Memorial Day trip

Ivy absolutely loves lavendar. So for memorial day weekend, we decided to go to a lavendar farm out in Sequim. It's a bit of a drive, so I found a game park out there to go to as well. Lucky for that because when we got to the lavendar farms, it wasn't blooming yet. We overlooked the fact that it's not in season yet. Oh well, now we know. The game farm was cool though. You basically drive your car through a maze of a farm and game animals are just walking about. For the most part, the aminals are all domesticated. You can buy loafs of bread to feed them and they pretty much just stand there waiting to be fed as you drive by. See my flickr site for more pics.


Maybe we'll come back in July when they bloom.


White horned rhino







At one point this silly bear had 3 legs in the water


Ahhh, love the smell of a new car.

The Cousins

Here are the cousins doing what the cousins do best, EAT! It's midnight and we're all hungry. Aren't we always all hungry when we're around each other.




Cousins in the hood.










After the funeral.

Wake Turbulence

Over the past weekend, Teri, Ivy and I took a flight down to L.A. for my grandfather's funeral. Turns out, it was the most eventful flight that I've ever been on. I'm already deathly afraid of flying and that flight made it even worse. So here's what happened. The flight itself was uneventful. Very smooth takeoff with very minor turbulence, if any. Then 3/4 of the way into the flight, the entire plane dipped to the right about 45 degrees and lost elevation. The whole plane was yelling. My knuckles are white gripping the arm rests and my heart is racing. Within a few seconds the plane levels off and we're fine. At this point I think OK that was scary as hell but we're OK now. Then the plane does it again, this time tipping the the left 45 degrees and losing elevation again. This time I'm thinking we're dead for sure. Something is seriously wrong and everyone in the plane is yelling even louder. All I could think of was that this plane will kill 3 family members. Just like the first time, the plane levels off again.

A few minutes later, the pilot comes on the intercom and says everything is fine. Here's what happened. There was a 747 plane 10 miles directly in front of us. At the speed that we're going, 10 miles is a very short distance. Just like boats have wakes as they glide through water, planes have wakes as well. Only the wake of a plane creates a mini tornado. We just happended to fly right into the wake of the 747. It basically brushed our 737 plane off to the side like a fly. Apparently, the plane was flying under auto pilot. After the first dip, the pilot took the plane off auto pilot and probably tried to readjust the plane causing the 2nd dip. The pilot also said that this was a very rare occurance. Most people probably won't ever experiece it in there lifetime. My question then is how the hell did we ever get that close to another plane??? What happended to the radar? Did someone fall asleep in the flight tower? To make matters worse, LAX was busy as usual, so we missed our landing. We had to circle around for another 20 minutes before finally landing.

The only good thing about this experience is that it has reinforced what I already know that planes are very sturdy. It will take a hell of a lot more to bring a plane down from mid air.

But it doesn't stop me from feeling like this when stepping on a plane:


Or thinking of this:

Karen's Connection

With Karen's connections here in L.A., she seems to be able to get into the hippest events in town. Turns out she was at the premiere of Spiderman 3 where Stan Lee himself was in teh audience. Needless to say she had a great time.

Dinner with the Lee's

We had dinner at this Chinese place that had really good shark fin soup. Haven't seen a lot of my cousin's for awhile now and it turns out they are all in college. Wow, how time flies right by.


Christine and Patrick


Teri and Karen


Chang Clan

Dinner

Ivy and I were really swamped today at work. I had to try to save a deal that was falling apart and Ivy had to work late to finish up since we're leaving for LA tomorrow morning. By the time we got home it was 8:30 and we're exhausted. When we got home though there was a seafood feast waiting for us. It was a very nice suprise to say the least.

I support Ivy

This one is for John and Neil. Don't laugh too hard.

New bike

In my never ending attempt to get in shape, I got myself a mountain bike over the weekend. I used to have a Specialized Hardrock that I was very fond of. I rode it all through college and twice rode down to Portland on what's called the Seattle to Portland bike ride. Once John moved into Mom's house, he threw it away. Ouch!

Anyway, there was a big sale over the weekend and I ended up buying another hard rock. It was a great deal, $410 for an aluminum frame, front and back disc brakes and front suspension.


I've made some adjustments to it already adding bar ends on the handle bar, gel seat for by fat butt and city slicker tires for road riding. I'm bringing my camera along on my rides now so hopefully I'll have some cool pics to put up shortly.

Mother's Day

I planned on taking my mom and mother-in-law to this really nice buffett at Newcastle Golf Course. The food is not that great, but the incredible view makes up for it. When we got there though, they put us in the ballroom instead of the restaurant itself. So we lost all view and ended up eating in a wedding banquet style ballroom.

Since my mom had to go to LA for grandpa's passing, it was just my clan and John/Neil. It was fun watching Neil take care of John. We also had dinner with them as well. It will be deja vu as you will see the same pics on his blog. Maybe you guys can compare the pics and see who has the better camera. Mine is a Canon Ixus bought in HK.


Rocky's got his eye on another balloon. See previous post.


John and Neil


Lily and her husband Alex


Ivy and her mamma


John milking his injury


Still milking it






Who wears bangs like this anymore? I bet she still thinks Kristi McNichol is cool


Newcastle golf course






This is a cool little market on our way home. Check it out, purple asparagus


Graffiti eggplant


$15.99 for one stem of tropical flowers. OUCH!

So cute.

Rocky's TV adventure

So in my previous blog, I mentioned that Rocky would be on TV. He was to be on the WE network on a show called Adventures In Doggy Day Care. We don't have that channel, so I had to pay $10 more to get an additional 100 channels just to watch Rocky on TV. Little did I know that there are actually 10 episodes and I have no idea which one he's on. I've watched 4 of them now and still no Rocky, so I'll just keep watching. So until he gets on TV, here are some videos that I took of him. They are funny as hell.

This one is of Rocky killing a balloon.


It was a nice day and we finally took Rocky out to the dog park for the first time this year. Apparently, he forgot how to swim.