Does That Imply Furikake is American Food?

On Saturday we hunted down a nice big Asian market so we could stock up on cheap (especially compared to our neighborhood grocery store) Calrose rice. While I was there I thought I'd grab some other Asian foodstuffs that I can't get at my usual grocery store.

Should it worry me that to find what I was looking for I had to go to the "International" aisle of the Asian market???

(NOTE: Okay, so really the problem was that I was at a Chinese/Vietnamese store and wanted to find a few Japanese things too.)

Scott, Candyland is Not a Contact Sport

We were playing a family game of Candyland the other night. Scott's a bit young, but we try to include him. He was pretty good at drawing a card. And he was pretty good at naming the color he had drawn. Then we would point to where he should move his piece. He would tap it there, then continue along the Candyland path, walking/tapping his piece along, completely ignoring the rules of the game. When he came upon one of our pieces, he would destroy the atmosphere of confectionery utopia by running into our piece and knocking it over. I think he has the games Candyland and Sorry confused. It was very difficult to memorize where everyone's pieces were all the time so the game could survive Scott's onslaught. Eventually he decided to walk his piece all the way to the end and then he threw his arms up in the air and exclaimed in a grunty raspy voice, "Uh! I win!" At least then he lost interest and we got to finish our game in peace.

(And in case you were wondering, no, I didn't win. I rarely do.)

I Can't Decide Which I Like Better

The cover:



Or the parody:



Both make me excessively happy!

The Patio Chair: Between a Rock and a Bigger Rock

For those of you blissfully unaware off in Google Reader land, I thought I'd draw your attention to two things.

First of all, our rock pile is growing. I have kindly refrained from posting about every added picture (because I'm nice like that), but I've been adding new photos to the slideshow nonetheless. So feel free to take the extra few seconds to click on over to the actual site and check it out. Heck, since you've already invested ALL THAT TIME coming, go ahead and leave a comment. I don't care if you don't have anything to say. It wouldn't kill you to say hi. Speechlessness at my amazing posts is no excuse.

The other item of rock pile business is that I've decided it was time to add something in the images for scale. It was starting to get hard to tell how big the rocks were. The latest rock photo is of a real doozy so I wanted you to appreciate it. Old patio chair to the rescue. So, yes, the ugly white chair is in the picture on purpose.

The chair will really come in handy when we unveil the next rock in all it's resplendent glory. We were planting another tree and dug one loose a couple days ago. I'll totally get a photo -- if we can ever figure out how to lift the thing out of the hole it's in.

Shamus

About a month ago we went on a family trip to Sea World San Antonio. The trip was my parents' birthday gift for the kids. It was really fun.

But before we get too far into this, I have a little message for children everywhere. Look, I hate to break it to you, but "Shamu" is a marketing ploy. A naming convention if you will. Let's face it, I went to see "Shamu" when I was little. In San Diego. Shamu is more of a brand name than an actual proper name for any one killer whale. And as long as we're chatting about this, let me remind you that no matter what the little boy they pulled out of the audience in the show said, killer whales cannot collectively be called "Shamus." That's just taking the brand name loyalty a little too far. Killer whales? Yes. Orcas? Yes. Funny Colored Big Dolphins? Kinda. Ruthlessly Intelligent Hunters? Sure, why not. The raptor dinosaurs of the marine mammal world? Too much Jurassic Park for you, but yes. Shamus? NO. Also, killer whale show? Not actually THAT cool. Big splashes. Well whoopity doo! I prefer the "antics" of the sea lions or the acrobatics of the dolphins. Now when "Shamu" can do this, then I'll stand up and take notice:

"I'm a flippin' little dolphin. Let me flip for you!"

(Name that movie.)

I can almost hear Scott's eloquent thoughts in this shot.
They go something like this: "Wow."

I think in this shot Scott branched out into the audible two word combination, "Dad, look!" Although in execution is usually sounds more like this: "Dad! Dad! Dad! Wook! Wook! Dad! Wook! Dad! Wook! Wook!..." Imagine that continuing for about as long as your imagination has patience to conjure.

So my camera has an "aquarium" setting. And I'm thinking, seriously? Is aquarium photography really a general enough use case to warrant it's very own setting? I guess some people must go to a lot more aquariums than me and/or care A LOT more about how their pictures of fish look. You know, they are just fish. No one actually wants to waste their time looking at your photos of them. Let me demonstrate:

(This is actually how I look if I let my hair air dry without product and then brush it out.)

(I swear I did not mess with the color on this photo. Crazy, huh?)

There. Now see how painfully boring those were? So why oh why does my camera have an aquarium setting? I think "smart cameras" need to be invented. They will analyze the photo you have taken and then if it deems the photo too pointless, it will "accidentally" delete it in order to spare the rest of the world. Although I'm not sure how I would feel about losing ALL of my photos. But anyway, what matters is that I got to use my camera's aquarium setting at least once, so that's already more than I would have expected.