Update! Pics of Kazu in the snow!

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Ali’s dream finally came true, and we adopted a cute little fellow. We have named him Kazu, which means “peace” or “obedient” in Japanese, depending on who you talk to. Don’t tell Ali, but just between Kazu and me, we have agreed that his full name is Kazuhiro Protagonist. He is a smallish black brindle Pit Bull, is 10 months old, and is very well behaved. He loves sleeping on laps, chasing balls, and begging for food. He also likes sunsets and long walks on the beach. See some pics!

Ali and I went home for another fantastic thanksgiving in WV. Everything is just as I remember growing up, lots of energetic, fun people, and lots of good food. The only differences are that now we cram in an extra meal at Mom’s cafe, and the number of dogs underfoot has quintupled. This was the first year that Ali’s parents, David and Barbara joined us in WV, and hopefully we didn’t scare them too much. See the pics!

Well, my late twenty has come to a close, and now I’m 30. Sure I’ve been working on grey hairs around my temples for a couple of years now, but now I’m officially old. But at least it was a lot of fun turning 30! Ali planned two parties for me. One was a surprise, and the other was to throw me off the trail. But it sounded like such a fun time that we just did both. The surprise party was more or less traditional, but with more meat. Wolfe made me a “meat cake” which is simply meat-loaf and mashed potatoes crafted to look like a cake. He also made me bacon ice cream, which I was less excited about. The meat cake was very good. Ali arranged for some out of town friends (Tim, Katie, and Eric) to come to the party along with Seattle friends. The second party was a tennis-themed picnic brunch. Basically that means that we dressed up in tennis whites (Ali and I had to buy them for the occasion), played a lot of tennis, and ate a lot of donuts. I had a great time at both parties, and I’d like to thank my sweet wife for arranging them for me.
Surprise Party pics
Tennis party pics

Ali and I bought our first house! Built in 1910, it has plenty of charm. The floor plan on the main floor is a little odd, but Ali and I have done a careful look at that and decided that we will be happy to live there for some time as is, but we can also imagine how to improve things over time. It has a basement apartment with lots of light, which we are renting out to suppliment our income. The upper two stories are ours. On the main floor is 2 smallish bedrooms, a dining room, living room, full bath and kitchen. Upstairs is a master bedroom and bath, with a large walk-in closet, and (for now) a solarium. We will probably turn the solarium into an office/library. That won’t take much work, all we have to do is remove the hot-tub!

We love the house, but the best thing about it is probably the location. We are two blocks from a great, big park, close (but not too close) to a bus line, and very close to my work (UW), the bridge to the east side, and only a couple of miles from downtown. We also have great views of the mountains! We can see two volcanos from our house! We can’t wait for everyone to visit!
See Pics Here

Updated! Added some “after” pictures of our kitchen, and some house warming pics.

As you probably know, on May 1st there were big demonstrations by immigrants and their supporters all over the country. Seattle was no different. The demonstrations here were huge, with probably around 50,000 marching through the street. Seattle is an immigrant friendly town, so the cops were supportive, and so was the local government. I went down and mingled with the crowds, and took some pics. See Here.

After Cedar came back from the research cruise in August, we went on a lovely roadtrip. First we drove to Spokane (pronounced spo-kan) in the new prius for the lovely wedding of our lovely friends Katie and Tim! We hit a crazy storm on the way out, with aggressive tumbleweeds and horizontal rain and everything. I took lots of pics of the BBQ the night before, then of the wedding itself. I actually danced (contra dancing think) and enjoyed it, which is a new experience for me. I think it was because 1) everyone else sucked too and 2) the caller was telling us what to do every moment. Anyway, cedar’s wedding pics here:
http://aliandcedar.com/gallery/tim_katie_wedding
and Tim and Katie’s collection, taken by many different folks:
http://aliandcedar.com/gallery/Wedding

From there we headed south to eastern oregon and the Wallowas, some surprisingly big mountains. These pics include a hike and the drive to and from from the Wallowas, including a landscape I’m pretty pleased with. Pics here:
http://aliandcedar.com/gallery/roadtrip_wallowas

From there we visited Crater lake. Fun facts:

• crater lake is 2000 feet deep, deepest is the US
• it is fed by snow and rain. No rivers!
• 35 miles in circumference
• erupted 7000 years ago, probably killed a lot of native americans
• biggest eruption in the americas in 150,000 years

From Crater Lake we drove to Redwood National forest. Its been said before, and it will be said again: Those are some big ass trees!
Pics of crater lake and redwood here:
http://aliandcedar.com/gallery/Roadtrip_crater_redwood

Then we visited Tim and Katie in the bay area. We went on a nice hike on the coast and saw some elk, including one squeeky, randy fellow. Tim was showing off wildly the entire time as usual. Pics:
http://aliandcedar.com/gallery/roadtrip_bay_area

From the Bay Area, we scooted up to Oregon again, and had a nice hike with our friend Jon Baldivieso around Mt Adams. A very rewarding hike, with many spectacular views, and a lot of nice water. Pics:
http://aliandcedar.com/gallery/roadtrip_adams

Then home again home again jiggidy jig.

Well, I finally went on an oceanography research cruise for my work. The Cruise was roughly 3 weeks at sea, aboard Woods Hole’s research ship Knorr. We started in Panama City, steamed for a couple of days to the Costa Rica Upwelling Dome off the coast of Costa Rica. We steamed in circles for a couple of weeks, stopping frequently to sample and process water. We worked hard. Gabrielle, Nathan and I represented the Rocap lab, but there were lots of other people, I think we had 28 scientists, and 20 or so crew on board. It was a ton of work, but a great experience, and I made some great new friends. We ended the trip in the Galapagos. As you can imagine, I took a lot of pictures.

Cruise Part I

Cruise Part II

Galapagos Wildlife Pics

I’ll try to update this space with the amazing story of my return to civilization carrying an 86 lb metal thermos filled with -198 celcius (-320 F) samples in suspicious little tubes.

I’m very proud to announce that my lovely and brilliant wife has graduated from lawschool! She worked so hard these past three years, yet managed to be a wonderful friend and wife to me the entire time. Here are a few pictures of the event.

Ali, Tina and I went on a short hike up Tiger Mountain. When we arrived at the top we had about 20 seconds of view, then clouds overtook us. Still a fun and worthwhile time. We saw some sweet slugs, and I took a few arty pics. See the pics!

The mighty Hellfish have won Spring League again!

We successfully defended our championship and our #1 seeding! Due to our high seed our first game was the quarters, a fun game against Thunder Stats. Our second game was a contentious game against the Santas. Poor losers. Our final game was against Torque, another fun, good spirited game, which we won for the championship! See the pics!