I want to talk about restaurants; technically one restaurant in particular. Why? I haven’t written much about food before, other than praising Salt and Vinegar flavoured snacks, and warning you good people, about the dangers of falling in love with Sour Cream and Chives. To remedy this, I want to offer you a review about a restaurant that I recently visited. The restaurant’s name is Lantern’s Loom, which I think was named after Green Lantern or Sinestro, though the staff were very vague about that.

Let’s set the scene. I was in my bedroom, trying in vain to put all my random stuff away, when I received an unexpected invitation from a personal messenger. It turned out to be the grand opening of a new restaurant. You see I was completely confused, because I had no idea there was going to be a restaurant opening in my house. Our kitchen and lounge are basically in the same room, so there’s no dividing wall between them. This means setting up a restaurant there, makes it the best location in the house. However, I couldn’t remember ever giving permission for this.

I have to admit though, I was very impressed with the invitation. It wasn’t a phone call, email or a letter; it was a personal message from the manager of the restaurant. He came and explained that the restaurant was open and if I would like to eat there for free. I thought it could have been a bit of a scam, but he showed me it wasn’t. It was their opening day and they wanted to build up some customers. I thought, “Hey, you know it’s a local restaurant, so we should support it.” So off I went to make the epic 6 m walk.

Once I was there; and I have to be honest, I started to see some red flags that maybe, just maybe, this restaurant was not quite as professional as I thought it would be.

I discovered that the manager was actually the waiter as well, and the chef was the waiter’s younger brother. He looked very happy doing nothing in the kitchen, which was odd. So I looked around and noticed that I had the whole restaurant to myself. While I was comfortable in my chair, the waiter came over and brought me the menu. It was a hand written menu, but in all honesty, I was a little bit disappointed with it. Not with the handwriting of course; that was awesome! What disappointed me, was what they were actually serving.

The menu had three different combos. The first was Vegemite sandwiches with hot chips; the second was chicken nuggets with hot chips; while the third combo was tomato soup with bread. Because of such a limited menu, I asked the waiter if there were any specials of the day. The waiter said that he didn’t know, but he would ask the chef. However, the waiter even didn’t bother turning around; even though the chef was less than 2 m away from him, because he yelled the question.

It was at this point when I noticed what the chef was wearing. He was standing in the kitchen wearing a SpongeBob SquarePants t-shirt, dinosaur shorts and nothing else; not even footwear. Now I’m not a food critic, but I did get the impression that this chef may not even be qualified.

The chef’s response to the waiter’s question was quite breathtaking. He replied that the waiter was not allowed to talk to him, while he was working. And by working, I mean standing there, eating a raw carrot. I heard the response, which was quite bizarre, but the waiter replied to me, saying that the special was chicken pizza. WTF?!

This was another red flag, telling me that this restaurant wasn’t quite legitimate. Anyway, I thought I would still give them the benefit of the doubt. The waiter asked me if I would like a drink, so I asked him what drinks did they have. He responded by saying, that they had every drink in the world.  

I was quite excited about this, so I asked for some fresh orange juice. The waiter walked away to talk to the chef, then came back to inform me that the chef didn’t like orange juice, so they didn’t have any. I was disappointed with this, so I asked for some grapefruit juice instead. After discussing with the chef again, the waiter replied they had no grapefruit juice either. I was starting to think I was in the middle of a Monty Python sketch.

This was another disappointment, so I thought it could be safer to ask for the waiter’s recommendation, which was chocolate milk and I agreed. Because of this, the chocolate milk arrived very quickly and as I was drinking it, I noticed the chef again. This time he had finished eating his carrot and now he was banging things around the kitchen, like he was drumming. I mentioned this to the waiter and he explained that the chef enjoys making loud noises while he is cooking.

The weird thing about this, was that waiter hadn’t taken my order yet. There were no other customers, so what was the chef cooking? It turned out that the chef was actually making his lunch, which was another carrot and some biscuits. I thought this was really strange, so I ordered the chicken nuggets and hot chips. The waiter told me that was a great choice, so he turned and yelled the order to the chef. I didn’t know why, but I had a terrible feeling that something was about to go wrong. And it did.

The chef replied that a giant squid had stolen all of the nuggets. To avoid another farcical interaction, I asked the waiter for his recommendation, which was tomato soup and bread. The waiter informed me that the chef would be able to cook this meal soon, so I would only have 10 minutes to wait.

I was alright with that, so I was left to enjoy the quiet atmosphere of Lantern’s Loom.

Or so I thought. In another display of unprofessionalism, the chef and the waiter were disagreeing on the amount of time it would take the cook the soup. The waiter was telling the chef, it would only take 10 minutes, but the chef was saying it was going to take 100 years. Again, I’m not a food critic, but I really didn’t have the patience to sit there for 100 years, waiting for tomato soup and bread. I took a deep breath and tried really hard to wait for the food. As I was waiting, I heard a familiar song.

The chef was singing his version of Intergalactic by The Beastie Boys. I offered to sing with the chef, but he declined saying that he was too busy to be singing with anyone; he was only busy enough to sing by himself.

I continued to wait. Not long after that, the waiter was called into the kitchen for a secret discussion with the chef. I continued to wait. Eventually the waiter presented my tomato soup and bread to me; however it wasn’t tomato soup and bread. The waiter explained that the chef didn’t want to cook tomato soup, so he made me a Vegemite sandwich instead, along with some chips. Luckily the chips were not Sour Cream and Chives.

I ate my meal in silence, except for the occasional request from the kitchen dog for my food. This place was bonkers. After I finished the meal; which was great, the waiter came over and asked me if I would like a dessert, to which I tactfully and politely declined; purely because I thought the chef might get angry again over my food choices.

Upon leaving Lantern’s Loom, I did ask for the bill, just to make sure it was free. To my amazement, it really was. The waiter thanked me for coming to the restaurant, while the chef said that I could cook the food next time.

Lantern’s Loom is a local restaurant, but also a family business, so I wish it great luck and success, because I want to patron the restaurant again…however, I feel some issues need to be addressed before I make another visit. If I visit Lantern’s Loom again, I’ll let you know if things have improved or not. Here’s hoping.

We are slowly heading into our final month of Summer here; which is equally positive and negative, just like a riding in a clown car. Anyway, that’s it for me. Please walk your dog, read a banned book, rescue a bee, and I’ll see you next week.

This is a short and special blog post today; well, short for me anyway. We put up our new Christmas Tree late last month, after donating the other one, so I thought I’d share some of the geek related Christmas decorations we have on it.

Because this is the first year with the new tree, UMC1 and UMC2 wanted to change the centre piece decoration. Usually it would have been a Christmas star, sitting on top of the tree. However after a lengthy discussion with the boys, my talented wife, and one paper mache project later, we now have on top of our tree, a Christmas Death Star that is fully armed and operational.

The next two decorations were former Christmas presents and they’re easy to explain. I mean, what’s Christmas without the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel?!

UMC1 and UMC2 wanted to make some special decorations for me this year, because I usually miss out on putting the tree up. They used some modelling clay and their theme was Star Wars, because they know I love it.

Here is Yoda made by UMC1, age 7. Amazing!

This is R2-D2 by UMC2, age 4. UMC2 wanted to be extremely accurate, so he drew on R2-D2 to make him look real. This is what he told me. Fantastic!

So that’s it for today. Like I said, just a short and special one. Next week’s post will be about my trip to see Professor Brian Cox’s HORIZONS – A 21st Century Space Odyssey. I’ve been waiting for this, because I have a reputation of being a geek to uphold. Thanks for following, walk your dog, read a banned book and I’ll see you next Monday.

I want to talk about becoming a new father, in particular my two experiences of witnessing childbirth. Why? I’ve been thinking lately and comparing how woefully physically and mentally ill prepared, I actually was for the two events.

Before I go on, let’s quickly address the fact that I did not give birth to my two boys; that was my wife. This is about my experience becoming a father twice over. This also led me to think about the time when I didn’t have children, and I’m just stuck with this one question: What did I do with my free time before children? That is an extremely difficult question to answer, because I don’t know.

So let’s start at the beginning and go back to the lead up to UMC1’s birth. At the time, we lived near a birthing unit, so we decided that going there, was better than to try and make our way to the city hospital, which was in the CBD.

We had done some birthing classes together, but it was nothing like I thought it would be. It was a room full of women asking insightful questions, while the men were getting ready to pass out, while listening to the answers. The only thing those classes did for me, was to make me more nervous and anxious about the event, which is so stupid; but that’s what happened.

I was starting to feel somewhat terrified about the delivery, from the point of view, that I didn’t want to be useless at the delivery; I needed to know what I could actually do to help my wife during the birth. I mean I could feel useless doing everyday things, but a delivery room was the last place I wanted to feel that.

Being a geek, the only recourse was to read some books about what I could do, with my role at birth. After that, I had come to the conclusion, that I will do whatever my wife or the midwife asks me to do. If I was asked to sing or recite some movie dialogue to help the situation, then that was exactly what I was going to do. I thought that was going to be the safest option.

Now this is going to sound quite strange, but my wife had already sorted out what she was going to wear for the birth. She selected on practical and sensible clothes, which is fair enough. The problem was, it had never occurred to me, about what I was going to wear.

I consulted my palantír;¹ and I selected my running shoes, black tracksuit pants, and my Superman t-shirt for the big day. How else am I supposed to welcome the newest geek to the club?

Anyway, let’s fast forward events to the day of the birth. We arrived at the birthing unit at 6 p.m. While I was there, I was a cauldron of bubbling emotions that ranged from happiness and joy to anxiousness and worry, but I did well not to show it. Drax would have been proud of me.

Without going into too much detail, I did whatever my wife and the midwife asked of me. Yah! I didn’t pass out or run away, so go me! My wife did an amazing job with the birth, and I’m still intimidated on how strong she actually is, because UMC1 was born at 9 p.m. I was even allowed to cut the umbilical cord, which was a pretty cool thing to do.

The stupid thing was everything was under control, it went exactly how it was supposed to. Well, except one thing.

I remember that the first time I held UMC1, was after he had spent some time with his mother. It was a fantastic feeling holding him, however every single person in the room forgot about something: the meconium.

We were all swept up with the excitement of the birth, when I was just holding UMC1, and he did his first poop, right on my Superman t-shirt. We were far too slow with putting on his first nappy. And to think, it was at that moment that it really hit me, that I wasn’t going to have nice things anymore.

We took UMC1 home three days later, and I remember the first two weeks were mental. I remember there were days, we did not leave the house, apart from walking the dog. I remember days where it was an achievement, if I had managed to get of my pyjamas for the day. Having said that, those weeks were amazing.

With that, let’s engage our warp drive and fast forward three years to the impending arrival of UMC2.

Our family of geeks had gone through some changes, before UMC2 arrived on the scene. We were now living in a new house, in a new town, because I had a new job. Also added to the fact that my wife is very stubborn, we had signed on to have a home birth. It’s very funny to be looking back on it now, but every time we discussed having a homebirth, I could actually feel the hairs on my head turning grey, because I was getting stressed.

We lived only a five minute drive from the hospital, so if anything went wrong with the birth, we could call an ambulance or we could all jump in the car, and in five minutes we could be at the hospital. In theory of course.

So the big day came and my wife’s water broke, as we were getting ready to go to the supermarket. I called the midwife as fast as I could, so she came over and my wife did another amazing job. A few hours later, UMC2 attended his first family gathering.

One extraordinary event happened with UMC2’s birth, was that I was the first person to touch him. When my wife was pushing, the midwife asked me, if I would you like to catch the baby. I was really stunned with that, because I never thought that was an option, ever.

I thought you had to be qualified to do something like that. Anyway I said yes, so I held out my hands, like I was a test cricketer playing at 2nd slip; and before I knew it, I was holding a baby. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to replicate that wonderful feeling, and hilarious as it was, I was holding the baby when the midwife asked me if the baby was a boy or a girl.

This was because we had never found out what the baby’s gender was going to be, so I was just so overcome with emotion, that I never looked at the baby’s gender, because I was just so stoked to have a new baby. Later on, I got to cut UMC2’s umbilical cord, which once again, was pretty cool.

I think back now on how stupid that was, to not have looked for the gender, but hey, new fathers do stupid things. And just to make sure that the universe was balanced, because UMC1 graced me with his meconium, UMC2 made it fair by giving his meconium to his mother. When it happened, I realised that could not have gone any better. The Force was balanced in our family now.

What I learnt from these two experiences 3.5 years later? One thing is that my wife’s amazing and I probably don’t tell her that enough everyday. I’ve also learnt that some things work out themselves, so I don’t need to worry about it. The best I can explain this as: Don’t sweat the small stuff.

As a parent and especially as a father, I feel like I don’t have every single answer, that relates to UMC1 and UMC2. I wish I did, but I don’t. But on the other side of the equation, I have learnt things as well. Like how many times you can sing a particular song to your child, and not rage quit about it; or the number of times you can read a particular book; or when they are becoming really upset about something, the best thing I can do for them, is to give them a hug.

Although the hours are long, and the pay is crap, being a parent is the best job I have ever had.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week.

¹ I stole one of the seven seeing stones, just don’t tell Sauron.