Humphrelia

Saturday night Malin and I went out with some friends to a concert. It was the first time we had been out for live music in quite some time. And, no doubt about it, we felt old.

I have a co-worker, Karen, who is a huge fan of G Love and Special Sauce, and she mentioned to us a few months back about their playing at the Tabernacle here in Atlanta. I am a fan of some of G Love’s music, so I wanted to go. To my pleasant surprise, Malin wanted to go, too. So we got tickets and have been sitting on them for months.

Saturday we met Karen and her husband, Cliff, at a restaurant in Midtown to eat before the show. We carpooled along with two other people (a couple that knew Cliff from work) to the show. It seemed that everyone there was 18 or under. There were lots of young kids there. I don’t usually go to see shows where the dominant age group is 15-25, so this felt a little odd. I like to pride myself on not listening to the crap to which most teenagers listen. That probably sounds snobby, but I honestly don’t think that many teenagers listen to much jazz, fusion, bluegrass, or Steely Dan.

The first opening act, Ozomatli, was pretty cool. Malin was not terribly impressed by their music, but we all agreed that they put on a great show. The second band, Slightly Stoopid, was a big disappointment. At a party several months back, I had heard about this band and how great they were supposed to be: the older brother of one of Malin’s high school friends is a big fan of theirs. I had heard some of their stuff before the show thanks to Karen playing a mix CD that had some tunes by both Ozomatli and Slightly Stoopid. But these guys have not yet found themselves musically. Their set was a hodge-podge of genres from all over the map – none of them being my favorite genre.

The first couple of songs that Slightly Stoopid played were a good start. And then they kept playing… It quickly went downhill. Malin and I were equally dismayed about the length of their set. After they were finished, a lot of the kids cleared out. I guess that punk / reggae / rap / metal / hip-hop / jam is a genre that is popular among today’s youth. I was unimpressed.

G Love and Special Sauce put on a good show. Karen was incredibly excited to see them play. She even poked fun of herself, likening her enthusiasm to Beatlemania and suggesting that she might faint when G Love came on stage. She did not faint, which was unfortunate because a photo of that would have been a great addition to this post!

They played a lot of tunes that I knew (though Malin was less familiar with their music), and they played well. Their keyboardist is awesome and some of his jamming solos reminded me a lot of John Medeski. By strange coincidence, the first time I ever saw a show at the Tabernacle was to see Medeski Martin & Wood in 1998. My second time at the Tabernacle was to see The Funky Meters in 1999, and it was the first time Malin and I went to a show together (we had just begun dating). Both of those were great shows.

Ultimately, Malin and I did not return home until 1:30am. We both emphatically agreed that the night would have been better (and we would have been less exhausted at that point) if Slightly Stoopid had gotten sick right before the show. Oh, well.

In the last post, I forgot to put one picture up. It happens to be the most fitting of the post title. It is a spooky self-portrait:

Since my wife is the photographer of the family, she doesn’t appear in the photos as often as do Will or I. So I scrounged up some photos with her in them. She might not like all of the photos posted here – but I like them, and this is my blog!

We will start off with a photo of Malin next to my good friend from college, Bob. We were in New York on a foodie vacation last year. Bob lives there, so we met up with him on a few of the nights we spent there. Bob is the one that got married this year on the day after our 5th anniversary.

The next photos, like the one above, were taken by the illustrious author of this post, me. The subjects: Malin and Will.

We will end the gallery with an image of me and my wife together. This particular photo is from two days after our 4th anniversary, over a year ago. Our anniversary fell on a weekday, so we didn’t go out and celebrate until the following weekend.

As all good things must come to an end, so too must this decoupage tribute to my wonderful spouse.

Another small business dies quietly in the night. Malin’s eBay store, Ten Bennett Home Accessories, is, alas, no more.

We were in the process of transitioning this business into other capable hands (my mother-in-law’s) since Malin has gotten herself quite busy with photography. But the main supplier of decorating and drapery accessories just recently announced a change in their wholesale price structure so that small merchants, like Ten Bennett, will effectively see a very large price increase.

This makes the eBay business less viable, so, considering it was a relatively small revenue stream, all parties agreed to let it go.

On the flip side, business at Heart Is Found Photography has picked up recently. Hopefully this trend will continue to a point where I can retire and hang out with Will while Malin takes pictures all day long.

There’s nothing like a ridiculous play on words. Comparing Will’s adventures in potty-training to The Beauty And The Beast for some reason makes me chuckle.

We had a major breakthrough on Sunday. For months we have been trying to convince Will to use the bathroom instead of his drawers. We have tried the periodic putting him on the potty hoping he had to go. Once we even had a success with that, but he didn’t really get it. It didn’t sink in exactly what we wanted him to do.

We’ve even tried putting him in underwear. He immediately knows when he’s urinated on himself and is less comfortable in the situation than he would be in a super-absorbent diaper. He wasn’t happy about it, but he still didn’t “get it”.

Sunday he “got it”. After lengthy tribulations on Saturday, repeated trips to the potty, and going through a half-dozen pair of underpants, he seemed to understand. On Sunday, he went to the bathroom all by himself three times, and he didn’t make a mess on himself at all. It was a fabulous evening: a sneak-peak at a time when we don’t have to buy diapers anymore. One secret ingredient to the success – one from which it will be difficult to wean him – is incentivizing the whole process. He gets to choose between a jelly bean or an M&M whenever he goes in the potty. And he never gets one otherwise. So he never gets to casually eat jelly beans or M&Ms as dessert or occasional candy. They are reserved for using the potty.

He has yet to go #2 in the potty, but we are still making progress. Hopefully his learning will occur quickly. He demonstrated an ability on Sunday to either hold his urge or to recognize it far enough in advance to not have to hold it. He has to demonstrate this ability consistently, and he still has to learn how to really hold it in situations where he cannot go to a potty. And eventually he’ll have to learn how to use a real potty instead of the plastic toddler-potty.

For all of you who are not parents, sorry for the grody post.. or am I? Hahahahaha. May your night be sleepless with nightmares of public evacuation. Just kidding :)

Hopefully, everyone else out there has a pee-in-pants-free-week!

I found some pictures of the dogs recently. I was wading through the vast ocean that is Malin’s Pictures and came across a couple of cool portraits of our pups.

This first one seems incredibly fitting: Marla is bounding around, out-of-focus. It’s the perfect metaphor for the life of this little, hyper dog with the narrowest of attention spans. The second one is an awesome portrait that shows the striking depth that a dog can convey with just his eyes (or, in this case, eye). This eye happens to belong to Miles, our older dog.

Will’s First Post:

Watch TV! Einsteins, Einsteins! I wanna eat Cheerios, daddy! And black juice.

Play trains, daddy. Play trains!

Play marbles. Daddy, play marbles!

Oooh – it’s rain outside. Go outside, daddy; go outside. Play baseball.

Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump!

Will jumping off of his toybox (about 10 months ago)

Jumping fun!

Will jumping off of a bench at a park

Transcribed by Josh

It has been over a week since I’ve posted last. Many things have happened since then.

My Camaro has now been in the shop for nearly four weeks. I’m getting very tired of this. I took it back in because the new differential started making a loud noise again. The mechanic thought it might be a problem with the new parts and bearings he installed and was trying to get the manufacturer to cover re-repairs as warranty work. I need to call tomorrow to find out what the hell is going on…

Speaking of cars, I figured I’d put a link to some images of a truly hot car from Alfa Romeo:

This is the sexiest concept car from a manufacturer other than Aston Martin in quite some time.

I recently received a package that I sent myself from Seattle – full of exotic and rare beers. Many thanks to Malt & Vine in Redmond: a bottle shop that can legally ship to consumers in Georgia. They also have a phenomenal selection of amazing craft brews and imports. They will soon be opening up an online store to sell rare beers to consumers all over the country via mail order. Tonight I sampled a 2002 bottle of Rogue Old Crustacean Barleywine and a more recent bottle of Elysian Dragonstooth Stout. Both were pretty darned good.

Even more recently, Will, Malin, and I went to a baptism. A friend of mine at work, Rex Arul, became a father just a couple of months ago. His daughter’s baptism was at the Christ The King Cathedral in Buckhead. It is a very impressive church, and they had a garden where Will and Malin hung out (Will wasn’t behaving in church, so Malin took him to walk around). There was a fantastic party afterwards at an Indian restaurant in north Atlanta (named Bombay Grill). There were lots of kids for Will to play with, and Malin and I chatted with many co-workers – particularly Nick and Lumi Dumitriu (Nick used to be my manager, and Lumi is currently on the same team as me). They have two children that were at Will’s second birthday party and at this party also, and it was very nice to talk with them in a social (instead of business) environment.

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Hark, our vacation has come to an end! I will summarize the rest of our week for you:

• Thursday morning we headed to Chinatown. There we ate Dim Sum for breakfast (lots of interesting-looking, small plates [like tapas], most of them stuffed with shrimp or pork). We also headed into a local market that had a cool Asian bookstore. After that we did the compulsory visit to the Space Needle to see the “Famous 520′ View” – which was fun. Will’s favorite part by far was the ride up to and down from the observation deck in the windowed elevator. In the afternoon we sampled brews at the Issaquah Brewhouse, owned by Rogue (in Issaquah, WA – a quick drive down I-90, East of Seattle). Finally, we ate sushi for dinner. This was also the only place where we found geoduck on the menu. It is a large phallus-shaped clam that is native to the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, it was not prepared that well and thus was far from the best thing we ate at dinner that evening.
• Friday we visited the Capitol Hill area for breakfast at a place called El Greco. The food was very good – the best breakfast we’d had in Seattle. We then took Will to play at a very cool park: Gas Works Park. In the middle of the park lie the remains of a giant, old, rusted Coal and Oil Gasification plant. Very cool. We drove around to do some shopping the rest of Friday afternoon, and found another great bottle shop while doing so. Dinner was awesome – Indian food at a place close to our hotel: Raga Cuisine of India. We actually had reservations that evening for a French restaurant that told us that bringing a child was okay, but it was too far away considering we’d have to drive through Friday rush hour traffic. I thought it was French based on the description in our guide book. It is, in fact, a Portuguese restaurant, named Brasa. If I’m ever back in Seattle, I’ll make a point of eating there, because the menu looks good.

Saturday, as you might expect, was more mundane: packing, fast food breakfast, driving to the airport, getting through security with a crazy, hyper 2-year old, flying back to Atlanta (Will actually napped for a bit on this flight, mercifully), waiting on our luggage (we took everything as carry-on, but had to check Will’s car seat), waiting on the shuttle to take us to the car in an off-airport parking lot, and then the final drive home.

The real fun of returning home will be adjusting back to Eastern time. Malin and I should be fine – it’s Will that may prove a challenge. The last thing we need is him staying up until midnight every night. We got him to go to sleep at 11:30 last night, and we’re going to try to get him to bed at 10:30 tonight, 10 tomorrow, and then back to normal at 9:30 on Tuesday night. We’ll see how it goes.

Malin took lots of pictures while we were out there (surprise, surprise), so I will try to get some to post here for everyone to see.

We are now just over halfway through our trip (we leave on Saturday). We’ve seen a lot and done a lot and still have a lot to go. Here’s a brief synopsis of the trip to date:

• Will was well-behaved on the flight over. This was mostly due to the fact that we flew on a Song aircraft, which has personal video monitors for every seat – even in coach. The monitor happened to get Cartoon Network, which was running a Scoobie Doo marathon that day.
• When we landed, we checked into the hotel and had dinner at the public house attached to the Redhook Brewery.
• Monday we just ate breakfast at the hotel. The rest of the day involved the first (of many) visit to the Pike Street Market for a cup of coffee from the very first Starbucks and then a trip to the Children’s Museum. Will enjoyed this thoroughly. We tried to eat dinner at a place called Brouwer’s Cafe (supposedly known for a good draft beer selection and good Belgian fare like steak frites and mussels). But it was more of a bar than a restaurant, and so Will was not even allowed in the place. Malin was pretty furious about their website being a little misleading in this respect. We ended up eating a disappointing dinner in Bellevue after much driving around.
• Breakfast on Tuesday was another disappointment. We relied upon advice from the hotel’s concierge. We should have known better after having to turn down his first recommendation of Denny’s. At that point we took time to better plan the rest of the week and make phone calls to make sure there would be no more surprises or disappointments. The rest of the day was filled with another trip to the Pike Street Market to grab peroshkis (savory pastries stuffed with meat and vegetables), a tour and tasting at the Columbia Winery, and then dinner at a nice seafood restaurant on the water. On the way to dinner we stopped at a highly-acclaimed bottle shop to get rare brews that are unavailable in Georgia (most of them will be shipped home on Friday).
• Wednesday we headed back down to Pike Street Market for breakfast at a French bakery (fruit-filled croissants and coffee) and then went down the road to Pier 52 – from which we took a big ferry across the Puget Sound to Bainbridge island. We walked around, looking at some of the boutique shops and cafes on the island near the water, and then headed back to Seattle. After that we had an awesome lunch at Salumi and then sampled brews at the Pyramid Alehouse and Brewery. That wrapped up the day: we went back to the hotel and just made dinner of the left-overs we had accrued so far.
• Today we’re about to head out to eat Dim Sum breakfast in Chinatown. We have lots of other stuff to do, too.

I’ll post again with details on the rest of the trip!

The biggest hassle of the trip so far as been parking. Parking is horrible and expensive everywhere here. And the public transportation is very poor to boot (even worse than MARTA in Atlanta). Aside from that, we’ve been having a great time. The weather has been gray and overcast everyday. The highs have been between 67 and 73 degrees Fahrenheit everyday (which is a welcome change from home – we’ve seen the 100+ highs in Atlanta this week and do not miss it!). The sun is supposed to come out today, so we’re planning on doing the Space Needle today.