Last Friday evening, I went to Disneyland with my kids and was enjoying the “grand circle tour of Disneyland” on the Disneyland Rail Road. My son loves trains, so this is one of his favorite things to do at the park. Oddly enough, he loves the tram ride from the parking lot so much that he cries when we disembark. I digress.



We happened to sit in front of the conductor that makes all of the announcements on the train (e.g. sit down, hands and arms inside, etc.). The conductor also calls out “all aboard” before the train is ready to move.

The conductor asked my daughter, “can you say ‘all aboard’?” “Uh huh,” my daughter replied. So the conductor put the microphone in front of her mouth and said “say it.” In a tiny squeaky soft voice, my daughter said “all aboard.” “You’re not that shy,” the conductor said.

So, the conductor turns to my two year old son and says, “how about you, can you say ‘all aboard’?”

Now, let me tell you that my son has been practicing for this moment his entire life. I don’t think ‘all aboard’ were his first words, but they were in the top ten. He has loved the Disneyland train since he first went to Disneyland when he was 6 months old. Whenever he is playing with his train sets (yes, that’s plural) at home, you can often hear him say, “all aboard, toot toot!”

My son replied to the conductor, in a booming two year old voice, “Uh huh.”

“Well,” the conductor smiled, “then say ‘all aboard,” as she moved the microphone in front of his mouth. The strapping young lad then said “all aboard” at a nice volume that everyone could hear throughout the train. That’s my son!

The Cast Members at Disneyland can really make a routine trip to their park extraordinary. Thank you!

Long time no blog. I’ve been very busy day to day recently, and the blog is usually on the low priority for the day. Plus the fact that I have never really enjoyed writing all that much, so it’s easy for me play hooky.

Today’s topic: eggs. I’ve been meaning to post this since Easter when my family visited and I whipped up a batch of scrambled eggs.

First, some history. Growing up, I worked at Law’s Coffee Shop in Oak Glen for about 5 years. Most of that time was spent in the kitchen. Every month, we’d have a breakfast buffet, and my main responsibility was cooking more eggs than any human should have to. I believe I cooked over 30 flats of eggs one morning, which is just wrong on so many levels.

So, with that amount of experience, I consider myself a damn good cook of eggs. Enter Alton Brown of Good Eats fame.



I love Alton. He’s my hero. If you’ve never watched his show on Food Network, and you have even a passing interest in cooking, you need to tune in. Even my 5 year old enjoys watching this show!

Recently, an episode addressed egg cooking, and one of the topics he addressed was scrambled eggs. I thought I’d give his method a spin, and wow. Wow. I’m not kidding. The results were mind boggling. If you ever wanted perfect scrambled eggs, here’s what you do:

1. Scramble your eggs in a bowl, and add a little milk.

2. Place some butter in a pan and let it melt on medium low heat.

3. Put the eggs in the pan, stir occasionally.

4. Here’s the magic: when the eggs just start to curdle, turn the heat to high! Yes, high! Stir constantly with a spatula.

5. When there is no more liquid in the pan, move the eggs to the plate. This is the hard one for me, because the eggs do not look done. But, they continue to cook on the plate and by the time they are served, they will be done.

Voila, perfect eggs. Give it a try. It’ll knock your socks off.

And if you’re interested in Alton Brown, you need to check out this wonderful fan page that has a transcript of every show he’s ever done with links to his recipes.

Now, that’s Good Eats.

GAMING: APRIL FOOLS



Best April Fool's I've seen today!

BASEBALL: FANTASY LEAGUE

This year, I'm trying my hand at owning a team in a fantasy baseball league. So far, it's been a very enjoyable process and highlighted the massive gap in my baseball knowledge to any player that doesn't wear a Angel's uniform.

So, here's my 2004 team!



I'm most excited about picking up Vladimir Guerrero, one of the newest Angels players, and arguably one of the top 5 players in baseball. I also signed hurler Tim Hudson of the Oakland A's and another great pitcher, Octavio Dotel of the Astros. I think I have a very strong team, with my weakest position at catcher right now. I do have a trade in the works so hopefully that position will be upgraded shortly.

What's interesting about this is that you become fans of specific players instead of focusing on a team. From what I've read, I'll have to stay active on a daily basis in order to manage the team, but it's going to be really good time watching how my players progress throughout the year.

DISNEY: BIG THUNDER RAILROAD

This past week, Big Thunder Railroad was quietly reopened at Disneyland. They took the opportunity while fixing the ride to also refurbish it quite extensively. I have yet to take a ride, but I am glad that it is back up and running as the park is always packed lately because of all the ride closures.


Big Thunder reopened last week

Here's some interesting photographs of the accident. These pictures are just of the ride vehicle and track; nothing objectional.

GAMING: CALL OF DUTY

There was a time in my life where I would go and watch movies on opening weekend and get the latest and greatest games on release. These days, I get to movies usually when they are on pay-per-view or HBO. I’m better about games, and those games that most people like, I usually get to within a year.

I finally got around to purchasing Call of Duty. Let me begin by saying that I am not a giant First Person Shooter (FPS) fan. I enjoy FPS’s, but primarily when I’m playing my friends, as it’s more of the social interaction with them that I enjoy than the game itself.

There has been one notable exception: Half-Life. I remember being completely addicted to Half-Life, and even playing the game in a darkened room with the sound cranked up so that the head crabs jumping out of the ceiling tiles would literally scare me enough to get me to jump.

I don’t want to say that I’m as addicted to Call of Duty as I was to Half-Life, because then I’d have to make an admission about a problem that I don’t want to fix. I love Call of Duty. I have only played a couple of multiplayer games, but the single player campaign is fabulous! The detail, the sheer number of models, the quality of the graphics and sound; all of these add up to more than the sum of their parts.

So far my favorite is the Russian campaign, simply because of how they set the mood. You find yourself rushing a hill, but there’s only a few weapons to be handed out, and lucky me, I get 5 bullets. I guess I can toss them at the Germans. So after you make it through this mess, you are told to charge across Red Square into machine gun fire. If, you decide to turn back, you will be shot. This was brutally brought home as I ran forward, grabbed a weapon on the ground, assumed the prone position and started laying down suppression fire for my comrades. My lack of rushing the machine guns was noticed, and an Russian officer shot me. Rush, means rush. Got it.

If the devil is in the details, then he’s completely intertwined in this game. I highly recommend this game to anyone who has a passing interest in World War II.

I’ve always been in a bind living in Southern California and loving baseball. When I was growing up, my cousin was a starting pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. Naturally, I grew to love the Giants. Since their mortal enemies are the Los Angeles Dodgers, I have a natural aversion to Chavez Ravine.

So, I have to go to Angels games. Now, they’ve been very entertaining over the years. Not because of the astounding baseball, but because of the really bizarre plays and errors that you would rarely see from a top notch organization.

That all changed in 2002 with their first World Series Championship in club history. The Disney Corporation decided it was time to sell the ball club in 2003 and new owner Arte Moreno took the reins.


Arte Moreno, Anaheim Angels owner

The new owner has been outstanding for the Angels. The first week he took over he lowered beer prices. He lowered ticket prices to fill the stadium. He has spent an additional $75 million on signing new players. He is upgrading the stadium scoreboards.

And now word comes that he is in negotiations to have approximately 150 games televised! Wow! That’s a 300% increase from last year. The manner in which he is going about this is really amazing. Instead of convincing stations to carry the games, he is simply buying the airtime and then the Angels will sell the commercials. Talk about balls.

I’m very excited about the future of the club, and more importantly the value of my season seats when I need to sell quite a few of them each season!

Even if all of his spending and effort fails to produce several winning seasons in the future, it’s good to know that there’s an owner that is doing everything within his power to ensure that the Anaheim Angels are a great team and are great to their fans.