We had Michelle’s official birthday dinner at Elephant Bar.

Later that week we went to the Spectrum where they had these really cool playhouse.  They were all custom built.  They had all kinds of different ones.  About a dozen in all.  They had sound systems, lofts, fireplaces, flatscreens, pretty much anything you can think of they had.

Of course we did our usual shopping and errands around Irvine.  Here is some video of Samantha at Trader Joes shopping.  I finished playing Uncharted 2 for the PS3, great game!

My time capsule died on me this month, so I had to buy a new one since it was past its manufacturer’s warranty.  Good news was that I was able to save the hard drive out of the old one so now I have an extra 1TB external drive.

We survived a very hot two weeks without air conditioning and our hunt for a new house is still dependent on us selling the condo we are in now.  No news on that front.

Michelle’s friends Tony and Jen got married at the Skirball Center.  They had a wonderful ceremony and reception.  They even had a photo booth at the reception.  Out scanner is packed so I can’t share those photos just yet.

We went to Disneyland and had a great time.  Samantha got her picture taken with Mickey mouse and Tigger.  She seemed to have a really good time.  All the adults had a blast too.  It was pretty crowded as it was the summer and a weekend.  But at least the weather was pleasant.

Movies

Leatherheads – 3.5 out of 5 stars.  One of Michelle’s picks.  Pretty funny and all around a good story.

Timetravler’s Wife – 4.5 stars.  Another one of Michelle’s choices.  I wanted to watch this but not until I read the book.  We watched it anyway and it was really great.  Can’t wait to read the book, two of my Facebook friends have already commented that the books is really good.

Life or Something Like It – 2 stars.  This was a flop.

Lost City Raiders – 2 stars.  B movie.  Don’t waste your time.

Post Grad – 1.5 stars.  Really bad!

Outlander – 2.5 stars.  Another bad movie.  We’re really on a roll now!

Legion – 0.5 star.  Lower scores not possible!  Terrible!  Didn’t finish this mess.

War of the Worlds – 3 stars.  Finally an acceptable movie.  Not great, definitely not as good as the book.  It doesn’t follow it very closely either.

Valentine’s Day – Didn’t watch all of this.  Went to Samantha’s room and colored with her.  0.5 star.  Total chick flick from what I saw.

Death at a Funeral – 4 stars.  Really funny British comedy.

Bangkok Dangerous – 3 stars.  Meh.  Nothing much hear, semi-ok assassin flick.

Robinson Crusoe – 2 stars.  Not very good.  Nothing like the book.

Celebrations

Michelle’s Birthday 8/2

Barbara Black Maxey’s Birthday 8/30

Books

This months books gets me to 27 books for the year.  Only three more to reach my goal of 30.  I’m hoping to get to 40 now, but we will see as hopefully, we will be moving soon!

War of the Worlds – 3 stars.  I think I had this built up in my head so much that when I actually read it I was disappointed.

Twilight: The Graphic Novel, Volume 1 – 4 stars.  Cool alternative look at the first three books.  I will be reading volume 2 when it comes out.  Anyone know when its coming?

Nano Comes to Clifford Falls: And Other Stories – 3 stars.  A collection of science fiction stories.  Some better than others.

Of Mice and Men – This one is one of the classics that I wanted to read.  I didn’t remember reading this in high school, until I had already finished it.  No loss though as this was a GREAT read! 5 out of 5 stars!

Robinson Crusoe – 2 out of 5 stars.  Disappointed again.  I think I had built this one up in my head again.  I had looked forward to reading this for so long that when I did, I was bummed.  It wasn’t enough for me.

Four Quartets – 5 stars.  Excellent!  Loved it.  Can’t wait to read more of T.S. Elliot’s works.

The Call of the Wild – I had never read any of Jack London’s books.  This is the first one I chose to read, and I was not disappointed.  I loved it! 5 stars!

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Excellent book! May just be a new favorite. Wonderfully and skillfully written. Steinbeck is a master!

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My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked some of the stories but not all of them. The longest one was the second to last story and I didn’t like it very much, also the last story I didn’t like either. It seemed like a continuation of the previous one. I think my opinion of the last two stories may be coloring this review badly. I guess I’m just not used to this kind of sci-fi.

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My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think I was expecting more from this book. I guess I had built it up in my head too much. I think it was good, but the story seemed to move so fast! I wish more time had been spent on telling the story of those 4 weeks. Maybe from different people’s perspective. Still liked this a lot, but think it could have been so much more.

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I thought this Butter Chicken with  Basmati Rice was pretty good.  It does have a kick so just be aware of that. I would say its  medium to high on the spicy scale.  We cooked this in the oven at 400 for 25 minutes, exactly what the instructions say, and it was a very nice temperature.  Perfectly thawed.  The chicken was not very tasty, pretty plain and uninteresting.  The rice was the best part of the dish.  The sauce was ok, like I said before kinda spicy, but tasty.  For those that are lactose intolerant this does contain dairy, but it hasn’t bothered me too much…yet.  One last odd thing, says it is a product of Canada.  I have nothing against our northern neighbors, just don’t see that very often, thats all.

Events

We had a great fourth of July party at our house over the holiday. We had both families come to a park near our home where we had hamburgers and hot dogs, went swimming and played lawn ball. It was a great day that was a lot of fun! I was able to play disc golf a few times this month with friends. It is always fun to get out and do something with Tim and Jeremy.

To celebrate our anniversary Michelle, Samantha and I went out to a fun dinner at the Elephant bar. The family and I also went to a pirate magic show at our local library this month too. I don’t think I have ever seen that many kids outside of a school before. There must have been 50 kids and well over 100 adults stuffed into a small room at the corner of the library. I think Samantha had a good time, but its really hard to say. The show started late around 7:30, and went until about 9pm, at which time Samantha was barely awake, but we could not have left any sooner than the end since the only exit was blocked by a huge crown of people.

I had a great lunch with my friend Ron.  We had not seen each other in about two years! Ron is an old podcasting friend of mine. Speaking of social media I also started a class at UCI Extension this month called Using the Web as a Marketing Tool.   I’m looking forward to it. I have already enjoyed the first weeks homework assignment, “Buy something online”.

I bought some new video games for the first time in a long time. Gamestop was having a buy 2 get one free sale so I bought 3 new games: Killzone 2, Resistance 2 and Uncharted 2. I have only played Killzone 2 so far, but I’m enjoying that game a lot. I have also played Uncharted and Resistance, the originals and really like both of them, so I’m looking forward to playing both of those too.

Our little girl Samantha had to get two crowns on her top front teeth, this month as well. I was surprised that it was needed and we even got a second opinion to make sure. Happily my brave little girl went through the procedure without so much as a grimace. Mommy and Daddy are so proud of her!

Michelle’s father is on the board of a credit union and every year the credit union has a meeting at the Park Hyatt (formerly Four Seasons Aviara) near my parent’s house. So her whole family (minus Paul) was down there and Michelle, Samantha and I joined them. It was nice to see my parents and we all got together one of the nights and had a great dinner at BJ’s.

Michelle’s birthday celebrations started early this year.  While we were down in Carlsbad my parents decided to surprise her with a cake.  She has been celebrating her birthday every day since!  That is a lot of candles on that cake!

When we got back from Carlsbad we celebrated even more….but you’ll have to wait until next month for that story.

Movies
Changeling – Good movie. Somewhat disturbing and sad, but al together good movie. This movie was based upon real events often called the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders.

Gamer was just a really really bad movie. Bad acting, terrible story, just skip this one.

The Last King of Scotland was and interesting story, like Changing it was based on true events and is actually based largely on the book written by Giles Foden. I have not read the book and probably won’t based on what I saw in the movie, which as gory, long and suspenseful.

Dark City was a great idea for a movie and wasn’t really bad, but it was not really good. It seemed like more of a B movie to me than anything else. It could have been so much more.

Kill Bill,  I didn’t really care for all the blood and guts in this movie and thought the story was pretty poorly thought out.

Cloverfield was a very different movie. The whole movie is shot from a handy cam. One handy cam. For me this made the movie hard to enjoy, but the more I thought about it this was probably the best way for this movie to be filmed, and its what really made the movie work. I like this movie more as time passes and I have more time to think about it.

The Invention of Lying was a very funny movie the the whole family watched.  Usually I just watch movies on my ipad, but Michelle wanted to watch this one since Jennifer Garner was in it.  I think Michelle enjoyed it as well.

Celebrations
This month we celebrated the following events.
Ty Maxey had his birthday on July 1
Michelle and I celebrated our 7th anniversary on the 12th.

Books
Last year I read 16 books.  I list 14 of them in a previous post.  This year I hope to read at least 30.  With the ones listed below I have reached 20.  Only 10 more books to hit my goal.  I have already read more than last year, so whatever happens I have made an improvement.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner.  This book was just okay.  I gave it 3 stars.  I think Malcolm Gladwell writes these kind of books better.  I still think that I will read the second book though, Superfreakonomics.

Raising Baby Green: The Earth-Friendly Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Care by Alan Greene.  I have read many baby books since (and before) Samantha was born and this one was devoted to how to feed your baby the right kinds of foods.  It was a recommendation from my mother-in-law.  I thought this book was worth reading, and might have been the best baby books with a food focus.  I gave it 3 stars.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.  I wanted to read this book because I never got the chance while I was in school.  It is part of my venture to read the classics.  I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars, but it might be more like 4.9.  The only reason it didn’t get a higher rating is because it is written for teens and children, not really for adults.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.  A classic novel.  Dove right into the story.  Was non-stop action and suspense.  I wish I had read more books like this.  It was truly a great novel.

On the Internet.  Below is a list of places you can “follow me” online if you so desire.

Twitter:  http://twitter.com/dahlenw
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jasond.watts (you’ll probably have to search for me, since I have this locked down pretty tight)
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/jason_watts
LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondwatts
Foursquare: http://foursquare.com/user/dahlenw

Needless to say, the kids at the park are very jealous!  The next week I had better luck with movies.  I saw M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, which I really enjoyed.  By the 9th I was feeling better and starting to get over a cold I had had since May.  Well enough to watch the last match-up of the Stanley Cup Final game.  I read and watched Hamlet in June as well.  I liked both the book (very much) and the movie adaption that Gibson did. I had a great birthday.  On the 13th this year the whole family drove up to Santa Barbara to watch as my brother-in-law Philip graduated.  On the way up we stopped at the Santa Barbara mission for mass.

I also discovered that I share my birthday with 27% of the world’s population about 17,995,207 people.  Just after noon on that day we watched as Philip graduated.

Congratulations to Philip!  Afterwards, we had my favorite pizza at Rusty’s by the beach.  With full stomachs we went back to our motel called the Eagle Inn, which was AMAZING.  Michelle picked it out and I have to say it was an amazing place that I hope we can go back to soon!  I would highly recommend it if you ever find yourself in Santa Barbara.  The next morning we took Samantha to Chase Palm Park, a very cool park with a playground made to resemble a huge ship.

When we got back on June 14 we were welcomed home to a small shaker well, small by the time it got to us.  Always nice to be reminded that we live in earthquake country.  Later in the month I learned how to spell my name in Elvish.  I just know that will come in handy some day

On the 19th I had a great birthday celebration in Carlsbad.  I hope everyone had a great time.  Plenty of food and good times.

I know Samantha had fun!  It was a celebration for a lot of people actually.  It was my mother’s birthday on the 16th and that weekend was Father’s day as well!  We had four dads there:  Duane, Jim, Tommy and myself.

We also managed to watch the new Alice in Wonderland film which I think we all liked, but then I tried to watch Pan’s Labyrinth, which I had heard good things about, but I didn’t like it at all.  On June 27th, we were lucky enough to be invited to Disneyland by my sister-in-law Lauren.  She works at Disneyland so she was able to get us in for free.  We met my parents when we got there and had a great time on the rides and watching the street parades.  While there we also celebrated my other sister-in-law’s birthday, Lisa!

Samantha wanted to visit Pooh, so we went on the ride and afterwards we were lucky enough to meet the bear in the flesh or fur as it were.

The shot above is right after she gave Pooh a kiss on the nose.  Everyone in line erupted in a instantaneous “AWWE!”  It was pretty adorable!

By the end of month I watched two more movies. Inglourious Basterds which if you can get past the strong language and gore, was a pretty good movie.  Lastly I watched Zathura, which is really like Jumanji, but in space.  I thought Zathura was really good.  In June, I also finished reading The Book Thief and Animal Farm.  The Book Thief was a recommendation from my friend Tim, and he was right on with this one.  I really like it.  I had never read Animal Farm in school, like most other people, but I did really enjoy this book as well.  Great month for books, not so much for the movies though.

Lastly, we took another Higson over to the dark side in June by purchasing David a Macbook Pro for his 8th grade graduation and birthday!  He was really surprised and we are very happy to have given him a gift that he will use in high school playing Mafia Wars and surfing Facebook, or I mean writing reports for school.

Speaking of Facebook, if your a friend of mine or Michelle’s there are a ton more pictures on our profiles.  Have a great day.

Samantha is nearly twenty months. Every day is a new adventure and very rewarding and exciting. Milestones: She’s now walking. She’s had a professional teeth cleaning in February and her next scheduled appointment will be in July. We walked to Ruby’s for dinner this week. We’ve dined there several times with Samantha, as it a fun place and kid friendly. Samantha gets an activity book and crayons. Samantha has been coloring for several months now. Her favorite activities are going to story time at the library and playing at the park. My mom takes her to story time twice a week; they both enjoy the outing. Our library is adjacent to a lake, so Samantha has an opportunity to see lots of ducks there. Actually, a couple of ducks are regular visitors to a neighboring condo, so she’s very familiar with ducks and other bird types. She likes pandas. She was the cutest panda for Halloween last year and will be a panda again this year. She has a panda stuffed animal and our 2010 calendar has only panda pictures. We are looking forward to the summer months. The beach club lagoon will be a fun experience for Samantha. The lagoon has a sandy shore and water slides. Depending on when we sell our condo, we will be moving at some point soon. We have a holiday weekend next weekend, Memorial Day Weekend, which will be so nice! Thanks for reading.

Tonight I’m going to review a few products from Rice Dream and some recipes I found.  In The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone she raves about her weakness, mint ice cream pies by Rice Dream.  So last time I was at Mother’s Market I picked one up and a chocolate one.  While there I also saw the “Nutty Bar” that Rice Dream also makes, so I got that as well.

The Nutty Bar was pretty nasty.  The only thing that tasted right were the peanuts on the outside.  The chocolate didn’t taste like chocolate instead it has a slightly metallic taste to it.  The ice cream was ok, but the horrible chocolate outside tainted the ice cream flavor.

The image above is from fitsugar, they had this great picture of the outside of the pie and the inside.  The cookie is the best part of this thing.  The chocolate is far from good, but the ice cream and especially the cookie make up for it.  Not bad, but I don’t think I will buy these again, I’m going to try to find another frozen treat that is better.  Any suggestions?  Please put them in the comments.

My mother-in-law made a recipe from The Kind Diet last week called Scrambled Tofu (page 283).  While it is in the breakfast section of the book, I wouldn’t relate this one to breakfast myself.  It would be a great summer time meal.  It is very fresh and light.  I will be making this again!

This one I made tonight.  It was very, very good.  Doesn’t look vegan does it?  It doesn’t taste vegan either!  I ate mine with crackers scooping up each bite!  And I even had seconds.  I got the recipe from the Ellen show.  One week day I was playing with Samantha on the ground in front of the tv and saw this, so I turned up the volume and made a mental note to search the Ellen website for it.  It was not hard to make at all and turned out great.  Can’t wait to make it again.  It was perfect for the rainy weather we are having this weekend!  If anyone knows where I can find red palm oil, I would love to try to make the nacho sauce that is on the same page of the Ellen site.  Please leave a note in the comments for me if you know where to find the stuff.