The other Saturday ago, the day after the soggy Pirates/Cardinals game Kenji and I attended in Pittsburgh, we drove out to Ohio to visit our nephew, whom we shall refer to as Diddy Kong, for his first birthday. Kenji has already proven to be somewhat of an influence in his nephew's life, as evidenced by this face:
Yes, Kenji taught him to do that. Get'um started young... ;)
This weekend Kenji and I drove out to Toledo, Ohio for our nephew's first birthday. To break up the 500 or so mile drive, we stopped for an overnight in Pittsburgh, where we planned to see a ballgame at PNC Park.
PNC Park is a relatively new ballpark, opened in 2001 or so. They did a really nice job of it, as it offers a really nice view of the city and its bridges from the infield, and has an awesome riverwalk built right into the park on the outfield side. Most importantly, PNC Park has relish, unlike some other stupid ballparks I can think of like, um, Yankee Stadium. ;)
When we got to Pittsburgh we though for sure the game would be rained out, as it had been raining pretty much the whole time as we drove through Pennsylvania. But since we already paid for the tickets we figured we might as well go and have a look at the stadium and eat hot dogs and have ice cream in a helmet. PNC Park has good ice cream too. You can get hard packed ice cream instead of soft serve if you want. And it's cheaper than the junky soft serve you get at Yankee Stadium. We had Moose Tracks, with chocolate syrup on top. :)
While we were eating out hot dogs, the rain seemed to let up, and the tarp guys started taking the tarp off the field. About an hour and half after the original game time the game started, and the Pirates whipped the Cardinals, 10 - 2. It was a really fun game because probably no more than 5,000 people were in attendance, so we pretty much had the run of the ballpark.
After the game, before going back to our car, which we paid a premuim of $12 to park in the garage right next to the stadium, we took a walk across the Roberto Clemente Bridge and back.
Most times when I hear people talk about Pittsburgh (except for my friend Thad), they don't usually have much good to say about it. But I rather liked it, at least what I saw of it.
In addition to letterboxing and lobstahs, Kenji and I had plenty of fun in Maine with Heather², Jon, Patti, and Keisha, and all the many many kids! We had campfires in the yard and on the beach, s'mores, sparklers, silliness and even a couple of hours of kayaking on Sunday.
Monday morning, Kenji and I got an early start, leaving Kennebunk by 7:30am. We stopped in East Hartford, CT to check out Cabella's, and then stopped in West Hartford to have some Harry's Pizza. Except we never made it to Harry's. As we turned the corner from Park Road onto South Main Street, we suddenly had a flat!
We pulled over onto a quiet side street and parked under some shade. A flat tire normally isn't such a big deal, except the wheels all have locking lug nuts on them... and as I removed the donut and tools from the back of the car, it became apparent to me that we did not have the key. The nice folks whose house we parked in front of graciously tried to help us by lending their Honda's wheel lock key... it seemed to fit but as soon as we applied any pressure to unscrew the nut, the key popped off. So finally we gave up and called a tow truck to haul our butts over to Pep Boys. Fortunatley they were able to take care of it. All in all the whole fiasco ate up 4 hours and about $250. But I can think of many worse things that could have happened, so I'm not going to complain.
Now I know you're wondering why on Earth the key was not in the car. Well, when we bought the car, Honda put the locking lug nuts on the car for us. They took the original lug nuts off and placed those back into the package that the locking lug nuts came in. Then they taped the package back up with some nice fat green tape that you can't see through... When I brought the car home, I thought the package contained only the original lug nuts and not the key, because I couldn't see it through the green tape. So I stored the package in the house, thinking there was no need to keep the old lug nuts in the car.
Well, we made two changes right away when we finally got home that night. 1) The lug nut key is now in the car, and 2) we got AAA.
Our Saturday in Maine was mostly spent letterboxing with high school friend Keisha... the crazy girl who drove all the way to Maine from North Carolina! We found 5 of the 8 boxes in the Postal Heaven series. I'm not too sure why the series is named Postal Heaven because the underlying theme seems to be more about cemeteries. Oh wait, I get it now... the letterboxes are mostly planted next to or in cemeteries... it's like they're dead and gone off to letterbox heaven. Heh.
Ohyah so anyway, after finding as many of the boxes we could, the three of us continued up the Maine Turnpike and hit Freeport, where we happened to find some Moxie. My friend Robor (his name's not really Robor, he just goes by that on the intarwebs) had a conversation about Moxie about six months ago, and I'd mentioned that the one time I tried it when I was a kid, I thought it was disgustingly vile and tasted like drinking medicine. I also said I was willing to give it another try as an adult to see if my opinion had changed. Well I didn't think it disgustingly vile, but it still had a bit of a funky aftertaste that I didn't really enjoy. I'm not a big soda drinker anyway but I managed to make it through an entire can and still had a smile on my face. But that doesn't mean I'll buy another can ever again.
Ok, so I lied. I have one picture that was taken with Kenji's new camera.
This cute little chipmunk was sitting on the stone wall outside my mommy and daddy's house on the Friday morning before Labor Day. Kenji and I were on our way up to Maine to visit with some of my old friends from high school... sort of a 20 year reunion of close buddies only. Anyway Kenji and I drove up to Massachusetts on Thursday evening and spent the night at my folks' house. Then we drove the rest of the way to Kennebunkport on Friday afternoon.
When I was a little girl, I always wanted to catch a chipmunk and make it my pet. I would try to do that by slowly and quietly approaching chipmunks sitting on our stone wall. Well it never worked. Kenji only managed to get within about 15 feet of this guy, but I cropped out the rest of the photo so it looks like was right up close. :)
Or came to visit - I am woefully behind in blog-updating department. A few weeks ago our friend Rebecca, who lived in the building next to ours in Salt Lake, and who we stay with when we visit Hawaii, came to NJ to visit us. She was on the east coast for not quite a week, and two of those days she spent in Delaware with her family, and we still managed to do a whole bunch of stuff. Oh, and that fish picture was from one of the NYC subway stations.
Without doing a complete play-by-play, we had a lot of fun. The first two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) Rebecca and I took the train into NYC and visited with another of her friends who also used to live in Hawaii, Erin. I think Rebecca's favorite activity of those two days was giving away coupons from our Entertainment Books to random people on the street. While in the city we also visited the International Center of Photography Museum, had lunch twice at two different locations of Havana Central (we had coupons), had egg creams at Katz's deli, walked Erin's dogs along the promenade in Brooklyn, spent an afternoon in a lesbian bar (which didn't seem to have any lesbians in it), ate Thai food (no coupons), ate ice cream (coupons), and gave away some more coupons.
Thursday we spent in NJ since we planned to drive down to Atlantic City in the evening. Rebecca loves to discount shop, and in Hawaii her favorite favorite favorite store to go to is Ross Dress for Less. We don't have a Ross near us, so I took Rebecca on a tour of other discount stores in the area like Marshall's, TJ Maxx, Daffy's, Loehmann's, Annie Sez, and I forget where else.
We finished shopping, Kenji came home from work, and we all packed for the weekend, hopped in the car and headed for the Tropicana hotel in Atlantic City. The reason we went there was that it just so happened that Rebecca's good friend from Germany, Stephan, was in Atlantic City on business. So we had a nice meal with him on Thursday night and we had lunch together on Friday.
During dinner on Thursday we learned from our waiter that there's a Ross near Atlantic City. So guess what we did on Friday while we were on our way to drop Rebecca off at her brother's in Delaware? I bet you can't guess. ;)
While Rebecca spent time with her folks in Delaware, Kenji and I continued on to go stay in Chesapeake City. This time we tried staying at the Blue Max Inn. It was quite nice - the room was larger than the one we stayed in the last two times at the Inn at the Canal. Breakfast was quite yummy, and they have a pirate guy hanging up from the second floor out in front.
On Saturday Kenji and I spent the afternoon in Annapolis, MD, mostly hunting for letterboxes. There was a series of boxes we hunted for in a park - we found four of the seven we were after. One box we found the location of but didn't manage to spot the box, and there were two more that we likely would have gotten but there were too many people around watching us, and we didn't want to risk giving away the location of the boxes. Along the way we found a basketball next to an empty basketball court, so we tried shooting some baskets.
When we were done with Annapolis, we drove to a Metro station on the Beltway and hopped on a train that took us to the new Nationals baseball stadium to see them play against the Texas Rangers. We rooted for the red team (the Nationals) but they pretty much got creamed by the Rangers. Oh well I guess we're pretty much used to that - that is, rooting for the losing team.
On Sunday, Rebecca and her brother, sister-in-law and parents all came down to Chesapeake City so we all walked around for a couple hours before heading back up to NJ. It was a really hot day so when we weren't ducking into shops for the air conditioning, we were sitting in the shade out of the sun. While we were sitting in the shade, we spotted a guy riding around on a really old-time bicycle. I don't know how he gets up on that thing, but he rode past us a couple of times anyway. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera or phone immediately handy, so this was the best picture I was able to get of him.
Rebecca took this picture of us with the Cheseapeake City bridge in the background. All the nice quality picutres in this post of course came from her camera. :)
So you'd think we had enough fun already but after driving the 120 or so miles home, Rebecca and I had one more adventure to partake in. One of my swing dancing friends, Denise, had her 40th birthday in June. So her mom threw a party for her at a restaurant only about a mile away from our house. She hired the Gas House Gorillas to play, and pretty much all of my NJ swing dancing friends were there. I think Rebecca had the most fun making up stories about me and her to all my friends. Something about the two of us being sisters born in Massachusetts and that she was naughty so our parents sent her away to boarding school in Wisconsin and who knows what else.
Today we have to go home -- boo. But at least we'll get to see Spammy,
Musubi, and Tiffknee. Yay!
Update 4/12/8 East Coast time: Now we are home. Since we had problems with getting a stable internet connection for my computer at Rebecca's house, I didn't post as many pictures as I would have liked while we were away. So now I'm going to add them in to the posts I made from my phone.
The monkey pod tree that Kenji is hanging from is at Moanalua Gardens, a privately run park near where Rebecca lives. Moanalua Gardens is home to the famous corporate icon, the Hitachi Tree. Our visit was an unsuccessful attempt to find letterboxes, but we had fun nonetheless.
I couldn't resist taking a photo of Japanese tourists taking photos of the Hitachi Tree. :)
Thursday morning we enjoyed brunch with Rebecca at Duke's in Waikiki.
I noticed this little girl watching Rebecca, and I made the mistake of telling Rebecca she had an audience. Rebecca then launched into a ten minute one-sided conversation with the little girl telling her she should always listen to her parents and that she should not steal $5,000 from them and then run away when she is 15. I think the little girl's parents were feeling frightened yet entertained all at the same time. ;)
Wednesday was a pretty rainy day so we spent most of our time shopping at Hilo Hattie and visiting Ala Moana. We think it's cool that you can now drive through the mall (between the old part of the mall and the new Nordstrom's wing), but the new stuff really isn't all that exciting. However, Shirokiya is still fun. :) I like their pretty new mochi ice cream display.
Before we found the new mochi ice cream display, we had a little bit of eats from the Shirokiya cafeteria upstairs. Kenji was feeling a bit under the weather and got a little boost of energy from a chicken teriyaki musubi. I of course had some peanut butter-filled mochi.
I found a cute egg with chicken legs-shape masher. Of course I had to get it because it says "Mashy" on the package. Plus the package says it's perfect for mashing eggs and potatoes too (little do they know I will also use it for mashing apple and pear sauce).
Yep so now we're back at Rebecca's and I can post the other pictures we took while out vacationing today.
So we're at Jamba Juice on Kapahulu, and they are playing Rockin
Around the Chistmas Tree. What gives??!
Aloha,
Marsha
Sent from my iPhone
