Week of February 19: Mortified

Teenage drama… we’ve all gone through it. Most of us survived those embarrassing moments of our yesteryears to become well functioning and valuable members of society. Those years were very awkward and clumsy for most of us and yet we hold these memories with warm fondness whenever a REO Speedwagon song triggers a flashback (how many remember The Jets?). The world used to suck so much back then. So many things could easily throw our world into chaos; everything from an unanswered crush to a grapefruit sized zit on your nose. Even I, yes the high school stud who lettered in two varsity sports, had good grades, was popular and was an all around nice guy (I just picked up my high school year books from my parents so I can prove all of the aforementioned claims… sure I was the 3rd string water captain for football but that counts!!!), had my fair share of angst. I think I dealt with my torments pretty much like how I deal with them now… alcohol. But a lot of my friends and people in general, found therapy by documenting their feelings. Journals, poems, songs, diaries, letters, etc. Countless tragedies and drama unfolded in the diaries of many “why me?” youths, each candidly recording their pure emotions, confident that their journal would never be read by anyone else.

Mortified is a show that started a couple of years ago in New York and Los Angeles. Mortified invites every day people to expose their innermost emotional horror stories on stage. Not sure if it’s considered therapy when people actually laugh AT you. Andrea and I first heard about this show a few months ago on NPR. So when Mortified came to San Francisco, we gathered a few of our friends and checked out the show. So on Saturday, we met up with our friends, Monica, Patty and Walter in the Mission. We met at Andalu for an early dinner and drinks before heading off to the Make-Out Room to catch Mortified.

At Andalu we also celebrated Monica's (in black) birthday. Monica is a leap year baby (2/29) so she's only about 9 years old!!! Since Monica's birthday fell close to Mardi Gras, Andrea thought it was a good idea to pick up a King Cake (picture on right) from Bread Garden Bakery in Berkeley. After stuffing ourselves with lots of tapas, we still managed to split the whole King Cake into 5 equal pieces and washed it down with a couple of pitchers of white sangria. Delicious!!!

The show was excellent and lived up to it's billing. I highly recommend it if you have a chance to see it. There were 8 performers who shared their hilarious secrets. I must say however, that some of the performers were definately putting on a show. I expected all of the performers to be every day Joes getting up on the stage and just letting their stories do the performing. But unfortunately, some found the need to reherse, refine and script their act, which took away from conveying the authentisity of the angst they originally felt. To me the best performers were the ones that just casually read their mortifying stories and simply reacted to the crowd's reactions. None the less, we all had a really good time. Andrea has been inspired and has promised to go digging into her stash of boxed-up past for some of her own mortifying tales. I will let you know what dark forgotten mystries we uncover.

Week of February 12: Keeping it real with Reggie Jackson

Living in Oakland, Andrea and I have come to appreciate the local history, culture and heroes. One of the greatest living Oakland hero is Mr. October, Reggie Jackson, who played with the Oakland A's from 1968 to 1975 and then rejoined the team in 1987 to finish his baseball career. As far as heroes are concerned, Mr. October is tops in Oakland. It's hard not to see Reggie's influence in the city. His signed Oakland A's jerseys are commonly displayed at sports bars, he is prominently seen in commercials and on billboards and he still packs a crowd at charity and other community events.

This week, my brother Brian, Andrea and I discovered the greatest tribute to Mr. October at a very local, family run diner called Lois the Pie Queen... the Reggie Jackson Special! What better way to celebrate the triumphs of this slugger than a breakfast consisting of 2 large fried pork chops, 2 eggs cooked to order, a choice of grits or hashbrowns or rice, and 2 slices of toast (biscuits and english muffins here are awesome). Much like Mr. October himself, this breakfast special is not for mere mortals. Andrea elected to go for something more healthy and light... she ordered the fried chicken breakfast, which consisted of 2 large pieces of southern fried chicken, scrambled eggs, rice with butter and a couple of delicious biscuits. Brian, who earlier announced that he wasn't really hungry, followed suit with his order of the fried chicken breakfast. He however, had his eggs over easy with hashbrowns instead. That left it up to me to represent the Kim's family name in giving props to Reggie. And with great pride, I proudly ordered the Special.

Map of Lois the Pie Queen
851 60th St
Oakland, CA 94608-1409

Let me tell you, Lois (she actually passed away decades ago but her cooking lives on) knows soul cooking. The pork chop was fried just right... tender and flavorful. The chicken was crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. Lois did something very clever with the chicken. She stripped the skin off most of the meat but left it attached to one end of the chicken. The result was that when the chicken pieces were breaded and fried, the skin was breaded and cooked on both sides as well as the meat. Thus, if you didn't like eating the skin, you simply pulled it off (as it was only attached by one end of the chicken) and still had the meat which was fully crispy breaded. Or if you liked eating the skin, you had a double sided crispy treat.

We did our best to clean off our plates but fell a little short. I think it was the first time I have ever seen Andrea leave behind rice uneaten. I don't think she's quite ready for the Reggie Jackson Special. We left Lois' smelling like fried soul food, barely able to move. And this was at 11 AM. You can just imagine how productive the rest of the day went. Next time (it will have to be at least a few weeks away for health reasons), we'll have to order less to save room for Lois' pies. Anyone up for chicken and waffles?

Week of February 5: Super Bowl XL

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog (Week of January 1) about my tragic Fantasy Football season. The Fantasy Football gods cursed my team and I ended up coming in last. The consequence of my unjust demise resulted in me hosting the Super Bowl party. Despite the shame of my last place finish and despite being forced to host the Super Bowl party, I turned my frown up-side-down and was determined to host one heck of a party.

For the feast, I cooked my famous fried chicken, mac & cheese (Leslie's favorite), corn and biscuits. In addition, Andrea cooked candied crispy bacon (soo bad yet soo good), Velveeta Jimmy Dean sausage dip (Brian has a love/hate relationship with this dish) and some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. As if there wasn't quite enough food, everyone who came over brought their culinary contributions. What started as a Fantasy Football loser penalty ended up as a delicious heart-stopping calorie-filled banquet. As for the game... I think the Pittsburg Pirates won. Right?

Todd and Leslie brought this cake. By the time it took to get my camera, someone had made off with the other field goal post and taken a slice from the other side. Johnny!!!

Kodi was a lot of help preparing for the party. Kodi was in charge of seating arrangements. Unfortunately, we forgot to tell him that the chairs were for people and not for his favorite bags of goodies.


Eagerly waiting for the food! Nicole (aka Shaguars) seen in black coming up the stairs (pic on left) was the winner of our Fantasy Football league... she handedly kicked all of our butts including her husband Scott's (pic on left, both hands in pockets). Even the ground hogs Steve and Kamini (pic on right), made it out of their den to attend the Super Bowl party. They managed not to be scared away by their shadows for once.

After the Hines Ward touch down, Ed celebrated by tossing his first born, Shaun in the air. Fortunately, Leslie was near by to stop Ed from spiking Shaun.


Dinner is served!

I was really surprised to see Mariella eat so much. I would dare to say that she ate enough for two ;) Last week, I heard the news that Kevin (the sharp shooter) and Mariella are expecting their first baby! CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Week of January 29: TV Dramas- U.S. vs. Korea

For the most part I don’t watch too much TV. Mostly I stick with the morning news & traffic (before work), sports and occasional DVD movies via Netflix. Andrea watches a little more than I do but all in all, our TV consumption levels are pretty similar. Instead of my sports games, Andrea prefers Oprah and some reality shows. Recently however, we have both become very hooked on a couple of TV shows. Both Andrea and I are hooked on ABC’s LOST and Andrea recently completed watching a Korean drama (aka K-drama to those in the know) called First Love of a Royal Prince.

LOST
It started pretty innocently for us. Curious as to what all the hype was about, we ordered LOST Season 1 from Netflix. And honestly, it sat on top of our entertainment center collecting dust for a while. I think we watched Dukes of Hazard (one of the worst movies ever) and The Longest Yard (another bad movie, except for the cameo appearance of Rob Schneider… “You can do it!”- always cracks me up) before we decided to take LOST for a test drive. Within the first 10 minutes of Episode 1 of Season 1, we were hooked. I don’t think either of us quite expected it and since then, we have been watching a few episodes daily to get finally caught up to LOST’s current schedule. We burned through Season 1 pretty quickly (24 hour-long episodes), thanks to Netflix. However, when we reached the end of Season 1, we realized that the rest of the TV world was currently in the midst of Season 2 and none of the Season 2 episodes we missed thus far were available in a DVD format (unless you bought homemade copies through eBay sellers, mostly from the UK). The only legal source was found through Apple’s iTunes at $1.99 per episode. Being the good law abiding citizens, homemade eBay copies were not even considered. That left us with iTunes as the only solution to our LOST fix. Downloading LOST videos from iTunes posed several questions and problems for us. We could download each episode from iTunes and watch it on our computer screen or we could try hooking up our laptop to our plasma TV and try watching it “normally”. After a little bit of googling, we decided that we would try to connect our computer to the TV. The biggest concern I had was how the quality of the downloaded shows would scale up to fit a big screen plasma TV as these iTunes videos were made originally to only fit a small screen (it’s all pixels these days). I bought a S-Video cable from Radio Shack and connected my laptop to our TV and after a few minor adjustments (I had to connect the laptop to the TV via S-Cable first and then power up the computer) we watched LOST Episode1 of Season 2. The video quality was surprisingly good (I had low expectations). It was nowhere close to HD but decent enough to make it worth the effort. And frankly, since Andrea and I were so hooked on the show, we didn’t even realize the degradation in the picture quality after a while. Needless to say, we are now caught up to the current schedule of LOST. We can’t wait for next Wednesday to arrive.

So what is it about the show you ask? The story is well written with a lot of twists and turns (much better than X-Files). Watching the show, you feel like you’re part of the whole situation. I sometimes catch myself getting pissed off at the characters on the show…

• “That Michael is such a hot head. Screw him… let him go off into the jungle.”
• “Charlie is such a damn whiner and a drama queen. Stupid crack head!”
• “They’re all idiots for entering the numbers on the computer. I wouldn’t.”

And the last reason for watching the show? Small island full of good looking people!

First Love of a Royal Prince
Andrea is about as non-Korean as you can get. Tall, blond, blue-eyed from Grand Forks, North Dakota. But everyday she is becoming more and more Korean. She has embraced my family, taken Korean language classes, developed fondness (even more than me) for Korean cuisine and has even taken up Korean cooking (you can check our her blog). I am very grateful that she finds my cultural heritage to her liking. And for the most part, I fully support her interests in Korean customs. However, I am somewhat skeptical of one particular source of information that Andrea has been using for her Korean assimilation… K-drama. It all started with Andrea watching a K-drama show as a way of augmenting her Korean conversational skills. And I must admit, the first K-drama show that we watched, All In, (I only watched it to help Andrea correctly absorb as much Korean as possible) was pretty enjoyable. The storyline was that of a tragic love triangle… two friends of opposite backgrounds, the son of a millionaire hotel owner, Jung-won and the street tough, In-ha, going after the same girl, the innocent and delicate, Su-yon. Andrea purchased the DVD box set of All In online and we promptly watched it together. Unlike the American dramas, K-dramas only last 1 season, usually not more than 24 episodes. Then Andrea discovered a TV station called AZN which is dedicated to a wide range of Asian TV shows and movies. That’s where Andrea found the K-drama, First Love of a Royal Prince. The storyline was that of a tragic love triangle… two separated-at-birth brothers of opposite backgrounds, the son of a millionaire hotel owner, Gun-hee and the workaholic self-made Mr. Perfect older brother, Seung-hyun, going after the same girl, the innocent and delicate, Yoo-bin. Sounds familiar? No it’s not a typo or some sort of blogging error; all K-dramas have the same freakin story line. The shows, All In and First Love of a Royal Prince, are the exact same shows with different actors and different location settings. However, unlike All In, I found the First Love of a Royal Prince to be unwatchable. It was full of over emotional acting with no sense of reality. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself this question… if you were a normal dude (and I don’t care what country you’re from) and the girl you liked, repeatedly told you that she didn’t like you, repeatedly told you never to contact her, repeatedly ran away from you (even to other countries), and got engaged to your older brother, would you still go after this girl when you have other hot women throwing themselves at you? Not convinced yet? Here was the deal breaker for me… this innocent and delicate girl, Yoo-bin is about to get married to Mr. Perfect, Seung-hyun. She is having doubts so she breaks down in tears and asks her fiancé, Seung-hyun (and I’m paraphrasing here) “Do you love me? I need you to tell me that you love me!” Very touching moment. And how does Mr. Perfect respond? “I will call you later”, checks his cell phone and walks away to another meeting. Bravo! Brilliant acting!! So real!!!

Despite all this, Andrea faithfully Tivo’d and watched all the episodes. Andrea’s mother, Karen (when she was in town with Rick) and even my brother, Brian, managed to catch a few episodes of the show and actually enjoyed it. Now Andrea is waiting for another “good” K-drama to come onto the AZN network. And I have a good idea what the storyline will be.

One side effect of Andrea watching K-dramas… Andrea is becoming aware of some of the mannerisms of a Korean wife and has threatened to use these virtues of my people against me. Some of these traits are:

• Korean pinching (ggoh-jjip): when a Korean wife is pissed off at her husband she uses her thumb and index finger to pinch the husband, usually in the arm. When the wife is really pissed, she adds an additional move… she pinches and then twists.
• Korean kiss (bbo-bbo): when kissing on the lips, this technique requires the wife to close her lips air-tight and pull back the mouth into an anti-pucker. When the husband leans over to kiss, the wife holds tight this position, never moves her head, keeps her eyes open and stares blankly straight past the husband.
• Korean nagging (bahgga-ji): according to K-drama, there are 2 types of Korean wives. One is an emotionless stoic pillar of self control and the second kind is an over sensitive nagging hot head.

Does anyone know how to use the Parental Lockout Control?

Week of January 22: Winter Backpacking @ Sam MacDonald Hut

Sierra Club has a system of huts that they maintain throughout California. Usually, these huts are within a few miles from the trailhead and are open to the public all year. I've been to a few of these huts (Ludlow Hut and Benson Hut) in the Sierra Nevada mountains but I only recently learned about the Sam MacDonald Hut in La Honda, which is only about an hour south west of Oakland.

Winter is the perfect time to visit the Sierra Club Huts. Chances are much higher in reserving the whole hut for your group of friends which is exactly what I did. Andrea and I packed our backpacks and hit the road early Saturday morning for Sam MacDonald Park. We met our friends at the parking lot near the trailhead. The Hut was located 1.5 miles from the trailhead and had running water, standard toilets, electricity, fireplace with wood, a full kitchen and slept 14. Since the Hut came with many of the conveniences usually not associated with backpacking, we were able to leave a lot of the camping gear behind and instead pack our backpacks with good food and beverages. Perhaps it was the convenience of the Hut or perhaps it was the caliber of friends Andrea and I keep, but I managed to gain weight over the weekend by eating and drinking all day.

We reached the Hut around noon. After lunching on delicious sandwiches, we quickly settled in and began a long day of enjoying adult beverages and playing multiple games. I must say, I haven't laughed like that in quite a while. Overall, the trip was an excellent way of being in the outdoors and spending time with good friends.

As you can see, Brian (black jacket) has already eaten his lunch and is buying time for his second round. Charles, Jenny and Andrea still have half of their sandwiches left!!!

Playing a civilized game of Blow Pong, where each team tries to blow the ping pong ball off the opponent's table side. Blow Todd blow!!!

After Blow Pong, we decided to get outside for some fresh air and some good old fun. Beers had nothing to do with what happened I'm sure. As you will see, I had a hard time holding the camera steady.

Todd vs. Charles

Lucie vs. Jason

Jenny vs. Lauren

Andrea vs. Victor vs. Leslie

Quite the view from our Hut. Andrea (top) enjoying the sunrise on Sunday. Todd and Leslie (bottom) trying to get away for some quality time alone.

Week of January 15: Snow Dog

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This week, lots of snow fell up in Lake Tahoe. We decided to pack up for a mini road trip and head up to the mountains for Kodi's first introduction to snow. Kodi is a 3 yr old Siberian Husky but he has never seen snow. So Andrea and I were very excited to see how he would react. My friends Luke and Nannette live up in South Lake Tahoe and graciously offered to have us stay with them. I've known Nan since my college days at UC Davis and she had gotten married to Luke last October. We had not seen Nan and Luke since the wedding so we were also excited to spend some time with them. Unfortunately, Luke was down in North Lake Tahoe with a friend who had come up from San Diego. But Andrea, Nan, Kodi and I spent some quality time together snow shoeing up to Fallen Leaf Lake.

Kodi's thought bubble... 'What is this stuff? This isn't powdered sugar!!' This was Kodi's first introduction to snow.

By the time we got to Fallen Leaf Lake, Kodi was quite used to the snow and was trotting around off leash by himself. Here is Nan and Andrea enjoying the sunshine.

Left: Nan and I walking around Fallen Leaf Lake. Right: Andi and I with a reach around self-service shot. What talent!

Week of January 8: Giddy Up Cowboy

This week, I traveled for work to the Informatica Sales Kickoff. It appeared that I had joined Informatica just at the right time. Traditionally, Informatica's Sales Kickoffs were held in exotic places and this year, my first year, would be no different. Hello Dallas, Texas!!! Yeee Hawww!

We all know the obvious factoids about the Lone Start State. Texas is the home of JR Ewing, GDuyba Bush and Barney the Dinosaur. But did you also know these interesting gems about Texas? :

• More wool comes from the state of Texas than any other state in the United States.
• Texas is the only state to enter the United States by treaty instead of territorial annexation.
• The state was an independent nation from 1836 to 1845.
• Dr Pepper was invented in Waco in 1885. The Dublin Dr Pepper, 85 miles west of Waco, still uses pure imperial cane sugar in its product. There is no period after the Dr in Dr Pepper.
• The first suspension bridge in the United States was the Waco Bridge. Built in 1870 and still in use today as a pedestrian crossing of the Brazos River.
• Texas comes from the Hasinai Indian word tejas meaning friends or allies.
• El Paso is closer to Needles, California than it is to Dallas.
• More land is farmed in Texas than in any other state.
• The nation's first convenience stores, the vast 7-Eleven chain, now in 18 countries, started in Dallas in 1922.

Now, don't you want to move there?

The Sales Kickoff was actually a lot of work. I would have guessed from the nature of those attending, mostly Sales people, it would have been just a formal business disguise for an all expenses paid 'we are so great' party (my previous experiences from other companies) but it turned out to be three days of 7 AM to 5 PM back-to-back meetings and presentations. And I had to present at one of the meetings! Needless to say, my presentation was flawless and inspiring. With my presentation out of the way on Day 1, I managed to sneak out for a bit and check out a few sights.

Not many Asians can pull this look off like I can. You can't tell from this picture but I was wearing a pair of cowboy boots to match! Who says cowboys don't wear Banana Republic's Stretch Poplin Dress Shirt with J Crew's Boot Cut Jeans? All that was missing from this picture was a mustang horse and perhaps a bandanna around my neck.

This is located in the West End Historic District of Dallas. The building on the right was where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shot that assassinated our president John F. Kennedy.

The X marks the exact spot where JFK was when he was shot.

The picture on the left is the view from the X spot to the Dealey Plaza, the building where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shot. The picture on the right shows 'the grassy knoll', the area where many conspiracy theorists believe shots -- and probably the fatal one -- were fired at President Kennedy.

Week of January 1: Happy New Year

The Warriors
For Christmas, much to Andrea’s joy, her parents, Karen and Rick, gave me a game called The Warriors for my Xbox. This game is based on the 1979 cult classic movie by the same name. Perhaps it was Karen and Rick’s way of getting me mentally prepared for this game but they originally presented me with The Warriors for Play Station 2. And if you’ve ever tried to jam a square peg into a round hole, you know that you can’t play a PS2 game on the Xbox. I had to endure the torture of staring at the unplayable game for a week. So by the time I got The Warriors for my Xbox, my anticipation and my expectation for this game had surpassed any reasonable standard. Would The Warriors live up to my hype?

"Can you dig it?"

The Warriors playing spin the bottle with the Furies

The answer was (and still is) YES and then some. I know most of you are not regular gamers and for the most part, I don’t consider myself neither. So I won’t really go into the painful details. I will say this much though… there is a lot of violence and foul language (the f-word is pretty commonly used) and I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. But if you can live past those minor moral standards, the game is pretty fun and very clever. One advice… make sure you have the hardware to enjoy the game, as I have come to find out. My trusted companion of probably 10 years, the 27 inch Sharp TV, is having a hard time “hanging” with The Warriors. The screen is going out and I am no longer able to make out the dark underworld of The Warriors’ turf. I guess it’s a glorious way for a TV to go. Or perhaps it’s Andrea’s way of controlling the amount of my game play. I hear the price of HDTV is pretty reasonable these days… hint, hint!

Fantasy Football
Andrea and I, along with 8 of our friends, belong to a Fantasy Football league. It’s a lot of fun, trash talking and even a little of NFL education. Since joining the league last year, Andrea has fully embraced Fantasy Football and even complained a few days ago that her Thursdays (the day that most people started adjusting the starting lineup unless you were Vin) now seemed a little empty.

This year yielded a disastrous outcome for me. I could go into a non-stop rant about why my team imploded but the end result was that I came in last place. The penalty for coming in last? I now have to host the Super Bowl party. As for Andrea, she failed to make the cut for the playoff round but she won the consolation round which put her in 5th place… well ahead of me. Andrea has been pretty good at not rubbing it in and has graciously offered to supervise my team for next year. I am sooo lucky! Grrr!!!!

Week of December 25: Crab boil for Crabby Weather

On Friday (12/30), Andrea and I hosted our first crab boil of the season. After the failed first attempt (see November 6 blog), I was determined to make this happen. We had invited my parents, my brother (BK), my sister (Stephanie) and brother-in-law (Doug), and the parents Doug (Doug, Sr. and Roberta) weeks ahead and had patiently waited for this day to come. When Friday finally rolled around, Andrea and I were very concerned. It had rained continuously for a week and the report from the harbor master at Pillar Point was that, as of Thursday morning, no boats were selling crab due to the weather but a few boats were making their way out on Thursday when there was a break in the weather. There was no additional information when I called the Pillar Point's Fishfone early Friday morning. To top it off, the weather was moving in and it began to sprinkle. The odds were against us. What were we to do? Take a gamble and drive an hour (each way) to Half Moon Bay's Pillar Point Harbor and hope that there were live crab? Postpone the crab boil? Pizza Party? With no clear favorable alternative, I did what a real man would do... I took a gamble, braved the storm and headed down to Half Moon Bay. With my Patagonia extreme rain gear on, Kodi, my fearless dog by my side and driving my lean-mean-baby-blue-station-wagon-driving-machine, I thought I had a fighting chance of returning home safely with some crab.

As Kodi and I approached Pillar Point, we could feel the stormy Pacific crashing against the harbor. There were no boats outside the harbor and the parking lot was virtually empty. The fish guide whiteboard outside the harbor master, which usually was packed with names and locations of boats selling crab was blank! My heart sank. But I didn't give up. I had gotten up at 7 AM and had driven for an hour and I wasn't about to let a little week long storm deprive me of a crab boil... I had to keep hope alive. I began to scan up and down all of the docks for any sign of activity. Docks A, B, C... all quiet. D, E, F... nothing as well. Then as my eagle like eyes glanced over Dock G, I noticed a man, nay a brave buccaneer, shoring his boat and unloading his catch. I could see the heat plume still rising from the boat's chimney. I quickly grabbed my cooler, zipped up my rain gear and headed out into the rain towards Dock G. As I dashed out of my baby blue station wagon, I could hear Kodi's howl cheering me on. At that very moment, the rain stopped and the sun peaked through the clouds. At Dock G, I had found what I was looking for... I found crab. The boat had just got in... barely beating the storm surge in. From what the Capt'n was telling me and from my observation around the harbor, he was the only "crazy son of a b**ch" to make the crab run. The Capt'n told me that he didn't expect to find anyone at the docks to buy his catch that I was as crazy of a "son of a b**ch" as he was. I took that as the ultimate compliment and I was rewarded with the first pick of his catch. The Capt'n stated that because no one had made a crab run in over a week, his crabs were very fresh and very large. Indeed, they were. I bought 9 crabs, weight totaling over 20 pounds. They were all very lively. I threw them into my cooler, packed ice over them, and started my journey home.

At home, I was greeted a hero welcome by Andrea and again later that day by my hungry and appreciative family as they feasted on the crabs.

All happy faces enjoying our crab. For the first time that I can ever recall, Doug Jr. was very quiet during his meal... not even self-humoring jokes from his mouth!


After the meal, we had some fun playing with Karaoke Revolution on our Xbox. In the father vs. son head-to-head competition, Doug Sr. schooled Jr. Even American Idol's William Hung would have laughed at Jr's performance.

Ray's Crab Boil Recipe
Hardware:

• Outdoor Burner. I used the Kick "A" Banjo Outdoor Propane Stove. If you're cooking for a smaller number, you can do it inside on your stove... but it will smell like crab for a week!
• Big Pot. I believe mine was at least 30 quart size.

Seasoning:

• Sea salt. Enough to have the water taste as salty as the ocean.
• Vinegar. About 1/3 of the bottle. It helps the meat of the crab separate from the shell.
• Season mix. You can use Old Bay or Zatarain's powder mix. I used about 1/3 of Whole Foods' Spicy Shrimp Boil mix.
• 3 lemons cut into halves.
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 whole garlic head (no need to peel)

Other ingredients:

• Dungeness Crabs
• Potatoes
• Corn

What to do:

Fill pot with 2/3 full of water. Salt water, put in all spices and potatoes. Bring to a boil. Insert all the crab (or as many as it will fit with a couple of inches of water level to spare). Throw in the corn. Bring water back to boil and cook for 20 minutes. Remove crabs to let them cool. Remove the corn and potatoes and keep them warm (cover in foil and keep in oven). Clean the crab. Serve with corn, potatoes, crusty fresh bread and melted butter on the side (optional). Eat!

Week of December 18: Rick and Karen (Andrea's Parents) In CA For Christmas

This year Andrea and I were unable to make it down to Minnesota for the holidays mostly because I have no vacation time accrued at work. Damn the Man! However, we were very fortunate that Rick and Karen had decided to make the trip out here and spend a week with us. With the rest of the family (Andrea's brother Scott, sister in-law Brenda and niece Kaia) in Iowa (Brenda's mom) and with the wonderful Minnesota winter, it didn't take a whole lot of arm twisting to get Rick and Karen here. Rick and Karen left the cold snowy, frozen lakes of Bemidji, Minnesota only to be greeted by the wet cold rain of the Bay Area, California. However, the rainy storms didn't put a damper on our holiday spirit.

Andrea and I managed to put Rick and Karen to work priming and painting our downstairs bedroom, while Andrea and I played Tiger Woods Golf on our XBox (just kidding!). They do good work... I highly recommend them! After they completed their chores (nothing's free at the Kims), we managed to have some fun...

A beautiful day at John Muir National Monument. The trees behind are over 300 Ft tall! Even Paul Bunyan would have had trouble with these.


We stopped for lunch at the Cliff House in San Francisco, which was built in 1863. Is that an oyster Karen is eating??!! Of course not... she's stealing Rick's French Toast!


My uncle (aka The Bottomless Pit), seen here devouring the hors d'oeuvres while my sister, Stephanie is feverishly replenishing the baguette, hosted the Christmas dinner.


All business at the "adult's table". We had 3 kinds of desserts, including Scandinavian favorites, Lefse and Krumkaka. Brian is giving the desserts a quick once-over to see which slice is the biggest and the crispiest while Andrea is getting ready to protect her slice.

This is our family!!!