::tidbits::
.................................................. * Who's Hieu?
* My photos on Flickr
* My Tweets
* My Blips
..................................................
::twitter::
.................................................. ::flickr::
Lunar New Year/Year of the Ox/Chinese New Year fell on the 26th of January this year and celebrations were going on around town all week long. We went to watch the Lion Dances and Kung Fu Exhibition up in the Heights Friday and Saturday...
While in Galveston last weekend, I found a little rock that totally resembled a cartoon baby skull head. That's Nicholas' well manicured fingers holding said baby skull head rock. It's now part of my permanent awesome-rock collection, which has rocks from all over - though none of those other rocks have faces. I could stick him with my collection of skulls, but admitting that I have such a collection* would be a little creepy.
Baby Skull head got featured as Little Skully today in the Faces in Places blog!
*My collection of skeletons/skulls are of the cute variety. No beings were harmed in the makings of such things.
My favorite photo taken with my phone so far... Nicholas up in the tree house out at Jenny & CJ's. Definitely a must-have for any household. I think we're going to have to have a treehouse built when we buy a house. Which I think means we need a house with a big tree in the back. It would also be helpful if the tree wasn't uncomfortably close to some crazy neighbors. Oo, and we gotta have the dual purpose fire/stripper pole. Yes.
I totally forgot to post this last month! Nicholas and I met up with CJ and Jenny at the Renaissance Festival for their Halloween weekend. Since Jenny had her camera out and clickin, we let her do most of the photography. Turns out, not only can she shoot a camera, she's quite the bow and arrow champion. :-) Pictures here... and here!
It's starting to get cold out! We got back from the Metroplex early in the weekend to spend some time preparing the apartment for the holiday decorating and it feels like the cold followed us home.
Well I got me a new phone before the break to "upgrade" my technology a bit. Not sure I'm in love with it just yet... But I'm in love with my Peanut - shown here in Loaf mode!
Nicholas, my sister and I drove downtown to catch the Parade of Lights and watch them light the Christmas tree in Sundance Square. We found out about it watching the evening news! We couldn't see much of the parade, but we got to watch the tree lighting from the deck at the Flying Saucer.
This month I had two Student Leadership Seminars for my district, one in Dallas and the other in Mexico City, Mexico. While Dallas was pretty much the same as when I saw it last, there wasn't a lot of sight seeing to be done, however I did get to go visit friends that I hadn't seen in a long time. The Dallas trip was Mashimaro's first drive up to the Metroplex. Yaa Maro! And this trip to Mexico was my first time in Business/First Class - talk about sweeet.
Mexico City was a short trip, sadly, but it was a lot of fun. The Mexico City campus of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey was beautiful and the students were amazing. I was picked up at the airport by a student who drove me to the campus in his red Peugeot 307 CC and got to listen to the latest latin pop music with the top down. The hosting students were very efficient and quite talented. A couple of them performed on stage with their dance troupe for an on-campus engineering festival. The food was generously provided by one of the students' mom. We're talking real, home cooked, delicious mexican food!
There's a huge chess set on campus. The pieces have rollers so they can be moved around. Each of the pieces represent a piece of Mexico's history.
This is the technology building on campus. The inside walls are all glass/plexi-glass. Even the elevator shaft is see-through. It houses just about every engineering and science lab with the latest technology and there's even an RTV and Digital Arts lab!
There's this well on campus that collects rainwater that gets pumped to a treatment center to be reused to water the landscaping.
I don't usually get window seats because I have a fear of being squashed between a large person and the wall, but sometimes it is worth it when you can see things like:
A wind farm - part of the Nine Canyon Wind Farm Project
This month's trip took me to Tokyo Japan. Leaving the Tuesday after Hurricane Ike blew through, the airport was full of people relieved to feel air conditioning. It was a relatively uneventful but painful 13 hour flight. I have been convinced that economy seating is high priced torture. There's no being comfortable, even with empty seats next to you.
I spent just seven days in Tokyo in a small hotel near Akihabara Station. I got to visit a few places in between the drizzle and rain and took my first ride on a train! Immensely fun, and scary at the same time. I couldn't read anything, I had to rely on numbers, colors, and diagrams to get around and figure out where I was going. My pictures are posted on flickr, and you can watch the slide show here.
Last month, I had a chance to visit the Middle East on a business trip. Munkie and I spent some time in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Bahrain seeing the beautiful sights and shopping at a couple of the largest malls in the world. We took over 200 pictures! The best ones are shared here in a Flickr set.
We got to see the Atlantis Resort out on the Palm Island
Our very own Spaceman Spiff made his way into his dryer-capsule high atop the stacking washer/dryer and spoke a very heartfelt farewell to his fans and family. Wasn't sure where he was going this time, or if he would make it back home. He thought for sure, he would go somewhere never seen by any kitty in history.
I finally got around to pulling off the photos on my phone. The other day we were walking around somewhere and I noticed parents taking pictures of their baby's 1st stumble. I felt sorry for kids whose childhood would only be captured on mom and dad's cell phone.
Since I don't have kids yet, I take pictures of other fun things. And here are a few things I felt worthy of a camera snapshot. More here.
Our friend Alex was in town for the weekend. We had lunch at Yao's on Westheimer near Gessner and took goofy pictures at the Water Wall by the Galleria. I believe in this picture, Nick has done something questionable and Alex was confirming that it was indeed what he thought had happened.
So it's been a busy busy last few... long times. In which I've been rained on. To the point where buildings disappear. And then magically reappear
Pretty cool trick huh? Vivi's turned into a photo celebrity while finding a new home on my new ottoman. The little guy's gotten bigger. He's put on some muscles. Muscles that require lots of food and produce lots of gas and apparently require lots of sleep... on my binders.
Nicholas was home and we did some sightseeins around the town. Met up with his family for a birthday celebration for his Aunt. There was also dinner with his Grandparents at what I will call the BEST Olive Garden in all of Texas. And then we caught up with the Oscar Mayer WeinerMobile but no one was home.
