Okay...It's official...I'm a Wussy boy

It's cold out and I don't care if people can hear me complain. Yes, I grew up in Minnesota. I'm supposed to be used to it...I'm a Minnesotan. We are known as stoic folks, who don't get riled up when it's cold. WRONG... I'm the guy on the street corner waiting for the bus, jumping up and down, shaking, and whining. Somebody pack me up and ship me away to somewhere hot, where I can wear my shorts and flip flops.

In response to Mamzilla's Meme

Okay...I'm going to do this...I'm sure that anyone who has read my blog has probably left due to the fact that I've been extremely busy and it seems as if I haven't posted since the ice age-a long friggin' time. I've had my regular full-time job as an academic advisor, a part-time job as an ESL teacher three nights a week, and taking a class for grad school every other Saturday. So...I've been lost in my own little world. I'm peeping my little head out of my hole like a little prairie dog. So, I've decided to take part in the Meme. I'll let my hair down and let you know a little about me. I've got to put down eight facts that most people wouldn't know about me...so, hold on to your collective hats, here I go.

1. Mork and Mindy was on prime time when I was a senior in high school. I thought that Robin Williams was so cool at the time, that I got a pair of suspenders and put buttons all over them. I thought I was smooth, funny, and just downright suave. Now that I have seen a few pictures of myself with the suspenders, doing the nanoo-nanoo handshake, I have a slightly different opinion. I'm glad that my wife didn't know me at that time and still has a sense of humor.

2. We held probably one of the most creative parties of1983 at tiny Wartburg College in Waverly Iowa. The Festival of the Nile-Come as Your Favorite Biblical Character party was a hit. We had shepherds, Joseph and his coat of many colors, Samson and Delilah (boyfriend and girlfriend combination), Pharoah (me), Moses, and a cast of others. My roommate came as the Devil, which was kind of odd since his dad was a pastor and the president of our school. We also had a girl that claimed she was a virgin and should be let in... we were skeptical, but she got in anyway. It was a ball... We found a few cute little shepherds passed out the next morning on our floor and had to vacuum around them. I just don't know of many biblical characters that spent the evening doing tequila shots. We took a little creative license.

3. I had a secret crush on Judith Light when she was on "Who's the Boss." I lost my attraction when I saw her as a judge on "Law and Order." She's playing much better roles now, but my heart doesn't skip a beat when I see her on reruns now.

4. I knocked my parents' garage off of the foundation in one corner because, as a young driver, I tried to back out while shaving with an electric razor and eating a danish.

5. In my early 20's my buddies and I went camping. We must not have rinsed the pots and pans well after one of our dinner meals. There must have been some dishsoap lingering on them somewhere that somehow made it into my intestines. We got in a farting contest late in the evening. Well...in the process of competing, I found that I wasn't shooting blanks...

6. I was probably the worst airborne soldier ever. During one jump, I landed on top of my NCOIC's (Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge) chute and hit him in the helmet with my left buttock. I gave him a concussion. I was not his favorite guy for a very long time.

7. I got dressed up in drag with two guys I worked with in Seoul who were gay. It was an adventure and I was told that I had nice legs. It was good for this straight guy's ego.

8. I started calling Goobs "Stinky" as a baby because it was cute. It has stuck and I'm embarassed to say that he answers to it and doesn't mind it when I yell, "Hey Stinky" when I get home in the evening. Yes, I'm a bad daddy...

I haven't tagged anyone yet since I'm so busy, but rest assured I will...

Back again...

Okay, so it's been a long time again. We've been traveling for the past week and now that we're home it's been time to rest a little. I'm heading back to work tomorrow and am not quite ready to turn in tonight.

So...what's been going on? Lots and it's all good baby! We all jumped in the car and headed to suburban Detroit to celebrate Goobs' birthday. Over half of J's family has now immigrated to the US and they have all settled in Michigan. J is the only member of the family who doesn't live in a suburb of Detroit. We visited the family right after we moved to the states five years ago. None of them had seen the kids, so we figured it was time. J works for a school district here, so she had both last Thursday and Friday off due to MEA weekend. Every third week in October, the Minnesota Education Association has their meetings and schools shut down. It was also birthday number four for the Goober man, so we thought we should take a few days and head on down to visit family.

We took off early Wednesday morning and drove all the way through. The weather was cooperative and the kids actually slept most of the way there. There wasn't a lot of fighting between them, so J and I were happy campers. I don't know if it's just the guy in me...but I drove for the duration of the trip and J played the policeman for those in the back seat. The drive took more out of me that I wished to admit. I ended up with a cold and lost my voice for two of the four days we were there. J might contend that losing my voice was not a bad thing...

So, what about our stay there? We got to go to the Henry Ford Museum complex in Dearborn. That was a good touristy type of thing. We also had to go to a new temple of baseball...Comerica Park. Yes, I'm just a bit of a baseball fan, and I've been a baseball missionary as well. I've converted my lovely wife to the faith. We took pictures outside of the stadium. They've a beautiful stadium with great carvings of tigers with baseballs in their mouths on the outer walls of the ballpark. There are also these wonderfull looking 100 foot tall bats there. But, the best part of it is a giant tiger statue in front of the park. The big kitty was also fitted with a giant Carhart zip up jacket for the colder months. I'll put some of the pictures from the trip on here a little later. I haven't had time to do that yet.

What about family fun??? Well let me tell ya...We had fun. We had a big production...Filipino style. We had enough food to feed an army. It was partially catered by a local Filipino caterer besides the food that various family members brought. We had dishes like pinakbet, chicken curry, bisteak, lumpia, and other stuff that I can't quite recall. J and I wanted to contribute as well. We wanted to throw our particular twist to it...so we threw in some Korean fun. We went to an Asian market and bought 8 pounds of kalbi (short ribs) and a couple of jars of marinade. We fired up a weber kettle and grilled kalbi. We didn't have any kimchi, but everyone loved the kalbi.

Ya know...we had...oh, I don't know...about 20 people in the home. Everyone was filipino but me...Oh, and of course the kids, but they are half filipino. Basically, Bisaya was spoken the entire night. I'm getting the hang of the language, so I had to listen to conversations and get the gist of the sentences. Sometimes I was accurate in my vague translations and other times, I was completely out to lunch.

J was able to catch up on family gossip and drama. She really did enjoy getting the news and some of the dirt going on. She related some of it to me as we drove home. My god...my family is sooooo boring compared to hers. So, she ate and talked and talked and ate...and of course laughed. There was a ton of Karaoke going on. People ended up watching a tape of the latest Paquiao fight. The computer was set up so that relatives in the Philippines were able to talk with us throughout the party via webcam...so we had guests there that we talked with and had fun with, but those poor folks couldn't sample the food.

It's getting late tonight. I've got to get to work tomorrow, so I'll sign off for now. Suffice it to say we had a great time.... The Samok Daddy is back.

Help...My daddy is a weirdo!!!

Hey guys...This is Goobs. My daddy has a little nuts these days. He started dancing in the hallway with no music on. My sister and I at least listen to the Wiggles when we dance. He just looks like he's got strange music going on in his head. Daddy sometimes talks to himself too... He's just a little strange. I wonder what the people on his bus and his bus driver think when they see him getting on the bus..."Here comes the goofy guy singing with his headphones..."

I think he needs a night out with mommy where they can go out, eat some yummy food, and just relax. Maybe grandma will come over and babysit and then they can have a nice time...and daddy won't be soooo weird.

Somebody... anybody...help my goofy daddy.

Sitting and Spinning

So, here they are on their sit and spins. They love them. They can sit in one place and go round and round for long periods of time. Sounds like me at the office... oh well... that's the way life goes.

Stirring the pot

Every so often a guy has to do something a little different to make life exciting. I had been thinking about that for a while...how can I make life just a little more exciting. These days it's been get up, go to the gym, get ready, go to job one...work...take the bus to job 2 on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday...then go home...run into the kids' rooms, hug them, and fall into a heap, only to do it all over again the next day. It's a real grind, but that's what life seems to be these days.

We do have fun on the weekends. Last weekend we went to an apple orchard that had camel and poney rides and other fun stuff. We took a lot of pictures with the kids and I got some rhubarb crisp-I had to be different, since everybody else was getting apple pie and apple crisp. The neighbor girl had a birthday party last Saturday evening. We did the thing we usually do...all of us go to their garage-cleaned out with tables and other birthday crap in it, sit with our lawn chairs, eat like pigs and watch our kids run around like maniacs. Hey...it's what we do...so...suburban.

So anyway...even though we have fun on a regular basis, I'm kind of feeling as if I'm in a rut with fun. The other morning I got an idea...spawned from an early morning workout at Gold's gym. Gold's has this nifty thing called the Cardio Cinema. They've got all these cardio machines set up in a darkened room set up like a movie theater. So there I was in the morning...on the eliptical. I was watching "Anger Management" with Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson. I saw a scene that got me thinking...Nicholson (the therapist) had Sandler (the patient/rage guy) stop on a New York bridge and sing "I feel Pretty" from South Pacific. So...my mind started working...I ride to work on this completely sedate commuter bus from the burbs to downtown here in Minneapolis. Nobody, I mean Nobody says boo to anyone on the bus. They sit in silence, reading, sleeping, or listening to their IPODs. I am tempted to stand up in the bus and belt out "I feel Pretty" at the top of my lungs. I wonder how people would take it if a 200 lb guy stands up in the middle of the bus and lets out a broadway tune? Would they think he's a closeted fool, who wants to let it out on a bus...No...no no, I'm straight...but maybe I'm a little crazy. Maybe they'd arrest me for disturbing the peace...cuff me and take me to the police station in Eden Prairie. I don't know...but, I'm just bored and wondering what I can do to stir up the pot. Any ideas?

Adobo Man...

Okay...so, it's been a really long time since I've posted. Work has been insane and I've picked up working part-time three evenings a week, teaching ESL. Damn, I'm tired...and it'll be crazier soon. I'll start my grad school class, "The Adult Learner" on Saturday, November 3rd. Am I a glutton for punishment, or what. I will say that I'm tired on a regular basis now. I can hardly wait to see how I'll be doing in November. Okay...enough whining. On to life as we know it in the Samok home.

J was gone last Saturday, so I was home with the kids. That's not a bad thing because we had fun-a dad and kid rough house day...and bonus...they took extra long naps-which allowed dear old dad to watch a little football on cable (who can complain about that???) Because she was gone until 6:00 that evening, Daddy was responsible for the dining fare for supper. I chuckled to myself at that time because...I thought...no sweat because Dad's on top of things. We had a giant frozen container of chicken drumsticks and a full container of rice. I figured that I had hung around the kitchen long enough when J had been preparing adobo, so it would be "no sweat." My brain told me that I was a filipino cook through osmosis-I had been married to a filipina long enough to produce pinoy dishes...or so it seemed to me.

My first task was to get this okayed by the chairman of the board (the filipina herself). I gave her a buzz and I got the affirmative to move forward on my cooking expidition (here's the ironic thing. I'm the academic advisor for a culinary program at a a college...how twisted is that??? I can get them in the right classes and point them in the correct direction in school, but I burn water!!!) She suggested that I go online and find the best recipe. This I did...I found one and thought it would be easy...another of my mistakes. I needed soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, onions, and crushed peppercorns (I didn't have a bay leaf, so I blew that off). So, I was off to the kitchen.

The chicken was thawed out, so I was off to a good start. I grabbed what I thought was the bottle of soy sauce. I was a little quick on the trigger finger for dumping the stuff into the pot...the bottle I grabbed was the terriyaki bottle (Hey, they look the same to me!). I had dumped in half of the bottle before I noticed it smelled a little off compared to what I thought was soy sauce and it had a somewhat different consistency. I saw that there was a new bottle of soy sauce in the cupboard too, so I thought to myself (okay, thinking to myself has gotten me into trouble so far) just grab the soy sauce bottle and dump some of that in there too. It can't be too much different! Okay...I dumped in a buttload of soy sauce. I went looking for the vinegar bottle-I'd seen a fairly full one in the cupboard about a week or so ago, so I knew we had some. Okay...now I realized the bottle of white vinegar was gone (we don't always keep a bottle of Datu Puti handy). The only vinegar left in the cupboard was a bottle of Heinz malt salad vinegar. Oh well, I'd already begun the process, so I decided to dump it in and see what happened. Again my ignorance was shining through, but it smelled pretty good so far, so I wasn't about to quit.

Okay...so far...so good. Now I went looking for the onions and garlic. I did find a decent onion, cut it up and threw it in the pot. I scoured the pantry for garlic. I had seen J prepare food with garlic just a few days before, so I was sure I would be able to find some garlic, smash it up with a knife handle and put it into the pot. There was no garlic to be found. Hey, but Samok Daddy was not a quitter...He would find something that would work to give it the garlicy (is that a word?) essence it needed. I dug through the spice cupboard and I found garlic salt. I sprinkled a healthy amount of garlic salt into the pot. I was confident that my adobo would be awesome, despite it's augmentations. My goal now was to let it simmer and simmer...

Okay... I overcooked it. I didn't know that at the time. When J came in the door at 6:00, her first words were welcomed by my ears. She said, "MMMMMM, Honey that smells so good." I stuck out my chest a little and felt proud. Of course, she then looked in pot with the adobo in it. I had let it simmer without looking at it-I was following that adage about the watched pot and all... I guess I overcooked it a little. The meat had completely fallen away from all the legbones. It looked a little mushy in the adobo sauce. J did sip the sauce and said it tasted pretty good, but it was a little too salty. She grabbed the bottle of vinegar, tossed some more in, grabbed a can of Sierra Mist, dumped that into the mix and had me taste it again. Oh my... that little bit changed it completely.

We dished it up with Jasmine Rice...and it was okay. It was my first attempt at adobo and I know it won't be my last. I'll keep trying, but don't expect any dinaguan or pinakbet from me in the near future!!!