Here’s what I did to ring in the new year:

I changed my first two diapers! My niece (Mr. W’s Gamer Bro’s daughter) Jenni drove to SoCal from Vegas to visit us for the long New Years weekend, and brought the newest member of the family with her! Don’t they grow up so fast? Here’s Lydia only last summer.
Oh, speaking of babies, here’s the newest one in my half of the family.
This is little Elizabeth Lynn (“Elle”) wearing the Anne Geddes ladybug jacket we got her.

…and here is the back of li’l lady Elle in her new ladybug jacket.

So coming up next month, Bat is going to swing by from Tennessee on his way to New York (I know it’s not on the way, but he scored some amazing flight fares!) for a weekend visit since he’s never been to SoCal, and I’m getting some activities together. So far I’ve booked Claudio and Dwaine for kayaking and sushi that weekend for some male bonding. I’d been craving ikari sushi and finally got some at Minato Sushi tonight. I raved so much about the $25 all-you-can-eat sushi that Claudio wants to go there when they come for kayaking. Here was our online conversation:
Claudio: Can’t wait!
Me: me, neither! do you eat uni?
Claudio: Never tried it. I generally will try anything but this is sea urchin gonads. Um… should I try it?
Me: I usually will try something I dislike every few years just to make sure I still dislike it. Taste changes, and this is how I rediscovered Indian food, bittermelon, brussels sprouts, eggplant. I love that stuff now! But uni…I just hit my 4th try last spring, and after getting that in my mouth I thought, for the 4th time, “WHY am I doing this to myself?!” I have a lot of friends who love it, and my dad loves it. “It’s like a mouthful of ocean,” he says blissfully. And you know what? I totally agree with his description. =6
Claudio: Unless someone I trust tells me I need to eat sea urchin gonads… I ain’t eating sea urchin gonads.
Me: it’s not so much gonads as just the entire innards, isn’t it?
Claudio: I read this on sushifaq.com
While colloquially referred to as the roe (eggs), uni is actually the animal’s gonads (which produce the milt or roe).
Me: omg, “gonads” is an actual non-slang term?
Claudio: Gonad definition according to wiki:
The gonad is the organ that makes gametes. The gonads in males are the testes and the gonads in females are the ovaries.
Me: sea urchin reproductive organs according to wiki:
Sea urchins are dioecious, having separate male and female sexes, although there is generally no easy way to distinguish the two. Regular sea urchins have five gonads, lying underneath the interambulacral regions of the test, while the irregular forms have only four, with the hindmost gonad being absent. Each gonad has a single duct, rising from the upper pole to open at a gonopore lying in one of the genital plates surrounding the anus. The gonads are lined with muscles underneath the peritoneum, and these allow the animal to squeeze its gametes through the duct and into the surrounding sea water, where fertilisation takes place.
Claudio: This makes me want to eat Uni even less… a lot less.
Me: ditto…DIT-TOE.
Claudio: 🙂
Me: maybe we can convince Dwaine to eat it as his first sushi experience.
Claudio: I think we’d have to bribe him with a bionic knee or something. ***
Me: maybe we ought to first wiki what a bionic knee costs these days before making promises like that.
Claudio: It’s Dwaine. He’ll forget all about it in 3 days…
2 if he’s been drinking
Me: THEN LET’S SEE WHAT ELSE WE CAN MAKE HIM EAT!!
Claudio: *blush*
Me: nice.

*** This has reference to another conversation that actually involved Dwaine, which went a little something like this:
Dwaine: Heart pounding, lungs burning, just puked a little. On the plus side, I ran for the first time in over a month and my time was much better than I tought it would be. 😀 …pardon me, I gotta puk…
Claudio: It looks like Ima haf to bust ur kneecap. Any preference?
Dwaine: The left one. It’s been acting up anyway. Plus I wanna replace it with something bionic. I’ll be faster than EVER!!!! …on that side at least. …better make it both.
Claudio: Good luck with all that. Do u know why they also called the “Bionic Man” the “Six Million Dollar Man”? Becuz that shit costs money!
Me: I say Claudio goes with Dwaine’s 1st inclination and just bust the left kneecap. I’d love to see Dwaine spinning in clockwise circles after his bionic knee replacement surgery every time he tries to run.
Dwaine: I’d STILL win!
…it would just take me a little longer…

Those two are so competitive. But now I get to sit back and see how long it takes Dwaine to discover this post. Lord knows Jordan hasn’t discovered HERS yet.