On Sunday we went to church and for lunch had a feast of steak, mashed potatoes, baked beans, and corn on the cob. Then we lounged about until dusk when we headed out to see fireworks. We grabbed a spot and played a game of Scrabble while we waited for the sun to set.
Then we watched fireworks. I was going to try to get some really neat pictures, but then decided I’d rather just watch, so this is the best you get:
That was pretty much our day.
Josh flew into town on Friday to hang out for the weekend. On Friday we went and saw The Last Airbender. It was OK. It was incredibly rushed, which was expected since they took an entire season of storyline and tried to make a 100-minute movie. So that was a little disappointing. We found it strange that they decided to mess with the pronunciations of the names. We also found it strange how much they changed some characters, like Iroh. They also didn’t include almost any of the humor from the series. It’s too bad that so much of the things we didn’t like could have been so easily fixed. Extending the movie to 150 minutes would have provided a lot more time to let the story line flow along rather than being hurried. And leaving in the trademark humor that each of the characters’ personalities have would have been good.
Anyway. This post isn’t about the movie. On Saturday we went to the Alameda County Fair. Getting in had the completely stupid and pointless process of passing through metal detectors. Apparently someone thought that so long as you make everyone walk through a metal detector nothing bad could happen at the fair. We’ll just ignore the fact that the perimeter of the entire fair is unmonitored and consists almost entirely of chain-link fence. Surely someone looking to cause trouble wouldn’t be bright enough to toss over their supplies and then go get them or to have an accomplice toss over their supplies.
[sigh], That’s also not the point. Let’s get back on track.
We started by watching the Mutton Bustin’ competition. Which is where they plop kids (ages 3-6) on top of a sheep and then let it loose to see how long they can hold on. We then moved on to the chocolate-covered bacon on a stick:
Jess even tried a bite and then proceeded to do her best not to vomit. Josh finished off the whole thing though.
After wandering around for a while we watched the All-Alaskan Pig Racing:
Before leaving we took an obligatory ride on the swings:
It was a fun time. We bought some caramel apples on our way out that were incredibly good. They were Granny Smith apples, covered in caramel, with a layer of yogurt, and sprinkled in cinnamon. The flavor was called apple pie à la mode.
I submitted this picture into our camera club competition tonight. It placed 1st out of 5 entries in Projected Basic.
We were sitting on the couch reading this evening when there was a knock at the door.
I got up to answer it to find a representative from the Democratic Party. Having taken my name from the list of registered voters (upon which I’m registered as an independent, not to be confused with the American Independent party), which apparently, in California is recorded as “decline to state”. It would seem the assumption in California is that everyone is really part of a party, but some people just don’t like to say so publicly, so you get registered as “decline to state”.
Anyway, this representative from the Democratic Party just wanted to see if he could change my registration to be a Democrat if I didn’t mind. I don’t really see why this matters much, but after declining his offer to change my party he proceeded to tell me about the Republican candidate for governor, Meg Whitman, who was apparently not going to be good but not for any specific reason.
After rambling on for a bit I interrupted to again state I wasn’t interested in changing my party affiliation.
The funny part is, he left and I still know nothing about the Democratic candidate or any reason why I should vote for him or her, but I do know that the Republican candidate is Meg Whitman. I have a tip for the Democrats, that’s not great marketing. You had someone at my door talking to me and didn’t give me a single reason to vote for your candidate or even drop the name of your candidate. Instead you gave some vague generalities about how the other candidate was going to be bad but didn’t actually give any reasons why she’d be bad.
Not effective campaigning, at least to me. If anything you made me annoyed that your platform is apparently “the other candidate is bad.”
Wednesday was my birthday. It started out with an exciting day at work where I fixed bugs and watched Google lectures on Map Reduce.
I get to come home for lunch which is nice and when I came in the door I discovered Jess had decorated for me!
After work I went and used the gift certificate Jess gave me at Christmas for a massage. My shoulders and lower-back had been rather tweaked so getting those knots worked out was rather nice.
Then I went home and waited around for Jess to get home from cub scouts so we could go to dinner. We went to Black Angus steakhouse in Dublin which was pretty good. They sang a birthday song and brought a giant cookie-ma-jig which was very tasty.
Jess made me a lovely chocolate with chocolate frosting cake:
After dinner I blew out candles, but we were both too full to eat any cake.
Jess ordered me a really nice frame to put my diplomas in. They’ve just been sitting in a box ever since I got them and I’ve been wanting to do something with them. So we put them in the frame and I took it to work and put it in my office which is nice. It’s almost like I’m a professional!
Thanks for all the birthday wishes and gifts. One year ago was a very different time. I was still in Provo, unmarried, still in grad school. Quite a change in my life from 24 to 25. It’s been a great year, here’s to another for 25 to 26.