Between working from home, visiting friends and family and celebrating the holidays, I am WAY behind on blogging.  I will get around to doing a full recap of all 3 of our Christmas adventures, but not tonight.  Tonight I’m tired and slightly nauseous.

I’m tired because I’ve been running non-stop since a 9:00 am spin class led by an instructor who broke out into a full Rockettes-style high kick number in the middle of class  (that’s what happens when you go tot he 24 Hour Fitness across the street from the Disneyland Cast Member Parking lot) followed by brunch, knitting, yogurt and catching up with a couple of particularly fantastic friends.  I’m nauseous because Jimmy, Mike and I joined Mike’s dad and grandparents for dinner at a very fobby Chinese restaurant.

Mike’s dad ordered a feast for the six of us- shell-on prawns, sauteed pea sprouts, a whole fried fish, steamed clams, fried tofu and seafood hot pot.

The clams went fast and furious.

Yes, that’s ice in the beer glass.

The real star of the show was the hot pot.

Swimming in that broth you’ll find shrimp, lobster, squid, fish, mushrooms, sea sponge and some weird balls.  I still don’t know what those balls were.  Jimmy told me they were lychee (wrong), Mike said he thought they were either fish stomachs or “poop holders” (I don’t even want to know), and his dad just called them “fish balls.”  Mike’s grandparents, who don’t speak English, just stared at me disapprovingly and probably wished Mike had married a nice quiet fertile Asian girl with a graduate degree.

Naturally, Mike, Jimmy and I decided to keep things mature and appropriate and started daring each other to eat the stuff in the soup.  Jimmy volunteered to go first and ate a mushroom.  In case you’re wondering how eating a mushroom counts as adventure, you should know that 2 years ago, Jimmy called all vegetables “salad” (as in “I want a cheeseburger, no salad”) and would only eat Romaine lettuce drenched in ranch dressing.  So a mushroom is a big step.

He liked it!  Well, he didn’t exactly like it, but he survived.

Mike went next.  He tried to eat a fish ball.

He failed.

Even though Mike had failed, I soldiered on and went face to face with the sea sponge.

That shit is nasty.

The taste wasn’t terrible- it really just tasted like sea water.  The texture… well, that was a whole different story.  That’s where the face comes from.

I did it though- I swallowed the sponge and kept it down (even if the oil in the food made me fairly sick later.)  And just as we finished dinner, the entire restaurant was suddenly serenaded by the most random musical trio I’ve ever seen anywhere in my life, let alone in the middle of a Vietnamese-owned Chinese seafood restaurant.

I have no idea what they were doing there.  But somehow, it was a fitting end to the night.