Archive for the year 2008
My TweetUp Cherry Has Been Popped
Posted on November 16, 2008 by Ching under Games, Life.
The theme was game night…
I totally sucked at Outburst…
Daniel and Crystal, expert Catchphrase players…
The well-prepared Sam and Ally did their own name tags…
Follicle-challenged men playing Risk… (How fitting!)
Our host Josh and his helper Carrie…
Brian was showing Anita my Mini 9…
Cindy (right) is the one who told me about the tweetup. Games were played everywhere, even in the baby room…
Obligatory Catchphrase photos because I just couldn’t help myself. Here’s Josh giving clues…
Julie giving clues…
Steph giving clues…
Anita was an angel…
Anita had to take this one because I have short arms…
I’ve been seeing tweetup messages on Twitter for a while and have always wanted to attend. Brian is so anti-social, though. He would never let me. This recent one was at Josh Dutcher’s so I sold it to Brian this way, “Don’t you want to meet Dan’s brother?” If it were anyone else’s house, I don’t think we would have come at all.
Brian and I are so punctual, it’s scary. I think we were the first ones to arrive. He wouldn’t get out of the car at first. He told me to ask if it is the right house first and only then would he get out. =P
I think there were 36 attendees altogether. It seemed like more. Maybe more if you count the kids there’s more than that? I asked Josh what possessed him to host the event. He said that someone at the last tweetup suggested that they have a game night tweetup and there were only 10 or so people the last time so he volunteered to host it. I guess he didn’t anticipate how huge the event would become. Every inch of his house was overrun by WichiTweeps.
It was a wonderful first experience. Going with the cherry-popping analogy… You know how you want your first time to be special and everything and how it doesn’t always work out that way in reality? Well, this was an awesome first tweetup for me. We got to meet so many interesting people of all ages. WichiTweeps are a truly diverse group. And, to top it off, everyone was so nice and welcoming.
I’m so glad Cindy told me about the event. I probably would have missed it otherwise. Hats off to Josh for being a wonderful host and Carrie for helping him out.
Anyway, Brian and I left pretty early (about 10:30 pm) because Brian doesn’t really like to be around people that much and he still had to finish packing for his trip. He is flying out to New Hampshire today. On the drive home I told Brian about how much fun that was. I mean, I found people to play Catchphrase with! LOL. I’m a geek, I know.
Brian didn’t have as much fun as I did as you can tell from his tweets (I don’t know that he ever does), but he said he didn’t hate it as much as karaoke so I’m hoping this won’t be our last.
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I’m Pretty Sure this Classifies as Trespassing
Posted on November 12, 2008 by Ching under Flickr, Life.
Jan had her heart set on capturing a picture of this bird that had a long neck. She thought it was a heron. Anyway, she walked back downtrodden. She said the closer she moved toward the bird, the farther away it flew. 🙁
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Kirstie Alley at Hana Cafe
Posted on November 11, 2008 by Ching under Food and Drink, Moblog.
We saw Kirstie Alley dining at Hana Cafe last week. What are the odds?
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Exercising My Rights
Posted on November 5, 2008 by Ching under Moblog.
Guess who voted for the first time yesterday! Yup. I did it. I had Brian take photos of me outside the building (no pictures are allowed inside) in order to commemorate the momentous occasion.
Brian didn’t vote, of course. He isn’t even registered. Never has. He says he is going for the world record of oldest first-time voter and will register to vote when he hits 100 or so.
Anyway, it was really disappointing because they didn’t even ask for my voter registration card or ID or anything. They just asked for my name, had me sign the book, and then directed me to the voting machine. It was really kind of anti-climactic.
Some of my coworkers knew that it was my very first time voting so they asked me how it went and the inevitable question of who I voted for… I voted for Obama, but he really didn’t need my vote. It was a landslide victory.
My in-laws are die-hard Republicans. I’ve always thought of myself as moderate leaning toward the Republican side. I took this quiz online a few weeks ago, though, and it told me that I’m liberal. Who knew?
Anyway, I figured that I would vote for Obama leading up to the election. However, you get information from all sorts of places that tend to sway you. Of course, my father-in-law probably wanted me to vote for McCain. So as we were driving to the voting place, I began to have second thoughts about voting for Obama and started considering voting for McCain. I was thinking that Obama will give all of my money to the poor people and so I should probably vote for McCain. But then, I realized that I’m one of the poor people so I might actually benefit from some of the policies that Obama will put in place. That solidified my decision to vote for him. LOL.
I’m really glad that I voted because this election will probably go down in history as one of the most important elections of all time. Now I can say I was part of it!
P.S. I’m backdating some posts so please be sure to scroll down. New blog posts about our recent trip are popping out below and if you don’t scroll down you will miss them!
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Day 8: November 2, Sunday
Posted on November 3, 2008 by Ching under Flickr, Travel.
The shipped docked in Houston on Sunday, November 3. Their plan was to get everyone off the ship by 9:30 am so that the ship could quickly sail to Galveston to pick up the next passengers.
Usually, there’s people waiting to embark as the weary passengers disembark so it is complete mayhem at port. Since embarkation was going to take place in Galveston, disembarkation was only slightly chaotic. I’m kidding. It was pretty orderly actually and, much to my surprise and amazement, by 10 am the ship had already started sailing for Galveston.
“I sure hope everyone was off the ship,” I told Brian. LOL. Anyway, here are some of the photos I took on Sunday during the whole disembarkation thing. (I don’t think I was allowed to take pictures in the port building, but I had already snapped a few by the time they told me otherwise.)
Brian waiting to disembark…
Zone 7 was one of the first zones called, but the zone by zone thing didn’t start until after the self-assisted luggage passengers got off the ship. They took forever! It must have taken almost two hours to get all of them through.
Self-assist is ideal for people with very few bags. For instance, Brian and I could have done the self assist thing. =P Some people had no business doing it, though. I think some people either didn’t hear the announcement about the luggage (that bags needed to be put outside your stateroom by midnight) or chose not to pack because they were busy doing some last minute partying the night before. I think that people who had multiple bags trying to self-assist caused most of the delays.
Then again, there were those people who wanted to come down to the disembarkation area before their zones were called. Some people just can’t seem to follow instructions. We actually saw some people get turned away because they were a higher zone number and they tried to disembark before they were supposed to… Anyway, those people ended up bogging down the hallways.
Other passengers waiting to disembark…
Finally off the ship…
Looking for our suitcase…
The suitcases were laid out by zone. That’s why you had to disembark in the proper order. The idea was to have say zones 1 through 10 disembark first and then all the luggage in those zones would get claimed and cleared out then the next few zones and so on.
It didn’t quite work that way because instead of claiming their luggage and filing out like they were supposed to, some people were just standing there like lumps of log (I guess waiting for their friends from zone 35 to come out) getting in other people’s way. We, on the other hand, had a system.
Brian and I figured we had the lowest zone number out of our entire group so we would be out first. Our plan was to have me stationed at the building entrance and watch as people from our group exited. Then, we would direct them to the meeting area where we could bring the van and truck over for loading. Our system worked pretty well actually because by about 11 am, we were on our way back to Wichita.
Nubia and James disembarking…
We had to wait forever for the rest of our gang. I think the riviera deck (deck 1, where most everyone ended up except for the bosses who had better digs) got to disembark last. Anyway, I came across our favorite couple James and Nubia while I was waiting so I had to take their photo. Naturally.
Kurt, Kathy, Shane, and Jen were out next. They had all the table toppers ported to our designated loading area. Everyone waited as Kurt went to get the truck from the parking lot.
Photo of the Jen and Kathy waiting…
I think Brent and Dan were the last ones to get out. Brent had the keys to the van. The loading of the truck was in progress as Brent went to get the van from the parking lot.
Loading the truck…
I think the guys did a much better job of loading the truck this time around. The mountain of luggage on the back of Kurt’s truck wasn’t as tall and the suitcases were packed much tighter. The tarp was taught and didn’t flap around as much as on the trip down either.
Group photo…
I had to take photos while we all waited. LOL.
Brian setting up Wilma, our GPS…
We’d had our GPS for a while now, but we never named her. Brent actually christened her Wilma. Honestly, we didn’t need our GPS going down or coming home because we were behind Kurt’s truck the whole way. I think we had it as a back up just in case the two vehicles got separated, but that was unlikely because Brent is a fantastic convoy driver. =P I think we mostly had it for the entertainment factor. Everyone loved to hear Wilma get pissed off whenever we made a stop somewhere that is not on her planned route. “Recalculating,” she would say indignantly. It was pretty amusing. It kept Brent on his toes, for sure.
Brian and Kurt at one of our stops…
Sleepy passengers…
I don’t know how they managed to sleep with Brent swerving in and out of traffic to keep up with Kurt and Shane. =P Well, Brent did do so expertly.
Actually, I got a couple of hours of nap time too myself. It was a long drive home, but we made it. We arrived in Wichita about 9 pm. Brian and I were back home by 10 pm… And that is the end of this very long poker cruise recap. 🙂
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