Monday, January 31, 2011

Blogging On The Go...

I'm trying out a new way of blogging, this entry is being sent in from my phone. I'm not home right now because today is Monday Funday!! On Mondays when Caroline and Charlotte are visiting we go out for fun before they have to leave. We have visited The Zoo, The Aviary, The Children's Museum, and other fun places. Today we don't have a lot of time for a fun adventure so we went to lunch at McDonald's and the girls are playing in the play place. They are the only kids here and they are having a blast exploring the play place all on their own.

I hope this blog entry is posting ok, and I hope the attached picture works correctly. If it does perhaps I can do some more Blogging On The Go!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Friday, January 28, 2011

THE BIG 9-0

It's an important weekend for the Kraemer Family. This Saturday we will be celebrating my Pap's 90th birthday. If you've ever met him you would probably be very surprised to hear he is about to be in "his 91st year." He still manages to drive himself to most places he goes to and he lives on his own. He gets around very well on his own, and once a month at HofbrÀuhaus Keg Tapping you may see him climbing up on the bench singing along with everyone else. Also when the snow gets too bad, you may find him up on the roof cleaning it off. Saturday afternoon we will be celebrating this milestone with a German themed surprise party. He has been told there is a party for my cousin's 10th birthday, but the party is actually all for him. Apparently he has been thinking something is up and telling some people he thinks the party will be for him too, but some well done answers/excuses/fibs may have driven off that train of thought.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAP!!
HERE'S TO MANY MORE YEARS OF YOU GOING AND GOING AND GOING...

Thursday, January 27, 2011

My Love of Dinosaurs

While trying to figure out what to write about today, Erica suggested I write about dinosaurs. I can't believe I didn't think of writing about them before. Dinosaurs are my absolute favorite topic on Earth. Ever since I was a little boy I can remember loving dinosaurs. I had dinosaur toys and books, I couldn't get enough of them. I loved watching television shows and movies about dinosaurs. The Land Before Time was my absolute favorite movie, and I own a copy of it on d.v.d. now. My favorite movie (as many of you already know) is Jurassic Park (pictured left), and I frequently refer to it as the greatest trilogy of all time.

I have memories in Kindergarten of kids talking about what they want to be when they grow up, and while most of them said things like teacher, or police officer, my answer was always paleontologist (pictured right). I don't remember how old I was, but during my grade school years, my dad and I went on a fossil dig as part of a class through the Carnegie Museum. It was awesome to go and dig up some real fossils from prehistoric aquatic creatures.

Even now as what many may refer to as an adult, I still love dinosaurs. I adore going to museums and seeing the dinosaur exhibits, and am definitely spoiled to have one of the best dinosaur exhibits here in Pittsburgh. My friends all know how excited I get when I see dinosaurs places, like the Jurassic Park T-Rex at the Toys-R-Us in Times Square (pictured left). Erica and I were at Sam's club and I saw a book about dinosaurs. I stopped a looked through this book for about 10 minutes, while Erica teased me for being distracted by dinosaurs. I fell in love with this book, it has information on over 50 dinosaurs. The book was also new, and there has been a lot of new information about dinosaurs found since I last read about them. I didn't buy the book at Sam's but I did go home and order it on Amazon (linked below). A few days later I got my book in the mail and right away started reading. I love it!! The book is amazing and I am so happy that I can continue to learn more about my favorite topic!
Also I am very happy to see that Caroline loves dinosaurs. She is an avid fan of Dinosaur Train (pictured left) on PBS Kids. Which is a fantastic show teaching kids about dinosaurs. She can name all kinds of different types of dinosaurs, and she definitely knows more about them than I did at her age, she probably knows more about them than I know now! When Erica and I were in Washington D.C. we bought Caroline a fossil kit where you dug out bones of a triceratops and then pieced them together to make a skeleton model. We also bought Charlotte a stuffed toy triceratops which has since been named "Dino (with a long "I" sound not like the Flintstones pet)" and it travels everywhere with her. It's awesome to see them take an interest in something I loved so much, and I can't wait for Caroline to come visit so we can read my new dinosaur book together.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Restaurants I Like and Dislike

I've reviewed three restaurants already and a few people have said to me "Dave you like every restaurant you review!" While I did say I disliked the Noblestown Road Wendy's I did like Wendy's as a whole so there has been a "Like" in every review thus far. So this week I decided I will write about a restaurant I dislike. It took me awhile to figure out what I would write about, I actually didn't figure it out until I started typing this paragraph. However, one restaurant did come to me and today I will be writing about why I dislike... (you can bang your hands on your desk/table/lap here if you wish to make a drum roll)...
RUBY TUESDAY!
Ruby Tuesday is not just an excellent song by The Rolling Stones (pictured right), it is also a restaurant that specializes in burgers, much like Max and Erma's and Red Robin. Now I've only been to Ruby Tuesday on a few occasions, but what I've witnessed there has made me dislike this restaurant. Jim and I even gave the restaurant a nickname "Racist Tuesday." This nickname pretty much explains why I dislike the restaurant; the service there was racist. Now I don't mean a waitress came up to us and said, "What can I get for you cracka's?" Although I may not have been completely surprised if that's how it happened.

James and I visited Ruby Tuesday on a few occasions whilst we lived in Washington D.C. for our semester at American University. When we visited we had both good and bad experiences, and also noticed other patrons of the restaurant having good and bad experiences. After a couple visits we realized a connection between the good experiences and the bad experiences both that we had, and we witnessed others having. The service seemed only to be good when your waiter/waitress had the same skin color as you. When James and I (both being white) had a white waitress the service was good. When we had a black waitress the service was terrible (pictured left is a dissatisfied hungry customer, that I found on Google images, who apparently was not the same race as his server). Now before you start thinking "well Dave you are just saying black people are terrible waitresses" STOP THAT! That isn't what I'm saying, let me finish. At the same time we were having excellent service from our white waitress, a black customer was complaining (and rightfully so) about the terrible service he received from her. We witnessed how she repeatedly came back to our table to check on us, refill our drinks, and update us on our order status. She never went to his table, his drink lay empty, and his food seemed to take twice as long as our meals to be ready.

On the flip side of this argument we had absolutely terrible service when our waitress was black. She took forever to come get our orders, bring our drinks, and bring out our meals. We only got refills once because we asked her specifically for them after she brought out our meals. She ignored our attempts to get her attention. All the while, she was giving excellent service to the black family just a few tables away.
The food at Ruby Tuesday is actually quite good, but because of the racist service roulette you play whenever you enter the restaurant this one has to go into the "Restaurants I Dislike" category. These are probably just a few coincidences about service, but from what we witnessed the restaurant is racist (although an equal opportunity racist). We never saw any Asians or other races dine there, or working as waiters/waitresses, so we could not observe this with any other races. However, after these few experiences we decided not to go back to "Racist Tuesday" because we didn't want to gamble on if we would have a white waitress or not.

Ruby Tuesday on Urbanspoon

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Tale of Captain Castaway Cox

The following story is a reprint from my old forgotten Dead Journal. Labor Day weekend of 2007 a group of friends and I went to Ocean City Maryland for some fun in the sun. One of our friends had a bit too much to drink and went missing for awhile. She eventually found her way back home, but the details of her night were a major blur. This story was created using the very few small details we had from that night, and the holes were filled in with just some awesome and funny stuff that I think COULD have happened as well (kind of like filling in holes in dinosaur DNA with the DNA of a frog... or nothing like that at all, but I wanted to add in a Jurassic Park reference). The story is full of randomness and many inside jokes, some of which I don't even remember. I have left the original story pretty much untouched, adding pictures, and correcting just a few of the more prominent spelling and grammatical errors. The original Forward written by Captain Cox is left untouched and reprinted in its entirety. I hope you can enjoy this story for what it is even if you were not one of the vacationers present during its happening. So without further ado, here is my Dead Journal Post of "The Tale of Captain Castaway Cox"

Forward:
By: Captain Castaway Cox
"so i think that i captured and forced to sail the atlantic ocean with capt. hook and the croc ate my shoe but luckily i made it out with just a few scrapes on my knee and then i needed to chase the croc that has my shoe and ticks like a clock with capt. hook. But i wouldn't fight peter pan so peter saved me from hook and dropped me off in a remote part of ocean city in which jill was nice enough to direct me home because i was so confused becasue of my high seas adventure and believing in fairies so that i could fly back to our house."


The Tale of Captain Castaway Cox

Cox the F’n Ox was a young lass. She grew up in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. She was educated in the art of architecture. A subject she did so well in, she architectured a sandcastle so nice it won her a trip to Florida. These points are actually not relevant at all to this tale of Capt. Castaway Cox, but I thought I would share them to give a slight look into the past of this adventurous scurvy filled buccaneer.
It was Labor Day weekend of the year two thousand seven, Cox the F’n Ox and some of her mates were enjoying the holiday weekend in style at Ralph’s house in Ocean City, Maryland. They were partying hard (a little too hard if you ask some of the neighbors), and having a fantastic time. Saturday night some of the vacationers decided to have a night out on the town, Cox the F’n Ox was one of these vacationers. She went all out that night, a night that will forever be remembered as the journey of Captain Castaway Cox.
Cox and some friends went out to find a good time. They were led to a bar with a mysterious name. Something about the color blue, but the details on this are conflicting. While there she met a little silver fox. This little gray haired fellow (no real photo exists of this man so pictured right is a different small gray haired fellow) decided he would win the heart of Cox by buying her and her companions a pizza. So off the small soldier went into the wild and using all his cunning and bravery secured a pizza for the adventurous team of vacationers. Sadly the plan must have been flawed because he did not get the love he thought he was going to get from Cox the F’n Ox. While at this mysterious Blue club, a young man with a piercing below his lower lip fancied one of Cox’s fellow buccaneers. He fell in love with the first mate Schmitty. Schmitty was a bit taken by this fellow as well, and when he said he had to leave to go babysit he took the Captain and her first mate (together they were commonly referred to as Schmitts and Giggles), with him. Schmitts and Giggles went with this pierced warrior to the home where he was babysitting, and details begin to get sketchy. It is believed Captain Cox may have left the babysitting gig early in order to find some adventure of her own. Also some scholars believed that Schmitts and Giggles left together, only to have Schmitty attempt a mutiny by attacking Captain Cox and leaving her in the streets of the real OC (pictured right).
Captain Cox was alone had no idea where she was or how she got there. All she had with her was a cell phone and the spirit of a true adventurous swashbuckler. She set forth to find her way back to Ralph’s house, and would not let anything get in her way. This was Captain Castaway Cox, on her own, doing anything it took to try and make it home.
Our courageous young lass began by heading towards the ocean, because she figured, if she can find the ocean she may be able to sail to her destination. She got to the sea shore and commandeered a large Spanish Galleon (pictured left), and began sailing for Ralph’s house. While sailing, her ship came under attack and being the brilliant Captain she was Cox realized that without a crew or any types of weapons at all she was bound to lose this battle. So Cox did what any wise sea farer would do, she dove into the wild waters of the unforgiving Atleonard Ocean. Cox may have blacked out during this time, and washed up on shore, covered in barnacles and starfish, with seaweed tangled into her hair. The ocean’s unforgiving waves also may have smeared the makeup Captain Castaway Cox was wearing. When she came to on the shore, Cox looked up and saw the most beautiful sight she had ever laid her beer goggled eyes on, a gigantic, beautifully lit, ferris wheel. Captain Cox knew she must ride that ferris wheel because when she got to the top she would be able to see all of the glorious land of OC and find her way back to Ralph’s house. She climbed up out of the water, shook a few barnacles off then headed towards the amusement park.
When she arrived at the park she realized she stuck out like a sore thumb, being covered in clingy sea creatures and all, so she went to a little t shirt stand and stole a shirt that read FBI: FEMALE BODY INSPECTOR across the front. Then she decided all her adventuring at sea made her hungry so she purloined some cotton candy from the nearby distributor of the soft pillowy goodness. She made her way to the ferris wheel only to find out she needed tickets in order to get on. Cox had no tickets and no money because it all was washed away by the unforgiving Atleonard Ocean. So she devised a plan to get onto the ferris wheel. She walked up to the man allowing patrons on the amusement ride and told him to look the other way because Marc Summers of Double Dare fame (pictured below right) was walking down the boardwalk behind him. When he turned to look she snuck onto the ride. He turned back around to say she was full of it and Marc Summers of Double Dare fame was not there, only to find she was no longer there. He saw her on the ride, but it was already too late, as she snuck by to jump on, she pulled the lever to put the wheel in motion. She began her ascent into the heavens on the beautiful bright wheel. However her plan was flawed she had forgotten that the ride was a big circle and eventually she would be back down at the bottom where the carnie guy who did not see Marc Summers of Double Dare fame would be waiting for her. Sure enough the evil carnie kept the wheel going so she did not stop at the top, and did not see Ralph’s house. She was headed back down towards the carnie. She had to come up with a plan quick. She thought of one, it was a doozie. She hid under the seat in the ferris wheel and when her car got to the bottom the carnie stopped the ride. He went to inspect the car which now appeared empty. When he got up close Captain Cox pounced from under the seat, unhinged her jaw and swallowed him whole as if he was a large tray of lasagna. She then ran off into the night so other carnies would not be able to find her after swallowing their carnie friend.
While running down the street Cox realized running was too much hard work. So she decided to steal a car. She smashed a window and hot wired a Mitsubishi Gallant. She revved up the engine and started to drive, Captain Cox was still a bit intoxicated and somehow ended up driving her Mitsubishi Gallant right into the unforgiving Atleonard Ocean. Cox climbed from the wreckage and went and stole another car. This one was a Prius, she felt good driving a car more enviro-friendly. Sadly this car, like the Mitsubishi Gallant, also ended up in the unforgiving Atleonard Ocean. Captain Castaway Cox stole six more vehicles and somehow managed to drive each and every one of them into the unforgiving Atleonard Ocean. After the eighth car sank to the depths of the unforgiving Atleonard Ocean she finally gave up on driving back to Ralph’s house. Cox decided she would try something new.
She remembered that like all good pirate captains she had her cellular phone with her. She used it to call her best friend in the world Leonard, who luckily had freaky fridayed with Jenny and was pleasant to all who spoke with her. Leonard tried to find where Captain Castaway Cox was but little did she know that the gods were playing tricks on Cox. Every time Cox told her best friend Leonard where she was the vengeful gods of the unforgiving Atleonard Ocean would switch the street signs to say she was somewhere completely different. This made for a very confusing phone call between Captain Castaway and Leonard. She was wandering the streets trying to figure out where she was, but was unable to tell Leonard, because the street signs kept changing and no matter what direction or how far she walked, the next location she told Leonard made no sense. Captain Cox knew something must be done, she told Leonard she was headed towards then unforgiving Atleonard Ocean, but wound up at the bay, then she headed towards the bay and ended up at the unforgiving Atleonard Ocean. When she got there she was confronted by Neppy, the evil god of the unforgiving Atleonard Ocean.
Neppy (pictured right) said to her she should have died in the battle at sea, but she fled to fight another day. He was not going to allow her to return to Ralph’s house. Nobody who enters the depths of his unforgiving Atleonard Ocean should live to tell about it and he was going to take care of that. He threw his mighty trident at Captain Castaway Cox, and without even blinking an eye she made a single sweeping motion removing a single shoe and throwing it at the trident. The shoe hit the trident and exploded in a blaze of rainbow glory sending the trident back towards Neppy. It struck the evil god in the heart and he died instantly, exploding into millions of dead jellyfish pieces that looked like lost breast implants all over the beach.
Cox then got back on the phone with Leonard and was now able to give her an accurate description of where she was.Leonard guided the tired, battled warrior back to Ralph’s house. She pounded on the door and acted out quite rude towards the handsome young man who opened the door for her (pictured above is a rough drawing of what Capt. Cox looked like when showing up at the door). Little did he know of the adventures she had been through just to return to that door, but he eventually found out, just as the rest of the world did, that on that dark night Labor Day Weekend, Captain Castaway Cox had the greatest adventure in all of history.

THE END… or is it?