a very foggy day

The last few days of 2008 was extremely foggy in San Francisco. Fog horns of the cargo ships going by the Bay Bridge were going off all night. It was exciting at first to see the Bay Bridge slowly disappearing in this dense fog but the fog horn soon got old and kept us awake for awhile.

As the sun slowly peaked out during the day, the dense fog quickly disappeared. This allowed us a nice view of the New Year's eve fire work from our window.

What is new year with out some nice hot chocholate right?!

Happy New Year!!!

The Flight of the Worker Bees

December was a busy month for Eric. Learning to be a manager is hard.

Other difficult situations include a coworker who went home with a fever and ended up having emergency surgery in the ER due to a perforated intestine. Hopefully he gets well soon. Another good example was the pregnant lady who worked until she started having contractions - and then wrote a three-page email summarizing everything she had worked on before she went to the hospital to deliver her baby. Mother and baby (and case team) are doing fine now.

[post by Eric; illustration by Julie]

Caramel, Caramel, Everywhere!

That's right! we had caramel for Christmas dinner ^_^ ... ha ha just kidding. This was the pre-Christmas dinner caramel covered marshmallow making party. Doesn't it look like it just rained caramel. This year even though the Orleans couldn't join us for Christmas, Julie and Eric had a lot of fun making these with Eric's family.

Merry Christmas!!!

Josie and Tim's Big Day

Congratulations Josie and Tim on finally tying the knot. It was the coolest inter-racial banquet we've ever attended. To be non-biased to their Chinese/Korean heritage, they chose a middle-eastern banquet hall. That way, no parents got the food they wanted and, as Eric's dad always says, nobody's happy unless their complaining (but Julie and Eric weren't complaining about the wonderful roast kebobs and numerous appetizers; even better than Zankou chicken!)

From 12.20.2008 Josie and Tim

Lot's of pic's by Julie (Eric's video was too big to post)

Rusty ^_^

It's been a year since Rusty passed away. We still miss her...

He threw me under the bus

One day at work, Eric's coworker ran up to him and said, "He threw me under the bus! I can't believe he threw me under the bus!" It was a very My Name Is Earl moment, as Eric pictured what was literally said. Apparently Eric's coworker A was working with coworker B on something, and when the higher-ups asked the team about it, B claimed that he had nothing to do with it and it was A's responsibility. Eric thought the description was funny, until he got the same treatment from B. In Eric's head, he was repeating "He threw me under the bus! He threw me under the bus!"

[post by Eric; illustration by Julie]

Polka dots?

From baby blanket

After Julie found out her supervisor from her previous job was pregnant, she set out to start knitting her a baby blanket. She found a pound of cream color yarn, appropriately named " a pound of love", and thought it would be nice to make a cream color blanket since they don't know the sex of the baby yet.

Although the cream color blanket looks ok, Julie spiced it up with some round polka dots.

From baby blanket

She accidentally pulled the stitches of the dots too tight and gave it a raised ball texture effect, which actually looks fun ^_^

From baby blanket

White Elephant Bonanza

To continue the White Elephant dinner tradition, the gang gather around the small Christmas tree at the Foristers for a exciting white elephant/ gift stealing.

From 2008.12.28- Christmas

From 2008.12.28- Christmas

From 2008.12.28- Christmas

This year there were a lot more gifts and a lot more things to steal. The gift you pick is usually not the gift you went home with. Noelle seems to always pick the popular gifts, her gifts were stolen away from her 3 times throughout the night.

From 2008.12.28- Christmas

The Lo's thought they were going to go home with his and hers massage chair... didn't happen. Mark and Julie fought over this neat wooden drawer...

From 2008.12.28- Christmas

Julie and Eric ended up with Kung Fu Panda and Eric's favorite popcorn popper.

From 2008.12.28- chirstmas

We will have to do it again next year!

Swimming in circles

On the first day of our vacation (before Eric's work went totally crazy), we went snorkeling just before sunset.

From thanksgiving 2008 and hawaii

Julie was a little nervous about the open water (ten feet from shore) and put a death grip on Eric's hand. Although Andrea thought it was very cute to watch the Foristers hold hands while snorkeling, Eric knew better. While Eric was trying out the new camera, he let go of Julie's hand. A few seconds later, Julie lost sight of Eric (who had stayed put as she swam forward), sending her into a panic and causing her to swim rapidly in a large circle to look for him. Eric, having finished with the picture, saw Julie swimming quickly away and thought he should follow or she might get nervous/lost. So Julie kept swimming as fast as she could, with Eric in hot pursuit. Eventually, Mike got mixed up with Julie's path and got a good (accidental) swim-kick. This slowed the Julie-torpedo down so Eric could catch up ... and disaster was averted. With that, the Foristers continued swimming hand-in-hand.

Unfortunately, Eric didn't know how to turn the camera on so there were no pictures of this underwater race. After returning to the shore, Julie and Andrea decided to say in the shallow end while sticking their heads in the water to watch the small fish. Eric and Mike then went boogie-boarding with child-sized boards (and child-sized waves). Perfect for the beginner!

From thanksgiving 2008 and hawaii

p.s. We saw Bonnie and Sally's long-lost cousin.

From thanksgiving 2008 and hawaii

Maui

Thanks to Berkeley CE, Julie and Eric got to go to Maui for the first time. With temptures in the upper 70's and lower 80's, it was very easy for us to forget about the gloomy weather of SF. With a great group booking rate, Julie and Eric got a ocean front room which has a veiw of the beautiful Maui sunset in the afternoon ( and occasional whale sightings per our hotel room neighbor).



Although in paradise, Eric's work kept him away from getting a nice tan. What seems to be a cool toy when he first started working ( the blackberry), soon became what interrupted our vacation. At times Julie wish she can "accidentally" take the blackberry for a nice swim ^_^

We did, however, manage to see the beautiful sunset at Haleakala ( too tired to get up to see the sunrise as recommended by the tour book).






Had some pupu at the Pupu Lounge.

And we even got to swim with turtles on the last day of our vacation *^^* which made the trip all worth it.




I guess we will have to go back again when Eric doesn't have a crazy work deadline.

Pain in the neck

We wish we can report that Eric was doing something more heroic when he pulled his neck muscle (e.g. playing football over Thanksgiving weekend, lifting heavy lumber while building a house in developing country...). Unfortunately, Eric pulled his neck muscle while rolling out of bed Sunday morning of Thanksgiving weekend. (After searching on line, Julie found that this is a very common situation. )

At first Julie thought Eric was just playing around, but after a few minutes of agony... it was for reals. Julie spent 30 minutes trying to help Eric out of bed but it was tough. First Julie pulled on the pillow slowly to rotate Eric's head, then slowly roatate his legs...any minor movement of his neck caused him a lot of pain. Moving at snail speed ( feeling pain with every bump on the road), we made it to the acupuncturist's office after 1+ hour (we didn't really wanted to wait at the ER for 5 hours on a Sunday).

(picture from when Julie did her acupuncture)

Eric was able to move his neck a little after 1 hour of poking around.

The next day, Eric got some muscle relaxant from the UCSF acute care doctor which knocked him out for the next 3 days.

I guess it was a blessing in disguise because this was a much needed vacation for Eric. Don't worry, Eric is all better now.