A Christmas Letter (The Lazy Way)

Over the last couple of weeks, we've gotten nice Christmas cards and Christmas letters from various friends and relatives, so Chris and I thought, maybe we should write something too. Of course, tomorrow is Christmas Eve, so it's a little late to send real mail...so we'll settle for making a blog post. :-)

Truth be told, while we feel guilty for not blogging more often, we're also pretty boring these days, so you're not missing too much. We basically spend most of our time at Google, happily eating and/or working. When we're not eating or working, we tend to play video games or play with our crazy sneaky cats.

Here's a picture of us playing with both cats and video games at the same time. In the picture below, Caprice is doing battle with Bowser as we play Super Paper Mario on the Wii):


In other cat news, both Caprice and Honey have figured out how to climb our CD case. This wouldn't be so bad, except that the door frame you see in the background is the door to our bedroom. When we wake up and open the door in the morning, it's...well, a little startling...to have two starving attack cats at head-level <bat bat bat>.


Recently, I caved to Chris's constant pining for an XBox 360 and got him one for his birthday. We finished playing Assassin's Creed and just started playing Mass Effect, which is made by the same people who make Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR). (By the way, KOTOR is one of our favorite games, because Chris gets to kill people with a light saber and I at least get a smarmy love story.)

Once a month, we find enough motivation to wash some dishes or do some laundry, but I'm sure you don't want to hear about that. (Especially the "once a month" part.) But if you want evidence, here's a picture of me in my Halloween costume, with the kitchen in the background:

Q: Can you guess what I'm trying to be for Halloween? (Hint: My pony tail is trying to have a white tip, which you can see if you look really carefully. The blue clothes are also not an accident.) Answer at the bottom if you really can't guess.

That's about it for our hobbies.

I guess we did do some traveling over the past few months, but nothing too exotic:

Los Angeles: We went to LA twice to visit friends and parents. Here's a picture of a lovely dessert we had on the 3rd Street Promenade (tempura banana split with plum, lychee, and green tea sorbet) -- soooooo delicious:

Folsom, CA: We finally made it out to visit our good friend Shar. (Yay for apple farms!)

San Diego, CA: We visited Chris's best man and saw lots of good stuff (and ate lots of decadent desserts) in SD. We saw the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit and also toured the amazing San Diego Zoo. The pandas were especially awesome. Usually they're just lazing around in their little caves, but we were lucky enough to be there when one of them was literally bouncing off the walls. They're surprisingly clumsy (but ohhh so cute)! Here's a picture of one falling out of a tree:

Here's a sickeningly cute picture of a bunch of meerkats. See the baby in the front? I just couldn't resist sharing it:

More San Diego pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/SanDiegoVisit

Maui, HI: Last but not least, Google sent us to Maui for a few days. Awesome right?! We went on a great hike (which thoroughly convinced me that I need to work out more), we saw some beautiful beautiful fishes at Molokini Crater (clearest water I have EVER gone swimming in, by far), and we had some great Jenga games where every finger tremble and every moment of tower-teetering was snapped a thousand times by the Google paparazzi (i.e. several dozen engineers who have photography and fancy cameras as their primary hobby).

Here's us at a luau:

So, that's most of what we've been doing for the last half of the year. Life is great and we couldn't be happier! We hope to visit more people next year, and already have plans to go to Taiwan (February, for Chinese New Year's), Indian Wells, CA (to see Roger Federer play, fingers crossed), and Providence (to see Jessica graduate). In the meantime happy holidays to everyone, and please ping us if you're ever in the Bay Area!

P.S. The answer for the Halloween costume: Firefox. I know, I'm a dork. :-)

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Last week, my teammates and I woke up at the crack of dawn to go kayaking in Tomales Bay. Having only ventured north of the Golden Gate Bridge once (to visit the Chandon Winery), I was definitely eager to see the much-acclaimed Point Reyes. Apparently the hiking is spectacular beyond words, plus there are even rumors of baby seals to be cuddled!

Knowing that it would probably be a beautiful day (weather forecast was predicting 85 degrees and sunny with a breeze), and also knowing that I would, in all likelihood, drop my cute Canon Powershot to the bottom of the ocean if I brought it along, I opted to get one of those waterproof disposable cameras. It even floats! But the annoying thing is that you have to *develop* the film. I think I mentioned to someone that I don't think I've *developed* film since 1999, and I was totally surprised to find that there are still so many places still in business that develop film for you. I mean, who uses film cameras anymore (except fancy-pants photographers who probably develop their own photos)?

Anyways, it was surprisingly easy to do. I went to a store called Foto Shop in Sunnyvale, and not only did they finish it in an hour, but they didn't even charge *money*! At least not for the digital copies. The prints ended up costing something like $3.40 total. I had no idea it was so easy. They're not as sharp as pictures from my normal digital camera, but that could also be attributed to human factors:

• Us chucking it around in the water to test its buoyancy.
• Having the lens encrusted with salt and other sea minerals.
• Me accidentally kicking it, when I temporarily forgot that kicking doesn't make you go faster in a kayak (unlike in a scull).
• And finally, letting it roast in the car. (Apparently film is heat-sensitive? I'd forgotten that.)

But they still came out quite nice, if you want to see them:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/TomalesBayKayaking

I was going to do some snazziness with the Maps API to plot out our various stops on a satellite map, but then I noticed that Picasa has a feature to do exactly that. Note that for the pictures on the water, "placement on the map is approximate"...but alas, there are no floatyball icons to be had! Also, I'm not positive where that nifty cove full of mussels was, but I'm pretty sure I got the other parts right. Can anyone see the teepees? ;-) (According to www.parks.ca.gov, they are "reconstructed Miwok bark houses".)

In the end, we didn't cuddle any baby seals, but we did see a bunch of jellyfish floating around!

Let's Go Funballing!

Two weeks ago, twelve of us (known as Team Hummucks) us participated in the first annual Google Puzzle Hunt. Both Microsoft and MIT host events like this, but if you're not familiar with those, it's two days full of solving logic puzzles. Each puzzle/task leads to more puzzles/tasks, and the goal is to find out where some ultimate prize is hidden and find it before all the other teams. Here's one of the puzzles I worked on. (Sadly, it's the only picture I took!) We had to twist up a Rubick's Snake according to some instructions, and eventually the various snake configurations spelled a word:


My personal favorite was the "Mathematician" puzzle. Hopefully the organizers publish the puzzles at some point so I can show you! The instructions for the puzzle simply said "Math is hard! Ego is imaginary! Let's go funballing!" I, of course, had been hoping since I joined Google that I would have some excuse to jump into our ball pit (you know, like the ball pits they have at McDonald's?), and I didn't need any further prompting than "Let's go funballing!". Best of all, there turned out to be crucial clues in the ball pit!

Unfortunately, once we made all the tough logical leaps, I screwed up the math. (Where by "screw up" I mean that not only could I not remember how to find ln -i, but I didn't even think to just enter it into the Google Calculator, which knows the answer.) Ah well, we got there eventually, and finished a respectable 11th out of 21 teams. That's exactly average -- which is not bad considering how many (practically) professional teams of puzzlers were competing. So, I didn't come out feeling like a total retard, which is always great after a weekend of thinking really really hard, and I hope there's another one next year!

Ivy and Jeremiah's Wedding

Yet another really beautiful and fun wedding, this time in Manhattan Beach, CA. My brother was an usher, and we saw plenty of people that we haven't seen since...well, high school! Both the famous Matt Gould and my 10th grade English teacher, Mr. Hertzog, performed during the ceremony, and we got delicious little mouse-truffles from Burdick's!

Congrats again to you both, and here are some pics!

Pictures of Ivy and Jeremiah's Wedding

Phyllis and Blake's Wedding

Words can't even describe how amazing and beautiful and fun the wedding weekend was, so instead, I will share some of my favorite pictures! (Colette has some really nice ones too, especially where mine came out a little blurry or red-eyed.)

Pictures of Phyllis and Blake's Wedding

There were four days whole days of festivities, and I think each one of them was *individually* bigger than our entire wedding last year, so I definitely tip my hat to the planners -- we are definitely honored to have been a part of so many special events! I mean, Phyllis and Blake were married by Cardinal Cheli, who flew out from Rome, and who brought a personal message from the pope!

Anyways, congrats again guys. (Now...who should get married next so we can have more parties to celebrate?)

"Working" in New York

For the last week of May, Chris and I worked out of the New York office. The office itself is really nice, with fresh free sushi everyday, and Legos everywhere! The weather was gorgeous, and I got to explore a lot more of the city than on any of my previous trips. Usually New York City intimidates the hell out of me, but having so many familiar people (and familiar California-esque weather) around made it seem much more friendly and fun.

Chris and I managed to time our trip so that it would coincide with the Red Sox's visit to Yankee Stadium. It was our first trip to the Bronx, and we had a really good time. Here's the view from our seats the first day:


And here were our seats from the second day:

Sadly, I think this particular point in history was the start of a depressing losing streak for the Red Sox, but we did get to see them win one game at least!

Other highlights of the trip:

• Tons of shopping with Colette and Jinger! Now usually I am not a big shopaholic (and Chris even less so), but Jinger took us to some really cute shops in SoHo, like Mango and Helen Wang. I also discovered how *truly* huge the Macy's is. Wanting to spend a little more time looking at earrings, I told Jinger and Colette that I would meet them "in the dress section" when I was done -- not knowing that there were like three FLOORS of dresses and probably DOZENS of sections!
• Caught up with John, Alex and Jing over some delicious meals.

Anti-highlights of the trip:

• I got a fishbone stuck in my throat! Lots of you have already heard this story so I won't belabor it, but I ended up walking over to the NYU ER to have it checked out (just to be safe), and that hospital was *gross*. There were only like TWO magazines in the whole waiting room and they were both totally crumpled and water-damaged, splattered with occasional mysterious brown stains. And the bathroom sink was all clogged with dirty used bandaids. And here's the new development to the story: yesterday I got a letter from them saying they'd taken my insurance information incorrectly so they couldn't bill it properly!
• I also watched Shrek the Third, which was kind of disappointing. But maybe I would have enjoyed it more without a fishbone in my throat, and also if I hadn't tried to wash down the fishbone before the movie by glugging down a Long Island ice tea. (Yeah, that was probably really dumb.)
  

Lots of Tennis

In February and March, we watched a lot of tennis! First, we watched the early rounds of the SAP Open in San Jose. Some of the big names we saw were Andy Roddick, Marat Safin, and Andy Murray. Here's a good shot of Roddick from our seats:


It turns out that both Roddick and Safin are terrible sports though. They both threw some awful temper tantrums, full of yelling and racket-chucking. We were definitely cheering for their opponents by the end. I mean, who does that, with a bunch of kids from local tennis clubs watching?

I was more impressed by Sam Querrey, who is Roddick's practice partner, and who came *so* close to beating him! He also gets extra points from me because his name showed up as "S. Querrey" on the board, which allowed me to make lots of bad jokes.

Nonetheless, the SAP Open is kind of a "tune-up" tournament. We were way more excited to see the Pacific Life Open at Indian Wells, CA, which is an ATP Masters tournament where all the stars play. Leading up to this tournament, there was a lot of hype about how Roger Federer (my hero, he's so graceful!) would break the all-time record for consecutive matches won if he was successful at Indian Wells. I'm thinking, this guy has won 41 consecutive matches, and he's won this tournament 3 years in a row -- of course he'll break the record, and I'll be there to watch!

Aside: If you haven't seen Roger Federer play before, you *must* watch this clip of him crushing Andy Roddick. I cheer every time I watch it (YESS!!).



Anyways, silly me. Federer lost in the first round to some guy I'd never heard of before, so we never got to watch him play. :-(

But we had a great time anyways. We got hassled a few times for wearing Red Sox hats to a tennis match (ironically by Yankees fans wearing Yankees hats), but it was HOT -- over a hundred degrees -- so we would have passed out without them. We had pretty good seats, but it was very very sunny:

We definitely had to take plenty of shade breaks. I think we ate (drank?) $50 worth of Fresher's Soft Frozen Lemonades.

The final match between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic was kind of one-sided, since it was Djokovic's first appearance at a final in a Masters event, and he was obviously jittery for the first set, but Nadal is just *amazing* to watch, and it was gratifying to see Djokovic break into the top ten for the first time. (He's like number 4 now and doing really well at Wimbledon.)

Here's me trying to be in the same picture as Nadal, after he won the final:

Google Ski Trip

The Google ski trip was a lot of fun, just like last year! Here are a few pictures (with some captions that Chris objects to, but oh well). I always wish in retrospect that I would have taken more pictures of actual skiing, but it never seems like such a good idea when I'm actually on the mountain wearing two layers of gloves and falling over my skiis. :-P

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/GoogleSkiTrip2007

Cat Walk

In January, we took Caprice to the park for a walk for the first time. She seemed to have a good time, although having lived her whole life in small enclosed places, she was very afraid to roam out into the open space and instead stayed very close to the various walls and trees she could find. Sadly, Honey stayed home because she still freaks out really easily.

During this outing, we also found that her camouflage works much better outdoors than it does against our white carpet and white couches. (Okay fine, both the carpet and couches are really more like off-white now, but you get the point.)

Mary(land) Christmas! (And Other Marey Puns)

For Christmas, we visited Chris's parents in Maryland, which was very nice and not really much colder than the Bay Area. Here's a picture of me on the trails in the backyard, notably wearing flip flops because a.) it really wasn't that cold, honest! and b.) well, I guess I *always* wear flip flops.

I am once again blanking out a little on what all happened over Christmas break, especially since family members don't tend to e-mail me about what we just did together so I can have a record of it in my inbox. Silly family members. But here's some highlights that I do remember!

• We played lots of Wii.
• We ate lots of Jessica's delicious Christmas cookies.
  
• We played a game called Winerd, which is a wine-tasting / wine trivia board game. The three wines we chose were made from totally different grapes, in totally different years, and on totally different continents, because we thought we'd make it easy on ourselves. Surprisingly, we got better and better as the game progressed. (Not enough "tasting" squares on the board, if you ask me.)
• We watched Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit and sampled some Wensleydale cheese, which is really tasty!
• We watched SO many DVDs, including new favorite shows, Arrested Development and House.

Lastly, Andrew got me an awesome gift (yes, despite no longer being 12 years old, I still love model horses):

I think the set is called "Arabian Mare and Foal" or something like that. So someone asked, what are you going to name them? They're Arabian, so they should have beautiful Arabian names. I was like, um, can you think of any notable Arab women? I'm thinking to myself, "Uh Golda Meir? D'oh! She's not Arab at all... AND that's a ridiculously terrible pun on Golden Mare". So someone else says "Princess Jasmine! That's all I can think of." So that's her name now, because in our ignorance, we can't think of any other Arabian female names. <sigh>

But the worst is still to come. So what should the foal's name be? Chris chortled and said "IED". So there we have it. Our well-intentioned attempt to give a couple Arabian horses Arabian names, and came up with "Princess Jasmine" and "IED". How terrible are we?

Joining a New Team

Ack, how terrible is this?! Today is July 1, 2007, and my most recent post was about the wedding, which was on July 15, 2006 -- almost a full year ago! Of course, that makes me sound a little more terrible than I actually was, because I do have some post-wedding posts about the kitties and our trip to Kauai. What's *actually* terrible is that I also haven't gotten Chris an anniversary present yet...but that's another story. Maybe I'll have more ideas about that after I finish going through all this history.

So where to start? I left off in September, so I guess I'll start in October?

Well October was a super-exciting and super-refreshing month, because I joined a super-amazing, super-brilliant, and super-funny team (with the super-oxymoronic name, "Local Universal"). One advantage of writing this post eight months late is that, well, we're *launched* now, so it's easy to show you what we did:

Or try this link to see it in action for reals: http://www.google.com/search?q=pizza+palo+alto

Nifty yeah? The total bummer is that now we've launched, one of my rockstar teammates is moving on to another exciting team. It's almost like Johnny Damon leaving the Red Sox! (Except the new team doesn't SUCK like the Yankees.) But I guess I remember how thrilled I was to work on new challenges and meet new people, so I can understand. <sniffles regardless>

I think that just about does it for October -- and probably also November and December too, since I have no memory of what happened during those months. I think I just...worked a whole lot?

No that's not totally true. Looking back through my emails, I also:

• Got lots of friend requests on Facebook, apparently.
• Went to Mel's birthday party! (Mel, I still owe you your birthday present! D'oh!)
• Visited SCV for Thanksgiving, where I discovered how fun DDR is (and also how mortifyingly bad I am at it --> hence no pictures).
• Got Chris a Wii for his birthday. (On time, yay!)

This is a picture of him playing Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii. Poor original NES, lying by the wayside.

My Favorite Wedding Pictures

It's been three months since my last post, and more appallingly, NINE months since the wedding -- but I finally have a set of my favorite wedding pictures to share! Thank you SO much to all the people who took these wonderful pics and shared them with us (especially Mom, Dad, and Jessica). Our official photographer took some beautiful pictures too, but unfortunately, we're not allowed to post those online.

Anyways, here's my favorite set from family and friends:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/FavoriteWeddingPics

I can't wait to see everyone at the weddings coming up this summer! You know who you are. :-)