We went up to the Albany, NY area at the end of July to see Amy’s cousin Jason get married, and also visit her grandma. Along the way we saw some exotic northern destinations like Schenectady, Niskayuna, Guilderland, and Rensselaer. Continue reading Upstate NY Adventures
Fourth of July 2011
We had a lazy, lazy Fourth of July and simply viewed fireworks from the condo parking garage rooftop. There was a lot going on, though, and I was able to get a decent timelapse of this show going on just a couple of miles away:
Set to tinny 1913 Sousa, as always.
Car
We got a car. Having a car is probably normal for a lot of you but it hasn’t always been for me. Continue reading Car
Visiting Charlottesville
We went to Charlottesville in April to see Amy’s friend Heidi get married. I rarely go south of the DC area and was interested in seeing that part of historic Virginia, so this was something of an adventure. Continue reading Visiting Charlottesville
Cherry Blossoms 2011
Full photoset is here: Cherry Blossoms 2011, part of the DC Cherry Blossoms Collection.
DC cherry blossom season was a bit unusual this year, with peak bloom starting unseasonably early in the last week of March, then going through a couple of mild freezes at the start of April which put the blossoms in a kind of stasis, prolonging the bloom for a bit. We just had to bundle up more for our yearly Hanami. Continue reading Cherry Blossoms 2011
iPhone
My gateway to iOS was a second-generation iPod Touch gifted to me by Mom for Christmas in 2009. For a while that served as my music player and secondary mobile device alongside the Nokia 5800 and later the HTC Magic, but more and more I found myself just wifi-tethering the iPod Touch to the phones to use for handheld computing, to the point that I decided to dispense with the unwieldiness of a double-device lifestyle and just get an iPhone. Continue reading iPhone
HTC Magic 32B AKA T-Mobile MyTouch
First off, I refuse to call it the “MyTouch.” Starting a proper noun with such a strong possessive pronoun just confuses the use of any article — or any other possessive pronouns — preceding the name. “A MyTouch.” “The MyTouch.” “My MyTouch.” “Your MyTouch.” Plus, it sounds like the setup for a bad “your mom” joke. No, I will refer to it at all times by its actual model name, the HTC Magic. I bought mine at a Costco cellphone stand for about $200 and a 2 year contract extension on my T-Mobile account. (This turned out to be a mistake, as the contract price dropped to $99 not long after.) Continue reading HTC Magic 32B AKA T-Mobile MyTouch
Nokia 5800
(I wrote this review years ago but forgot to finish it. Though hardly relevant these days, I am posting it backdated now just as a reminder of the earlier days of Nokia’s decline.)
By mid-2009, my old Nokia 6120c had descended into unusability with random shutdowns and blank-screen wakeups, so I decided it was time for a new phone. Out of continued brand loyalty I decided to try the Nokia 5800, purchased unlocked from Amazon for $339. (Update: down to $279 as of 2011.) Continue reading Nokia 5800
2010 in Review
In 2010 I revived my site and said I was back. After a few cursory entries I slacked off on writing once again, partly due to alternating work-craziness and social media-driven distractibility, and partly because of Star Trek Online and Minecraft. To compensate for the deficit I’ve been backdating new retrospective journal entries. In fact, I’m backdating this one right now.
We kept living in our condo, and I kept working at that news magazine (which canceled print and went web-only ), while Amy continued at the library. Pandora the cat lost a lot of weight and the vet diagnosed her with hyperthyroidism, necessitating a daily regimen of thyroid and kidney pills to maintain her otherwise surprisingly good health.
Travel-wise, we went on a cruise to the Bahamas; visited Hong Kong, Manila, and Boracay to see my brother get married (while I got shingles); for Thanksgiving weekend we saw the Tenement Museum; and for Christmas we saw Amy’s grandma in Schenectady. Amy’s parents also came over to visit us for the Fourth of July weekend, and toward the end of summer we checked out the National Arboretum with Jason.
In 2010 I went full-iOS and bought an iPad, which pretty much became my go-to portable computer for travel and couch use. (Indeed, I didn’t even bring my MacBook to the Philippines; the iPad sufficed.) Around October I also treated myself to an iPhone 3G (secondhand, jailbroken and unlocked for use on T-Mobile) — and then promptly lost it on a train in New York. After that I bought an iPhone 3GS (also secondhand, jailbroken and unlocked) and managed to not lose that one. (The old Android phone did serve okay as backup between iPhones.)
We bought a car in October: a 2010 Hyundai Elantra (HD). I hadn’t driven for years and did not have a license yet, so Amy drove the car exclusively for a while. Our first big trip was to IKEA in Woodbridge, and that’s how we learned to not take the Beltway anywhere, ever. Our second notable trip was to Meadowlark Botanical Gardens near Tysons Corner, and that was a much easier drive. (Post-facto addendum: I got my license the following year.)
Christmas 2010: Schenectady Edition
For Christmas of 2010, we visited Amy’s uncle and aunt and grandma up in Schenectady, NY. This meant flying up to Albany Airport (ALB) in dead of winter on a little regional jet out of Dulles (IAD):
Amy’s uncle is a very avid Harley-Davidson enthusiast, and apparently this is related to the porcine holiday ornamentation on the lawn and in the windows:
The downstairs Christmas Tree looked really familiar:
So did this jolly guy:
And Amy’s relatives gifted me with a way-cool Star Trek (2009) USS Enterprise tree ornament:
We drove down a road which is apparently famous for its Christmas lights:
Unfortunately a huge winter storm threatened Northeastern US travel, so I used a weather voucher to reschedule our flight home a day earlier, cutting our trip short. It turned out to be a good move as we caught the last ALB-IAD flight before days of chaos and cancellations. But not before I got some photos of the ALB Prayer Room, for my collection:
So ended our Schenectady Christmas. We might go back in the summer. Photoset here.