My Little Gourmand

I love telling the story of how when Lily was just 2 or so and starting to let us know her food preferences, she really enjoyed cheese.

And since she got stuck with us, it's rare to have velveeta or american cheese slices in the fridge. Far more likely to find aged smoked gouda, feta, extrasharp cheddar, and other more adult cheesy comestibles.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise when Lily would call out her choices by name rather than just a request for generic "cheese".

But hearing a whiny two year old screech - "BRIIIIEEEEEEE ! I want BRRIIIIEEEEEE!" was hilarious to say the least.

Fast forward a few years.

Making dinner the other night: rice, veggies, applesauce and pork chops (sauteed with butter and oil, little bit of garlic, little bit of cinnamon).

Lily: What's that?

Me: Pork chops

L: I don't like it.

M: Um....you like hot dogs...you like kalua pig....this is the same thing...

L: I'm not gonna eat it...

M: Try it...there's cinnamon plus with the applesauce it's really good.

L: No.

M: Here's a little piece with just a touch of applesauce...they taste good together..it's like that part in Ratatouille where Remy and his brother....

(NOTE: Appealing to Pixar animated characters is sometimes useful to help make a point or misdirect small children)

Jake: MMMMMM....I don't like it...I LOVE IT!

M: Thank you.

(NOTE: Occasionally rival siblings will take opposing viewpoints merely to piss off one another. But if that means that at least one kid eats their dinner without kvetching, bring it on)

L (beginning to lose it): No...I WON'T!

M: Well Jake likes it...

L (blubber whine pout stink eye): IF THIS WAS SUSHI THERE WOULDN'T BE A PROBLEM !

Happy Birthday Lily

Interestingly Lily and Jake's birthdays always fall on the same day of the week. He was born exactly 28 days before his big sis (this year they were on Tuesdays). Kim and I share birthday days of the week too but on two Thursdays (this year at least) much farther apart.

Lily asked for cinnamon cupcakes for her special treat and she got em...along with all sorts of cool presents.



Don't know if she considered a really pretty sunset a score but the rest of us thought so.

The real party was on Saturday when she and some friends from Ma'ema'e (and preschool before that) all hung out at the house, watched Alvin and the Chipmunks, ate ice cream, played dress up...then went to the fair!



Ala Moana has been hosting the Family Fun Fair for the last three years - great place for rides and corndogs. And since the kids are at such an age, things like the lagoon, rocks with crabs crawling about, and the fun house are all you need to have fun. Well, an access all rides all day long bracelet didn't hurt either.

Jake goes to kindergarten

Over the course of the past couple weeks, Jake has been orienting at Ma'ema'e. The schedule is one bound to make working parents tear their hair out:

Monday: Boys 8:30 - 10:00
Tuesday: Girls 8:30 - 10
Wednesday: Boys 8-12
Thursday: Girls 8-12
Friday: No school at all...

....or some such nonsense.

Back when I WAS A KID mom and dad just dropped us off the first day, kiss on the cheek, buh bye - kindergarten time. But you try and tell the kids today that, and they won't believe you (thank you Monty Python



But Jake was ready....
Pencils? Check
Folders? Check
Erasers? Check
Apron? Check
Crayons? Check
Watercolors? Check
Favorite dinosaur t-shirt? Check
Sauropod toy (saltasaurus if you are keeping track)? Check




One last hug from Mom for good measure then it was time. Fortunately he has two friends from preschool in his class (and he and Kaela are the two little lovebirds - oy) so he'll be fine.



Lily was stoked to start school with a messenger bag that she'd been lusting after for months.



Jake? He's just psyched.

Special guest: Kim

Well, there it is. It's 7:50pm and the kids have done a fabulous job this Wednesday evening while their dad is out surfing. Finished their homework, ate dinner, had 45 minutes of free time, stopped nicely and transitioned into the shower, cleaned up their toys, brushed their teeth and got comfortable in bed with their book of choice.

Lily chose to read her new birthday book....Where Do I Come From.

After a little gasp, giggle and a cover of her mouth with her hand, I had to ask..."what are you laughing at?"

"Mom, did you know that the stuff that comes out of my nose came from dad's penis?"

Flabbergasted, I inquired curiously, "Where did you read that? Show me." She pointed to the paragraph that explained how after the wriggling about, it ends with something like a sneeze. Needless to say I had to read that page out loud and clarify that her hunnabutta does not come from her dad's penis.

However, she did need to verify that to make a baby the man's penis has to go inside the woman's vagina. Big giggles from Lily. And then the inevitable..."Mom, did dad do that to you?"

"Yes," with textbook calmness I replied.

"eeeuuu. I don't ever want to have a baby. I'm not going to get married."

So now I get to don on my anthropology degree and add, "you know Lily, we are of the homo sapien species and if we don't make babies then we won't have more of our species. "

You can image that at this point I'm thinking Brad is missing out. This is absolutely hilarious. Of course, knowing Lily, she'll want to talk about this some more.

We both agreed that she could come to me for questions to clarify rather than her 7 year old friends.

Oh no, now I hear Jacob asking...what are you reading.

Time to turn of the lights in the room! - Kim

Dear Third Day

Radiohead wants their album cover back.

Happy (Belated) Birthday To Me

Happy Birthday To Me
I'm one hundred and three
I still go to preschool
And I miss my Mommy.

My Mommy's at work
She fired a jerk
She hired a monkey
To do my homework

The monkey couldn't do it
And he said "Boo hoo"
He went out of the door
And back to the zoo

*As taught to me by Jacob



* Cartoons by Ross Yamanaka. I wish by me.

How are these men similiar?

It would probably help to know who they are.

Well, most people will be able to ID Nelson Mandela.

You know, the 90 year old Nobel Peace Prize winner only recently removed from the US Government's terrorist watch list...one down, 999,999 "security risks' to go! That Ed Kennedy guy still probably has an axe to grind about that thing in Dallas, but I digress.

The other guy....no one? Bueller? Bueller?

Well, here's how I got started on this.

I was listening to the BBC's reporting on Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday and they mentioned that he was "South Africa's first democratically elected president". This got me to thinking.

If universal suffrage = democracy (and conversely less than universal suffrage <> democracy) then I wondered who was the US's first democratically elected president?

Washington? Yeah right...No it took another 133 years after him to actually elect a president democratically in the USA.

Any guesses? Well, I did pretty much give it away by showing his picture above.

Warren G. Harding btw.

Happy Birthday Jake!

And Kevin Bacon too. And that dude who invented the Zeppelin...um...what's his name again? Oh and the Wall Street Journal! And Marty Feldman!

Only Jake got coffee ice cream cake on the deck though. And dinosaurs, airplanes, cards, hugs, etc.

Yet another music quiz

More bands than 8-bit rockers!

Now with answers!

This quiz made the rounds a couple years ago but I'd never seen it till recently.

Make a pot of coffee, turn off the phone, and make sure the boss is out of the office since it's gonna take a while and you'll need help from friends and/or family.

DOWNLOAD HERE - you'll need to have MS Excel to play.

Dinner on the deck redux

Eating out on the deck in the summer, just like back in 2005.

Father's Day

There was this one time when Kim said "OK. It's your birthday. Pick where you want to go out to eat."

Much to her chagrin, I picked Denny's.

Now in my defense, I did pick the best Denny's in the whole wide world. Which one you ask?


The one across the street from (and with a fantastic view of) Wakiki Beach. Sadly, it's no longer a Denny's and the Grand Slam Breakfasts anytime 24/7 are a long forgotten greasy dream/

This Father's Day Kim showed that she'd been paying attention for the last 19.5 years (yes, you read that right). Instead of asking "Where do you want to go?" she had her own suggestion ready to go when everybody was up and about last Sunday Morning.

She suggested a place that had special significance for me, one that made me wax nostalgic for the days when I was the kid and my dad would get up early to make sure that I had a special Sunday breakfast waiting for me when I woke up.

"How about Jack In The Box?"

Ahhhh. Croissant supreme combo meal. What a treat.

Yes. A Jack In The Box croissant was my Proustian madeleine, transporting me back to Tucson Arizona in the 1980's. Perhaps not as interesting a voyage as fin de siecle Paris but it's all I got, so deal.

Of course the kids had no idea (until I told them) that this was such a treat for me. Jack in the box. Where I drank my first cup of coffee as a 14 year old (or so). Gene and I got up early one weekend morning, drove across town and before getting started on a solar water heater kit for the house that we would build at a local school cafeteria under the supervision of somebody who (unlike us) knew his hammers from his screwdrivers. Before this we stopped off for a breakfast at JITB.

I'm sure it was loaded with so much sugar and half & half/non-dairy creamer, I would gag on if I were to drink it today, but damned if I can't picture that JITB on the corner of Campbell and Broadway (OK a block or two east of Campbell, but you know the one).

Figuring that the kids would like something more, well, kid-like, I got them the French Toast sticks which came with syrup and a dusting of powdered sugar.

Jake was happily chomping away when he took a look over at my Supreme Croissant.

"I want some!"

I rip off a chuck...hand it to him.

"More than that!....Let's switch...You can have mine"

I shudder to admit it, but I honestly got a little choked up....



The rest of the day was as mellow and relaxed as you could imagine. Watched the kids jump about at gymnastics.

Went home and played some Waterworks. Watched the swordfight from Princess Bride to give us ideas on choreography.

NOTE: Now when swordfighting Jake will throw his green foam weapon up, conspicuously switch hands and exclaim "I am not lefthanded!"



Went to Chuck E. Cheese/the ceramics store to 1. Play the Star Wars video game and 2. pick up Lily's handpainted ceramic dog bowl for S. Sparkle.

Then off to the beach to play in the sand and watch the full on summer swell until the sun went down.

Day well spent.

No. I've not taken up huffing...

Pleny people around the museum got a kick out of me in my makeup for my Cetacean Idol bluescreen work. Hope you get as much enjoyment as they did....

Take a look at this to see what the facepaint was all about:



Must say it made my day when I made this highlight reel of Cetacean Idol facts/songs/judges, posted it to YouTube and found out that there were already videos of people playing my game!

Way cool.

A ride on TheBoat

Uncle Charlie (aka Zach's Dad) had been telling us about TheBoat ofor a while now, but we hadn't got it together with them until the other day.

TheBoat is one of those classic city/state traffic relief demonstration boondoggles: too many people drive so, hmmmm, let's offer boat service! Except make it really difficult for them...like not allowing parking at the "commuter" end of the line.

But that being said, when you stop and think about it as a simple FUN/$ ratio and not as a means of commuting, it's a helluva great deal. Here's the scoop:

• 1hr boat ride each way along the south side of O‘ahu from Aloha Tower to Barber's Point


• Spectacular views


• Indoor seating with A/C


• outdoor seating with great view of the sizeable wake...


• ...cuz TheBoat hauls ass

Total cost, round trip for me and two chillun: $6
First intro to maritime adventures: well, still that same price, as above....
Getting both kids back to Aloha Tower with nobody having tossed their respective cookies: worth considerably more than $6 but no, not priceless. Let's be real.

Newest creation

Just finished a Yak. Not the beast of burden but the Soviet WWII fighter.

Jake graduates!

Next stop kindergarten. Jake didn't give us the satisfaction of letting us layer on the leis until we couldn't see his blue eyes. Took them all off except the homemade lei by Tutu Kane and Lily.

"And so my fellow graduates, this is not an end, but rather a beginning...."

The two Children Center alums"

"Yeah? You should see the other guy!"

Went to pick up Lily the other day and found her nursing a seriously nasty looking bump. She collided with her friend who escaped completely uninjured and left Lily with a Rocky Balboa level shiner. Took three days till Lil would let me take a picture of it. By that time we had taken a battery of x-rays to insure the soundness of her zygomatic arch.

Took Lily a couple days to want to be seen in public as well, and that was fine with me since I'm sure a few people were thinking "Hmmm....CPS...where's their number?" when the two of us would walk by.

Pensive Lily

Before above obviously.

Guitaircraft Carrier

Came home to this interesting mashup the other day:

Whales Exhibit

So it finally opened. On May 16th we had what by Bishop Museum standards was a pretty damn good opening night crowd: probably about 500 members and friends.

Definitely a big team effort with help from education, collections, B & G, and many more.... Here's us moving everybody's favorite whale related collections piece from the Vert Zoo collection: our whale penis boat bumper. Yep.

Back in the whaling days, resourceful sailors used every part of the whale's penis. And yes, it really does take three people to move it since it's stuffed with sawdust.

Here's a picture of me regaling our summer intern with an amusing anecdote about summering in the Hamptons, sailing with Bill Buckley and...wait.

No, this is me pretending I have a 6 foot cock. That's right.

Kids playing with the custom made, handpainted foam puzzles:

And some more playing "Humpback Migration" - basically "Candyland" with blubber. Mmmmmm...muktuk!

Brain (whale and human) models for comparison and lice (real and just whale) to gross out the kiddies:

Random bones from the collection and our life sized whale tail wall in the background:

Some humans for scale:

Of course the big draw isn't all the extra junk we all worked so hard to make, but the big whale robots:

Here's a link to the inspiration for the above video.

Lily letting off steam