Family Funk

Happy Scoble Day errr I mean Happy Birthday

Family Funk, Friends & Family, Holidays /

Today is my nephew’s birthday but around here we usually refer to the day as Scoble Day! It’s not that “The Heir to the Throne’s” birthday is not important, it is very important but 2 years ago today Scoble commented on my blog, (in a now very badly formatted due to multiple platform changes post about Patrick and their podcasting fun)! The comment is lost due to multiple platform changes but the memory lives on.

We’re missing “The Heir to the Throne’s” birthday party, again, which is troubling for many reason. This year I’m particularly disappointed since my brother’s best friend is there with his band, performing for the party-goers. I cannot imagine a more interesting party is taking place anywhere in the world. I really hope my mother comes through with good photos and that someone takes some video.

riley.jpg

Happy Birthday, little dude!

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Fine Charleston Dining – Part 2

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Family Funk, Foodie, Travel Log /

I don’t know what in the heck is going on with my template all of a sudden – do any of you in firefox see weirdness? I pulled the last post because I know it was fine yesterday, before I published. But pulling that didn’t seem to solve the issue. And I don’t think I did any fiddling with the template yesterday. Weird. Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yes, more Charleston dining experiences. Last weekend we hit two more restaurants that were new to all of us. Both were very good and worthy of future visits.

First, we hit the Sunfire Grill & Bistro for dinner on Saturday evening. It’s just over the old Ashley River Bridge if you’re coming in from the North Area. I believe it is in the old Steak & Ale building. We arrived at 6pm and it wasn’t the least bit crowded, but it wasn’t empty either. It’s a dark restaurant, “date atmosphere” but there were quite a few large groups and just a few couples.

Jenn ordered Shrimp & Grits and seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. She ordered a chocolate something or other cheesecake for dessert and ate almost the whole thing. Which means it was good since she was stuffed from the main course. Michelle ordered some sort of seafood combination platter with Tilapia and shrimp and she ate a surprising amount (Michelle rarely does more than pick at her food at a restaurant), TW ordered the crap crab soup as a starter and was pleasantly surprised by it and a grilled cheese for her main dish – unfortunately they brought her the child’s grilled cheese instead of the special gourmet grilled cheese but she was happy with it. For dessert she ordered some sort of chocolate chip cake that she liked very much. I ordered a black bean burger and potato salad and both were very, very good. TW forced me to order a slice of strawberry cake and everyone enjoyed it. There was some mango syrup drizzled around the plate and it was a nice touch.

For breakfast on Sunday, we drove around the corner from Jenn’s apartment (and when I say around the corner, I mean it – she could walk there almost as quickly as we drove) to the Sunflower Cafe. Typical breakfast fare and everyone seemed to enjoy what they ordered – everything from Beignets and country ham to pancakes to omelettes. (One thing to mention – when they say something is dusted with powdered sugar, they don’t mean dusted – they mean coated. If that troubles you, then you should consider asking them to go easy on the powdered sugar or leave it off entirely.)

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Driving in Panama

Daily Dose, Family Funk, Memories, Travel Log /

When I saw Marvia’s post about driving in Panama I laughed out loud and then I sat back and let the memories wash over me. There is NOTHING like Panama driving and the only thing I’ve found that even comes close is driving in the Philippines.

Marvia is right – turn signals aren’t to be bothered with. Brake lights and head lights are also not important, (except I did get pulled once by a nice Panamanian police officer who spoke no English and wanted me to know my right brake light was out. Gee thanks dude – the other 300 cars on this road right now don’t even have brake lights, but hey, that was nice of him.) Also, the honking. Honking can mean 50 different things and usually something like “hey dude with the flowers, or the bags of oranges – I want to buy some and I’ll stop right here in the middle of the road while you bring them over, we haggle over some money and then I’ll take off without looking to see if anyone is attempting to go around me because I’ve sat here so long – and then I’ll honk the horn again because my mom’s auntie lives over there and she might have seen me driving by.” Horn honking in the US means nothing and is just an annoyance to me – at least in Panama, it meant something interesting.

That traffic she talks about, hahaha, oh yea. Bad. One of the worst experiences of my life was sitting in the middle of The Bridge of the Americas for 2 hours during dry season. I can’t describe it. It was. not. good. Thankfully, I did not have a child with me at the time. I’m pretty sure I’d have abandoned the car and walked home.

Marvia followed a bus to the bus terminal, hoping she’d get to where she was going – I’ve done that! Though actually it wasn’t a bus, it was a nice American couple and I figured eventually they would drive to one of the military bases and from whichever one it was, I could get home. It worked – took me 20 minutes out of my way, but hey, at least I was not lost.

Ah Panama, how I miss it.

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Miss Liberty

2 Comments / Family Funk, Holidays, Melissa Ferrick, Sights & Sounds /

I woke up this morning to find Maria had a great piece about patriotic music and I knew immediately what my favorite would be! Melissa Ferrick doing Dayna Kurtz‘s Miss Liberty! (I took this video last winter – it’s not complete. You can find a complete video here)

Here are the lyrics:

I’m Miss Liberty
Give me your junkies
your irresponsible drummers
I’ve swept my halls clean of clean
Your kitchen raiders your wingtip dayrunners

Go plant your flags and make your
Promise to my promised land
And we’ll make love to the new frontier
In the hot beach sand

You’ll hold me like a drowning man
And come at me too human and then
Drag me down again and leave me

Broken like a spine
Split open like a melon that’s been
Dropped from a high high place
Broken like a spine
Split open like a melon that’s been dropped

I like this country she’s like a whore
Who loves her junkies
Who loves all her sad outlaws
Lifts up her skirt to tease and flirt
With the wretched who have washed up at her shores

When we die i hope someone’s god
Takes us in like immigrants
And we’ll make love in the leftover light
Of heaven’s tenements

You’ll hold me like a drowning man
And come at me too human
Drag me down again and leave me

Broken like a spine
Split open like a melon that’s been
Dropped from a high high place
Broken like a spine
Split open like a melon that’s been dropped

Yes
Yeah
Yeah
Yeah
Yes

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Fine Charleston Dining

Family Funk, Friends & Family, Kid Talk, Travel Log /

We made a very quick trip up to Charleston this weekend. Our biggest issue, as always, was where to eat. Charleston obviously has some excellent restaurants and we even like some of them but we tend to avoid those normally recommended in travel guides and travel blogs. We like things that are a little different or a little more laid back.

Since we were in the West Ashley/Downtown area I wanted to stay in that area. Driving into North Charleston or Summerville was really not something I wanted to do just to eat. So, I looked at the Charleston City Paper and TW read the hotel travel guide, I picked a couple and called Jenn and Michelle to find out what they wanted – plate food, not pizza. So, we hit The Triangle for dinner on Friday night. Awesome. The fried avocado rolls were, well, the defy explanation. Next time I go, I might just order a plate of those as my meal rather than having to share with the table! The spinach/avocado dip was also good and the main courses were as well. (TW got a bread pudding to go and was not as pleased with that – so if you like bread pudding, you might want to skip that one)

While TW was reading the hotel magazine she noticed Cereality had come to Charleston! The magazine said it was opening in mid-June. The company’s website still had it listed as “check back for grand opening”. Since we had really enjoyed the Cereal Bowl version in Miami last year with the little kids we thought we’d take the big girls to this one – so I called on Saturday to find out what time they opened. The young woman who answered the phone was unsure and had to ask – 10am, she said. So, we arranged to meet the girls there at 10 before they headed to the beach and we headed home.

As TW were standing outside waiting for the girls and pondering the menu, a gentleman from inside came over to welcome us to “the first 15 minutes of the first day” – huh? We had no idea we had arrived for the grand opening. What luck! The girls arrived, we all pondered the options and ordered. Fun! Pop Rocks in Michelle’s cereal were a huge hit. She and Michelle plotted all sorts of combos, just like the little kids did after we took them to The Cereal Bowl.

We enjoyed the communal tables, it’s a little loud and I really hope they turn the music down just a little bit so we can enjoy the cartoons playing on the TV and the conversation a bit more. Other than that, it was a hit with all of us today. And I’m pretty sure it will be a regular breakfast stop for us on our frequent trips to Charleston.

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