visiting friends => ^o^

This entry has sat in the draft drawer forever... life has been busy busy busy and now I'm finally back-posting it ^o^

Highlight of the weekend: J visiting.
It's tough to beat good times with friends.

Trip summary...

Thursday...
I took the day off work to drive down and meet J in Carmel. Our expected meeting time was 11:30-ish (she left SoCal at 5am!!). Of course, schedules and meeting times rarely work out to what is "planned", especially when it involves both parties driving a distance. At somewhat last minute, she decided to take a detour to drive up highway 1 through Big Sur rather than highway 101. According to J, there was nothing in Big Sur other than the very scenic views and driving through there is something you do once in a lifetime. (Not sure about doing that drive, but definitely will do the Big Sur half marathon if I ever get back to running.)

I arrived at Carmel after noon and had an hour to myself to drive along Scenic Drive and do some "sightseeing" of quaint houses (each with their own quaint name), get my fill of the windy surf, smile at the dogs walking along the beach, and peek at lovers making out in their cars. Brought my camera, of course...



After J arrived at 1:30, we went out to lunch at a nearby "bistro" and then toured the streets of Carmel, on and off Ocean Avenue. The mini shops and art galleries lost their appeal after a while though. I want to say I understand and appreciate art, but a lot of it eludes me, especially the "modern" variety. There were only really two galleries that I liked... the Thomas Kinkade one (of course) and one that had paintings by Michael Wheeler and Robert Richert. The feeling I got while looking at any one of Richert's full-size paintings was just amazing (J can attest to it, too.).

Carmel has a decent-sized dog population... the dressed fluffy ones are too cute...


The day ended with dinner in the evening followed by watching Raising Helen (definite chick flick) and part of a Veggie Tales movie in the hotel/inn.

Friday (Yay for off-Friday's)...
Breakfast at the inn... a drive back up... lunch and tour of the G-office... hanging out at our apartment... dinner with EJ, RC at a Malaysian restaurant... and more hanging out at our apartment.

Saturday...
Shadows over Camelot at EJ's... dinner at Korea House... the bean game and another round of Shadows over Camelot at Rob's.

Sunday...
Dim sum... Arkham Horror (6 hrs!)... watched Home on the Range... Indian takeout for dinner... and then dropped J off at the hotel her parents' were staying at.

Apart from Carmel on Thursday, there wasn't much other "sightseeing". Actually, no other traditional sightseeing (J said seeing the G-office, EJ's place, and RC's place were sightseeing). I really had a hard time believing that it was ok to not do any of the touristy things around here and SF, but I guess it was better that we didn't force her to do those things she wasn't particularly excited about. She was, however, [to my surprise] excited about playing K's games... so much so that I gave in to Arkham Horror. It's too bad for K she doesn't live up here...

Well, good times with friends are ^o^, however it's spent.

babies love ice and snow

ice

The last few weeks have pretty much been... wake up at 9am, work, get home at 10 or 11pm, watch our recording of the winter olympics until 2am, sleep, repeat. Watching the winter olympics re-surfaced feelings of "I want to skate/play hockey/etc" in K. And right after he mentioned it, I found out there was a special olympics-related 'event' at Logitech Ice. What could be better than a few free hours of skating and hockey?

So... last weekend was our first time out at an ice rink since Cambridge! The rink had free lessons & demos in figure skating, hockey, speed skating, and curling. We had signed up for all but the curling... but by the time we got to the rink, we had already missed the intro to skating and figure skating demo... but we did get to free skate for an hour ^o^ And it was on the *much* less crowded back rink; the front one was just crazy-filled with people, which made no sense to me because they could have just signed up for the free event to skate in the back one :-/

The ice felt shaky at first but most of the skating motor memory came back after a while. I would say that it's like riding a bike, except I still don't know how to ride a bike :-/ Oh, and apparently they teach kids by having them skate with buckets...


The hockey lesson came up next... and that was awesome (and tiring!)! It was basically a full intro to skating plus some hockey... drills to learn to skate forwards, turn, stop, skate backwards, forward crossovers... and then skating with a hockey stick, skating with a stick & puck, passing the puck, skating while passing the puck, shooting drills off the rink sides, shooting into the net. Lots stuffed into a short period of time! Though it was all review to K, he seemed to have fun, too ^o^

I had very cold feet (literally) after nearly three hours on the ice.

snow

And this Friday (off-Fridays are so nice!), I headed up to Bear Valley near Tahoe for my first snowboarding experience. It was sort of a get together for my group at work... of course, there's just too many old old people who are afraid of breaking this or that... so it ended up being only four people from my group of 60+, two wives, and me. I got a ride from one of them (yay!), so sleeping less than 4 hours Thursday night didn't kill me.

We started out a little past 7am... stopped for breakfast along the way... got there around 12 noon... finally got my equipment by 1pm... hung out at the very bottom of the slopes (where the incline was like 5 degrees or less =P) with the only other coworker new to snowboarding... lesson at 2pm... started heading back at 4:30-ish...

It was a blast (to say the least)! (And tiring, again!) The lesson was ^o^; they taught all the basics you needed and the guy teaching it had this really cool accent.

Windmills on the drive up (just like SimCity!)...


On the ski lift (taken with camera strap securely fastened around my wrist, of course!)...




I expected snow-covered trees and below freezing weather... it was 40 degrees! Still plenty of beautiful scenery tho...




babies

Yesterday I went to my first baby shower... I've never really had many girl friends, so spending a whole afternoon with a group of girls celebrating the upcoming arrival of a new baby was... interesting (especially when it came to girls talking about their husbands/boyfriends helping (or trying to help) with housework/etc... despite K's [few] weaknesses in the area, I was definitely the luckiest one in the group ^o^).

Most of the shower was spent eating, chatting, opening presents, and playing silly games. Silly games like baby word searches, making baby sculptures out of bubblegum (very sticky!), estimating the mother-to-be's waist size in bathroom tissue, and baby name games. It was a different fun from my usual socializing.

... And Saturday night was yummy food and watching "The Last Samurai" with EJ and R.


Recent reads...

The Giver by Lois Lowry
I can understand how it won the Newbery Medal... a short, quick, and recommended read. It was almost frightening in parts (poor youngsters reading it) and I think I'll just stick with my [good] interpretation of the ending.

Straken by Terry Brooks (last book in the trilogy)
One thing I love about reading a fantasy series is that it's practically guaranteed the ending will be satisfying... how could it not after all the long journeys, hardships, and heartaches?

Work *can* have the potential to be more than "just work"....

"Sometimes what you're working on is just so _cool_ that you don't want to stop; like last night, I wanted to keep coding, but I thought I should at least get some sleep."

why blog?

March of the Penguins... the longest library request/hold list I've ever added myself to... #145 in line :-/

I'm usually more of a observer and listener in a group conversation rather than the talker. This weekend there was a mini conversation about blogs and someone mentioned having a blog would be too stressful... either too much work to upkeep or afraid of not having anything interesting to say. I didn't say much (if anything) during the conversation itself, but it did make me think back to when I first started writing here. Why did I start this?

It was pretty much on a whim, like just about every other thing I start. I had already been in my regular routine "stalking" of my friends' blogs and other random interesting people ^_~ And randomly out of that I started my own. Of course, I did very carefully select *where* it was to be and had fallback accounts in other random places, just in case ^o^... just as carefully as I had selected my past handwritten journals... but aside from that, it was a whim. See if I would actually write; see what I'd do with it.

Ever since my first journal from way back when, I've loved to write to keep my memories and thoughts alive *somewhere*, and this is more convenient than getting out the pen and journal (so sad for the lost years... the ones in which I never wrote anything anywhere). And when I do write, I try not to think that just about anyone out there could come across this and read it. There is that aspect, isn't there? I suppose it was an odd thought at first (what if ___ reads this post?)... and maybe somewhat pressure-filled (aaah! I haven't written in __ days, I better write something!), but that peak phase went away fairly quickly. Maybe I *did* want to be found by at least *someone* in the beginning. But someone did and that was the end of that.

Everyone writes for different reasons... it's easy for me because I'm not writing for anyone else in particular but rather for *myself* (and yes, just clogging up the internet). Heck, anyone else reading this would probably find it boring anyways.

boom boom

Going into winter... bye bye yummy chestnuts =(

My chestnuts were merrily roasting away (tho not over an open fire, and no jack frost nipping at my nose either... this is California)... when I heard a 'boom' from the oven. I stroll over to discover one of my happy chestnuts decided it had had enough of the heat and exploded. And explosion *IS* the right word... itty bitty fragments of chestnut all over the place!

Of course, the greedy palate of mine decided no way was I going to let one chestnut deter me from my yummy goal. Shortly thereafter, another 'boom'... chestnut #2 met its end. Thankfully, there were no more after that (tho having them all explode might have been exciting). I'm not sure what went wrong. Of course, I did make the x's in each chestnut to let steam out. And I've roasted chestnuts many times before without any drama... guess they were just too impatient this time :-/

How could something so small (walnut-size) make such a big mess?! Certainly can't put off cleaning my oven anymore...

bulsae, eragon

What has the world become if simply holding open a door for someone results in a "you have exceptionally good manners... thank you"?

Bul Sae aka Firebird/Phoenix
Started Nov 27, finished Dec 18th.
MBC 2004, 26 episodes
Cast... Lee Eun Joo (as Lee Ji-eun), Lee Suh Jin (as Jang Sae-hoon), Eric Moon (as Suh Jung-min), Jung Hye Young (as Yoon Mi-ran)
After getting past the first two painful and seemingly pointless/random episodes, the rest was much much better. It's one of those where you feel for every one of the characters, no matter how much you want to hate one.

While I'm at it, might as well write down somewhere K's ratings for the Korean dramas we've watched thus far...
Bul Sae - 5/5
Love Story in Harvard - 2/5
All In - 5/5
Beautiful Days - 3/5
Attic Cat - 1/5
Autumn Tale / Endless Love - 3/5
Summer Scent - 4/5

Eragon  [by Christopher Paolini]
One of those... must keep reading, even while eating. For a fantasy story lover (which I am), this is a definite read. Eragon can be the end, but of course, there's a sequel, too. I put my name on the library's list for Eldest... but impatient me, I found another source to keep me occupied until my name comes up on the list. Afterall, ebooks just don't do a good book justice.