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Christmas 2004 will go down in the history of flight as the year that two members of the Flick family became pilots. Noah entered the fleet with his fighter jet and Grandpa John qualified as a private pilot (but he only flies a Cessna 172).

Noah spent Christmas Eve at the Flicks and, naturally, received a truckload of gifts (but, no trucks). In addition to our Christmas celebration were were celebrating Grandpa John’s successful completion of his flight training–he is now a certified pilot!!!

Uncle Mark, Aunt Jen and a cast of several joined us and we all had a great time. The scary thing is that there probably is more to come for Noah and we are probably going to have to buy a bigger house to keep it all!

Oh, and Noah wants to say something: gfffffyugy000000000ggxzssw.

Well, another year is almost over here in tinkleflick land. Noah is almost 2 (on January 9th) and we are looking forward to 2005.

Here’s a picture of Noah and his Daddy (glipses of Ralph in the picture archive are somewhat rare, so we thought we’d show you one.

Speaking of the picture archive, the New Year’s resolution for the staff at tinkleflick Internet Services is to make some more pictures available on the website. Check back with us soon and we’ll hopefully have something soon.

OK, well, have a Happy Holiday from Ralph, Wendy, Noah, Cookie and Delilah (Jenny says “Hello” as well).

It’s kind of amazing sometimes how the world works. In August, Ralph went to golf school in Carlsbad (by the way, if you are looking for a great golf school check out A. J. Golf Schools) and just happened to be paired up with Brian Setzer’s manager who very kindly offered to get us on the guest list for the show. So, we dropped off the Noah Bear at the grandparents’ house and off we went to the Universal Amphitheater!

We had backstage passes so we got to go in at the artists’ entrance, valet the car and enjoy some drinks and snacks before the show. It was the first time either of us had ever been back stage at a show like that and it was really cool.

The opening act was Royal Crown Revue who are have been around since before the whole swing music craze really started. They are obviously very talented musicians (the bass and drum solos were very interesting) but we still prefer Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and, going back to the early 90’s in Chicago, The Mighty Blue Kings who do not seem to be around anymore. In any case, Royal Crown Revue provided a very good opening set while the Universal filled up for Brian.

After a quick pit stop back stage, we went back to our seats for Brian’s show. The stage was great, the band had a ton of energy and Brian was as entertaining as ever. After welcoming the crowd to the 3rd Annual Christmas Extravaganza and answered his own question why it was an extravaganza with: “It just is!”

They played all of their known versions of Christmas songs, a few Stray Cats tunes and, in the middle of the show, let the orchestra take a break while Brian and his bass player and drummer played a very cool, stripped down rock set. The ended with a rockabilly version of The Nutcracker Suite which was probably the best rendition of that particular piece we have ever seen!

All in all, we had a great time and, with the massive amount of video equipment in place during the show, it looks like you will be able to experience the event for yourself on DVD in the not too distant future!

OK, so here I am at one of my favorite local restaraunts: The Fish Tale having one of my favorite things: Nachos! I am writing this on my PDA and I took the blurry picture with my PDA as well (see my first article—the PDA is very cool).

Yes, the Fish Tale it is, in fact, a fish place but I have only had fish here a couple of times because the nachos are so freakin’ good! To give you an idea, Wendy and Noah have been out of town for almost a week and this is my second trip here! As long as I have been plannning the updated website, I have been planning to write a story about Fish Tale nachos and so I thought the “Things I Love” series would be the perfect venue for my essay.

As a side note, in case you are wondering (a) where I came up number 83 for this article and 82 for the PDA article and (b) where the list of the other 81 things that I love, I don’t actually have a list it was just an estimate. Soon, I will introduce the “Things I Hate” series, but the numbering will start MUCH higher!

So, back to the topic at hand. Why am I so fired up about nachos from a fish restaraunt? It’s not because they are fancy or anything like that. They are just very good at the basics: light, salted chips beabs and cheesevwith remarkably good salsa on the side (I order them without the sour cream and jalapenos). But the real kicker is that they bake the chips so the edges burn just a bit and those few chips are worth the price of admission.

The next time you are near the Los Altos shopping center in Long Beach, stop by and order up the mini nachos (the mini portion is a meal by itself) and a beer. Oh, and give me a call and I’ll join you!

Noah has been missing from the tinkleflick homestead for almost a week now and we finally have some information on his whereabouts! As it turns out, the game of “girl chases boy” went overboard and he just kept running until he was spotted in Charlotte.

Just kidding, of course. Wendy and Noah took off last Monday and flew to visit our friends Jean and Mike (and Michael, Luc and Vivienne) who moved to Charlotte earlier this year. With the magic of digital cameras and the Internet, we already have some pictures from the trip.

Let’s all wish Wendy and Noah well on their long trip back tomorrow–Ralph really needs them to come home because he pretty much has nothing buy Diet Pepsi and trail mix in his system!

There are more than a few broken PDAs in my wake mostly because Wendy keeps breaking hers and taking mine. So far I have been cool with this arrangement because it gives me an excuse go buy a new toy.

Anyway, one of my latest toys is my iPaq 6314 which has smart phone, wireless and Bluetooth capabilities. I can surf the Net anytime and anywhere I want (with no filters–take that, NC IT Department). In fact I am submitting this story to you on my iPaq now!

It’s a little slow but I think the next generation of devices that replace it will be able to replace laptops. I am sure that I will find out before long when I have to hand this over to Wendy after she breaks the Palm Zire that she bought for me two years ago to replace the Handspring that she confiscated the year before that!

Another year is about to be over here in the house of tinkleflick and Noah is just a few weeks shy of his SECOND birthday!!!!

Along with being 2 years old comes a very short attention span when the boring adults want to do dumb things like sit around a restaraunt and have a nice dinner. Noah was very happy to discover a Winchell’s on one of the many walks we took the other night while we were at dinner. He promptly declared that he wanted one of each kind of “cookie” that they had there and spent dinner slobbering all over it.

In this picture, Mr. Noah is offering you a bite of his cookie (don’t take him up on it–it’s probably soggy).

Best wishes for a happy and safe holiday season to all of our friends and family.