Remembering Uncle John

We visited Uncle John earlier this year.  He was the biggest Cal Bears fan that we knew.  Red flowers are very common at grave sites, but blue ones are not.  So we took some pictures and touched them up just for John.  First here is the untouched picture.

The following are the touched up photos.  Just what did we change?

Five-person Band...just one guitar

...and now the parody!

Reagan Doodles

A page of ink drawings among personal papers from 1981 released Saturday March 17 2012, by the Thatcher Archive at Britain's Cambridge University. Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was so fascinated by U.S. President Ronald Reagan that she snatched and kept this page of his doodles at a G7 summit, the former British prime minister's newly released papers reveal. Reagan left the piece of paper sitting on a table at the meeting near Ottawa, Canada in July 1981, adorned with a scribbled eye, a man's muscular torso and several heads including one that looks like a self portrait. (AP Photo/The Thatcher Archive)

Talk About Down to Earth...

Mariner Baseball!

If You Have a Little Time to Kill...

If you're curious about what's inside an iPad, check this out.

2012 Pinewood Derby Races

This was Ethan fifth and final pinewood derby since he will be moving up to Boy Scouting later this year. He came into this race as the defending champion and probably was rooting more for his brother than for himself. He had a fast car, hitting a top scaled speed of almost 201 mph, and had Spider Turtle in the cockpit

This was the second pinewood derby for Ryan. Last year he finished just off the medal stand. This year he surprised all of us and took home top honors. It's hard to say what he did right, maybe a little help from mom, dad and our cubmaster. Ryan's car reached a top scaled speed of over 203 mph.

Is "Fashiony" a Word?

Ryan: Mom can I wear this to bed?

Mom: Yes, I guess that's okay.

Ryan: I like it. I think it's "fashiony."

Ryan was referring to wearing a white t-shirt under his pajama top.

Senior Day at Cal

It was a memorable day for us in more than one way. It was Senior Day at Cal with two of the more popular Bears in recent memory playing their last game at home.

Harper Kamp after five years and countless bumps and bruises, one missed year due to injury and the firing of the coach, Ben Braun, who recruited him to Cal. When Braun was shown the door after Kamp's freshman year, Harper almost followed Kamp out the door to UNLV. He decided to stay with the Bears and the rest is history.

Jorge Gutierrez was Montgomery's first recruit at Cal. It was a lucky break for both sides as it turns out. There was a slot open for Jorge only because another player had asked out of his scholarship when Braun was fired. Jorge was available only because he was not highly recruited out of a prep school in Las Vegas.



The part of the memory will be our luck to be chosen for the pre-game experience to take in the Bears' pregame practice from court-level. The only way this could've been better was if they allowed to remain in the court side seats for the game.

This means that we also got our photo up on the big screen during the second half of the game. The kids were pretty excited about it especially Ryan. At first when I told him that we were going to be able to see ourselves on the big screen, his reaction was, "I don't want our picture up there." Later during the game, he kept asking when our photo would appear.

What made the evening perfect was that the Bears won!

Everyone went home happy. Even the larger than life posters of Jorge and Harper.

And also the large contingent of Jorge fans who were at the game wearing yellow matching T-shirts. In the group were Jorge's parents with his father trying to capture the moment with a video camera. That's his mother holding up the Mexican flag and his father to the left of the flag in the photo below.

Glee

Ryan signed up for the after school Glee program at our elementary school this year. He's been busy practicing these songs:

"Don't Stop Believing"

"Total Eclipse of the Heart"

"Defying Gravity" which came from the musical Wicked.

Cal Wins Thriller

Ethan and I were on-hand for this thriller that featured three technical fouls called and a game of "I can do better than that" between two former Golden Gopher teammates. Joseph of Oregon won the scoring battle, but Cobbs' Bears won the game. Ethan says that this was the best game that he's ever seen in person.

Valentine's Day

Faces of 2011 Holiday - The Video

Sights of 2011 Holidays

Although mostly rainy, we did manage to get out and about the Seattle area.  The Seattle Sheraton had its annual Gingerbread House display to raise funding for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.  On the flight to Seattle, we took in the sights from 30,000 feet to spy Crater Lake, Mt. Hood, Mount St. Helens, Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier.  Although Christmas evening dinner was the height of food smells and sights, we sampled small and large bites at:

Locol Barley & Vine in West Seattle where Chuck had a gig playing jazz adaptations of tunes by local grunge bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden to name a few as part of a keyboard, drums and bass trio; the atmosphere was local, the food was good (we sampled kale chips, a beet salad and a spicy corn and chicken chowder), and the music was a hit;

boom noodle at the U Village (which is no longer the U Village that I remember from my days as a kid going to the Village to bowl); while walking to the place from where we parked a horde of young men only wearing underwear crossed our path (didn't get this photo);

Red Mill Burgers in the Magnolia area; drive by this place several times as it is near where our relatives live; we first heard about this place on a show on the Food Network; the burgers and fries were terrific;

Kaname Izakaya in the International District that we visited for Happy Hour and consumed way too much food, the idea was to go and eat a little bit of this and little bit of that off their Happy Hour menu; we continued onto order ramen, soba and donburi; the food was good but the service was a little off;

Blue Star Cafe & Pub in the Wallingford district that must have one of the largest selection listing of scrambles and omelets known to humankind; I think I already know what I'd order for the next 10 times that I visit; not only is the menu large so is the establishment itself;

Stell's Burgers and More across the street from Seattle Pacific University is another place that we drive by frequently but had never tried; we tried the gyro sandwiches and Greek fries and were pleasantly surprised; the pita bread used for the sandwiches were warm, light and fluffy;

Old Mill Cafe outside Sequim where we stopped on the way back from our visit to the Olympic Game Farm; another stop being the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge and Spit (could see Canada across the way!);

Getting to the Olympic Game Farm included crossings of Puget Sound on the Washington State ferries.  In all the years going to Seattle, this was the first such crossing for our kids.

Mixed into this fun was two movies with the kids:  The Adventures of Tintin in 3D (we even convinced Ojiichan to see what was his first or second movie ever) and Arthur Christmas.  The parents had a movie night too and took in the latest Sherlock Holmes offering.

The Adventures of Tintin was at the IMAX theater at the Pacific Science Center which we visited a second time to see the exhibits.  Finally, we hiked over the Fremont district on two occasions - the place has really grown up to have an interesting mix of restaurants and eclectic shops.

But really for the kids the best times seemed to be when they were just hanging out.  They built forts with the bedding.  They built their own arcade and shops.  They played games and discovered a new favorite game called Forbidden Island that was actually based on the need for teamwork to succeed rather than on winning or losing.

Perhaps that should be the message for all of us in 2012 - let's succeed together.

Faces of 2011 Holiday

We had a memorable time with family over the holidays. The following is a compilation of our many faces from the holidays. The fish eye and other effects were the courtesy of our new camera. We played with many of the settings - perhaps too many of them. It was only on our return that we discovered that we had shot all of our photos in compressed mode using a lower resolution. And we thought that there was something wrong with the camera...

Happy New Year!!!

We rang in the new year this year, just barely filling our glasses before the end of the countdown to midnight.  Then it was back to a game of bowling on the Wii.

Christmas Dinner 2011

The menu included: lasagna, turkey, scallop casserole, soy chicken, corn casserole, green bean casserole, mash potatoes, sweet potato rolls, green salad, rice, homemade chow mein noodles, strawberries and pear...and for dessert: apple pie, pumpkin pie, ice cream and creme brulee.

Afterward, we had a friendly round of a white elephant gift exchange that included coffee, a stick of beef salami, CD of Christmas music, that Drew Barrymore smash "Ever After," a multitool, a note tablet, chocolate turtles, a magic set, an LED headlamp, UNO card game, chocolate candy assortment, a puzzle, and window crayons.

After the game, there was a round of friendly bartering where that Drew Barrymore fan (Tatsu) traded up for the movie by giving up his UNO game. Ryan surprised his parents by giving away chocolates for window crayons. Naomi to the surprise of some secretly coveted the LED headlamp - perhaps a new instrument to read in bed after "lights out." The three most stolen items for the night were: an assortment of chocolates, coffee and a stick of salami - who would've thought in Seattle.

Neil Young, Bob Dylan and others

Can you name all of the performers?

Bob Dylan and Neil Young

This apparently was from something called the SNACK concert at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco in March of 1975.

Life Imitates Art...Sort of

Watch this video first...



Now read these lines from the song "Highlands" by Bob Dylan from his Time Out of Mind album:

Then she says, “I know you’re an artist, draw a picture of me!”
I say, “I would if I could, but
I don’t do sketches from memory”

“Well,” she says, “I’m right here in front of you, or haven’t you looked?”
I say, “All right, I know, but I don’t have my drawing book!”
She gives me a napkin, she says, “You can do it on that”
I say, “Yes I could, but
I don’t know where my pencil is at!”

She pulls one out from behind her ear
She says, “All right now, go ahead, draw me, I’m standing right here”