A Visit from Fernando & Erica

My cousin Fernando ("Nando" for short) and his wife Erica were in Southern California for Comic-Con and decided to spend a couple of days in Orange County. This is one of my cousins from my Mom's half of the family (the Chicago side, as I call it, even though Nando and Erica actually live in Las Vegas).


James, Erica, Fernando & Tim brave the heat for an outdoor pic. (07/22/06)

We hadn't seen them since their wedding in 1999 or thereabouts when I got a call from them last February. They were going to be in Santa Monica and we met them for dinner. This time around we got to spend more time with them. Unfortunately they didn't escape the Las Vegas heat as much as they wanted to — it was so HOT the entire time they were here.

But we did discover that they too are Phase 10 fans. So Saturday night we ordered up a couple of pizzas from Angelo's & Vinci's, cracked open a couple of bottles of port, and played until we couldn't keep our eyes open any longer. I don't remember who was ahead in the end, other than I know it wasn't me.


The Slingbox: a device we can no longer live without.

While they were here, we were so impressed with Nando's Slingbox — a device that allows him to watch his home TV over the internet — that we had to have one (you know Tim and his technology). It will come in very handy the next time we visit my Dad, who only gets like 13 channels (half of which are in Spanish). :) And thanks to a very generous thank-you gift from Fernando and Erica, we went and got ourselves a Slingbox of our own. Thanks Nando & Erica!