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Last night while sitting on my back porch enjoying the thunderstorm, I had a visitor join me. This frog came along on the porch heading towards the back door, or just wanting to get out of the wet weather. I have never seen a frog anywhere near our yard before.

 

You can see more pics on my Facebook album, or my Picasa album.

- Stephen

We spent the 4th of July at my Uncle Jerry's for his birthday and 4th of July party. Quite a lot of family came out from all over on both sides for the festivities. It was a lot of fun meeting some new friends and re-connecting with some family we had not seen in a while.

   
We were introduced to the game of Stump. I can't believe that I have gone this long in my life and not come across this game before! Basically you stand around a stump and take turns attempting to hammer another persons nail into the stump fully. What makes the game hard is that you have to flip the hammer first and catch it before taking your turn and in one fluid motion, without readjusting your grip, you take a swing at one of the nails. (Preferably not your own.) It is actually quite a lot of fun. And of course I managed to find a site dedicated to the game: http://www.worldstump.com/china/chinapics.html.

Pictures from the party can be found in this Picasa album, or on my Facebook album. I kept the sizes large so that they would be printable.

- Stephen

Address:
         237 Saint James Place
         Philadelphia, PA 19106
         (215) 625.8800
Web: http://www.zahavrestaurant.com/
Cuisine:  Israeli/Middle eastern
Service:
Food:
Atmosphere:
Cost:
Overall rating:

Last night we we out to dinner with Wayne and Katherine. This place is the top rated places to eat in Philly and for good reason. Outside the building is pretty non-descript. Inside it is a completely different atmosphere. Everything is open, pretty much in two rooms. From anywhere in the place you have a view of the kitchen working on orders. It is warm and inviting.

Service is tapas style, basically small plates which are meant to be shared and should be. The recomended starter and speciality for the table is the Salatim & Hummus with Laffa. The Salatim is a selection of different dishes from chick peas to beats enjoyed with or without the laffa. Their hummus was some of the best I have ever had. As we went through and placed our orders, our waiter Eric asked us if we were sure we had not been there before. He said we were hitting all the best plates in our ordering.

I spotted the Jerusalem Grill, which was a mixed offal - "all the good stuff". I wasn't sure what it waas, but I from the vague description, I had a pretty good guess. Eric confirmed that it was heart, liver and testes from different animals. Mainly duck and lamb. I rouned my order out with Kibbe Naya (raw ground lamb) and The Jaffa (Branzino - a whitefish). Fried cauliflower, stuffed baby peppers, The Read Sea (seared tuna) The Turk (ground beef), The Farsi (lamb), The Galil (eggplant) and Fried Kibbe.

Nothing I had disappointed. The Jerusalem Grill was tremendous. It came with a side of a mustard like sauce, more sweet then spicy and laffa. The spice was only needed as an accent as the heart, liver and testes were extremely tasty on their own. I had not had raw lamb before, but it had a great flavor and texture to it, again the spices not overwhelming and letting the food stand on its own. Everyone really enjoyed their food and a good bit of sharing. The only off-note was in the Turk which Erica ordered. It was just too much spice for here and she felt was overwhelming. Not from a heat perspective, but just being too much seasoning.

For a drink, I tried their "Tel Aviv Black & Tan" which was a half and half of Goldstar Larger and Malt. I followed it up with just the Goldstar Malt as the meal progressed. Overall both were OK. There were good beers, but didn't really blow me away. They just seemed to be good middle of the road beer.

We finished up the meal with desrt. Erica and Wayne got the Roasted peach which was a cashew baklava, a peach and white chocolate panna cotta. Katherine tried their drink "The new milk and honey", which I had a taste of. It was really good, not overly sweet and I am sure could knock you back without realizing it. I had the Konafi which has a shredded, crunchy phyllo dough on top of ricotta, rose water and pstachios. It was deliciously sweet.

It was a great night overall and I look forward to going back there.

- Stephen

Today we started off by visiting Erica's grandfather in the morning. And then we  met up with my parents, Thomas, Veronica, Miquel and Nina at Oreland Pizza for lunch. From there we headed down to the Philly zoo for the afternoon.


The morning was overcast and rainy, but by the time we hit the zoo it was warm and sunny. As it turns out, they were also taping an episode of "Dinner Impossible" with Robert Irvine at the zoo. They were doing a dinner for local armed forces, police and fireman at the zoo.


We came across where they were filming and hung out for a while watching what they were doing. It was pretty interesting to see that what you see from Chef Irvine on the show was actually going on in person. We managed to get some good shots of him in action.

The menu apparently was inspired by different animal groups - reptiles, primates, big cats, and birds. And apparently on the menu under reptiles were chocolate covered crickets!

Everyone had a great time at the zoo. Afterwards we headed up to Giuseppi's near Oreland for dinner before everyone headed home.

More pictures can be found on Facebook, or my Picasa page.

- Stephen

This site is wonderful! http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com

It has a lot of gems like this:

The garage renovation, making our garage and basement one large room is really moving along. The new support beam is in and the walls are down. They have started digging to pour the footer where the garage door is.

It is really amazing the difference in the space, compare then:



To now:





 - Stephen

I was updating my AFI Top 100 movie checklist which Erica and I have been slowly working through, and I only have 3 more movies left in the list! I only have "The African Queen", "The Apartment", and "Swing Time" left to watch. I have seen bits and pieces of African Queen, but not the whole thing all the way through. Unfortunately, African Queen is not out on DVD - at least Netflix doesn't have it. So finishing off the complete list may take a while.

Working through the Top 100 list has been interesting and has broadened my horizons a bit. I have learned that I just don't get the Marx Brothers. I tried, with no less then 3 of their movies, and I just don't find them funny. Sure they have a few funny zingers - but not worth sitting through an entire movie. Usually I can at least find bad comedy's somewhat funny, but through the majorit of their movies I did not even crack a smile.

The list has put me in front of a lot of movies I would not have considered, mainly a lot of the older movies from the 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's. We like to think of the 1950's and before as simpler times, or as times of innocence and not having to deal with quite frankly adult topics. Such as in "On the Waterfront", "The Best Years of our Lives" or "Sunrise". "Sunrise" is dealing with a husband unfaithful to his wife and planning the murder of his wife to go away back to the city with his mistress. There were a lot of movies through all of the decades up to the present that I found I really enjoyed.

Even though movie technology is not what it is today, a number of the very early movies like "Modern Times" and "Sunrise" hold up from a cinematic perspective today. They beat out most of the "B" movies made today. I did not consider all of the movies on the list 5 out of 5 stars. There were a number that were, and most were either 3 1/2, or 4 stars. But a few such as "Nashville" and the Marx Brothers movies which I don't think should be on the list. I could understand one of the Marx Brothers movies being on the list, as these movies are not all on the list because of story and acting, but also because of cinemetography, technology or just as a representative piece of the period or commentary on the time period.

I would say that if you regularly avoid differnt movies because of what you think they are, stop and give them a second look. The AFI Top 100 list is a really good list to start with. You will be suprised at what you find may be your new favorite movie!

- Stephen

I have been busy getting back into work and home this week so I have not gotten to editing the pictures from the trip. Hopefully I will have more time this week. For now, here are our ratings for everything we saw on this trip. These are not if the place is good or bad, just if they lived up to our expectations.

D - Did not meet, it did not live up to our expectations
M - Met, it met the experience we were expecting.
E - Exceeded, it exceeded our expections.

Place	E	S
Jack Daniels	E	E
Andrew Jackson's Hermitage	E	M+
Parthenon	M	M+
Stockyard	E	E
Space Camp	M	E
Big Boy	M	M+
Ave Maria Grotto	E	E
Wintzell's	M	M+
Jim & Nick's	M	E
Bellingrath	E	E
USS Alabama	E	E
Katrina Memorial	D	D
Ronald Reagan statue	M	M
World's largest rocking chair	M	M
Melrose	E	M
Walnut Hills	E	E
King Tavern	E	E
Vicksburg Military Park	E	M
Natchez trace	E	E
Kermit the frog birthplace	E	E
Clinton Presidential Library	M+	M+
Gouchos	M	M
The Old Mill	M	E
Popeye statue	D	M
Braum's	M	M
George Washington Carver memorial	E	E
Fort Smith	M	M
Praying hands	M	M
Walmart	D	-
Giant Morel mushroon	M	M
Truman Presidential Library	M+	M+
Church of Christ Temple	M	M
Hallmark	E	E
Electric House	E+	E+
Crayola Café	E	E
Arthur Bryant's	M	M
Truman National Historic site	D	D
Shareidan's	E	E
Needle and Button	M	M
Carlos O'Kelley's	E	M
Glore Psyciatric Musuem	E	E
Giant Soccer ball	M	M
Volkswagon spider	E	M
Giant	-	E
Tombstone desk	M	M
Upstreams	M	M
Lewis and Clark	D	M
Cornstalk café	M	M
Mary Tyler Moore statue	M	M
Mall of America	M	M
Tiger Sushi	M	M
Tony Roma's	M	M
Wolverine Movie	M	M
Honza	D	M
Music Man	M	E
Riverside Iowa (Kirk's birthplace)	D	M
Culver's	M	M
SPAM museum	E	E
Hannibal (Mark Twain)	D	M
Mark Twain Cave	M	M
Superfund site	E	M
Jefferson Expansion Memorial	M	M
Trattoria Marcello	M	E
Mark Twain Dinnette	M	M
Ted Drewes	M	E
Marlowe's	E	E
Graceland	E	E
Peabody hotel and ducks	M	M

Hopefully I can get the pictures done this week and posted.

- Stephen

Here are the numbers for our road trip:

1st car (PT Cruiser) 2,073 miles
2nd car (Dodge Journey) 1,939.7 miles
Total mileage: 4,012.7 miles

Gas receipts: $278.09, 139.835 gallons. (Not including an account for starting with a full tank for both cars)

For the entire trip we counted the number of PTs we spotted, for the 2nd half of the trip we counted PTs and Journeys

PT sightings: 182
Journey sightings: 2

Yep, for the entire trip I only saw two other Dodge Journeys, but that goes in line with the piece of junk I think it is. Alhough, I don't give high marks to the PT either, but that seems wildly more popular.

- Stephen

Yesterday we probably had our easiest day of all. We didn’t really make it out until lunch time. Starting off with lunch at Marlowe’s with some really good BBQ, fried rolls and the largest salad in history. We started there because there was a line of cars to get into Graceland that wasn’t moving, so we opted for lunch instead.  Marlowe’s was a big BBQ place down the road, plastered in everything Elvis. The food was great. The fried rolls, while wonderful, are simply doughnuts without the sugar.

We then headed back to Graceland and thankfully the line had cleared. It is quite a tour.  We had the silver package which got us into the house and all the museums. They are pretty efficient at keeping people moving along. The tour of the house was the most surprising as it was not as gaudy as we had expected. It was -- for its time -- a pretty cool house. Even if you are not an Elvis fan, this would be a must-see.

Afterward, we headed over to the Peabody Hotel to hang out and wait for the “March of the Ducks.” It is a tradition, started as a joke over 70 years ago.  They have ducks in the fountain in the lobby of the hotel. Every evening at 5 PM they march the ducks into the elevator and up to their pad on top of the hotel. And every morning at 11 AM they are marched back down the elevator to the fountain. It is quite a sight. There is a “duck master” who runs the show. The first duck master did it for 50 years! (He was a former carney who trained the ducks.)

While there we took some time to relax, write out postcards and figure out where we were hitting for dinner. Rendezvous is a big BBQ joint near Beale street which was recommended to us by a number of people. They were not wrong in their recommendation. There were a lot of people waiting to get in, though we only had to wait about 30 minutes for a table. There are two floors (at least) to the place and it is kept pretty simple. The menu is one page and utensils are all disposable. It is a finger-licking-good rib joint.

After dinner, we walked it off by heading down to Beale Street and hanging out there taking in the action. It is a lot like Bourbon Street. I personally liked it better then Bourbon Street, Erica however preferred New Orleans.

- Stephen