We had dinner with our friends Kristen and Mac and the kids. For some unfathomable reason known only to her, Jasmine wore her pjs. Maybe she just wanted to get ahead of her night-time routine.
It was pizza night. I brought the fixings for a spinach and artichoke salad. The kids got a pepperoni pizza. The adult got much more adventurous with pesto, yellow peppers, calamari olives and mushrooms. Oh yeah it was good!
I went on an Oregon history themed field trip with Jasmine’s class. We spent the day at the Oregon Historical Museum and the Wells Fargo “museum”. (It’s their lobby with displays from the old west.) The Oregon historical museum was my fav. There were lots of wagon artifacts and interesting historical factoids. The presenter passed around various oddities and had us guess their purpose – candle mold, coffee grinder, hair straightener (!).
Wells Fargo did an economy exercise and the benefits of banking – boring. Only at the end did he talk about the stagecoach – which is what we really were interested in. I believe he said 9-12 people actually rode in the thing – 2-3 in the front seat; 6 inside the carriage; 3 on top somehow holding on; it sounded like they didn’t have many bathroom breaks – and it was very dusty.
They handed out a copy of an actual ticket which included on the back some suggestions while traveling. “It is better to stay inside the coach should it get loose rather than making a jump for it.” “Spit with the wind, not against it”. “Don’t snore loudly while sleeping or use your fellow passenger’s shoulder for a pillow; he or she may not understand and friction may result.” And my favorite “Avoid such topics as politics and religion.” Just like traveling coach today.
Oh – the first picture below – is Jasmine trying to do her morning math exercise in the classroom before the field trip.
It was a dark and stormy night. So of course one thinks of Korean food. We love the intimate family style of this restaurant. The owner always takes time to help us with the menu. We started with the pre-dinner chopstick practicing. I got my usual egg cracked into a bubbling pot of stuff and Jeff got the fish. A whole fish. And he liked it. Jasmine and I spent the rest of dinner trying not to look.
Jeff got this ad in the mailbox advertising a new restaurant; claiming to have “boardwalk fries” and even naming it the restaurant. Now Jeff literally worked on the boardwalk at Rehobeth Beach, DE making such fries so the bar was set pretty high. While they were not quite at the level one expects on an east coast boardwalk, the fries were pretty darn good. And they also had the new programmable soda machine with a touch screen. You can now pick say, Mt Dew and add vanilla to it (why one would do that, I have no idea, but you could if you wanted to.) Can flying cars really be that far behind? With all that power I still got a diet coke, but I went a little wild and added cherry to it. Jasmine went crazy with the Fanta option.
Of course there was an adult costume contest. Halloween only comes once a year. Most pulled out their Ren Fen clothes so there were lots of hobbits – some of whom said funny things – like “I’m the 3rd cousin twice removed of Bilbo’s mom”. Then there was the Nazgul – who talked in growls and gasps – pretty imaginative. The audience digged that one and two fighting Urikai – who hammed up the crowd. Then, of course, you can’t have a Tolkien costume contest without the obligatory Gandalf.
