Beach Day

It’s been a while since I’ve put up a post, but hey, it’s play off season. It’s hard to watch hockey, basketball and type all at the same time. This is the second post of the day so make sure to keep reading after this one.

Last weekend was Memorial Day so in what is starting to become a Witten tradition we spend the Monday at Huntington Beach. , Drew & family, Adam & kids, Beth & Ruth’s kids?, and Aaron & Rachel showed up along with Tania and I. Some friends of Drew and Sherri also tagged along.

It’s was a long two hour drive there and another two hour drive home just to spend three hours hanging out with everyone, but I gotta say, it was worth it. Its fun hanging with the family and besides, what better thing did have to do? Nothing. Unfortunately it was windy which made it quite chilly. And of course I left by hoodie sitting on the couch at home right next to my ipod. I spent most of the day wrapped in the blanket and towel I brought.

Ruth and Scott were down under (you'll have to visit Ruth's blog to get the details) while Charles was visiting the old country to see the results of mission (you'll have to visit Beth's blog on this one)

I knew it was going to be a fun day as soon at we got on the sand – there were about 200 or so Hawaiians having get together – the men were playing drums and guitars while 30 or women were dancing. The best part of the day? Feeding string cheese to Harper and having me return the favor and feed me. (My food had the added favor of sand)

Begging for more...

Beth picked up a shovel on the way to the beach, which of course the day for the kids. After looking at the high prices of the “play shovels” Beth went the tool section and noticed that small real shovels were only $2 more than the plastic ones.

Harper was the the keeper of the hole, while the girls made sure the keep it full of fresh water.

It was a good thing for me that the weather was cold and the waves were weak - I wasn’t temped to go in the water despite that fact that I brought my boogie board, wet suite and fins (just in case someone needed to borrow them). But everyone else had fun in the water. I noticed that Daniel did really good riding the waves. Adam’s a good dad. He spent a lot a time with her in and out of the water.

Sunday I smoked some ribs – nice and slow, four hours at 230 degrees. Ralph’s had back ribs on sale. These are not as good as baby back ribs or St. Louis style ribs but they were on sale. Word of advice, no matter how well you cook them, the cheaper cut of ribs will never come out as good as the premium cuts. The ribs were good, but a learned again one more time that the best BBQ always starts with the best meat. Next time I’ll avoid the cheap cuts even if they are on sale. Next weekend I am going to slow smoke a pork shoulder roast for 15 hours to make some pulled pork. I’ve never tried this before. It will be a fun experiment.

We'll need a better showing at the beach on Labor Day and if you all are willing to drive up to Zuma Beach I'll bring the hot pulled pork BBQ sandwhiches.

Amber's Dance Performance

Amber took a dance class this semester to help her stay in shape. Santa Cruz has a dance performance where the students not only perform but also do the chorography. Between college and her job, Amber doesn’t have a lot of free time for dance practice, so she was only able to participate in one dance. This was her first dance performance since moving to Santa Cruz so there was no way Tania and I were going to miss it.

Since I haven’t seen Terri’s and Jim’s new house yet we decided to stay there. Cathy, Terri and Dale also went to the dance performance with us. Actually, Jim also wanted to go, but we only bought five tickets a head of time we had to call the day of the event to see if there were any more tickets available but unfortunately they were sold out.
Jim and Terri have got themselves a nice place. Tania told me it had a huge back yard but when I look at the window the back fence was twenty or so feet from the house – what’s the big deal about that I thought to myself. But when you go out and take of look, the back yard space on the North side of the house is just as big as the part behind the house and the South side is about three or four times larger than that. They have nice garden started on the North side. They are growing a little bit of everything. They had a fresh crop of radishes in and boy where they hot – they must have been Mexican radishes.

We wanted to spend some time with Amber so we left Terri’s house around 11:00 AM to have lunch with Amber and hang out a little. It was one of those rare days in Santa Cruz with no breeze, no clouds or haze and temps in the 80’s. It sounds nice but the only problem is that when weekends like that come around the San Joser’s come to Santa Cruz in droves. We stayed away from the downtown area to avoid the crowds. Amber took us to Café Brazil which is close to house. Everyone enjoyed there food, but the star of the menu was a parfait made with Acai berry smoothie mix with granola and a mix of berries on top. We had two orders as appetizers for the table.

After lunch Amber took us on a tour of the campus and then we kicked back at Ambers. This a peice of art work on campus that is a fav hang-out/meeting place of the students.

One thing I have noticed about places where the weather is always cool – they are never prepared for the occasional heat wave. The theater that the dance performance was is was hot. Everyone was fanning themselves with the program. I felt sorry for the performers up on stage dancing. They must have really been hot.

Most of the dance numbers were very good, good dancing and fun to watch performances. Some were more like mini plays with dancing than a traditional dance performance. Amber was in the last number. When it was time for what I thought was the last number, I was looking all over the stage for Amber but couldn’t find here. Then all of sudden, Amber pops out of trash can. Yep, that’s right, a trash can (you gotta love modern dance). It was fun to watch up on stage again.

We had late night desert at the Saturn Café in Santa Cruz before heading back to Terri’s house. The next morning Tania and I drove back home. The back held up well for the long drive – good news for the vacation this summer – but Tania did do most of the driving.

PS: As I am writing this the Lakers are finally making a run in the 4th (game 5) – it’s about time guys – this isn’t supposed to be another close game – read the memo

Mother's Day

One of the nice things about living in Thousand Oaks is that Ventura is only a half hour drive North. Old-Town Ventura is a blast to visit. No offense Ruth, but it kicks butt all over Fullerton's and Brea's Old Town. It has all the antique shops and mom & pop restruarants that you would expect out of any Old Town, but it is also over looked by a bueatiful tree-lined hill and has fresh salty air from the beach that is only four blocks away.

On Mother's Day went out for breakfast with my sister inlaw's family (Jenna, Alex, Alec, and Brennen) at cool cafe called My Florist. The prices were very reasonalbe (around $8) and the food was outstanding. I had eggs benedick with Salmon (instead of ham). I don't know why I ordered it, because it is not one of my favorites and more importantly, eggs benedick is a very dangerous item to order. You never know what you're going to get. A lot of places really destroy hollendaise sauce, making it either way to heavy or sweat. Their sauce had a slight spicy bite to it - very cool. It was also served on bruschetta to give it that fancy touch. Tania and Crystal both had the Belgium waffles with scrambled eggs. I don't know what they did to the eggs, but they were delicious.

To top the meal off, two gentlemen provided music playing guitar and violin. All in all, it was a very nice meal. I would recommend My Florist to any of you when you visit Ventura. It is on Oak, one block South of Main Street.

After breakfast we took a short stroll along Main Street browsing in the shops and art galleries. Tania found a jewerly making shop/bead store. Crystal and I kicked back at a small cafe for a glass of tea so Tania could take as long as she wanted.

Nice Mother's Day. We really don't go up to Ventura enough.

Swine Flu

Look out, here comes the pigs!
Our local high school, Newbury Park High, closed today because a student caught the piggy flu. They closed two schools in Oxnard last week. I guess that's to be expected when you live next to a farming community.

While I don't have the swine flu, I do have an out break of posion oak. It started off as just one spot on my arm. Unfortunately, I thought it was a bug bite so I wasn't careful about spreading it. Now I have a large patch on my calf, two spots on my right arm and three on the left. Itchy, itchy.

I started physical therapy two weeks ago. Going into it I was very doubtful that it was going to help, but my pain has actually decreased since I started. However, while my days are going better on the pain scale, I am still having trouble sleeping through the night without tons of pain pills and sleeping pills.

Lastly, one word about out Lakers. Very, very sloppy play for a team that is suposed to be one of the favorites to win it all. Come on guys, try to play with pasion the WHOLE game.