One of my favorites: Viva Madrid

Tonight we went with the "Link Crew" to Claremont to socialize and bid some more fond farewells to summer. I like Aaron's coworkers and he likes it when I can actually make it to hang out. And I like it when I'm not too tired or insecure or any combination of the two. ;) Meaning, I like to seize those opportunities. Even when I am feeling tired and/or insecure, I still find myself having fun with the English department from EHS. And I assume that since this was a Link thing that not everyone there was English, but you get the point. We went to the best restaurant. I talk about it often, but I've never blogged about it, so here you go.

If you have not done yourself a favor in a while, go to Viva Madrid in downtown Claremont. Okay, so maybe it's only a favor if you truly enjoy garlic and flavorful food. This place is my favorite restaurant, hands down. It has awesome ambiance, the food is delectable and the Sangria is amazing. In moderation, of course. ;)

It takes a little bit of preparation, so you either want to read up here or go with someone who is experienced. Unless you're feeling adventurous. First and foremost, unless you get there early (as in, 5pm when they open), expect a wait. And expect for the whole experience to take some time. The food is very fresh and everything comes out at different times.

Once you decide you're okay with that, you're going to go to Claremont and park near Rhino Records. Between Rhino and Starbucks, you will see an hallway that looks like this:

When you go down that hallway, to the right, you will see the entrance to Viva Madrid. The wall is red. There are white Christmas lights hanging in the windows. There is faux front entrance shrubbery. There are old chairs mismatched with old tables, and even a church pew, out in the waiting area. If you look inside, you will see a mishmash of tables and chairs, paintings, ceramics, garlic hanging from the walls... it sounds so chintzy now that I'm writing about it, but it really is a cool place.

From there, you'll be seated, hopefully in a reasonable amount of time. Be warned that in most cases if they tell you 30 minutes, it's really 60. Sad, but true. You will want to focus your energy on deciding what "tapas" you want. I highly recommend the Jamon y Queso (two different types of ham, two different types of cheese, black olives, green olives, bread, oil & vinegar), as well as the asparagus with ham, the bread with tomatoes and garlic, and the artichoke. For those sweet toothed friends I also recommend the steamed strawberries with cheese, which is on the special menu. I've had some people say it's too sweet to eat with dinner, but I love it. If you order just those tapas, I don't see why two people should not leave feeling full. You might want to order a main dish to share, depending on your need for actually having a full plate in front of you. But you could really stuff yourselves on tapas and enjoy the ambiance and if you're really lucky, you may even get to experience the guitarist who perches up in the balcony that appears to be faux. ;)

I don't get many opportunities to go, but I love it. And if I love it, there's a good chance you'll at least like it.

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Isn't it ironic? A little too ironic.

The Beat Rolls On

Flipside is currently finishing out a 6-week adventure called Summer Hangouts. Normally, during the year, there are Growth Groups (aka Bible Studies) that meet and are broken down according to age, life stage, etc. But with the summer season and everyone being in and out on vacation and with kids being out of school, it gets to be challenging to keep an intense Bible study going.

So for the summer, we opted to try offering various service opportunities. For instance, one group was doing a Bible study for women at a recovery center. Another was going out and handing out food and hanging out with the homeless in Ontario. Another was helping to distribute food at a local food bank. I helped lead what is called The Closet, which basically gives out free clothing once a month on a first-come, first-served basis. We've been doing a lot of folding clothes, figuring out what size and gender they are, and I've been able to get to know a few people from our church. It's really easy to get into the routine of seeing certain people on Sundays as a "hi-bye" friend, so it's nice to get a little bit deeper. I love people. :)

And Aaron got to go help out with our version of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The city of Rancho Cucamonga has a list of several homes that have code violations and are facing legal action if they don't fix the problems. Some of these people are disabled, or elderly, or just don't have the financial resources to do simple repairs themselves. I'm sure it's a combination of all of the above that really gets them into that place. Whatever the case may be, it's been cool to be able to help out in that way.

We are trying to find the balance as a couple, as a family... as far as how much time we spend on ourselves and how much time we spend with our family and how much time we spend giving to others. It's difficult, and we're learning, but it's good to have a place like this where we'll be able to look back and see how things have changed over time.

Aaron's Birthday: Part 2

For Aaron's actual birthday, we pretty much just celebrated the whole day. In the morning, I took him for his favorite breakfast at Flo's #2 in Chino. They have the best biscuits and gravy. Much better than I could have made at home, that's for sure. ;) Plus this way I didn't have to clean up before going to work since we did have company coming later that night.

I worked during the day, and Aaron went to help some guys paint at a friend's house who has a baby on the way. It was really quiet in the office, and Alisha basically told me to go home early. So I did, but not until 4:15. :p I came home and it was pretty much a frenzy to bake a cake and get things picked up at home.

Once the cake was baked and out of the pan, I did the best I could to "gussy-up" and we headed down to Chino to meet the Calocas at their house so we could go to dinner. We had to wait a while for Ashley to get home, and apparently Oscar got stuck at work for a little while, too. Eventually everyone made it to Johnny Carino's, as in, Oscar, Rosanna, Natalie, Ashley, and her friend, Tiffany. The food was great (as usual). That is one of my favorite restaurants, so I was not disappointed at all when Aaron said that was where he wanted to go.

After dinner, we had to rush home a bit because some friends were coming over for cake and ice cream. We got home around 9:15 and the McCool's were here waiting for us and Lori & Ryan were not far away. And leave it to me to be frosting the cake as the guests are coming in, and then leaving to get ice cream while Aaron had to entertain. Such is life.

We had a nice time chatting with everyone, it was small enough that we weren't cramped in our apartment, but there were enough people that the conversation was interesting. ;)

Finally Ryan harassed me into bringing out the cake, and we did the whole shabang - singing and all. Only, at first, when we sang, Aaron accidentally started it himself and he was real awkward about it, so here's a picture of that, too. Then we sang a second time to make him feel better. Everyone left around midnight and we were exhausted. But I had planned a day of rest for us on Saturday, so we survived.

Happy 28th, Aaron!

Aaron's Birthday: Part 1

As part of a clever ruse to cover up Aaron's birthday gift, which was taking us to a Dodgers-Giants game, my parents brought over our patio table. Which was part of our anniversary gift. We had gone shopping for the furniture a few weeks ago, and found chairs at Ikea, but no table. We looked everywhere. My dad is pretty good at handiwork, and the chairs are wood, so I asked if he would try making a table. It took a few weeks to construct and get the stain right, so they brought it over on Thursday afternoon. I was hoping it would throw Aaron off the trail, and it did. :) He was really confused about why they were there.

I had talked my dad into taking me and Aaron to the Dodgers-Giants game on Thursday to celebrate Aaron's birthday (which was Friday). I have known about this plan since June 16th... which is unheard of for me. It was fun to have something to tease him with for a bit. Eventually I found out what his guesses were, and he guessed it on the first try - but I covered it well. So he was still surprised and quite perplexed when my parents showed up here on Thursday evening. The pieces didn't really fit together until he opened his gift, which had the tickets inside, and even then not until he saw that they were tickets to the Giants game - when he realized we were going that night.

We headed out and made our traditional stop at Phillipe's. Home of the world's best beef dip sandwich. Their food really is good, and much less expensive than eating at the stadium. Plus they have quirky things like lemonade and iced tea for 55 cents, or you can just buy a hard-boiled egg by itself, the soda is in cans, etc. And they have awesome (and cheap) coffee. Aaron and I had coffee and lemon meringue pie for desert. :) In case you have no idea what I'm talking about with this whole "Phillipe's" business, take a look:


Then we made our way over to Chavez Ravine and waited with the masses in line to get our Russell Martin bobbleheads. Score! While we were in the car waiting to park, Aaron and I took a moment to think about what faces we would make if Barry Bonds hit his stupid homerun at our stadium. Aaron looked real scary, I just looked kinda confused and irritated. By the way, you can thank our new Samsung Sync camera phones for bringing you this picture-filled post. :)

I'm a very competitive person. So it really chaps my hide when the Dodgers don't step it up, especially on the rare occasions I get to go see them play. But I love those dramatic moments... bases loaded, great hitter comes up to bat (ie Nomar, Kent, Martin). It's just so awesome to have 50,000+ people on their feet, most of them cheering for the Dodgers... chanting, yelling, stomping. It's seriously why I love going to games. That and the garlic fries. ;) Even though we never pulled the game out of that downward spiral, we still got lots of hope-filled moments and loud cheers going. That's always fun. I took several videos with my phone, hoping to catch an awesome grand-slam moment, which, of course, didn't happen. Either way, the video is a glimpse of how awesome that sound is:

But there's a tragic downside to that. More often than not, especially with the Dodgers, apparently, you're going to be let down in those clutch moments. Runners in scoring position just wasted. This game was pretty pathetic when you look at the stats. I think when all was said and done, we had 13 hits and scored 2 runs. One of which was WALKED IN. Oh man. It's games like that that give my friends who are Angels fans room to talk crap about my boys in blue. And why Aaron always reminds me not to get my hopes up when it comes to the postseason. *sigh*

There was also a chance that Bonds might hit his 755th (fraudulent) homerun. And that redeemed the game a bit as well. Aaron was ready to throw the ball back if he caught it, in which case, my mom and I had a plan to tackle him because that would be worth some serious cash. Ha. Every time he was up to bat, we booed so loudly. It was awesome. And at one point pretty much the whole crowd started chanting "steroids", a la the tone which Aaron described to me they used to use to chant against Daryl Strawberry back in the day. I took a video with my cell phone, I was a little late on the draw - so this wasn't the booing when he came up, which was the loudest. It's just booing as he was swinging. And if you look accross the stadium you can see all of the flashes of those so-called haters trying to get a picture of that record-tying homerun. :PDon't get me wrong, I don't hate Barry Bonds - but it's just not right that someone who is so obviously using steroids is taking a record like that from someone who actually earned it and worked for it. Hopefully A-Rod will smash his record quickly.

We stayed until the bitter end. That end being a 4-2 loss. We stopped at McDonald's in Covina on the way home for some comfort food - aka $1 sundaes. At which point my dad realized that his wallet had fallen out of his back pocket at the stadium. :( We tried calling all kinds of phone numbers to see if we could get a live person on the phone to no avail. Sorry, Dad.

That was the kick-off of Aaron's birthday celebration. Part 2 to follow...

Ebb & Flow

Serve Day has ended.

It was a learning experience. I think the thing that made it the most difficult was the intensity of the communication... I sometimes felt as though I was talking to so many people about so many different issues that I couldn't keep track of who needed what or who I had talked to about their project, or being at a meeting in Costa Mesa, or... you name it. At one time I had a pretty good memory - I could remember exact conversations, details, dates, etc. I suppose with not doing theatre anymore and thereby not memorizing scripts anymore I'm not putting that muscle to use.

Aaron and I actually didn't do one of the various Serve Day projects. We opted, instead, to take the huge binder I had put together with project information and maps and go driving around the Inland Empire, finding people doing projects and handing out ice cold water and checking on any supplies they needed. We also got some granola bars in case anyone had forgotten to eat breakfast. :) Much to my surprise, most project leaders were a step ahead of us on that side. But there was one project, the car wash at Albertson's in Upland, who had almost run out of water. So they were grateful and we were able to give them a whole case of water.

Then we had planned to head down to San Antonio park, where there was a homeless BBQ going on to give out the last of the water. Wouldn't you know we passed the street I had intended for us to turn on to get down to the park, and we ended up on Grove:

Which is near where I used to live in some apartments on 9th street. We saw day laborers there all the time. And sure enough, they were waiting to be picked up on this hot July afternoon. So we drove up and down the street and gave them water and granola bars. They were extremely grateful, and I think a bit surprised that people stopped just to give them some water... huh, just like it says in Matthew 25, right?

37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

And after that, I recalled that we saw some homeless people on Mountain, so we headed back over there and gave out the last of our water and granola bars. I felt a little bit guilty that we hadn't done an official project, but the day laborers made it all worth it. I think we could easily incorporate that into the Mobile Closet and send out a team to go hand out water to them on the same day we go hand out clothing & toiletries to the homeless in Ontario.

Hopefully next year I will either have someone else be the Anchor for Serve Day, or I will just be able to handle the workload better as I hope to grow into my role in ministry. I don't regret taking it on, it's just that the inner perfectionist wishes I had done a better job with it.

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.

Michael J. Fox (1961 - ), quoted by Lorne A. Adrain in 'The Most Important Thing I Know'