November 25, 2007

just married

Well, Ronda and I got back from eloping yesterday. Just for the record, Ronda is not pregnant and all the parental units do actually approve of our marriage. (Of course none of the parental units knew about it until after it was done, but hey, we wouldn't have been eloping if they did.)

We both took Wednesday off from work and went down to San Francisco City Hall to get married. Chuck and Juju were present as our witnesses and photographers. All our pictures from the event are online here. It was a beautiful day and after the ceremony we went to take pictures in The Presidio and have lunch at the Cliff House. After that Ronda and I drove up to Sonoma and spent three nights at the Gaige House. We had a great time just hanging out in our room, which we only left to get mud wraps, massages, and food. (Ronda made some great dining reservations and we went out to eat at Ad Hoc in Yountville, The Girl and the Fig in Sonoma, and The Fig Cafe in Glen Ellen.)

Well, now we're getting back to reality and looking forward to the rest of our lives together.

a couple weeks of travel

So on Friday, Oct 26th, I went to Brazil for the first time. I was there for 8 days, doing presentations about opensolaris at four different universities. I flew into Sao Paulo, then i presented at FATEC in Sao Jose do Rio Preto on Monday, at the Ministry of Education and UnB in Brasilia on Tuesday, at FANOR in Fortaleza on Wednesday, and at FTC in Salvador on Thursday. Our travel schedule was pretty hectic, but we did get to see a bunch of different cities in Brazil and i was able to relax Friday and Sat in Salvador. Here are some of my pictures from the trip.

On Sunday i flew out of Salvador to beautiful Newark, NJ for a week of university recruiting. Tuesday night we (me and one of my co-workers) had an info session at Princeton University and Wednesday we had a full day of interviews at the Princeton career center, after which we drove down to Baltimore, MD so that we could repeat the info session and interview process at John Hopkins University on Thursday and Friday.

One evening in Baltimore was spent hanging out with some old friends, Jonathan and Frances, who moved to Baltimore a while back. They were leaving town early Friday morning, but we managed to catch up and chat over a tasty dinner at The Helmand on Thursday.

Saturday morning i rented a car and drove down to visit my sister near Washington DC. We hadn't seen each other for almost a year so we had a really great low key time just hanging out. We did some shopping, cooked some chili, tried some local restaurants, etc. It was near her birthday, so to celebrate we went to a spa to get massages and then we went out to a great dinner at Nora's, during which we were heartily entertained by an an incredibly arrogant and annoying french man sitting next to us. We spent most the dinner talking in Polish about him and his dining companion.

I finally got back home at around 11 am on Tue, Nov 13th. In summary, i ended up visiting about 8 different cities in 17 days. Man, was i happy to sleep in my own bed again.

November 17, 2007

my saturday

woke up to a backed up bathtub. bought a drain snake, used it and a plunger to unclog the tub. quickly scanned through a couple old issues of the economist. went through about a months worth of piled up snail mail. paid my bills. itemized my receipts from two weeks of traveling for work. cleaned up around the house. spoke to my parents. started planning for a lobotomy tomorrow.