More SeaWorld

Our friends Dave and Amy brought their family out from the East Coast to visit last month. They came by our place one morning so Chelsey could take pictures of baby Kate. Amy posted some of her favourites here. After the photo session we all went to SeaWorld. I had to work later in the day, but we were very efficient while I was there. We made it to three shows (dolphin, sea lion & Shamu) in a little over an hour. Not bad. I think the sea lion one was my favourite. Everybody else stayed later after I left, which meant Chelsey got to visit the baby rescue otter that we love to visit.
-Jason

Happy Pi Day!

Don't you wish your birthday inspired math nerds to write cheesy songs?
(the actual song doesn't start until 47 seconds in, so skip ahead if you can)

ikebana 4

I didn't particularly like this week's arrangement. It didn't seem like the flowers worked well together so everything felt cramped to me.
There was a second little old Japanese lady there today and after I had finished she came by and completely re-did my arrangement. Then (and I found this very amusing) the teacher came by and completely re-did everything the other lady had done.
So when I got home, I put it back to the way I had it originally.
I guess it just goes to show that "the right look" is highly subjective.

bakeshop week 5

Do you think Jason will notice if I re-purpose one (or several) of these cakes for his birthday cake?

Ramen!

One of our favorite food discoveries in Japan was ramen. Although it is relegated to the food pyramid basement and widely regarded as only an uber-cheap college student staple in the U.S., the Japanese embrace ramen. There are entire restaurants devoted to it. Plus, it's delicious. It blows Cup-O-Noodle out of the water.
Jason was particularly excited when he found a Japanese restaurant in town that serves ramen. It wasn't as good as the milk ramen from Koba & More (our favorite kind of ramen at our favorite place in Himeji), but it satisfied our cravings.
The restaurant also served Calpis (or Calpico as they re-name it for U.S. distribution), which was Jason's favorite Japanese drink.

Las Vegas

Chelsey attended a photography conference in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. Naturally I wasn't about to pass up an excuse for a getaway so I went along too. I flew in Friday after work; since I got there fairly late it seemed like a short trip, but it was a lot of fun.
It had been a few years since I'd been to Vegas and it has changed quite a bit. I guess that's the normal state of affairs there. Chelsey and I talked about how we remember Vegas trying to pitch itself as a family vacation destination. That seems to have gone by the wayside, judging by the scantily clad women dancing on tables in the middle of the Excalibur casino in the middle of the afternoon. There are also a few new big hotels in the middle of the Strip. Chelsey and I strolled down there on Sunday and wandered through one of them, the Aria. It was very nice and looked like a very fancy new hotel (lots of upscale shops) but it doesn't have a theme and seemed to lack some of the excitement of Las Vegas. We didn't go through the Cosmopolitan or the Mandarin Oriental, but they seemed to be the same.
For a Valentine's celebration, we treated ourselves to Ka, the Cirque du Soleil show at MGM Grand, after Chelsey's conference was over. It was our first Cirque show and it was amazing. The acrobatics were incredible and it was hard to understand how the performers didn't fall sometimes. The most notable was a guy who was jumping rope atop a giant rotating wheel. In the end, though, he stayed on and we were thrilled.
The next day we watched the Bellagio water show. It was good as always, although the wind played havoc with a couple of parts. We then wandered over to the Imperial Palace, because it has cheap table games. I ended up winning a bit of money at craps, which was an excellent way to end the trip.
-Jason

the zoo with Kim and Tessa

Kim wanted to take Tessa for an outing to the zoo and was nice enough to invite me to come too. Jason really wanted to come but he had to work, so it was a girls outing.
The weather was cool (by San Diego standards) but it was a really nice day. Tessa's favorites were the tigers and the elephants. One of the tigers was sitting right up against the glass, and I think that Tessa liked being able to get face-to-face with it. She kept pointing at it and calling it a dog. It was really cute when the little boy next to her tried to point out that it was a tiger not a dog because "dogs don't have stripes".
I think she liked the elephants because she thought we were saying they were "Elmo"phants. She kept pointing at the elephant and saying Elmo.