Irrelevance Glorified

Back in May, I took a long weekend and traveled back to Chicago for my nephews very first birthday. It was the first time I had seen him since last August, so he had grown up quite a bit, and was on the very verge of walking. My other sister was traveling up from Florida, and a bunch of rugrats were invited over to ensure that chaos would ensue.

Interacting with Sachin is interestingly different from a lot of other kids. In the limited interaction that I’ve had with my other friends’ young kids, I feel like I’m met with a bit of skepticism. Like, they are not sure if I’m for real or not, and they take a while before they feel like they can address my existence. For Sachin, he took to me pretty quickly. I think that the most simple explanation is that unlike my other friends with little kids, I look a lot like his Mommy and Daddy. Sachin showed little hesitation in crawling up to me, pulling on my pant legs to bring himself to his feet, and then asking to be picked up.

In the pictures below, you’ll notice that there aren’t a whole lot of actual birthday party pictures. That’s because I was pressed into camcorder duty, and was thus unable to use my own camera. However, there are a lot of other pictures of doing cute little Sachin things that I’m sure people can enjoy. You can blame the graininess of the pictures on the fact that I used a high ISO setting to combat his fidgety-ness.

Flickr Set Here
Slideshow Below
Pictures and Descriptions after the jump.

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Much like last year, my Mom visited me in February. However, things were better than last year. First of all, we weren’t both sick. Second of all, she was able to stay 2 weeks instead of just 1. And third, it didn’t rain all the whole time, just part of the time.

I wasn’t really in a position to take a lot of vacation time, so there weren’t any awesome road trips, but we did manage to see some things when the weather permitted. First off, we visited the Winchester Mystery House, a interesting little tourist trap in San Jose. Basically, the heir to the Winchester Rifle fortune used her husband’s legacy to build a rambling, chaotic house. No pictures allowed, though, of the inside, so no photographic evidence.

The weekend after that, it was a rainy day, so we went to do some museuming in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, where we visited the Conservatory of Flowers, the Science Museum, the Art Museum, and a Japanese Tea Garden. And the day after, we visited a state park to see some redwoods.

Whenever I look over these pictures, I usually find that I forgot to take many pictures of actual people. That is true in this set as well. It’s quite flower-filled, at my Mom’s request. But still, hope you enjoy.

Flickr Set Here.
Slideshow Below
Pictures and Descriptions After the Jump

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Last Thanksgiving, I decided not to go back to Chicago, mostly because flying back to the Midwest is a pain in the butt and sorta expensive as well. I like to travel within the time zone, to minimize those hassles. So when Bruce and Tina extended an invitation to me to visit for Thanksgiving, I accepted it before they could explain that it was mostly sarcasm.

Visiting them is “interesting”, mostly due to their two young boys, Nile (20 months when I visited) and Cyrus (3 months), who are slowly draining their parents’ sanity. This was actually my first time meeting Cyrus. He was still blob-like at this age, but I liked Cyrus; he did not fuss when I held him, and we had some good conversations during tummy time. Nile was a bit suspicious of me, but allowed me to read some books to him. He’s pretty verbal at this age, although Tina is much more skilled at comprehending him than I am.

We were pretty ambitious for this Thanksgiving meal; I convinced Tina to try out the Good Eats Brined Turkey recipe, which makes for a deliciously moist turkey. It turned out well overall, although we were hampered by not having a true probe thermometer. I also made a slow-cooker cabbage dish that turned out pretty well, and a sausage stuffing that was delicious, although I should have chopped the walnuts within it a bit finer.

Overall, though, this was just an excuse to visit Bruce & Tina, two of my favorite people.

Anyways, here are some pictures of my visit, which will probably be used as evidence someday by Child Protective Services.

Flickr Set Here.
Slideshow Below.
Pictures And Descriptions After the Break.

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Back in November, I used up some of my vacation days and visited Japan. Not just on a whim, mind you; when I travel, I travel to visit people. In this case, it’s my good friends Yusuke and Tomoko, old compatriots from High School (Yusuke) and undergrad (Tomoko). While I flew in from San Francisco, another friend from undergrad, Becky, flew in from Boston along with her boyfriend Steve. So in many ways, it was a little reunion with a lot of my favorite people.
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I was in Chicago at the end of July/beginning of August, but not three weeks later I found myself back again. Cameron and Gina were having a wedding reception! I know what you’re thinking. Wasn’t there some sort of reverend activity back in September? Well yes, there was. But you know, parents prefer it to see their kids getting married, rather than just hearing about it, so they decided to have a little ceremony in Chicago, and invite more than two people. I didn’t remember to take many pictures, because I was all caught up in the moment, but here they are, along with a picture courtesy of Dave Clutter.

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For once, a post not about hiking! Back at the end of July, I traveled back to Chicago for a long weekend. Why? Well, for one, I hadn’t been back in a little while and hadn’t seen anyone in my family since February, so it seemed like a decent idea. Secondly, my sister Sharmila had recently had a kid, so I was up for seeing my new nephew Sachin. And thirdly, my other sister Vandana and her husband Rich were coming up from Orlando, which is a fairly rare occurrence. So I took a few days off from work and flew in to Chicago. Thursday was spent doing chores around my Mom’s place, such as cleaning gutters and stuff. Friday we drove up to Sharmila’s place on the North Side, meeting up with Vandana and Rich. We spent most of that day goo-gooing over the baby and taking a little walk out to Lake Michigan. Saturday’s forecast called for rain, so we decided to do something indoor, namely go to the Art Institute of Chicago. I hadn’t been to the Art Institute for a really long time, so I was definitely up for that (although I was very disappointed when I realized they had removed/hidden the medieval armor and weapons gallery). They had recently opened up a new Modern Art wing, so I was curious what they had there. It was….interesting, to say to the least. I took a few pictures, although not so many as I always tend to feel like I’m stealing from artists and the museum when I do so. Afterwards we went out for Tapas, and Sunday was time to return to our respective homes.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures after the jump.

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Back in May I visited Portland for what may be the last time in a long time. You see, when I’ve gone to Portland it’s been for the express written purpose of visiting Bruce and Tina (and Nile). Soon, Bruce will be moving to Walla Walla, so Portland probably isn’t much in my future.

This trip was great because Jesse and his wife Anne were able to come out on Memorial Day weekend as well. We did a bit of hiking, a bit of lying around doing nothing, and a bit of wine tasting. The pictures and videos below are what I took during the trip. Sadly, Tina is under-represented because her pregnancy made it hard to join in on the wine-tasting and hiking. But she was with us in spirit.

As always, hit the Flickr set for pictures and video, hit the slide show below if you’re lazy, or hit the jump to see everything at once.

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Since Bruce moved to Portland, I’ve visited there a decent number of times (4…I think?). However, I was in the mood for something…Norther. So I decided to visit Cameron, who is now up in Seattle. As a first time visitor to Seattle, Cameron took me around to some of the most pictured places, so that I could jump on that bandwagon. Gina actually arrived from Korea that weekend, but due to the jet lag she didn’t actually feel to participating in much. However, we did go see the new Star Trek flick (lens flares anyone?) I was pleased to find out that Cameron and Gina’s cat, Maki, still remembered me. Anyways, I took some pictures, although never as much as I intend to, and am posting them here. Either hit the Flickr set, watch the slideshow below, or hit the jump to get all the pictures in a row with descriptions.

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Back in February, my Mom visited me for a week, and we did a bit of traveling around. Now, February isn’t the best time to visit the Bay Area. In general, it’s pretty rainy, and this week didn’t disappoint — it rained most days. However, we soldiered through and still did things.

First, we went up and visited wine country. The two most obvious choices in the Bay Area are the Sonoma and Napa regions. Napa is the more well-known, more expensive, and more pretentious valley, while Sonoma is more up and coming. So Sonoma it was. However, the wine tasting would have to be more about ambiance rather than actual, you know, wine, because I would be driving and my Mom is a tiny person who rarely drinks. Because of this, I didn’t care about maximizing the number of places we visited, and cared more about doing things that seemed interesting. Hence the visit to Korbel, with pictures below. Also, since I’m an idiot, I forgot my camera, so all I did was take a few pictures with my cell phone.

The next weekend, we went down south to San Simeon to visit Hearst Castle, at my Mom’s request. Incidentally, this visit was the 2nd in a two-hundred-something part series entitled “Better Know a California State Park.” Part One occurred during Yusuke’s visit back in December, when we visited elephant seals at Año Nuevo.

So, hit the jump for more pictures (and explanations), hit the Flickr set for pictures at the source, or just hit the “play” button below if you’re lazy.

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In honor of Martin Luther King’s birthday, I spent the holiday with perhaps the whitest guy I know. And because I’m lazy, they haven’t been posted until now. But hey, better late than never.

I visited Portland back in January to see Bruce, Tina, and little Nile. This version of Nile was a little bit more interactive than the last time I visited, but not yet mobile enough to be a full-fledged monster. Normally, I’ve just done a picture dump of these things, replete with explanations, but after seeing Bruce introduce slide shows to his webpage, I thought it came off acceptable. Of course, my pictures are typically poorly composed, so explanations are usually necessary. So, hit the jump to see all the pictures, hit up the Flickr set (and increase my Flickr traffic), or just passively watch the slideshow below.

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