Mahalo.ne.Trash

Owen's favorite animal at the zoo is the Great Argus Pheasant . You can hear the bird from anywhere in the zoo, and Owen refuses to leave until he's seen the bird in action. And here's Owen's version: Here's another, but with a little lion mixed in.

Owen: "Please watch Ehl-mos World?" Me: "Um, later. Let's just keep playing for now." Owen: "Please watch Ehl-mos World?" Me: "Later." Owen: "Please watch Ehl-mos World?" Me: "Owen, what did I just say?" Owen: "(stares at me for a beat)...please watch Ehl-mos World?" Me: "Didn't you already watch Elmo today?" Owen: "Yah. Please watch Ehl-mos World AGAIN ?" Me: "Ask your mom."

Here's a great Slate article that sums up the events of last night quite nicely. It sure was fun being part of history! "Tonight's crisis is the result of all our enthusiasm," Obama supporter Susan Atwell tells me at the auditorium door. "But no one fainted. No one got punched in the nose. We all survived, because we're a laidback community." She smiles and looks around the slowly emptying space. "The aloha spirit got us through."

Erin, Owen and I participated in our first Democratic caucus tonight. And let me tell you, we caucused the s**t out of that place (where s**t = snot. This is a family blog after all). One of my office mates works for the Obama campaign and she told me to show up 30 minutes before the doors were scheduled to close at 6:30 pm. It turns out that we could vote even though we weren't registered in the state of Hawaii. In HI , you can caucus as long as you are (1) eligible to vote in any state and (2) haven't yet voted in another state. I looked up our caucus location on the nifty Barack Obama website and made plans to meet Erin and Owen at Nishi Moncho Ramen at 5:30 so we could fuel up for a night of democracy and Change. Shoyu yakisoba noodle plate? Yes we can! We arrived at Manoa Elementary school at 6pm to find the main playground packed with about 1000 people. There was a full metric shload of people there to vote. We were instructed to wait in a succession of lines. In the fir...

While gone are the days of the world's best supper club (I miss you, ladies!), we've been fortunate enough to sneak right in to a group of other lovers of cooking and enjoying delicious meals as a community. We hosted many of them for thanksgiving dinner, which I'm sure got our foot nicely in the door, and last Sunday we attended what will hopefully be a monthly gathering of young families around a central theme. February's theme - SOUP'S ON. That's right, even in Hawaii it gets cold enough that you want soup... well, then again even I can't consider 68 degrees soup-worthy weather. I simply love that we all wore slippahs and kept the soup warm by placing the huge pots on an outdoor grill. My best recollection of the lineup: Pupus: Cheese platter, poke with avocado Soups: Homemade Thai-ginger soup with salmon and rice; Thai-ginger soup with coconut and chicken (this was a purchased replacement for a homemade wild-mushroom green onion soup that was unfortun...

Owen has no need for 13 and 15. But really, do any of us?

Happy Chinese New Year! UPDATE: It has just been brought to my attention that Gau in Cantonese means something completely different than "semi-sweet gooey mound."

Owen was taking a bath when he got a strange look on his face, looked down and then we both heard a loud noise that was not unlike the horn on one of those old-timey Model T cars: "arOOOOgah." Then a bunch of bubbles rose to the surface. Owen: (visibly shaken) "DADDY! What happened? What that make-it that sound?!" Me: "You just had a little gas." Owen: "Woah! Owen have loud gas!" Me: "Yup, sometimes gas is loud."

I'm starting to think the boy is going to be a movie star or director when he grows up, because he is absolutely obsessed with being filmed ("take picture") and then watching his own instant replays (or dailies, as they're called in the industry). The good thing is that he's finally figured out that he has to actually do something in order to watch a video of himself doing that thing. Before, he was constantly requesting non-existent videos: "Owen watch movie brushing teeth?!" The downside is that about 20 seconds into any shot he starts requesting to watch it. You can here his "Wat-thit!" and "See-it!" at the end of most videos these days. Owen trying to fly like a birdie: Owen after requesting, "Daddy take picture Owen running with book." Listen carefully at the 0:11 mark. Owen practicing his jump shot.