Who wants to go to a boring snooze fest of a dinner party and sit around and stare at the other guests, trying to make polite conversation without yawning over dessert? Not the Intrigue Family! We decided to gather up a couple of families with kids and have a casual, kid friendly afternoon and evening at our place. In that regard, we invited a couple of friends over. For the sake of anonymity, how about we call the first family George and Martha Washington, due to their Virginia/D.C. connections? (Yes, I know that D.C. wasn’t the capitol when Washington was POTUS, but it is named after him, so work with me.) The second family, we’ll call The Livingstones since they lived in Africa for a while. We also hosted a friend on leave from attending a school in Pakistan who we’ll call Ed, because…that’s not his name. With a combined half dozen kids, that rounded out the evening’s attendance.
I planned on keeping things simple, which is unusual for me. Stateside, I look at having people over for dinner as having a captive audience to try a new recipe and make a bunch of appetizers. Over here, I seem to have lost my cooking mojo, so I made pasta salad and decided to marinate and grill some chicken breasts. Since we didn’t bring our grill with us, I bought a one time use grill at Arpico Supercenter. That’s also where I did battle at the meat counter for the last of the boneless chicken breasts. Shopping over here is a lot of work, Fellow Adventurers.
Anyway, after we sat around enjoying each others’ company and some frosty adult beverages for a bit, it was time to fire up the grill. That was the first folly in our little dinner party. Once out of the package, it was apparent the thing was thinner than a single use aluminum pan. Hmm. It also included charcoal and “special igniting paper” and looked like it might hold two chicken breasts at a time. We all got a good laugh out of it as I sent The International Man of Intrigue outside to try to light it while I dodged scootering, biking, running and crawling children to get to the kitchen to fire up the oven as a Plan B. It’s a good thing there was a Plan B because the “special igniting paper” on the grill didn’t even light, let alone the charcoal. Into the oven went the chicken.
Thirty minutes later, the chicken was done and it was time to convince the house full of Little Explorers to stop moving for five seconds and at least eat a bite before running off to play again. About that time, it started raining. Good thing we went with Plan B—I don’t want to grill outside in a monsoon! Just as the grown ups started filling their plates, it happened. It started with Mrs. Livingstone and I putting chicken on our plates and saying, “Did you feel that mist coming down from the ceiling?” The next thing we knew, Mr. Livingstone and Mr. Washington had sprung into action, grabbing the “Waterfall Preparedness Kit” aka, buckets, (leftover from this crisis the other night)stacked in the corner and shoving them under the stream of water coming in from the skylight. All the gentlemen got the table and chairs out of the way and got buckets set up while we moved the Little Adventurers upstairs for movies and the grown ups into the family dining room to eat.
This was when the biggest tragedy of the evening struck: The chicken was bone dry. It tasted like sawdust with Italian seasoning on it. Ugh. Never mind that the steady stream from the roof had turned into a deluge, forcing Mr. Washington, Mr. Livingstone, The International Man of Intrigue, and Ed to empty 10 gallon buckets and 16 gallon tubs, lest they overflow and add to the lake forming on the tile floor of the formal dining room. The chicken was dry, people. Dry.
Despite that obstacle, dinner went on and soon enough it was time for dessert. The waterfall in the dining room had even turned back into a small stream. Perfect. Rich people pay big bucks for water features in their houses and we have one that everyone can enjoy over dessert. Then, just as I was brewing coffee and passing out water for tea, the power went out. Total darkness engulfed the house. Luckily, before we could even find flashlights to go out and fire up the generator, it was back on.
Once the power was on and dinner was finished, the Little Explorers all figured out that splashing in the dining room was oh, so much fun. The little Washington boy was even jealous that he didn’t have a waterfall and puddles in his dining room.
After everyone packed up and headed home to deal with their own ceiling drips, I put our Little Explorers to bed while The International Man of Intrigue finished bailing the water on the floor. While we did the dishes, we remarked that, even though it wasn’t your typical dinner party, it sure was funny.
(In all seriousness, as I post this, tornadoes are ripping through my home state of Kansas. I hope all my family and friends are safe and sound and not hosting a dinner party.)
Showing posts with label chicken ducks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chicken ducks. Show all posts
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
The Rest of the Road Trip
I’m sure you can barely remember my two most recent blog posts, since they weren’t that recent anymore. Sorry about that. We went on another trip (which I’m sure I’ll blog about at some point since it involved sea turtle hatchlings and was awesome). Anyway, to recap, we survived getting lost taking the scenic route and a trip to the elephant orphanage.
Rather than drag this trip out into thirty seven and a half more blog posts, I’m going to hit the highlights for you today. Someone also told me I’m not getting paid by the word, which probably means I should be a bit more brief. Then again, I’m not getting paid at all, so I guess it doesn’t really matter, unless any one of you Fellow Adventurers wants to send me a check. I promise not to spend it all on beer, but only because beer is cheap here.
Getting back to business, I’ll summarize some things. Our hotel in Kandy was awesome. It was back off the main road toward the mountain a bit and it was very much a part of the surroundings, almost like a hotel had grown out of the mountain.
We ventured out our first morning there to see Kandy’s main tourist attraction and the most important Buddhist holy site in all of Sri Lanka, The Temple of the Tooth. The temple holds the tooth of Buddha. The belief is that after the Buddha’s funeral pyre, some guy went and snatched a tooth, and, to make a long story short, during the 300’s AD, the tooth was brought to Sri Lanka for safekeeping. Interestingly, it was believed that whoever possessed the tooth was the rightful ruler of the country. True to belief, Kandy was the last home of the Sri Lankan kings. The temple itself was very interesting as well as super crowded. It happened to be a time when the reliquary holding the tooth was going to be displayed. Apparently they never display the actual tooth. Being there on a day you can see the reliquary and visiting the temple in general is supposed to give you good karma. After fighting the crowds in the main temple I was hoping that getting our karma recharged was worth the hassle. The monks also bathe the tooth once a week on Wednesday in some special water and then hand the water out to worshippers to take home because it is believed to have powerful curative properties. I wish I’d known that before our visit. I could not figure out why people were carrying what looked like dirty water home in bottles. Everyone in the temple also wanted to touch our kids, which The Little Explorers do not find endearing in the least.
There were some other interesting things about being around the Temple of the Tooth, like the crazy monkeys living in the area around the central pond. They have little fear of humans and beg for snacks and such. We even got to see a monkey fight. Big entertainment. Less entertaining and more frightening were the chicken ducks. These things were freaky. I swear, it was like a Frankenstein combination of a chicken and a duck. I’m not generally one to get freaked out about animals, but these things gave me the heeby jeebies. They were so frightening and weird I took some pictures to share with you. When I got home, I asked my brother-in-law, who is a bird watcher, about these freaks of nature. He told me they are Muscovy ducks, and are really neither ducks or chickens. Freaks of nature, indeed.
Tell me that's not horrifying.
Shudder. Freaky deaky.
After our time in Kandy, we headed to Nuwara Eliya, which is in the mountains of Sri Lanka and in the heart of tea country. For some reason we can’t figure out, it’s actually pronounced Nurellia, as if it’s all one word. Try to pronounce it as two words and native Sri Lankans will look at you like you have two heads and speak Pig Latin. Hey, I’m not the one who named it a name that is clearly two separate words. That’s all you, Sri Lankans. While there, we visited a tea plantation, which, in the interest of proving that the workers are no longer actually slaves, is now more politically correctly called a tea estate. I’m sure that doesn’t make much difference to the practically indentured servants who live and work there, but it might make us westerners feel a little less guilty about drinking tea, which I guess is the point. Human rights aside, it was actually very interesting. Did you know black tea and green tea are actually the same thing, only the black tea leaves are left to ferment for three days? You do now. Amelia Earhart was the most captivated with the process and was excited to get home and tell her Grandma, who likes to drink tea, all about the tea production process.
In Nuwara Eliya, every road seemed to lead us by the same really beautiful park. Each time we passed it, The Little Explorers would exclaim, “A not-broken playground! Can we go play at it Mama? Daddy, look! Can we please go to the not-broken playground?!” I guess that gives you an idea of what the playground was like, and what most of the playgrounds we find here in Sri Lanka are like in comparison. Finally, on our way out of town, we obliged the kids and stopped at the park. We immediately understood why this playground wasn’t broken. There was an admission charge to go into the park and garden. We once again confused the heck out of some Sri Lankans by asking for the resident admission fee, got that straightened out, and headed inside. We strolled leisurely through the park on the way to the playground. Upon reaching the playground, all three Little Explorers took off running gleefully and began playing on all the equipment, most of which was, indeed, not broken. Of course, all that fun came to a screeching halt when Gertrude Bell announced, “I have to poop, NOW.” (You didn’t think we could go an entire blog post without talking about poop, did you?!) The International Man of Intrigue agreed to take Gertrude Bell on a quest for a restroom, since we figured there was a high likelihood of there being a potty in a place that had an entrance fee. About two seconds after they turned to walk away, Arthur Dent walked headlong into the side of a metal slide, fell, and started screaming. I sprinted the five feet to him and just as I was scooping him up, heard Amelia Earhart let out a shriek of terror. I whipped around just in time to see her trying to scramble out of some sort of drainage ditch. I screamed and tried to run over with a still hysterical Arthur Dent in my arms. Luckily, since The International Man of Intrigue had only gotten two steps in the search for the restrooms, he was by Amelia Earhart’s side before I could take more than a half step. This is how we roll, Fellow Adventurers. If one thing crazy happens, several more must happen in quick succession. It’s just our life. Lucky for me, The International Man of Intrigue is trained in acting quickly in emergencies and wasted no time in assessing the damage to Amelia Earhart. Our big fears were broken bones and snake bites, so when she came up a bit dirty and scraped up, missing her glasses, we took a deep breath of relief. Not so, Amelia Earhart, who kept screaming hysterically, especially once she realized her glasses were gone. The International Man of Intrigue bravely went over the side of the foot bridge (really just a dug-in plank) in the search for the glasses. He came up with them, and while they weren’t completely smashed, it was painfully obvious Amelia Earhart had stepped on them in her scramble for safety.
Can you blame us at this point for cutting our losses and deciding to head home? We did stop back at the hotel we had already checked out of and begged use of their facilities one last time. Once we had Amelia Earhart cleaned up and Gertrude Bell feeling relieved, we hit the road for Colombo.
I’m going to admit, I wasn’t sure of the drive home at first. We were on a one lane road in the mountains. I mean one lane, not as in one lane in either direction, but one lane. I got my passenger brake foot ready and warmed up my vocal chords for lots of screams of, “Red bus!” Fortunately, while there were a couple of moments I slammed on my imaginary brake, for the most part, it was a very scenic drive, complete with waterfalls and only a few moments of panic. Of course, the closer we got to Colombo, the crazier the traffic became. Apparently we didn’t get the memo that it was “No Brake Light Friday”. It definitely kept us on our toes, and probably explains the first ever car accident we’ve seen in our time here. We were coming up on a small village when traffic inexplicably stopped. In Sri Lanka, this, of course, means that everyone jockeyed for position and drove on the shoulder until cars were jammed in three wide on our side of the road (with a few cars actually being partially or mostly on the wrong side of the road). We were wedged in behind a van that claimed to be a Nissan Homy. We laughed at the name until a group of about 9 guys piled out of the car, all in matching black slacks and each wearing a different color of pastel button down shirt. Then we absolutely roared with laughter. A Homy van full of homies?! You have got to be kidding me! As they came back to the car, they made motions indicating that there was an accident ahead. We figured that meant we’d be sitting for hours. Nope. Cars started to go around the accident and eventually we were close enough to see a bunch of men prying the door open and pulling some guy out of a van. By the time we got up to the scene, there was no scene. Someone else pulled the car off the road and that was that. No police, no ambulance, nothing. Weird, right?
Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful trip home, except for that time we passed a mobile fish cupcake truck three wide on a two lane bridge. Gotta keep it interesting, after all.
Rather than drag this trip out into thirty seven and a half more blog posts, I’m going to hit the highlights for you today. Someone also told me I’m not getting paid by the word, which probably means I should be a bit more brief. Then again, I’m not getting paid at all, so I guess it doesn’t really matter, unless any one of you Fellow Adventurers wants to send me a check. I promise not to spend it all on beer, but only because beer is cheap here.
Getting back to business, I’ll summarize some things. Our hotel in Kandy was awesome. It was back off the main road toward the mountain a bit and it was very much a part of the surroundings, almost like a hotel had grown out of the mountain.
We ventured out our first morning there to see Kandy’s main tourist attraction and the most important Buddhist holy site in all of Sri Lanka, The Temple of the Tooth. The temple holds the tooth of Buddha. The belief is that after the Buddha’s funeral pyre, some guy went and snatched a tooth, and, to make a long story short, during the 300’s AD, the tooth was brought to Sri Lanka for safekeeping. Interestingly, it was believed that whoever possessed the tooth was the rightful ruler of the country. True to belief, Kandy was the last home of the Sri Lankan kings. The temple itself was very interesting as well as super crowded. It happened to be a time when the reliquary holding the tooth was going to be displayed. Apparently they never display the actual tooth. Being there on a day you can see the reliquary and visiting the temple in general is supposed to give you good karma. After fighting the crowds in the main temple I was hoping that getting our karma recharged was worth the hassle. The monks also bathe the tooth once a week on Wednesday in some special water and then hand the water out to worshippers to take home because it is believed to have powerful curative properties. I wish I’d known that before our visit. I could not figure out why people were carrying what looked like dirty water home in bottles. Everyone in the temple also wanted to touch our kids, which The Little Explorers do not find endearing in the least.
There were some other interesting things about being around the Temple of the Tooth, like the crazy monkeys living in the area around the central pond. They have little fear of humans and beg for snacks and such. We even got to see a monkey fight. Big entertainment. Less entertaining and more frightening were the chicken ducks. These things were freaky. I swear, it was like a Frankenstein combination of a chicken and a duck. I’m not generally one to get freaked out about animals, but these things gave me the heeby jeebies. They were so frightening and weird I took some pictures to share with you. When I got home, I asked my brother-in-law, who is a bird watcher, about these freaks of nature. He told me they are Muscovy ducks, and are really neither ducks or chickens. Freaks of nature, indeed.
Tell me that's not horrifying.
Shudder. Freaky deaky.
After our time in Kandy, we headed to Nuwara Eliya, which is in the mountains of Sri Lanka and in the heart of tea country. For some reason we can’t figure out, it’s actually pronounced Nurellia, as if it’s all one word. Try to pronounce it as two words and native Sri Lankans will look at you like you have two heads and speak Pig Latin. Hey, I’m not the one who named it a name that is clearly two separate words. That’s all you, Sri Lankans. While there, we visited a tea plantation, which, in the interest of proving that the workers are no longer actually slaves, is now more politically correctly called a tea estate. I’m sure that doesn’t make much difference to the practically indentured servants who live and work there, but it might make us westerners feel a little less guilty about drinking tea, which I guess is the point. Human rights aside, it was actually very interesting. Did you know black tea and green tea are actually the same thing, only the black tea leaves are left to ferment for three days? You do now. Amelia Earhart was the most captivated with the process and was excited to get home and tell her Grandma, who likes to drink tea, all about the tea production process.
In Nuwara Eliya, every road seemed to lead us by the same really beautiful park. Each time we passed it, The Little Explorers would exclaim, “A not-broken playground! Can we go play at it Mama? Daddy, look! Can we please go to the not-broken playground?!” I guess that gives you an idea of what the playground was like, and what most of the playgrounds we find here in Sri Lanka are like in comparison. Finally, on our way out of town, we obliged the kids and stopped at the park. We immediately understood why this playground wasn’t broken. There was an admission charge to go into the park and garden. We once again confused the heck out of some Sri Lankans by asking for the resident admission fee, got that straightened out, and headed inside. We strolled leisurely through the park on the way to the playground. Upon reaching the playground, all three Little Explorers took off running gleefully and began playing on all the equipment, most of which was, indeed, not broken. Of course, all that fun came to a screeching halt when Gertrude Bell announced, “I have to poop, NOW.” (You didn’t think we could go an entire blog post without talking about poop, did you?!) The International Man of Intrigue agreed to take Gertrude Bell on a quest for a restroom, since we figured there was a high likelihood of there being a potty in a place that had an entrance fee. About two seconds after they turned to walk away, Arthur Dent walked headlong into the side of a metal slide, fell, and started screaming. I sprinted the five feet to him and just as I was scooping him up, heard Amelia Earhart let out a shriek of terror. I whipped around just in time to see her trying to scramble out of some sort of drainage ditch. I screamed and tried to run over with a still hysterical Arthur Dent in my arms. Luckily, since The International Man of Intrigue had only gotten two steps in the search for the restrooms, he was by Amelia Earhart’s side before I could take more than a half step. This is how we roll, Fellow Adventurers. If one thing crazy happens, several more must happen in quick succession. It’s just our life. Lucky for me, The International Man of Intrigue is trained in acting quickly in emergencies and wasted no time in assessing the damage to Amelia Earhart. Our big fears were broken bones and snake bites, so when she came up a bit dirty and scraped up, missing her glasses, we took a deep breath of relief. Not so, Amelia Earhart, who kept screaming hysterically, especially once she realized her glasses were gone. The International Man of Intrigue bravely went over the side of the foot bridge (really just a dug-in plank) in the search for the glasses. He came up with them, and while they weren’t completely smashed, it was painfully obvious Amelia Earhart had stepped on them in her scramble for safety.
Can you blame us at this point for cutting our losses and deciding to head home? We did stop back at the hotel we had already checked out of and begged use of their facilities one last time. Once we had Amelia Earhart cleaned up and Gertrude Bell feeling relieved, we hit the road for Colombo.
I’m going to admit, I wasn’t sure of the drive home at first. We were on a one lane road in the mountains. I mean one lane, not as in one lane in either direction, but one lane. I got my passenger brake foot ready and warmed up my vocal chords for lots of screams of, “Red bus!” Fortunately, while there were a couple of moments I slammed on my imaginary brake, for the most part, it was a very scenic drive, complete with waterfalls and only a few moments of panic. Of course, the closer we got to Colombo, the crazier the traffic became. Apparently we didn’t get the memo that it was “No Brake Light Friday”. It definitely kept us on our toes, and probably explains the first ever car accident we’ve seen in our time here. We were coming up on a small village when traffic inexplicably stopped. In Sri Lanka, this, of course, means that everyone jockeyed for position and drove on the shoulder until cars were jammed in three wide on our side of the road (with a few cars actually being partially or mostly on the wrong side of the road). We were wedged in behind a van that claimed to be a Nissan Homy. We laughed at the name until a group of about 9 guys piled out of the car, all in matching black slacks and each wearing a different color of pastel button down shirt. Then we absolutely roared with laughter. A Homy van full of homies?! You have got to be kidding me! As they came back to the car, they made motions indicating that there was an accident ahead. We figured that meant we’d be sitting for hours. Nope. Cars started to go around the accident and eventually we were close enough to see a bunch of men prying the door open and pulling some guy out of a van. By the time we got up to the scene, there was no scene. Someone else pulled the car off the road and that was that. No police, no ambulance, nothing. Weird, right?
Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful trip home, except for that time we passed a mobile fish cupcake truck three wide on a two lane bridge. Gotta keep it interesting, after all.
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