Family

I am severely behind on my blogging (sorry my two readers ), but last weekend I had the opportunity (with my grand-niece and grand-nephew) to take in the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater MayDay Parade that occurs annually near Powderhorn Park. Needless to say, the puppets were extremely impressive, as were the various drumlines that were featured. My small grand-nephew and grand-niece were good throughout the entire 90 minute parade (even waiting semi-patiently for over hour just for the parade to start). As usual, I will have the pictures up soon...

After experiencing the sheer joy (not!) of having my 20 year old refrigerator go out sometime in the wee hours of the morning last weekend (and losing all of my nice meat cuts ! ), I have been living out of ice coolers and take-out food. My new refrigerator was finally delivered yesterday, and even though I don't have the water source line hooked up yet, I am appreciating being able to have cold drinks and frozen food on the premises again (without having to worry about the daily dose of ice ).

I finally made it to the Mn Science Museum's Race Exhibit. My nephew and I went and both of us found the various exhibits very interesting and well put together. There were both interactive exhibits as well as different video sessions. A couple of the really good exhibits were: Youth on Race video: Multi-racial theater troupe from St. Paul Central High school discuss how race has affected their identity. Student Lockers exhibit: Students from St. Paul Peace Academy decorate lockers with items regarding what race means to them. Hapa Project: Photographic exhibit of people who describe themselves as multi-racial Asian Americans. Living With Race Theater video: Stories of common people's experience with race and racism in the United States. US Census Shifting Categories: large photo of multi-racial group from Augsburg that shows how various racial groups have been classified by the US Census Bureau through the years. Here are some various websites that featured in the exhibit: Hapa Project Mavin Foundation Facing Race Slavery In New York (PBS) Matters of Race (PBS) Race - Power of Illusion Understanding Race Since the exhibit ends this coming Sunday, I am glad that I finally made it.

I will be babysitting my older sister's kitten this week, since she will be out of town for the Thanksgiving Holiday. It should be an interesting to see how the kitten likes my tangle of computer and stereo equipment wires.

Over the past weekend, the family took a quick mini-vacation up to Alexandria to lounge around in the Arrowwood Resort. A childhood friend of my (older) nephew's also came along and brought his family, which was nice.
Even though I didn't arrive until after everyone else on Friday, we did manage to squeeze a pontoon ride (complete with fishing for the kids), numerous Jet ski rides, a round of golf and a speed boat ride (I like having the marina just a short walk from the hotel), as well as numerous visits to the indoor waterpark . The weather was ideal for the weekend: sunny and around 75 degrees.
Nice!!

Started my day having to make my own breakfast.
(Still) Busy unpacking my clothes and peeling (thanks to my magnificent sunburn on my face, arms and back).

After getting over being evicted from my stateroom on the ship, our traveling group spent the day in Miami at the Newport Beach Resort (since our flight didn't leave until 8:20 pm that night). It was a pretty low key day; I was either taking a nap in the room (like my grand niece and grand nephew) or taking a nap on the beach.
At some point I will get off of my lazy duff and my trip pictures posted.

At sea again today on the way back to Miami . When I wasn't trying to fight the effects of my sunburned back, I did take in the Dodgeball tournament (some pretty cool plays, I must say) and also watched Pam ring the bell at the top of the rock climbing wall (way to go Pam!). It seems sad that the cruise is almost over and we will be leaving the ship tomorrow. Some day I will have to go on a month long cruise, maybe then I won't be quite so sad when the cruise is over.

Next port of call was George Town, Grand Caymen. My niece, Laverne and I all had the snuba excursion booked for mid-afternoon. Snuba lets you dive down a short distance (usually up to 25 feet) without dive tanks - there is an airhose attached from your regulator to the floating air tank at the surface. I was a little anxious about doing the snuba (getting air hoses tangled etc.), which probably explains why it took me a little bit longer to get adjusted to using the regulator for breathing (even though I have snorkeled quite a bit). However, once I got adjusted to breathing through a regulator and the pressure on the ears, it was by far one of the funnest excursions I have been on. My niece and I were attached to the same air tank and never got our air hoses tangled (whew!). The particular area that we were diving at was about 20 feet and had quite a (cool looking) fish as well as a shipwreck. After about an hour we had to surface and go back.
Needless to say, I'll will definitely be trying to get into a diving class as soon as I get back home.

As a nice take home souvenir, I received a lovely case of sunburn on my back and arms, which made my back look like a chicken.
My niece/roomate spent the remainder of the evening saying "Here, Chicky, Chicky" whenever I needed to have more aloe vera lotion put on.
Familia --> priceless

First port of call was Ocho Rios, Jamaica, which means "Eight Rivers" literally translated (even though the town doesn't have eight rivers). The family went ashore in the morning and my nephew, who had previously been to Ocho Rios several times before, hustled us up a taxi driver named "Tony" to take the family all over the island. I was only able to travel for about an hour (I had a snorkeling excursion already booked for the afternoon). The mini-tour was pretty cool. We stopped at an overlook for Dunns River Falls, as well as drove up into the hills to see some of the expensive estates. One of the nice things about Jamaica is that the water streams (for the most part) are not polluted, so if you are thirsty, you can simply pull over by a river and get a drink (which we did at one point).

The snorkeling excursion was at a site called "Laughing Reef", which was a pretty shallow reef (probably 5 feet or less for the most part, since I could stand up) that had some coral formations and some small fish. The snorkeling was OK, but it certainly wasn't the best snorkeling excursion that I have been on. I was pretty happy that all of my snorkeling equipment worked good though (especially since it took me several days to get it picked out prior to the cruise).
Comparing notes with the other family members at dinner, it seems that it would have been funner for me to continue on the Ocho-Rios mini-tour. They ended up going all over the island, including a stop at a very nice beach (can't remember the name).

The first full cruise day was spent at sea. After paying proper homage to the omelette bar, I did a little bit of exploring around the fourteen different decks of the ship, taking pictures along the way. Some of the cool features are the rock climbing wall, 9 hole putt-putt golf course, full workout room, Univ of Miami Oceanic Research Lab (the only lab of it's kind in the world) as well as the requisite multiple swimming pools and hot tubs. Of course, doing all of that exploring is hard work, so one must continually be well fortified with food and drink to keep up the energy, so I made sure that I paid attention to the various buffets around the ship as well . Tonight was the Captain's Dinner or Formal night and it was quite cute to see my grand-nephew and grand-niece all dressed up. Of course, everyone else looked very nice as well.
(Note: The lobster wasn't bad either... )

As a side note, I made the decision to shoot exclusively in RAW format for this vacation, thanks to a co-worker tipping me off about a cool program called Bibble which makes it extremely easy to manipulate the RAW "digital negatives". The only drawback to shooting in RAW format is that it takes up a lot of space - on my Pentax ist*DS it is about 10 MB/picture (so I brought 8.5 GB of SD storage with me, much to the amusement of some of my family members ).

I spent most of Sunday morning feverishly packing until 1:00 am in the morning (can anyone say, procrastination?! ), only to have to get up at 3:30 am to get to the airport on time for the flight down to Miami, Florida. There are a total of 10 people traveling in our group (including two small kids: my grand-niece and my grand-nephew).
After an interminal wait in the boat terminal to board the ship, we finally were allowed to board and go to our staterooms (my niece and I's stateroom had a balcony which was quite nice). Unfortunately, I was too tired to even book my excursions, so of course I put it off until tomorrow...

The first cruise day summary:
(I can say emphatically that I acclimated well to my stateroom with a balcony - having the ocean waves to sing you to sleep as well as looking at the stars over the ocean is a very nice experience indeed )

Will be going on a cruise to the Carribean for the next week.....

This weekend, part of the family took in the 2006 World Short Track Speed Skating Championships that were being held at Mariucci Arena, which featured quite a few of the speed skaters who competed in the 2006 Torino Olympics. For those who thought that short track speedskating was exciting watching the Torino Olympics on TV, I can honestly say it is even more exciting seeing it live (and this coming from someone who is not very familar with the sport). We ended up with seats just four rows up from the ice, and as a result had a very good view of the finish line.

I have heard this sport described as "NASCAR on ice", and whether or not that is accurate, I often felt like if I blinked I could miss critical part of the race since things happened so quickly. My older sister, who was a speed skater as well in her day, would often have to give me the post race analysis.
It was especially impressive to see the two Koreans, Ahn Hyun-Soo and Lee Ho-Suk, often times come from four places back to first place with just a couple of good passes (the South Korean fan section had a lot to cheer about during the afternoon and did so heartily ).
Of course, there were the requisite wipeouts as well; one of the Canadian women skaters went down really hard and had to be stretchered off of the ice.
Probably my favorite races of the afternoon (although I throughly enjoyed all of the races) were the relays. The men's relay, in particular, was incredible with Korea and Canada exchanging the lead several times during the last couple of nail-biting laps that had most of the audience on their feet (unfortunately, the Koreans ended up being DQ'd for obstruction).

I am never sure at events like these if personal photography will be allowed at events like these, so I didn't bring my camera (and, of course practically everyone around me was snapping pictures ). So, for some cool pictures of the event, check out OhnoZone (still waiting for the official site to get their photographs up ).

Update (4/30/06): It seems that the photographs from the 2006 World Short Track Speed Skating Championships are at last up on the web. Enjoy!!

Thanks to the persistence and creativity of my nephew's wife (and the entire family spending both Saturday and Sunday over at my nephew's house ), we now at last have our family cruise booked!!
We are going to the Carribbean on the Royal Carribbean Explorer of the Seas ship.
Yes!!