ketchup post #2 :: don't stop, get it, GET IT!

From

From The Great Urban Race
If you happened to be downtown or in Hillcrest on October 24th, you may have noticed some 1000 folks running around wearing random costumes and bib numbers. 2 of those happened to be Team Don't stop, get it, GET IT! who also happened to finish in 2 hours and 49 minutes. Good enough for 29th. 29th outta 480. Four-eighty. Four hundred and eighty! (Yes, I'm proud. What.)

The Great Urban Race is basically a one day Amazing Race. With our partner team Neuro Fuzzy, we solved 12 clues that forced us around downtown, Little Italy and Hillcrest by foot, bus & trolley.

Next year top 10!

ketchup post #1 :: hello, jack!

We finally got to say hello to Jack in August at the ripe ol age of 4 months. The kid is awesome. Just look at his hair. Boston was as hot as usual and we saw Steve Tyler. Random.

The Dirty Thirties

From

From my 30th

Dayyyaaammm...July has been hectic. Yes, I turned 30. But c'mon, like that's gonna stop me from being carded. Anyway, like always, I try to keep my birthday low key. Not that I don't like them, I'm just not big on birthdays. So go figure that my non-birthday dinner turns out to be one of the best I've celebrated. It helped having comic con in town since that funneled a lot of folks into SD and more importantly, downtown. Dinner at the Gaslamp Strip Club was great, especially since I STILL didn't have to cook my own steak (thanks, Philly!), Whiskey Girl was as fun as always and the post-party-Rock-Band-jam-session-until-5am was beyond entertaining. If you haven't seen the photos, then you're not on Facebook, which means you should be because Raul posted some good ones there. In the meantime, I've uploaded a handful to Picasa (click the link above).

So that was this past weekend, the weekend prior Jennie surprised me with half hour ride on a motherflippin' BIPLANE.



I suppose I should've seen it coming given all our aerial adventures in the past, but regardless, it was faaaaantastic. Highly recommended. (shots from the sky are in here)

And then the weekend before THAT, Grace & Jeff came down to visit so we hit up UCSD for a trip down memory lane. Turns out that the old stomping grounds ain't so old anymore. New buildings, new sculptures and a super tech heavy Price Center had me screaming "where the heck was all this when we were going here?!" But then I remembered I was turning 30 and that our freshman year was almost 12 years ago. Oy.


(more UCSD photos in the la jolla set)

And the weekend before that??? Independence Day people! Aren't you keeping track? (see below)

big bay boom!

Jennie and I were able to score a prime spot at the Embarcadero Marina Park to watch the Big Bay Boom fireworks display last night. (Of course, showing up 7 hours before the show didn't hurt our chances.)

more fireworks photos in my downtown flickr set.

this is not what I do

If you've ever perused my photostream, you'll see lots of environments. LOTS of environments. My unofficial motto is "the world inspires me". I build environments for games and I photograph them. It's what I do.

People, on the other hand, is not what I do (in terms of photography, that is...don't be sick). Saying "this is how I see the world" is one thing. Saying "this is how I see you" is another. I guess it's a comfort level I had/have yet to achieve. But in any case, that didn't stop Katie and Dan from enlisting me for their engagement shoot. And you know what? I'm glad it didn't stop them. However, it does help when it's friends and it definitely helps when they're dressed up and rockin' some awesome makeup. (Their wedding theme is Dia de los Muertos and they wanted their engagement photos to reflect that theme, hence the makeup.)

So with Jennie aiding me as art director, we brought them to the Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve to do their shoot and the old barn and the woods there served as perfect backdrops. We didn’t really do any of the “typical” lovee-dovee-kissy-kissy stuff, but then again, this isn’t your typical couple. Plus, you know, Dan’s face was painted as a skull. You can see the results through the link below. I thought it was a great first run at this sort of thing and maybe it’s not normally what I do, but maybe that’ll change.

the flickr set

fun with food dye

With all this extra time on my hands, I finally got around to doing one of the photo experiments I had on the backlog.

enjoy.

7&7s

"Was that a score?"

"No, that was a try."

"But they got points?"

"Right. He got a try."

"He tried to score?"

"He scored points on a try."

"Well that's nice. You know...that they give points for trying."

That conversation didn't really happen, but I'm trying to illustrate the point that rugby is confusing. And by rugby rules, I get points for trying. :)

Two Sundays ago, we caught 14 matches during the second day of the USA Sevens tournament and I'm still not entirely sure how it's played. All I know is that it's fast (at least the 7s variation of rugby is), it's brutal and the USA Eagles unfairly lost to the Argencheatas. Still a fun time.

flying thru the air with the not so greatest of ease

Although this post may be a bit late, Jennie's birthday extravangaza celebrations were not. We started off at Disney's California Adventure and got through practically the whole park before the rain started coming down. Fortunately most of the attractions are indoors anyway. And in case you were wondering, Disney birthday perks include free entry, a big birthday button, EVERY worker says "Happy Birthday" and a free bag of tortillas. That's right. A free bag of tortillas. Don't be jealous.

That night we had dinner with the Kit clan at Birdhouse Grill in Encinitas. (Highly recommended. Bring cash.) Saturday night was with friends at Puerto la Boca, Bondi and Maryjane's Coffeshop. (Thanks Jody for helping organize the night out and thanks to everyone for helping get Jennie toasted.)

The big kicker was Sunday afternoon where we got our Circus of the Stars on at Trapeze High. No, seriously. You read that correctly. We have videos to prove it. Like this one:


more birthday photos & videos here

It's amazin, so amazin, so amazin, so amazin...*

Our continuing quest to see the world landed us in Egypt (“India-Lite” as I like to call it) along with our friends Derick & Theresa. The Pyramids of Giza have always been something I’ve wanted to see, but Egypt was not where I wanted to go. Maybe it’s because there are an estimated 22 million undiscovered landmines out there had something to do with it. I don’t know. But regardless of the reason to hold back, we decided that embarking on this trip with a tour group would make it a safer journey. Because that makes sense. Strength in numbers, right? Uhh, right. Anyway, no regrets about going at all, but the tour group, however…that’ll probably be the last one I do. Sure it’s great not having to worry about transportation or lodging, but when you’re on someone else’s schedule and that schedule means waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning to make sure you see everything you possibly can, it gets a little tiring. But I digress. And really, none of that matters because Egypt was a truly incredible experience. I was in a constant state of awe travelling along the Nile River, visiting the Temples of Isis, Horus, Luxor and others, the Karnak Complex, seeing Ramses VI and Tutankhamen’s tombs (not to mention Tut’s actual mummy!). It was all just absolutely amazing and more so was the fact that so much of it has held up over the course of time.

And of course those Pyramids of Giza are definitely a site to behold. The fact that they put everything else to shame is probably why they were one of the last things we saw. Even while standing on it, it was tough trying to comprehend how something so massive and thousands of years old was possible. I mean, some of these stones seemed as large as our apartment and you’re telling me that way back when, there was even another layer on top of them? There’s really only one explanation – Aliens. Had to be. No Egyptians would admit to it though. But maybe they figure they’re not coming back, so somebody ought to take credit. Who knows?

Oh, and Jennie rode a camel. I walked the camel. Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

BOOSH!**

the flickr set
the picasa set

* Kanye West's song Amazing from his album 808s & Heartbreaks became our theme song for the trip
** copyright 2009 Derick Tsai