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.

Academy of the Arts, San Francisco Tour

Last weekend we drove up to San Francisco to tour the San Francisco Academy of the Arts. We did a tour a over a year ago but we didn't tour or look at any of the dorms. Crystal is gong to there this Fall and she has to choose her top three picks for dorms so we thought another tour would be good now that we know for sure that she is going there.

Crystal was so excited!

I checked my Marriott points and I had enough to get us two free nights at a brand new Marriott one block from Union Square which was perfect because it was right between the campus building where the tour was and the dorm that we were going to tour. We got an awesome room - nice size and a great view.

Here we are waiting for the tour of the school.

After the last tour Crystal was not sure if she wanted to major in Graphic Design or Animation. However, what really got her interest this year was a major called New Media. Now she is leaning towards majoring in this but she is going to take a few 3D Animation classes to make sure. Graphic Design is pretty much off the table. New Media is kind of a combination of Graphic Design and Animation. While Graphic Design includes designing the packaging of product (cereal boxes, CD covers, etc) and company logo's and things like that, New Media is more of the animated graphics you see on TV and Web Sites.

After touring the school we had lunch then went on the dorm tour. Crystal has to choose three dorms and her preferred room set up as soon as possible because it is prioritize by when they receive your request. We won't know which dorm she gets until about month before school starts - likely in August.

This is the dorm that is Crystal's first choice. The only bad part is that is right across the street from the Ambulance entrance to the SF Hospital.

This is the dorm that we got to tour. It used to be a hotel but was donated to the school.

This is the old lobby. You have to use your student ID card to get the doors open, but they also have a security guard in the lobby 24/7.

Here is Crystal in the hall way on one of the floors where the rooms are.

All of the rooms have bunk beds. Most hold two students, a few four and some, for those who can afford it (not us) are single rooms. The bathroom set ups are also different so you have to request your choice. Some rooms have a full bath, some have only a half bath and showers shared for each floor and some rooms have no bathroom at all, just one shared for the whole floor. Crystal is going to request them in that order.

This is a shot of the rec room. There were two students playing a video game when we got there, so of course every started watching them play rather than listening to the tour guide.

When we were walking between buildings of the campus tour and old Asian guy walked by with a huge cat on his shoulder. The cat was just kicking back on this shoulder like a bird. I thought he had an owl on his shoulder at first. I can't believe he trained a cat to stay up there like that. He was just walking down the streets of San Francisco. It reminded me of Harry Potter for some reason. I tried to get a good shot but this is the only one that turned out. This is from the back so you can't really tell it is a cat.

The day after the Campus tour we stopped by Santa Cruz on the way home to visit Amber. He had lunch with her, her boyfriend Josh and Josh's brother. This was the first time we met Josh's brother. He's a real nice guy - takes after Josh.

I was worried about going on this trip because of my back. Tania drove most of the way. Crystal even drove for a while once we got out in the middle of no where. It was the first time she drove the van but she did a good job.

When we got about an hour or so from the city it started raining so I took control and drove from there. Neither of the girls wanted to drive into the city any ways. On the way back I drove the first 2 1/2 hours and then Tania drove the rest of the way. My back held up great. No bad pain the next day, but most importantly, no hospital trip needed.

Another Amber Visit

The best part about having your children away for college is having come back home for a visit. Amber called on Tuesday and said she didn’t have to work this weekend so she was going to drive home for a visit. She left Thursday afternoon and was able to stay until Sunday morning.

It was nice to spend some time with her. She was having trouble with a couple of papers she needed to write for sociology so I proofed them for her and gave her a little advice on her writing style. A big part of my job is writing reports and over the years I have gotten better and better at it. I still suck at spelling and grammar. And I frequently change tense (past & presence) when I shouldn’t but I have people proof for those types of things. What I am pretty good at is figuring out how to organize the topic and lead to point. I’m not saying I’m great, but we’ll see how well Amber’s professor thinks I am. It felt nice to be helpful.

An extra bonus for this weekend was that Amber and Crystal really got along well. They never really fight much, but over the past few years they have kind of drifted apart in terms of being friends. This weekend they seemed like friends again. They spent a lot more time talking one-on-one than they usually do.

Dan and Barbara drove up from Orange County on Saturday and Alex, Jenna and kids came over also. I cooked up a turkey and we had a nice dinner enjoyed each others company.

Brennen performed in a play in Pasadena a few weeks ago (on the same day Max was baptized). It was a competition where the kids had to write the play themselves and make all the costumes and sets themselves also. I think it is called odyssey of the mind. They get judged on a lot of different attributes of the play. They ran into a few problems with some of their props and one of the kids skipped a whole section of the play. They were very disappointed with themselves but they still managed to win second place. Now they get to go to the state finals in Sacramento next month. If they were able to win second place with all the mess ups, who knows how well they will do next time if they can get through it error free.

Wonderland

My brother in-law is a middle school librarian. He also creates comic books - both writes and illistrates. Unfortunately, the comic books don't go far in terms of paying the bills, thus the middle shcool he must go five days a week. A few years back he was comissioned to write a follow up story to Alice in Wonderland. Tommy agreed to do it because they hired someone to do the graphics so all he had to concentrate on was the story writing. (yep, that's right. I have creative people on both sides of my family)

If you remember the orginal Alice in Wonderland, when the Rabbit meets Alice he first mistakes her for his maid, Mary Ann. Tommy's story follows Mary Ann as she returns Wonderland from vacation after Alice turned everything upside down. Many people begin mistaking Mary Ann for Alice and havoc ensue. It is very fun story.

While the orginal series came out in several soft bound comic books, this month, the Wonderland series was released in hard cover book form. It is very nicely done.

And while fat, ugly, over weight cats hate it; I really enjoyed reading the story. It is much nicer in book form because it will last longer and for some reason the story just seems funnier with hard covers. For kids of all ages who are discovering comic books, this would be a book to own. There are not any guns, monsters or violence that boys typically seek for in comic books, so it will probably be enjoyed more by girls than boys, I think readers of both genders will like it.

Two other comic series that Tommy writes are called Stitch and Skelebunnies. I like these better than Wonderland. They are full of the strang and weird and are written for an older audience than Wonderland. But not to worry, they are only GP13.

If you want more, you can visit Tommy's web site at:

http://www.tommykovac.com/

Or you can go Amazon.com and order a copy of Wonderland for $13.59. Some of his other stories are also available on Amazon.

Sorry for the advertisement, but hey! This is family. And it really is cool stuff.