October 10, 2008

Take Me Out To The Ballgame!

The Major League Baseball regular season was coming to a close and with no playoffs in sight for the Giants or A's, we decided to take in one of the last regular season games. The Giants tickets were too expensive (around $50) but I found some cheap tickets for the A's on StubHub. I found a discount code too which knocked the cost to around $17 per ticket.

We also wanted to see the Maui boy, Kurt Suzuki, catcher for the A's play, as well as Ichiro Suzuki, who plays for the Mariners. Unfortunately, Kurt wasn't starting but we did get to see him play a couple of innings. Ichiro played the whole game but didn't do much. The A's ended up winning and since they scored more than seven runs, we each got a couple for a free liter of Pepsi, yeah! We also tried to find some Kurt Suzuki T-shirts but I guess they didn't anticipate so many people wanting them, as one of the vendors said they only printed 50 of them earlier in the season, and a big group from Hawaii bought them all.

Ichiro batting with Kurt catching

Jennifer After The Game

David After The Game

Since it was a nice game, we did a bit of caching afterwards, at Oyster Point near the Oakland Airport. Found a few caches, saw some birds dive bombing the ocean for some fish, and came across a vulture eating a skunk (yech), but that's a story for another time. =)

September 17, 2008

The Omnivore's Hundred

I was reading another blog On My Plate (onmyplate.org) and found this list, The Omnivore's Hundred, a list of a hundred things to eat. So here's my list, with things eaten in bold, and things I'd never eat italicized. Of course, there are some thing on the list that I've never heard of!

Dave's Hundred

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper Too hot for me!
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar I could do the Cognac, but not the cigar, yech!
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake Yep, yep, yep, and yep!
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill Heck no!
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse Nope, no way, no how.
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

September 14, 2008

A Day In The City

We decided to spend a day in the City yesterday, well at least half a day as we didn't get there until the afternoon. Our first stop was for a couple of geocaches, Alamo Square and The K-Leave Me Cache, which was our 1900th cache found. They both overlooked the famous Painted Ladies, the victorian homes that are used in many TV shows/movies.

While there, we also spotted an unusual sight, plants growing in different shoes. The local gardener/caretaker of the park must find shoes left at the park and uses them as pots.


After taking in the views, we were off to the Exploratorium. There were tons of hands-on activities for kids of all ages, including magnets, fish, sight, hearing, light displays, etc. We spent a couple of hours there trying different experiments and probably could've spent another hour there but we were getting hungry.

So off to Chinatown we went to eat BBQ pork buns from the various dim sum shops and then over to North Beach for some tiramisu at Victoria Bakery.
After walking up and down the streets of Chinatown, we walked down to Union Square for some shopping at Macy's, then at the Westfield mall. We finished the day with a dinner at Coriander's, Sweet Chicken with Crispy Basil and Chicken Pad Thai. Yum!

September 12, 2008

Vegas Baby!

We just got back from our annual trip to Vegas with the Hayashida clan, including my parents, brother and his fiance, grandparents, aunties and uncles. We stayed at the Fremont Hotel for the first time, since our usual hotels, California and Main Street were booked solid due to an Asian basketball tournament taking place that weekend.

Since we were born in Hawaii, we're eligible for the kama`aina discounted room/meals package, $310 for room and all meals for four days. Not a bad deal and I was surprised that our hotel room at the Fremont was nicer than the ones we've stayed in at the Cal and Main Street, although a bit smaller. We ate most of our meals at the Market Street Cafe at the Cal, although we had a great breakfast buffet at the Paradise Buffet at the Fremont. We also had the Seafood Buffet at the Paradise Buffet. We're shown below after filling our bellies with crab and dessert.


I won't go into much detail about the gambling as we deposited a small amount into the casinos' banks but we did pretty much all our gambling downtown. We only went down to the Strip once, to see the Bellagio conservatory and fountan show. We lucked out, seeing our favorite fountain show/song, Con Te Partiro. Jenn also got to see her favorite lobby fixtures.


Since we're trying to find geocaches in as many states as possible, we decided to make the drive north to Arizona and Utah. We also decided that if we were going to drive all the way to Utah, we might as well drive to Zion National Park. I figured that it would be three hours up, a couple of hours at Zion, then three hours back. Well, it was an 11 hour trip, after stopping for lunch, dinner, and a few caches, including about 45 minutes at an Earthcache in Utah featuring dinosaur tracks.


Zion was cool, with all the colorful rock formations. I also finally gave in and bought a National Parks passport and stamped it with the Zion cancellation stamp. I wish I had bought one earlier since I've visited many other National Parks/Monuments.

All in all, we had a great time, getting to see all of our relatives. We didn't lose too much money and got to eat a lot of great food. Time to diet!