We had an interesting night, a week ago, here at the G & G house. Our friend FB called us with a bit of alarm in his voice telling us his wife SB (also our friend) had to be admitted to the emergency room, and he wanted to go there to be with her, so he wanted to know if he could bring his twins (one boy, one girl, between our boys in age) over to our house for the night. Of course we said yes, so it was a little slumber party. The kids loved it. It's funny sometimes how self-absorbed children are. It's a quasi-emergency -- their mom or their friends' mom is in the hospital -- and all they care about is what Pokémon they should trade.
I added the qualifier "quasi" above because SB didn't appear to be in any immediate danger according to FB. She just started acting really strangely -- slurring her words, not making any sense, not being able to focus, etc. -- so they went to the doctor, and the doctor said to go to the ER. She has some chronic health issues, so my mind immediately went there, but FB seemed to think they were unrelated. S speculated that she was having an adverse affect to medication, and indeed that turned out to be the case, but not exactly for reasons one might think. What happened is, on a recent vacation to Mexico, she got a rash, and unbeknownst to FB, she bought some pills for it from a pharmacy. Either something got lost in translation, or they treat rashes very differently down there, because she tested positive for some sort of narcotic. She had unwittingly drugged herself. They didn't notice it earlier because she also got heat stroke in Mexico (rough trip!), so they chalked up any strange behavior to that.
Anyway, she's all good now. She's sane again and presumably got that rash checked out too. The kids stayed with us until, like, 5:00pm the next day, just because they didn't want to leave. It's better for us, actually. It's so much easier to parent when there are other kids around to occupy your kids' attention. The cleanup afterward isn't fun, but it's worth it to be mostly left alone the entire day.
In other news from this weekend, S and I went out for a Mother's Day brunch at a chichi restaurant -- and by chichi I mean it was in a nondescript brick building in an alley, they grill the food in a stone pit in the middle of the restaurant, and you're served by beautiful people of indeterminate gender and ethnicity.* It's a Middle Eastern place, and it's one of those deals where they have a set menu and just bring you dish after dish, and you're totally stuffed, and then they say, "Are you ready for your mains?"
*Actually, our server was just a normal-looking white guy, but that doesn't sound as cool.
You do actually get to pick your main, one to share for the table, and S let me pick because it was almost all red meat, so she wasn't going to eat it anyway. I rarely eat red meat myself these days (it's really bad for the environment), but, you know, it was a special occasion, so I figured what the hell? and ordered up some goat. It was good, but right after I ordered it, I saw the steak being prepared for another table and instantly regretted not ordering it instead. My thought process was when do you ever get goat? take the opportunity when you have it, but as I said, I hardly ever eat red meat of any variety, so that same logic could have been applied to steak. More saliently, I've eaten goat before, several times, and I like steak better. It was a missed opportunity, but once dessert came -- a divine mocha chocolate pudding -- it was a moot point. I feel like pudding is an underutilized dessert. A good pudding is on par with, maybe even better than, a good piece of cake or pie, but you don't see it on menus as much.
We at ate around 2:30pm, and since I'm still doing my intermittent fasting diet, it turned out to be my only meal of the day. It was more than enough. Overall, the diet is going pretty well. I've dropped a few pounds, and I've been keeping up with the weight training, so I think it's fat, not muscle weight. I haven't noticed any dip in energy levels, and I actually don't get insanely hungry throughout the day like I thought I would. I also thought I would miss the ritual of eating a before-bed snack, but I don't. On the contrary, it's nice to finish my second meal around 8:00pm and think to myself that's it belly; you're done for the day. For whatever reason, this regimen is pretty easy for me to stick to. So, I'll keep going with it, I suppose.
Anyway...
I do this daily trivia game called Apocalypse Sports Trivia, and I've come to realize that I have some pretty big gaps in my sports trivia knowledge. For some reason, whoever writes the questions loves asking about international soccer, and I know next to nothing on the subject. Here are my overall stats:
Notice there are just as many soccer questions as baseball questions. What the hell?! Is this not America?! Actually, I love soccer, and the team I root for, the Seattle Sounders, just became the first non-Mexican club to win the CONCACAF Champions League under its current format. But I started following soccer as an adult and pretty much only watch US teams in big games (if that), so I don't have that base of knowledge built up. Looking at this now, I'm flummoxed by how I have a higher percentage in hockey and country club sports than in basketball. The basketball questions must be harder, as I know way more about basketball than those other sports.
The best stat, of course, is the one at the top: 21 / 21 in baseball. I came very close to missing my first one yesterday. Here's the question:
In June 2005, the 810 Zone restaurant was opened in the Kansas City metropolitan area, and held a contest to let fans name food items after local sports legends. The punny two-word name of one item happened to contain the names of two different characters from (very similar) promotions held in the middle of every home game in two different (non-KC) MLB stadiums. What was the name of the food item?
I had no idea at first, as I've never heard of this restaurant and have never visited the Kansas City area (save that time I had to rent a car there and drive it to my cousin's wedding). But I started thinking of KC sports legends and common baseball promotions, and I was going put something like Bret Saber-Hoagie, thinking maybe the question is referring to a Star Wars promotion. But why would a team have a Star Wars promotion at every home game? That didn't seem right. So, I thought of a promotion the Nationals do, a Presidents Race, and thought of the names of the characters in it -- George, Tom, Abe, Teddy, etc. -- and then I remembered that the Brewers have a similar promotion in which they race sausages, and it hit me: George Brat! That had to be it! Indeed it was, and I won my match.*
Until next time...
*By the way, if you click the link above, you'll get a video of a man telling a story that really makes me laugh. It's not because the story is funny -- it's not really -- but because it's a grown man (a baseball icon!) telling this story, in great detail, to some other, seemingly totally uninterested, grown men.
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