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New Neighborhood Restaurant

I finally got something that I have been wanting for a VERY long time: A neighborhood restaurant that I can easily walk to from my house. Yes, I know, living in Ballard, I have tons of options for restaurants that I can walk to in 20 minutes. This place, however, is just a few blocks down the street from my house!

After seemingly endless remodeling (seriously it seemed to go on for YEARS), Picolinos finally opened this last Tuesday. So in a move that was driven more by blind eagerness to try something new than intelligence, Kathy and I took the girls to the new restaurant yesterday (Friday). Although Picolinos was pretty kid friendly, my daughters (at least the little one) are not always restaurant friendly.

The menu has pizza, pasta, and a few Italian entrees and a nice beer and wine list. We got there shortly after they opened for the day at 5PM, and quickly ordered the girls some pasta with the idea that they would be occupied eating right away, then a little later we ordered our food and a bottle of Chianti. By the time the food arrived Nadia was pretty much covered in butter and pasta and had made the decision that she was not at a restaurant but instead a playground. Siena was only slightly better, but that had to do with me making desperate empty promises of candy when she got home.

Kathy and I made the decision to have our meals boxed, but unfortunately that wasn’t going to work for the bottle of wine. So in true Gorohoff fashion, we pounded the bottle of Chianti (something that I highly discourage ever trying if you have never done it), and returned home to enjoy our meal where our girls could run free.

The boxed food was very good, and while we were there the service was great. The reason for me writing all this up: I want everyone to try this place out. I want it to succeed, I really want a neighborhood restaurant that stays the test of time.

So if you’re in Ballard for dinner, check out Picolinos!
http://www.ristorantepicolinos.com/

VOTE!

I like shiny new things

I did it, I went out and got an iPhone. I couldn't help myself; it's what all the cool kids were doing! So I had to have one too! The funny thing is that everyone else was just talking about getting an iPhone (my boss had actually ordered one from AT&T), but I end up being the first one to actually own one. All Apple stores appeared to be either hopelessly sold out, so I opted for ordering one from AT&T and I had the phone 2 days later.

I had always said I would never get an iPhone. My cellphone plan was obscenely cheap and I was getting a free Windows Mobile device with free data plan from work. The problem was I had a cellphone, a Windows Mobile device, and an iPod that Iwas carrying around everwhere, and I was usally forgetting one of the 3 devices either at home or at work.

Now everthing will be handled in one device. Granted, the iPhone plan will be more expensive, but because of where I work I do get a nice discount. Most important, it's shiny and new (until the next shiny new thing comes out...)

Family Vacations and Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines had always been my favorite airlines to fly with my kids. They are often the most affordable airlines, they allowed people with small children board first, they are always friendly, and the fact that they didn’t feed you didn’t matter because you always bring tons of food when travelling with small children. For all these reasons I told everyone, the only airlines to fly with kids is Southwest. However, since my last family vacation Southwest had changed their policy about families with small children getting to board first. The new policy was that if you were travelling with small children you board between group A and group B. This might mean 50+ people boarding before you.

So why does this matter? Why should people with small children be entitled to early boarding? The reason is that it takes us a lot longer to get settled with squirming kids, and our maximum allowed number of carry-on bags, a stroller, and multiple car seats to set up on the plane. This completely blocks everyone else from getting past you until you’re settled. Also, since Southwest has a first come first serve seating policy you might have to break a large family group up rather than having them all together (yes, I admit that getting to go between group A and group B you will almost always find 3 seats together, but you won’t necessarily find 3 rows of 3 seats together which is nice when you are traveling with a family group of 8 or more people).

I just finished a family vacation where we flew Southwest (mostly because it was the only airlines that flew direct to our location). So while I was waiting for boarding to begin I asked someone from Southwest why the change in policy? Her response was that she wasn’t entirely sure, but she did know that a lot of people were abusing the family-with-small-children-board-first thing, and a lot more people without kids were complaining about family-with-small-children-board-first thing. I know that I for one definitely did abuse the policy: I would use my then 2 year old daughter as a first class board first ticket for me and 8 or 9 other adult family members. I had also seen other people trying to convince the airlines that they needed extra time to board with their 13 year old son. As for people complaining, one of the most vocal critics was my own father, he would rant and rave about how unfair it was that family with small kids was boarding before. He would cause a scene loudly asking why he showed up 2 hours early so he could be up front in the line and still these families are boarding before him (my dad has never traveled with either of my young daughters). Seriously, my father gets more flustered talking about the Southwest family boarding policy than he does talking about politics.

Although the old policy seemed very unfair, what ultimately would happen is all the people traveling with small crying noisy children would all group together at the front of the plane and everyone else toward the back. Ultimately the families with the yelling noisy bothersome kids would be somewhat separated from the rest of the adult business traveler passengers. With the new policy we were forced in amongst a number of business travelers who didn’t seem delighted about my screaming 18 month old daughter of my chair kicking 4 year old daughter (if it wasn’t a 7 AM flight I would have offered to buy everyone around us drinks).

We all survived the flight, and we all got to sit together. However I no longer recommend Southwest as the only airlines to fly when traveling with children, and I will definitely investigate other options for flying with children in the future. Southwest falls to the position of all other airlines for me now, whoever has the cheapest ticket or the only direct flight gets my business.

The Legend of Blue Ribbon Expeditions (Part 3)

Yah, I know, I skipped part 2. I'm working on it. There seems to be some gaps in my memory of that particular trip.

However, to avoid the same problem for part 3, I decided to just video tape the event...

The Last Ski Day

Last weekend we decided to take my daughter up for one last day of skiing in 2008 (for her at least). We were going to visit our regular ski area Alpental but as we exited the freeway we were greated by a "parking lot all full" sign for Alpental; the parking lot was all full for a ski area on April 19th!??!!

So instead we headed down the road to Ski Acres (a.k.a. Summit Central) and enjoyed a ski day there. Here is our day...