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2 Year Anniversary!

Can’t believe Karen and I have been married for two years!  Instead of shelling out major dough for some restaurant, we decided to dine at the local Karen Lee House of Tea…

The fine dining began with a mango salad dish…

then continued with a mushroom soup…

and then the Lobster with piña colada…

After the dining at this fine restaurant with a world-class chef, we decided to take a little Vista tour (not to be confused with Windows) at the place where we held our banquet 2 years ago, the Edgewater Hotel.

Then after a leisurely walk, we returned to the Karen Lee House of Tea for some dessert…

It’s easy to take for granted someone who’s with you all the time, but I truly appreciate sharing my life with Karen the past two wonderful years.  🙂

Family and Friends

Eva’s Wedding

On Saturday, Karen and I attended Jerry & Eva’s wedding.  It was in a cozy, wooden Lutheran church with a very Lutheran pastor, who interestingly could speak Mandarin.  You can see him in the picture denoted by the … head.

Afterwards, we headed over to the reception.  It was funny for Karen to have been enlisted to bring salad before we even RSVP’ed, but whatever.  🙂

Call me a carnivore if you will, but apparently Karen’s salad was the only item I didn’t try that night.  The roast beef was good, though…  it was prepared by someone whom I haven’t seen for a decade!

The last time I recall seeing the Chef was back in 1995 when I attended College Fellowship at ECC.  All I remembered was heading to his Greenlake residence with a few other CFers after jogging where he, a student of the culinary arts, gleefully produced cooking oil by placing huge pieces of lard on the frying pan.  That was my only memory of him.

Apparently his memory was better than that as he called me by name on the way to the wedding on Saturday!

Anyway, my sitting around while waiting for Karen didn’t sit well with the other helpers, so I was enlisted to help fold the napkins around the utensils.  By the end, I was an expert napkin folder who outshined all the others–a rare gift.

In the meantime, Karen was busy setting up the wedding cake…

By now you’re probably thinking that this is a very DIY wedding, and you’d be right.  I suppose every wedding has its own character.

Finally we were able to sit down and relax.

After dinner, the bride and groom toasted each table…

When they came to our table, all the helpers were gone busy doing stuff, except for me.  I would have helped, but I wasn’t feeling well because…  let’s just say that I forgot Lactaid that morning with my cereal.  The helpers never came back and I never got to toast the bride and groom!  Wats up wit dat?!

Still, I wish Jerry & Eva the best on their new marriage.  🙂

Home

Enjoy the sun!

With Seattle raining about 11 out of 12 months of the year, we need to embrace the sunlight whenever it can be detected.  Now that Karen and I have finished the fence and the shed, we moved on to our next project–the picnic table!

There was a story in purchasing the umbrella.  During our first visit to Pottery Barn, the lady mentioned, “if you see it for lower in the catalog, we would honor that price”, but when I called in to make the actual purchase, a different lady answered and insisted they never do this and that their retail price includes shipping, which is why it’s more expensive!  I waited until the next day to make the plead in person, but the original lady wasn’t there.  I ended up asking a guy, but his attitude was “that’s our price, take it or leave it”.  Finally I gave up and went to the register.  I made a puppy face and asked, “Can you just give it to me for the catalog price?”  She said, “I’m not supposed to do this, but… okay!”

So the moral of the story is… when all else fails, utilize the puppy face.

Home

Another Project Done!

After finishing the fence, Karen and I moved on to other projects, one of which is the extra-large honey bucket for emergency use from the yard!  Okay, maybe not.  It’s a storage solution for all the yard equipment.  Because this area of the land was sloped, the most difficult part Karen and I had to do was leveling it.  Hopefully we won’t wake up one day and see the shed at the bottom of the slope.  😛

Now that it freed up the extra space in the garage, Karen’s real motivation for urging the shed’s completion was to resume my muscle-building routines on the bench.  Anyone up for some reps?  😉

General

Silly Night

Karen and I dined at Jeem last night, and when it came time to pay, I pulled out the wallet and realized that my credit card was missing from its usual slot!  A slight flashback brought me to Red Robin, the last place I touched my wallet for lunch after church, so that must have been where it was…

We hurriedly paid with Karen’s credit card and drove over to Red Robin across the street.  The manager performed the security check by glacing at my ID and disappeared through the backdoor.  When he returned, his hands were empty and declared the bad news–card not found!  How could it be?!

“Who was your server?” he asked.

“I don’t remember.  I may have to report this card stolen, so can you check one last time?” I answered.

The manager strolled down the aisle and disappeared again.  Suddenly a revelation hit me–I may indeed have the receipt in my wallet.  I promptly opened it up and sitting in the bit fat slot was the receipt with the server name!  Then I checked in the other compartment, and there it was, the credit card!  To spare the manager the agony of realizing that the last 15 minutes was an exercise in futility, I thanked him and mentioned I’d look for it and left.  When we got back to my car, Karen asked, “Where’s your jacket?”

So back to Jeem we went…

Home

Magic Bean II — Delayed

For those of you who have religiously followed the chapter on the Magic Bean with writing, I went to extra length to ensure a more interesting type of plant–the Dancing Flower!  And no, it’s not the battery-operated version that wiggles when its hidden condenser microphone detects vocal signals.  This is a living, growing plant that does the John Travolta or Michael Jackson at the cue of music!

Unfortunately, the delivery didn’t make it past customs, maybe because they were deemed as agricultural hazard.  Either that or the customs officers are now growing the botanical entertainment in their kitchen. In any case, I regret that we will need to postpone this blogging event until further notice.

General

Demo

My manager asked me give a demo of what I work on today to about a hundred people.  I thought I had everything taken care of, so I waited until 11pm last night to prepare.  When I tried connecting the device, it failed!  Took me until 3am to sort it out!  Note to self: procrastination=bad.

In the end, the demo went smoothly.  Couldn’t say the same about the other demos, though.  One had problems getting the laptop connected, and the other continually crashed…  It helps to lift up even the small things to God.  🙂

Home

Fence Finished!

Karen and I finally finished the last piece of our fence, the gate!  Now our lawn is no longer the public access shortcut for kids, and curious pedestrians can no longer peek in to observe our featureless yard.  Unfortunately it also prevents the cute bunny rabbit from entering and feeding on the dandelions, and it offers little protection against the curious black kitty who uses our yard as a big litter box.

Not that it was all easy.  While we were trying to install the gate, I had to hold fifty different items with my hands, feet, neck, etc. At one point I dropped the drill, and when I grabbed it, it got tangled on my shirt and started drilling!

Pushing it away only made it go faster because I was holding on to the handle, where the accelerate button happened to reside.  Somehow by the miracle of God I ended up with only minor scrapes, which appears as a tiny little red dot in the lower-left hand corner of the rip in the picture.  Consider it a battle scar to show for this valiant fence-building effort!

Special thanks to Allan and Wes for helping with setting the posts, and Erick for pulling out a huge boulder and hacking away at a root that just wouldn’t go away.

Let’s just hope it holds together…

Travel

Lavender Festival!

Every year people attend the Tulip Festival.  This year, olivetheotherreindeer suggested we try something different, such as going to the Lavender Festival at Sequim, which lasts only one weekend!

To get to Sequim, we had to take the ferry across the Puget Sound.

When I was about to take pictures of the guys, the announcement came for people to return to their vehicles.  Bummer!

The first farm we went to was called Purple Haze…

Erick and Jeffrey started by trying out some local delicacy, like the Lavender Virgin Margarita…

Jeffrey immediately gave it the thumbs down.  There was also the lavender white chocolate ice cream, which according to Carol, just tasted like regular white chocolate ice cream.

That’s when we started taking pictures…

And more pictures…

We paid $10 for unlimited access to 7 different farms, with free shuttling service provided from farm to farm.  The central hub is at downtown Sequim, so we took the bus to get there.  It was a squeeze…

I was sandwiched so badly I had a hard time even getting my camera out, but as you can see from the picture, some of us were just comfortably sitting on the seats while the rest of us suffered.

We arrived at the hub where it resembles a fair with booths and long lines all over the place.  Many of us opted for the Gyro for lunch…

After lunch, Erick found this incredibly large farm with called Lost Mountain, which was hyped with “100 different species of Lavender!!!”  So to Lost Mountain we went.  We took the bus again, and this time we squeezed two rows between the aisles!  After the bus made its first stop, we were able to sit down, but not before our hands turned tomato red…

Picture doesn’t do justice to the colors of our hands.  Anyway, we arrived at Lost Mountain…

So we did find a hundred species of Lavender, but apparently there was only one of each, contained in a small patch of land!  We were conned.  Nevertheless, we made the most out of the place.  One interesting feature was a water mill running purple water…

It’s hard to see the purple water, but I assure you it was purple.  Karen also decided to bring out her favorite cartoon character to join the fun…

Also some of us decided to collect their own lavender…

I have no idea what olivethereindeer was cutting there…

By the time we were ready to go, we had to wait in line for the bus again.  Some people’s sunburns were starting to become apparent as a strange mark surfaced on my back…

It wasn’t really a burn, but I still have this mark today.  Maybe it’s from the camera strap?

Turned out we weren’t able to get onto the next two buses because they were both full, so we ended up waiting for an hour!  Next time, we should just drive instead of taking the shuttle…  While most of us were just standing around, some of us managed to make the time productive.

Finally we were able to squeeze on the bus and return to our parking lot.  That’s when we decided to check out at the beach with the lighthouse.  On the way, Erick took a wrong turn somewhere and we ended up getting a nice view of…

A deer.  He stared at us as we made a U turn in someone’s back yard.

When we arrived at the beach, there was a lighthouse in view, but it was really small.  Even with my super duper 300x zoom lense, I was still only able to offer you this picture with minimal details…

Unfortunately to reach the lighthouse required a 5.5 mile hike, each way!  That’s like circling Green Lake four times!  We decided to pass and just enjoy the beach…

Erick was really into playing chicken fight on a log…

After that, a shark appeared in the water…

Okay, so there was no shark, but we did take a funny picture!  😛

Then it was time to go home.  We first dropped by Taco Time for some to-go dinner, and then we got held up waiting for the draw bridge.  The traffic literally stopped for 10 minutes. While waiting, Jeffrey had an emergency crisis and needed a place to…  download some software.

Unfortunately he couldn’t find an outlet.  Later Johnny, Angela, Jeffrey and Grace stopped at an alternate location while the rest of us headed over to the Ferry.  We thought they didn’t make it to the 9:20 ferry because they were the fifth car in line for the next ferry, but they managed to squeeze in.  Close call!

Anyway, then we took the ferry ride home…

That’s it, folks, our Lavender Festival trip!  It was fun, but we most likely won’t be going another Lavender trip for a long time.