My So Called Life

Writing Her Name

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I did that!

And I’ve never even seen her write a single letter before, much less a word!

We’ve already found an excuse to make a trip back to Joy Yee. This time, as promised, we were a lot more adventurous. Almost too adventurous. First off we had some duck egg rolls, which were pretty good (Although really, it was mostly due to the awesome sweet and sour sauce they have). Not too crazy. Then I ordered a red bean freeze. If you’ve never had red bean ice cream, it’s really good. It’s pretty much like cherry. This, however, had real red beans that I had to eat with a spoon (except for the ones I was able to suck up with the straw). It was weird, but good. Like sweet pinto beans. Finally, was my super good, suuuuuper spicy Korean soup. I know that Korean food has a reputation for being spicy, but yowza. And that wasn’t even the worst part of it. I’d say the worst part were the enormous squids floating around in there. I like calamari now and again, but something about the way that the two long grasping tentacles hang down longer than the other ones. And 6 inches is just a little over the line for me, size wise. I ate a smaller one, but that’s all I could manage. Still, despite all of that, it was super delicious, and I was extremely happy with the meal as a whole, which I didn’t even come close to finishing.

Maybe my valiant effort is what prompted this:

::Evie sticking out her belly::
Sara: “Who’s belly is bigger, Evie’s or Mommy’s?”
Evie: “Daddy’s!”

Winter Olympics 2010

/ Shane / 2 Comments

It would be a grave disservice to not have a post about the thing I am spending most of my time on these days: the Olympics.

It is only fitting, considering the amount of coverage I got on my last Olympic post.

Let me first start by saying that I haven’t seen ANY curling this year, which is the sport I was most looking forward to. If you haven’t seen curling, you are missing out. The part you don’t think about is the strategy involved with precisely placing stones to block your opponent.

In general, I think the sports that actually pit one person or team against another directly, as opposed to those that are against the clock or scored by judges, are far and away the best. That is why short track speed skating = AWESOME. The luge, however = not awesome. At first it seems cool to see guys hurling down at 80 mph, ready to sacrifice their body. Unfortunately, it gets old fast. If you’ve seen one luge run, you’ve seen them all. There’s not much difference to see between a good run and a bad run (other than crashes and falls, of course, which they don’t mind playing over and over again, in all their glory).

I’m not a big fan of figure skating. I don’t really mind it all that much. It turns out I just like competition. There’s something about watching people compete for a medal, when everything is on the line, that can make virtually anything exciting. I would watch Olympic paint drying if there was such a thing.

The real reason I don’t like figure skating is because they fall down. ALL THE TIME. It just seems like we ought to be able to find 3 people in the entire world that can skate on ice and not fall down. I really hate to see someone who fell during their routine end up getting a medal. It just doesn’t feel right. Maybe the penalty needs to be a little stiffer for a fall. Like execution. I bet after a few of those, people would stop falling.

Another thing that really bothers me about the games is the somewhat mercenary nature of citizenship. I’m all about rooting for the U.S.A., but I’m constantly hearing about how this one or that one just got their citizenship less than a year ago. And it works the other way too, with Mr. Italy, 10 time Italian champion who was born in Rome and eats nothing but spaghetti day and night, and he happens to live in rural Pennsylvania. It’s one thing if it’s the whole immigrant story, with some kid coming over to the U.S. and climbing his way out of poverty to eventually win the gold in the Olympics. However, it doesn’t strike me as what’s happening. Instead, it just seems like people are switching allegiances to any convenient country where they can compete. So how am I supposed to feel good about the medals the U.S. is winning with these ringers from other countries? Am I crazy that I want my athletes to be super patriots?

Don’t get me wrong though, it’s not all complaining. If everything was so awful, I wouldn’t spend 6 hours a night, every night, watching it. For every bad thing, there are two good things. Snowboard Cross. Short Track Speed Skating. Snowboard Half Pipe. And nothing can beat watching those Canadians belt out the national anthem after winning the gold in Ice Dancing. If you have to lose a medal to another country, it sure makes you feel good to see them really enjoying it.

Chinatown

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Sara and I had been looking for a really good place to go in Chinatown, and I think we may have found it: Joy Yee.

This was just sort of your typical Chinese restaurant: very busy, huuuge menu, portions very large, very cheap, and very solid. All of the food was very good. We played it pretty safe, so nothing was outstanding, but perhaps in the future we will be more adventurous.

However, one place that Joy Yee really shown, was the enormous drink menu. We tried 3 tapioca freezes: Avocado, Jack Fruit, and Taro Root. All of them were good, but I thought the Taro Root was particularly amazing (and blue!). Evie was quite surprised to suck up a tapioca bubble. I think this was the most fun, picking out these crazy drinks and finding them delicious.

And to top it all off, even with the drinks, we only spent like $27! There is no question that we will be back.

So, after that rousing success, we couldn’t just stop there. Next up was the Saint Anna Bakery, located just a few doors down. We wanted some desert, and we got it! Everything was very good. We picked out 4 things, including a giant slice of hazelnut cake. Imagine my surprise when the total came to less than $5! Just to top it all off, the lady gave an extra desert to Evie for being too cute.

So, needless to say, a very successful trip. Thanks to Dabu for suggesting it!

Monday Catch Up Post (and quotes!)

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Evie: “Rabbits eat vegetables, like grass, carrots, raisins…”
Me: “I didn’t know you knew so much about rabbits!”
Evie: “I kept it to myself.”

Evie: “Does an ant have 8 legs, like a spider?”

I’m very proud of my smart girl!

Evie, trying some food at a restaurant: “Mommies and Daddies say it’s yummy, but big girls say it’s yucky.”

Last week, Evie took another stab at high theater, when Sara took her to see a play of her current favorite story, Pinocchio. It was a disaster. Complete 180 from the first play. She started freaking out as soon as the lights went down and refused to go back into the theater. Her main complaint was that Pinocchio was “big, not little”, i.e. played by an adult, not a child. I think it will be a while before we give plays another try.

On Sunday, we took the train in to the Art Institute of Chicago, for “Free February”. Sara and I wanted to check out the new Modern Wing that opened up last May. I was a little nervous about how Evie was going to do at a museum that was not hands-on, but she did pretty good. Obviously, when you’re going with a kid, you have to sort of present things in a certain way. Like, “Ohh, look, horses!” Or like, find the things that she would be into. She seemed to really dig the modern art! She liked the idea that we could look at it and decide what we thought it looked like. She even sat on the floor and examined a few for a while. Afterwards, we found some children’s art activities in the basement, and Evie enjoyed them so well, that she didn’t want to leave.

Naturally, we managed to get in a trip to Yolk while we were in that neck of the woods.

We also managed to hit up a new (for us) restaurant in Chinatown, but I think I’ll save that for a separate post tomorrow

Me: ::Throwing a long, beautiful, arching snowball and nailing Evie in the legs::
Evie, excitedly: “Good job daddy!!”

What can I say, it was a beautiful throw?

Frontera Grill

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Over the weekend we hit up another new restaurant, Frontera Grill. This place was a little pricier than we usually go in for. Run by famous Chicago chef-restaurateur Rick Bayless, it serves some truly awesome, authentic Mexican food. It’s also right downtown in a pretty touristy area, another thing we don’t usually do.

Let me back up a second and say how it is we came to be interested in this place. They make awesome salsa. I can imagine most people might eat at the restaurant and then seek out the salsa at the store afterwards, but it kind of happened the opposite for us. We’ve been getting their truly impressive salsa at the store for some time now.

So we went to check the place out, but we pulled our usual trick of going really, really early so that we can be in and out with Evie before the place gets too crowded. The problem is that the plan falls down when a place is so busy that it’s always crowded. There was a line already when we got there 15 minutes before they opened. They told us we would get a table in about 45 minutes.

We spent some time at the fanciest McDonalds I have ever seen, before eventually making it into the restaurant. Despite the wait, and despite the hype, the place still blew me away. The food was amazing. We had a couple of appetizers and entres of course, and even a margarita. With the exception of some salsa that was roughly the temperature of the sun, each thing was more delicious than the last.

I can’t recommend the place highly enough, we will definitely be back there again.

As far as everything else, work is really killing me at the moment, so I didn’t do much else besides work over the weekend. So I apologize for the lack of quotes, etc. Hopefully we’ll be on track again next week.