holi

Here's Juni, Bethany, Rory, Rahul, and me all standing in the middle of a pile of color... Holi is an indian celebration of color, and we all had a good time throwing and smearing colors on ourselves, each other, and strangers... There was a lot of dancing and DJs playing most of the day, and aside from getting powdered colors in our eyes, we had a great time. Unfortunately, a lot of my hairline stayed pink no matter how much I scrubbed... they served up some really tasty indian food as well, so I was pretty excited as well...

Central Texas Barbecue!

This place had some really good barbecue, though on the way up, Bethany explained the differences between the different geographic styles and this place's sauce may be inbetween a few places. I might still prefer baby blue's in venice in southern california for ribs, but the cuts of meat here were delicious, and the style of the place was super-texan with a lot of john wayne perifonelia plastered all over the walls. ;)

17 mile drive of monterey and salinas

We continued driving through monterey's cannery row and on to the scenic 17 mile drive through Pebble Beach and Spyglass golf courses. we took in some great views of the ocean, and hit Castroville on the way home for the Werckle-recommended "Central Texas Barbeque", which was a special treat. Here's some pics!
A view of the beach... There were surfers, joggers, and photographers out today. I nice man named Juan let us use the rest room at a private dining/party hall on the beach, which made the rest of the trip much better.Here's the "lone cypress" tree that is used as the logo for Pebble Beach Golf Course. pretty neat view..
This copcar went baywatch on the salinas beach. Somone apparently needed medical attention down the way... I hope they're ok, but I could definitely hear the baywatch theme song as this guy drove by.

Monterey Aquarium!

Bethany and I hit up the monterey aquarium this weekend on a roadtrip down to do some sightseeing and touresty stuff. The giant ocean sunfish took the cake as the most amazing sight to see at the aquarium (below)... they are incredibly huge and have insane facial features!
I thought this was a cool pic of bethany looking into a circulur glass of fish... It would make a good painting if it were blurrier, maybe a photoshop project.

The scariest eel in the house... and it's already dead!


Aside from these, there were funny otters (one that was eating his tail), a lot of jellyfish, and sharks galore. I used my new camera and it ruled. (it lets you take 60 FPS video... which I needed to catch high speed motion of the fishes!)

rear ended... again!

Before Saturday's road trip got started, my cavvy took a pretty good sting in the back.
My car is on its way to 360 degrees of scratches and scrapes. ugh... city life. All in all, this one wasn't so bad, but my back's a little sore again, but no major injuries and the road trip went on...

Another peek at little olivia

I got to stop home for a bit after the wedding and definitely was surprised at how big olivia has gotten. She continues to be insanely cute... She barely seemed to remember me from my last visit, which saddened me, but before long she was laughing and smiling in my lap again.

Here she is looking a little spaced out or cautious...

dude! the stretten is married!

Coming home to Shawn's wedding was a rapid blast of visitation to the fine state of michigan. It was snowy and most of the cars couldn't get around. Shawn picked me up from the airport in Grand Rapids and the snow just kept on pouring down like magic. I forgot my camera, and didn't take any pics of Shawn or the ceremony, but here are some of the usual suspects. ;)

Park - looking like he's just about to let something go to the left... yeah, that's a lean if I've ever seen one.
Andy - representing detroit and up to his usual antics... (finger pointing and hat wearing)
Spanky - aka Face. well... just making it look good. He setup everything for us and picked a sweet hotel room near the B.O.B. (big ol' building), Grand Rapids's square warehouse building full of bars and clubs...
We had a lot of fun hanging out after the wedding, and wishing shawn and joyce the best. 3/4 of the wedding was americans and 1/4 was the Kenyan corner (joyce is kenyan)... it was very interesting to see the cultural divide inside a wedding chapel, but everyone was cool.