Brave girl gets ears pierced

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Homewood Suites, Miami

Technicallly I think it's 'Doral', but it's still a balmy 75 this morning. It would be nicer if Marilyn and Aeryn were here.

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Aeryn's 7th Birthday Party

The kids had fun at the JimpZone. Icecream cake was hard to cut, so I had Marilyn do it--just kidding.

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Happy 7th Birthday, Aeryn!

A nice warm gift from Grandpa Joe...

An affectionate elephant (her favorite Animal)

(photo to come)

And a wardobe for American Girl, Kit





Followed by a trip to 'where a kid can be a kid' and they can spend $20 trying to accumulate enough tickets to trade for a plastic bug. She had fun, so it was worth it. She's just about at the end of this age and on to the next... *sigh*



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Back at Dozo

Great sushi/sashimi and a long list of sakes...

This sake, Draft, was somewhat sweet, dry and crisp.

...

An hour-long conference call later... I head back across the street, sushi-to-go in hand, to finish





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Over 10 years on the road and irons were never an issue...

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Happy Halloween!

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Ares 1-X is launched!

I thinks it's awesome! After weather postponed the launch yesterday, it took off today. Looked great! Too bad it's only taken us 40 years to get back to where we were in 1969... oh, wait, it's worse than that.

Ares will carry 'Orion' which is the little Apollo-esque capsule that "will be the Earth entry vehicle for lunar and Mars returns... Orion is scheduled to fly its first missions to the space station by 2015 and carry out its first sortie to the moon by 2020."

So, it's actually going to take us another 11 years to get to where we were 40 years ago. Thank you, my government, for pissing away 40 years of work with underfunding, bad management and political paybacks. If you just let scientists and engineers do what they want, the way they want, we'd have a program that works and works a lot more cheaply.

If you take the same approach to running NASA for the last 40 years, give it a budget of nearly half the federal discretionary spending, you'd get the US military.

The difference would be that all the spending would have resulted in a gazillion amazing scientific discoveries that would have provided cheap, clean power for all (ZERO dependance on fossil fuels -- no more angry arabs), cheap sources of food/nutrition (no more starving peoples), and cheap, on-demand medical resources ('public option' not needed).

Can you say 'United Federation of Planets'? Can you say 'Star Trek' is real? That's where we'd be if the roles were reversed and the NASA budget were 30 TIMES the size of the DoD budget (and that's just DoD ops -- it doesn't include VA, HomeSec, etc.)

It would truly have been cheaper in terms of dollars and lives to develop new tech to solve the world's problems and GIVE IT AWAY than it would to try to get the world to do things the way we want at GUNPOINT.

Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.

Hard Rock Cafe, Singapore

Right behind my hotel the whole time. And here I was doing room service when I thought it was too much trouble to go out late. Duh.

Too dark for the picture but there was a little girl about 4 or 5 that Aeryn would have tried to become soulmates with as she was dancing a wild jig to the beat of the house music ('80's and disco). I need to start packing Marilyn and Aeryn into my suitcase...

Update: I did snap a pic, and used a little drawing app to point out the little girl. Her parents were out of frame on the right and they let this group of strangers dance her like a marionette. That's how safe and 'family oriented' Singapore is.





Being a 'bad boy' here is not washing your hands after you pee. Being a rebel Is crossing against the light (and living to tell the tale): 'dats right...I cross on red at Orchard and Bencoolen -- 'cause I'm bad like dat! Right in front of buses -- I'm crazy B!'

Update #2: ok, now I know why I don't come here: $46.53 (US) for the salmon dinner and two beers that would have cost me $32 at TGIFriday's. But then TGIF's doesn't have a live band and dancing Singaporeans as entertainment.

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Coffee that will make you poop

So i figured out how to make coffee that will caused you to dump right in your pants after the first sip -- it will be that strong.

First, start with a good strong bean or mix:

and that's a good start... but water is important too... so if we were to use water with a little bit of a kick...

now we're talking!

So, after you've made your coffee, now with twice the caffeine of normal coffee, well -- why stop there?

How about a little cream?

Ok! Now I've got a cup'o'Joe with 3x caffeine!

Yeah baby!

Ooops! Gotta go poop!

Toilet etiquette is serious in Singapore

OK SINGAPORE!
Those signs are in every restroom. And don't forget about the kid that was going to get caned for graffiti (what a tool).

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First meal at 'The Feathers' restaurant in the hotel of the same name.

This is where I'm staying while in Oxford, England (oh, did I mention I'm teaching in Oxford?).
The venison sausage is excellent (I saw this on the menu and thought of my Dad deer hunting, so I had to have some). The parsnip mash is not at all what I expected and does have a fairly complementary flavor. However the blackberries, unfortunately, don't.
Oh, and Marilyn: you need not fear the superiority of their 'buttered carrots'. Yours reign supreme. :-)

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The 11:42 First Western from Paddington to Oxford

Yes, it caught on fire. Just when you think things are starting to make sense -- you know, you're coming to terms with what life gives you -- life says, "No, I've got something different in mind..."

The driver of the train was not very helpful. No announcement, practically no direction, other than the most helpful announcement of "stay away from the fire."




London Fire showed up and got everyone off the tracks and on to the streets of the neighborhood. Would have been nice of the train company to make some announcement by now.


Update: (an indeterminate period of time later...)
Oh, two buses came to take people to another couple of train stations. A load of us didn't fit. A Third bus came later to take the rest of us to Slough (the 'ough' pronounced like 'ow') train station and I made my way to Oxford from there.

So, to get from Chicago, USA, to Oxford, England, only takes two planes, a train, another train (on fire), a bus, another train (not on fire) and a taxi.

Neat, huh?

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One of seven non-Asian restaurants within 5 miles

I had Chinese food last week, and I don't have anything against other styles (well, except Indian, and that's a whole 'nother story) but I likes my American fares.

But this us about the only non-fast food restaurant within about a one mile radius and one of very few in a greater area -- it's ridiculous, really.












That's over 30 businesses (the pix are all unique). All Asian. Most Chinese. And you see that again and again -- and that's in a suburb of Toronto, ON, CAnada. You know, where 'French' is the other 'official' language.

Like I said, I like Asian food, but come on. I didn't see that many Asian restaurants in Singapore.

There is one little pocket with about 5 or six non-Asian restaurants, however unless you get there before 6pm, forget it: you aren't gettig a table for an hour.


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Excitement as the fire alarm rings!

At the Markham, ON, Hilton Garden Inn. Three trucks, the fire chief and a cop in less than 10 minutes. Well done.

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Selmarie Cafe during Lincoln Square's AppleFest

Aeryn looking like a sleepy lizard on a warm rock.




They play with their hearts, but they sing with their feet.

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Yum! I miss this when I'm gone...

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Instructions?

Oh! Step "3": Enjoy!

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Aeryn at the Anthony J. De Julio Park

A little park on the corner of 'zoom' & 'go fast'.

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I can't help liking this song

Mom asked me about my car, I wanted to show some video in action so I went to youtube and I stumbled across this:

and if you skip past the first 50 seconds you get to the Mini Cooper goodness.

I really liked this movie, despite the always flat performing of Mark Wahlberg (he killed 'The Happening' for me.)

And this tune is quite catchy.

It figures...

Hmmm... 'get cat food -- grilled chicken'. Ok. Go to Target.

Doh! Someone beat me to it -- ALL of it! Man...

Alright. Maybe Purina has some--




WTF? why can't the cat just eat 'grilled salmon' or 'chicken entree'?
Ok, we'll try




And see if he won't eat one of these.

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McCormick Bridgehouse And Chicago River Museum

Come here to learn all about how the Chicago river is a steaming cesspool and full of e-coli.

Well, it's not quite that bad -- certainly not as bad as it was a hundred years ago (a lot less animal carcasses now) -- but it did get an 'F' rating on the e-coli.

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Garfield Park Conservatory with Mom, Dina, Carlos and Joe

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Aeryn's First Day of First Grade

W00t! W00t!
She does it like a pro: no tears, no running.

A note about the school, the Science Academy of Chicago: I wouldn't say 'multicultural' as much as 'bicultural'. Large Muslim presence. Funny for a nonreligious school run in what used to be a Catholic school, adjacent to a Catholic church, to be full of what many people might say 'scary people', and yet they prefer this over a 'muslim school'. The Jews send their kids to religious schools, the Catholics send theirs to religious schools and here are Muslims--perceived as being even more devout--sending their kids to a 'science academy'.

Well, at least we don't need to move to a predominantly Muslim country in order to learn a bit more of their culture.

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This is the story of a story...

The story being "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

No matter how often I hear the radio programme (it's English, not U.S.ian) it holds up. It's funny, and not in a drooling sort of way but in a deeply complex sort of way. And it's still socially relevant which reminds us that no matter how much time has passed, people are basically creating and dealing with problems that they foist on each other in an attempt get ahead of each other.



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Slim PS3. Fewer fingerprints. Better clearance next to HDTV on pedestal.

The new 'slim' PS3, on the right, is about 1/3 the size and weight of the current PS3 and comes with a 50% bigger drive (120GB) for the same price as the current PS3 (80GB). Oh, and if it was sitting next to our HDTV (which is on its pedestal rather than a wallmount), we could rotate the TV without scraping the top of the slim PS3 or knocking it over.
So, if you want to wait for the smaller system with the bigger drive, it will be here soon. If you want to get a PS3 for less, wait until the new one comes out and then you can buy the 'old' one (with the 80GB drive) cheaper. I've got the 80GB one and I don't think I've anywhere near filled the drive, however, my usage may not be 'typical'. I tend to use ours for playing a few games (Killzone 2 is da bomba), as a Blu-Ray player (where else could I get a Blu-Ray player and game machine for $30 over an ordinary player?) and to stream multimedia content to it using the Java PS3 Media Server app.
Perhaps other fill the drive up with downloads from Sony, game saves and updates.

Flight to Singapore

Can't do that in coach...


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Chicago, Chicago...

:-)

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Still waiting...

At least the airport has power again...

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Welcome to Toronto...

unfortunately we can't get you off the plane because of the lightning. Don't be alarmed if the plane is hit by lightning as it should pass along the skin of the airplane. At least, that's if the plane is airborne -- no grounding issues. When the plane is on the ground... I wonder what happens then...

Toronto airport (see the 'Sheraton' sign in red?), Gate F1, after the power went out, in a storm, stuck on the plane.

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Now appearing on my wish list...

Because black is always in fashion and it looks badass (and geeky)...

and you need a helmet...

and video review of the helmet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KK_mN_Lt84

Mexican food, Mexico City Style

Aztec soup. Choose your own toppings: sour cream, tortilla strips, cheese, avocado, fried tortilla strips that look like fried pork rinds.


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A Rainy Fourth

Marilyn and Aeryn await the start of the Village of Hoffman Estates Fourth of July parade.













What do all of these people have in common? Getting rained on. Oh, and obesity. After two weeks in Europe it's nice to come home to my country where, when it comes to industrialized nations, we may not be number one in education, or life span, but we are in obesity--great job, Americans! Have a donut!

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