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Busy Memorial Day weekend
May. 29th, 2009 10:43 pmOn Thursday, Jono said, "Wait, we're not doing anything for Memorial Day weekend? Really?" And then we proceeded to do lots of things and meet up with lots of people. It was a whirlwind in the Jane Austen way!
Since Flickr is being increasingly stupid, I switched over to Picasa. The photo album is here, and a similar stash is on Facebook. But mostly illustrated below.
Friday night:
At BADASS we watched the first half of Mohabbatein, which, because it followed 3 pairs of lovers, had 3 times the Bollywood. As in, 3 times the build-up, 3 times the spurning of love, etc. However, not 3 times the dancing, so actually less dance density than your normal bollywood.
Saturday morning:
Met up with Julieta and Anders (Spanish teacher I knew from last year, and her Korean-adopted-by-Danes husband) in Santa Cruz and went for a nice hike in Wilder Ranch.
We walked by the ocean
And gawked and climbed Big Tree
Then we went to poke around some tidepools.
I knew Julieta from teaching last year. She taught Spanish. Now she's teaching adult education and also a nutrition class at an elementary school. Her husband is actually a Korean who was adopted by Danes, so there's a lot of interesting identity things there, and totally challenges my racist assumptions about Asian people. :D
Then we had a really yummy lunch with Julieta's parents, including fresh cheese from Mexico that her dad smuggled in, as well as salad, chicken, goat-milk-caramel, and radishes from Julieta's elementary school garden. It was a fun and yummy experience.
Saturday evening:
Jono did roleplaying (Trollbabe rules in Glorantha setting, dubbed Trollantha by Cat), while I sorted lots of checks for Chinese school.
Sunday morning/afternoon:
Met up with Isaac, who was in SF for the weekend. Had gloriously cheap and tasty dim sum at Dol Ho, on the recommendation of Jeremy. It was a random dim sum place in Chinatown that was full of old Cantonese people. They didn't have as wide a range of selections, but we still got the cart experience, and what they did make, they made well. So really good Shumai and various shrimpy goods. (No 粉条, no lotus-chicken-wraps). In introduced people to Turnip cake! The best part was: we had our fill and it came out to $9/person. Crazy!
Then we (Isaac, Gabe, BADASS, Aza) went to the Exploratorium. Jono was super excited because he has many nostalgic memories of reading/playing the Explorabook as a kid. There was much spinning of objects and experimenting with optical and sound and all sorts of fun stuff. Jono later regretted not being able to go into the Tactile Dome, upon which I suggested that he close his eyes and try to navigate the apartment. Then we got boba and a very yummy crepe.
Here's the posse outside of the Exploratorium
Here's a few of us inside. The Exploratorium makes everyone child-sized again.
Sunday evening:
We had dinner with Jinghua and Oscar (newcomer to Mozilla Labs from Google China and her Venezuelan husband that she met in Denmark), and talked about all sorts of random stuff. They tried to keep it relatively tech jargon-free for me. :D
Monday morning/afternoon:
Schlepped up to Oakland to hang with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yeloson. He made us really yummy Pu'er tea, we had amazing Vietnamese food, and then played King of Siam, which has a lot of crazy strategy. For example, everyone has 8 cards total to last the 8 turns. Do you play more cards earlier, or do you play 1 card per turn, or do you save them for the end? You want to help one color win, but in order to cash in on the win, you need to remove pieces of that color from the board, which then decreases the chance of winning for that color... And there's always the British waiting to snipe at the tied provinces. But since it's only 8 turns, it's also a rather quick play. We enjoyed it so much that Jono bought it when he went to visit the game store! I came back early to take a nap and prep for the evening..
Monday evening:
Went over to Cat's, hung out with Stephanie, ate lots of dumplings, and then proceeded to mass-produce baked goods -- made 100 x-shaped cookies for the faculty room (announcing my "upcoming nuptials"), and also made 24 vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cupcakes for my students (one of them is vegan). They were all very yummy and quickly devoured! Success!
Since Flickr is being increasingly stupid, I switched over to Picasa. The photo album is here, and a similar stash is on Facebook. But mostly illustrated below.
Friday night:
At BADASS we watched the first half of Mohabbatein, which, because it followed 3 pairs of lovers, had 3 times the Bollywood. As in, 3 times the build-up, 3 times the spurning of love, etc. However, not 3 times the dancing, so actually less dance density than your normal bollywood.
Saturday morning:
Met up with Julieta and Anders (Spanish teacher I knew from last year, and her Korean-adopted-by-Danes husband) in Santa Cruz and went for a nice hike in Wilder Ranch.
We walked by the ocean
And gawked and climbed Big Tree
Then we went to poke around some tidepools.
I knew Julieta from teaching last year. She taught Spanish. Now she's teaching adult education and also a nutrition class at an elementary school. Her husband is actually a Korean who was adopted by Danes, so there's a lot of interesting identity things there, and totally challenges my racist assumptions about Asian people. :D
Then we had a really yummy lunch with Julieta's parents, including fresh cheese from Mexico that her dad smuggled in, as well as salad, chicken, goat-milk-caramel, and radishes from Julieta's elementary school garden. It was a fun and yummy experience.
Saturday evening:
Jono did roleplaying (Trollbabe rules in Glorantha setting, dubbed Trollantha by Cat), while I sorted lots of checks for Chinese school.
Sunday morning/afternoon:
Met up with Isaac, who was in SF for the weekend. Had gloriously cheap and tasty dim sum at Dol Ho, on the recommendation of Jeremy. It was a random dim sum place in Chinatown that was full of old Cantonese people. They didn't have as wide a range of selections, but we still got the cart experience, and what they did make, they made well. So really good Shumai and various shrimpy goods. (No 粉条, no lotus-chicken-wraps). In introduced people to Turnip cake! The best part was: we had our fill and it came out to $9/person. Crazy!
Then we (Isaac, Gabe, BADASS, Aza) went to the Exploratorium. Jono was super excited because he has many nostalgic memories of reading/playing the Explorabook as a kid. There was much spinning of objects and experimenting with optical and sound and all sorts of fun stuff. Jono later regretted not being able to go into the Tactile Dome, upon which I suggested that he close his eyes and try to navigate the apartment. Then we got boba and a very yummy crepe.
Here's the posse outside of the Exploratorium
Here's a few of us inside. The Exploratorium makes everyone child-sized again.
Sunday evening:
We had dinner with Jinghua and Oscar (newcomer to Mozilla Labs from Google China and her Venezuelan husband that she met in Denmark), and talked about all sorts of random stuff. They tried to keep it relatively tech jargon-free for me. :D
Monday morning/afternoon:
Schlepped up to Oakland to hang with
yeloson. He made us really yummy Pu'er tea, we had amazing Vietnamese food, and then played King of Siam, which has a lot of crazy strategy. For example, everyone has 8 cards total to last the 8 turns. Do you play more cards earlier, or do you play 1 card per turn, or do you save them for the end? You want to help one color win, but in order to cash in on the win, you need to remove pieces of that color from the board, which then decreases the chance of winning for that color... And there's always the British waiting to snipe at the tied provinces. But since it's only 8 turns, it's also a rather quick play. We enjoyed it so much that Jono bought it when he went to visit the game store! I came back early to take a nap and prep for the evening..Monday evening:
Went over to Cat's, hung out with Stephanie, ate lots of dumplings, and then proceeded to mass-produce baked goods -- made 100 x-shaped cookies for the faculty room (announcing my "upcoming nuptials"), and also made 24 vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cupcakes for my students (one of them is vegan). They were all very yummy and quickly devoured! Success!
