Category Archives: Fun

Our Wonderful Weirdo Friends

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The friends we hang out with most are the three other couples in our small group. Each of us brings a unique flavor to the group due to our different jobs, family and religious backgrounds, education, world views, and personalities. In our group we have conservatives and moderates (liberals, even?), PC users and Apple users, vegetarians (well, one) and omnivores, athletes and couch potatoes, shy people and outgoing people, parents and couples who might never have kids, lifelong Christians and newer converts, nearly newlyweds and people approaching their 15th anniversary, people from stable families and some from troubled ones, Dr Pepper drinkers and Coke drinkers.

In our ranks are a married pair of cops, a video production and Mac guru, a financial advisor with a bunch of letters after their name, an anatomy teacher, recovering Church of Christ-ers, a craft-y person, a soccer player, a brave soul who teaches Sunday School to preschoolers, a coffee snob, a couple of super-hip people who have owned more iPhones than I’ve owned cars, a certified bomb technician/chiropractor, a stay-at-home mom who paradoxically likes Linkin Park and action movies, an underfunded wine connoisseur, a pair of ambitious home remodelers, and a pair of baseball fans. Somehow we combine all these differences and make a wonderful stew of a group. I am grateful to know each of them.

The Un-Starbucks

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To conclude Date Night Saturday night, Jenny and I dropped by our favorite local coffee house, Buon Giorno in Grapevine. Jenny has breakfast there with her girls on some Tuesday mornings, which is how we first discovered it.

Why do we like it so much? First of all, good coffee and tea. They roast their own beans to ensure the coffee is fresh. In addition to the daily brew of a few popular flavors, you can also order a French press of freshly ground coffee in a couple dozen varieties. A couple of weeks ago Jenny and friends tried a French press of the fabled Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, the first time I’ve ever heard of such a thing at a coffee house. I normally order a cappuccino. Jenny ordered some delicious tea.

Second, it is NOT Starbucks and doesn’t want to be. I don’t hate Starbucks, but I like many of the details in which Buon Giorno’s owners have chosen to be different. Their coffee and tea come in real ceramic mugs rather than wasteful paper cups. They have no drive-through. The pace is slower, the atmosphere quieter and more relaxed. You don’t hear yuppies rattling off a memorized 10-word long description of their cup of coffee. You simply place your order, find a chair or couch to sit on, and wait for them to bring your drink to you. On most Friday and Saturday nights, you can catch live music starting around 8pm. Tonight we heard a great singer-songwriter playing exactly the kind of introspective acoustic rock that you want to hear in a coffee house. We enjoyed a wonderful, relaxing evening and look forward to going back soon.

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10 Things We Never Dreamed We’d Say…

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…before we had a baby:

  1. Please don’t fart on me.
  2. Don’t step on Daddy’s crotch.
  3. Don’t put your pacifier on your penis.
  4. Stab it! Stab it! YAY!!!
  5. I just don’t want to go out on Date Night covered in boogers.
  6. Why are you holding on to the cat’s leg?
  7. No, that bone is not for you to chew on. Chew on this.
  8. The toilet is not a drum.
  9. Mommy can’t breathe if you’re on her throat.
  10. The doggie doesn’t want to eat the giraffe.

Pocket Sandwich Theater

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For Date Night on Tuesday, Jenny and I went to a great theater in Dallas called Pocket Sandwich Theater. Before the show you can order food and drinks. I’d wanted to go for years but never followed through until this week.

We had a great time! The food was good and reasonably priced. I had the namesake Pocket Sandwich, turkey and corned beef on pita bread. I can’t remember what Jenny had, but she was pleased. We split a brownie sundae for dessert. PST offers a wide variety of shows, generally comedic to some degree. Our show was called 4 out of 5 Doctors, an improv and sketch comedy show that had us rolling. Normally PST has one show that runs Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights and random acts during the week. Their website offers movie-style ratings so you can know which shows are kid-friendly. Our show was not, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as some improv shows. Apparently the PST tradition dictates that the audience members throw popcorn at the cast during some of the shows, which sounds fun to me. If you’re into funny, live theater and want something different to do one evening, check out Pocket Sandwich Theater at Mockingbird and Central in Dallas.

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Sharks and Cage Diving

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As a kid I read a lot, hopping from topic to topic. One of my favorite topics was sharks, which interest me to this day. One of my favorite times of year from a TV perspective is Shark Week, the Discovery Channel’s annual homage to the the shark. Although it tends to focus too much on shark attacks since people are so interested in them, it also includes programs about the scientific side: diet, behavior, differences among different regions and species, and conservation efforts. I have watched a LOT of shark shows this week and hope to catch or record many more. It’s like Christmas in August!

Although many people find them terrifying, I find them fascinating. Sure, my heart speeds up a bit if I see one while snorkeling, but for me it’s more of a healthy respect than terror. I think people have mostly accepted that man sits comfortably atop the worldwide food chain, especially with today’s technology. But swimming with sharks unprotected knocks us down a level. The great steward and “master” of God’s creation suddenly becomes potential prey, and many of us don’t like that idea. The movie and book Jaws (which was based on a true story, by the way) and tons of hype by the media have grossly overemphasized the danger that sharks actually pose to humans. This demonization of such an amazing creature both angers and frustrates me. It also gives people an excuse to tolerate overfishing of sharks even if they object to whaling or the accidental killing of dolphins or sea turtles in fishing nets. Here are a few interesting facts I’ve gathered so far:

  • Each year, humans kill 100 million sharks. Some are killed just for their fins, some for meat or skin, some for sport.
  • Each year, sharks bite about 100 humans worldwide. Yep, 100. That’s less than one every three days, somewhere in the world. Of those 100, maybe five are fatal. In other words, we kill 1 million sharks for every one that even attacks us and 20 million for every one that kills a human.
  • In terms of recorded shark attacks, Florida is the most common location, followed by southern Australia and then South Africa.
  • Experts believe that many shark attacks are preventable. Victims are often involved in high-risk activities such as spearfishing, swimming alone, or swimming at night, dawn, or dusk.

Before I die, I want to dive in a cage with great whites. You probably think that’s either awesome or crazy. Either way, I won’t be going any time soon because the trips are expensive. But how thrilled and honored I would be to see one of the most powerful and capable predators in all God’s creation in person. There are three main areas to dive with them: southern Australia, Isla Guadalupe in Mexico, and South Africa. Here are links to three dive operators that serve these areas, in case you’re interested (hint, hint):

Rodney Fox (Southern Australia)

Cage Diver (Isla Guadalupe, Mexico)

Dive South Africa – In one area of South Africa, great whites are spotted jumping out of the water like a whale during attacks on seals.

Not into great whites? You can also dive with enormous but harmless whale sharks, which eat plankton and can grow over 50 feet. Belize, where we spent our honeymoon, is a good location:

Belize Scuba