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?

The Twister

/ Shane / 1 Comment

When I was little, there was no bigger game in town than the minor league hockey team, the Fort Wayne Komets.

It doesn’t seem like a minor league team would be any big deal, but I’m telling you, people had signs hanging in their window. Every game was packed. We talked about the Komets at school. Everyone knew the names of the players. I think I still have a puck or two lying around somewhere.

But of all the excitement provided by the team, there was one thing that was a bigger deal: The Twister.

The Twister was a gentleman of, ::ahem:: generous proportions who sat somewhere in the stands. At some point during the game, they would play “The Twist” over the loudspeaker, and the Twister would leap to his feet and start doing the twist.

The Twister

I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I’m telling you, when I was a kid, this was probably the most famous guy in Fort Wayne (thinner than I remembered, by the way…maybe this was a more recent picture). When the song started up, the entire arena would freeze and begin frantically searching for the Twister. Spot lights would come on, people would be pointing. He had an official Komet’s jersey with the name “Twister” written across the back. You might go to the bathroom during the game, but as soon as you heard, “Come on baby!” rip out over the loudspeaker, you dropped what you were doing and ran in to see him.

You wouldn’t think it would be such a big deal. I couldn’t tell you why it was. Even now I’m scratching my head a little bit over it. The guy just liked doing the twist. He always had a big grin plastered all over his face. You might think that people were just mocking the fat guy doing the twist. Maybe they were at first, but I’m telling you, the guy was beloved. You could be famous just by association to the Twister, like, “The Twister is my neighbor!” “No waaaay, dude!”

I don’t know what his real name was, or if he’s still around. From some searches I did, it sounds like he’s still out there, twisting the good fight. Obviously, only the people from Fort Wayne are going to understand how awesome the Twister was. But all I can tell you is, look at the other people in the crowd. Look how happy they are. Look at how happy the Twister is. Think about how much joy the Twister has spread in his days. What have you done to make the world a better place?

Playing Pretend

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Evie loves to play pretend. So much so, that the line between reality and pretend starts to blur a little bit.

At any given moment, Evie has assigned all of us characters to play. And I mean all of us, not just Sara, Evie, and me, but also Nala, stuffed animals, even inanimate objects (er, other inanimate objects besides the stuffed animals) in some cases.

It began with Alice in Wonderland. When she was going through her Alice phase, specifically after seeing the play, she assigned each of us a character. She was the White Rabbit, Sara was Alice, and I was (unfortunately) the Queen of Hearts. Not only did we have to answer to and address each other by these names, when called upon, we each had a catch phrase to say. Evie’s was, “I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!” Sara’s was, “Curiouser and curiouser,” and mine was, “Off to the dungeon!” (In the play, they were hesitant to say, “Off with her head!” so the queen was reduced to “off to the dungeon!”

As I commented on a similar post over at Stay at Home Blogger:

It leads to such ridiculous statements by Evie as, “Alice and the White Rabbit are watching the Queen of Hearts put salsa on his burrito.”

It kind of takes you out of the moment when you are trying to be stern with her and she says, “No, I’m not Evie, I’m Smevelyn!” (My fault on that one, it was a name I used for a little girl in a story I told her…not very creative)

The problem is, that our identities change by the minute. I could be Geppetto from Pinocchio, The Man with the Yellow Hat from Curious George, or Mufasa from the Lion King, all within a span of an hour. In fact, even Evie has trouble keeping track of who is supposed to be who. The other day I overheard her having a conversation with herself that went:

“Evie, do you have a bumblebee?
No, I’m not Evie, I’m George.
Oh, excuse me!”

Although it gets old at times, quite frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think an imagination extremely underrated as an important life skill. I think being able to think in that way will help you be successful, no matter what you end up doing in life. And I love that she will be able to entertain herself in this way. So in the meantime, I’ll put up with answering to Geppetto and telling her 50 times in a row that I’m glad she saved me from that whale.

I’m just telling you this, so that you can expect to have a new name assigned to you, should you ever come over to visit.

Prank Emails

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Okay, usually pranks like this are really lame. People who call in or write in to a show and just scream something stupid, or say some inside joke that only a few friends will get are just dumb. You’re not impressing anybody.

On the other hand, sometimes there are clever pranks, which are done well enough that the person who is pranked just has no clue. Case in point #1:

Even better would be if you could subtly Rick Roll someone while they are talking about being pranked:

Links via Urban Prankster.