Taiwanese election!

We had some election-related excitement and celebration, just like this SF Chinatown shop owner:



Not being able to vote, we decided to "gamble" on some Taiwanese stocks last month. According to popular media, if Ma wins the stock market will go up.

Fast forward to last Friday night, when we went to sleep early for work on Saturday. We were woken up briefly when Julie's parents left a message on the answering machine, but we couldn't tell what they said. Then Julie had a nightmare. She woke up screaming that Ma lost the election and that we lost all our money (she didn't know how little I'd actually invested) and woke me up to tell me we had to pull our money out right away. Of course, the markets aren't open on Saturday morning and Ma won anyway, so everything turned out okay.

Isn't democracy great!

Fun weekend in Tahoe

Our trip had a rough start. Although we were very excited to see snow flakes falling down from the sky , we were asked to put on snow chains to go up the summit, which added another 2 hours to our drive. While Eric was putting on the snow chain, Julie realized she brought her camera without the memory stick... guess it's time to test out Julie's camera phone ^_^
The next day, we (Eric, Andrea, and I) took a beginner's snowboarding lesson, fell a lot, and tried our best to look good for the camera. (We were slowing Mike down... so he had to leave us at the bunny slopes) ^_^
Julie even attempt to take some photos of the awesome view from the ski lift. (Eric cringe)


While we were sweating away carving snow, Sally and Bonnie enjoyed a leisurely afternoon with J-Lo and family^_^

Julie enjoyed playing with Sally, especially her floppy cheeks and ears ^_^

(Stop bothering me-_- I am trying to sleep...)

We concluded our trip with some nice group shots

More pictures from our trip:

Ready for snow!

Julie's goggles arrived today, so we had a dry-run to make sure everything worked ^_^

As you can see, everything works. All set for next week's trip to Tahoe!

New Addition to the Forister Household

(or, the most kissable flower)

Our latest didn't-plan-to-purchase-it-when-we-walked-into-Costco find were 14 Dutch Tulips. They looked so sad, said Julie. So we decided to take them home. Now that they have the best view in the apartment, we expect big flowers in the coming weeks.

Man vs. Nature

With high rent comes great views. This last month we were treated to two spectacles - one natural, one man-made.


The storm-clouds that moved through SF recently gave us a particularly nice sunset:



And, our window of the bay bridge gave us front-row seats to a fireworks show Saturday night:



We don't know why the fireworks show was going on, but it was a nice treat. We speculated that it might have been a misfire of the St. Patrick's day fireworks intended for next week, since there were lots of green explosions.

Craft withdrawal II

Julie recently finished a baby-blanket to give to a close friend from UCLA. After many months of on-again off-again knitting, the blanket is complete. This blanket follows the inaugural tradition of blue-and-gold colors, with a yellow bear in the corner. True bruin spirit!

Putting the ears close to the body prevented any confusion with Mickey Mouse. Eric has seen too much litigation and doesn't want to upset anyone.

Big enough for babies of all ages!

Craft withdrawal

After the wedding season, there seems to be little crafts to do around here. So, Julie decided to make roughly 1,000 little finger-puppets, maracas, and candies to advertise VOSH-California for the upcoming Opto West convention in Anaheim.

Maybe Julie thinks it's withdrawal, but it looked like a binge of craft-making to Eric. And Eric decided to help out by eating a few chocolate peanutbutter cups ^_^