I took over Gaboli duty (Gaboli being the portmanteau that Carrie and I came up with to refer to the twins collectively) at three in the morning, and proceeded to stay up with them until around five, at which point they calmed down enough so that I could get a couple more hours of sleep. When I woke up around seven, they were stirring a bit, so I took them to Carrie so that she could feed them.

At this point, I had planned on taking a quick nap for a few hours, and then getting up so that I could do some work. So, I crawled into bed and was about to doze off when I received a call from Sarah’s (my ex wife) stepfather, Sonny. It seems that she had opened an account at a credit union and listed me as a co-owner. When she had passed away, full control had reverted to me. So as not to disturb Carrie and the kids, I took the call outside of the bedroom. While I was talking to Sonny, I decided to pull up the bank accounts on my Mac and confirm that I had primary control. Seeing that I did, I then went about talking to both Sonny and the bank to see what needed to be done so that Sarah’s husband could get the money out of the account.

Upon hanging up, I noticed that my computer was acting strangely. Despite clicking around the desktop, I was unable to access any applications, and there was no response to my keystrokes. With a sinking feeling – I had seen this before – I hard-rebooted my computer, only to get the dreaded Mac OSX Question Mark of Death.

For the second time since I had bought the machine, my hard drive had crashed. Damn.

Luckily, I had my work computer with me, so I was still able to get some work done and make an appointment at the Apple store in Tukwila so that I could get my computer fixed. But replacing the internal hard drive on a Macintosh is not an inexpensive proposition – I ballparked the estimate at $300. But it had to be done. Needless to say, the culmination of events left me more than a little upset. I had to jump through some hoops to help Sarah’s husband get the money that he was rightfully due, my hard drive had crashed, I would have to drive twenty miles to get it fixed, I would have to spend money, and a good deal of my music and photographs were gone. 

So, I did what any self-respecting man would do to deal with all of this.I went for a run. 

I ended up doing two miles in slightly under twenty minutes, and I found myself at my favorite spot nearby, Columbia City Bakery. I treated myself to my usual quad shot of espresso, chilled for a bit in the cool, sunny outside area, and walked back home, having gained a bit of perspective.

The rest of the day went pretty well. I got some work done, helped out with the kids, and took my computer in to get fixed. Pleasant surprise: since there have been so many issues with the hard drives on Macbooks, they replaced mine free of charge. Even better surprise: since the smallest hard drive they had on hand was a 160Gig model, they slapped that one in there for me. Sweet!

Lottie's Lounge

Our favorite hangout, Geraldine's, was closed, so Carrie and I decided to take our her parents and take a chance on Lotties Lounge.  The food itself was excellent - I  had the Italian Sausage grinder, Carrie had Ham, Swiss and Arugula, and while I forget what her parents had, no one had anything but good things to say about their sandwiches, They also serve an excellent chili soup and clam chowder as well. Carrie's clam chowder came out cold, though, and we had to send it back.

The reason I marked them down from four stars was the service. The woman tending bar had her back turned to us for much of our visit while she was busy futzing about with her bar tabs. It took her five minutes to get around to giving us our menus, and another ten to get around to giving us our check (plus five to get her attention so that she could get my wife's clam chowder warmed up).  The music was way too loud as well. As good as the food is, I won't be going back,

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Twas the days before...

I decided to take Wednesday off as a "Charlie - only" sanity day. I figure that I'll be plenty busy during the holidays and the next few pre- and post-baby months, so I should take the opportunity to get these days in while I still can. I visited Carrie briefly in the hospital, then went downtown to see "Avatar", which was a pretty amazing movie, not just because of the 3D or special effects, but also because the acting was (mostly) believable, and the storyline was pretty decent, if not a little hammy and predictable at times.

I had another visit with Carrie after the movie, and our good friend Refugio came in for an hour or so, during which time we exchanged gifts. After I left the hospital and came home, I followed a good movie,"Avatar", with a truly bad one, "GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra". Ughh!

After an early morning visit to the hospital, I made the rounds doing some last-minute shopping:

• Cafe Verite / Cupcake Royale in Madrona
• Trader Joes in Madison Valley / Capitol Hill
• Whole Foods in Cascade / Downtown
• Bob's Meat Locker in Columbia City

At Bob's, I had to wait for about 45 minutes before the butcher took my order because of the long line. A couple of times, people attempted to jump the queue, and let me tell you, hell hath no fury like Christmas shoppers who have been waiting in line when others attempt to get in front of them.

So...

I went home, and started making our Christmas dinner - Beef Bourgninon with Collard Greens, with an appetizer of cheese curds and olives, and fig and eggnog cupcakes for desert (no, I didn't make these...). I was able to get quite a few things done while waiting for the beef dish to cook. I then took the dishes to Carrie in the hospital, where we sat, ate, talked, and just had a generally good time.

I know the hospital might not have been the best place to spend Christmas - but we did have a very special day, since we were together and eagerly awaiting the arrival of the next two members of our family.

Hopefully, Carrie will be home on Monday. She'll still be on bedrest, but at least she'll be here with me, and not at Swedish. I'd like that very much!

Cold Turkey...

It was almost a disaster.

Carrie and I had planned on grill-roasting our turkey. I had gotten the turkey prepped, cleaned, rinsed, brined, rinsed again, and set on a nicely preheated, cleaned grill with woodchips for smokiness.

Then it happened.

We ran out of propane - at 3 in the afternoon - on Thanksgiving.

*sigh*

I would like to be able to say "luckily, Lowes was open until 4, and, after much heroic effort and mad-dashing down Beacon Hill, I made it to the store with 10 minutes to spare, and I was able to trade in my existing propane tank for a new one, and all was good." Alas, such was not to be the case. No place that sold propane was open in Seattle, and Carrie and I hastily re-jiggered the course d' cuire, and our Thanksgiving dinner was only an hour delayed.

Everything turned out great  - the appetizers set the stage nicely, the turkey and stuffing was moist, the green beans, cornbread and beets were delicious, and the desert was fantastic.  We spent that meal doing something very un-Thanksgiving-like - watching season three of Deadwood - but to each their own ;)

I spent most of the day after doing projects around the house, attempting to strike items off of the ever-growing list that, inevitably, every homeowing husband finds awaiting him. Lest you think that I do these things grudgingly, however, know that I'd much rather work for our gratification in our own house than someone else's in an apartment - or not at all, even, since the results of my efforts work to enrich our lives directly. Also, before you get the impression that the list is solely a "honey-do" list, let me also add that many of  the items on it were directly contributed by me.

The Day Before

One of  the good things about working in the tech industry is that, if you have the right setup, you can work from home on occasion. Varolii issues laptops to its employees, and the VPN connection is usually very reliable; more often than not, the only chokepoint is my own wireless network; thankfully, since we dumped Clearwire (whose service in both Leschi and mid-Beacon Hill has never been that great in the first place) in favor of Qwest DSL, we don't have much of a problem in that area.

I bring up the above so as to set the stage for the meat of my post today. I elected to work from home because I promised Carrie that I would pick up our Thanksgiving turkey this morning from Bob's Quality Meats in Columbia City so that I could dunk it into a quick-brine solution for overnight. Before I could do that, however, I had to go to a doctor's appointment in Belltown. After that, I would have to make my way to Columbia City, pick up the turkey, then schlep it back home in time to call in for a 11:00 AM meeting and get a few hours of work in before breaking to prep for T-Bird day.

Having accomplished all of my work-related goals for today, I'm content to sign off and spend the evening with Carrie getting things readiy for a wonderful feast tomorrow.

If I, for some reason, don't say it tomorrow - Happy Thankgiving!

Labor Day weekend

The long weekend started out innocuously enough. Saturday morning, we arose to a meal of buttermilk pancakes and scrambled eggs, then we went about prepping the baby's room for painting.

Along with removing all of the doors and light fixtures, we had to remove the blinds, curtain rods, and shelves that the previous owners had left behind.  Around this time came my first point of contention with them: not only did they use a system that was a bear to remove, but they used cheap hardware in the form of brass flathead screws that was a pain to remove. I ended up having to tear the shelf rods from the walls, leaving behind hugte holes and tears in the drywall that required the generous application of spackle.

So- stuff removed, bare wood surfaces sanded (they are getting painted as well), and walls washed. Time for the primer - and point of contention #2: the ceiling in both the kids' room and our bedroom has this rather unsightly popcorn texture to it; that means that I'll have to put not one, but two generous coats of primer just to fill in the uneven parts.

Despite all this, things were swimming along smoothly enough until Carrie started having severe abdominal pains during the afternoon.  It turns out that she was in the early stages of appendicitis, and needed to be taken to the ER so that she could get an appendectomy. We were both very fearful, not just because of the fact that she needed surgery, but also because we were unsure of the effect that the anesthesia and any subsequent pain medication would have on the twins. All three individuals made it past the surgery okay, though, and they are back home resting and recovering. Today (Tuesday), she's up and walking around, although with a bit of difficulty alternating between standing up and sitting  / laying down. Still, she's in considerably less discomfort than she was, and that's saying a lot, I think!

In other news:

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I had made an abbreviated version of this run earlier,but I hadn't realized that, by cutting out the run from Orcas to Dawson, I was cheating myself out of .3 mile. The extra distance didn't take that much longer to do, and I felt a lot better once I got to Columbia City Bakery. Lest ye wonder why I take the time to run down there, Carrie and I love thier pastries., breads and sandwiches, and their Torta Rustica is a treat that, if you can get a hold of it, is something to be treasured alongside a fine wine. If Carrie can't come with me, then I'l run to the bakery, get a espresso and pastry, pick up something for Carrie, and walk back. Why walk? Well, I do live on Beacon Hill!

My weekend - first time on a new run - more mashups - second playlist of 2009

On Saturday, Carrie and I (after a nice hearty breakfast of grilled chicken sausage and eggs) went into Ranier Valley in Seattle so that we could go to a sale being held by Kate Spade, featuring her organics line of baby clothes. Now this was quite an event, since ordinarily this line of clothes sells for beucoup dineros in her retail stores, and this weekly sale was featuring many of her leftover and discontinued styles for wholesale prices; additionally, they were firre-selling everything at half off, so Carrie and I walked out of there having spent $130.00 for what could easily have been $500 worth of clothes.

Like I had mentioned, this was being held in Ranier Valley, which is a neighborhood just south of the trendier Columbia City business district, which happens to be where our favorite butcher, bakery, farmers market and diner is located at. Ranier Valley itself, however, is strictly a working-class neighborhood that has unfortunately suffered the effects of urban blight and neglect. So the neighborhood has its own set of problems; however, it's not an entirely bad place, and there are more than a few fine establishments there, so to hear well-off people complain about having to drive into the "Ghetto" in order to get their discounted Kate Spade Organics baby clothes was more than a little sickening. If these people felt so strongly about having to suffer the presence of the less fortunate while they themselves fill thier minivans and SUV's with discounted boutique baby clothes, they should have saved themselves the drive and paid retail price at a mall in the exurbs.

But that's just me. And I digress.

When we had first looked at what was then our future house together, Carrie and I fell in love with the place, but we knew that a few things had to be changed, chief amongst them the color scheme. The previous owners definitely had thier own sense of style and asthetics, which is fine, but it's not ours. So, we went down to Lowes with a basic idea of what needed to be changed, got a few paint samples, took them back home, and put them on our walls. Sunday, satisfied that we had made the right choices, we went back to Lowes and bought four gallons of primer and five gallons of paint so that we can paint the living room, kitchen, hallway and kids room. We'll also be painting our front door as well, so hopefully, the weather this weekend will cooperate and be decent enough for us to leave everything open so that we can air the place out without freezing to death.

Damn, Denzel!

It being so hot last night, Carrie and I went to see a movie so that we could get out of our hot house and enjoy the AC of the small Columbia City Cinema. It was playing the newest Harry Potter flick, "Away we Go", "Ice Age III", and "The Taking of Pelham 123". Not being in the mood for a trendy comedy, fantasy (which is what most trendy comedies are, in my opinion), or animation (which is what most trendy comedies are, in my opinion), we went for Pelham.

Damn.

It disappoints me to see Denzel Washington take on paycheck roles, since I happen to like him as an actor, and it kinda bums me out to see John Travolta in yet another role that sucks. Honestly- has he done anything of serious worth since "Pulp Fiction?"

Speaking of Denzel...

When I was in the Navy, one of the guys in my division got it into his head that I fancied myself to be some sort of ladies man. He made up a joke in which my pickup line was "Hey baby, did you know that Denzel is my brother? Yeah - in my family, he's the ugly one!" As a result, some of my shipmates started calling me "Denzel." When I moved to Jacksonville, and later Hawaii, with my first wife, occasionally some gal would look at me and say "You know what? You remind me of Denzel Washington!"

Okay - so here's me...

From [~neverland~]

And this is Denzel...

From [~neverland~]

Obviously, we are the spitting image of one another! :)

Walk to Geraldines

This past Sunday, Carrie and I took this route to the always wonderful Geraldine's Counter in Columbia City. I can honestly say that we burned more calories on the walk there and back than we consumed at the resturant itself! It's always a kick-ass place to go for Sunday brunch, however! Thier deep-fried French Toast is always a fave with us.
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