Irv’s Journal

No big detailed post.  Just wanted to say Alaska was AMAZING!  Highlights:

• Aleutian Ballad (Deadliest Catch) Crab Boat tour.  WOW I would say if you had to choose one excursion to do, this would be it.  From showing us their fishing techniques, to telling fishing stories, I don’t think I had any dull moments on this tour.  Plus you get to meet people you’ve seen on TV, and they’re really nice guys.  The topper on this trip was when they took us to a native American reservation, where they were actually allowed to feed and bait the eagles!  I swear there must have been 30-40 eagles  swooping around right next to the ship!
• Eagle Preserve raft tour.  Being an “Eagle Preserve” I would have thought we would see some eagles!  Unfortunately I guess the majority of the eagles were off flying somewhere because the weather was so nice.  During the 1.5 raft ride I would say we saw about two or three eagles total.  However the river raft tour was nice, and we got to see some great views.
• Food on the ship was excellent.  Luckily dessert wasn’t always a great hit.  I managed to not gain any weight on the trip! Woohoo!
• The ship is REALLY smooth while in the protected waters.  It rocked slightly on the last day or two when we got out to open sea.

Highly recommended trip, especially if you get a good deal!  I would probably wait and do one of the later ones, even though we were really lucky and had sun every day.

I must say that this trip was much better than I had even expected.

Esther and I packed late into the night on Friday.  We then had to get up extra early to get to Steven and Jennifer’s wedding on Saturday morning.  This really led to a really frazzled exit from the house.  The wedding was at a golf course in La Habra, it was a very nice and scenic setting, and seemed to go off without any major issues.

Of course, thanks to Virgin America for changing our flight time to almost two hours earlier than scheduled, without any notification!  We didn’t find out about this small issue until we were about to check-in for our flight.  This meant we had to skip out on the wedding early and rush over to the airport, so we ended up missing out on the cake cutting and other activities after lunch.

Luckily, our flight to Seattle was on-time and pretty smooth.  Amy and Sean picked us all up and took us to an interesting Korean restaurant for dinner.  The rest of our Saturday was pretty much spent settling into our rooms (and doing a bit of extra laundry on my part) and relaxing.

Sunday started off at a cafe for brunch.  The food at this place was definitely hearty – I don’t think anyone finished their food!  After brunch, the whole family decided we needed to get out, so we took Kayla for a nice walk to the park.  The shocker of all was that Seattle was nice and sunny, so a couple of us got a bit slightly sunburned.  We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the Lakers game, then most of us napped and got ready for Esther’s birthday dinner at Ginza.  This place is a cozy little Japanese restaurant with really fresh fish.  Pretty much every time we’re in Seattle we end up at this place, and as usual, we weren’t disappointed.

We were all rather full and tired, so after finishing off the evening with a little birthday ice cream cake, we all pretty much called it an early evening, since on Monday morning, the cruise awaited!

We’re leaving this Saturday for our cruise!

Wow, it has certainly snuck up on us pretty quickly. I’m pretty excited, since this will be my first cruise.

Gotta get packed, since we’re going to Steve and Jen’s wedding on Saturday AM and then heading straight to the airport for our flight to Seattle. Hopefully we get a nice and relaxing weekend at Amy and Sean’s before our drive up to Vancouver to catch the ship.

Bringing workout gear and plan on using it this time… I definitely do NOT need to gain the weight on this trip that everyone is seeming to warn me about…

What’s new:

Got a new car! Woot, I love the S2000 so far. Going to put the IS300 back to stock and send it back to my parents. Yeah I’m pretty sure about putting back to stock, even if I was going to sell it.

Refinancing the house. Yeah, it’s only been a year, but we can’t pass up saving an extra 1 1/8% in interest. All told, we will recover our expenses from this re-fi process within the next two years! Not to mention our monthly payment is a lot cheaper!

Gearing up for next month’s Alaska cruise with the entire Lai family. Should get out there and practice with my camera, I’m pretty rusty by now.

So I guess I skipped over the entire month without a post. I guess we were on the go a lot, all things considered. I was home for a few weeks from Japan, then headed out to Virginia for a week. Finally back and looks like March will be tripless as far as I can tell.

Been playing a ton of Street Fighter 4. Finally got all the characters unlocked and there’s still tons left to do.

Still feels like we are always on the go on the weekends. This past weekend we went to Petco to meet up with one of Esther’s friends. It also happened that there was a dog adoption thing going on, so we played with some of the puppies that were available.

This week we are back with our trainer. Although I can’t say “back” since once again we are getting a new trainer. Not sure why, but it seems that we keep getting the trainer that ends up leaving. Though this time we ended up with a “Master Trainer” which apparently means he’s gone through with several of their training sessions and hopefully plans on sticking around for a while.

We’ll see.

Work trip number one for the year.  Heading off to Japan next week.  Hopefully back by 2/2.  Woopie I’m spending my birthday in Japan!

Nothing really too exciting to talk about…

Back after the holiday break.  For starters, it was a lot busier than I expected.  Though I guess that’s expected for the holidays.

Didn’t get to finish my bathroom projects like I had planned, but oh well.  There’s always time to do more projects!

Amy and Sean were in town so we spent a lot of time with them and hanging out at the Lai house.  Sarah got a new 2008 Highlander Sport, which was pretty neat.

Not too much excitement on the home front.  We had a little get together with some friends and then spent our first New Year’s Eve at home.

In 2009 we are considering getting a dog, a Lai family cruise, and it’s starting to look like a busy travel year for work.

RAIN! Wow, it seriously hasn’t rained like this in years. I love the rain… except when I have to be outside or drive around in it.

Somewhat concerned about the recently burned areas, since the land is probably in a fragile state. Hopefully the hillsides hold up.

It’s supposed to rain through Wednesday. Check out this map!

Esther and I decorated our house for Christmas!  Woohoo!  Actually, with the small amount of lights that we’ve put up, it really didn’t take us long at all.  First time decorators, both of us.  I’m thinking of trolling around for post-Christmas deals on lights and other decorations…

In the meantime, we’re going to look around for a tree.  For the sake of cleanup and laziness, we’re looking for a pre-lit fake tree.  I brought back a hand-blown and hand-painted ornament from Germany, so it’d be neat to have our first ornament on the tree for our first Christmas together.

Just catching up here.

As you may already know, Esther and I were forced to evacuate our house two weekends ago due to the Yorba Linda/Anaheim Hills Fire.  There was much excitement to be had, but we escaped with all three cars and lots of our belongings.  The evacuation was lifted on Sunday, but we didn’t return home till Monday.  Thankfully everything was okay, just as we had left it.  I believe the closest point of the fire was about a mile and a half or so away from the house.

The following weekend I headed out to Germany for a work trip.  While I had never been to Germany (besides the Frankfurt Airport), I wasn’t too excited about this trip.  I ended up having a white Thanksgiving in Germany (snow started early this year), and since the trip ended early, I was home on Black Friday evening.  With temps in the low 30s, i realized yet again that I am seriously lacking in the warm winter coat department.  Yeah, I never really think about it since I live in sunny southern California, but generally when I go on my work trips it can be REALLY COLD!

One of the nice things about being in Germany is the month long Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) that takes place in most of the cities starting the week of Thanksgiving.  Basically it is a giant fair that pops up in the town squares and people sell crafts and other random stuff.  It’s a place to get your Christmas shopping done.  And to go along with being a fair, there’s tons of fair food to sample, such as rostbratwurst (grilled bratwurst on a roll), kartoffelpuffer (potato pancakes served with apple sauce), giant brezels (pretzels), and of course gluwein (hot spiced red wine).  I managed to try most of the food, which was definitely good.  Tried a non-alcoholic version of the gluwein (hot spiced grape juice) and must say it was pretty tasty as well.

Now I’m back, and just counting down till the holidays!