Had an awesome b-day dinner with Lailah (and her GMR) at the Mediterranean Cruise in Burnsville tonight. Some of you may know this place - there is live belly dancing. The belly dancer came over after a few dances and asked Lailah if she wanted to dance on the "stage" with her. To her credit, she got up and danced (three other girls a few yrs older than her, also were invited, so it was a pretty … [Read more...]
Rick’s birthday party at Nancy’s
July 21, 2016 By
Hello there. I see you're back with us now. It seems one of my recent stories has a following. I've written a couple of stories the last few days, and the one I thought that would have generated the most "likes" (because of the "hook" used, of Lailah dropping by, after stealing GMR's car) only received a couple of "likes". Whereas, the other story of my dinner with Rick and his friends received … [Read more...]
Paint nite
July 20, 2016 By
Photos of my completed art were just posted to an album, along with photos of two examples painted by our instructor (a very young woman, she must have been in her early to mid twenties - but, she really knew her stuff, knew how to teach painting, and also to make it fun for the "trainees"). Had a great time. This was my third paint nite - should do it more often … [Read more...]
Dinner with Nancy and Lois, before seeing South Pacific
July 20, 2016 By
Hi there. This is story #2 from this past Saturday night. Story #1 was my encounter with a stranger in the parking lot before dinner at "The old spaghetti factory". Once I figured out how to pay for parking (had to download an app) and actually paid it, I walked across the street to the restaurant. I was still a bit early, and this place has a huge lobby with lots of elegant seating, so I took … [Read more...]
Saturday’s outing with Lailah
July 18, 2016 By
To set the stage: My kitchen breakfast nook area has a huge window looking out toward the walk leading to my front door. <you'all have probably seen it in my Lailah kitchen table videos.> I'm eating breakfast this past Saturday morning, reading my newspaper (on my e-device). And, I hear some giggling outside, which makes me look up. And, I see this little girl looking in my window, … [Read more...]
Seeing South Pacific in the evening after having Lailah that afternoon
July 17, 2016 By
Huh. Well. Starting from around 5:30pm Friday, thru 11pm tonight, it's been a whirlwind of "activity", in the life of Brian. You can tell with my lame opening of "Huh. Well.", that I'm just too dad-blame tired right now (midnight) to write all about what's transpired during this 30 hour period, since it would probably take me a couple of hours to do it, and Mr. Crabby didn't get to take a nap … [Read more...]
Photography and Fireworks
July 4, 2016 By
The problem with shooting 280 fireworks photos (in the space of thirty minutes), is trying to figure out which are the "truly great" and which are only "good", the easy part will be throwing out the junky ones. Some of the "good" ones look "artsy-fartsy", and while I like them, i don't think others would agree. Going to try to review them and post only the top 10 percent - we'll see how that goes. … [Read more...]
New TV series
June 29, 2016 By
Well, it seems I've been in a writing mood today. So, this last one is going to be quite short. If you like science fiction with your tv shows, then try out "Humans." Awesome premise, causing some very profound thinking about our future with "robots". If you have already seen this series or start watching it, I would enjoy reading your thoughts on it. I want to say more, but can't find the … [Read more...]
Bobby Fischer Movie
June 11, 2016 By
Watched a pretty good biographical movie tonight: "Pawn Sacrifice", staring Tobey Maguire as a young Bobby Fischer (chess champion in the '60s and '70s). Tobey does a great job at portraying Mr. Fischer. The movie starts with us seeing him as a 6 yr old chess prodigy, thru his teenage and young adult years, and finishes with the infamous 1972 Fischer/Boris Spassky championship match in Iceland, … [Read more...]
Grace and Frankie S1/S2
June 1, 2016 By
Binge re-watching season one of Grace and Frankie (before moving onto S2). Episode 12 has Grace (Jane Fonda), and Frankie (Lily Tomlin), dancing on top of a bar in a nightclub with a bunch of twenty yr old guys ("boys") cheering them on. I don't even want to go where I'm about to go, but how can two "girls" in their mid 70s still be "so hot"??? What's that new phrase, 70 is the new … [Read more...]
Lailah – spin art painting
February 20, 2016 By
"We" (the "Royal" We) bought this kid's art device, a splatter/spinner thing-a-ma-bob, in early or mid December. You know, the kind where you put a piece of card stock into it and it spins it around, and you then squirt paint onto the card stock as it spins, causing these multi-colored circle things... After the first one or two times using it in December, we (not the royal we, but Lailah and I) … [Read more...]
Lailah sightings
February 20, 2016 By
Lailah sightings have been a bit more further apart than usual, this last month or two. She is such a busy girl these days! This is one of two short videos we found of her, dated yesterday. We don't know the exact location where these were made, or even who the videographer/narrator is... First vid is only a minute long and the second is 3-1/2 mins long. [We also found a couple of brand new … [Read more...]
Lailah – tomorrow
February 19, 2016 By
The good news is, I have Lailah tomorrow. Haven't seen her in a couple of weeks. Won't be able to sleep tonight - her coming over to babysit her GranPaBrian. The bad news is, just like when you have a maid, you have this overwhelming urge to tidy up the house first, BEFORE they arrive to clean up the place (in Lailah's case, it's not her coming to clean my place, but to purposefully make it look … [Read more...]
Lunch with a friend, and politics
February 18, 2016 By
I met one of my wonderful "friends" today for lunch. We were great friends about ten years ago, but as some friendships do, we lost contact over the years. We renewed our friendship the last couple of years via Facebook, and recently been getting together for lunch and/or movie about once a month. Today, we had another great time, another great conversation with them, catching up, etc. I really … [Read more...]
Star Wars vs. Star Trek
November 10, 2015 By
I'm not going to go into the "why" since it's a stupid (and long) story, but last night, I re-watched something called "Star Wars". I'm sure you may have heard of this film by now. If I had to guess I've probably not watched this movie in roughly ten yrs or more. To be frank, the movie last night was not the original version - this one was from a DVD (non blu-ray) collection of all 6 movies, and … [Read more...]
The “Twitch” app and Bob Ross!
November 2, 2015 By
Bob Ross! Read something recently about a thing called "twitch" (which is now a part of Amazon). Apparently it's an iPad/iPhone app, and it streams "stuff". The thing that caught my attention is that they are now streaming a marathon of Bob Ross painting shows...ALL ~380 of them. The "twitch" app is free, and the streaming service is free as well. So, if you want to watch Bob Ross, download the … [Read more...]
Peeve: Talking during a movie in the theater
October 22, 2015 By
I was having a conversation (with RML) last night, about people talking in a movie theatre - this person knows how I typically react, and mentioned to me they think I'm trying to be "confrontational" (by my asking the person talking in the theater, "could you please be quiet?"). No, I replied, I'm not trying to be confrontational, I'm trying to get them to "shut the heck up!" So, my question is, … [Read more...]
Baking and Banana Bread!
October 22, 2015 By
My thanks goes to Yvonne Van West, a few months ago, I was lamenting about a portion of my bananas going to waste since I tend to buy a bunch of six, but only get to eat three or four before they "over-ripe". Yvonne was brilliant in sharing with me that I could be making banana bread from the unused ones. So, I got myself a banana bread mix recently, and made my first ever batch of banana bread … [Read more...]
Lailah and recent MN Zoo outing
October 22, 2015 By
After doing our usual indoor play activities from 10am until about 1pm, Lailah and I drove over to the MN Zoo (it's really nice being only 5 mins away). We then spent ~three hours walking around the outdoor animals, like the "Takin", the Asian Wild Dog, the prairie dogs (she loved those little guys, popping up out of their tunnel holes), the Moose, the Camels, the Leopard, the Wild Boars, and we … [Read more...]
Need better ideas for outdoor Lailah activity
October 21, 2015 By
HEY! Lailah fans: I'm getting "the kid" tomorrow. The (been there, done that) plan is the MN Zoo. Bit do any of you out there have a better outdoor activity (we've done the apple orchard already)? Need some great ideas, please! Otherwise, we'll just go to the park one last time (before the "W" word arrives in the next few weeks), playing on the slides and swings together, playing "hoops" on … [Read more...]
