Perfect Weekend

Just had the ideal birthday weekend, perfectly orchestrated by Mrs. Farrington.

The celebration started Thursday night and ended on Monday pm.

Fortunately, my birthday goes down during restaurant week, so we got some discounts on some of Denver's best food.  Not all we ate is pictured but you get the idea.

Thursday night:

 Carne Asada, with sweet potatoes and mole colorado at Lola

 Fresh donuts

 Junk Food and fine chocolates

Next night we went to Stellas

 Tomato Rigate with cream and tomato sauce

 Best ciopinno ever

 Fresh chocolate chip cookie dough and milk, Candice makes chocolate chips cookies on demand.  That quality alone makes her my favorite person on the planet.

Saw Hugo, that night.  I thought it was going to be an action adventure with little kids.  It was way better than I had expected.  Totally recommended, especially if you have an affinity for silent films, which we do.

Waiting for calories in my new Ben Sherman shirt, love it!

Next morning, slept in, opened some presents and then went for brunch at root down.

 Amazing hot chocolate with a touch of chili and miso cinnamon whipped cream

 Banana bread french toast, maple agave syrup

 Sun dried tomato hollandaise for that benedict

Breakfast burrito, with chorizo and mole sauce

Guns were then rented at the shooting range where we practiced for the upcoming zombie apocalypse.  It's serious business.

 Pictured is the .40 Sig Sauer P229 and a HK .45acp sub machine gun

One thing you should know about zombies is that they only die from head shots. This is one dead zombie. This fella was  taken out at 25 yards.  I did miss twice, which in a real zombie scenario, could have been the end of me.

Then I went and got a massage, it felt so good.  According to the masseuse, my traps, butt and feet  were really tight.  I wish I could get a massage everyday.

Then we all snuggled and watched Project Runway

After an epic snuggle, we went to dinner at Ocean Prime

where we summoned the holy trinity of meats in honor of my special day.  Filet mignon with bernaise sauce and crab which was then finished is a cabernet jus, lobster tail, asparagus and garlic mashers.  Basically the best plate of food ever.  We ordered too much grub.

After dinner, we went and saw the The Artist.  Great movie, the hype is well deserved.

After the movie, a late night run was made to El Diablo where I got a taco al pastor and a braised beef number with cotija cheese and avocado.

Surely using some sort of black magic, the wicked chefs at el diablo take a chili relleno and stuff it inside a burrito, to produce the ultimate late night fattener.  

The 

next day I was greeted by a mcgriddle combo from Mcdonalds.  I know this "food"comes from a factory or some sort of mine but I pretty much can't resist it.  Once in a while isn't going to kill you, right?  Then we went snowboarding.

The weather was in awesome mode and there was no need for many layers.

Got home and went to my family birthday party where I gorged on homemade sushi rolls, gyoza, yakisoba and a very labour intensive (but totally worth it) coconut cake.

 Later that night, I watched UFC and Strikeforce until bedtime.  Mma is my favorite sport, so again, perfection.

Then yesterday, I ate coconut cake for breakfast, then a ton of amazing BBQ from Boneys.  Finished the extravaganza at Cholon for dinner along with a bunch of other good food.  Side note -don't miss the brussel sprouts at Cholon-amazers.

A huge thank you to all the people who made my birthday weekend so special, especially the long- legged blond who always rocks my world.

Nothing good can come out of a list made a 5am.

It's 5am and I just had a Birthday.  It's time for a little self-reflection and life lessons I've found to be true.  It’s generally a list of clichés but whatever.  Let's do this.

1.  Pleasure is really important to me.

2.  I get teary eyed more often than I'd like to admit.  Probably once or twice a week.  That's probably weird for a dude but it's who I am.

3.  It generally works out better if you listen more than you talk.

4.  Don't wait to do the things you've always wanted to do.  This is one of the most important things.

5.  I'm a worldly person in a good way.

6.  Don't let your work define you as a person.

7.  Experiencing things that are out of the ordinary bring me a lot of happiness. 

8.  Goals are hugely important to me because they help me to live deliberately.

9.   Most people my age seem older than I do.

10.  I have genuine envy for people who feel passionate about their work.

11.   Balance really is the key.

12.  Cowards really bother me.

13.  My family is one of the greatest sources of happiness in my life but they can also drive me crazy.  This is probably because I care so much (this excludes Candice).

14.  I'm a little insecure about "fitting in."

15.  I'm not a very spiritual person.

16.  Generally speaking, I'm a confidant person.

17.  Most people are boring.

18.  It bothers me when people don't like things they've never tried.  Crack cocaine, hookers and Russian roulet are exceptions.

19.  I'm a worldly person in a bad way.

20.   Physically, I’m a little ugly and I’m totally ok with it.

21.  Being in your 30's isn't bad at all.  You have a better sense of who you are and what's important to you.

22.  Staying up really late, doing something fun or slightly naughty, is a great way to feel young again.

23.  Americans work too much

24.  Comparing yourself to others isn’t usually going to be a good thing although it’s unavoidable.

25.  Helping people is an easy way to feel connected and happy.

26.  I've been blessed with maybe 5-6 friends in my life.  I'm not always great about staying in contact but I'm fiercely loyal and think about them more often than they probably realize.

27.  I'd rather sacrifice and wait for what I really want than go for what is easy or convenient.  I think this has given me character.

28.  Sometimes I feel like there is very little that I have control of.  This is, at times, a great source of frustration and at other times a source of peace.

29.  I constantly evaluate what I want to do with my life.  I think this stems from the fact that I don't know what's coming around the corner.

30.  I had hoped this blog would originally be a place where I could document what was going on in our life and how we felt about things.  It's not totally what I had imagined, not as gritty.

31.  Physical activity is vastly under rated for happiness.

32.  Most people under-season their food.

33.  Kindness, generosity and tolerance are really attractive qualities.

34.  My wife is super hot and awesome, she makes me so happy.  Choose your spouse carefully, I don’t know that I see tons of awesome marriages out there.

35.  Having experiences that put your life and problems in perspective are refreshing and important.

Grand Bahama

Grand Bahama trip report

So why Grand Bahama?  Well, for one, we had never been to the Bahamas, so we wanted to check out that area.  Dos, Grand Bahama is a little more mature and in general doesn't try as hard as it's neighbor Nassau (or so our research stated).  C. The highest concentration of tiger sharks in the world.  We all know how I feel about sharks, especially dangerous ones.

So off we went, a short 40 min. flight from Miami and we were there.  We stayed at The Grand Lucayan resort which was nice/fine.  It had great beaches and nice pools and gym.  The rooms were a little disappointing but there weren't a lot of hotel choices.  Not horrible just holiday innish.

The view from our room was amazing!!

We ate well for the most part.

Conch fritters, really not a lot of flavor from our friends, the conchs.  Mostly tasted of fried batter, which isn't a bad thing.

Too much boob compression from the life jacket

Fried whole fish, plantains and sweet potatoes

Lot's of relaxing and ipading around the pool and ocean. In this pic, a fine example of the female buttocks can be seen as luck would have it, right above Candice's butt. I'm not sure what this means butt I'm sure the universe is try to say something here.

Watercraft of all types are pretty much awesome.  I want to do this right now.

We rented a scooter and drove many hours around the island. We totally didn't get lost...Ok, so we got lost a lot. The locals are the nicest people on the planet. We would pull over to look at our map and 3-4 people would pull over to help us. There also wasn't any nagging sales people like you find in so many beach destinations. The Bahamians are the nicest people I've ever met in the world. Honest too.

Stone crab is the specialty in the area.  It was really good.

Finally it was time to go dive.

Several hours passed as our chartered boat took us to....TIGER BEACH!

Tiger beach is only 20' deep of crystal clear oceanic beauty.  The bottom is covered in fine white sand.  It was just the captain of our boat, our dive master and Candice and I.  When we arrived the captain started chumming the waters with a mixture of fish blood and guts.  It took maybe 30 minutes before the first lemon shark arrived.  The captains eyes were amazing, he would be like "there's a shark out, 75 feet."  I could almost never see what he was talking about but it was a little nerve wracking/exciting that there were sharks around us that I couldn't see.  Mostly I just get stoked though.  Candice was a little scared but as usual she pushes past it and then has the time of her life.  I love how tough she is. After maybe 45 minutes from our arrival we had about 18 lemon sharks 8-12' long circling the boat.  It was time to get in...

The sharks were beautiful, they are truly so misunderstood.  They moved slowly, just curious about us. They would get so close that they would bump into you.  It wasn't alarming but cool rather.

Remoras were all over, little suckery fish that hang out with the sharks, cleaning them.

The box hanging is full of fish guts, it keeps the sharks around.

Watch your toes!  

We dove all morning with the lemons.  We took a break, had some pb and j to keep it real.  After a little bit I hear the captain say "that's a tiger" while pointing out in the distance.  I looked into the drink and this time I could see something black and huge out in the distance.  We were all excited.  Unlike lemon sharks, tiger sharks are a little more cautious when investigating a potential meal.  Being that it's one of the few oceanic creatures that can bite right through a sea turtle shell, I'm not sure why there's so cautious.  Our dive master explained that sometimes they see them in the distance but they don't come in.  I was hopeful we would dive with one but was also happy to see it top side, even if it was a long ways out.  The dive master was already in the water, he came up and yelled "get in, it's a tiger!"  Usually, I like to enter the water right before Candice and be there for her as she enters, just to make sure things are ok.  I couldn't wait this time as I didn't know if we'd miss seeing the tiger.  I threw my gear on and plunged in.  Candice followed after a few minutes.  After waiting for what felt like forever, our dive master signaled us to look in his direction....

There she was, a 14' tiger, she had to weigh well over 1,000 lbs.  If I had to guess, I'd say 1,200-1,500 lbs.  Gorgeous!

 She would make a pass, checking us out and then disappear.  Then she would reappear in a totally different direction.  I know she could see or smell us way before we could see her.  It was one of the best experiences of my life.

 At one point, she starting coming straight at us.  Candice was right in front of her before she turned and moved off!  Biggest adrenalin rush I've ever had in the ocean.

 Closer...

 And closer...

 You can see her stripes/dots really well in this pic.

 The lemons were so gentle that at one point, I just reached out and held on to it's dorsal fin.  The shark, just swam a little harder and I went for a ride, maybe 20-25 feet.  That's the second time I've been able to ride a shark!  The above pic is my hand lightly holding it's fin.

One huge highlight was the great hammerhead that we saw.  It's really rare to see them, there's really only 2 or 3 places in the world where their population numbers are high.  It came out of nowhere and swam right up to Candice.  Dangerous things seem to be attracted to her.

Check out the vid

Amazing time in the Bahamas.  We've been lucky enough to dive all over the world.  Tiger beach was the best day of diving I've ever had.  Check that off the bucket list.