Catherine is TWO!

Tedd, Hol, and I were invited to Catherine Revtyak's 2nd birthday. Today was the big festivities... tons of little kids enjoying the playsets and goodies. Tedd was super helpful with the little ones, watching out for them and playing with them on the equipment.

Posted by ben at 08:37 PM
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Little David

Lucky for me Cynthia, Andrew, and Holly wanted to go see some performance art/dance concert Saturday afternoon. I know, normally I wouldn't be all that interested in this sort of event, however in this case I made an exception. Since the three of them wanted to see it, that left me with little David, Cyn and Drew's 3 month old. Somehow I ended up with great end of this deal. A baby to play with and then send home.

David and I took a long walk in the nature park across the street from our neighborhood. He seemed fairly interested in the sights... and gave me a chance to try out the Treo's wimpy little 0.3 Megapixel camera. (Big on cute, small on quality. Oh well. I didn't buy the thing for the camera.) On the way home, I steered towards the AYSO soccer fields to make sure he was exposed to some proper culture, but he seemed more concerned with getting back to his waiting bottle.

While we waited for everyone to return, we did a little eating and reading. We listened to Coltrane, although I don't suppose David's music education is lacking at home, if a bit heavy on the Springsteen catalog. As per our earlier agreement, David waited to need a diaper change until Mom and Dad got back... David is welcome in our house anytime. *grin*

Posted by ben at 08:50 PM
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Scott's Art

Just home from Scott Laumann's latest showing at his studio in Santa Ana. Hol and Alicia Laumann got right to business, talking about dance, teaching dance, and anything remotely related to dance. Scott and I consoled each other, having both been the 'lone guy' in a room full of dancers many a time. Drinking, and heavily, is the key to survival.

Some really nice work-in-progress stuff shown tonight, including some from his jazz series. Perhaps when Hol's lotto winnings start rolling in I could afford something from his jazz series. I love this one of Elvin Jones (check out his website for this one and more). Also, his work is all over the web. Try here:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13.

Tedd and I walked around his space and checked out the art. Tedd had an eye for things he liked and pointed out individual elements he considered the best. On the way home, Tedd summed it all up, "Art is cool." Indeed.

Posted by ben at 10:00 PM
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Hardwood Install

Spent this afternoon installing hardwood floor at Steve's new loft. He's now got a lot of work done on the place. Framing/drywall is in place and his new bathroom is almost complete. His additional kitchen cabinets and half-walls are in too. Time to get a move on the floors. Tedd and I did the layout whilst Hol and Steve measured and cut. There were a few places where we had to slow down and cut custom holes for electrical in the floor or to go around corners.

Installing, once we got the feel for it, was literally "a snap". The flooring he bought is designed to fit together like Legos. No glue, no nails. It comes in 8" by 8' planks. Each plank is made up of a top layer of individual hardwood strips (2.7" thick by random shorter lengths) which is pre-treated and sealed. This is fixed to a longer plank with a tongue and groove setup -- the difference being the grooves are so well engineered they snap into place. If you screw up a seam and don't get it just right? No problem, just unsnap it and start over. Neat stuff.

Posted by ben at 08:00 PM
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Day Off

Events had conspired against me on President's day. Rather than bumming around the house and playing soccer, I had made some tactical errors in scheduling. First we had to have Hol's car in for service at 7am. Seemed like a good idea at the time. In hindsight, I should have taken it as a warning.

From there I met Steve at his place to continue on the quest for a complete hardwood install. Thanks to some 'day labor' help from Daniel and Jeff we were able to get the floor completely laid by 6:30pm. Just in time to get home for our dinner plans. The floor looks good though, real good. There's actually a couple things left to do, but in reality, the bulk of the work is done and there's now almost an entire second story floor of hardwood freshly laid.

Hol, Tedd, and I then met Phil and boys for some pizza. Di was under the weather from a cold the boys just got over. When we showed up at the pizza place, the Colline boys had already managed to ditch dad and take up fortifications in the video game room. After dinner we stopped by Cold Stone for some ice cream. Mud Pie Mojo is so damn good. I'm not sure about Phil's choice though... banana ice cream with Heath Bar?

Posted by ben at 10:00 PM
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Lunch Meeting

I had an important lunch meeting today. Well, not so much me, but Cynthia and Drew did... that meant David was free for lunch and what do you know? So was I. We headed over to Mason park right behind our old condo in Oxford Court. A ride on the swings, a slip on the slide, and quick lunch next to the lake before we had to head back to the office. Take note of the English football socks we brought back for him...

Posted by ben at 01:30 PM
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Astrid's boots

Astrid was interested in my Treo600 in the car this morning. I pulled up a picture of her, taken last fourth of July, on the phone. She pointed and simply said, "baby". Yep, that's you. I pulled up a few more pics of the various babies at the party. "Baby, baby". I then showed her a picture of our smaller kitty, Perl. "Meeeeow, meoooww," she said. She seems to learn a new word everyday.

While David received a couple pairs of soccer themed socks from the UK, little Astrid got a pair of footie boots w/ the England emblem and a little soft soccer ball. She wore them to school today, so I grabbed a pic or two. Sources close to the little one stated "she really likes her soccer shoes". She's a smart one alright.

Posted by ben at 09:30 AM
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France 2, England 1

First round match pitting England versus France and teammates against teammates could have been explosive. Not surprisingly, both teams played it safe. England handed the win to France in injury time with an incredibly poor ball back from Gerrard of all people. The game overall was very 50-50, and 1-1 would have been a very fair result. It's too bad both teams played "not to lose".

Joe invited the whole P.F.B.crew over for a Euro 2004 BBQ at his beautiful home. Kids and wives made the outing a very nice day which hopefully we can arrange again in the future. Tedd and I rounded the day off with a little soccer of our own down at Uni Park. Very nice day indeed.

Posted by ben at 09:31 PM
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Father's day BBQ

Cruised home on Sunday in time to meet up with some of Hol's workmates (Thanks Heather and John!). Very cool BBQ in Nellie Gale (There's horse property in 'the OC'!?). Grabbed this pic of Heather, Beth, and Hol after a few beers/glasses of wine, or in Hol's case, sugar.

Posted by ben at 09:30 PM
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San Diego Zoo

Many thanks to the Burley's for taking us down to the San Diego Zoo as guests on Saturday. It was pretty cool and certainly something we'd do again. I'd even look into the yearly passes that Josh and Clare have... Cat Canyon was pretty cool, with a few of big cats coming out for a sniff. The polar bear exhibit was sweet! Check out the photos (click on the thumbnail) of one playing underwater.

We ate dinner at the Shakespeare pub & grille. Pretty decent, but I'm not sure how authentic it was -- Clare agreed. They did have a Euro '04 schedule on the wall, but seemed to have stopped tracking the scores of the matches after Thursday's England vs. Portugal game. (It was a pretty good game, despite England dropping out of the tourney.) Saturdays the Pub is supposed to have a Curry Night, but alas not today. Oh well. Another excuse to go down south again.

Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
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David Sitting

Hol finally got some David-time this evening. After months of promises, the stars aligned. Cyn and Drew were able to give up their little beast for a few hours so we could have some time with him. They went for dinner and a movie. The little guy was full of energy and played the entire time he was here, taking breaks only to eat (or smear the food on me) and drink. "Cousins" Sparc and Perl were slightly annoyed by the little "intruder", but as far as we are concerned, he's welcome any time. Enjoy the pics Cyn and Drew, I know you were probably thinking I'd have these up while you were still at the movies... maybe next time.

Posted by ben at 10:13 PM
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Burley's BBQ

Thanks to Josh and Clare for having a 4th of July BBQ -- we know Clare can't be 100% behind this holiday, but she still celebrated with the rest of us! Nice to see everyone at the Burley's freshly remodeled pad. Check out the pic of Josh and Toshi preparing the big fireworks finale.

Posted by ben at 11:00 PM
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60% Visit

Three of the five Barrett's visited us last week. 60% isn't bad. We missed Jamie and Morgan, but certain concessions had to be made. At least we got to see the little ones, who are growing up pretty fast. Click on the thumbnail to view some pictures of the kids. Camryn played 'only child' for a day and hit Disneyland with Aunt Holly and Mom. She also took her first dance class at Focus.

Posted by ben at 08:00 AM
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David's B-day

Although his real birthday was on Wednesday, David organized his first party on Sunday afternoon. A BBQ at the park. Well, ok, his Mom did much of the work (the majority of it in our Process Improvement course, actually... )... Here's the pics we grabbed from the highly successful event. I sure hope David brings some of that booty he got as gifts into the office... we're bored with our own toys.

Posted by ben at 02:30 PM
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Ten years of friends

My last day at UCI was a week ago. It's been a very strange experience to leave. I guess I've never left a place after an almost 10 year association.

When I think back about the work done there's only a few fragments here and there... Sure we did meaningful things (to us), but what really comes to mind is the friends.

Ten years with one group of people really allows you and your families to become entangled. We know each others kids and spouses, many of them were at our wedding, we were at theirs, we babysat their kids (or pets), etc. That's the tough part of leaving and one I hadn't really considered. Sure I liked what I did at GSM, but we spent years building those relationships.

Will we be able to build new relationships at Medsphere? Without a doubt. That just takes time. What troubles me most is, will we be able to maintain these existing relationships?

Posted by ben at 07:45 PM
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Introductions & Congratulations

Introducing Ms. Mia, Mr. Liam and Ms. Paloma. Many congratulations to Amy & Toshi, Clare & Josh and Alicia & Scott! One of the finest crops of babies we've ever seen:

Posted by ben at 08:00 PM

Real Madrid v. Galaxy

Real Madrid played a friendly match against the LA Galaxy at the Home Depot Center in Carson. About half our team coughed up the dough for sideline seating (Thanks to Larry for arrangements and Brent for driving!). I admit, I was a bit dubious when I saw the ad a few weeks ago:

I kinda figured they'd trot out one or two stars, probably Beckham, and field their under eighteen reserves. Thankfully, I was completely wrong. The starting line-up included Raul, Owen, Guti, Beckham, Gravesen, Roberto Carlos, Casillas and Zidane. This was no reserve team with Figo and Ronaldo sitting on the bench.

Galaxy played respectably, but were clearly out classed. Zidane is absolute magic on the pitch. His touch is incredible, but his positional awareness allows him so much time on the ball. Beckham and Owen played pretty well with some good runs. Gravesen is clearly there to replace Makalele in the midfield and played that role very well.

Hartman fumbled a couple of outside shots from Roberto Carlos -- probably never been hit so hard in MLS. He made up for it in second half with an amazing save as Figo broke free behind the back line, opened to his right and faked left. Hartman took it off his foot, then proceeded to save it from two other attempts while being fouled.

Sitting down in front of our section was the entire women's national team -- kinda cool! Great to see Real Madrid in the absolutely sold out stadium. Hopefully the success of this tour will bring more big name European clubs through here for friendlies. Flickr's RealMadrid tag has some additional photos.

Posted by ben at 10:00 PM

The Police (in The OC)

After years and years of threats, The Police finally staged a "reunion" tour. As one of my most favorite bands of all time, I'd followed the threats for years, but stopped paying any attention. I almost didn't believe the tour was on... They announced the date for LA as 6/20 (hrrm... that date seems familiar and important. hint: see previous post.).

Well, we just couldn't find a way to break away from our previous engagement (we'd only had it on the calendar for 12 years!) and thought the chance had gone. Thanks to Phil's persistence and hawk like awareness of concert ticket sales, he was ready and waiting for another show to open up and it did. He snagged four sweet tickets only a few rows from the stage (behind it).

Really great to hear this band together -- good energy, plenty of good material (nothing new, but that's just fine with me). I really hope they do a live album of the concert series (I'm sure they'll do something -- plenty of video equipment on hand, so perhaps a DVD). My only complaint is that the sound setup in the arena was poorly tuned and not of the quality I'd hope for... that and I'm getting old. Even w/ ear plugs it was too loud for me.

Although I'm still looking for a boot of the show we saw, I did find one from the concert series when it was in Vancouver, BC. I've been listening to this recording, hoping for a professionally produced copy to emerge soon. Also interesting, a few videos (from phones, I guess?) have appeared on Google YouTube -- Here's King of Pain:

Posted by ben at 11:59 PM

Bates Girls' Retreat

Unfortunately our friends the Bates are making the leap out of California -- Shandon has taken a new job in NC. With his start date fast approaching, they needed to make a quick trip to their new town to nail a new pad (er, lease one until they find what they really want).

That meant Hol and I got an opportunity to spoil their two little ones. We only had a short three days w/ little A and M -- so we worked hard to get in as much spoiling as possible. Play dates, story time, "camp outs" (in the house), movies, naps, playgrounds, walks, swimming, the zoo... Actually, I'm fairly certain Hol and I were more tired than the little ones. What fun though -- the girls are welcome to come stay with us anytime.

Posted by ben at 01:30 PM

Blood Passion

By:

Long time soccer mate and family friend, Scott Martelle, recently held a local reading for his new book, Blood Passion. Hol and I attended the reading here in OC instead of braving the traffic to attend the earlier party in LA. Scott read a short passage from the book, talked about his motivation and research techniques, and answered questions from the crowd. The book is already getting some solid reviews. Having heard Scott talk about this project for the past couple years, I know he's put a lot of time and energy in (plus his day time gig at the LA Times) -- I'm quite certain his efforts were worth the outcome. Many, many congratulations to Scott!

Posted by ben at 09:00 PM

Krall @ Hollywood Bowl

Tonight Hol and I made the trip up to the Hollywood Bowl with Mike and Tam. The show was the LA Phil doing some arrangements of Jazz giants, with the headliner being Diana Krall. She worked with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, both singing and playing piano. She has a strong voice and presence, while being able to do some very subtle things. She was quite personable, if not a little tired (who can blame her?). Overall the show was a lot of fun. Unfortunately the picnic, music and atmosphere was mildly spoiled by the 2 hour drive home. How can there by bumper-to-bumper traffic at midnight?!

Posted by ben at 02:00 AM