The Monday before Christmas, we did our celebrations and exchanged gifts with Malin’s mom and Randy. They would be with Randy’s family on Christmas morning, so came over to celebrate with us a little early.

Will loves opening gifts.

Especially when they contain anything related to Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or Batman…

My parents and my brother arrived on Christmas Eve. The next morning we all awoke to see Santa’s handiwork. After making short work of ripping through Santa’s presents, we moved on to the general exchange, during which Will made out with even more loot.

His grandparents got him a really wicked Darth Vader action figure – complete with battle damage (but no hole into which you could pour motor oil or grapefruit juice, no dispensor fist…). They also gave him a video game to which he has been addicted ever since: Lego Batman for the Wii.

Malin got him a Yoda action figure. After all, every plastic figure villain needs a plastic figure hero upon which to whoop ass, n’est-ce pas?

Malin and I also bought Will this Georgia Tech baseball cap to match mine:

The three things that Will asked Santa Claus for this year were a bicycle, “knight” Legos (more formally known as Castle Legos), and a knight costume. Here you can see him trying out the bicycle:

Santa brought him the Legos, too, but the costume was actually a gift from Malin’s mom.

Who knew that one of his favorite hobbies would be mixing and matching the heads, helmets, bodies, legs, and accessories of the Star Wars and Castle Legos? It’s a fun hobby yielding memorable characters like the evil jousting goblin that wears a stormtrooper helmet (I’ll have to get a picture of that guy and post it here, won’t I?).

After exchanging gifts, we ate breakfast: a French Toast casserole, scrambled eggs, and sausage links. Ann made it over for breakfast, and Randy came by after finishing Christmas with his family. They joined us, along with Jake and my parents, for Christmas dinner.

Dinner this year consisted of three courses:

1. Carrot Soup
2. Fresh hand-made fettucine with a brown butter demi-glace sauce, shitake mushrooms, and pearl onions
3. Roast leg of lamb with potato croquettes

Sick Weekend

We were supposed to drive to Greenville, SC the weekend following Christmas. My parents and brother retreated to Greenville the day after Christmas. In addition to visiting with them some more, we were hoping to see our friends Audra and Jon and their young daughter Madelyn.

The night after Christmas, Malin, Will, and I went to see The Tale of Despereaux. The movie was decent – better than I expected.

The following morning when were to get ready to leave, we ended up not being able to make the trip. Malin wasn’t feeling very well, Will’s never-ending cough was a little worse, and I felt like complete garbage: a bad cold resulting in a sinus infection – complete with a sore throat and ear ache.

So we stayed home that weekend, trying to recover. Unfortunately, I felt like crap for pretty much an entire week. I finally started to feel better just yesterday (Sunday the 4^th). Sorry everyone. We really wanted to visit with everyone, but just weren’t up for the car ride, and probably wouldn’t have been much fun in the shape we were in.

The Empire Struck Back

The next Tuesday – December 30^th – Malin was feeling rather gracious. Despite her hesitance to let Will see the first Star Wars movie (she was quite upset at me when she found out that we had watched it one night after she went out), she allowed the viewing of the sequel: The Empire Strikes Back – arguably the best movie out of all six that were made (I would argue that anyway…)

Will was bedazzled by the plot twist. The realization that Darth Vader was Luke’s father – that Anakin and Vader were one – was a total head game. Okay, perhaps I’m putting words into his mouth. But he enjoyed it immensely. Until bedtime…

That night and the following night, he kept us up for hours. He would begin screeching and crying in his sleep. He would wake up from the nightmares and come wake us up. Malin was up with him between midnight and 3am the first night, consoling him and doing anything to get him to fall asleep. The next night, it didn’t begin until about 4:45am, and I was up until close to 7 trying to get him to fall asleep.

The morning after he saw the movie, we asked him what his dreams were about. He answered, “I was dreaming about Darth Vader cutting off Anakin’s hand.”

“You mean Luke’s hand.”

“Yeah. And about Darth Vader freezing Anakin.”

“You mean freezing Han Solo.”

“Yeah.”

It’s kind of funny how he calls everyone Anakin. When he first heard of Indiana Jones this past Spring/Summer, he kept calling him Anakin Jones. I guess he really likes the name Anakin… It’s a good thing Will doesn’t get to name the new baby.

In an attempt to save ourselves another sleepless night, we put a night light in Will’s room the next day. No nightmares since. It will probably be quite some time before we allow him to see this one again. Although, naturally, the next morning when we suggested that he shouldn’t watch the movie again because it gave him such nightmares, he responded, “No, it’s good for me!”

Dirt, Dirt, and More Dirt

On New Year’s Eve, Randy graciously brought Malin a humongous truckload of nice, dark dirt for her garden. When I say big truckload, I mean it. He brought over a Dodge Ram 4500 with a hydraulic-powered bed specifically made for hauling dirt and mulch – literally.

So that afternoon was filled with shoveling a truckload of dirt onto the beds in Malin’s garden.

The next day incurred even more work, of course: tilling. I got to use our baby tiller – the “cultivator” – to re-till the beds and mix the new, dark dirt with the existing soil and clay.

While we were busy out there, we also moved our hop plant to the garden (it was previously in a natural area off the side of the house).

New Year’s

One of the gifts that my mom had gotten for Malin was an excellent cookbook named Charcuterie. Ever since pouring through its pages, we wanted to cook something from it.

So on Tuesday we went and bought a reasonably-priced meat grinder (an attachment for her Kitchen Aid mixer). We had decided to make a country pâté since all the ingredients were easily available – except for pork liver (which is really hard to find around here). We substituted chicken liver in our preparation of a Pâté de Campagne. The result is tasty – a salty, cold, meatloaf that is elevated to new heights thanks to the use of pork fat (to improve its flavor), sweet spices (think pumpkin pie spices – to make for sublime seasoning), and a small amount of liver (to smoothen the texture).

The pâté, unfortunately, was not actually consumed on New Year’s Eve. We prepared it that day/evening, but it wasn’t ready to eat until the next day.

So that night we made braised beef short ribs with some reheated potato croquettes from Christmas dinner.

We didn’t quite make it to midnight. We offered to let Will stay up with us, but he crashed around 10:30pm. We decided to toast around 11:30pm (Lindeman’s Pêche, not champagne) and then go to bed. We didn’t feel like pushing ourselves to stay up that last 30 minutes. Perhaps that’s lame, but I’d say it’s not. I’d say it’s lame to stay up late for the sake of staying up late. After all, we weren’t at a party or even around other people this year. So with Will asleep, there would be nothing interesting at midnight that we had not seen dozens of times before. Besides, we had both had crummy nights of sleep recently thanks to Will’s Darth-Vader-induced nightmares…

Tasty Tacos

This past weekend was my last weekend of vacation. I greatly enjoyed these two weeks at home, but all good things must come to an end it seems…

On Friday, we met our friends Scott and Karyn at Taqueria del Sol. We caught up, saw their baby daughter Zoe (whom I’ve seen only once before – and she had grown a lot since then), and ate some tasty tacos. We’ll be seeing them again soon because Malin is going to take some pictures of Zoe. I mentioned that we’ll bring some home-made sausages (thanks to the magical instructions and recipes in the Charcuterie book). To that, Scott replied, “As long as they’re turkey sausages.”

He is a bit disdainful of fatty indulgences like sausage. Turkey sausage – ha! I have no problems making a turkey sausage. The book even has a recipe for one. But it sure as hell will include pork fat – because turkey is far too lean to make a proper sausage by itself (as is virtually all meat except for pork shoulder and beef short rib…)

After lunch we returned home. The weekend was slow and relaxing. I brewed beer last night (Sunday). All is right with the world.

Flying West

We left on a Friday, one week after Will’s last day of school for the term and my last day of work prior to my sabbatical.

Our trip out west was on a Song aircraft, so it had the entertainment units built into each seat:

We got settled quickly after we arrived. My sister picked us up from the airport and drove us to her place. I had sent a package to her and Cass earlier that week, and the tracking info said it should arrive the very same day that we landed. When we got there, however, we discovered it was not there. The package was a box packed with many homebrews.

National History Museum

On Saturday, we had a big day out – at the museum. Kristie and Cass had gotten a zoo keeper outfit for Will when they were last at the Santa Barbara zoo, so Will wore it much of our week there. He hesitated in putting on the jacket at first – not sure why. But he wore the hat and binoculars to the museum.

There were a bunch of USC fans tailgating as the National History Museum is just outside of campus on its southern side.

The museum had two special interests that attracted us (Will): dinosaurs and spiders.

The first set of dinosaurs, aside from the display out front in the above picture, is in the main foyer. And it is quite a spectacle. It reminds me of the great room at Atlanta’s Fernbank museum – which also has a towering set of dinosaur skeletons.

Will helped Cass give a small token of appreciation to the museum. Donations are fed into the dinosaur mouth:

Our first stop, after the grand display in the foyer, was the land of spiders. Outside the main spider exhibit, they had all of the nasty, poisonous arachnids on display. Will was keen on inspecting each and every one:

The main exhibit inside was awesome. Arachnophobes need not enter. It features numerous spiders, many quite large, freely running amok in a large outdoor space. You walk under their webs, you can see them in the bushes, and you have to be careful not to walk right into some of them. No glass walls protect them from you (or you from them). I think Malin and K were a little freaked out. Cass and Will enjoyed it thoroughly. I thought it was pretty awesome, too.

Malin found the molted exoskeleton of a grasshopper among the bushes and webs:

After the spiders, we visited the halls of mammals, of which there are three at the museum.

They also had a really cool exhibit of birds, including this fellow with the ridiculously long beak:

There was a section on marine life, including some very large fish. This is a picture of an incredibly huge nautilus (> 6ft tall) that defends the entrance to that wing:

Last but not least was an exhibit about the restoration process for dinosaur bones and fossils. They had an actual restoration lab in there with windows so you could see inside and watch the people work.

On our way out, Malin noticed how cool the water fountains were. It looks like you could perform a baptism/christening in one:

On the outside, we had one last set of photos to take – of the giant tiki head, similar to the heads on Easter Island:

Olvera Street

The next day, Malin, K, and I went for a walk through an art festival in North Hollywood. It was pretty uneventful and boring, so we decided to go somewhere else. We ended up going to Olvera Street, looking at shops, and eating good Mexican food for lunch. Warning to tourists: Olvera Street restaurants are expensive. Unfortunately, Will was behaving rather poorly at lunch time, so we left in a bit of a hurry. So we weren’t able to grab a Mexican wrestler mask while there (of which there were plenty available).

The Zoo

The next day, Kristie had to work. So Cass took us to the zoo.

You can see that Will finally decided to wear the jacket that was part of his zoo keeper outfit.

One of the first animals we encountered was a meerkat, sleeping in the shade.

The zoo had all manner of animals, from alligators to lions and sea lions to ibex. Here is a quick montage. Men, try not to be too intimidated by the zebra.

Cass told us how the tallest male giraffe occasionally wanders to one side of their enclosure and does his best to feed off of a very tall tree using an amazingly prehensile tongue. While we were there, we got to see this endeavor in action.

There were also a very fair species of ungulate named Gerenuk (sound like made-up words from a viking poem, don’t they?)

What would a trip to the zoo be without apes? They had many apes, but the best photos we got were of chimpanzees:

On the way back out, the meerkat had finally woken up:

There was also a petting zoo. Before leaving, Will got to pet the goats and sheep that were there. We got one last picture – Will and Cass standing outside the petting zoo:

Unbirthday Party

The next day, Cass and I went to the UPS facility to pick up the homebrews. They had not been delivered on Monday either and were waiting for us at the facility. That evening, a friend of Cass’s came over to help us sample some of the homebrews – which was fun for me since, even though I made them all and have tasted them all before, they tasted better and new with a few months age.

During the day on Tuesday, we had an Unbirthday Party:

Ours was held at the Travel Town Museum – a large field with old steam engines and train cars in it. Will had lots of fun wandering around the trains.

After playing in the train cars, we sat down at a picnic bench and ate lunch. After lunch was the obligatory balloon animals. It is an unbirthday party after all! Instead of animals, however, we made things like helmets, swords, and small intestines:

Before the picnic was finished, we had to have cake. It is an unbirthday party after all! Will calls it “red vulva” cake. Red Velvet is how most of us might refer to it:

After the picnic and balloon-sword fencing, we took a trip around the museum on their miniature locomotive:

When the tour rode around to the back of the park, we could see a train car with a wonderful exclamation painted on it.

Before we left, we got one last picture – this one of all five of us:

Santa Monica

On Wednesday, we decided to drive to Santa Monica. Cass had some things to do, so K accompanied us and drove us about. We first hit up some shops along with way. Among other things, we got Will some cool, new, blue shoes – his LA Shoes. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of them when there were still new and clean, but there is what they look like today:

We went to the main pier at the Santa Monica Beach, had some ice cream, and rode on the ferris wheel.

The main point of going to the beach was for Malin to get a shot of the sunset:

Will was misbehaving on the beach, running off, not listening to us, and so forth. So he was looking pretty glum at this point.

After the beach, we went to do some more shopping and eat some dinner. We ate at a small bar/restaurant called The Library Alehouse, which served decent food and a had a nice selection of beers – from California and otherwise.

There were some cool murals on the walls in the area, too:

Sushi With Uncle Uncle

On Thursday, we went into LA to visit Little Tokyo. While there, we visited a Japanese bookstore, and we also went into a Japanese market. Will got some interesting/odd Japanese toys from the market. We also got the obligatory pack of Pocky.

That evening, continuing with the Japan theme, we had a delicious dinner at a nice sushi restaurant. Cass’s uncle came to dinner with us. Cass and K just call him “uncle”, so we figured Will could call him “uncle uncle.” So we ate dinner with uncle uncle. Will did pretty well, but eventually got quite bored. So he climbed under the bench (our table was against a bench, so half the party sat on the bench and the other half across the table in chairs) and began playing with the arrangement of rocks thereunder.

Returning to Atlanta

The next day was are trip back home. Cass and I dragged a box of stuff that wouldn’t fit into our carry-on suitcases (we never check luggage) to a shipping store to have it FedEx’ed home.

I also had a bunch of interesting and rare brews that I bought while in LA. But we didn’t have boxes and packing material on hand to safely send them on their way, so Cass offered to pack them up after we left and send them to us.

The trip home was uneventful.

Post-Trip Activities

The day after we got back was Saturday. That evening, friends of mine from college visited us: Desmond, his wife Jessica, and their one-year-old daughter Alexis. They left the next morning to the airport to go on their own sort of vacation in Florida.

The following week, we drove through the Carolinas. We spent a couple of nights with my parents in Greenville, SC. We also visited Durham, NC to see our friend Audra and her husband Jon. They had just had a newborn baby daughter named Madelyn. Finally, we had a stop in Charlotte, NC to visit with some of Malin’s relatives and to see Desmond and company yet again.

Our night at Desmond and Jessica’s house was fun. We played Rock Band 2 on their PS3, and Will had a lot of fun banging on the drums. Surprisingly, as much fun as he had at Desmond’s and again at Best Buy playing Rock Band, he has yet to ask for a copy. But we won’t be surprised when he does.

Stay tuned for the next and final chapter of the photo backlog – Halloween. It will be a much shorter post than this one, so it should go up pretty soon.

Part of the reason, at least over the past few weeks, has been a long vacation. I’ve been lazily lounging around the house for four weeks… well, not entirely lounging actually. The company I work for has (had) a nice sabbatical policy. Starting at your fifth calendar year, you have the option of taking a four week sabbatical every three years. I took one when Will was born (that was after I had been there for five years). I wanted to save my next sabbatical to take off when the new kid comes around (next April), but rumour has it that our 2009 Benefits plan will not include the sabbatical. So I needed to take my extra vacation time before it was too late to do so. So we scheduled for me to take my four weeks off starting with Will’s vacation from school (which was only three weeks long).

The first week of vacation was the week of September 22^nd. During this week, I had the clutch on my car rerepaired. The clutch pedal has been acting up ever since the new clutch was put in. When I took it in, they claimed the clutch hydraulic system needed a new slave cylinder. It wasn’t expensive, but I was irate that they were asking for more money to fix the car. The pedal had no such problems before they installed the new clutch.

It is certainly possible that they’re competent and honest mechanics. The slave cylinder could have been on its way out and coincidentally didn’t exhibit any systems until after they messed with it (they did have to flush, fill, and bleed the hydraulics when replacing the clutch). But they obviously had difficulty getting it fixed – they told me it would definitely be ready the next morning. It took a whole day and half beyond that before it was ready, and the guy explained to me over the phone how difficult bleeding the system was. That tells me that they had the same problems even after replacing the slave cylinder (i.e. this was likely a waste of my money) and spent extra time to properly bleed the system. It feels like the did major adjustments in the new clutch, too, because the pedal travel, weight, and friction-point location and length all feel very different then when I took it in…

But it appears to finally be fixed now…

That week I also shipped a case of homebrew to my sister and brother-in-law in California. That Friday, Will, Malin, and I joined that case of homebrew as we boarded a plane headed for Los Angeles.

We had a good time in LA. We took Will to the National Science Museum, the LA Zoo, and Travel Town. We had an unbirthday party (complete with balloon animals that weren’t really animals – more like abstract shapes such as intestines). We went to Little Tokyo. We had good sushi. We had so much Mexican and Central/South American food that we swore off tacos for awhile… We had an unpleasant time dealing with UPS, which decided to totally screw up the deliver of the previously mentioned case of homebrew… And then we flew home.

The following week, it was Malin’s turn to have her car in the shop. The Audi’s radiator was leaking, and it had a cracked CV boot. Mercifully, the radiator leak was fixed cheaply by replacing the overflow reservoir (less than $200, which feels cheap compared to most of my visits to the mechanic).

Her car was fixed just in time for a road-trip. We stopped by and visited my parents in Greenville, SC. We then traveled to visit friends in Durham, NC for a couple of days. On the way back, we stopped and visited some of Malin’s family in Charlotte and stayed the night with a college friend of mine, Desmond, that lives there. We spent the next day in Greenville again. Will’s grandparents took him to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua while Malin and I went to see Max Payne (which wasn’t half-bad).

And this week we’re getting back into our routine. Will started school again this week, so we’re waking up early to take him there. He’s gotten hooked to the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated show on Cartoon Network over the past month. Tonight, however, he fell asleep before it came on (so he’ll have to watch it tomorrow). In this case, it’s good that he fell asleep because this was the roughest episode yet. The target audience is definitely kids, but it’s kids that are a good bit older than Will (8-12 year olds I’d guess).

Today was my last day of sabbatical vacation. I have the weekend ahead of me, and then I must return to the office. Just like my first sabbatical in 2005, this one felt very short. It doesn’t feel like it’s been a whole four weeks… But it has been long enough that it will feel a little wierd returning to work – and a little depressing.

And one of the main things I wanted to accomplish during this four week time – fixing drywall holes left by plumbing repairs – still hasn’t been done… Man, I am such a slacker. But what the hell – it’s a vacation, right?!

I’m hoping to post some pictures and more details from both our week in LA and our road trip in the Carolinas, so stay tuned.

Malin took her camera along, and Will loves being in pictures (several times, he stopped and insisted that Malin take a picture of him right then and there). So this post has a decent number of photos…

Getting There

We had a bit of a rough time getting to the airplane. First, on auto-pilot, I drove towards the airport instead of towards our park-and-ride facility of choice. After doing a loop around Hartsfield-Jackson, we finally managed to get to our park-and-ride facility. And… naturally… it was full. I’d seen them full before only once – during spring break. I wasn’t sure why they were so busy now. I suppose it was just after school got out for summer, so perhaps a lot of families decided to fly to an early summer vacation destination, much like ourselves. They gave us a coupon for one free night at another facility up the road (same owners of course).

We drove up the road and parked, hopped on the shuttle to the airport, and made it all the way to the airport before realizing that we had left something in the car: Will’s booster seat. We didn’t need his seat for the airplane so much as for the rental car once we landed in Boston. The shuttle driver was nice and happily drove us back to the car and then back out to the airport.

We were finally at the airport – all of our junk in tow! The next bit of fun we had was getting our boarding passes. We had Delta e-tickets, so the shuttle driver dropped us off at the Delta terminal, and we walked up to an available kiosk for check-in. As Murphy’s Law would predict, we were unable to get our passes from the kiosk. As luck would have it, our seats were on a “partner carrier”: Continental. Even though we booked the flights through Delta and Delta and Continental are “partners”, we still had to lug all of our junk to the other side of the airport (Continental and Delta are not on the same terminal) to check-in and get boarding passes.

Thankfully, we had left home early enough to allow plenty of time in security lines. That meant we were early enough that all of the mishaps so far didn’t cause us to miss our flight. In fact, since we were lugging around so much stuff (a three-year-old and a booster seat is what really did it), we were let into the special, short security line that is intended for disabled passengers, passengers traveling with infants, and others with special needs.

This, of course, is the view from the plane – somewhere over the U.S. eastern seaboard, between Atlanta, Georgia and Newark, New Jersey (we had a connection at Newark, continuing on to Logan International in Boston).

Before long, we arrived in Boston, Massachusetts.

Getting Acquainted

After we landed, we took a shuttle to the rental car facility. Very shortly after we got everything squared away and had packed the rental car, my brother, Jake, showed up (he missed us by a few minutes meeting us at the airport, so he took the same shuttle to the rental car facility to meet us).

We got on the road to go to the hotel and unload the car. Traffic was rough – rush hour on Friday. We finally made it to our hotel (which was not really close to anything – about 10 miles north of Cambridge up I-93). We chose an out-of-the-way hotel, in Woburn, because of the price (the amount we saved on the hotel was more than enough to pay for the rental car to allow us to get from Woburn to everything else). After being buckled into an airplane for a few hours and then in a car for an hour, Will was ready to expend some energy, as you can see from the photo on the right.

We decided to go to Cambridge Brewing Company for dinner, and Jake invited a friend of his to meet us there. We had a little difficulty getting to Cambridge because of the fact that our hotel was nestled in between I-95 and I-93. To make things more confusing, I-95 and I-93 have the same exit numbers in this area. Unlike other cities where you can tell you’re on the wrong interstate because of the direction it runs (North-South instead of East-West or vice versa) or because the exit numbers are way out of range, in Woburn I-95 and I-93 both run North-South and intersect one another at exit number 37. That’s right: the exit from I-95 to get onto I-93 is exit 37, and the exit from I-93 to get onto I-95 is exit 37. So naturally, we started down the wrong interstate in our journey to Cambridge. After some frustrating time had passed (”How could Google maps be so freakin’ wrong!?!?!”), we discovered our mistake and were finally on the right way.

Dinner was good, and the place made a nice variety of interesting and tasty ales. Since we were in Cambridge, Jake walked home, and we drove back to the hotel.

Getting Around Town

Saturday was a busy day. We woke up and ate breakfast at the hotel. I think this was Will’s favorite breakfast place because they had make-your-own Belgian Waffles and fresh apples – two of his favorites. After breakfast, we went to pick up Jake, and then we stopped at the Samuel Adams Brewhouse for a tour. After the tour, we ate tasty sandwiches and cookies for lunch at Flour Bakery, near the kid’s museum.

Before we could eat, however, we had to find it. This would prove challenging as Boston has to be the very worst city in the country for driving around. The roads are not on a grid. At first, I didn’t think this would be a big deal. After all, downtown Atlanta isn’t on a grid either. But Boston is really, really not on a grid. Typically, in a city with a lot of one-way streets, the directions alternate: left turn only, right turn only, left turn only, etc… but not in Boston. If you need to turn left, you can count on coming across three right-turn-only streets in a row. You can also frequently count on a complete lack of street signs. Need to turn right onto some particular street? Then you better know what the intersection looks like because many intersections are signage-free. For many reasons, driving around Boston was a huge pain… So out of total frustration, we decided to park and just walk to lunch. Because we planned on going to the park after lucnh, we parked in Chinatown. It is centrally located: lunch to the southeast and the park to the northwest.

The restaurant was close to the kid’s museum, but we didn’t actually go to the kid’s museum. Will had seen the one in Seattle, and they were similar enough that we didn’t feel the need to go to another one. Instead, we walked around Boston. We walked a very short part of the Freedom Trail.

The part of trail we walked ended at the Boston Common park. We had walked around a good bit at that point, so we took a rest in the grass:

After our walk, we decided to eat dinner at a Thai restaurant near where Jake lives in Cambridge. We then called it a night.

Getting Into College

Sunday was Father’s Day. To celebrate, we left the hotel to meet Jake for brunch at the Exchange Street Bistro. The place was pretty fancy but reasonably priced. The meal was good, but not perfect. The French toast I ordered was way too decadent. It was stuffed with (i.e. layered with stuff in between each slice of toast) peaches and blueberries, which were good. But it was also smothered all over with mascarpone – which tasted good but was simply too much. I think a light dollop of mascarpone on the top and some more conventional topping, like butter pecan syrup or maple syrup, would have been more to my liking. Malin ordered Crabcakes Benedict and Jake ordered Eggs Benedict. Their meals looked good (and from the few bites I had off Malin’s plate, tasted good too). Unfortunately, however, one of the poached eggs served on  Malin’s plate was way overcooked (it looked more like a hard-boiled egg than a poached egg – dense with a dry, chalky yolk instead of a runny yolk).

The rest of the day was spent in Cambridge, touring colleges for Will :)

First we drove over to the MIT campus and visited the MIT Museum. This place was very cool. The bottom floor hosts The Mark Epstein Innovation Gallery. The day we were there, this gallery included interactive exhibitions on MIT’s City Car concept and their engineering contributions to oceanography. The latter featured a simulator allowing visitors to control a robot (an unmanned, remotely-controlled, undersea vehicle) that was, by far, Will’s favorite exhibit.

Upstairs features a very large space with some very cool exhibits. The first gallery focused on robots. This gallery was a big disappointment: don’t get me wrong, it was interesting. But when you have a three-year-old that has really gotten his hopes up for seeing robots, this exhibit simply couldn’t fulfill that level of expectation. The robots were all behind glass cases, and none of them moved. Will was not impressed. The next gallery featured two exhibits: one on holographs and the other featuring intricate, mechanical sculptures/artwork from a mechanical engineer named Arthur Ganson.

These sculptures are phenomenal. I wish I could describe them better. They ranged from spindly, wiry contraptions to elegantly moving machines, and all of them were very cool. You’ll just have to check it out for yourself to understand what I mean.

After MIT, we visited the campus of Harvard University. The campus is quite attractive and makes for a nice walk. We walked past the library and the law school and took pictures of ourselves on the steps in front of the buildings:

We were also obliged to visit the statue of John Harvard – and rub his toe for good luck:

In one of the buildings (can’t remember which) they had a very old mainframe on display – one of the first big computers, complete with a large array of knobs for defining the inputs to your program (in decimal) and a punch card reader. Will was mesmerized by it, wondering, “How does one play Lego Star Wars on this gigantic contraption?”

After a thorough trip through campus, we finally decided to meander back to our car. During the walk back, Malin snapped this amusing shot:

Will fell asleep in car on our way to dinner. This night we stopped at a staple for tourists visiting Boston: Legal Sea Foods. It was okay. The food was decent, but overpriced. It reminded me a little of Cheesecake Factory… Will woke up just in time to eat some dessert. After dinner, we called it a night.

Getting To Waltham and Back

The next day, Jake had to work. We were to pick him up from work in the afternoon. There was shops and such at which Malin wanted to shop, so we drove from the hotel down to Cambridge for some shopping.

The first stop was supposed to be a quick stop at IHOP. We had an extremely aggravating battle with squirrelly roads, unlabeled streets, and traffic. It took forever to finally find the place, and everyone was thoroughly irritated with one another by the time we finally got out of the car (both from hunger and from arguing about how the hell to get to the restaurant). Big honkin’ stack of flapjacks to the rescue!

The next stop after breakfast was a vintage fabric store. Will and I played at a really cool playground (the Gore Street Playground) while Malin searched for cool material.

After that, we drove up to Somerville to hang out at Davis Square. There were several shops that Malin wanted to visit. We rounded out that trip by picking up some desserts from a place named Kickass Cupcakes. With a name like that, how could we not go in?

We split one of our cupcake acquisitions in the car on the way to go pick up Jake from work.

We then had even more fun with the Boston area roads. For instance, on-ramps from the surface streets in Boston onto I-90 are very poorly marked. Many of the signs don’t even indicate that it is an interstate – they say “Massachusetts Turnpike” instead. We never did exactly figure out the next steps. We had directions, from Google maps, for getting to the Watch City Brewing Company. We got off the interstate and then went in search of the streets it indicated – to no avail. We finally decided to just drive around, taking streets that lead us in the right direction. We did finally cross a street whose name we recognized from the directions, and we were able to get to our destination from there.

Watch City had a tasty selection of ales and quite good french fries. After a short time there, we were off, back to Boston. Our destination this time was The Barking Crab for a spot of dinner. Dinner here was good. I think it was just as good as Legal Sea Foods, but a little more reasonably priced. I also really liked the fact that they didn’t take themselves too seriously here; the restaurant was much more casual than Legal Sea Foods.

After dinner we drove to the North End – home to Boston’s Little Italy. We parked and walked around. It was very crowded, and there were a slew of restaurants that all could have made great dinner destinations had we not just eaten. On the recommendation of a co-worker who used to live in the Boston area, we made a stop at Mike’s Pastry shop. Will and I split some delicious gelato, and Will and Malin split some chocolate-dipped, puffed pastries.

At that point, it began to rain, so we called it a night. We said our goodbyes to Jake, since he’d be at work the next day when we’d be on our way to the airport.

Getting Ready to Leave

Tuesday was our last day there. We had some time, however, before we had to get to the airport to leave. So we revisited a few places in Boston before going home.

Our first stop was the Boston Public Gardens. Here we are, standing at the gates just outside the gardens:

While in the gardens, we took Will on a swan-boat ride. I do not recommend this. It is a very short, boring, slow ride around the pond. You’ll have just as good of a view, if not better, for free by simply walking around the pond. After the boat ride, we did just that:

After a swan-boat ride at the gardens, we drove back up to the North End to get a daytime view of Little Italy. We walked around and got a delicious sandwich from a Salumeria. Will and I decided to wait outside while mother dearest went inside to grab some grub:

Will didn’t care for the sandwich, so on the walk back to the car we let him pick out a slice of pizza from a deli/bakery that was on the way:

Getting Home

Our ordeal getting on the plane back home was even more stressful than on the way up to Boston.

First, we had to return the rental car. This should have been easy: our paperwork from the rental car facility even had a photo with arrows on it. Unfortunately, I found the text beneath the photo – pertaining to when I would see this – to be a little confusing. So I ended up getting off the highway too soon. Then, after arguing a little bit about how the heck to get to the place from the surface streets where we now found ourselves, we headed off and did, in fact, manage to find the place.

A quick shuttle to the airport and we were ready to go! This time, we knew to check-in at the Continental counter, not Delta. Their kiosk system wouldn’t accept my e-ticket number, so I had to ask for assistance. The woman that helped us informed us that our flight was a little late. That meant we would miss our connecting flight (through Newark again was the plan) and have to take the next one which would put us back in Atlanta about three hours late. I was visibly irritated by the situation so the lady did a little extra to help: she moved us to a direct flight on a Delta plane that left nearly an hour earlier than our original itinerary (we were early, so we figured we could make it without a problem).

Unfortunately, we had to walk over to the Delta counter to check-in. We were able to check-in at a Delta kiosk, but unable to choose seat assignments. This was bad news because none of our seats were together – the boarding passes had us spread out all over the plane. So we decided to rush to the gate to get the seat assignment fixed before the plane took off.

Naturally, as Murphy would have predicted, we hit another snag: Malin and Will got tagged for the “extensive” search at the security line. So we had to wait a bit longer than everyone else as Malin had to stand in a big, dark box that scanned her. And then they had to open all of her carry-ons and inspect everything. They were rubbing around the luggage with a tissue and then running the tissue through a scanner (I assume to check for dust or residue that would be left behind had we packed explosives).

Just as the security folks were finishing their scans, Will’s backpack broke. The zipper completely failed. Malin had to clutch it tightly to prevent its zipperless opening from dropping all of its contents as we hurried to the gate. As we arrived, boarding was about to begin. I was pretty pessimistic about our chances of getting our seat assignments fixed this late in the game… Luckily, I was proven wrong. The lady at the gate heard our situation and printed new boarding passes in the blink of an eye. Just as we were handed our new boarding passes, the call to board the plane was issued. We immediately jumped in line and had a smooth ride home.

We brought a big Tonka dump truck for Will to play with in the sand. We also brought his “tools” – a plastic toy shovel and rake, made for sandbox play.

He made several trips from the house to the beach. The first afternoon we were there, shortly after arriving, Donna took him and Catrina (Audra’s and Jason’s young cousin) to the beach to play. We returned again the next morning, and again in the evening, and again the next day, etc…

During some down time before the wedding, the three of us (Malin, Will, and me) went for a stroll on the beach. Malin took many pictures of us on the beach. When we walked under the pier that was near the house, she handed me the camera and asked me to snap some in order to get herself in some pictures. The first photo up there on the right is shy Willie getting a piggyback ride from mommy. The one below shows the two of them looking for shells under the pier:

There were actually lots of seashells to find down there. Just a few feet away from where they’re standing was an alley of crushed shells that seemed to run the whole length of the beach:

Tiring of my photography skills (or lack thereof), Malin eventually reclaimed her camera to prove that I was actually at the beach with the two of them:

She also got some great shots of Will playing in the sand. This one is my favorite:

The rest of the vacation centered around the wedding and our preparation of food for ourselves and the other guests: a low-country boil on Saturday, crab cakes and fish’n'chips on Sunday.

Unfortunately, we had to leave the beach on Monday. I can’t wait to go back… perhaps later this summer?

So as you may know, we had a long memorial day weekend on the beach at Oak Island, NC. We were there to see our good friend Audra marry her fiance (now her husband), Jon. We were also planning to bring some foodie entertainment for everyone, and Malin would be taking pictures the whole weekend.

Arrival

We left Greenville on Friday morning. The day was slow. Will watched Return to Oz for the first time, and he enjoyed it. We still need to get the original The Wizard of Oz on DVD so he can watch that one…

After about five hours of driving, we arrived at a phenomenal house. It had eight bedrooms, a small pool, a balcony with a hot tub, a deck, and an industrial kitchen packed with nice cabinets and even nicer appliances. Once we figured out in which room we would be sleeping, we hastily unpacked our car.

Several folks had already arrived – among them Audra, Jon, Jason (my long-time friend and brother of the bride), and Donna (Jason’s wife). We decided to order pizza to make dinner easy. We ordered a slew of pies, which would be slowly consumed as folks trickled in throughout the day and evening.

That evening Malin went out to the beach with Audra and Jon for an engagement photo shoot (click the pic to see a little more):

After the engagement shoot, we spent a fair amount of time hanging out in the “game room” of the rental house. For what seemed like hours, Audra and Jon busily scanned in childhood photos of one another, to be shown in a slideshow that would be displayed on a big, flat-screen TV during the wedding reception the next afternoon.

This, unlike the remaining nights at the beach, was not a late night. We retired at a reasonable hour.

The Wedding Day

When we woke up, we were treated to breakfast. Some of Audra’s and Jason’s family cooked up some scrambled eggs with hashed potatoes, biscuits, and sausage gravy:

Most of the morning, Will played video games. Maysa, Audra’s youngest sister, brought her Wii with her, along with many games that Will found to be quite fascinating. Maysa and Catrina shared with Will.

Malin and I had one key task to accomplish before the wedding: buy fresh seafood for the reception dinner. We went down the road and happened upon a wonderful fish monger. The guy that ran the place was incredibly friendly and incredibly helpful as far as what to buy. We told him we wanted to do a low-country boil with blue crabs and other shellfish and that we needed to serve as much as 20 people (there were more people at the wedding, but there would also be other food like burgers and dogs).

We went home with a big box o’ crabs. Yummy!

We returned in time to see “the cake lady” delivery the cake. It was very pretty, and they (the cake lady and her assistant) nearly toppled it over while setting it up on a table. Some of the seashells looked so real, and yet they were all made of chocolate: genius!

Speaking of chocolate shells, here is a pic of Audra’s and Jason’s youngest sister Maysa (left) and their cousin Catrina (right), packing party favors with more of the ingenious confections.

Also before the ceremony, Malin was able to sneak into the bridal suite and snap a picture of the bride and her younger sister Lauren getting ready for the big event:

The ceremony began on the beach amidst beautiful weather, surrounded by sand and ocean. It was quite nice. Unfortunately, I missed most of the ceremony due to a disagreeable three-year-old. Will insisted on walking along the beach to look at seashells. Every time I insisted that we watch, he would get upset and very loud. Not wanting a tantrum to disrupt the event, I gave in and let him walk around picking up shells. I even tried to persuade him through peer pressure: “Catrina and Maysa are watching the ceremony”, but it was to no avail. I was hoping that last bit would work since he had developed a bit of a fascination with the two girls – perhaps even a crush on Catrina.

Luckily, Malin was able to capture the beauty of the day so that I could look upon it on a computer monitor afterwards. Click the photo to see a little more.

After the ceremony, the cooking began. Jason and his uncle Eric manned the grill stations, cooking up burgers and dogs for the hungry crowd:

Meanwhile, I was at the seafood station, boiling corn on the cob, pork sausage (it wasn’t Andouille, but it was still good), potatoes, four dozen blue crabs, and five pounds of shrimp. It was divine. The crabs tried to put up a fight, but they don’t fight so good when their brains are half-frozen from sleeping in an ice-filled cooler for hours:

As it would turn out, the fish monger sold us too much crab and shrimp. This was partially our fault – notably less than 20 people were hungrily partaking of the low-country boil.

So that evening several folks, including Jason, Donna, Lisa (Jason’s and Audra’s mother), and Dave (Jason’s and Audra’s father), helped to shell left-over shrimp and crabs. We decided to shell it all and save the succulent meat for more crabby goodness the following day…

Will spent most of the night watching Ian, Jon’s nephew. Ian had brought his Nintendo DS, and Will was quite entertained by watching him play video games on it.

That night was a late one. Many of us stayed up until the wee hours, talking, and sipping whiskey. I retired around 2:30am. Jason, his dad, and Bryan (Jon’s older brother) stayed up until almost 5am… A good time was had by all.

The Day After

The next day, with some assistance from Jason and Malin, I whipped the left-over, shelled, crab meat into crab cakes for brunch. This was a lot of fun, and everyone enjoyed the final product. The recipe I found (randomly happened upon it online while searching for recipes whose ingredient lists were satisfied with what we had in the kitchen) was a good one, and they turned out awesome.

After brunch, Jason, Dave, and Jon went to the big pier on Oak Island to go fishing. Will wanted to watch them fish (he actually wanted to participate, but he needed some assistance, so the real work was done by the three folks who had acquired fishing licenses).

It turned out to be a very slow, quiet afternoon fishing. Apparently there was only one bite: Jason caught a small shark.

When we returned to the big ol’ house, I had to start preparing dinner. I accompanied my dad on a fishing trip in New Orleans in early May and had brought back many delicious spoils (twenty pounds or so of red fish). Malin and I brought some of the fish with us to Oak Island, just in case we didn’t actually catch enough fish there to feed everyone.

That afternoon, I had to skin all of the boogers. They were filleted by the dockhands, but the skins – with scales in tact – remained. My dad called them “on the half shell.”

After skinning and scaling all of the fillets, Malin set about cooking them in a bath of bubbling oil, along with thick-cut potatoes. And, voila, fish and chips was served for dinner. Dinner even included a cocktail shrimp appetizer, thanks to the leftover shellfish from the previous evening. This meal turned out marvelously. Everyone was well-fed and enjoyed it, and it was a fulfilling and pleasant experience to help out with the food and have everyone like it so well… two meals in a row, no less!

That evening was another late one, though not quite as late as the previous night. Jason and I sampled some very nice spirits that were brought for the event: Patron Silver, Bushmills Original, and Johnny Walker Black Label.

The Trip Home

The next morning, we had to wake up and start packing. Checkout was at 10am, so we had to have everything out of the house before that so the keys could be returned by 10.

It was difficult saying goodbye to such a good weekend and to the friends that were there with us. We got on the road and started driving back to Greenville, SC.

Will watched Return to Oz numerous times in the car on the ride back – it was his newest addiction (which has since been replaced by Harry Potter, and more recently Indiana Jones and Batman).

As we were driving near Columbia, SC, we were hungry for lunch and decided that what we really wanted was Taco Bell. We had borrowed a GPS receiver for our laptop from my dad, and used it to find a Taco Bell.

My dad calls her “Betty.” She barks directions at you in a calm, unflinching manner as you drive. Damnable Betty supposedly drove us to two different Taco Bells in Columbia. Neither were there. Neither appeared to be locations where there ever was a Taco Bell. Curse the software and its bad database of “points of interest.”

When we got to Greenville, my mom took us to a very interesting restaurant named Saskatoon Grill. They specialize in interesting game, wild foul, and steaks – Canadian-style supposedly. The Kangaroo steak I had was quite delicious, though not particularly Canadian. We also had an appetizer that featured three sausages: one made from wild boar, another from buffalo, and the last from ostrich meat. Malin’s entrée was a sampler of meat: lamb, buffalo steak, and duck breast. Overall, it was an interesting meal and tasty to boot.

The morning after that was the Tuesday after Memorial Day. We had breakfast with my mom at IHOP and then hit the road yet again, homeward bound. This trip, we managed to find not just a Taco Bell, but a Taco Bell / Pizza Hut Express! Sometimes life shines upon you brilliantly.