Ever since we got back from Miami, I have been enjoying Cuban coffee. For camping we have a little French press, and it makes a tasty little pot of Bustelo. Two scoops of sugar in every cup.
I have to get some of those tiny expresso cups.
Present Tense
(PAST IMPERFECT)
Category Archives: family
A New BM2 in the House
Tim was recently promoted to boatswains mate petty officer second class, otherwise known as BM2. This is the new patch he will wear on his sleeve (if it’s not on his sleeve already).
With the baby on the way, this couldn’t have come at a better time. When Holly and I were down in Florida last month, we visited Tim and Carrie’s apartment. All of us were hanging out in the freshly painted nursery, and I heard Tim refer to Carrie as the CO. I laughed.
This is how I feel about Holly, too.
Meet the Navarros
Here is Tim with Carrie, his new wife, and the Navarros, his in-laws. I am so proud of him. None of the older Navarros speak English, but that didn’t stop Tim from dancing and kissing all the women and hanging out and talking trash with all the men. I could have never done that in my twenties.
Quick Trip to Miami
Miami was a heck of a lot of fun. I thought it might be similar to San Diego or LA, but it’s a much different feel. More tropical. The birds outside our hotel sounded like the jungle noise you hear in the movies. We stayed in Fort Lauderdale, which was a little off the beaten path for seeing Tim and Carry, but a very beautiful place to be in its own right.
This was the view off the balcony of our room:
Private beach at our hotel:
They had these permanent, collapsible beach tents installed on the beach. I haven’t seen them in Jersey, Delaware, or anywhere here on the West Coast. You put them up and huddle inside and it feels like you’re in a big conch shell. Especially cool at night, under the stars.
Me giving Aaron sand boobs. You probably shouldn’t do this to a kid in puberty, but he took it like a mensch.
Ed, Tim’s step-dad, took us all out to eat an awesome Cuban place in South Beach.
South Beach is notable for having mannequins in retail windows with enormous breasts. You would think just my eleven year old son would notice a detail like this, but these mannequin breasts grabbed me and my wife’s attention, too. What a zoo! I love Cuban food. I have to get one of those little Cuban espresso makers.
I have more to post about the wedding, but I am still collecting my thoughts and fighting off a cold. It was a very happy, joyus occasion, and I want to pass on as much of it as I can for those who couldn’t make it.
Miami Nuptials
Tim is married.
As of Sunday night, March 29th, 2009, Team Elhajj has expanded. We are now blessed with a southern franchise in Miami. I’ve never seen Tim so happy. Carry is gorgeous.
Congratulations, son!
We’re headed back to Seattle now, but I’ll have updates soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the photographs on flickr.
Amazing Talent
This is my niece.
She is auditioning for a choir opportunity at Liberty University. What a beautiful voice! She is overpowering the capabilities of the mike and the sound track is a little out of sync, none of which is her fault, but despite all that, it’s just a really powerful, heartfelt performance.
I am not familiar with the song, but wow.
Girl Scout Camping in the Boondocks
This weekend Kennedy and I went camping with her Girl Scout troop and all the fathers, a father-daughter adventure in the Cascade mountains.
We stayed at a fire training camp, which made the whole thing feel surreal. Everywhere you look there were life-size mock ups of typical fire fighting challenges, including a four story concrete building covered in black soot, an overturned tractor trailer tanker truck (pictured below), a railway tank car, and dozens upon dozens of towering stacks of wooden pallets to set ablaze.
Kennedy and I arrived at the camp first and found it deserted. I kept thinking: this can’t be right. But I was wrong. This was exactly where we were supposed to be. The girls slept on a gigantic mattress, like the ones pole vaulters use to land on. Not sure if this is bona fide fire fighting equipment, but somehow Kennedy managed to slip off it in the middle of the night. She was unharmed.
There was much girl bonding going on.
The fathers were excellent cooks.
There was no snow this weekend so we had to improvise our Saturday afternoon activities. We tried geocaching, which involves all of the father’s standing around intently staring into little hand held devices as their daughters complain.
Fathers can go places that mother would never approve.
More pictures at flickr.
Of Grizzled Hearts and 50,000 Volts
This is my brother at work.
This remarkable video came from a manned surveillance camera that just happened to be shooting in the right direction during the arrest. Pure coincidence.
Once all the overlay text stops, you can see a gold truck pull up at the top right. This truck is filled with police. The little Nissan in the middle of the screen also has a solo cop driving. This cop has a taser. The guy racing on foot is the bad guy. If this video had an audio track, you would hear the cop in the Nissan screaming out his window, “Stop police!” But, of course, there is no audio so it feels like an old Charlie Chan movie, with pratfalls.
My brother is pure awesome.
If you were wondering where the “grizzled heart” line came from, this was how I described this very same brother last month on the Brevity blog. I am just glad the cops didn’t have tasers when I was boosting sneakers from the Harrisburg East Mall.
Great Wolf Lodge Birthday Adventure
This sequence of photos is from the indoor water park at Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mounds, Washington. That’s 1000 gallons of water spilling from a very large bucket, suspended maybe 40 feet high. We celebrated the kids and my birthday here, a chain hotel and water park about 70 to 80 miles from our house.
We had fun, but everyone agreed it was not as good as Camelback, the water park in the Poconos that my sister Tina and her husband Steve treated us to the last time we were in Pennsylvania.
More pictures on flickr.
Present Tense 