Happy New Year

We wish all our readers a happy 2012. We are looking forward to a new year, a new job and new adventures.
-Jason

Happy Holidays

We hope that all of our readers had a nice holiday season. I realize I am a bit late in sharing this picture of our tree. It's a rosemary tree and it was really decked out once we hung our one string of bubble lights on it. Plus when the lights would heat up, it would release the rosemary aroma. It wasn't quite as good as that fresh pine smell but it was nice. The little tree almost got lost when we put some of our presents around it.
Another funny bit of holiday cheer was the tattered card we received from Jason's aunt and uncle. We're not sure how the post office shredded it, but it came to us in pieces inside a plastic bag. Amazingly, the USB drive that they'd included made it too. After a little bit of jigsaw detective work, we reassembled the card and we amazed that we weren't missing any pieces.

Further adventures in Japanese team names

We discovered some great team names while we were in Japan, especially among the women's pro sports leagues. In the volleyball games we went to, we saw the Airybees, the Queenseis and JT Marvelous. The fledgling pro women's baseball league is striving to keep up. Last summer we tried to go see a game between the Hyogo Swing Smileys and the Kyoto Astro Dreams, which were the only two teams in the league at the time. Things must be going well, because the league has decided to expand by adding the Osaka Brabee Honeys. What's a Brabee Honey, you ask? Well, it's a combination of things the team administration hopes the players will be: Brave, like Honeys to their fans, and, um, Bees. Of course, all three of those words would make for too long of a name, so they sensibly combined the Brave and Bee portions to Brabee. I think any of us would have made the same call.
-Jason

Foot Locker Nationals

Last weekend my friend Chris came down so we could go over to Balboa Park and watch Foot Locker Nationals, the national high school cross country championships. They had a big set up in the park, including a video board near where I usually run. Both the boys race and the girls race turned out to be pretty good races. The girls went first and one runner, Erin Finn, bolted out to a big lead. I was sure she was out too fast and would die, because you can't just bury a national-caliber field like that. She nearly did though; the eventual winner, Molly Seidel, chased her down with about 800 meters to go, but that was it.
The boys race started slower with almost everyone bunched up. The end was similar, though, as it came down to two guys. This time Edward Cheserek and Fustum Zenaiselassie just took off halfway through the race and left the rest of the field. They stayed together right until the end, when Cheserek sprinted away for the win. Watching the two of them battle each other over the last mile was pretty exciting.
It was a lot of fun to have a relatively big event happening within running distance of our apartment.
-Jason

Model Railroad Museum

One of the many museums in Balboa Park is the Model Railroad Museum. Last week Chelsey took me for a visit. It was a quiet little museum, but it was pretty interesting. There were three or four extremely detailed model sets that showed the San Diego area its railroads at various points in history. We could follow the train from the airport, down through Tijuana, across the Carrizo Gorge bridge and into the Imperial Valley. It was pretty interesting, especially seeing all the detail in the buildings and surrounding areas.
There was also a temporary exhibit of a Lego railway around a Lego city. It was pretty neat, too. They had a challenge where visitors were supposed to try to spot various things hidden in the city, such as four people on Segways or an Iron Chef contest. Chelsey and I did pretty well. We were determined to find the Iron Chef contest.
-Jason
There are a few more pictures on the picasa site.

December Nights

We went to December Nights in Balboa Park a couple of weeks ago. It's one of the biggest festivals in San Diego (it started as Christmas on the Prado). Most of the museums in Balboa Park are free at night and there are lots and lots of Christmas decorations and food booths throughout the park. It was a lot bigger than we were expecting, with a lot more people.
There's a group of international cottages in the park and each cottage was offering food from that country during the festival. I went and got a Czech sausage while Chelsey got a Turkish doner kebab. We also snacked on some baklava from Iran, and I also got some ice cream.
We mostly walked around and looked at the decorations in the park, since many of the museums were quite crowded. We did go in the Hall of Champions, a sports museum with some interesting exhibits on the history of professional sports in San Diego, as well as a giant rotating statue of a discus thrower with a Santa hat. The Hall was showing Christmas videos in their auditorium; we tried to go see A Charlie Brown Christmas but they showed It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown which was not nearly as good. Despite that, we had a great time. If we stick around San Diego in the future, I'd definitely like to go back.
-Jason
There are a few more pictures on the picasa site.

Water Polo Update

I scored a goal.
-Jason

powdered sugar

Yesterday I stocked up on the necessary supplies for my Christmas baking. I went to Costco to get the jumbo sizes of a couple of the things I needed a lot of: butter, chocolate chips, etc. I needed quite a bit of powdered sugar, so I actually stood there in the aisle in Costco and tried to figure out how long it would take me to bake through their 50 pound bag. I didn't get it, and now I can't believe that I was actually considering it.

Water polo

We found an adult water polo group in San Diego a few weeks ago. Chelsey had missed playing but it's hard to find an adult group, especially one that's not dominated by hyper-competitive males. This one is called Old People Water Polo and seemed so welcoming that I was willing to try it out as well.
It's turned out to be a really good group. We've gone twice now and they've been really nice. Chelsey's fit in well and scored two goals in her first game. I spent most of that game being pretty lost. I could swim around OK, although I got pretty tired, but there was a lot of time when I wasn't sure what was going on, or even where the ball was. The second time we went I did a little better. I kind of knew what was going on and tried to play with a strategy in mind. It worked sometimes. I even got a shot off, but it was saved by the goalie. I didn't notice until after the save that the goalie was Chelsey, so no wonder. There were still some times when I wasn't sure what to do and just tried to get rid of the ball as quickly as possible, but Chelsey says that will get better. I wonder if the part where I get really tired swimming back and forth will get better too.
-Jason

Turkey Day

We did a double Thanksgiving in Phoenix -- I guess it helped to make up for some of our nontraditional Thanksgivings abroad. We had one on Thursday with my parents and some of their friends, but then had a second one on Sunday when Dusty and his family were in town.
Jason got a double-dose of cranberry and we took him to the Railroad Park. What could be better?

camping

One of the presents we received for our wedding was a tent and sleeping bags (thanks Malcolm and Ris!) and we were anxious to test them out. I'd been camping before, but it was a first for Jason. He decided we should make our first attempt somewhere close to home so that if it was a complete disaster we could pack up and come home.
We picked the beach-side campground just south of Carlsbad. The weather report for the weekend was iffy, so we didn't make reservations in advance but had checked the website the morning of and found there were still a few spots available. When we arrived the park ranger told us that we got the very last spot. We found that hard to believe because it was a really great spot. The campgrounds are on a bluff over the water and you have a pay extra for the waterfront spots. Our spot was on a corner, so we had to go up a little hill to see the water but there weren't any other campers between us and the water. We were also close, but not too close, to the bathrooms.
We were successful and we confirmed that the rain fly worked. We got a slight drizzle but stayed dry and happy. Now were are contemplating our next adventure. We'd love to work up to a Yosemite trip maybe this summer or maybe the next.
There are a few more pictures on the picasa site.