10th Anniversary

The weekend before Christmas, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our first date. (I can't believe it's been a decade!) We don't celebrate this one very often, but it was also a fantastic excuse for a getaway at the end of a hectic quarter.

So Chris planned a lovely, relaxing trip to Calistoga, which is at the northern end of Napa Valley and is known for its mineral hot springs (pictures from the trip here). We stayed at a decadent resort called Solage, where we got a massage, and basked in their "Mudslide" treatment. Bliss. It was cloudy and drizzly for most of the trip – perfect weather to soak in hot water and hang out someplace cozy.

I loved this particular fountain, which looked like a cube of pure water, with fire burning on top. We thought we should be able to say a magic incantation and cause Callandor or Excalibur to emerge. Dorks to the core!

The resort also provided us with a couple of bikes so we could avoid driving as we went wine tasting. (Apparently it's not illegal to bike under the influence?) Happily, the sun was peeking through the clouds as we biked to the highly recommended Vincent Arroyo Winery, about a mile away.

They wine tasting is free, and when we tasted the wine, we could see why; we definitely bought lots of it before we left. The balsamic vinegar is SOOO delicious too! We also met J.J, Bodega, and Nameless, the black lab, brown lab, and cute marble-patterned cat, whom their wines are named after every year.

When we finished with wine tasting, we biked over to see the nifty Old Faithful of California, which went off about every 20 minutes.

I couldn't resist feeding a llama at their petting zoo.

For dinner, we went to JoLe, which is now probably my favorite restaurant of all time. We had the four-course tasting menu with wine pairings, and it was some of the most excellent food I've ever had. I didn't even believe in wine pairings (i.e. that it makes much of a difference) until that night. My favorite was the ice wine (very sad I forgot what it was called). I also might have a new favorite food: foie gras, which I had never tried before. And the scallops were to die for; I let Chris have the last bite and he was like, "wow, maybe you do love me". Haha.

We've come a long way from the Valencia Macaroni Grill in 1999!

Chilling with Cats

Last weekend, we visited my parents in L.A. for Thanksgiving. After gorging so much, I wasn't feeling photogenic enough to take pictures, but the remodeling they did was pretty cool -- very pretty hardwood floors. We saw lots of friends and ate a lot of food, of course. Embarrassingly, I got hooked on the Twilight / New Moon series, despite how bad I KNOW it is objectively.... We also played many rounds of Dominion with my brother. I'm hoping the dork points from the card game balance out the brainless teenage girl points from the movies.

Now we're back home and relaxing with the cats.

Pig Roast in Illinois

At the beginning of October, Chris and I flew out to Urbana-Champaign to see the Penn State vs Illinois football game. WOOHOO!! But wait...why Penn State vs Illinois again? Well, Chris's brother is a junior at UIUC, and some of Chris's relatives went to/grew up near Penn State, so it was a darn good excuse to have a family reunion. (Convenient that Illinois is in the middle of the country – we had representatives from Maryland, Texas, North Carolina, and California.)

Key stats for me before this trip:

1. I'd never been to Illinois (outside of O'Hare).
2. I'd never gone to a college football game.
3. I'd never gone to a tailgate.

Let me start by saying that Chris's uncles and their friend Loren did a professional job at tailgating. They got a 110-pound pig (that's 110 pounds AFTER gutting) and they started roasting at 6am (or something crazy early like that).

At first, I was imagining that there would be a pig rotating on a stick over an open flame (like Chris's frat did one year, with fairly gruesome results). But this was, I believe, Loren's SIXTH pig roast, so he knew what he was doing. He brought something called a "China Box" to slow-roast the pig:

The pig is inside the box, and those are the coals on top. I still don't quite understand how the heat went down (heard mumbles about the metal conducting the heat), but here's us enjoying the warmth, the delicious smell of roasting pig, and the beer at about 9:30am. (And yeah, my Advantage Federer shirt was the closest thing I had to orange.)

More pictures of the star:

We had fantastic sides like potato salad and this really great dish of beans, all thanks to Loren. The pig got the only piece of fruit we brought to the tailgate:

And it was soooo tender and yummy. Mmm! I didn't even mind smelling like pig smoke for days after we got back. We invited all the nearby tailgaters to come grab some, since well, we had 110 pounds of pig, but still had three or four gallon bags full of meat by the end of the day. Awesome.

At about 2 o'clock, we all headed over to the Memorial Stadium to see the game. The game itself wasn't particularly competitive, but I enjoyed the marching band:

Oh, and here's my obligatory picture with some corn. We drove by a lot of corn on our way from O'Hare/Midway airports to the university, but this is UIUC's experimental cornfield; apparently it's the "oldest experimental cornfield" in the United States.

Other tidbits from the trip:

• We saw Zombieland, which I was initially very skeptical of, but actually it was a lot of fun!
• We stayed at a bed and breakfast called Akademika, which was excellent. Big comfy room, yummy breakfast, and walking distance to campus, if you're ever in the area and looking for a place to stay.
• We pre-paid for a tank of gas at Enterprise, and brought the car back with the empty light on. Aww yeah. Getting our money's worth, haha. So now you know that a trip from Chicago to Urbana-Champaign and back is one full tank of gas in a Chrysler 300. (Btw, the Chrysler 300 is a terrible car.)

Last weekend, we tried out Loren's bean recipe. It turned out lovely, and we had enough to last us all week! Here it is if you'd like to try it.

Steve's Beans

1 (1-pound) tube regular or spicy Jimmy Dean sausage

4 (15- to 16-oz cans of different types of beans (drained) (dark red kidney, black beans, navy beans, pinto beans, Great Northern beans, etc.)

1 (31-oz) can pork and beans (drained)

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup barbeque sauce

1/2 cup ketchup

1/2 large onion, chopped

1 (10-oz) can regular of spicy chopped tomatoes, drained (I use Rotel diced tomatoes and chilis)

1 teaspoon liquid smoke

1 teaspoon mustard

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

6 to 8 strips of bacon

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large skillet, brown the sausage, breaking it up into pieces as it cooks. When cooked through, remove from skillet and drain fat.

In a very large bowl, mix sausage and remaining ingredients (except bacon). Transfer to a 9x13-inch or other large baking pan. Place bacon strips on top and bake for 1 hour. If necessary, run under broiler to crisp bacon before serving. Makes 15 servings.

Chris had to go to three supermarkets to find Jimmy Dean sausage, though to be fair, he started with Whole Foods and Mollie Stone's, and I don't think that stuff is full of local or organic goodness... Anyways, Safeway was the winner; they had an entire aisle dedicated to Jimmy Dean sausage, haha.

That's about it, but here's all the pics from the trip, if you want to see more!

US Open!! Aw YEAH!

Yup, Chris and I went to New York for two weeks to watch the 2009 US Open!! There's no way I can do justice to the whole trip, but here's an attempt some highlights, at least. We got the Night Plan, which means we got tickets to every night of the US Open, plus all the finals.

Before we went, everyone asked, wouldn't we get tired of watching so much tennis? (That is, everyone except Coach Rick, who was bummed that we "only" got the night sessions.)

Answer: Nope. Loved every minute.

This was the view from our seats in Arthur Ashe Stadium (Section 325, Row W, Seats 9 and 10, our home away from home):

We were pretty far up, but sometimes people left early and we snuck down to take their seats. Here's the closest we got. (See Federer in the background?! This was after he won against Soderling.)

The best match: Dent vs Navarro; not one, but TWO serve-and-volleyers, playing five full sets. What more could we ask for? And Dent is American so the crowd got really into it.

The best drink: The Honey Deuce. Grey Goose + lemonade + Chambord + three honeydew melon spheres on a toothpick (for the tennis balls, awww). Chris has been making these for himself ever since we got home.

The best song: I Gotta Feeling, by the Black Eyed Peas. They played this *every* single night as the players were warming up, and now I can't listen to it without being totally pumped to watch some tennis.

The best shot ever: We were there for Federer's self-proclaimed "best shot ever" and the entire stadium went totally crazy.

Over Labor Day weekend, my blockmates came to New York and got in on the fun!

Since most of us play some tennis, we were psyched to try to get some courts and hit a few balls together. Alas, it's insanely hard to get courts in Manhattan, with the cheapest private courts being $65/hour, and the lines for public courts being over THREE HOURS long! I've never even seen a line for tennis courts before, much less one with 17 people in it.

So instead, we took a stroll along the High Line, which I thought was really nice, but...

Best quote: "Okay, we have these in Alabama too, but WE call them weeds." –Phyllis.

Together, we explored Queens, ate at Katz's, ate Kati Rolls, and played Rock Band. They insisted that I sing...but after one song, I never got the mic back, hrm... :-)

My blockmates got the Holiday Twilight Plan, so they got to enter the grounds earlier (4pm instead of 6pm) which gave Chris and me a chance to wander around taking pictures (and eating more).

Best treat: Lemon Ice King. I never had Italian ice before, so thanks to a co-worker for the suggestion! On the way, we walked past the Queens Zoo and the most packed park I have ever seen; practically every square foot of grass was being used, seriously.

Best landmark: The Unisphere.

As I wrote earlier, this post doesn't do justice to all the awesome things we saw and did (and ate), but come talk to us, and we'll be happy to rant. And we have about 200 more pictures if you want to see them!

Tahoe Hiking Convoy

I wasn't going to blog about this, but then I saw the pictures and decided they were too hilarious. At the end of August, my team got to go on an awesome three-day trip to Lake Tahoe, and we had one morning where we were supposed to plan an activity on our own. Of course, everyone procrastinates like crazy and tries to join someone else's activity when it's clear that it's too late to plan anything.

This left us with ONE activity and NINETY-NINE (99) people. That's right, 99 of us went hiking around Mt. Rose, in what can only be described as a friggin' convoy.

Look carefully at all the little heads disappearing behind the bend. I didn't even catch everyone on camera.

Fantastic few days, plus I won at poker for the first time ever! I keep trying to remind myself that anybody could win with the ridiculously good cards I was getting (I think I got dealt ace-king and then pocket aces in two consecutive rounds at some point), but nonetheless, I am totally hooked.

Chris didn't get to come to Tahoe; poor guy was playing tennis in beautiful Carmel instead. We lead a tough life.

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District Champs!

Congrats to Chris's tennis team, for winning at Districts last weekend in Alameda! The Santa Clara "Bravehearts" dominated the USTA 3.5 men, going 14-1 in their matches.

Chris and his partner Rob won all three of their three matches, and all three were full of nervous moments, with two mini-tiebreaks and two super-tiebreaks. Official scores for the weekend here. I also have a few pictures from Sunday's match and the delicious sushi at Sushi House afterwards.

Next weekend, it's onto Sectionals at Carmel! (And then, to the US Open! Albeit as spectators.) Coach Rick says that Sectionals are even tougher than Nationals, because other NorCal teams are so strong -- especially Sunnyvale. So wish them luck!

Tommy and Tiffany's Wedding

Yup, my little brother Tommy got married last weekend!

Part of me still can't believe he's all grown up and moved out! My dad told a really funny story at the reception, about how Tommy never wanted to get married and move out when he grew up (despite how much I beat up on him, haha). But Tiffany looked gorgeous (in both her white and red dresses!), the church was beautiful, the reception at Ming's was delicious, and we had a wonderful time catching up with friends and family.

Want more pictures?

• Wedding weekend pictures taken by me.
• Wedding weekend pictures taken by my dad.

A couple other momentous events happened this weekend too, independent of my brother:

• We took my cousin Kasandra to an In-N-Out for the first time! Seems like it's famous, even in Georgia.
• Chris and his dad installed the projector on our ceiling! SOO AWESOME! Apparently our stud-finder had been making up lies, which Brian cleverly saw through.
• We hosted PEOPLE at our condo for the first time! Chris and I (mostly Chris) grilled up a spectacular feast for eight (our parents, plus Ayi and Kasandra). I think my parents in particular were impressed that we knew how to cook. :-)

Flatteringly, we got lots of requests for recipes, so I figured I would share them here! Most of them are pretty simple, but really yummy when there's fresh summer fruits and vegetables around.

Salads. We made two salads, both from Mark Bittman's 101 Simple Salads for the Season, published in the New York Times. We made the first two recipes:

1. Cube watermelon and combine with tomato chunks, basil and basic vinaigrette. You can substitute peach for the watermelon or the tomato (but not both, O.K.?). You can also add bacon or feta, but there goes the vegan-ness.

2. Mix wedges of tomatoes and peaches, add slivers of red onion, a few red-pepper flakes and cilantro. Dress with olive oil and lime or lemon juice. Astonishing.

The only detail that we changed was that we used fresh heirloom tomatoes instead of normal ones.

Shrimp. Chris's mom bought us our first cookbook when we first moved in together in Seattle. It's called How to Cook Everything: The Basics, also by Mark Bittman, and one of our favorite recipes is "Shrimp, My Way":

Makes 4 servings

Time: 20 minutes, plus time to preheat the grill

Be forewarned: This is the kind of dish that makes people eat more than they should. Make extra; I always do.

• 1 large clove garlic
• 1 tablespoon coarse salt
• ½ teaspoon cayenne
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1½ to 2 pounds shrimp, in the 20 to 30 per pound range, peeled, rinsed, and dried
• Lemon wedges

Start a charcoal or gas grill or preheat the broiler; in any case, make the fire as hot as it will get and adjust the rack so that it is as close to the heat source as possible.

Mince the garlic with the salt; mix it with the cayenne and paprika, then make it into a paste with the olive oil and lemon juice. Smear the paste all over the shrimp. Grill or broil the shrimp, 2 to 3 minutes per side, turning once. Serve immediately or at room temperature, with lemon wedges.

Preparation Tip: You might want to skewer these (or other) shrimp before grilling, either for appearance or ease of handling. Metal skewers, which get quite hot, are reusable. Wooden skewers, which are a little easier to handle and can be discarded after use, should be soaked in water to cover for at least 15 minutes before using, to inhibit burning.

Apparently even Kasandra, who hates seafood, liked these!

Wings. Chris says he "winged" the spice mix for the wings (yuk yuk yuk), and just threw together a mix of the following spices without measuring too carefully:

• cumin
• cayenne pepper
• black pepper
• minced onion
• paprika
• salt
• ground ginger
• ground mustard
• garlic powder
• habanero powder

We also threw some peppers, onions, zucchinis, and portobella mushrooms, on the grill, and made some tube-ready crescent rolls, but I doubt any of you need the recipes for those!

Later in the weekend, we went for a nice hike in the Portola Redwoods State Park with Chris's parents, which was great except for the mosquitos, who apparently have a "feeding frenzy" in the summer. Yeah, we should have read that bit before we drove out there without any bug spray, haha. But luckily, since bugs LOOOVE my sweet blood, I was effectively everyone else's bug repellent.

We're really happy that the weekend went so well, and congratulations again to Tommy and Tiffany!

Redwoods, Rafting, and Roses

Okay, we're finally posting about our fantastic end-of-June road trip through Northern California and Oregon! Here's the full album of pics from the trip.

Excluding Christmas and Thanksgiving breaks, this was the first vacation that Chris and I have planned since Taiwan (in early 2007!). So needless to say, we were ready to relax and have some fun! We went white water rafting (first time with real rapids!), visited Chris's sister in Portland, and drove through both Redwood National Park and Crater Lake National Park. I wish we were still out there. :-) But here's some highlights for anyone else heading up that way!

-3...-4...-5...Liftoff!

By the time we finally got organized and ready to go, it was Sunday evening. We thought about leaving Monday morning, but figured it would be good to do a few hours of driving to avoid the rush hour traffic. So we drove through SF, popped by the newly renovated Frjtz for a dinner of fries and crepes, and figured we would stop somewhere along the freeway when we got tired of driving. Turns out we got tired around 11pm, at which point I searched for a hotel on my G1 and found a Hampton Inn in Ukiah, CA, with dozens of gushing, glowing reviews. I've honestly never seen so much excitement over a Hampton Inn. But it was nice and clean.

Eureka! I Have Found It!

There. I've been wanting to say that since I learned it was California's state motto in fourth grade. We passed through Eureka, CA for lunch, so I finally got my chance, haha. After lunch, we took a walk through the sand at Clam Beach.

Redwood National Park

I always wondered why redwoods always grow in little clumps, and not in large continuous forests. And why does Redwood City seem to have no redwoods? In retrospect, it should have been obvious; we chopped the rest down and the clumps are all that's left. Apparently redwoods used to cover most of the Northern California and Oregon coasts, but 96% of the forests were chopped down to fuel the California housing boom after the Gold Rush. I was also surprised that Redwood National Park is so new; the park wasn't established until 1968. We learned all this during our short but lovely nature walk in Lady Bird Johnson Grove.

As we continued north, we stopped by the Klamath River Outlook, which was gorgeous.

Brake Scare and Galice Resort

Between Redwood National Park and Galice, OR, there were a lot of steep and winding roads. I started to notice rapid thud-thud-thud-thud-thud noises every time I braked, and we immediately suspected that our brake pads had worn down again, d'oh! Last time, it cost us $1700 in repairs. We were pretty stressed by the time we made it to Galice Resort around 8:30 p.m. We were even more stressed to find that the resort restaurant was closed for the night and we had no cell reception or WiFi to find a car repair place or catch up on Wimbledon.

Galice Resort itself was sort of dingy and underwhelming as well. We stayed in the Lodge, which was clean, but let's just say that the carpet reminded me of cat trees, and the comforters were pretty threadbare. We went to sleep, somewhat depressed that the lodges on the river, being more remote, would be even worse. And the next morning wasn't much better. We woke up early to ensure that we would have time for breakfast, but were nearly late for the pickup because the service infuriatingly SOOOOO SLOW. We probably waited for more than 20 minutes after being seated to even get menus. Not auspicious.

Rafting on the Rogue River

Happily, as soon as we got picked up by Noah's Rafting, our day got brighter. They helped pack our stuff in "dry bags" and drove our party of 14 to the drop off point, where we met our wonderful guides, Jerry, Justin, and Jamie.

Kayaking vs. Rafting

After all the safety advice, they asked how many of us would like to kayak. Since it was still early morning in a deep valley where the sun hadn't quite reached, I was skeptical of getting wet in the cold-looking river. And heck, we were on this trip to go rafting, right? Luckily, Hugh, whom I arranged our trip with, convinced us that kayaking was a lot of fun and that the first day had some great rapids for learning. So Chris and I took the double kayak. BEST DECISION OF THE TRIP. Kayaking through the rapids was amazing; the experience is MUCH more exciting because you're so close to the water and have so much control over where you go. When we eventually let other people have a turn in the kayak, we found rafting to be way more boring.

We were concerned that we wouldn't ever get our kayak back once the secret was out, but what saved us was that double kayaks are extremely hard to steer, and no pair had the l33t teamwork skills that Chris and I had. Apparently they call them "divorce kayaks" but throughout the trip, our guides said we were the best pair they'd ever seen. W00t, go us! We watched with amusement as other pairs (admittedly teenage girls) degenerated quickly into bickering and name-calling and swore they would never use the double again. Muahahaha. All ours again!

Rapids

The rapids we kayaked through were Class I-III. Apparently it's too much liability for them to let beginners kayak the two Class IV rapids on the trip, so we rafted through those instead. Here's the best map Rogue River rapids that I could find.

The class III rapids were FUN! Jamie explained which "lane" of the river (like swimming lanes) we should use for each of the rapids. There are five lanes, with lane one being furthest left, lane three being in the center, and lane five being furthest right.

Our closest brush with catastrophe involved a large, sharp saw-tooth rock named the "Can Opener". Jamie had warned us extensively to avoid the Can Opener in lane three, and that we should stay in lane two. Well, as we entered the rapids, Chris and I were looking and looking for the Can Opener, going, "Hm, maybe it's that one? Or that one?" -- all the while looking pretty far ahead and drifting into lane three. I had a nice jolt of terror to suddenly see a big black pointy vicious rock, about three yards away and rushing straight toward us, just below the surface of what had seemed like another big wave from further back. I was like "AHHHHHHHHH PADDLE ON THE RIGHT!!" before Chris noticed and started to paddle frantically too.

In the end, we managed to avoid it, although we were so out of position that we ended up slamming into some more benign rocks on the next turn. Justin later told us how much we freaked them out, and how the last people to hit the Can-Opener popped their inflatable kayak and took hours to rescue. But, disaster avoided!

The other exciting rapid was Blossom Bar (a Class IV), the biggest drop of our trip, where we almost got caught on the infamous "Picket Fence"!

Lodges

After a day of hard rowing, we stopped at the Black Bar Lodge, which despite its remoteness and lack of road access, was WAY nicer than the Galice Resort. The food was delicious; salmon and whitefish smoked by Hugh himself was my personal favorite. We passed the evening photographing deer (extensively, as you can see in the album), exploring the area around the lodge, and playing horseshoes.

We were extremely bad at horseshoes. At any distance.

But idyllic as Black Bar Lodge was, believe it or not, Paradise Lodge was even more luxurious and rustically beautiful. And the food was, again, fantastic. So much for losing weight in the wilderness! I couldn't believe how great the accommodations were, given that we were in a designated wilderness area. We were expecting something just a step up from camping, but were delighted to have hot showers and comfy beds!

Swimming

Besides rafting and kayaking, our guides also showed us several almost-too-lovely-to-be-natural swimming holes in the creeks that feed the Rogue River. A couple of them were deep enough and in close enough proximity of tall rocks that we could jump. I've never jumped off of anything higher than a normal pool diving board, but I resolved to be adventurous and jump off of anything our guides deemed to be safe -- including a rock that was about 20 feet tall. GO ME! Chris didn't do it. :-) Here's a swimming hole at Paradise Lodge that we didn't jump in (which is why I have a picture).

The most awesome swimming we did was in the Mule Creek Canyon, which is the narrowest point on the river, and therefore full of fast-moving water and really awesome rapids. After we went through the Class IV rapids, our guides let us jump out of the rafts and drift through the rest of the canyon in life vests -- one of my favorite parts of the trip.

Overall, I would absolutely recommend this trip to anyone! My only regret was not having a waterproof camera! Next time it would be fun to go with friends and family too, rather than some random loud obnoxious teenage girls. :-P

Crater Lake

On our way to Portland, we stopped by Crater Lake, which was gorgeous!

But sadly, most of the hiking trails were closed because they were still covered with snow. At the end of June! Who'd have thunk?

Visiting Jessica in Portland

Chris's sister very kindly found us a wonderful bed and breakfast called the Rose Cottage to stay at on Friday night, because we hadn't booked a hotel yet. We haven't stayed at many bed and breakfasts in the past, usually opting instead for the predictable hotel chains, but we had such a good experience that we chose another bed and breakfast for our trip to Illinois in October. Anyways, we felt extremely guilty at getting in so late (around midnight), but breakfast was terrific, and included the most delicious blueberry muffins I have ever eaten in my life. The innkeeper was kind enough to give me the recipe, which I plan to try out soon!

On Saturday, Jessica invited us to a Brown alum event -- a relaxing cookout in a hazelnut orchard, where we learned how to play croquet!

We were INCREDIBLY relieved to be connected to the internet again. Amusingly, that's how we found out both a.) that we were in a hazelnut orchard (yeah Image Search!), and b.) how to play croquet (yeah Web Search!). Haha, such dorks.

Our trip ended with a visit to the Portland Rose Gardens. So pretty.

We didn't get a chance to play tennis on the nearby courts that were surrounded by roses, but perhaps that's just as well. Apparently the fragrance can be a bit much when one is trying primarily to breathe oxygen. :-)

And that's it (except for the long hot drive home, which I'm sure nobody cares about)! Next installation: Tommy and Tiffany's wedding!

Monterey, SCV, and Cambridge

Geez, the last time we posted was in April, and now it's practically the 4th of July! So much for posting once a month. Guess we've been having too much fun to write many updates, but here goes!

Monterey, CA

In early May, Chris's dad came out for a conference in Monterey, and took us sailing in Monterey Bay:

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

Jenn was a happy camper, because Brian though to bring some Bonine AND remembered to have us take it before getting in the boat.

We saw some lazing sea lions on the rocks, but otherwise not a lot of wildlife. Brian got to steer for most of the trip, and we definitely thought he did a better job than our guide at picking a smooth path through the waves.

Santa Clarita, CA

Later in May, we drove down to visit my parents for Memorial Day Weekend. I got to catch up with Natalie, one of my best friends from elementary school, and even got to see her lovely new house and meet her super-cute pony, Twilight:

So much fun to talk about horses, Ouija Board, and pork sung again, haha. Note that Wikipedia confirms that pork sung is legitimately a "a snack food on its own." And apparently it translates to "meat fluff" which I never realized before.

On Saturday evening, to celebrate Chris's recent promotion, we took my parents out to dinner at a fantastic Japanese restaurant called Maru. In Valencia. Seriously, no offense to SCV, but when I got asked a few weeks ago what the best ten restaurants are in my hometown, my list started with "um, like Macaroni Grill"? Like many Yelpers, we were skeptical of a place that had "spicy tuna meatballs" on its menu, but ohhh, they were soooo good. Should have taken pictures!

Griffith Observatory

My parents mentioned that Griffith Observatory has reopened after a couple years of renovation work. They said they had never been before, and Chris and I were like, "me either!" so we decided to drive down. When we got there, we both independently remembered that "oh, wait, we have been here". I guess everyone had field trips to Griffith Observatory in elementary school, but none of us clueless kids had any idea at the time.

Here's us with the Hollywood sign, visible from the observatory:

I'm ashamed to say I fell asleep in the planetarium show, but having recently seen Star Trek, I appreciated the terribly corny video of Leonard Nimoy being beamed around the premises and eventually meeting his future self, while telling the story of the observatory's renovation.

A few more SCV pictures here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/SCVVisitMay2009

Cambridge, MA

A couple weeks later, at the beginning of June, Chris and I flew to Boston for our respective 5th year college reunions! We were most excited about seeing our close friends, so we skipped most of the official reunion events. Chris went to just one lecture, where he promptly fell asleep. Hilarious. Memories indeed.

I skipped the lectures, but fell asleep instead at the New England Aquarium's IMAX show about whales and dolphins. Dark room, silent sea creatures floating slowly across the screen, soothing ocean-themed music -- can you blame me?

We also saw fornicating penguins (complete with a packed audience of cat-calling high schoolers on a field trip). I have pictures of that, but you'd rather see this lovely picture of lionfish right, right? ;-)

Here's Colette, Jinger, Rebecca and myself touring Paul Revere's house (I'm the one stupidly wearing shorts, ever optimistically hoping that Boston weather will be just like California):

Somehow I didn't take a lot of people pictures on this trip, but it was so great to see everyone, and I can't wait to meet up again at the US Open!

Speaking of tennis, I have one parting rant -- can you believe how obnoxious NBC has been with with its Wimbledon coverage? The New York Times has been covering it:

Coverage That Should Be Changed Without Delay

NBC Takes Its Time Showing Murray-Roddick Semifinal

But enough on that. Next post, I'll tell you about our awesome trip to Oregon!

Victory is Ours

I was always terrible at writing sports articles, but I'm pretty psyched at the moment, so I'm going to write it anyways. Tonight, I played in my first official USTA tennis match -- and we won 6-3, 6-1.  Sweet! My partner Smitha and I were the #3 doubles team, but our court was right by the table with the snacks, so we had a nice audience cheering us on.

To use a baseball phrase, we were "down quickly 0-2" in the first set, thanks to me being nervous and hitting all sorts of easy groundstrokes long. I'm not really sure why I was nervous given that, you know, there is really nothing at stake here, but it took until the third game for me to start hitting well. But I think it paid off to keep playing aggressive. Favorite shot of the night: I caught the net man cheating to the middle and smacked a backhand winner straight down the line. [Insert fist pump here.]

My shoulder was pretty achy and serving was especially a struggle, but I managed to escape with only being broken once (two double faults, so really, I gave it to them). Now that I've taken some Aleeve, I think the shoulder's fine again.

The team as a whole won every match except one, so it was a victorious night for the Sunnyvale Tennis Club women's 3.0 team.

Now I'm watching Sports Center and wondering:

• Wow, how did Papi hit a *triple*?
• Did the Nationals rip their logo from Walgreens?

Thoughts on the Battlestar Galactica Finale

WARNING: Spoilers in this post! Stop reading now if you haven't seen it already!

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Last night's finale of Battlestar Galactica (Daybreak) was so awesome in so many ways. By the end, I was thinking "wow, that was good" and crying at the same time.  After witnessing the destruction of civilization and then surviving many dark years of sacrifice and suffering, the tattered remnants of humanity finally, at long last, enter the Promised Land. In the Old Testament, the Pentateuch ends with the Chosen People on the very brink of fulfillment, as if placing a clean slate before every reader and posing a simple challenge: Don't screw it up this time. In much the same way, our beloved characters from BSG land on a beautiful, verdant Earth, where they pledge to pass down only humanity's best qualities, and to break the perpetual cycle of human-Cylon violence. The very last scenes, which bring us to present-day New York City and show us images of modern robots and feats of AI, are a direct message to the viewers -- that whether the cycle gets broken is actually up to us.

The finale was strangely uplifting and hopeful, for a show that has never been shy about exploring the brutal, greedy, selfish, and extremely imperfect aspects of human nature. But BSG has never been as meaninglessly misanthropic and chaotic as say, the Watchmen (which I just watched last week). Throughout the series, there has been a theme of "a plan" and a greater power watching over the characters and guiding their steps. Still, going into last night, I couldn't quite convince myself that everyone wasn't going to die in a big fiery explosion. So by all rights, I should be thrilled with this ending, with some fantastic combat scenes and so many poignant and fitting moments for the characters we know and love.

Instead, I was sad all day today. I couldn't fall asleep until 4 a.m. Even playing tennis for two hours couldn't keep my mind off it. Usually crushing the tar out of a tennis ball can get my mind off anything, but today, I really had to tell myself multiple times: "Get a grip. Stop being sad about Lee and Kara, and keep your eye on the frakkin' ball."

Chris thought the finale was excellent and was mildly annoyed by how much the writers resorted to deus ex machina to explain Starbuck's ressurection (as well as Head Six and Head Gaius). He also thought that Cavil deserved a more meaninful end than comitting suicide in the CIC, especially after he had just turned the corner and made the "leap of faith" for peace. I didn't mind all those. But when I watched the ending for Lee and Kara, I just got this deep sense of, wait, this wasn't supposed to end this way.

Over the past few weeks, I've been re-watching the first three seasons of BSG and trying to gleam some clue of whether they would end up together. Starbuck and Apollo share so much history that I found it difficult to believe that they wouldn't eventually work out their issues. (Though it's true, they do have a lot of issues. See the Wikipedia article for Kara Thrace for all the history that I'm too tired to type out properly.) Nonetheless, I saw the Lee and Kara as equal partners in a way that I never saw Kara and Sam or Lee and Dee as equals.

In Daybreak, we see that Lee and Kara have had a fairly destructive relationship from the day they first met. Since then, despite obviously caring for each other, there has always been some obstacle keeping them apart (little issues like their marriage to other people, for instance). But I always figured that those "little issues" were just plot devices to prolong the inevitable, and that they were destined for each other. So in the fourth season, when it seemed like they were growing into a relationship that was less destructive, and especially in Daybreak when all the obstacles are finally gone and they have a chance to make a new start, I figured that they should finally have some measure of happiness together. Instead, Kara declares her love for the hybrid Sam, before he takes Galactica on her final journey into the sun. Then, in the middle of the open savannah, Kara vanishes into the wind as Lee is happily proclaiming what he wants to do with his new life.

I was shocked. That's it?

I read the following interview with Ron Moore that was interesting:

TVGuide.com: Were the Lee, Zak and Kara flashbacks your way of telling us that Lee and Kara were wonderful, but were never meant to be together?

Moore: Yeah, I kind of felt that Kara and Lee had never really left a moment in time on the table. They were kind of trapped in that moment perpetually of wanting, longing, feeling but never being able to full enjoy it or fully embrace it. They just really never left that place as characters.

This made me wonder, well why did they never leave that place as characters? Why bother creating so much tension and longing over the first three seasons, only to let it literally dissipate into thin air with so little resolution? Why not develop their relationship more in the fourth season, instead of having them hardly talk to each other?

I think I found part of the explanation in this interview with Katee Sackhoff, where she explains how the plot was influenced by Michael Trucco's real-life accident, and how her feelings for him as a close friend came out on screen and led the writers to the decision to alter the plot and have her end up with Sam instead of Lee. If this is true, it's kind of even more disappointing.

On some intellectual level, I like the imagery of Lee chasing the pigeon and never catching it, until finally, one day, it flies out the door, never to return. As if Kara was never his to have. It also seemed fitting for Kara not to just have a pastoral domestic life, after having defined herself as a fighter, dying, being resurrected, leading the fleet to Earth, and fulfilling her part in God's grand plan. It made sense for Kara, now an angel, to eventually leave Earth, having finished her mission.

But I'm still sad that there wasn't a little something more before she left.

I started writing this post in the hopes that I could make my peace with this part of the ending and then bask in the glow of the many parts I liked. It didn't quite work, but I guess at least I still have my poster to cheer me up.

It reminds me that probably the real reason I'm sad is that Battlestar Galactica is over now.

27 Like Federer

Last month, my life was dominated by two things:

• Battlestar Galactica
• Tennis
  

Within the space of three weeks, I watched all four seasons of Battlestar Galactica back to back to back to back, and while I LOVE this show and it's totally excellent and I'm completely addicted, I must admit that it made me pretty depressed. After all, I just spent all my non-work hours watching my favorite characters' hopes and dreams turn to ashes and death.

A friend on Facebook "tagged" me in their 25 Random Things note, and as I tried to come up with my own list, I realized that all my things were reactions to Battlestar Galactica. It went something like this:

1. I wish I could be a fighter pilot like Starbuck.
2. Those of you who know me realize this is totally ridiculous because I get airsick on commercial jumbo jets.
   
3. Please oh please, why can't it be Friday yet?!
4. P.S. I really want Lee and Kara to get together.

Thankfully for the world (and myself), I didn't publish it. (Yes, there is some irony to publishing it here, but I don't think anyone reads this.)

So when the Australian Open started, I was psyched to watch Federer dominate everyone and cheer me up.  Here's a picture of Caprice watching Roddick beat Djokivic:

Caprice loves tennis, and we love how she goes SPLAT on the screen trying to catch the ball. And in case you're curious, yes, we're watching TV on a monitor, because our beloved Epson projector, from way back in our college days, finally bit the dust.

Anyways, watching Federer ended up making me even more depressed, since he lost that gruesome heart-breaking final to Nadal in five sets, even though Nadal had just played a record-breaking five-setter two days before.  People ask how I could root against Nadal, and the answer is that I don't root against Nadal -- I like Nadal!  I just have to root for Federer because a.) he's awesome, and b.) he's 27 like me.  I hate how the announcers keep saying he's "getting old" and I really don't want to believe that the best is behind him (i.e. me).  If you want to see a real flame-out, look at Britney Spears...who's, oh wait, also 27. D'oh. Sigh.

I couldn't even watch Federer's interviews afterwards, he looked so sad.

On the bright side, this caused us to get off our butts and stop being depressed about TV.

That same weekend, Chris's men's combo 6.5 doubles team won the USTA NorCal Sectionals in Sacramento!  Not quite the same as the Australian Open, but we'll take it. Here's a few action shots I caught, when he and Ashok were playing on center court (the "Arthur Ashe" of beginner's tennis, or something):

Congrats to the champions!