Mom's birthday in Arizona

Wow. It's been almost 2 months since I've posted here. Jessica and I took a 3-day weekend to visit my mom and dad in AZ, where they're considering spending the winter months of their retirement years. This was a surprise visit for my mom's birthday (which was actually a few days before). It was such a short trip that it almost just seems like a dream at this point. It was exciting to surprise mom, and it was nice to see an area of the country that we'd never been to before. It was also nice to escape the unusually cold weather that we've been having in New England lately. If you want to see more pictures, look at my Flickr site here.

Florida

Just wanted to do a quick write-up on our recent mini-vacation before it's too late. The reason that we decided to take a vacation in the second week of December is simply because I found out in the middle of November that I had a couple of vacation days that I was going to lose if I didn't use them before the end of the year. We'd already made our Christmas travel plans, so we couldn't really extend those, and I didn't want to waste the days just hanging out at home.

We spent the first night in Miami Beach at a small hotel called Circa 39 (oddly enough it's near 39th street), which was recommended by the Lonely Planet travel guide as having Miami Beach style without the attitude. With this single recommendation, the book pretty much paid for itself and then some. We spent about an hour on the beach and in the pool the next morning and then took off for Key West. On the way out of Miami, we drove through South Beach, which has the largest concentration of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne architecture in the world (one entire square mile in this part of the city is on the National Register of Historic places). I wish we'd had time to get out and walk around and take some pictures, but we wanted to be in Key West before dark, so I guess that will have to wait for another time.





After that we began the ~4 hour journey from Miami to Key West. Driving on the Keys reminds me a bit of driving on Cape Cod. The part closest to the mainland is full of tacky gift and souvenir shops, which then give way to a pretty sparse wilderness, followed by a quirky city at the very end. We stayed at a Hyatt resort hotel (because we got it for less than half price through Priceline) and got a lot of use out of the pool and sauna (moving back and forth between them probably contributed to the nasty cold that I got the day after we came back).






I didn't really take many pictures of Key West itself, because we spent most of our time there at night. We spent most of Monday at the Bahia Honda State Park, which had nice beaches and allowed us to walk around on one of the abandoned railroad bridges that used to run out on the keys.





Tuesday morning, we had to be out of the hotel by 10:00, so we still had some time to spare so we stopped by the Key Deer National Wildlife Refuge. There are supposed to be about 600 of these miniature deer living on Big Pine Key, but somehow we managed to not see a single one. There were also supposed to be a couple of alligators living in the pond at the refuge, but we couldn't find them either. After that, we drove 4 hours back through the keys and made it back to cold Boston in time to get a normal night's sleep!

Christmas Tree

Anyone who has seen our condo knows that we don't have a whole lot of extra space, so the question of what to do for a Christmas tree was a little bit of a challenge. We don't really have the storage space for an artificial tree of any significant size, and I wasn't sure how the cats would react to a real one. We ended up opting for a Charlie Brown tree (complete with Linus's blanket) from Urban Outfitters. From the minute I took it out of the box, Simon and Susie were far more interested in the artificial pine needles than I would have ever expected.

Since we still had the cat problem, we decided that the tree would have to go on the ledge above the sliding doors (the only place in the whole house that S & S are unable to reach). This presented another problem, since I wanted to put some lights on the tree, but there is no electrical outlet up on the ledge. A couple of days later, I found the perfect solution to the problem: solar powered LEDs! They actually work really well. During the day, the lights automatically shut themselves off and the solar cells begin to charge a battery. At night, the lights come on and stay on until the battery runs out (which usually turns out to be way past our bed-time).

It's not exactly overwhelming, but at least we have a place to hang our few ornaments and some colored lights in the evening!

Some Updates

We have not been very diligent with our blog. Here are some of the updates from us.

Our Mini-Moon
We had our mini-moon in Napa Valley. It was a very wonderful trip disregard the weather. When we went there in September, we were caught in the middle of a heat wave. We spent two days in Napa and our third day in San Francisco and Palo Alto area.

The B&B we stayed at is a very neat house. Mom and Dad (Sharon and Terry) purchased us a honeymoon package there. We love it. The owners of the B&B make our stay very wonderful. They hosted wine reception every evening. We had some wine and got to know people staying at the B&B.

It was a pretty brave decision to bike in the wine country. Had I known the biking situation in CA, I probably would have objected to this idea. Unlike the east coast, bike lanes are just seperated by a white line. But it was great fun and a good workout, I have to admit. We stopped at three vineyards: Frog's Leap, Miner and Cliff Lede. Each has its own specialty. Frog's Leap produces organic wine, Miner is powered by solar energy and Cliff Lede has a very nice gallery (the video I posted earlier was shot there).

Then we drove to San Francisco. We stayed at Hyatt near one of the piers. We could see the Bay Bridge from our room. We then went to Palo Alto and visited Apple's headquarter. The picture below was taken at Infinite Loop.
It was a very short trip but an unforgettable one.

The Kitties

Simon and Susie are doing great. They are now one year old. Simon looks like an adult cat but he sometimes still acts like a baby. Susie still has a baby face. They acted a bit weirdly the day when my parents but got over pretty soon.

Our life

People asked me, "Jessica, how's the married life?" "I really don't feel that much different from my single life". That is always my answer. We feel very happy.

Because of the busy summer, we recently realized we haven't gone hiking for a long time. Over the last few weeks, we went to Middlesex Fells Reservation twice. Probably will go again this weekend if the weather is good.

Our work

We still work at the same companies. Not many changes. I switched job within Biogen.

I received my CPA designation this evening. In the future, I can CPA next to my name. I am still working on Level III of CFA.

A Very Cute Movie of Dave

Dave looks very cute in this movie. Don't you agree?

Thanks to Everyone...

...who joined us for one (or, in some cases, more) of our wedding celebrations. It was a great time and everyone who participated helped to make it that way!

Love, Jessica and Dave!

CFA Level III, here I come

I cannot wait to share this with everyone. Just found out that my hard work from February to May paid off. I passed CFA level II. Here I come, level III.

This is one of the best gifts I could ever give to myself for our upcoming wedding. I was really nervous last night but I feel so good about myself. Thank you, Dave, for your support and love. I could never have done this without you.

I am looking forward to seeing everyone this coming weekend.

Love, Jess

July

Just doing the "monthly update" (not by design, but that's the way it seems to work lately).

Mr. & Mrs. Xu are over their jet lag now and adjusting reasonably well to life in America. They seem to be keeping themselves busy by reading, watching TV on the internet (we were going to get them the Comcast Chinese TV package, but there seems to be more available online and it's free), playing with the kitties, and going for walks along the beach.


The weather was just awful for about the first 3 weeks that they were here (it's been cold, and it rained almost every day between Memorial day and the middle of July). It hasn't gotten much better, but we have had a few sunny days since then. We went to Ipswitch (about a half-hour north of where we live) to pick blueberries on Sunday.


The Revere Beach Sand Sculpting Competition was last week and weekend. They've been holding this contest for 5 years now and it's actually gotten quite a bit of regional (and even some national) attention. The sculptors come from all over the globe (although this year a Canadian was the only one from outside the U.S.).

Susie has been finding lots of new hangout spots lately (her favorite seems to be the towel shelf in the bathroom).


Other than that, Jessica and I have been busy with work and planning the wedding celebrations. We were able to get the majority of the details for the IN wedding worked out when we were there in June, and we've been spending more time working on the Boston dinner in the past few weeks. It's a lot of work, but hopefully it will be a lot of fun. We look forward to seeing everyone in August!

Grand Opening of DelicaTea.com

I am so excited to announce that after almost a year's preparation, we finally launched www.delicatea.com. We worked on this website on and off since last November. During this period, my business partner was still back at school and I was busy preparing for CFA level II. Working on the website was almost like a third job. But we survived.

Many thanks to Dave, our lead artist, who took all the beautiful pictures. Without him, we would never have been able to create such a beautiful site.

徐妈妈和徐爸爸到了

Mr. and Mrs. Xu arrived late on Thursday night and will be staying with us through the wedding until the middle of September. They seem to be dealing with the jet lag pretty well so far (as I write this, it's almost midnight, and they've been up since 8:00 am!).


It will be interesting seeing how well 4 people and 2 cats can live in an 800 square foot loft. We put up curtains in an effort convert the upper floor of the loft into something resembling a real bedroom (thanks in part to Mom's efforts on the sewing machine when we were back in IN last weekend).

Simon and Susie are each adjusting to the new guests in their own way. Susie immediately made friends with them like she does with everyone else. Simon was shy at first, but seems to be warming up.

Revere Beach Kite Festival

Jessica had to study all last weekend again (test is this Saturday, so wish her luck!), so I went down to the beach by myself to take pictures of the kite flying festival that was going on.

In this set, there's also a picture of Jessica studying in her pajamas, and of course the usual gratuitous kitty pictures. Simon likes to get underneath one of the doormats and pretend that it's a tent (I guess that's what it is anyway... he hasn't really explained this one of his many quirks to me).

Memorial Day

We didn't do much this past Memorial Day, but I guess that's really what holidays are for sometimes. We took a bike ride along the Charles River on Monday and saw a surprising amount of wildlife (turtles and baby geese/ducks) for the middle of the city.

The water in the ocean is now warm enough to wade in, but still cold enough that it's very clear. Low tide was around 5 in the afternoon so I went out and took pictures of the hermit crabs and other sea creatures and plants a couple of times.

On a completely unrelated topic, I just found some movies that Jessica took while we were in (and on our way to and from) Culebra.

Happy Summer '09!

We're still alive

Wow, it's been about 2 months since either of us have posted here. Nothing really new. Jessica is studying for level 2 of the chartered financial analyst exam. I'm still employed. We actually own a TV now. Simon and Susie aren't really kittens anymore. Here is a series of pictures of Susie giving Simon a bath:

Puerto Rico 2009

Here are the pictures from our trip.  I couldn't decide which ones I liked best, so I'm just posting links to all of them.

Using what we'd learned from the "survey" trip that we took last winter, we decided to spend most of our time in 4 places: We spent our first afternoon in San Juan, the next 2 days in Ponce, a day on the offshore island of Culebra (picture above),  and then finished up with an evening kayaking trip in the "bioluminescent" bay called Laguna Grande in the extreme northeast corner of the main island.

We flew in to San Juan late Friday night/Saturday morning, so we decided to spend the late morning and afternoon exploring old San Juan.   The old part of San Juan reminds me a lot of downtown Boston or San Francisco:  It's undeniably charming and old (even older than Boston... don't forget, this is the part of the world where Columbus landed on his first voyage), but also a bit too obviously tourist oriented in places.  Click here for the San Juan pictures (or here for a full slideshow).

Our second stop was the south coast city of Ponce.   When we were there last year, we kept hearing that they had one of the biggest carnaval celebrations in the Caribbean during the week leading up to Ash Wednesday.  This was the main reason that we chose the week that we did to make this trip.   We weren't disappointed.  The magnitude of the festival is almost a little bit overwhelming.   Most of the pictures I took are of the parade that happens on Sunday afternoon, which started at 1:00pm and didn't end until 10:30 or so!  From the hot, dry, breezy weather and mountainous surroundings, to the Catalonian architecture, to interesting things like Carnaval, I like Ponce a lot... I'm not quite sure why so few people outside of Puerto Rico know anything about it, but I guess maybe it's better that way.  Unlike Old San Juan, Ponce is tourist friendly, but not sickeningly touristy.  Click here for the Ponce pictures (or here for full slideshow).

Our next to last stop was the offshore island of Culebra, which is politically part of Puerto Rico, but geographically more par of the Virgin Islands (St. Thomas is only about 10 miles to the east).   In terms of overall activity, Culebra was almost a 180 degree difference from Ponce, as it's purportedly one of the least developed places in the Caribbean.  On the whole island, there are about 2000 full time residents, and probably less than 100 tourists at any given time.   There are only about 4 restaurants on the whole island, and everything closes at 10:30 (but if you want to stay up later and walk around, that's fine too... crime is virtually non-existent here).   The only places to stay are small bed-and-breakfast type places and beachside bungalow type apartments that can be rented for the whole week.  They're all very affordable (I now see absolutely no reason to ever rent a place on Martha's Vineyard or the Cape for a week... even with airfare, it would be cheaper and much nicer to go here).  The beaches are unbelievably beautiful (I didn't enhance these pictures at all... the water really looks that way!), and on a weekday, even the most popular one probably had no more than 30 people on it.   I suspect it's only a matter of time before people begin to discover this place and someone has the idea to start building tacky resort hotels that will bring in tourists by the thousands.   We hope to return a few times before this happens!   For the Culebra pictures, click here (or here for slideshow).

The trip's finale was probably the most unique experience.   We took a kayaking trip into the Laguna Grande, which is one of the last bodies of water in the world where bioluminescent plankton live year round.   It's really amazing to dip your hand or paddle into the water and see a cloud of blueish light follow (they only light up when physically agitated).   You also get a fireworks display any time a fish jumps or darts away from the kayak.  Unfortunately it's really impossible to photograph this well (and it's a fairly bad idea to take an unsealed camera on a kayak ride).   If you look at the map here,  you can see where we went.   We started in the oceanside bay that you see in the lower right-hand corner of the map.   The guide then lead us through a completely dark mangrove swamp into the lagoon.  It really felt like we were in the jungle as we were paddling through the swamp (Jessica was scared that a snake was going to drop down from the trees!), but in the end, I think we agreed that it was well worth it!   

Back to reality...

Hot weather in February is good. Parades, piña coladas, and nice beaches are fun. Bioluminescent dinoflagellates are cool. Unfortunately, we're back in cold rainy MA now. Pictures and details later.

Escaping the cold...

The extreme cold here seems to be over for the most part. We're seeing more rain than snow lately, but make no mistake, it's still winter, so we're of to Puerto Rico on Friday night for a short 5 day vacation. We're going to try to make this one a little bit more relaxed than last year's jaunt, but still have lots of stuff planned, including:

- Exploring old San Juan (in the daylight this time!).

- The Carnival parade in Ponce

- A stay overnight on the island of Culebra in the Spanish Virgin Islands

- A nighttime kayaking trip in the bioluminescent bay near Fajardo

It's supposed to be 88 degrees and sunny in Ponce on Sunday... I'm sure that will be a bit of a shock at first, but I'm definitely looking forward to it! More after we return.

And now it's 2009

Haven't posted anything here for a while, so I thought I should update everyone on some things going on around here:

We've been planning the wedding which will be in late August. We're still trying to keep it small and simple. We're very grateful that Mom has been helping coordinate things quite a bit.

After a month of saying "I know I'm going to fail", Jessica found out two days ago that she did pass level 1 of the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) exam. She's now planning to take level 2 in June.

I watched the inauguration ceremony for the first time in my life... at work. The company I'm at right now will undoubtedly benefit from the Obama administration's support for "smart grid" technology, so it was almost a company sanctioned event.

J. is working on starting an online tea business. We've been taking lots of pictures of tea.


It's been really cold here. The average high for Boston in January is 36 degrees... that's not warm, but probably not quite as cold as a lot of people think. This year, however, there have been only 4 days when the temp surpassed 32. The beach in front of our house looked a lot like the coast of Antarctica. It was beautiful in a strange way, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly for me. To escape all of this, we're trying to squeeze in a short trip to the Caribbean for 4 or 5 days sometime in the next month if my work schedule allows.


We took Simon and Susie to the vet last Wednesday where Simon lost his manhood, and Susie her fecundity. It's always sad to have to do this, but it needed to be done. Susie had a reaction to the pain medicine that they gave her. The vet told us to stop giving it to her, and since then she's been fine. Simon doesn't seem to be even slightly phased by any of this.