OC Fire

OC Fire
Originally uploaded by Matt New

This is the view from my mom's house on Tuesday, October 23rd. The fire burned about 15,000 acres at this point and was 30% contained. Apparently two nights ago my mom could see large plumes of flames from the upstairs at night.

Tustin Tiller Days 2007

So this weekend was the annual Tustin Tiller Days weekend. We started the weekend by meeting up and watching the parade. I figured this was good for Meg, because it would remind her of all the small town parades in Indiana. There were about 4 or 5 marching bands in the parade and it's fun to sit in old town Tustin.


After the parade was over, we headed to the festival grounds for some lunch. We also got the kids branded with some temporary tattoos from Ralph's. Gotta love marketing.




After the tattoos and lunch, we got our tickets and wristbands and started riding some rides. Emmy was much better this year and went on a bunch of the small rides by herself. Christopher was a daredevil, of course. In fact, it's not clear who was the bigger kid on the rides - Christopher or Meg.


All I know is that it was me that got stuck going on the Hang glider ride which was like the hurl-o-thon. All in all, we had a great time and the kids had a blast, which is all that really matters in the end, anyway.

Radies wedding

This weekend Meg and I flew up to Portland for my friend Jason's wedding. I've known Jason since the 4th grade and we spent most of our formative years in jr high and high school hanging out, even tho he lived 15 miles away. We used to literally ride the bus to each other's house to play d&d and car wars - total geeks.

Anyway he and Brandi have lived in Portland for some time now so they decided to do the ceremony at this place called the McMenamins Edgefield. It's a historic styled hotel where they brew their own beers and make their own wines which you can sample at various little shacks scattered across the grounds. Themain catch was that most of the rooms do not have bathrooms. This gave us both great duress when we planned the
trip. Neither of us were that excited about reliving the dorm life

When we got to Portland, the weather was rainy with sunbreaks. We had a great lunch at the Rogue brewery on a tip from Jason. The food was great and the beer was yum. Meg had herself some cheese soup which is awesome. We walked around a bit and the started to drive over to the hotel. On the way there we had rain, sun, sleet, hail, and snow! Gotta love the pacific northwest

The first night there we met some of meg's friends for dinner and had too much wine. The next day we watched the cal football game in the pool hall. It just so happened that cal was playing Oregon that day #6 vs #11. Let me tell you not a lot of people were happy to see us in all our cal gear. Cal actually ended up winning the game on a last minute fumble. It was insane and I was very loud. Surprised I did not get killed.

The wedding was later that day and everything ended up being really nice. It did not rain at all on Saturday so everything was relatively dry.

Sunday we headed down to Salem to see more friends of Meg. I was wearing my bright gold Cal shirt which was probably embarrassing for Meg but oh well. Later we stopped by Jasons house to say bye and headed home.

cal vs tenn

9:42am:


So I am giving this mobile blogging thing a try. Today meg and I flew up to berkeley to see cal play tennessee. Huge game to start the season. We are sitting on airbart right now heading over to the bart train

Not sure how sober I will be to keep this up but its an experiment





1:37pm:

We've been at kips for two hours now. Watching the ucla game and making friends. Can't believe mich lost. Will head up to the stadium soon after our 4th pitcher and some top dog.




8:32am (the next day):

Yeah I thought so. The game was too good and I was too bombed to keep live posts going. Anyway the game was awesome. Both sides going back and forth. An opening tip for a runback, a punt return by desean jackson, so good.





After the bears won, everybody ran on the field where we pretended we were young again. To meg's huge surprise, I actually walked up to nate longshore and gave him a highfive. Then we walked past andrew larson (our punter) and I told him to kicking like that and he'll make a lot of money next year. He just looked at me and laughed and said "I'm trying man!' Then the best part of all was when we walked off the field and the band was playing "you wanna be starting something" by michael jackson

Ma ma se ma ma se ma ma coo sa...

i hate ny

last night, meg and i went to the yankees vs halos game. it was a pretty spur of the moment decision. we looked online and found some reasonable tickets in a section that I like. i have to give meg some credit, she was willing to go even tho she had to get up at 5am the next day to get on a plane to Philly for work.

we actually got down to the big A early enough to watch the yankees take bp. we got to see all the big names hit which was pretty cool. we found our seats and got ready for the game.

i have to say that the dynamic at halo/yankee games has change a lot over the years - basically ever since scioscia took over as coach and the angels have had a winning record against the yanks. i have been to two other halo/yankee games - one was game 1 of the alds in 2005 - in each game, the crowds get nasty. i think yankee fans are the lowest form of life there is... (sorry jimmy). they have this unique sense of arrogance and entitlement that no other fan has. it's like being surrounded by 15,000 barry bonds clones. as a result, things tend to get really ugly in the stands - there were at least 3 fights right by us last night.

the feeling was definitely playoff-esque. the game changed leads 4 times. each time one team would go in front all of the fans for that team would stand up and taunt the other team (usually culminating in a fight somewhere). the last 3 innings were the most draining, intense time I've spent at a sporting event. both teams had numerous chances to win the game, but it was until the bottom of the ninth, when ryan budde hit a ball that dropped in between cabrera and abreu that the game was over. we were sitting out in right field, so we saw the ball coming at us and the two yankees running for it... we didn't even know if it had dropped until we saw kendrick take off for the plate and the entire stadium (minus the yankee fans) jumped up and starting screaming. high 5's were all over the place. the yankee fans streamed out of the stadium. the angel fans taunting them with "YANKEES SUCK, YANKEES SUCK" as they walked out. it was intense. i couldn't sleep for 2 hours. meg got 3 hours of sleep before her cab came. our voices are completely gone. it's awesome.

4th Mammoth Trip - 2007

Day 1

My birthday is coming up, so that means that it is time for the annual summer trip to Mammoth.

This year, we changed it up a bit. Meg and Emmy joined us, and instead of camping, we went to Yosemite for the first day.

A couple weeks ago, I had ordered this attachment to my bike, which turns it into a tandem, since C has been riding his bike without training wheels. I figured that it was good practice for him and easier for him to go for a longer ride.

I also mounted my old bike seat on Meg's bike, so she could take Emmy along. After a night in Oakhurst, we headed into Yosemite to try out the biking experiment.

Everything went really well. The kids loved being on the bikes and it was the perfect distance to go for a ride with kids. Basically, you get to see all of the valley but you don't get too worn out. We actually saw a bear and a deer while riding.

Unfortunately there was not enough snow this year, so the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls were not flowing. Sort of odd for me - it was the first time I'd seen that. We did go to the Welcome Center and checked out the new displays that they had - pretty cool.


The last thing that we did on our bike trip was to stop at the Merced River, get off our bikes, take off our shoes, and go in the water. We spent a while, wading, and skipping rocks. I think the kids could have stayed there all day. They had a blast. After that, we got back on the bikes and headed back to the car.

After we left the valley, we drove across the Tioga Pass and headed over to Mammoth, where we are going to stay for a couple days. We did some swimming, ate some pizza, and crashed out for some sleep.




Day 2

The next day, we got up in Mammoth and headed over to Schatt's Bakery for some breakfast. After that, we got some Subway (yes THAT Subway) and packed up our stuff to go fishing up at Lake George.

We got to the lake and got all our poles in the water. The last couple of times we'd gone fishing, we'd been shut out. This time, we ended up catching four fish - maybe Emmy is lucky. who knows... She did seem to really like playing in the water and was not afraid of the fish that we caught, so I think that's a successful first fishing trip for her.


After we fished and had our lunch, we went for a bike ride around Lake Mary, which was nice. Definitely not as long of a ride as Yosemite, but still nice way to finish the day in the mountains.

We then went back to our hotel and went for a good swim, where C practicing jumping into the pool over and over again. Dinner at Roberto's and it's time for another night of sleep.


picts

Gun control...

Read this article from Ted Nugent today regarding gun control:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/19/commentary.nugent/index.html

Sorry Ted, but you're an idiot. This rant reeks of a "treat the symptom and ignore the problem" mentality. Let's see what sounds safer to me. A society that has a limited number of guns, or a society where no one is allowed to carry a gun? Hundreds vs. over a billion. Hmm. Seems pretty obvious to me.

What do you think actually happens more? Someone saves a life because they happened to have their gun on them and take down a lunatic, or a tragic, unintended accident because a gun was in the house - think children in a house with a gun. Sure, the parents should be able to teach a 5 year old how to stay away from a gun, or the parents really don't need to have a gun at all.

Why do we need guns anymore? To control our government? I highly doubt that is still applicable. Furthermore, why should EVERYBODY be entitled to carry an assault weapon or an automatic weapon? I firmly believe that our fore-fathers never envisioned a day, where someone could kill over 30 people in less than 10 minutes. No one should have the right to be able to deliver the carnage that modern day weapons are capable of. There is absolutely NO justifcation for this.

What's sad is that at the end of the day, like every other decision in America, it all comes down to money. The people who are profiting from the rules will never allow them to be changed. Who cares if people die, the environment suffers, or people continue to have health problems, we're still making a ton of cash here.

For those of us who have kids in this world, it's numbing to think how little we can really do to change this and make our world into a safer, cleaner, and better place.