This photo of Mia and mommy is from a previous set of pictures. Unfortunately, we’ve been under the weather, off-and-on the last couple of weeks. Taking any good pictures has been difficult. Hopefully, we’ll have some opportunity this week to take some newer photos.
This photo was originally taken on January 23, 2011.
Mia is still learning to crawl. She’s comfortable being on her belly on the floor. She can pivot left or right and can move ever so slowly backward. But she hasn’t grasped the skill of forward movement yet. When that time comes, I’m sure she’ll be taking off, crawling to every conceivable corner of the house.
We have wanted to take Mia to the Monterey Bay Aquarium but hadn’t found a good weekend to do it. Fortunately, we had the last weekend of January free of any commitments. We were also very fortunate to obtain two guest passes from my sister’s co-worker who has an aquarium membership.
Asking for directions.
Since it was Mia’s first time there we tried to visit all the exhibits that she might find of interest. The first exhibit we saw was the seahorses. I’m not sure if Mia could actually make out the seahorses with her own eyes, but there were large monitors that gave a close-up view of how they looked. I’m sure she could make them out from those images.
Looking glass.
We later went into the interactive area. Farrah placed Mia on what seemed like a water bed-type pad. She really enjoys it swaying back and forth.
Bounce house like.
After our trip, we headed north to Santa Cruz to have dinner with the Trabers. Luckily, the weather on the way up to Monterey was cooperative. The drive to Santa Cruz was met with light drizzle. Luckily, there were no incidents to speak of. We spent an hour or so at the house, then headed to Riva’s for a nice seafood dinner.
All in all a good day.
Mia and the Jellyfish.
These photos were taken on January 29, 2011.
Currently, my favorite commercial, even though I’ve yet to see it on television. I just love the kid’s reaction in the end. I can imagine Mia having a similar reaction.
Part 2 in the series. This one covers remixes in films, specifically Star Wars and Kill Bill. Watch this video past the credits for the portion on Kill Bill.
The first video, which covers music, was very interesting. You can visit the website to make a donation for the continuation of this project.
I’ve often wondered what the difference was between Great Britain and the UK. And if you have ten minutes to spare, this informative video can enlighten you on the differences. Good to know there’s a video explaining it.
It’s a question I believe each dad asks themselves, “When do I introduce Star Wars into my kid’s life?"
Well, it all starts with a t-shirt. Farrah bought this shirt at the Gap for 58 cents! Such a bargain. In this photo, with Mia’s face, all scrunched up, it looks as if she’s tired of having her photo taken.
Now, as far as the films go, I’m talking about the original Star Wars trilogy, not the last three highly disappointing films. And in any event, you’d introduce the original trilogy first. You would not want to spoil the huge revelation in Empire Strikes Back, would you?
I’ve heard that a good age to start might be three years old. At the least, you can lay down the groundwork through storytelling. My friend BossaNova said he started telling his daughter the story of Luke, Leia, and Han around that age as well. Who knows, Mia may be able to retell the story similar to this little girl.
This photo was taken on January 20, 2011.
Mia is as playful as ever. Each day, Farrah tries to think of a way to tame all that hair. It’s difficult, but it needs to be done. Otherwise, it can look a bit scary. I’ve included two photos in this post so you can get a complete picture. I look at this series of photos and I can’t help but think, wow, future sushi chef.
Looking like a sushi chef.
“Can I have an order of the sake? My wife would like a California Roll as well.”
These photos were taken on January 23, 2011.
This week I had the opportunity to eat lunch at Mobowl. MoBowl is a food truck serving Chinese cuisine with a twist. We’ve tried MoGo, a similar concept involving Korean cuisine, and we’ve enjoyed what they had to offer. Would MoBowl be the same?
To find out where MoBowl will be on any given day, you need to either look on their homepage or their Twitter stream. They only serve food on weekdays during lunchtime. On this particular day, they were only three minutes away from my workplace.
On to the review.
Atmosphere
Well, it’s a food truck. The truck is clean, with available drinks and plastic utensils available upfront. The menu is written in chalk and is easy to read.
Service
They were a half-hour into their lunch service. I only saw one customer in line. I wondered if this was a bad sign, but I walked up to the truck and ordered. The order taker – possibly the owner – was friendly, giving me several options for what I ordered. I had the Five Spice Pulled Pork bowl. There were two additional options with my meal, a fried egg, and brown rice. Each would cost an additional dollar. I opted only for the fried egg. The meal came out to nine dollars total.
They were able to make my dish in less than five minutes. I took it to go, as is the case with these food trucks, and took my meal back to the office.
Food
The food comes in a sturdy plastic bowl. Items in the bowl are segregated into three areas: a salad, rice with a fried egg on top, and pulled pork. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like that much food. Then you realize the bowl is deep, and the contents of the bowl make up a hearty meal.
The salad was a normal regular green salad with a light dressing. The egg was fried medium with a slightly runny yoke. The rice was perfect, not too soggy or too dry. The meat, at first taste, was extremely tender and flavorful. I enjoyed it for a while. But after some time the five spices, which I’ve had before in other dishes, became overwhelming.
Verdict
I enjoyed my meal, though again, the five spice was a bit heavy-handed in my opinion. I think I’ll go back to try another offer. But for now, I give it 2 1/2 stars out of 5.
I’m trying to invest in a cross-platform note-taking system. What I’d like for this system to do is:
I like the idea of Evernote. I’ve tried to use it before when it first became available on the iPhone. For some reason, I haven’t taken to the system. But now that I have the application on all my devices, I’ll take the opportunity to take it for a full run. I’m going to try using the free version of Evernote for all my note-taking (e.g. blog posts, blog ideas, longer personal projects, etc.) The only thing the free version appears to be missing from my list above is the offline abilities. Those can be had with a premium account. Let me set a 30-day trial period, ending on February 25th. Let’s see how that goes.
So what am I using now?
I’m trying to get by with Elements. It’s a cool little iPhone and iPad app that syncs with Dropbox. But that’s the limitation, the availability of the app on those two platforms. I know I can use a simple text editor to access the Dropbox-created file or create a text file and put it into Dropbox for editing in Elements. But it seems laborious at this point. But it might be the more elegant solution if the Evernote software on the Mac and Windows machine proves to be cumbersome. Who knows.
I’ve also been trying out Scrivener for writing. Again, the problem is it only resides on my Mac. And again, I suppose I could export the file to Dropbox to make further edits, but it seems too much work to accomplish this.
I’ll let you know how it progresses.
This is a short video of Mia in her outfit. You can see how she rubs her gloves - or hands - together.
The lottery of birth is responsible for much of who we are. If you were not born in the country you were, what would your life be like? Would you be the same person?
IfItWereMyHome.com compares the living conditions in your country to another of your choice. It’s interesting to see how different - and not necessarily better - your living conditions are to others, as a country. Everyone’s got problems.
