Our Christmas Poem

Twas the night before Christmas
When all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
Except our laptop mouse

It's been a grand year
Full of fun and memories
So here is a recap
For our friends and families

We began this year
Still at school in Chicago
Preparing our next move
with thoughts of San Francisco





Terah did no school work
But still he got his diploma
Michelle bought her first couch
While Terah drove past Oklahoma







Got to see old friends in Philly
At a wedding where Terah was the best
man, Michelle thought she had the flu
Turned out to be a positive pregnancy test





Michelle has one semester to go
and should probably keep her day job
Terah has started work at Cisco
And this poem is kind of odd



To all of our friends, we think of you often
Even those not within sight.
So happy Christmas to all
and to all a good night!

Bachelor Party and Old Men

This past weekend I flew out to Baltimore to help celebrate the upcoming wedding of one of my good friends, Shaun, by throwing him a bachelor party. By party I mean lots of food and old-ish guys running around trying to play sports. Then more eating and sitting around playing poker and Wii. Now that's a party! Seriously, it was a lot of fun and we're all really happy for Shaun.

Brunch at Miss Shirley's Cafe:

Then some outdoor sports at Patterson Park (frisbee and football). I didn't get to take a lot of pictures, but you get the idea.

The wounded warriors after a water break

BBQ time

Margarita time!

Biking in Santa Cruz

A few weekends ago my sister came out to visit us in California. We were able to give her the full Bay Area experience: wine tasting in Sonoma, a night in SF, cupcakes from Sprinkes, sushi, froyo, In-N-Out Burger, and a trip to Santa Cruz. Here are some photos from our bike along the shore in Santa Cruz.

On the road again...

After graduation I got to take a little solo roadtrip from Chicago to Cupertino. I figured that it wouldn't be too bad and could easily cover the 2,168 miles in about 4 days. That means averaging about 7 to 7 and 1/2 hours a day of driving. Although that kind of sounds like a long time to drive a day, it really wasn't too bad.

What helped to pass the time was that I got to listen to a bunch of audio books that kept me quite entertained. My reading list:

Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris (very funny collection of short stories)
City of Thieves - Daniel Benioff (coming-of-age type of story set in WWII Russia)
Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer (riveting true story about a disaster on Mount Everest)
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (pretty interesting story, but I never got to finish it)

I even got to listen to the short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Overall, quite an eclectic mix of reading (listening).

As for my journey, I pretty much drove due west through 8 different states, and stopped in Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Reno before making it to California.

Here's a sample of some of the pictures (in chronological order) I was able to take while on my drive. As you can tell, the weather and scenery changed quite a bit!

Finally escaping the storm

Impending storm clouds...

Videos from the storm (notice that it was raining so hard some cars pulled over):





Clear skies again... ahhh...

Pulling into Omaha where the College World Series of Baseball was taking place and I stayed in the same hotel that as the ASU team:

Getting into Colorado

Seeing a Rockies game at Coors Field. Rockies won on a Helton walk-off HR!




The view from the hotel:
The a big salt lake:

My first traffic jam in California :-)
Home sweet home...