Philly Zoo and Swim Days

The kids went to the Zoo! And this is what they saw and did.

Not sure what's to the right




And the horsey ride I think was on a really old horse.
He looked tired.




And who cares about the animals...give me ice cream.





Thanks to Jack and Cameron's mommy Leah, for the generous invitation to their place for swimming and the zoo.

Click me for more Philadelphia Zoo photos.







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Apple Tree Farm

This is Apple Tree Farm.
And this is Mrs. Boot.


We went picking for apples and fought over the big tractor.

Click me for more photos of Apple Tree Farm

Babyface Babycakes Diaper cakes

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=35209496404

Can you people see this?
Just thought I'd share this with the folks who subscribe to my blog.

If you see something brownish...I wouldn't eat it. It may not be chocolate or a O'Henry bar.

Bad Seagulls Beach

We got to the beach in mid afternoon to avoid the hotest time of the day. But the ocean was very rough, you could see the white tips of the waves. After heading to the beach we weren't allowed to go very far into the ocean.
We went as far as we could and that was enough for the kids to have fun. Although Grace doesn't seem to like the water very much.

Hey you know why you're not allowed to bring food to the beach?
Cuz the friggin seagulls swarm your bag and fly away with it even if they can't freakin open the bag or the plastic container. They took some cookies that I wanted to try.

When we came back from playing in the water we saw seagulls hanging around our stuff and we thought the wind was blowing garbage around. But it was our food! Where's the NRA when you 'em?

Click here for more Spring Lake beach photos, minus the seagulls.

Six, not sex

It was a rainy day. And I tried to order a pizza from 1-800-something-3636 not 'free sex - free sex'.

That's me on the right. Looking very euro-ish wearing everything that Tresa and her cousin Martin selected for me in and around Metzingen, Germany. Well except for my fruit of the looms and my target black socks. I chose those.

So I keep getting our anniversary date mixed up with Antonio's birthday. His is on the 22nd and ours is on the 24th.

It wasn't a rainy day, it was a real sunny day down here in the Garden State.
It's 6 years and counting today and getting better every day. Happy Anniversary.

Real wives of Orange County

There's a reality show on called "Wives of Orange County".
I'm not a fan of reality shows. Tresa had it on.
But it's not very good.

When we were at the Welk resort just north of San Diego. I was standing in line with all the other kids waiting to go down the water slide.

So behind me was a couple of boys who were later joined by their mother. Who's sitting on the far right there.

There were a bunch of little girls ahead of us and a gap of a few steps had opened. The little boy behind me yells - "MOVE UP!"
No 'excuse me' or 'please'. It was a rude yell. These girls weren't noisy or impolite they were very nice. I think they were (as I) a little shocked at the behaviour and treatment they recieved, with the mother standing right there.
If you were the mother what would you have expected her reaction to be? Upset at her son, and maybe take him aside to say that that's not proper behaviour.

This is what she said to her son - "Good for you, honey."

Nice. It's no wonder we live in a rude world. Rudeness gets rewarded. Awesome.
I wanted to say something, but I didn't want to give parenting advice to someone who probably will make a big stink, if they encourage this sort of behaviour. I didn't want the other kids to see an adult go wacko. That's what I was assuming.

I'm disappointed in that parent.

Other than that, the Welk resort was quite nice. Full of seniors and families and lots of play area for kids. Pretty family oriented place.

Really clean, great weather, beautiful pools and 2 golf courses.

There's three pool areas. The one I took photos from had the most kid stuff. A little water park, a slide and a play room area with foosball, pool table and internet.

Click me for more Welk photos.


That person/mother/wench/whatever should strive to be more like our friend Charul. She's a real deal wife of LA County. But then again she's not even american, she's Canadian.
And she can cook indian food faster than ordering a cardiac arrest big mac meal at mcdonald's.






The other thing we noticed was recycling was optional here. This is our pizza container. Going to some landfill.







And we kept visiting this place -Pinkberry and Jamba Juice.
Since we don't have them in Canada.



And we couldn't leave LA without going to the Beach. We visited a different beach this time from when we were here in 2006. We went to Seal Beach which was more kid friendly.

The water was chilly, but you get used to the temp really fast. The sand is nice and there's a play park near the pier. I liked it, but Tresa liked Huntington Beach better.

There's these tiny homes off the beach. And there nothing special, but they're going for 4million USD. Phew.

Click me for more Seal Beach photos.

Olympic coverage in the USA

Olympic coverage in the USA is lousy. The Olympics are about international competition. But all you see are US athletes.

In one diving competition where Canada was in 2nd or 3rd spot, the coverage was edited such that you saw the athlete who was in 1st spot and then the 2nd place athlete and then the 8th and 10th place americans. That was the coverage.
You would not see any of the athletes in between.
And for sports where there are no US athletes, there is no coverage. I don't understand.
I was really missing the CBC coverage which shows everyone. It's unfortunate that it's like this.
I was glad to be back in Canada to watch the rest of the Olympics in it's entirety.

It's no wonder many folks in the US know very little about people or places outside of their own country.

Go World Go!

The Riviera Club - Joanna & Nate

So this is our friend - "the american roommate" that we met on a bus during my first trip to Thailand back in 2001. That's the tiny person on the right there. She was traveling on her own from an university exchange program in Japan.

So being the friendly traveler Tresa asked her if she wanted to split a room with us. It worked out. We all got a nicer room at a reduced rate. I don't even recall how we got to talking. All I remember was she had a baseball hat. And I was hoping for air conditioning. This is the place I got heat stroke and fed some tropical fish.

And now she was getting married after all these years. This was the first time we'd met Nate. We'd heard about him, but never met until now.

hey this venue was and is a PGA tour stop. It was really impressive. In the Pacific Palisades right off of Sunset Blvd. The Riviera Club is home to the Nissan Open.
During the ceremony I could hear the ping of golf balls from the driving range.


Mike Weir won this event in 2004 & 05.





I was looking for the trophies and Tresa found it off in another location. The fatter trophy on the right-middle there is the PGA one, and the one to the left of it is the Wanamaker trophy for the US Open. I think that this club also hosted a US Open event.


Anyways...back to the wedding. With Joanna's fondness for everything asian, although I only saw about 5 other asians at the wedding for some reason I was expecting more, the wedding itself had an asian theme.

From the cherry blossom trees to the kimono table cards and the blue buddha. Even the center pieces were made out of bamboo. Bamboo is a renewal resource you know.

We couldn't help looking around all the time. It was such beautiful venue.
Our salad was pretty too. I took a picture...see the link to the album below. My steak was good too, but no pic. I ate it pretty fast. It was good.

Look for the dessert, the strawberries wearing tuxes. It was a good thing I had taken a nap in the afternoon. I had been working on EST while in LA. So my body clock was still going to bed by 9pm PST and up at 4-5am PST. I would have been beat. And I needed to be awake to drive back to Charul and Ramesh's place. Good thing we had the GPS in the car.

These are Joanna's parent. They were so nice. I wished I had video'd father-daughter dance. Cuz it was pretty unique. It wasn't a slow song. I did take multiple shots so hopefully you can get a sense of the dance.

We didn't realize that we were so well known. We were known as the Thailand couple (I'm also known as the tropical fish guy). Every time we introduced ourselves people's eyes would open wide and say 'You're the Thailand couple'.
But if your kid was travelling alone in a far away land. And a couple befriends you, I guess you'd be grateful too. It's always safer with friends than alone.

Thumbs up to Tresa's outgoing travelling personality.

Click me for more photos.

The Ol' Getty Factory

It was an adventure of unexpected things. We got to the airport in Toronto 2 hrs in advance. When getting my boarding pass I notice that our seats were in 3 different locations on the plane to our connection to Denver. The lady at the desk did the best she could but could only get two of the seats together. Grrrreat, I thought. But the lady who was in the seat next to Tresa and Kieran was kind enough to exchange seats with me so that we could all sit together.

It was probably because the Toronto FC were on the plane to Denver to play a match.

I also noticed our Denver to LA connection was also all over the place, but she couldn't do anything about it because it was a United Airlines flight. And I had to take care of it over in Denver.

Once in Denver we rushed to the gate to try to get 3 seats together. And again, we couldn't get 3 seats together, and no one was willing to exchange seats. NICE.

Once in LA though our problems didn't end there. We were waiting for our bags. And we found out that they weren't on our flight. GRRREAT! No bags. No toiletries...nothing. Awesome. But before we left the airport I wanted to make sure we had 3 seats together going home.

I then found out that you can book your seats online 24 hrs in advance. No wonder we had no seats together. People were booking them well in advance! It then didn't matter so much to get to the airport 2+ hrs early.

We eventually got our bags (24+hrs later), but the time they said it would arrive kept coming and going. First it was 10-12pm on Friday, then 3-6am Saturday, then 2hrs later, then I stopped calling.

So in LA do what the LA'ers do.
You know in LA, no body walks. There's even no walking signs. I'll take a pic to show you. Everyone drives. Pretty soon it'll be like the people on board the Axiom in WALL-E.
But we went against the norm around here and walked the hills. We saw geckos and fig trees and spikey flower plants and play parks.

We also went to Jamba Juice and Pinkberry.
Pinkberry is a 3 year old chain that's basically frozen yoghurt and fruit and stuff.
But they have a coffee and green tea yoghurt in addition to the plain.

Check it out. www.pinkberry.com

We walked around the area. And it's up the hill and then down the big hill to get to the main shopping area.

We found something that you can't get in Toronto. I finally got a taste. The last time we had these was at Hersey world in Penn. And they went like there was no tomorrow.


And we finally made it to the Getty. This is the place Joanna was suggesting that we go the last time we were here but never made it.
What an amazing museum. The building itself is a work of art. The whole history of Getty is worth experiencing.

Did you know that seat belts first purpose was to keep you upright when you fell asleep in a vehicle.

Click me for more Getty photos

Lord Simcoe Day

This was our first trip up to the cottage this year. For several weekends now it's rained. Rained lots. It was good and bad. Good cause we saved money watering our grass. Good because it made me study. Bad, because it's summer time! It's supposed to be nice out. We've been inside all winter.





I'm so glad I got my PMP exam out of the way. Now I could enjoy the rest of my summer without having to lug around the text books. The first thing I did when I finished my exam was text message Tresa "I passed!". So we headed home, packed the car and headed up north to God's country to see Kieran.

I was still wired from studying so much, I hadn't studied that much for an exam since university. When we were at the cottage I wasn't sure what to do I felt like I needed to be doing practice exams.

But there was food, there was wine, beer, fishing rods, worms to bait on hooks, fish to catch. Dedek did all of that for both me and Kieran.

Dedek even took the fish off the hooks when we caught them. All 25 of them.
Kieran got to touch the fish's eyes...gross.


There was marshmallows to roast, chocolate and graham crackers to turn into s'mores.

And there was more food and more wine.

Trails to ride and run and a nice clean lake to swim. It felt good to decompress.



Bread cooked on an open fire,
and did I mention there were more s'mores.







Click me for more photos

I want my, I want my .... P-M-P

After about a month of missing out on rides and other fun stuff in order to study and get this exam out of the way. I got my PMP. My Project Management Professional designation.

I was planning on writing this exam months ago, but I was so busy with work and we were going to Europe. I was waiting for the best time to prepare and write it. In the end, there was no best time, you just had to do it. Now it was summer and the nice weather was here and I had to spend it studying at a library.

It was 4 hrs of reading tricky questions. With 9 mins left remaining and reviewing my questions once more, I just thought click the 'end exam' button and go. I clicked it and the screen went blank for a moment. People were telling me that you will automatically know if you passed or failed. The next screen that appeared was a survey request. I thought to myself - I failed. CRAP! I clicked the option that indicated everything was great and clicked Done. Then....Congratulations on passing the PMP exam message came up. WOO HOO! Thank GOD. I was so relieved. The next thing I did was text message Tresa "I passed."

I was lucky, June and July weren't such a great months, it rained quite a bit and on July 20-22 I was fortunate or unfortunate enough to be summoned to be a juror. I'd never done it before but it's your civic duty to do it when called.

What do you do when you're summoned? You wait most of the time, in a large room with all the other potential jurors, between 8:30am to 4:30pm until the court is ready to interview you and determine if you are able to serve as a juror.

So I studied to pass the time. And got the bulk of my studying done during that week. And I moved my exam date from Aug 21 to Aug 1. I didn't even know you could move it up, I thought you could only move it back. But at the time when I booked it, the dates I wanted weren't available, so when I was basically very close to being ready I moved it up and went into overdrive studying. It was the perfect time, cause Kieran was up at the cottage for 2 weeks while daycare was closed for holidays.

On day 3 of my jury duty week. My group was finally called up to the courtroom. They'll ask everyone some group questions (like: do you know the victim or accused or anyone involved in the case?) So if anyone of these applies you get excused. The defense can also just say "no".

So what happens if you get selected to be a juror?
Being selected would have meant staying for weeks or months to juror a trial. In the end I wasn't selected. Phew. Now I'm exempt for 3 years. So if you get summoned. Check it out. Bring a few movies. Maybe a pillow.