Nineties Nostalgia

Former geek classmates of mine, do you remember those long evenings
together in the late-nineties, huddled up in the COB Computer Lab
until 10:00pm (closing time) madly writing code together before going
our separate ways to log in remotely to continue writing the code that
would get us a passing grade in that damn CSC 101 class? Yes, I
remember that, I remember those that couldn't make the grade (pun
intended) and fell by the wayside, switching their Business
concentrations to something like Human Resources or Management.

But, I digress. The point is, I got a phone call at 9:00pm on Thursday
night with an interesting proposition from Paul, who's company was in
desperate times and in desperation called me to see if I would be
interested in doing some MS Access coding work for them. I told them I
would consider it after I could see what was going to be involved.
Confident in my skills after reviewing their database, I set off
coding away at night, confident that it shouldn't take toooo long to
finish this project. Unfortunately Erika had just come home after
spending a loooong day with her grandfather (who has terminal cancer)
and deserved my attention at the same time. Being the wonderful girl
that she is however, she was fine with me just talking for a few
minutes before letting me continue on.

Fast forward 14 hours later, and it was 12:30pm and it felt like the
day was over. I hadn't even finished but I had called in sick because
I just couldn't give up at that point, and I couldn't go to work after
pulling an all nighter, the first in years – Risk-game-playing-night
aside. I quickly passed out on my bed and didn't wake up for many
hours, and when I did, I wanted to go back to sleep again.

After a deflating draw for Liverpool Saturday morning, I headed to
Sean's apartment to continue with the project where I left off on my
coding project. First we had a nice "business lunch" over in
Williamsburg at Dumont, where I enjoyed a fine, thick burger with a
slice of Danish blue cheese. It was one of the better burgers I'd had
in a while. Considering that I had eaten two pieces of wheat toast in
a 14 hour coding session, it was no surprise that I had a famish-like
hunger!

After continuing my work for a few more hours, Paul and I headed out
to Manhattan to meet up with a group for dinner at Samba Le, a dining
establishment long the object of my dining obsession for its cuisine
genre: Italian-Brazilian. Fascinating combination! I had tried to take
a girl there years back for a first date to take their complimentary
Samba lessons and eat dinner, only to arrive and find the place
shackled up and closed. The story of my former dating life!

This time, however, it was open and our reservations were well
respected. For some reason, I can never resist the Feijoda dish when I
eat Brazilian food. Every place I go, they always note that, hey,
Feijoda is the national dish of Brazil. How many countries do you know
have a "National Dish"? Not to mention their "National Drink"
(caiparinha). So, of course, that's what I ordered and I was
definitely satisfied by this meal, as were the others (note to self:
grilled skirt steak was awesomely garlicky!).

Not satisfied with having a wrecked sleeping schedule from just one
night, after having a drink at our newly-found favorite watering-hole
The Bourgeois Pig, I got a ride from my Dominican Republic / Hungarian
group of friends (a wonderful combination of friends for me, don't you
think?) to check out this new Latin night-spot downtown. Well, after
mediocre music and having my package touched "accidentally" by a
gentleman in line at the bar, we decided to go somewhere else and we
(they) chose Gonzales Gonzales in Noho.

I've heard about this place having the best Mexican food around from a
Chinese/Cuban mix guy that actually lives with his family in the East
Village, so it wasn't totally unknown to me. But I didn't know they
had Latin dancing there and when we arrived, there were police showing
up because of some conflict that had happened inside and later a guy
came out with his face bleeding from another conflict at the bar, I
knew that I was at a REAL Latin establishment. Excellent! They had
great music (live Salsa band followed by DJ) to boot!

We capped the late-night off in Washington Heights at a roach coach
serving fine Latin cuisine to all the locals leaving the clubs up
there. We ordered up a couple of Patacones, which are essentially meat
sandwiches with the bread replaced by a fried plaintain "bread" that
was absolutely amazing! A good end to a late night – I wasn't really
planning on being up until 5:00am :-# !!

J. Riley, not much for the public consumption happened on Sunday, but
I did research a new mobile phone, which I purchased this morning! The
new Motorola Z6C Global Phone from Verizon! Looking forward to getting
that in two days :-D

Reverse Commute

This weekend I did the unthinkable. No, I'm not talking about the poker game that I actually was the first one eliminated from. I fought, I twisted arms, I slyly coerced my friends from Manhattan into coming to the Bronx - three of them!

The strategy was three fold: First, Melissa and I offered an evening of poker on her new set. Obviously everyone was angling to get their money back that I easily swept from them a fortnight ago, so it wasn't much of a stretch. Then, we offered to make them dinner. Dinner and poker? Who could resist? Finally, we pulled a bait and switch and offered an olive branch in the form of olive oil - we would take them to the irreverable (sp.? thesaurus?), infamous Little Italy - in the Bronx! It worked like a charm, they were sold! To add a cherry on top, they even coerced D into driving us up from midtown so that we didn't have to take the subway on a chilly evening!

And the night was splendid. Well, the meal was anyway - poker was a disaster for me. After a plethora of research, we decided to hit up Roberto's on Crescent Avenue. We went for an early dinner because the last time I went, the area was packed and the waits were long. Roberto's didn't let us down - it was packed with an "older" crowd - most likely from further uptown in the suburbs - while most other restaurants were empty. But, my oh my was it worth the wait. Fabulous food, a greeting from Roberto himself (the chef), and comments from the Manhattanites like "wow, this is probably one of the best Italian meals, best surprises that I've had in a long long time". That's right, that's how we role in the Bronx - legit fo' sho'!

Today as I was waiting at the back of the train platform for a subway to arrive - forever - I remembered the first time that Paul and left our safety zone soon after I arrived in New York and - shocker - rode in the VERY LAST CAR of the train all the way to Brooklyn. Talk about being sheltered! Now, it's the ONLY place I go ;o).

J. Riley, I have restarted my Spanish lessons in preparation for February!

Special Report - Happy Holidays!

When home for the holidays, I got plenty of comments from the myriad of relatives that I saw that my blog has become lame because I never update it - my bad! This is a somewhat true statement and I have no excuse really. Sure, the Bronx isn't exactly the kind of environment that influences my creativity or makes me the envy of my loyal readers, but there is plenty of time for me to sit and think up here, especially since there is nothing to do except ride a half-hour to the city or go to the gym. But, I made the choice to live up here for a reason, I just gotta do what I can to continue motivating myself I guess!!

But the new year has come. Maybe it's time for me to turn the proverbial leaf and try to write more. We'll see what happens!

After today, the holidays are officially over. My holidays were a good way to end a year that has touched both highs and lows, from my introduction to a special person in my life to the introduction of difficult health circumstances that I will have to deal with in the coming year. But I suppose that this is life and it is what everyone has to appreciate or deal with.

I spent the Christmas season in California getting a chance to visit many of my relatives, some for the first time. We had a good four days of Christmas this year, with fantastic food on Saturday at my grandparent's house, a Christmas tradition at my grandma's house next door with all of the relatives from my dad's side of the family, a Christmas-eve traditional crab feast at my house, and then a Christmas traditional leg o' lamb meal at my house. It was fairly quiet around my house this year since it was just my family who was around, but that's not a bad thing. My dad and I got to do a grueling two-hour hike up in the hills around my house, my mom and sister and I got to do some "shopping", and my remaining Los Gatos friend and I got to do some nerdy server and web photo album setup (stay tuned for details on that!).

Unfortunately, I had to miss out on my sister's 21st birthday bash because of my work schedule, but the lack of anyone around the office gave me time to finish up paperwork and also to prepare for the upcoming trip to Peru at the end of February for myself and my parents, with whom Erika and I will travel to the wonderfully historic and cultural capital city of the Inca's, Cusco. With this paperwork completed, hopefully Erika can be with me next year at this time and get to meet everyone!

For New Year's, I joined in on the annual traditional pub crawl, this year starting in Little Italy and wondering up into the East Village. We started at the Australian establishment Eight Mile Creek before stops at the dive Tom & Jerry's, DBA, Three of Cups (where we celebrated the New Year) , and the pinnacle of the evening, The Bourgeois Pig. This is a place that I had always wanted to visit but never actually made it to, so the fact that we happened to come across it on our pub crawl made it especially nice. We sat at the aristocrat location of the place and drank our drinks in awesome little metal goblets and ordered a Bailey's chocolate fondue that came with an assortment of fruits to dip. It was definitely the high spot of the evening and capped a wonderful holiday season!

J. Riley, Good Luck to all in the new year!

Falling Off The Wagon

It had to happen eventually. Things were just going to easy for me, what with the corn on the cob, the ribs, and biting my finger nails. My orthodontist told me today that he thinks my teeth have fallen off the wagon, they are having a relapse. It's either my teeth (in conjunction with my tongue) or the bones, but something's not right. Why he didn't figure this out the FIRST time, I don't know. Hopefully the extensive imaging that I'm going to have to go through AGAIN (Third time? Fourth time? Fifth time? nTh time.) will provide him with evidence that he can fix the problem, whatever it is. But one thing is certain, and I've told him: I am not having surgery again. So I guess I'll just wait for the results from the x-rays and pictures.

New pictures of Ryder Linden Haines, courtesy of two emails that made my Inbox explode:








J. Riley, One of the many reasons I can still answer "good" when people ask how I'm doing!

Chanchamayo or Bust: Day 2

I didn't sleep fantastically at the high-altitude, low frills (perfect!) Galaxia
Hotel in Tarma on Thursday night, but we did get up early nonetheless and get
ready for the rest of our journey. After packing up our goods, we headed down
the road to a Hacienda-like hotel that Renzo was familiar with to have our
breakfast. Following our typical eggs, ham, fresh bread, and panettone
breakfast, we were back on the road for the next hour or two to get to
Chanchamayo.

The geography was certainly interesting in this area, how it changed so much and
so quickly. The coastal regions of Peru are very much a desert with little to no
plant life. As we climbed the rugged volcanic peaks of the Andes, the ground
turned into a reddish clay with some shrubbery, but still few, if any, trees.
Once on the other side of the mountains, as we descended down towards
Chanchamayo, the terrain suddenly changed, with green plants growing without a
problem. The ground was fertile enough for the local people to be growing
things like corn on the farms littering the side of the road. However, an hour
later, the terrain changed again into a lush, tropical environment.

I always imagined the jungle being something like the rain forest, with twisted,
gnarly trees growing under the shade of canopy trees that lift high into the sky
with amazing amounts of wildlife, snakes, bugs, and birds galore. The terrain
around Chanchamayo hinted at this kind of environment, but only just. There
were trees that I imagined to be canopy-like with bare trunks that rose high
and branches and leaves at the top that grew almost horizontal, but they were
spread around the area. The smaller trees and plant-life were certainly lush,
but I didn't see any crazy animals and it wasn't dark and smelling of rain or
anything like that. It was very much open terrain, but very lush and
mountainous still.

The Andes affect the weather significantly, pushing the clouds from the coast up
to higher elevations, causing them to compress and rain, which causes the
condensation that falls to the fertile grounds on the Eastern side of the
Andes, which in turn creates the lush environment. The rain water eventually
drains down to the flatland further east, where it pools up in the Amazon and
even more condensation there creates the rain forests of my imagination.

However, Chanchamayo was not this rain forest. However, it was lush and fertile
enough to grow a myriad of tropical fruits, as we found in the first hotel that
we checked out. It had an orchard of mango and other fruit trees with small,
private bungalows that were apparently very nice inside. Ketty walked around
picking up and peeling mangos from the ground while we got the tour of the
premises from the hotel keeper. Renzo recommended this one because they'd
stayed there before and it was at a special rate - around $30 a night! But we
ventured further down the street and found another place that had private
bungalows in a more tropical setting with plants growing overhead along the
paths. This was $25 a night and since we were only going to be there at night
and in the morning, we decided to go for it.

By the time we were moved in and settled, it was time for a late lunch, so we
went into town and ate at a place recommended at the hotel. Again the aji,
again the avocado salad, and again the delicious meal (I had fish with rice
this time).

After lunch, Renzo was burnt out from all the driving and headed back to the
hotel for a nap while I went with the girls in a moto-taxi / tuk-tuk-tuk up to
the hill that overlooked the valley to take pictures. We eventually made it
back to the hotel in the late afternoon to relax for a bit before going out at
night. I busted out my dominoes set to teach Erika and Ketty the Haines
tradition of Mexican Train dominoes while we drank some beer and drank some
juice and vodkas and enjoyed the wonderful weather. I spotted a wild red
parrot in a nearby tree (hard to see in the pictures), which was pretty crazy.
It was massive and was the only true jungle animal that I saw on the trip.

Renzo finally rose from his slumber to join us and we ended up going to a disco
just a few minutes away (walking) to dance, munch on some food, and drink some
chelas (beer) before finally crashing after a full day!

J. Riley, to be continued...

Chanchamayo or Bust: Day 1

Thanksgiving weekend, I completed the final leg of my 20,000-miles-in-five-weeks journey and capped it off nicely with a trip down to see my love in Peru. Erika and I were going to be taking a road trip on my four-day trip there to a town called Chanchamayo, which is on the Eastern side of the Andes in the hilly jungle of Peru. Her friend Ketty is from this town and her and her boyfriend offered to take us there for the trip. Logistically, it was challenging making the long road trip, but, hey, logistically making a trip to Peru for four days is bad enough, what's another two days of driving :o) ??

Lucky for me, the flights to and from Peru are both red-eyes, so I can maximize my sleeping and traveling time for short trips like this - assuming I can sleep. I do things like staying up late the night before, stay away from caffeine substances the day of the flight, and drink some wine before boarding the plane, all in order to catch as much shut-eye as possible on my journey. Usually it isn't very solid sleep, and I caught about three hours worth on the seven hour journey, watching plenty of videos on the comfortable Lan Peru flight.

I arrived drowsy and feeling gross with a raw throat at 7:00 in the morning in Lima. Lili, the link between Erika and I, graciously picked me up at the airport since Erika was taking her English test for her class that morning at the American Institute (ICPNA) when I arrived. Lili and I drove to ICPNA in time to pick her up and head to a cafe to get some breakfast - a turkey sandwich (Happy Thanksgiving!!) and a coffee (wake up!) for me. Afterwards, we drove to their friend Ketty's house and prepared for that day's adventure: shopping at Gamarra!

I'm not really sure how to explain Gamarra. You know the Christmas booths that they set up in places like Union Square (for you New Yorkers)? Well, Gamarra is one street that is probably about two miles long with thousands and thousands of these little booths inside maze-like buildings, some as high as eight floors, lining this street. We spent probably over an hour in one building alone, courageously led by the expert shopper Ketty. It's difficult to explain how crazy this area was, but I promise to take Summer and Faryn there if they ever come to Lima someday (hmmmm) because it has all the latest fashions (designer or otherwise), all for dirt cheap. I ended up buying two t-shirts and two-button up party shirts - all of which are good quality - for about thirty dollars in total. Lili bought several tops for $2 each. Ridiculously cheap. And, I was the only gringo in the whole area to boot! Highly recommended shopping for gringos with a sense of adventure and patience :o) .

After this we headed back to Ketty's house to prepare for the trip - which included me finally taking a shower - no wonder Erika was offering me so many cough drops for my throat all day ;o). Finally ready to depart, the four of us (including Renzo, the boyfriend) piled into his impressive work car - a Kia Sorrento. More on this car later. Anyway, we ran a few errands doing important things like buying more cough drops for my throat, gas, and panettone, which I don't think I've actually tried. Renzo is a big fan of panettone, so I rolled with it. But damn, that stuff is tasty! For the Haines family who hasn't tried it before, the bread tastes like that yummy Hawaiian bread that we used to eat as kids except it's also got a lot of dried fruits in it like mango, papaya, raisins, etc. I think I need to add this to my Christmas-treats inventory every year from now on!

Anyway, we hit the road. Traffic in Lima is nuts, so it was a crawl out of town before we hit a hotel that we stopped and had dinner at. Renzo enjoys the finer things in life down in Peru, so we frequently dined at the nicest places in town, all of which are dirt cheap nonetheless, so I was fine with this. Of course, we're not talking about dining in Jean Georges or anything like that, we're talking about nicest places in town for Peru. Typically, this means a simple, non-lavish (by our - my?? - standards) restaurant with amazing food and good service. Food tourism in Peru is growing pretty rapidly because the food there is incredible!

We fit a game of foosball in before dinner out in the back lawn that overlooked a river and I realized that the foosball standards for South Americans is infinitely higher than for us Americans. Renzo and Ketty both were amazing players, but my Liverpool-like defensive prowess was respectful enough to ensure that myself and Erika, who was poaching many-a-goal like Fernando Torres does every week for Liverpool, dominated the preceding before we got tired of the bugs and went inside for our typical Peruvian appetizer - avocado salad with lettuce, onions, and tomatoes (yum!), topped with oil and vinegar.

One interesting thing that I noticed on the trip was that everywhere that you go to eat, they bring you your forks and knives on a little dish, along with a small bowl of their house-aji - hot sauce! It's not hot sauce in the American Tabasco-like sense, though. It is usually mixed with something creamy (mayonnaise?) and is made from any combination of the plethora of peppers available in Peru. On the trip we dined on aji that was yellow, orange, or light red, all with pepper specks and all with the perfect balance of picante with my palate. I never refrained from adding a dollop or five to my plate to mix with the meal.

Following a fantastic dinner of Loma......something (which was beef in a sauce served with rice I think) and nibbling on Erika's trout as the sole diners in this restaurant, we further gorged ourselves on crepes with ice cream and chocolate. I was seriously stuffed by this time and was already establishing myself as the fat-American and living up to my college nickname "Two-Racks" by this time.

Back on the road, we finally got out of town on the eastern-highway and were slowed, briefly, by many semi trucks that were making the crazy drive through the Andes to the mining towns up in the hills. They proved no match for Renzo's SUV, though. I'm not a huge fan of Kia because I've always considered them to be cheap, no frills cars. But this car had some serious power passing these semis on the twisting, climbing highway with four adults on-board. The interior was simple and functional, a nice contrast compared to most cars these days that make you feel like you're driving a plane with all their frills and gadgets. I had no complaints about the head or leg-room in the leather seats in the back, it was very nice. I came to find out the next day that this thing was actually a diesel! I've never been in a diesel that was so quiet and had so much passing power, not to mention that it sips gas like a Honda Civic. So I was very impressed.

Anyway, since it was dark outside, there wasn't much to see on our trip. We went over the top of the Andes, hitting elevations above 5000 meters (~15,000 feet), passed through dilapidated mining towns with rivers so polluted that nothing could live in them, had pannetone and tea in a one-street town with about 5 nightclubs on it, and finally decided to stop for the night in Tarma at around 11:00pm. I was exhausted!

J. Riley, To be continued....

I'm an Uncle! Again!

I haven't met the strapping young Ryder Linden, heir to the Haines dynasty, yet, but Summer has provided lots of on-location reporting from her blog here! I can't wait to meet him!

Queen of the throne Elliana was busy spreading the news to everyone. Is the phone upside down?


J. Riley, Proud Uncle!

Ketchup

I've got some serious miles to cover on my blog - pun intended! I've actually been pretty busy lately running around to see various doctors since my diagnosis of myotonic dystrophy, not to mention the regularly scheduled trips to the chiropractor, orthodontist, California, and Peru :o) .

First of all, three weeks ago I went out to Southern California to attend my friend Jeff's surprise birthday party and to hang out with my good friend Ryan. I got an awesome deal on flights and it was a three-day weekend for me, so I made the trip on pretty short notice. As I've said before, I usually don't like to go to LA because there are so many different pockets of friends and family there that I would have to spend a week there just to visit them all. So if I didn't visit or I didn't tell you I was going, don't blame it on me - blame it on...something else (??).

I've been in sort of an outdoorsy mood recently, so Ryan stacked the weekend's events around various outdoor activities - which is a good thing because 66.6% of the time there was 70-80 degrees without a cloud in the sky. Saturday I woke up early (jetlag) and Ry and I got some early morning breakfast at a local joint before heading down to Newport Beach to go water kayaking around Balboa Island on a perfect, warm day with a light breeze. We took our time, spending most of the day cruising around, giving my shoulders a nice workout while admiring the rich and the famous's huge yachts. I can't imagine living in a place and having one of these monstrous things sitting right outside my house. I don't ency them, I just think it would be kind of crazy to have a lifestyle like that.

After a short visit back at his parent's house, Ryan and I went home and relaxed until our night-time event - Jeff's birthday party at a place called El Coyote in West Hollywood. It's a classic, old school Mexican restaurant from the 1930s with mediocre food but an interesting atmosphere. I can't put my finger on exactly what, but LA is definitely much more different than New York, but I can't really tell you why that is. Anyway, after that we went to a bar called St. Nick's and had a few drinks before heading back home.

For some reason, when I stepped off the plane the night before, my voice was squeaky and was going away - probably from the air-conditioning on the airplane. It was even worse by Saturday night so I asked my local pharmacist - the bartender - to prescribe me with something to make it feel better. One shot of Patron tequila with hot sauce and salt later, and my throat was in fact feeling a little better. It was a short-term fix, though...


Sunday, being the other 33.333% of the weekend, was overcast and cold, a good day to sleep in and be lazy. Ryan's friend was having a barbecue at his house that day so we headed up to the hill above Long Beach to his place in the afternoon. He made some wonderful burgers on his massive barbecue set and we had a good time meeting his friends, one couple - half of which was from Bulgaria - recently getting married and dealing with Greencards and what not. Interesting to get their perspective on the amount of time dealing with the government for such matters. The evening's meal was followed up with some drunk piano debauchery, Ryan's friend and the gay couple from next door singing pop classics while playing the piano - well I might add!

We finished up the night watching two movies - Alpha Dog (with my hero Justin Timberlake) and a movie with Morgan Freeman and John Cusack. I found the story-line of Alpha Dog to be pretty blase, but I thought the acting was great. The other movie, however, was absolutel probably the worst movie I have seen in my life. Poor story, poor acting, it was just terrible. I lost an ounce of respect for those two actors' agents' skills in finding them good movies to start in after seeing that one. It was so bad, I don't even remember the name of it. But don't watch it :-s!!

Monday, my last day in town, Ry and I headed up to the hills above Palas Verdes (sp.) to try to go hiking. He hadn't been up there before, but we figured it was close and the views should be nice for such a nice day, so we hit the road and spent some time trying to figure out if there was actually a trail or not at the place we found online. We found some marked trails, took some other unmarked trails and finally ended up in some rich people's backyards. We wandered back downhill and enjoyed stretching the muscles and getting some California sunshine.

After burning those calories (do I sound old yet?), we went to a nice Greek place in downtown Long Beach and ate a ton of food and had a bit of wine in the nice weather before it was time for me to go to the airport and fly on my red-eye back to the cold, wet NYC!

J. Riley, Next stop: Peru

Pictures from Chanchamayo

I'm back from my trip and have a lot to write about. But, just have to find the
time!! Here are some pictures to satiate your appetites for now...

http://picasaweb.google.com/jhaines/07PeruChanchamayo

J. Riley

Surprise!

Many apologies - I'm late!

I don't know why, but for some reason I've been really busy lately. I'm not even sure what I've been doing! Anyways, before I get too far behind, I gotta talk about last weekend! Or, rather the weekend before that. I conspired with Summer to drop in on my parents and the rest of the family on my nieces weekend. Everyone was supposed to be there (except Nana - who was in Hawaii - so I can't fault her for that!) - all four siblings, my niece, my aunt from San Diego, my grandpa, my grandma (all the way from next door :), plus a full truck load of cousins, second-cousins, and aunts from Manteca. It was my niece Elli's second birthday and was a chance for everyone to get together, so I figured I'd use some of my seriously depleted vacation time to drop in on everyone - in cognito!

Of course, my flight to get out there was delayed (typical), but I eventually arrived at around 1:00am on Friday night. Sum woke up and drove all the way up to San Fran to pick me up in the wee hours of the morning and I got home and crashed where there weren't any bodies - namely, the couch. I figured that with the plethora of visitors in town, I would add a little confusion and people would figure that I was someone else sleeping on the couch. Worked like a charm!

I woke up at 7:30 and, amazingly enough, nobody was awake yet so I covered up in my blankets and waited for the first crew to wake up. The first victims were Graham and Elli. Elli came running into the room and Graham told her to be quiet because Faryn was sleeping on the couch. Surprise! It was very cute that Elli remembered me and said something that Graham translated to "Uncle Justin" :) . Next up to the plate was dad, who was taking a shower and then came out and after seeing a body on the couch and trying to figure out who would be sleeping there, was fully caught off guard. Surprise! Brie, Faryn, my grandpa, and Aunt Jude were all in on it shortly after, leaving only my mom left to surprise. She was out of the shower and doing some laundry in the back so I waltzed back and said "Good Morning" and she turned, looked at me with a confused look on her face, and paused for a second before realizing who I was :o) . It was great!

The weekend flew by, but getting up early helped stretch it out as much as possible. After cleaning up and eating some fresh bagels, I was off with my dad to get my haircut by our favorite barber Lee who I hadn't seen for at least a year probably. We got back to the house and I got keys to my old car and went to say hi to my friend Stefan in his new house across town before he and I went jetting back in time to say hi to my aunts who had just arrived and see Elli going through her presents. There were two little boys there and I was trying to figure out which cousins they were (hey, it's been a while!) before finding out that they were just kids my sister was babysitting and that all my cousins and second-cousins weren't coming because of a nasty flu that was floating around the house, having infected several people already. The funny thing about my niece opening the presents was that she was most interested in the
John Deere tractors until she got the set of velcro'd together fruits that she could "cut up" with a plastic knife. Awesome gift idea for anyone with toddlers to buy gifts for!

After the gifts came the feast. I helped put together a couple loaves of garlic bread while bags and bags of spaghetti were being cooked and a big old salad tossed. Needless to say, there was ample amounts of food and I was very well stuffed by the binge eating outside on the patio where the sun was nice and comfortable, like a Fall day in California should be.

After lunch, the boys all lounged around and watched college football for a few hours with my brother's alma mater playing a big game up in Oregon. A few hours later my brother, sisters, and I went downtown to Los Gatos to have a snack of some burgers and sweet-potato fries while I got grilled about Erika from the girls (ahem - Brie :o), which is fine with me. Later we got a very very poor movie (Evan Almighty) that we chilled at home and watched until everyone was ready to pass out. It was quite a disappointing movie considering it had Steve Carell in it!

Sunday started early again with dad cooking up massive amounts of waffles. Because they had been driven out of their home from the fires in San Diego, my brother and his fam had come up earlier in the week and thus had to leave early to go back to work on Sunday, which cut short my visit unfortunately. After watching a little tiny bit of the play-by-play on the Liverpool v. Arsenal game (in which we were winning when I left in the 70th minute), I went down to the park with my brother, sister-in-law, and niece to meet up with some of my brother's friends, all of which had kids roughly the same age, and all of them having second kids in exactly the reverse order! Too funny :)

After bidding them all farewell and seeing off Graham and fam, my dad and I went for a hike in the hills surrounding Los Gatos and the valley in general. I had no idea this was the case, but several philanthropic funds set up by Silicon Valley legends like HP acquire land in the hills that they intend to keep as "Open Space" with hiking trails and just wilderness in general, which is great for residents that want to get out and stretch their legs for a bit. These Open Space areas almost form a whole circle around the SF Bay and is something that I think should be taken advantage of more often - as my dad does :). We had a nice tiring walk up to the base of Mt Uminum (sp.?) before heading back to the house for dinner. I definitely could feel that exercise in my legs by the end of the day!

Mom, Dad, and Jude made steaks and an orzo & shrimp dish for dinner which was awesome. The house sure was quiet now that everyone was gone except for my aunt and my sister Summer. At night dad introduced me to the show No Reservations which is an awesome show about a guy who goes around the world (NY included!) and eats crazy stuff, whether it's deep-fried hot dogs (not so crazy, but it is in Jersey!) or pan-fried cow brains (a bit extreme). After a dinner like that though, I was totally out by the time we got half-way through New Jersey.

Monday, my last day in town, I slept in a bit before getting up and making some oatmeal. Dad was coming home early from work to take me wine tasting in the area, so Mom and Aunt Jude and I took a road trip over to Santa Cruz - for coffee at Fins, which is a coffee shop run by friends of the family. It was another beautiful day and we took our time, went walking along a path next to the beach, and I got grilled again about Erika and our in-progress plans for the future :). Since it was getting late, we scrambled back over the mountains to get home just in time as my dad was home and cooking up leftovers from dinner for lunch.

After lunch, we headed up the hill in his old sports car and hit up a converted school-house-cum-winery up in the hills above Los Gatos. We were planning on hanging out there for a while but it turns out that it was closed during the week! Without any other real plans, we decided to head up to some other hills in the area to visit our family friend Frank, who manages and makes wine up on Bear Creek Road. Surprise! He couldn't believe that we were in the area and we got a personal tour from him of the winery and tasted a variety of wines of different age, including some freshly crushed grapes with oxygen and everything. That was interesting to learn about the wine-making process up close and personal.

After doing some more tasting there in the tasting room, we headed down the road to give David Bruce's winery a test as well. Wine is something that I should definitely be trying to drink more of because I certainly can't tell the good stuff from the bad yet, though I'd really like to. It took me a few years to figure out what beer I like, so I guess wine will take that much longer. Couple more trips to California a year and I should be good to go...

After heading back to town in the rain, we capped the night off with some Mexican food in downtown LG at Andales. It had been a pretty long weekend considering it was only three days and I was pretty beat, which always makes for a good red-eye flight back to the City - straight for work. Unfortunately, by the time I got on the plane I wasn't as tired so I didn't sleep all that well, which of course led to a lousy Tuesday :). But, I'll trade one bad day in for three wonderful days with my family any day - or three!!

J. Riley, this Friday, I head to Southern California for another three-day weekend. But don't tell Jeff. Surprise!

P.S. Last night I went to the gym and actually did some weights and was amazed at how much better my hands functioned after a little bit of muscle work. That's good news, and tomorrow is my EMG test by the neurologist, which hopefully will clear up my pessimism about having defective genes :)