Monday, January 01, 2007
Wedding Anniversary, Christmas, Eve’s birthday and 2007
This year, like the last one we decided to do the family thing over Christmas and New Year. Last year, the family came to Albany, when Trish was so close to her due date. Little did we know that as soon as Aunt Kathy and Grandma would jump on their flight back to Los Angeles, Trish would start her labor. But that is a separate story.
Ah date night for our third wedding anniversary. We decided to have Cassandra, our baby sitter come over on the 19th, so we could go out. Eve had just gone to bed and she has already started sleeping 10 hours at a stretch. We headed off to a restaurant in the Castro district of San Francisco called Chow. I had heard quite a bit about Chow and was quite excited about taking Tricia there. I hate pretentious restaurants whose staff thinks they are better than you.
As predicted it took us a good 20 minutes to find parking and then the wait was about 15 minutes. We were escorted to the patio area which was covered and heated. We ordered crab cakes to start with and I had a wood baked pizza while Trish had short ribs. Everything was made to perfection. My only complaint, we finished dinner too quickly. We decided to head out to look for a dessert place closer to the city. Since it was a weeknight, most places were already closed. I asked Trish if she’d like to drive up to lookout near the Golden Gate Bridge. I had never seen the bridge at night and was quite interested. It was a clear night, but very windy. I was quite cold but I think I got a few decent pictures. I need to download them from the camera. We got home by about 10:30pm since Cassandra needed to head home too. It was a nice evening. We are planning other date nights.
I was mind bogglingly busy at work over the next few days where I had just migrated all of our training collateral to the new portal. There were still a few niggling things, but I decided to do that over our much anticipated vacation. (Which never really happened... good.)
On the 22nd we packed the car full everything we thought we might need in LA, where everyone was headed. Everyone here means the family. My dad was also supposed to make it, but he could not. So 23rd morning as soon as Eve woke up at 4:30am, we dressed her up, gave her a meal, packed in the last couple of things and hit the road by 5:15am. Tricia did the first stretch till about 8am, when we stopped at a diner for breakfast. After that I drove for a while, we stopped for an extended period over lunch and reached Aunt Kathy’s by 2pm. Not too bad.
We got the guest bedroom, where we set up Eve’s crib. We got all the presents out and arranged them under the tree. After an early dinner, Trish and I headed to bed, we were just exhausted. Eve did not sleep well at all. She did not expect us to be in the room. She called out to us all night. “Hi!....UP!” Who can ingnore cries like that?!
At this point we had Grandma, Trish’s mom, Aunt Kathy, Eve and me in the house. The next day Donald showed up with two cats. Everybody was itching to open their gifts. Well, mostly Tricia. Eve entertained everyone with her good mood. That night Tricia and I decided to sleep outside, in the living room and let Eve sleep inside. So, we had Donald, Tricia and me on the floor, and Trish’s mom on the couch.
Now, I’m a snorer. The next morning when we woke up, Donald was nowhere to be seen. After a couple of hours he walked in with his bedding and told us that he slept in his car. That did not make sense to anyone, but hey, it’s all good.
Grandma wanted to do breakfast, shower and get ready for the day. Yup, today was Christmas day. After a breakfast of everybody’s favourite, “Dutch Babies”, we started opening gifts. It took us more than 4 hours to get through it. I’m glad Grandma insisted on breakfast. We got some very thoughtful gifts and tried to do the same for everyone.
The living room was a war zone when we were done. Wrapping paper, bows, ribbons, boxes, bags and the like… We spent some time with cleaning up and soon enough we were ready for dinner. Now, in this country they call the Thanksgiving meal and the Christmas meal dinners, even though you’ll eat at about 3-4pm. Anyway, Aunt Kathy pulled out the turkey, which she carved. As you might imagine, we ate like little piggies.
That evening we watched Miracle on 34th Street, the new one. Not as nice, but as Christmas-sy a movie as one can watch on Christmas day. Tricia decided she wanted to watch House afterwards. Aunt Kathy had the first season. It wasn't too bad. Now Aunt Kathy still did not have an internet connection, so after I teased her for a while, we called a local ISP to get an appointment for them to come and get things set up, later in the week.
The next day we decided to head to the Getty to have a look at the "Icons of Sinai" exhibit. Now, I avoid anything to do with religion and Tricia rightly calls me a freakin' nut, but this exhibit is awesome. This exhibition offers an unprecedented look at some of the oldest surviving icons from the Byzantine world, and provides rare insight into monastic life, past and present, at the remote Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine. Backroads into classical Christianity.
The next day we decided to meet up with Mili. We just hung out all day, not doing too much, just chatting and watched a Movie or two. Now, since we were meeting them after Eve was put to bed, we needed to get our act together and put her to bed, get her settled, make sure we were dressed and ready to head out. We got to Mili's around 7pm and we had dinner and drinks with Mili and Rahul. It was good to catch up with them. Mili is Anupam's only family besides his adopted Ford/Sturdevant ones. We headed back close to midnight and everybody was passed out. We snuck into our room and went to bed ourselves.
Today, on the 28th the internet was finally up, so I spent a couple of hours setting up Aunt Kathy's wifi and adding plenty of security. Plus I updated all the software on the new laptop and then sat down with her to create email addresses. We looked at how to chat, use the web cam and other things. I think she will manage, considering how bright she is. Later that evening, Lisa, Trish, Don and I headed off to Universal Studios Citywalk, for dinner. This is a decent little place with themed restaurants. We had dinner at the brewery with beer and martinis. Trish decided that Crepes after a big dinner is always a good idea... plus she was a little tipsy.
Aquarium day. On the 29th we drove to Long Beach to the Aquarium of the Pacific. This was Eve's first aquarium experience. Eve loved the fishies. She made the fishie sign all day.
The next day we hung out at Aunt Kathy and started the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, while Tricia worked on Eve's birthday cake. I got some pretty cool pictures of the work in progress.
Today is 31st of December and it's Eve's first birthday and she got bucket loads of gifts from everyone. She did not sleep all day, so se was a quite clingy and crabby, but after Aunt Kathy's friend Shelly got there, she decided she wanted to have fun and opened all her gifts, wore a dress and walked all over the place. She had a very good time, but due to lack of naps, she went down early and stayed asleep.
It did not look like anything special was going to happen for new year's eve and I wanted to make it special for everyone. Now we could not go out due to the passed out baby, but I could head to neighbourhood grocery store and buy a few supplies. I bought appletini an aple flavored martini fixings, some fresh Atlantic Salmon and a couple of other things I thought that might work as crowd favorites. Tricia and I are foodaholics, we cook, shop, talk about, subscribe to magazines, watch the Food Network and pretty much anything to do with good food from around the world. So, I made these and served them up fr dinner. This was the first time I saw Donald show interest in anything beyond processed meat, so I am sure dinner turned out well. Tricia had a couple of Appletinis and we watched tv together. Not as exciting as some of our new years of past, but a lot can be said about spending time with family.
The next day, packed up all our stuff and headed back to San Mateo. We had a really good time and now it was time to head back home, work for 3 days and fly off to Australia. Yup, we are going to Sydney after 5 years. We are very excited about seeing all our old friends like Anna Vidman, Nick Fields, Anna Pai and so many more. We have bitter sweet memories of our time there...
Ah date night for our third wedding anniversary. We decided to have Cassandra, our baby sitter come over on the 19th, so we could go out. Eve had just gone to bed and she has already started sleeping 10 hours at a stretch. We headed off to a restaurant in the Castro district of San Francisco called Chow. I had heard quite a bit about Chow and was quite excited about taking Tricia there. I hate pretentious restaurants whose staff thinks they are better than you.
As predicted it took us a good 20 minutes to find parking and then the wait was about 15 minutes. We were escorted to the patio area which was covered and heated. We ordered crab cakes to start with and I had a wood baked pizza while Trish had short ribs. Everything was made to perfection. My only complaint, we finished dinner too quickly. We decided to head out to look for a dessert place closer to the city. Since it was a weeknight, most places were already closed. I asked Trish if she’d like to drive up to lookout near the Golden Gate Bridge. I had never seen the bridge at night and was quite interested. It was a clear night, but very windy. I was quite cold but I think I got a few decent pictures. I need to download them from the camera. We got home by about 10:30pm since Cassandra needed to head home too. It was a nice evening. We are planning other date nights.
I was mind bogglingly busy at work over the next few days where I had just migrated all of our training collateral to the new portal. There were still a few niggling things, but I decided to do that over our much anticipated vacation. (Which never really happened... good.)
On the 22nd we packed the car full everything we thought we might need in LA, where everyone was headed. Everyone here means the family. My dad was also supposed to make it, but he could not. So 23rd morning as soon as Eve woke up at 4:30am, we dressed her up, gave her a meal, packed in the last couple of things and hit the road by 5:15am. Tricia did the first stretch till about 8am, when we stopped at a diner for breakfast. After that I drove for a while, we stopped for an extended period over lunch and reached Aunt Kathy’s by 2pm. Not too bad.
We got the guest bedroom, where we set up Eve’s crib. We got all the presents out and arranged them under the tree. After an early dinner, Trish and I headed to bed, we were just exhausted. Eve did not sleep well at all. She did not expect us to be in the room. She called out to us all night. “Hi!....UP!” Who can ingnore cries like that?!
At this point we had Grandma, Trish’s mom, Aunt Kathy, Eve and me in the house. The next day Donald showed up with two cats. Everybody was itching to open their gifts. Well, mostly Tricia. Eve entertained everyone with her good mood. That night Tricia and I decided to sleep outside, in the living room and let Eve sleep inside. So, we had Donald, Tricia and me on the floor, and Trish’s mom on the couch.
Now, I’m a snorer. The next morning when we woke up, Donald was nowhere to be seen. After a couple of hours he walked in with his bedding and told us that he slept in his car. That did not make sense to anyone, but hey, it’s all good.
Grandma wanted to do breakfast, shower and get ready for the day. Yup, today was Christmas day. After a breakfast of everybody’s favourite, “Dutch Babies”, we started opening gifts. It took us more than 4 hours to get through it. I’m glad Grandma insisted on breakfast. We got some very thoughtful gifts and tried to do the same for everyone.
The living room was a war zone when we were done. Wrapping paper, bows, ribbons, boxes, bags and the like… We spent some time with cleaning up and soon enough we were ready for dinner. Now, in this country they call the Thanksgiving meal and the Christmas meal dinners, even though you’ll eat at about 3-4pm. Anyway, Aunt Kathy pulled out the turkey, which she carved. As you might imagine, we ate like little piggies.
That evening we watched Miracle on 34th Street, the new one. Not as nice, but as Christmas-sy a movie as one can watch on Christmas day. Tricia decided she wanted to watch House afterwards. Aunt Kathy had the first season. It wasn't too bad. Now Aunt Kathy still did not have an internet connection, so after I teased her for a while, we called a local ISP to get an appointment for them to come and get things set up, later in the week.
The next day we decided to head to the Getty to have a look at the "Icons of Sinai" exhibit. Now, I avoid anything to do with religion and Tricia rightly calls me a freakin' nut, but this exhibit is awesome. This exhibition offers an unprecedented look at some of the oldest surviving icons from the Byzantine world, and provides rare insight into monastic life, past and present, at the remote Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine. Backroads into classical Christianity.
The next day we decided to meet up with Mili. We just hung out all day, not doing too much, just chatting and watched a Movie or two. Now, since we were meeting them after Eve was put to bed, we needed to get our act together and put her to bed, get her settled, make sure we were dressed and ready to head out. We got to Mili's around 7pm and we had dinner and drinks with Mili and Rahul. It was good to catch up with them. Mili is Anupam's only family besides his adopted Ford/Sturdevant ones. We headed back close to midnight and everybody was passed out. We snuck into our room and went to bed ourselves.
Today, on the 28th the internet was finally up, so I spent a couple of hours setting up Aunt Kathy's wifi and adding plenty of security. Plus I updated all the software on the new laptop and then sat down with her to create email addresses. We looked at how to chat, use the web cam and other things. I think she will manage, considering how bright she is. Later that evening, Lisa, Trish, Don and I headed off to Universal Studios Citywalk, for dinner. This is a decent little place with themed restaurants. We had dinner at the brewery with beer and martinis. Trish decided that Crepes after a big dinner is always a good idea... plus she was a little tipsy.
Aquarium day. On the 29th we drove to Long Beach to the Aquarium of the Pacific. This was Eve's first aquarium experience. Eve loved the fishies. She made the fishie sign all day.
The next day we hung out at Aunt Kathy and started the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, while Tricia worked on Eve's birthday cake. I got some pretty cool pictures of the work in progress.
Today is 31st of December and it's Eve's first birthday and she got bucket loads of gifts from everyone. She did not sleep all day, so se was a quite clingy and crabby, but after Aunt Kathy's friend Shelly got there, she decided she wanted to have fun and opened all her gifts, wore a dress and walked all over the place. She had a very good time, but due to lack of naps, she went down early and stayed asleep.
It did not look like anything special was going to happen for new year's eve and I wanted to make it special for everyone. Now we could not go out due to the passed out baby, but I could head to neighbourhood grocery store and buy a few supplies. I bought appletini an aple flavored martini fixings, some fresh Atlantic Salmon and a couple of other things I thought that might work as crowd favorites. Tricia and I are foodaholics, we cook, shop, talk about, subscribe to magazines, watch the Food Network and pretty much anything to do with good food from around the world. So, I made these and served them up fr dinner. This was the first time I saw Donald show interest in anything beyond processed meat, so I am sure dinner turned out well. Tricia had a couple of Appletinis and we watched tv together. Not as exciting as some of our new years of past, but a lot can be said about spending time with family.
The next day, packed up all our stuff and headed back to San Mateo. We had a really good time and now it was time to head back home, work for 3 days and fly off to Australia. Yup, we are going to Sydney after 5 years. We are very excited about seeing all our old friends like Anna Vidman, Nick Fields, Anna Pai and so many more. We have bitter sweet memories of our time there...
