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Sundays with Samith

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Samith brings Brighton into Seward on Sunday evenings to play basketball at Concordia’s youth basketball program (there’s some other name for the program, but, yeah). While Brighton is basketballing it up, Samith has been coming over to our house for what we have affectionately been calling, Sundays with Samith™.

We mostly just sit around, eat dinner and talk about things. But this time Samith came bearing gifts. Sometime ago, Samith was lucky enough to purchase a Bag of Crap™. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to purchase a Bag of Crap at the end of a Woot Off™, but I’ve never been quick enough.

One of the items in the Bag of Crap was a TruGuard (presumably also™) screen protector for an iPhone5. Samith knows that I like to live dangerously and don’t keep a cover on my phone, but this is just 0.3mm thick. He thought I could maybe live with that.

crap1

The instructions were so brief that we did a lot of assuming about how we were to do things, but it all turned out okay. Their selling point is protection, but the most amazing thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any fingerprint smudges on the screen anymore. That’s really pretty neat.

Thanks Samith, and thanks Bag of Crap.

Samuel L. Jackson comes through again

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We had another successful Bad Movie Night on Tuesday, and Lauren is finally letting me write about it. We didn’t go into it thinking it would be anything out of the ordinary. Samith investigated the movies this time around and presented us with two choices: Jupiter Rising or Kingsmen.

Samith characterized Jupiter Rising as, “potentially having some love story element involved.” And he characterized Kingsmen as, “Has Samuel L. Jackson ever disappointed us?” Or, in the case of Bad Movie Night, maybe that should be, “Has Samuel L. Jackson ever not disappointed us?” Or maybe, “Has Samuel L. Jackson ever appointed us?”

They* say that good movies are all good in the same way, but bad movies are all bad differently. I think it’s fairly safe to say that Kingsmen was bad in the Oh-Sh*t-We-Ran-Out-Of-Money-And-The-Film-Isn’t-Done sort of way. Which is sort of, but not quite the same as Dusk Til Dawn’s I-Bet-You-Didn’t-Know-This-Was-A-Vampire-Movie sort of way. Oh, and belated spoiler alert for Dusk Til Dawn.

Afterwards we ate a Five Guys and reminisced about other spectacular Bad Movie Night Movies. What are some great bad movies that you’ve seen?

deathrace D-War-1187 snakes-on-a-plane*No one says that, I just make things up.

Seems like old times

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What if we held a Bad Movie Night and no one came? It was Bad Movie Night yesterday and it was just Samith and I. Usually we have from 4 to 12 people. Okay, usually we have 4-6 people, but we occasionally break double digits. Yesterday it was like the very first Bad Movie Nights a dozen or so years ago when it was just Samith and I all the time.

We were both 15 minutes late and that meant we were walking into the theater just when Robocop was starting. It was actually a surprisingly good movie. There were about 4 parts that I really hated, but apart from that it was entertaining. It was also surprisingly long –nearly 2 hours long.

After the movie we decided to eat someplace we hadn’t eaten before. They’ve opened up about a hundred new restaurants in the Haymarket. We went to the first one that we saw that we hadn’t been to before. That turned out to be the Rodizio Grill. It was good, but there were only two things on the menu. You could have the salad bar.

Lots of odd dishes  

That was about a third of the salad bar. It could easily be a meal. I wish it had a quarter for scale. Those are actually fairly large serving spoons. Oh, wait. Here is a Samith for scale…

That's Samith

You could also order the salad bar and meat. They had a little sign type thing on the table and if you had it turned one way they would bring you a new meat to try every few (2-3) minutes.  When you were ready to take a break from the meat (to get more salad or whatever) you would turn the sign over. We probably started and stopped a half dozen times or more during the course of the meal.

Each serving of meat was only a few bites and there were easily over a dozen different ones to try. My favorite was the ham, followed closely by the grilled pineapple (which I’m given to understand is not actually a meat). They had beef, pork, lamb and chicken each prepared 3-4 different ways. There were probably more. The last time we turned our sign over they brought something by that we hadn’t seen before.

Grill direct from Brazil 

For those of you not in Nebraska, I would also like to point out that it snowed while we were there. It was 70 degrees out yesterday.

My First Rib Fest

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While Lauren has been busy with home visits, I’ve been spending every waking hour at School getting computer things working and putting 3 classrooms in order. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve actually been spending a fair amount of time each day eating too.

At the start of the busy season, Lauren and I stocked up on things we could just heat up and eat. But I haven’t eaten many of mine. It’s been one, “Lets go out to eat!” after another amongst Lincoln Lutheran faculty. My latest conquest: RibFest. I don’t know how I’ve been in (well, near) Lincoln for 18 years without going to a RibFest. We went for lunch, because there is no cover charge until evening.

We ate under this thing. There were a lot of them.

They have people who cook ribs come and cook ribs and other people come and eat the ribs. It’s a very simple concept. Samith invited me to go with him and Joel invited me to go with him, so I went with both of them. It was like on that one sitcom where the main character is on a date with two people at the same time and almost, but not quite manages to pull it off.

I almost pulled it off, but they were sitting on either side of me. In fact, they got the ribs from the places on either side of me too. I went to The Texas Rib Ranch’s stand. Samith went left to some place from Kentucky and Joel went to the right to some outfit from Australia.

The line that Samith was in.

I was happily eating some of the best ribs I had ever tasted, until I tried Samith’s, actually Ian’s, Samith’s son’s*, ribs. They were better than mine. Then I tried Joel’s. They were even better. It turned out I had the worst ribs at RibFest. Well, maybe not, there were a half dozen other rib places.

Still, I felt robbed. No, I felt full. I thought about ordering a whole rack, but the half rack was enough for me. I highly recommend RibFest. It was Festive and there were Ribs.

This is where I got my ribs.

*Not entirely sure if that is punctuated correctly.

Thinkin’ ahead

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A couple of weekends ago Lloyd and I cooked some brats on the grill when it was so blasted hot and our air conditioner hadn’t been fixed yet.. (Y’know, ‘brat’ should really be spelled differently. The way it stands now I just see/imagine naughty children getting a good sear.) Anyway, I came up with a brilliant idea for those ancient chicken tenders cluttering up the freezer: cook them!

Yessir, I actually cooked them, and for the next couple of meals, half the work was already done. “What are we going to eat? Well, how about some vegetables and chicken that is ready, you crazy genius!” or “Just a delicious salad with pre-cooked chicken!” I felt so amazing!

While Lloyd’s been gone, I grilled another batch, minus the children sausages. It has been a life saver.

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Hawaii Update

Curt’s first day on Maui started off, as every day in Maui should start off, with a sunrise walk on the beach. It was a lot of fun with Curt, because I have been having beautiful sunrise walks on the beach for almost a week and had forgotten a little bit howreally amazing they were.

I had decided yesterday that today would be my first sunrise swim on the beach and Curt was happy to jump right in with me. The air is just a little cool in the morning, but that just makes the ocean seem warmer and we stayed out for about 30 minutes. That brings total Sunrise Walk On The Beach time to just under 2 hours son were back just

before 7:00. We putzed around the house a little more than usual this morning before getting started. Brad, Curt and Samith all had work related things to do. I played mother hen and packed our bags for the day.

We went up to the big tourist town (I’m sure Brad will supply all of the actual names in his post) and there wassome souvenir shopping done. We also went into a couple of art galleries. I’m not sure how we ended up in them, but everyone seemed to enjoy a little time looking at art. It was strange.

Next came my reason for jumping in the car this morning. The largest Banyan tree in the United States. The main trunk is huge and there are about 20 other trunks (it’s that tree that sends down roots from the air and they form new trunks). It covers just under an acre of land. We got there about lunch time, but I wasn’t hungry, so while everyone else went to eat at Cheeseburger in Paradise I camped out under the tree and communed with nature.

After that got old I scoped out 7 shave ice places to decide which one would be Curt’s first shave ice. It is unfortunate that they had just eaten as we just got small ones. To really appreciate them you need more.

Next a quick trip up the beach to the Hyatt Sheraton because they have a really nice beach and there is, legally speaking, no such thing as a private beach in Hawaii. The beach was amazing and the waves were huge. This is evidently not normal, but the waves were ten feet high if they were an inch.

It was great fun to play in them, but I got rolled over the wrong way by a really big one and ended up hurting my neck. I’m currently taking Advil and Rum and am beginning to feel better. By tomorrow I hope to be able to turn my head for the helicopter ride.

We ate dinner at the wide spot on the side of the road that Brad found via Yelp months ago. It is. Little chicken stand. We each got a quarter bird with corn and rice.

Curt and I ended the day the way we stated it; at the beach. I have not gotten the prerequisite amount of reading at the beach in yet and since it didn’t hurt to read, and only hurt a little bit to walk, we want down to the beach and read and/or slept until sunset. There are more pictures on Flickr now, including ones from the Snorkeling Trip.

Maui Day 4

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Lauren here. Lloyd and I are not doing well in our coordinating of information. Here is his write-up of a couple of days ago.

Lauren out.

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If you’d like to read about Maui Day Three, Brad has a nice write up.

Today started out like every other day in Maui with a refreshing morning walk on the beach. I’ve done this enough that I recognize some of the other people who walk on the beach at the same time I do (about 5:30am). One guy I’ve stopped and talked to twice now is interesting. He’s from Denmark and retired to Maui about 5 years ago. I can’t recall his name, but he said it means ocean (I have to way to verify this). I suspect I will see him tomorrow as well.

I got back to Brad’s about 7:00 and Samith had been up since 3:00am working. I’m not really sure when Samith sleeps. He is always up when I go to bed and usually up when I get up. I had a traditional Hawaiian breakfast of Special K Red Berry and when 8:00 rolled around we went snorkeling.

Brad’s fellow teacher Paul and Paul’s brother Jim took us snorkeling. They are really great people and it was good to go with people who knew that they were doing (and who had equipment that we could borrow).

Snorkeling started out poorly for me. Everyone else had experience snorkeling and I think Paul thought that I did as well. I thought I made it readily apparent from my ineptness that I had not, but when were were all done and eating lunch he was surprised and said that wasn’t a great spot to do your first snorkeling.

But it was a great spot to snorkel, and by the time we were nearly finished I was no longer worried that I would die with each passing moments. This was sort of a new experience for me. I’m more used to convincing other people to do things that they are scared to do rather than being the reluctant participant. Samith did a nice job of making sure I was still alive and I would probably have turned back if it wasn’t for him. One of the first fish I saw looked up at me with a look that seemed to say, “Dude, you don’t know what the hell you’re doing, do you?” I’m not sure if that look was meant for me specifically or if he gave it to all the snorkelers.

But I did eventually figure out, more or less, what I was doing. And even while I was terrified, everything was beautiful and interesting. Just about the time I was scared I was going to die we saw a sea turtle. They are really amazing. Jim touched it, and I think Brad got really close too.

There were some underwater tunnels and Paul and Jim swam through them. I didn’t realize that the hole I was looking into was a tunnel, and I was more than a little surprised when Paul came swimming out of it. Samith purchased a disposable camera in a waterproof case so there should be some snorkeling pictures tomorrow.

We snorkeled for a couple of hours then went out to eat at a fish place. It was very good (Brad has not yet steered us wrong on eating establishments). I had the Fish Tacos, because they were the specialty of this little shop. The owner came out and explained the 17 ingredients in the taco and how to best eat it. The advice was necessary.

After that we headed off for the mandatory shave ice followed by the mandatory afternoon nap.

In the afternoon we drove up the Iao valley which is right up the road from Brad’s school. Surprisingly, he had never been there before. It was a beautiful rain forest. There are other parts of Maui that are rain forests,  but we have not been there yet. We will probably go back up the valley when Curt gets here. He’s more of a hiker than Samith is. Instead, we walked around about a mile of paved trail. It was nice that Brad knew a lot about plants, because we saw a lot of them.  We saw both a cat and a chicken.

The evening was finished up with another wonderful meal (this time at an Asian noodle place) after which we went to Costco to drop off Samith’s film. We will pick up the film tomorrow and then I can put up some snorkeling pictures.

In the mean time, here are the rest of today’s pictures. Oh, and I washed my colors and whites together and now have pink underwear and socks.

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Lauren here again. At the time of this writing, Curt is well on his way to Maui. Happy traveling!

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