Last week was my spring break. It was relaxing, a time away from the constant pressure and stress of school and its related activities. Some of the highlights of my break include:
- Lots of time with Leslie: taking walks, watching LOST, cooking pizza, making pizza blindfolded, and reading Harry Potter to name a few things.
- Palm Sunday lunch at Grandma and Grandpa’s with the family.
- Lunch at Thipi Thai in Glen Ellyn with cousins Alli and Emily.
- Lunch with mom at Sushi House.
- Picking sister Sarah up from the airport and having breakfast at Egg Harbor.
- Easter Sunday lunch at Grandma and Grandpa’s with the family.
That was a short list, but it was a good break overall. How do I know? It was hard to come back to school.
I was just looking at my calendar for March, and I have to say, it is the most colorful month. In my terms, that means it’s busy. There is all kind of events, midterms, things to do, birthdays, and places to go.
What’s your busiest month?
The month of March in my iCal.
I know that it is Valentine’s Day and not Thanksgiving, but this morning I having one of those moments of realizing how much I get to be thankful for.
Check out pictures from this year’s trip to Turkey Run.
My extended family is full of traditions, and this past weekend, we executed probably one of our favorites. Annually, my entire extended family on my Mom’s side gathers at Turkey Run State Park in rural Indiana for a weekend of hiking trails, sausage burgers, playing football, watching baseball, eating carmel corn, praising God for His beautiful creation, and simply enjoying the company of one another. What happens at Turkey Run? Here are some of the highlights:
- Friday trails: Since we have such a large family, not all of us can meet at the park on Thursday, but those of us who can wake up early Friday and take a trail. For the trail map, click here. Usually it is trails 6 and 7 which are close to the inn, but sometimes we go over to the main set of trails and do 4. I enjoy Friday trails because the entire family isn’t there, so you can focus on those who are.
- Pizza Hit: Everyone has to arrive by 5:30 on Friday because of the Pizza Hut tradition. The restaurant is basically the only one that is relatively close to Turkey Run, and is located in the city of Rockville about 15 minutes drive. Pizza Hut is where we are all finally together as a family, and we eat greasy pizza while talking with each other. Shortly after finishing our pizza, us cousins run out into the small little field in between Pizza hut and an ice cream stand, and play football. Usually it is just throwing it around and tackling each other, but sometimes we manager to actually play a game.
- Saturday trails: Saturday’s trails are the big trails. We start early over the suspension bridge, and then proceed up trail 3 to where we have our family picture. This year, at that spot we learned that my cousin was pregnant! It’s exciting. After that it’s along trail 5 or 9, where we connect back to 3 outside Bear Hollow. From there it is 10 all the way up to Camel’s Back, and then back along 10 to 3 and then through Rocky Hollow, which is one of my favorite parts of the park. It’s basically just these really deep canyons with water flowing through them.
- Covered Bridge Festival: Saturday’s dinner is courtesy of Rockville’s Covered Bridge Festival. The food is extremely greasy and probably really bad for you, but there is nothing like sausage burgers, crullers, chili, pork chops, hot dogs, and boy scout ice cream. Around where we eat, there are little tents set up with locals selling everything from painted saw blades to jewelry to home grown pop-corn. It’s quite the cultural experience.
- The evenings:: Every evening is family time, and since all of our rooms at the inn are so close, we just leave our doors open and wander between rooms. Evening activities include watching baseball, swimming in the pool, playing card games, watching home movies, or just sitting around chatting and eating my aunt’s carmel corn.
- Sunday’s trails: Sunday morning is the traditional hike to the covered bridge on the outskirts of the park. The hike is not as long as Saturday’s, but it is a little more “rugged”, as we have to pick our way through many more canyons. The covered bridge is a common site in Indiana, and there is very few images that match the bright red bridge against brilliant yellow and orange fall colored trees. It’s magnificent.
So that is a little taste of Turkey Run, check back in a little for some pictures from this year’s trip.
After going through over 400 images, I am finally done, and you can see a collection of 140+ Yosemite images from my family’s trip in August. There are some good ones, and probably some ones I should have cut out. Oh well.Check them out here.
When I say I am going to Irish Fest, a lot of people just stare at me blankly. Irish Fest is a irish fest. It is an event put in Milwaukee where some of the best, and some of the upcoming, Irish bands come and perform at outdoor pavilions right along Lake Michigan. The time is full of good music, crazy Irish people, greasy Culver’s burgers, beer for those who drink, and my shave-ices (similar to sno-cones).There were a few bands we saw this year, including:
- Liz Carroll and John Doyle: This duet represents some of the finest Irish music ever produced and ever played. Both musicians are at the top of their class, and it’s the highest class. In terms of musicians and technique, it does not get any better than Liz and John. And what’s unfortunate is that we heard them first, so the rest of the day was a bummer in terms of good music. But that’s ok, they were so amazing that they made the three or more hour drive (thanks to traffic) worth it.
- Leahy: The second band we saw was a band called Leahy. They are composed of quite a number of people, and have a different style than most traditional Irish bands. For example, instead of the classic fiddle, bodhrán (Irish drum), Uilleann pipes, Irish tin whistle, and guitar, they had a different mix of instruments: bass, drum set, fiddle, piano, and guitar. But they had a great groove and after purchasing some of their music, I have come to rather enjoy them.
- Scythian: Though famous, I did not like this band. They were composed of a drummer, a guitarist, a bassist, and a fiddle player. However, they had little technique, and they won the crowd by trying to make Irish music rap music. It didn’t work.
- Frogwater: We ended the night watching a group called Frogwater, with a guitarist, a bodhrán player, and a fiddle lead. While their traditional style was certainly more enjoyable than Scythian, their music lacked a uniqueness such as evident in the incredible work of Solas, Flook, Lunasá, La Bottine Souriante, Liz Carroll, and John Doyle.
For anyone who has not checked out Irish Fest in Milwaukee, I think you should indulge yourself in a terrific evening at Irish Fest Milwaukee 2008.
As many of probably have noticed, I have not been here for the last week or so. But, aha, I have explanations for why, and am prepared to share those with you.
- Intern Presentation (Part 1): So for most of the summer at Apple, I have spent my time working on a project for my team that I was going to present to my department. So two weeks ago from this Thursday (26 July), I presented the project to my department director, his staff, and the 13 other interns in the department. Oh, and in case you forgot, the department I work in is Development Technologies. The presentation went really well, and it was a lot of fun showing everyone what I had been working on.
- Intern Presentation (Part 2): At the head of Apple is Steve Jobs. Under him, there are about 11 Senior Vice Presidents in charge of things such as iPod, iTunes, retail, finance, operations, marketing, industrial design, applications, and software engineering. And as you can probably guess, I am under software engineering, which includes everything that ships in the Mac OS X box (which does not include iMovie, iPhoto, etc., or any of the pro apps). My Senior Vice President is Bertrand Serlet, and under him are 6-7 directors of departments, with Dev Tech being one of them. As with my department, the other departments also had intern presentations. From the 6-7 departments, one intern is chosen from among all the other interns in that department to present to Bertrand and the rest of his staff. My project was chosen for this, so last Thursday I got to present to the Senior Vice President of Apple’s Software Engineering, and I think it went ok. It was mostly just fun to do. So along with that, he invited the 8 of us (a department had 2 interns instead of 1 present) to dinner tomorrow night, so that will be exciting.
- Yosemite: Right after my presentation on Thursday to Bertrand, my family and Leslie arrived at Apple. We spent that day touring Apple and Pixar, and then having dinner with friends. On Friday, Dad, Mom, Jon, Jennie, Sarah, Leslie, and I packed up and headed five hours across the San Jacquin valley to Yosemite National Park for the weekend. It was absolutely gorgeous! We started out by driving up to Glacier Point which overlooks the entire valley and half-dome. Oh my, it was beautiful! We spent Friday night and Saturday night at this little hotel about an hour from the valley. It consisted of these little cottages which were the rooms, and they were very quaint. On Saturday, we drove into the valley and hiked up Vernal Falls, which is a 317 foot waterfall cascading between two huge rock faces. It was, as with most things in Yosemite, absolutely gorgeous. We finished Yosemite on Sunday with looking at the sequoias at the Mariposa Grove. Those trees are just massive! They are 20-30 feet in diameter it seemed, and tall, and just big. The trip was awesome, and it was just great to be with my family.
- San Francisco with Leslie: On Monday, Leslie and I spent the day together in San Francisco. It was my surprise to her, and while she knew that we were going to do something together, she had no idea what or where. We took the 8:00 express into the city, and then rented bikes on Fisherman’s Wharf. The first time I was in San Francisco, it was really warm and sunny, but this time, it was cloudy and freeeezzzzing! So as we biked around the wharf and across the Golden Gate Bridge to Yellow Bluff on the way to Sausalito, we were just frozen little ice cubes. We had lunch on Yellow Bluff, which I just mentioned, and looked out over the bay and San Francisco. Despite the clouds, it was still pretty. We biked back to the city, dropped off our bikes, and then walked to Pier 33 to catch a ferry to Alcatraz. Alcatraz is just freakin’ awesome! It has so much history. Les and I took an audio tour, and got to hear all about the stories of the place. We both really enjoyed that. And as we were going around Alcatraz, the sun broke through the clouds, and as we took the ferry back, we were able to enjoy a beautiful sunset. Upon arriving back to the wharf, we went to Boudin bakery and got hot clam chowder and a huge loaf of sourdough. Oh, so good! We finished our evening off by walking to Ghirardelli Square and got some chocolate. At that point, we decided to look at the train schedule, and which to our dire concern, we realized that the last train for a few hours left in twenty minutes a long way from where we are. So we payed a cabby well to get us there on time, which he did. Another great adventure with Leslie!
So that is where I have been. I have had a great couple weeks, and I am sorry for not writing on my blog earlier. I took over 400 pictures in Yosemite, and another 220 in San Francisco, and I will post them soon.
Two posts in one day.So I just got back this morning from my cousin Jason’s wedding. Jason is a few years older than me, actually he is the same age as my brother Jon, and he wed Cassie Nestleberger. The wedding was held outdoors at a country club, and it couldn’t have been a prettier day for it. The ceremony was very well done, and it was very cool to see the expressions on Jason and Cassie’s faces as the ceremony progressed. They are so good for each other, and they truly love each other.The reception was held at the country club as well, and consisted of the traditional toasts, dinner, cake cutting, and of course, dancing. I must say that our family knows how to have a good time.Besides the wedding, the trip just consisted of seeing family and seeing Leslie, which of course is a very wonderful thing. As a family, we ate meals together, watched a movie together, and just enjoyed each other’s company. When not with my family, Leslie and I took a watch, ate Thai food, played the card game Flinch, and read The Chronicles of Narnia aloud to each other.I really appreciate and love my family, and I feel truly blessed to have them. And Jason and Cassie, congratulations!
Hello all, pictures from the cabin trip are now available!