Eda, Yusuke, Violeta and I (and little Sophie too!) went to check out Fotofest 2008 for one day, hoping to catch photography during the Cultural Revolution in China. Instead, it was a lecture on the history of Chinese photography in general, so we started meandering about the museum, and revisited the light tunnel, where I was almost exactly one year ago with Chi-Wei:

"Gimme!"

It was my first time meeting Sophie. Very cool. :)

Last weekend, Tree Frog invited us up to his family's ranch house in a little town between Houston and Austin. For a city girl like me, I was a bit apprehensive since I mean, c'mon, how do you live with ZERO internet?! :)

Well, I am proud to say that not only did I survive without internet, but I even had offline, real-life fun! :) The crisp air was refreshing. We were surrounded by green grass, blue sky, and clear water. The puppies that came along seemed to enjoy the large expanse of roamable land. I learned to ride a 4-wheeler with manual shift (I can't drive a manual car to save my life). I rode a tractor lawn mower. We ate Tree Frog's mom's freshly homemade brownies. We rode in the back of a pickup truck. We jumped around on bales of hay. We slept in tents with only thin layers of sleeping bag separating our bodies from the ground (and then there was the tent that had not one, but two Aerobeds? Heehee!). I'd forgotten what it felt like to not HAVE to be anywhere, and to kinda just do ... nothing in particular, except focus on chillin'. :)

Thanks to those who came out (especially those that battled severe disorientation in the dark to come join us)! Enjoy the pics. Lots of epic memories in this one. :)

Tree Frog's rendering was on the front page of the Austin American-Statesman's Business section (that pic in the middle beside the Dell story):

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These scans were pieced together (not entirely perfectly, but good enough) using Photoshop's Photomerge tool. I tried my tried-and-true Canon Photostitch, but it wasn't able to line up the text very well.

Chef Hugh was on the front page of the Chinese Community News for his recent non-cooking developments. He's the handsome dude with the pretty girl on the rightmost:

Congratulations to the newlyweds. :)

My 15 seconds.

Chef Hugh stays busy with the introduction of son #2, P-Jo, XO's youngest brother from the same litter. He seemed a bit depressed as he was probably coping with having just gotten his tummy stitched up.

Papa Hugh showing P-Jo's stitches.

 
In addition to the unique coloration of his face, his paws exhibit a little half-and-half action as well.

Look at those wrinkly little legs! Aww!

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These two pups are gonna be getting a lotta love from Auntie Caroline. :)

With that face ...

With that snore ...

With that wrinkly little body ... ?

I need to get over there with my dSLR to capture the puppy madness properly. :) [ more pics! ]

I was unable to view the lunar eclipse due to hard rain and a class I was attending. This was the night before last, where the view of the moon surrounded by gnarly clouds inspired me to grab a tripod and snag a few shots. Untouched except for slight cropping.

... More like, "Wonderful Weekend". That's just the song I'm humming in my head at the moment while writing this here post.

Man, what a weekend! Played cards, ate at two restaurants I'd never been to before, got a deep tissue massage (by a man with strong hands and an exotic accent to boot, heh heh heh), watched Booty Call for the first time (LOVED IT), and shot fun pics at the "Seven Wonders" in the Houston theater district.

My legs are sore from running back and forth to set the timer on the camera and jumping as high as I could for multiple mid-air photo attempts. :)

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The Anti-Valentine's gathering was a hit for the most part.

You know, I think I've only had ONE Valentine's Day date ever. As in, an actual outing ON February 14th. Here's how it went down:

It was a fine day back in the stone ages, er, I mean, college. A handsome younger lad that had started hanging out with our group of friends, I'll call him "J", had asked me out for Valentine's Day dinner. At 8:00am (!!!) he showed up at my dorm room door, with a stack of envelopes, and a single rose. Each envelope was labelled "9:00am", "10:00am", "11:00am", and so forth, for the whole day up until midnight. I was instructed to open them on the hour, each hour. Not wanting to ruin any surprises for myself, I did exactly as told. Romantic idea, no?

Well, 'twas not to be. The notes contained in the envelopes started off cute, slightly sweet, as would be fitting for our level of acquaintance. But then they started to become extremely random in nature: the one that still sticks in my head to this day is the note that read:

"Don't pick your nose too much,
it will cause nosebleeds."

This is a re-enactment of the accompanying illustration. I exaggerate not.

Dinner was lovely, with normal conversation. Only upon finishing did I realize that ALL OF OUR MUTUAL GUY FRIENDS, the losers (yeah PH, AL, JW, I'm talkin' to you guys), had been sitting there, a few tables over, spying on us the entire evening. Uh, I guess it was a good thing I hadn't felt the strong urge to jump J's bones in public? Any semblance of a date ended there as the whole gang headed to Einstein's and played video games. Which WAS pretty fun.

Anyway, fast forward to last night:

Thanks go out to Jon for picking a place with NO vegetarian choices except for bread, coleslaw, and french fries. :) Light flirting with the waiter had him asking me to come back Sunday where he would toast the bread in a special way, just for me ...

More light flirting again at Starbucks; I asked for the opposite of the fat free "skinny latte", and the cashier came up with the fattiest combination possible, labelling it as "Special Drank". Hee hee!

A happy group of Anti-Valentine-ians, camping outside Starbucks singing various Christmas carols and cartoon theme songs together. We definitely could have been mistaken for a bunch of drunks. :)