There's a Dog in the Backyard

“There’s a dog in the backyard. Do you see the dog? Huh, huh? Do you see the dog? There, there he is! He’s running around! Dog. Can you say, Dog?”

The reply comes back, “Baby.”

“Max,” I say, “that’s a dog. Not a baby.”

“Baby!” He yells back, finger pointing, arm waving, smiling as only a 19-month old can about a dog running around in the backyard. I turn my attention to his twin sister.

“Julia,” I say, “do you see the dog? Can you say, Dog?” She just smiles at me like I’m a big dummy. ‘Yeah, Dad, I see the dog. I see the dog everyday. He barks and runs around and he plays and I really want to go down there and play with the dog. Yeah, Dad, I see the dog. And you know I can’t say ‘dog’ cause if I could, I would, and I think you know that.’ She’s a smart one, that Julia. A real smarty.

While I have their divided attention, I ask Max, “Where’s the baby?” At this point in time, Max refers to everything as ‘Baby.’ A few months ago, everything was ‘Da-Da.’ Later, everything was, ‘Mom-Mom.’ Now, everything is, ‘Baby.’ The only thing he has a reserved word for is milk, and that comes out as, ‘mo-mo.’ As in, ‘More milk, please.’ I take liberties with the interpretations…

I’m standing there, holding one toddler in each arm, looking out the window at the dog, and I ask Max once more, “Where’s baby?”

He looks at me, smiles, and leans toward his sister, finger pointing at her chest, and squeals, “Baby!”

“Max, that’s your sister, J-J!” I say.

“J-J!!” Max yells back.

“Good boy, Max. That’s right, that’s J-J. J-J is not a baby, she’s a toddler.” He just looks at me and then goes back to looking at the dog. “Julia,” I say, “Where’s Max?” Again, she looks at me like I’m a big dummy. ‘You know where Max is, you’re holding him… why are you asking me such inane questions?’ I ask her a second time, “Julia, where’s Max?” This time she gets a big smile on her face and then dive bombs with her head into Max’s chest. I guess that’s one way to let me know where Max is. It would be too easy for her to say, ‘Max.’ Too easy for her to point at him. Julia doesn’t do things the easy way. She does things her way.

And we resume watching the dog run and play and have fun. So much fun.

Birthday Wishes

Wishing You a Happy Birthday

All you have to do is remember
that I love you

Even when the toddlers run away
they love you

Even when the toddlers scream and scream and scream
they love you

All you have to do is remember that we love you

Happy Birthday, to my wife, the mother of my children, the most important woman in our lives.

"...And I can't do a love song, like the way it's meant to be..."—Dire Straits

Hitting the Full-Speed Coffee

Q: Which flavor of coffee do you prefer? A: The kind with the most caffeine.

When it comes to coffee, the caffeine is the key. Drinking decaf is like drinking non-alcoholic beer. What's the point? With this in mind, the best coffee is the strongest coffee. And right now, the French Roast wins hands-down. It does not matter the brand; it does not matter if it's beans or ground. The French Roast is consistently the strongest that I've come across.

The Kirkland house blend we tried before didn't cut it. So, we moved on to the Safeway Select French Roast beans. It's good, it gets the job done, it's not great. We are moving on once again...

In the cabinet, we have a Costco-sized bag of San Francisco coffee. I'm looking forward to it. The SFWeekly wrote it up in their Best-of series: Best Coffee Bean Roasters. The article does not appear to be dated (which I believe is a huge Ooops, kind of like putting your pants on your head, even toddlers know that's an Ooops), so who knows if the article is recent or not. I'll let you know how that coffee is in future posts. Stay tuned.

The daily routine of grinding beans has lead my wife to refine her technique. Where I like to put six tbls into the grinder all at once, she likes to do three and three. She claims the beans grind finer that way with less beans in the grinder. That's fine in theory, so that's how we do it. And plus, the toddlers really like the Whrrr, Whrrr, Whrrr, noise. They like to put their hand on the dome while the beans are ground up. It's great fun.

It's Cold In Here

Picked the wrong day. Yeah, it is the wrong day to not have a jacket in the car. Usually, the car has two or three jackets thrown in the back seat. You never know when it's going to be cold, hot, windy, or all of the above. Or none of the above. You just never know. You just never know when my office is going to be freezing, or steaming; it's never "just right." No, it's never just right. It's either freezing or steaming. And today was the wrong day to have cleaned out the car. It was the wrong day to bring the jackets into the house. It was the wrong day to not have the fleece, or the vest, or even a wind breaker. It is plain and simple: it was the wrong day to not have an extra layer to put on. My fingers are cold. My nose is cold. My feet are cold. It's cold. I could leave my sandwich on my desk and it would stay cold. Did I mention it is cold in here?

Alfredo Sauce

You can't go through life being afraid of alfredo sauce—or looking at pictures of food that contain alfredo sauce—even if that food consists of beans and potatoes. You just have to endure. Look at the picture, contemplate it, and then decide: did I really need to look at that? The answer is probably No, I didn't really need to look at it.

Alfredo sauce is darn good. It's creamy, it's rich, and when you pour it on pasta, it's great. After dinner, after the sauce pan has been sitting on the stove for awhile and the sauce has started to thicken, that's the best time to lick the spoon that was left in the pan. If the sauce is good, it's like licking semi-melted butter. It's like eating warm gooey cheese. It's like heaven on a spoon. It's as if you can feel your arteries harden as you go for a second taste.

I must say however, that alfredo sauce has it's time and place. Mixing it with beans and potatoes, maybe not, on a pizza instead of the traditional red sauce, yes and no, you just can't call it pizza, you have to call it baked bread with sauce and toppings. How about we keep the alfredo sauce where it belongs: on a heaping plate of pasta; and the spoon that was left in the pan.

Coolest Compilation of Music, Ever

If you want to listen to some of the best music ever recorded, and you only want to pay 49 cents for it, then click the image.

Unique Taste Sensation

If there is anything I strive for, it's creating a unique taste sensation. That is what I live for. That is what it is all about. Something new. Something unique. Something that hasn't been done before. Something that tastes good and is not necessarily good for you. The Unique Taste Sensation: that's what it's all about.

And it turns out I am not the first person to mix mashed potatoes with refried beans (although I probably am the first person to mix those two items along with a hamburger patty, cheese, and BBQ sauce). While searching for an image of mashed potatoes and refried beans, I found home-and-garden.webshots. It looks like some vegan person mixed mashed potatoes, refried beans, and spinach with black bean gravy (see the photo).

On Picasa, I found a group of friends who, "mixed together four eggs, two Morningstar sausages, mashed potatoes, salsa, refried beans, and a bit of alfredo sauce. It was surprisingly tasty, though next time we might leave out the potatoes." Leaving out the potatoes is a big mistake if you ask me... I'll spare you the picture of that one.

Leftovers

Fair warning: Do Not Attempt This at Home. The following was performed by a professional. Amateurs may suffer severe consequences.

I repeat, do not try this yourself. If you ever feel the need to try the following, I advise against it. Do not, under any circumstances combine the following:

• mashed potatoes
• black refried beans
• hamburger patty (seasoned with Worcestershire)
• shredded cheese
• barbecue sauce

If you do combine these items, you may find it simply delicious. Leftovers for lunch can be fun, and filling, and tasty.

Breakfast

Not all breakfast sandwiches are created equal. Most breakfast sandwiches consist of some kind of bread (I prefer a croissant), eggs, cheese, and either bacon or ham. It does not sound like a hard sandwich to mess up. However, after doing a taste test between two different cafeterias, which are separated only by a parking lot, I realized the differences can be dramatic.

Let's start with the cafeteria that's in my office building. The owner's are nice enough, they smile and say hello, but they give you attitude if all you buy is a Snickers and no lunch. "Oh? Just chocolate today?" And it's said in not such a nice way. The food has a reputation for being Costco-on-a-bun. That right there should tell you something. For the breakfast sandwich, they do offer your choice of bread, but no croissant, I opt for the english muffin. The eggs come scrambled and taste like salt and pepper, but otherwise, nothing remarkable. The cheese is a slice of Kraft American Singles, which is fine if you're 5 years old and your mom is packing your lunch. The bacon tastes like it just came out of the microwave and is a little limp and chewy. All-in-all though, it's still tasty in a generic kind of way, and I really don't mind it because it fills me up on those days I just don't have time to eat at home.

Now let's jump across the parking lot. I just tried this other cafeteria for the first time today. And let me tell you, I'll have a hard time going back to that first cafeteria. The owner here is very friendly, with a smile, and a down-home look about her. The menu offered peroshkies and I detected a slight accent from the owner, so who knows, maybe they offer some authentic home cooking here? She also offered a choice of bread, just about anything I wanted except the croissant (woe-is-me). As before, I opted for the english muffin. I also opted for the bacon instead of the ham. I was also prompted for my choice in cheese, which was a pleasant surprise, I went for swiss just to mix things up a bit. I then sat down and grabbed a paper and read a headline about how home prices in the SF Bay Area have dropped. They still haven't dropped far enough for my liking, with the median price now over $500k (as compared to $800k in the city).

With my sandwich ready and boxed to go I headed to a table to dive in. My first surprise was that the eggs were over medium. I thought to myself, This is different. I thought it was a given that all breakfast sandwiches had scrambled eggs and that fried eggs were reserved for pancake sandwiches. I shrugged my shoulders, picked up the sandwich, and took the first bite. Butter. Sweet delicious butter. Oh, how I love thee. Everything is better with a bit o' butter. The cheese was real swiss cheese with nothing processed about it. The english muffin was toasted to perfection. The bacon was piled high and was crisp and bacony. Like bacon should be. I ate half the sandwich and felt full. I ate the other half cause it was so darn good and felt like I overate.

I can't wait to go back and try the peroshkies. I am hoping for more of that butter. Sweet, sweet, butter.

I Wish

I wish the weekend would never end. I wish we could play all day, every day, all day long. I wish we could bang on the drum till the neighbors knocked on the wall. I wish we could bounce the ball until we make a hole in the floor. I wish we could eat snacks for as long as we wanted. I wish the weekend would never end and then you would never have to go to school and we would never have to go to work and we could play, and play, and play some more until the neighbors knocked on the wall and then we would laugh and sing and shout at the top of our lungs, "We're playing in here, can you keep that knocking down? Don't you know how much fun it is to play and bang on the drum and bounce the ball and eat snacks? Don't you know how we don't want the weekend to end? Why don't you know?" And then we would play some more and bang the drum some more and bounce the ball some more. And then we would eat snacks. I wish the weekend would never end.

Coffee Links

So, I got a comment requesting advice on coffee. I did a little research and discovered very quickly that there is a lot of free coffee available online. Who figured that? What I figure is, you could probably get about a year's worth of free coffee by going to all these sites (or at least a free "something"). This way, if the coffee is no good, no sweat, you did not pay for it, so who cares?

• Longview Coffee Company offers free shipping.
• Choose a blend and Seattle's Best will send you a complimentary sample so that you can enjoy their uncommonly smooth taste.
• Looks like the Italians are competing with Seattle: they are offering one free bag of coffee with each purchase. Woot!
• Gevalia is upping the ante by giving out a coffee maker and a coffee scoop when you buy two boxes of their coffee. Not too shabby.
• I'm breaking the "freebie" streak by introducing coffee from Kona. Why am I breaking the freebie streak? Because we like the beer from Kona, so the coffee can't be that bad, right?
• Complete detour from the coffee theme: We tried this beer for the first time while on our honeymoon. We recently rediscovered it at Costco. And they have a cool website to boot.
• Last but not least, here's an entire website that does nothing but provide links to getting free coffee. I counted about 23 different highlights on that page, so perhaps it's possible to get several months worth of free coffee? You tell me.

OK, you got your links: start clicking, ordering, brewing, and drinking. And you tell me how good that coffee is!

Bonus link: I don't think these guys are offering any coffee freebies, but they do have an image of a dancing goat. And you don't see that everyday.