Kaboom!

There’s a radio station here in San Francisco called KFOG that puts on a big concert, called Kaboom on Piers 30 and 32 every year, which is followed up by a big fireworks display synchronized to music. Sunnia and I try to go pretty much every year — especially since it’s free. Except… this year, it wasn’t free at all. Apparently the costs have gone up, so they decided to charge everyone $10 to go, which really isn’t that bad a deal, and actually could cut down on the crowds, which might be nice. However, before we even had a chance to make that decision, Byung and Greg invited us to skip the crowds and watch the fireworks from the comfort of their sailboat out on the bay. Cool!

Sunnia cooked up a strawberry-rhubarb cobbler and we drove up to Emeryville (where they keep their boat). We were a bit late and then got lost in the parking lot (don’t ask) trying to find the right dock. However, we eventually got there, and joined the crew of folks on the boat, which included 8 other adults and 5 children (I think all under the age of 6…). 6 of those 8 adults were all sailors, so Sunnia and I went below deck to get out of the way and hung out with Byung (and ate too much food) while we motored out. When I was a kid, I went sailing a few times with my Dad and Wil (on a much, much smaller sailboat), but it’s been at least 20 years since I’ve been on a sailboat, so it took a little getting used to the motion.

It had been crazy windy and cold (as the weatherman said on the radio “unseasonably cold and blustery”) all day long, and when I’d been walking Sugar earlier, I got worried about just how icy cold it would be on the water. And, indeed, even though I came bundled up in four layers, I was told I probably wasn’t wearing enough. So I stayed below deck on most of the ride out — and as we left the dock, the water seemed pretty choppy, so the ride was a bit bouncy. However, as we passed under the Bay Bridge (both the new and old part), amazingly the wind went away and it actually became pretty nice out, so we popped out to see the view. We motored over to McCovey Cove, with a nice view of AT&T Park and then anchored to wait for the show. Apparently someone was supposed to bring a boombox so we could hear the concert and the music synchronized to the fireworks, but somewhere along the way it was forgotten. No matter. Soon enough, the fireworks went off — and we were actually really close to the barge where they were setting them off. It was a long show (20 to 30 minutes or so) and both kids and adults seemed to enjoy themselves. About 3/4 of the way through, I figured I might as well try to see if my cameraphone would work and snapped a bunch of pictures. Unfortunately, most of them look like a boat exploding in the Bay:

Oh well. I did get one that actually looks like fireworks:



All in all, pretty cool. After the show, they turned the boat around and started to motor back, just as we had motored in, and we were all amazed at how nice it was out. Not too windy. Not too cold. Then, apparently, the sailors noticed that there was another sailboat nearby… and it had its sails up, rather than motoring. In an effort to defend their honor as sailors, they put up the sail, turned off the motor and away we went. We got to sail all the way back and it really was a lot of fun. As we got close to dock, Byung asked me if I would blog about this… so, what else could I do? All in all, it was a really fun experience, both the fireworks and getting to hang out on the boat. Hopefully we’ll get to go again sometime.

At What Price Would We Sell Our Wedding Date?

There have been huge collection of news articles lately about the popularity of July 7th for weddings this year. Even famous folks like Eva Longoria are planning to get married that day — though, she hasn’t found a location yet and, I’d imagine it’s getting increasingly difficult to find any venue at this point. It’s not too difficult to understand why. The date 07/07/07 has a nice symmetry to it, first of all. Then, of course, for many, 7 is considered a lucky number. Some religious folks believe that 777 is a number representing God. Then there are those who believe that 7 is a lucky number in gambling — and you can see that in slot machines where 7 – 7 – 7 wins you the jackpot.

Of course, for those of you paying attention, you’ll also note that July 7th, 2007 is when I’m getting married as well. Not only that, but we have a pretty damn good location for such a date: Heavenly. If you really think it is a godly number, what better place? Then again, if you’re not so into the Biblical aspect, but more into the gambling aspect, the location still works, given its proximity to Lake Tahoe casinos. Needless to say, we were pretty happy once we realized how cool the date was (and Grier insists that a secondary wonderful aspect of it is that I will never forget my anniversary).

In many of these articles about July 7th wedding days, they talk about desperate brides (it’s always the brides, isn’t it?) who so want that date that they’re willing to pay those who’ve already secured the date. That resulted in a conversation tonight at dinner where we began to wonder at what price would we sell the date (and location… and what the hell, I’d even throw in the cool artwork I made for the Save-the-Date) for our wedding? It would have to be something overwhelming, just to keep my mother from strangling me. So, we figure that it would have to be enough that we could make it up to all the guests who already made plans to travel to the wedding, and then would probably need to buy us a new home as well — given that our current search for home has made us realize how ridiculous home prices are in the Bay Area. Also, if it helps us afford a nicer honeymoon, that wouldn’t hurt either.

So, that probably prices most folks out of the market (though, Ms. Longoria, I imagine it might be well within your budget — so feel free to call). In the meantime, anyone have any suggestions on how much we should sell our wedding date and location for? Sunnia thinks we should put it up on eBay and see what happens.

* PS: If my mom hasn’t yet discovered this blog, I get the feeling she may find out about this post rather quickly. She may require that the amount get bumped up to pay for the hospital stay that would be induced from finding out we were potentially changing the date of the wedding after so much planning.

Fields From The Sky

So there’s this theory that you actually need to blog on a daily basis to get into the habit, and while I do that for work, it’s not so easy around these parts. I get ideas for posts, but then life/work/everything else gets in the way and I have to decide if it’s worth staying up another half an hour at 4am to do a post or actually getting to bed before the sun starts rising, and the pillow usually wins out. Of course, I keep collecting all these ideas for posts (and, yes, I’d said I was going to do a series of music posts, but that’s gotta wait a bit).

Anyway, I was going to do a post on my travel schedule lately. Back in business school I thought that the students who wanted to go into consulting were nuts, after hearing about the hours and the amount of traveling. Of course, as fate would have it, these days I’m willing to bet I put in more hours than most of the folks who went into consulting — and I haven’t taken an actual full vacation in… well… forever.

And, I was thinking it out recently and realized that I’ve actually been on an airplane at least once every month for at least the past 15 months — and the same will be true at least through July and possibly beyond that. Of course, it’s not quite as bad as it seems. For some weird reason, my travel schedule almost always has me flying somewhere at the end of a month and flying back at the beginning of the next month. So I flew at the end of November and back at the beginning of December, then again at the end of January and back at the beginning of February… and then again at the end of March and back at the beginning of April. Of course, then I had 3 more flights in April, so I sorta killed it there. July is now looking like it may involve something on the order of 7 to 8 flights, but at least some of them will not have a damn thing to do with work for once.

Of course, you’d think with all this travel I’d have stacked up some pretty nice frequent flier mileage, but you’d be wrong. Not sure how that’s happened, but I’ve never been able to redeem miles for anything. Part of the problem is JetBlue. For all the wonders of JetBlue, your points only last 12 months — and even I’m not flying fast enough to stack them up. When I booked my latest JetBlue flight, I learned that they (like every other airline) have a credit card, and points you earn with it last forever, but I really have no desire to get another credit card, so I’ll just suffer along.

Anyway, the point of this post before it went off on a tangent was that I actually enjoy flying. I’ve always enjoyed looking at maps and stuff, and staring out the window while flying, figuring out where we are and seeing what everything looks like from the sky really is still a joy. When Google Earth first came out and gave you nearly the same sensation, I was thrilled. However, I’ve found myself doing one odd thing while taking off and landing in metropolitan regions: I start spotting baseball fields.

I don’t know why, but it just amazes me how many baseball fields there are, even in densely packed areas. In some cases, it must represent a ton of valuable real estate if it were turned into housing, but we’ve decided that the tradeoff is absolutely worthwhile. Given my ongoing obsession with baseball, I’m certainly not going to disagree. However, you have to wonder what someone who has no idea what baseball is would think flying over one of these areas and spotting all these odd fields with dirt diamonds over to one side.

Yeah, I go a month without posting and this is the best I can come up with… I keep hearing random friends/relatives/acquaintences tell me they’ve discovered this blog (not that it was ever hidden, but I never told anyone about it either), so maybe this is my attempt to bore you all away, so I can go back to blogging in obscurity.

Recipe For Getting Sick

Wednesday Busy day knowing I’m heading out of town for a bit. Rush around tying up loose ends at work, before heading out to Bay Area Blawgers event (not sure I qualify, and not sure I like being in a room full of lawyers, but hey, it was fun), meet cool folks like Matt Cutts, recognize that you can’t easily sneak out by 7pm as you had promised… stick around to the end. Then rush up the peninsula to meet Sunnia and Teck for dinner. Head back home to show Teck around (he’s house/cat sitting), pack (yeah, that’s important) and finish up some work. Finish up at 2:30am. Realize I need to be awake at 4:30am to get to airport.

Thursday Wake up after 2 hours of sleep. Rush to airport, get on plane, sleep somewhat. Carlo later tells me that airplane sleep counts for 1/3 of regular sleep. Noted. Stop over at O’Hare. Plane is late getting there, giving us enough time to use bathroom, grab McDonald’s (healthy) and rush to gate to get on the plane as nearly the last passengers. Fly to Laguardia. Land right at 5pm local time — and decide that it’s probably easier to ride out rush hour at aunt’s in Queens than trying to make it to Manhattan with luggage. Dinner with aunt, uncle and grandparents (just arrived themselves earlier in the week). Nice to see everyone. Exhausted, though. Hop on subway. Get screwed up at the transfer, have to back track, etc. Finally get up to Artis’ place around 10pm. Check in with work. Oh look, there’s work to do. Work until 2am. Sleep.

Friday Spend all day running up and down Manhattan from meeting to meeting. End up eating two lunches, but no dinner (evens out), including one at the aptly named Fried Dumpling. “Best $2 Lunch in NY” sign says. I believe it. Eventually end up back at Artis’. Pack up, run down to Penn Station, screw up transfer again (I really did used to understand the subway system). Take the LIRR out to the Island. Parents pick us up, spend time showing us redone kitchen and wanting to discuss life/wedding/etc as we are falling asleep. Finally go to sleep.

Saturday Awake at 5:30am to drive down to Baltimore. Stop off at old high school job bagel place. Buy some bagels from old boss’s wife and old boss’s son (they don’t recognize me). Start driving. Realize parents never gave us car registration… realize it might be important. Double back, pick up registration. Head back to Baltimore. Actually, amazingly, drive all the way to Baltimore by 10:30am, with just enough time for Sunnia and I to change into nice clothes and get seated for Adam and Kate’s wedding. Adam and Kate’s wedding runs until 4pm. Lots of fun. Catching up with the old gang, blah, blah, blah. Leave wedding, go to hotel. At wedding, Adam mentions that he left a note for us at the hotel with directions to pub where everyone’s meeting later that night. Hotel has no idea about note, but says someone left a plate of chocolate covered strawberries for us. Take the strawberries, go to room, fall fast asleep for 3 hours (yay, sleep). Sunnia stays up to eat half the strawberries. I wake up, eat my half (delicious), Sunnia wants to sleep and not go to pub. SMS Adam, calls with directions including super secret “cheap” parking garage in downtown Baltimore. Drive to downtown, garage is not only cheap ($3 unlimited time) but empty. Hang out with old gang again. Catch up with Steve, Rob, Adam and assorted wives. Adam has no idea about delicious chocolate covered strawberries. Apparently they were meant for someone else. Realize my voice is disappearing. Don’t drink anything alcoholic all day, figuring that’s probably not a good idea. Leave pub at midnight. Drive back to hotel, explain why I didn’t bring back food (oops) for Sunnia. Go to sleep.

Sunday Wake up at 7:30am to drive to DC Metro to go into DC to see cherry blossoms (a requirement of the trip). Feel more hungover than I’ve ever been, despite not having had anything alcoholic to drink previous day. It’s cold and gray out. Meet up with Donna and Ben who show us around and we get to catch up. See the 3000 or whatever cherry blossom trees, take a bunch of pictures, and get back on the Metro by noon. Get to car around 12:30 and decide we’ll get lunch on the road. Know we need to be back in NY by 6, figure we can sit for a slightly longer lunch than fast food. See sign for IHOP. Discover highway sign for IHOP neglects the 5 mile distance from the highway. Also, didn’t count on Sunday brunch crowd. Decide to try innocuously named “Irene’s Restaurant” down the street. Turns out it’s Mexican food. Not what we wanted, but we’re already here. It’s half empty. Should be quick, right? Discover the world’s slowest restaurant service. Ends up taking almost 1.5 hours. Leave tiny tip, get back on road. Now it’s raining. Sunnia drives and I sleep a bit (car sleep: even less productive that airplane sleep). Get to NJ, I start driving again. Stuck in traffic. NJ Tpke not much fun. My head is killing me. Stupid GPS system continually tells us “In 2 miles, stay on the current road… In 1.5 miles, stay on the current road… etc….” Note to GPS makers: no need to tell us when you want us to stay on the current road. Decide to ignore GPS’s plan to take us through Manhattan (common sense module not included in GPS system) and get stuck in Staten Island instead. Eventually get back an hour late for Sunnia’s “no longer a surprise” bridal shower. Even though I’m invited, I say “I’m sick” and proceed upstairs and collapse, noting that I have a fever, a hacking cough and feel generally grumpy. Sunnia and guests apparently had lots of fun, though.

That was all a week ago. The rest of this past week involved trying to recover from that experience (and never having nearly enough time to complete this blog post). I thought I was getting better by Tuesday evening, only to get worse when I needed to get up early both Wednesday and Thursday (Thursday for my flight to Chicago). But got more sleep Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. of course, now I need to get up crazy early tomorrow morning to catch my flight back to CA. I’m still coughing like a mad man, which I’m sure everyone else on the flight will be thrilled with… Hopefully on the way to being better for real, though…

It Makes Sense

This might or might not have happened earlier. If it did happen, I might or might not have taken creative liberties.

Her: Hey, can you put that box of contact solution I bought away?
Me: What’s that over there?
Her: Oh, that’s more contact solution.
Me: You bought them both today? But it’s a different brand.
Her: Yeah, the first one was on sale.
Me: That doesn’t explain…
Her: But the other one is the brand I use.
Me: *blank stare*
Her: It makes sense.
Me: *Puts the contact solution (both of ’em) away*

Sometimes it’s better not to ask questions.