Pt. Reyes

Ricardo and I had a long planned trip after New Year's to Pt. Reyes, just north of San Francisco. As it happened our trip coincided with the worst storm in 5-7 years. Cue the excitement!



The surf on Thursday, the day before the worst storm day. It is hard to tell from this picture but it was bad. It broke twice on its way to the beach. Huge waves crashed atop each other and multiplied. And the wind was horrendous, enough to nearly blow you over.



Muir Woods during a lull on Thursday. Real low light, (we were there late and it was so cloudy) but so beautiful and green.



This is about half of the creek behind the B&B. As you can see it is galloping toward flood stage. We actually left two nights early because the Innkeeper said maybe we should get out while we could. Trees were falling and blocking most of the main routes, and other places were flooding already. We took this lovely, scenic back roads way out, and got home without many problems. We did get caught in the southbound 101 closure at the Richmond bridge. Ricardo's GPS unit, who according to the documentation is named "Jill", has a button marked "detour". We pressed that and she led us down a variety of frontage roads that got us neatly around the closure. She's so handy.

Christmas with Ricardo's Family

Over Christmas part of Ricardo's family came to visit from Indonesia. His parents and his younger sister came. We were delighted to meet them. Happily, everyone got along famously and we even decided to squeeze in another visit before they left.



Here's the whole crowd at our house for the first lunch. Notice the red and blue colors running through the picture. Beautiful composition. ;-)



Here's his family outside the restaurant where we ate for the second time.



The entire happy group. (My sister had to work both days.)

I'm so glad it went well. They even invited us to Jakarta! I'll keep you posted if we go. Maybe later this year.

R & J Christmas party

Ricardo and I went to his company's Christmas party last month. It was held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco which is a wonderfully elegant place. The most fun part was the party favor. You know those plastic pictures that change position when you tilt them? They hired this company that brought the equipment to make those. They would take a picture of you smiling at the camera and then another doing something silly (couples generally kissed with one arm thrown back). They merged these two images onto a plastic rectangle. When you tilt it you see us switching between poses. The way they did it makes the transition visible too. It almost looks like animation.

I wish I could put that up but it doesn't scan well as you might imagine. Here are three we took at my parent's house that turned out nicely.



Here's the two of us in close-up in our fancy attire.



The full-length Christmas party glory.



Doesn't this remind you of how they pose people at prom? I think it is cute.

It was lots of fun and I got to meet some of his friends and coworkers, which I hadn't done before. Several folks said he is know as a master foosball player. I hadn't known that. I'm so proud. :-) It was neat to see this other part of his life.