The more I shop at Costco, the more I realize that there are really two kinds of treat ladies (I say 'ladies' because I have only seen one guy in the many years I've been shopping there). The first kind makes the treat stand run like a well-oiled machine. She has 2 or 3 trays goin' in the toaster oven, and the plastic tray with bite size samples is always generously stocked. One need not even halt the rolling wheels of the gargantuan Costco shopping cart to sample the garlic buttered shrimp. Then there are the treat ladies that are always causing cart pile-ups and shopping delays because they cannot or will not churn out the DiGiorno slices fast enough. They fidget with the toaster oven controls, fastidiously check lineage of each child hoping for a sample, and keep a tray of empty napkins in the bullpen, waiting to emerge with pizza slices, should they ever show up.

This week at work, I witnessed two phenomena that often occur in presentations, and they caught my attention for some reason. The first is the urge for a presenter to ask (after spending an hour or so speaking) "has this been useful?". This is typically asked by an important person after he/she has given a highly esoteric talk to a room full of silent employees. Regardless of the situation, this question breaks the employees out of their trance, and the presenter hears a jumble of comments like "of course" and "sure it was", as if anyone would be crazy to think otherwise. It's as if we're going to audibly mumble "complete waste of time" or "I'd rather have been filling out HR benefit election forms in my cube for the last hour". The second thing is the concept of the "hard stop", as in "we have to wrap up in 15 minutes because I have a hard stop at 4:00". This makes a mockery of our ability to manage time in the absence of the "hard stop". It suggests that the meeting organizers would just love to have everything drag on for hours on end, but today will be prevented from doing so by the trotting out of the phrase "hard stop".

This weekend, I finally conquered spare ribs. Back ribs have always been easy - hard to make them anything but tender and good in a little over an hour. However, I have had limited success with spareribs. Probably my best showing was when Mom and Dad visited us in Pittsburgh, but I've only been able to get tender meat inside by burning the outside. This time, however, the grill was just the right temperature, I sprayed the ribs with apple cider every 3o minutes just like Steven Raichlen told me to, and voila! - perfect spareribs. They were amazing. BTW - if you want a BBQ book, get "how to grill" by mr. Raichlen. It's great for beginners like me, and takes you through all the steps w/pics. It got us hooked on bbq during our summer in Evanston. That's about it for now. Pics - Kai trying to see out the front window (on tippy toes). Me stealing Asha's princess crown, Asha in on the swingset with Kai, and Kai in the kitchen.

This week was also Kai's first birthday. Marie made a banana cream cake that we all enjoyed, and Kai even figured out that there was good stuff inside the wrapping if he tore it open. He did need some help getting it started, though. Jerome and Asha were both really cute about Kai's birthday, and both made cards for him even though Marie and I hadn't told them to. Gma Campbell sent along two presents for Kai, who loved the truck book (the Thomas the Tank Engine overalls were more of a hit with Kai's mom). Kai also was allowed the pleasure of devouring a piece of banana cream cake on his own. As you can he, he quickly got into the task.

To be honest, I can't really think of a lot to write about, but here are a couple of things. On Friday I went on my first campout with the Teacher's Quorum. It was apparent that the Teachers had planned it themselves because the entire plan focused on taking various props to the sand dunes in the desert and riding these props down the dunes. They hadn't taken into account the fact that the dunes are 2 hours from San Diego, so it would be dark when we got there. They planned to camp in approximately the same place as they had 2 years ago when they came to the dunes as Deacons. This would also be the time that they were also almost run over by dune buggies numerous times during the night. After arriving at around 10pm, the boys then insisted that we camp in the same spot. I vetoed this idea, and we went to a different place where folks are actually supposed to camp and pitched our tents. Predictably, the boys stayed up all night, but this had the fringe benefit of having them suggest that we go home at 9am the next morning. Another fiasco that I managed to see coming was breakfast, which was supposed to be french toast. On the way out, we stopped at a truck stop to buy dinner. It was there that I acquired 2 Clif Bars which would serve as a fine breakfast in the event that something went wrong. Well, the Teacher that was supposed to bring the stove didn't actually come, so at 8am while I was contentedly snacking on my Clif Bars, the teachers were washing down chunks of virgin white bread with room temperature apple juice. In case you're keeping track, here's a rundown of the campout stats:
Teachers attending: 9
Teachers shot with airsoft guns: 9
Leaders: 3
IPODs holding songs with profanity: 1 (that I know of)
Total man hours of sleep for leaders: 12 (I got half of that myself)
Total boy hours of sleep: 18
Total meals eaten: 2
Total meals purchased at fast food establishments: 2
Driving time : 6 hours
Time spent actually having fun on dunes: 2 hours

An unrelated realization I made this week: At work, I keep on seeing people that I swear worked at PPG, too. These are people I probably only see once or so a month, and I guess there's a place in my brain where I store that info, and it happens to contain both PPG people and Pyxis people. I can't tell them apart anymore. Of course, I'll probably find out that in addition to myself, there were a bunch of people that worked at PPG headquarters that also quit and moved to SD to work at Pyxis at about the same time as me. 

Here we are at Point Loma! On the suggestion of my excellent brother Stu, we all went up to Point Loma on Saturday afternoon. It was a gorgeous day, and we could see all the way up the north coast on one side, and all of downtown San Diego, Coronado Island, and all the way down to Tiajuana on the other. The point is near the spot where Juan Cabrillo is believed to have landed in 1521, becoming the first white guy to visit San Diego.


Jerome plays with a beetle. Unfortunately, this propted Asha to grab an insect for herself. This insect happened to be a bee, and it stung her middle finger. It appeared to hurt pretty bad, but after a few minutes it was ok. 

OK, a few more from Mother's day. Stu made a strawberry tart, and it was really, really good.


 

This week, I'm tired. I spent 4 hours writing a talk for church last night, and have no desire to blog. I see this as a temporary affliction. In the meantime, here are some pics from our first real trip to the beach. It was great!


 

So, I turned 31 this week. I got lots of presents, including some great flip-flops and board shorts from Marie. I also got this great product from Sony which will finally enable us to transfer all our old camcorder tapes to DVD. There is one minor problem - it doesn't work. It came from Costco, though, so it won't be a big deal to take it back if we can never get it to work. I really wish it would just work, because it's really simple to use - it just makes coasters, that's all. asha. (that last word is the work of Asha, who made me let her write her name in the blog).

This week was also the Fathers and Sons campout, which was held at Lake Jennings. It was only about a half an hour away from our house. There was no shortage of prickly pears, as you can see, but it was hard to feel like we were roughing it when I could look across the lake and see the palatial sub-suburban mansions of San Diego rich folks. The Jack-in-the-Box was only about 3 minutes from camp, and many a Father and Son succumbed to the temptation. In fact, Jerome and I were the only ones that actually cooked our dinner at the site. As if you can have a Fathers and Sons without cooking your own dinner. We had hamburgers.

This is what Asha calls her "mad face'. CTR5 (Asha wants everyone to know that she just wrote "CTR5" on the blog)










This is another picture of Asha, but this one's not her "mad face".

Here are some unrelated thoughts from this week. After seeing the name of one top prospect in last week's NFL draft, I was left to wonder whether D'brickashaw Ferguson has a long lost brother named D'rickashaw, who shows a prodigious athletic ability regarding the pulling of a two-wheeled cart.

Also this week, Marie and I decided to unload our house to a total low-ball offer, which reminded me of when Clint Eastwood's character remarked "There are two kinds of men in this world. Those with loaded guns, and those who dig." We dug. We'll see if we actually close.