We’ve got this week off for spring break so I took Sam, Julian and Cameron to Busch Gardens in Tampa. It’s a bit strange seeing beer all around at an amusement park. The kids are getting drunk off of Dippin’ Dots and cotton candy while the parents are getting drunk off of Budweiser, Busch and Michelob.

Overall the park was okay. They had about three interesting roller coasters but the lines were too long to wait. We watched a bird show and “Pirates 4D” with Leslie Nielsen. The 4th D is water dropping on you imitating bird crap and your seatbacks vibrating like bees. The atmosphere of the park was the best part. They did a good job of incorporating a lot of animals and wildlife features. The layout sucked by the way, it’s one huge circle so you have to go all the way around to get back to the front.

They’re really adament about not feeding the seagulls.

Apparently not enough people were heeding the first sign so they had to reiterate.

I’ve always wanted to get the song list from the Johnny Rockets jukeboxes. I never called their corporate offices a few months back but they were unable to supply me with one. Well on Saturday I took the time to write the entire list down. The following is the downtown Denver Johnny Rockets jukebox list in the exact order they appear. I’ve also made an iTunes playlist but it is missing 12 songs.

Expressway To Your Heart - Soul Survivors
Walk - Don’t Run - The Ventures
Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison
Margaritaville - Jimmy Buffett
Next Door To An Angel - Neil Sedaka
Then He Kissed Me - The Crystals
Jimmy Mack - Martha and the Vandellas
La Bomba - Ritchie Valens
Turn Turn Turn - The Byrds
All I Have To Do Is Dream - The Everly Brothers
Mrs. Robinson - Simon and Garfunkel
I Can’t Get Next To You - The Temptations
Chantilly Lace - Big Bopper
Up On The Roof - The Drifters
Baby, I Need Your Lovin’ - Four Tops
Alley Oop - Hollywood Argyles
Roll Over Beethoven - Chuck Berry
Da Doo Ron Ron - The Crystals
I Got You (I Feel Good) - James Brown
Joy To The World - Three Dog Night
No Particular Place To Go - Chuck Berry
Twistin’ The Night Away - Sam Cooke
Heat Wave - Martha and the Vandellas
Tell Him - Exciters
Don’t Be Cruel - Elvis Presley
Think - Aretha Franklin
Baby Love - Diana Ross and the Supremes
Heard It Through The Grapevine - Gladys Knight and the Pips
Will You Love Me Tomorrow - The Shirelles
Wild Thing - The Troggs
Walk Like A Man - The Four Seasons
Little Old Lady From Pasadena - Jan and Dean
Hello Mary Lou - Ricky Nelson
Calendar Girl - Neil Sedaka
Rave On - Buddy Holly
I Got You Babe - Sonny and Cher
Kind Of A Drag - Buckinghams
Hey Baby - Bruce Channel
Everyday - Buddy Holly
Tequila Sunrise - Eagles
Ain’t That A Shame - Fats Domino
I Can’t Help Myself - Four Tops
Working My Way Back To You - The Four Seasons
Lollipop - The Chordettes
Wake Up Little Susie - The Everly Brothers
You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling - Righteous Brothers
Chapel Of Love - Dixie Cups
Dock Of The Bay - Otis Redding
Happy Together - The Turtles
Wipe Out - The Surfaris
Barbara Ann - The Beach Boys
How Sweet It Is - James Taylor
I’m Into Something Good - Herman’s Hermits
Sh-Boom - The Crew Cuts
Copacabana At The Copa - Barry Manilow
Cheeseburger In Paradise - Jimmy Buffett
Louie Louie - The Kingsman
Little Darlin’ - The Diamonds
The Wanderer - Dion and the Belmonts
Little Duece Coupe - The Beach Boys
Night Fever - Bee Gees
Do Wah Diddy - Manfred Mann
All Shook Up - Elvis Presley
At The Hop - Danny and the Juniors
Fun, Fun, Fun - The Beach Boys
Locomotion - Little Eva
Stray Cat Strut - Stray Cats
Oh, Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison
Respect - Aretha Franklin
Splish Splash - Bobby Darin
Do You Believe In Magic - Lovin’ Spoonful
Take Good Care Of My Baby - Bobby Vee
Ain’t Too Proud To Beg - Temptations
She’s Some Kind Of Wonderful - Grand Funk
Get Down Tonight- KC and the Sunshine Band
Cupid - Sam Cooke
Runaway - Del Shannon
Higher and Higher - Jackie Wilson
Leader Of The Pack - The Shangri-Las
Duke Of Earl - Gene Chandler
Good Lovin’ - Rascals
Tossin’ And Turnin’ - Bobby Lewis
He’s A Rebel - The Crystals
Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love - Barry White
Oh, What a Night - Dells
Come Go With Me - The Dell-Vikings
One Fine Day - The Chiffons
Book Of Love - The Monotones
Big Girls Don’t Cry - The Four Seasons
Heartbreak Hotel - Elvis Presley
The Twist - Chubby Checker
Spooky - Classics IV
Stop! In The Name Of Love - Diana Ross and the Supremes
Johnny B Goode - Chuck Berry
One Of These Nights - Eagles
Last Dance - Donna Summer
Stayin’ Alive - Bee Gees
Tequila - The Champs
Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag - James Brown
Hit The Road Jack - Ray Charles

Geocaching: I’ve had requests from both Jeff and Candice to go geocaching. I want to get a better handheld GPS. The one I have now works fine it’s just a bit cumbersome.

Potlucks: I want to attend and throw potlucks. I think we could have a lot of fun and get really creative and inventive with this. I don’t think I’ve ever actually cooked and item for a potluck.

Food Review Panel: I mentioned this to Ian and Max but I’d like to gather a list of all specific restaurants i.e. Mexican, BBQ, Buffets, etc. and review them. We would have an exact method to rate taste, quality, decor, service, etc. From there we will compose a list of all the highest rated eateries in each category.

Vasona BBQ: We need to have a barbecue a Vasona with a softball game. We’d have to get at least 20 people but I don’t think that should be a problem.

Running the Almaden Lake Trail: Lance and I will do this one together. Right buddy?

Biking San Francisco: Max is fanatical about this. He’s told me that he already has routes worked out. I need to borrow a bike. How would we get there and back, Caltrains?

Skydiving: I really want to go skydiving. I’ve always wanted to but never gotten around to it. Does anyone want to come with? I think they have a drop zone in Gilroy.

Sabercats: Hell yeah. Front row. We’ve got to do this again.

San Jose Grand Prix: I wanted to go last year but I didn’t get around to it. I think it’s July 29th. It will be a lot of fun.

Great America & Boardwalk: I haven’t been to either in like 4 years. I want to spend a whole day at Great America. I miss being a kid and running around all crazy like. We could spend a whole day in Santa Cruz as well.

Ah, I miss summer. This one is going to be the best ever. I’m going to make sure of that. Keep your calendars wide open because we are going to do so much in just a couple of months.

I’ve added a bunch of new photos to Flickr. Click on the photos below to see the full sets.

Christmas Set

Aspen Set

Roadtrip Set

Did anyone see the guy the other night who turned down $76,000 and ended up with $8? His daughter was like “I told him not to. I told him” when he picked case #5. The next girl on the show just played it horribly and walked away with $50.

I’m addicted to this show. How can it be so entertaining to watch people opening suitcases for an hour. It would be so fun to be on. I would rock it.

NPR has a cool story on the decision making of the contestants. You can also play a flash version of the game here.

Last night I’m lying in bed just about to start up season 6 episode 14 of Friends, you know the one where Chandler can’t cry, when I hear Sam walking around upstairs. This is highly unusual for 10:30 PM. So I’m thinking “What’s going on?” All of a sudden there’s a knock at my door. Sam comes in and tells me there is some guy at the front door that’s pissed about some bear. Does he mean me?

So I get my PJs on and run upstairs. It’s our neighbor to the right. He looks a little ticked off. Seems the trash guys left our bin unlatched and the bears are no longer hibernating. Bad thing. See I just went through our refrigerator and pantry and threw out all of our food that would go bad or stale, which was quite a lot. There was trash strewn about everywhere including the guy’s yard.

Anyways, our irate neighbor commences to tell me about Fat Albert the 450 pound bear that frequently walks between our two houses. He explains how if a bear that size leans on his front door the bear will be in his house…and how he has a little dog and a wife inside…and about safety…and how he’s already had the police come out…and how they shone their flashlights…and…and…and. He’s an incessant talker. All I can think of is “Damn, I’ve got to clean all this crap up right now,” but the guy won’t stop yapping.

The trash guys have been leaving our bin unlatched all winter long but it never occurred to me to lock it up because the bears were never around. Obviously it’s my fault so I run downstairs throw on my shoes and grab a trash can to clean up the mess. Apparently Fat Albert dragged one of the bags about 50 yards up the guy’s stairs and onto his front porch. Funny thing was that there was a lot less trash than I threw away. Looks like our buddy bear here is fond of shredded wheat cereal, frozen strawberries, hot dogs, Cheez-Its, bread and pizza among other things.

So its pitch black, 25 degrees out, I’m in red pajamas, a t-shirt and converse cleaning up trash from my neighbor’s yard, all the while being scared shitless by any sound coming from the bushes thinking that Fat Albert is going to tear me to bits. His little dog is yelping its head off and my hands are sticky with hot dog juice and ice cream. All I can say is good last night in Aspen.

Today I was able to pick up “The Golden Apples of the Sun” by Ray Bradbury, “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Of Mice And Men” by John Steinbeck, “Utopia” by Thomas More, “The Phantom of the Opera” by Gaston Leroux and “Famous American Speeches” which includes Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural speech, Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Susan B. Anthony on women’s right to vote, and J.F.K.’s inaugural speech among others. Between the local thrift store and the Pitkin County Library all six cost me a whopping $1.00. Talk about a steal!

Dreyer’s Ice Cream ContestDreyer’s is giving away 1,500 neighborhood ice cream block parties. The parties consist of door-step delivery of Twelve (12) cartons of Dreyer’s Slow Churned Light ice cream ($200.00 ARV) and one (1) “Party In A Box” (napkins, ice cream scoops, spoons, name tags, disposable camera, etc.) ($150.00 ARV). The Total Retail Value for each prizewinner is $350.00.

You must submit a 350 or less word entry of why your neighborhood deserves the ice cream party. The judging is based on the following criteria:

* Originality/Creativity 50%
* Enthusiasm 25%
* What makes your neighborhood special 25%

Let’s hope for a delicious Dreyer’s ice cream block party. The winners are picked on or around June 6th. Below you will find my entry.

What better way to bring a community together than 12 cartons of Dreyer’s Slow Churned Light ice cream. Just the thought, the possibility, nay, the hope of such grand treasures has already brought the neighborhood closer. Ours is one of beauty, friendship and character like no other. I’m hard pressed to think of anyone else better deserving. We will celebrate our diversities, our differences, our similarities all over a bowl of delicious Dreyer’s ice cream.

I can imagine it now. It’s mid-August, it’s a perfect 85 degrees. Beautiful white clouds spot the perfectly blue sky. Children scream with anticipation while playing tag to hurry the time up. As the tables are set and ice cream is laid out in endless rows the neighborhood comes to life. The hundreds gathered have come to the party with smiles already plastered on their faces. What better way to start a jamboree? Stories of the neighborhood fill the avenue only to be interrupted by laughter.

Individuals from all backgrounds and of all ages will become closer friends. Not only for one day but for years to come. In an area as fast paced as Silicon Valley we often need reminders to slow down. Although we are all friendly with each other we rarely take the time to really get to know one another. This event will give us that opportunity.

To take an example from you as you’ve blended Girl Scouts Samoas Cookies with Slow Churned Grand Light Ice Cream, I would like to take this opportunity to blend together my neighborhood. What better description than slow churned? This will begin a process in the community which will be described forever as the slow churning of our neighborhood.

I thank you for giving me inspiration to bring myself closer with the people who live nearest me. A neighborhood is more than just houses and families. It is shared activities, ideas and most importantly lives. You have reminded me that we must consistently work to improve and better our environment. Long after the houses have been built we must continue to build our community.

Wow, I just finished reading “Angels & Demons” by Dan Brown and I think I may have liked it more than “The Da Vinci Code.” I like the premise of “Angels & Demons” more. I won’t give either away if you haven’t read them but I highly recommend them both. I read “Deception Point” last year and enjoyed it as well, though not to the same degree. I’m going to start “Digital Fortress” this evening.

It’s truly amazing to me how an individual (Dan Brown) can research and write such books. They are so thoroughly thought out and devised. It’s incredible. I am looking forward to “The Da Vinci Code” movie on May 19th and really hope that they produce “Angels & Demons” as a film as well.

I read “Bleachers” by John Grisham last week. It was very sweet and a very quick easy read. If you want to kill a plane flight I would pick this up just before hand.

I also recently read “The Little Book That Beats the Market” by Joel Greenblatt. If you’d like to know how to save $1 million in the next 17 years read this book. It’s explains in simple terms how anyone can achieve this. I plan to follow his guideline and make my million.

Anyone have other good reads they recommend?

After reading “Fast Food Nation,” I went on to read “Fat Land” by Greg Critser. Below I’ve compiled a list of the more interesting quotes. Really read these, don’t gloss over them. They are quite astonishing if you realize the implications.

“A serving of McDonald’s french fries had ballooned from 200 calories (1960): to the present 610. In fact, everything on the menu had exploded in size. What was once a 590-calorie McDonald’s meal was now 1550 calories. By 1999 heavy users people who eat fast food more than twenty times a month accounted for $66 billion of the $110 billion spent on fast food.” pg. 28

“The single most telling statistic came from the USDA. We calculate that if food away from home had the same average nutritional densities as food at home: Americans would have consumed 197 fewer calories per day. Put another way, that’s an extra pounds worth of energy every twenty days.” pg. 33

“Between 1989 and 1994 consumption of soft drinks by kids soared. The USDA estimated that the proportion of adolescent boys and girls consuming soft drinks on any given day increased by 74 percent and 65 percent, respectively.” pg. 49

“The firm estimates that about 30 percent of young women in the United States wear a size 14 or bigger.” pg. 60

“The risk of death increased by two percent for each pound of excess weight for ages 50 to 62, and by one percent per extra pound for ages 30 to 49.” pg. 99

“The most important risk factor for type 2 diabetes was the body mass index. Even a body mass index at the high end of the normal range was associated with a substantially higher risk [than a lower body mass]. More than 61 percent of all cases could be directly attributed to overweight.” pg. 107

“By the mid-1990s the consequences of boundary-less America were everywhere apparent. Physicians in inner-city hospitals were seeing unprecedented numbers of children with type 2 diabetes. (Until then type 2 had been a disease seen almost exclusively in adults.)” pg. 109

“By 1993, 41 percent of all Saturday morning kid show ads were for high-fat foods.” pg. 114

“A boy who never ate at a fast-food restaurant during the school week averaged a daily calorie count of 1952; while those who ate fast food three times or more a week (one fifth of the studied) consumed on amazing 2752 calories a day.” pg. 115

“See, the idea is to make the store accessible, easy to get into and out of from the street, but just a tad away from the, eh, mainstream so as to make sure customers are pre-sold and very intent before they get here. We want them intent to get at least a dozen before they even think of coming in.” pg. 128

“In 1992, for example, most pediatric diabetes centers in the United States reported only 2 to 4 percent of their diabetes patients as type 2. Two years later that figure jumped to 16 percent of new cases. By 1999 the figure in some parts of the country would zoom to nearly 45 percent of new cases.” pg. 133

“The calories from just one extra soft drink a day gave a child a 60 percent greater chance of becoming obese. One could even link specific amounts of soda to weight gain. Each daily drink added .18 points to a child’s body mass index.” pg. 140

“There are, first and foremost, the premature deaths of more than 280,000 Americans every year, the figure the American Medical Association now believes reflects the number of obesity related mortalities. There is the $100 billion annual price tag for the care and treatment of diabetics, the majority of new cases being a direct result of excess weight.” pg. 147

“They found that a kindergarten BMI was highly predictive of obesity at later dates. A child with a low kindergarten BMI of 16.5, for example, would have only a 21 percent chance of becoming obese by fifth grade. While a kindergartner with a BMI of 23.7 would have a 91 percent probability of becoming obese.” pg. 164

“In 1993 the ever-up-for-sale Louisiana legislature halved its existing soft drink tax in return for Coca-Cola’s pledge to build a new bottling plant, then repealed it entirely in return for Coke building a bigger plant. At about the same time in Maryland, legislators caved in to threats from the Frito-Lay corporation not to erect a new plant there and repealed the state’s snack food tax.” pg. 174