The first signs of getting old

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Okay, I just turned 30 and now this.

Verizon called the other day to tell me I had text messages. They said that they had noticed because receiving text messages was a break in my pattern, and they just wanted to know if that was okay. They said they didn’t want me to be surprised when I had a few charges for text messages on my bill (we don’t have text messaging in our plan). So basically, they did everything except go step by step on my phone to tell me how to get my messages.

In summary, the call went something like this:
“Don’t be alarmed! This is called a “text message”. Many people of your generation don’t know what that is, so I will explain it to you. Don’t bother trying to fiddle about in there by yourself, you’ll probably just mess things up. Just so you know, when you break out the bifocals to look at your bill, you will notice a charge on there. Do you need me to explain to you what money is?”

Am I really that old? Sure, I don’t text message much. It’s just not my thing really. But lets just say I understand the concept, I didn’t need quite so much hand holding. I have received text messages before, they’re not just all piling up in my inbox unread.

I guess maybe they put stuff like that in there when the stories started coming out about parents having a $500 phone bill because their kid was texting all over the place. So I guess they really are doing it as a favor to me or something. But we’re talking about like 3 text messages here, not 3,000. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed the difference on my bill. And it’s not like the first time I’ve ever received one. I’ve even sent a few.

So, in summary, get off my back Verizon, I’m not in the grave just yet. And get off my lawn.

The restaurants of break

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Over the break (the two weeks over the holidays during which I didn’t blog), we were out and about a little more than usual, which led to us hitting up more restaurants than usual. So I wanted to mention a few of the highlights:

The best of the lot was Electric Cheetah in Grand Rapids. Evie was pretty excited to go here, since she considers us the “Cheetah family” (on account of how fast she and I run at soccer practice). She must have been hungry too, because she insisted she was going to order “everything” from the waitress. The waitress must have been taken with her, since she spent a few minutes showing her pictures of her kids. I had one of the best sandwiches I can recall, the “Sloppy Jalopy” which was:

House-smoked corned beef brisket and black forest ham, caramelized red onion, tomato, thousand island, Dijon, and Swiss on grilled rye.

They also had a root beer list the way a brewery has a beer list, which was also enjoyable to read (but the one Sara ultimately chose did have high fructose corn syrup in it). They also had good fries with *awesome* dipping sauces for them. I don’t remember what they all were, but there were like 10 different kinds and they were all delicious. My favorite was the dill. Also, Sara had some saffron-tomato soup which she enjoyed. All in all, a very awesome “hipster” lunch spot (it even said hipster on the menu, so I know it’s true).

Obviously that was a little more interesting than the Pizza Hut lunch buffet, but that doesn’t mean Evie didn’t enjoy it more. Evie ate more than Sara! She had 3 pieces of pizza, garlic toast, a dessert breadstick, 3 slices of peaches (she didn’t beat her old man though).

Next up was a restaurant a little closer to home (and one we go to now and again), Chant. At this one, Evie was excited about getting to try “sushi” (except it didn’t have fish). She had wanted to try some at Sara’s work Christmas party, and then she got a set of play sushi from Rachael, which she loves to play with. So I ordered some so that she could try it. I don’t think she really liked it, but then again it was non-traditional sushi, so she might go for it again some time.

The last and least exciting restaurant was Quiznos, the name of which Evie found hilarious. “Quiz-nose? The restaurant is Quiz-nose?” Now, it’s just funny to have “nose” in the name, but this was especially funny to Evie, because she has special names for all of us in the family. Evie is Spoon-nose, I am Fork-nose, and Sara is Kitchen-nose. This all happened one day when Evie and I were being silly, and I was wearing a spoon on my nose, but in true Evie-fashion, she never forgets a thing. So these names have been around for a long time and she never forgets them. So this sort of added to the humor of Quiz-nose.

There were a few more restaurants, but those were the ones that stood out.

The Addams Family

/ Shane / 5 Comments

Over break, Sara and I took a day for ourselves and went to see The Addams Family. It is a musical that is premiering here in Chicago before going on to Broadway in New York. It stars Nathan Lane as Gomez and Bebe Neuwirth (A.k.a. Lillith, from Cheers (Frasier’s wife)) as Morticia.

Overall it was pretty good. I absolutely loved the scene where Uncle Fester is singing to the moon. For me, it was worth seeing for that scene alone. The guy who plays Uncle Fester is great, and so is the kid who plays Pugsly. Without a doubt, Grandma got all the best lines. As far as Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, they were okay. I was excited to see them, and they didn’t do bad, but they didn’t really knock my socks off either.

Overall I’d have to rate it a solid B. I enjoyed myself, and I didn’t regret seeing it, but I can think of a couple of shows off the top of my head that I thought were better (but of course I can think of plenty that weren’t as good, either). At one point I thought to myself, “What is missing from this show?” It had everything you could have wanted; good actors, good sets, jokes. Somehow it just didn’t catch me. I think the music wasn’t that catchy. Sara thought the jokes were too corny maybe, but then again, they usually are in things like that.

So anyway, if you’re looking for a show to see, I would recommend this. Especially if you were a fan of the T.V. show; there are plenty of references to the show (I actually saw a fair number of episodes via Nick at Night, back when that showed old reruns). Just don’t pick this one over Wicked.

50 States

/ Shane / 5 Comments

Here we have Evie singing the 50 states in alphabetical order. We pulled out this old party trick over break a few times, and it went over well, so I thought I should get a video of it. She does pretty good with minimal prompting, though some of the state names are a little garbled (sorry Hawaii!) Girl has a memory on her, that’s for sure.

Maybe you’ll see her on the today show someday, like one of those kids that knows the names of all the presidents or whatever.

You can see some of her previous songs here.

Surprised!

/ Shane / 2 Comments

So Sara planned a surprise party for me on Saturday, and I think a good time was had by all. The star of the party, of course, was the tower of homemade cupcakes in lieu of a birthday cake. These weren’t just your average cupcakes either; the green ones were chocolate mint, the orange ones had orange cake, the strawberry ones had strawberry filling. The schnozberry ones tasted like schnozberries. They were amazing.

Now the first question you’re probably asking yourself is, was I surprised? Well, I’ll have you know that I am extremely brilliant, and you have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool me. And by that, of course, I mean that I’m so oblivious that most people pretty much stopped bothering to even pretend around me, and I STILL probably wouldn’t have caught on if it hadn’t been staring me in the face.

I knew my mom was coming this weekend. So the first clue was when I called her to see if she had received my email about bringing her snow pants (Evie wanted to play in the snow). The conversation went something like this:

Me: “Did you grab your snow pants?”
Mom: “Yes, and I already called Rachael to tell her to bring hers.”
Me: “Oh, is Rachael coming too?”
Mom: “No.”

Despite this, I still wasn’t suspicious yet. Not suspicious enough to not notice the 6 lbs. of beef thawing in the fridge or to think anything was amiss when Sara proceeded to make 45 cupcakes while I was in the kitchen (to be fair, this doesn’t mean that I didn’t notice all the cupcakes, only that I didn’t see a problem with someone making me 45 cupcakes).

However, on Friday night I was opening up some presents from my mom, and the card said, “I hope you were surprised!” “About turning 30?” I asked (I quite expected to make it to 30, thank you very much). I thought maybe there was a surprise in the present. “Was I supposed to open the present first?” So I opened the present and it was jeans. My mom tried to play it off. “Aren’t you surprised I got you the same present for Christmas and your birthday?”

This was decidedly odd, but before I could even think about it, I opened the birthday card from my dad that came in the mail. “Sorry we couldn’t make it to your party.” “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Sara. Now I might be oblivious, but when you put the word “surprise” and “party” so close together, combined with all the other weird stuff (I thought of some other odd stuff later too, in retrospect), you’d have to be pretty dense not to get it.

Not to take anything away from anybody though, there were several highly successful ruses. For example, Tom and Barb calling to wish me a happy birthday when they were really in the car a couple of blocks away. Rachael also calling to wish me a happy birthday and talking to me for a long time, even though she was going to see me the next day. And also my mom making me go the long way around to backtrack and see the people on the ice rink for like 10 minutes. I did not detect that I was being delayed (though I may have been a little exasperated about it!)

One final word about birthday parties, I think it is hard for Evie to imagine any situation that is not all about her. This is not entirely her fault. I remember at one point, she was sitting at the table eating a cupcake, the only one, while she held court with about 8 people crowded around her. From her point of view, there wasn’t much difference between her birthday party and my birthday party.