Day 10 1/24/99

  Here is our couples group that has been meeting for the past 2 and 1/2 years. We have been exchanging marriage and parenting ideas. It's a good way to share with each other our common problems and support each other.

Going from left to right: Russell and Lisa (their two daughters Julia and Erica are not shown); Mandy, Tim and their daughter Monica; Linda, Gary, and their daughter Megan; Theresa and Stephen (their dog Rondo not shown :-)

For dinner I steamed Red Snapper with hot fermented bean sauce. It was tasty but a little bony.

Day 11: 1/25/99

I can get used to this sabbatical as I accomplished so many things in just one day: deposited some checks at the bank, did step aerobics at Club Sport, talked to my high school friend Sharon at the Club, did weights and stretching, had a Chinese lunch of steamed pork and cabbage buns, drank Chinese tapioca milk tea,  bought parsley for dinner, bought de-caf teas for the trip, bought some tea plums for snacking, went to the Wine Shop in San Jose to buy some dessert wines, vintage port, three bottles of Gloria Ferrer ( http://www.gloriaferrer.com/eng/wgloria.html -- cool winery in Sonoma that Bob and I visited several years ago during one of the work management training week )  champagne for the big Millenium new year party (never too early nor too late to prepare), some Chardonnay, including a whole case of this top-rated Chalk Hill Estate Bottled Chardonnay,

(according the Wine Spectator's tasting notes: http://www.winespectator.com/   This is also rated one of the top 100 wines of 1998 by Wine Spectator.)

Bold, ripe, complex and concentrated in style, this California Chardonnay is brimming with flavor--layers of rich fig, pear, pineapple and smoky, toasty oak that linger on the long and complex finish. A worthy successor to the '95, a Spectator Selection last year.Drink now through 2002. (38000 cases produced)

had a mint ice cream cone with pistachio nuts at Baskin Robin, bought a new Canon 80-200mm zoom lense for the safari, met a new friend Liza on-line who will be going on the Kili climb with us, if I have room in my day pack decided to bring this bottle of 85 Taylor Fladgate vintage port to celebrate the successful Kili climb (imagine this bottle that came all the way from Portugal to U.S and now it's going back to Amsterdam and then to Tanzania.) went to the driving range to practice my golf swings and putting, and cooked rack of lamb using a recipe that I got from the Internet!  The Chimichurri Rack of Lamb recipe is from Canadian Living Television ( http://204.101.252.95/cltv/recipes/tvrec221a.htm ) Yummy. Amazing day, and it's only the 11th day of my 80 days of vacation!

Day 12: 1/26/99

Even though I'm away from work, but I still get to work on Intel's Celeron processor ( http://www.intel.com/celeron/ ). In my case I helped John and Pauline to bring up their 366Mhz Celeron HP system. Unfortunately, we struggled for three hours. Finally the problem with the sound and modem card is because it was not plugged into the PCI slot all the way! I opened and closed that stupid case more than 5 times. Here is a picture of me almost killing that HP machine with the screw driver :-)

Rondo's Kamp K9 Report Kard:

So Rondo did not do very well. I guess we cannot have him stay overnights. However, we will bring him back again for a 1/2 day of day care next Tue. .  Here is Rondo pooped out after Kamp K9.

  In the afternoon I shampooed Rondo and had a nice father and son bonding experience :-)

Had a nice on-line chat with Liza about our Kili climb and Lisa about Mah-Jong. Dinner at Guido's pizza with Theresa was pretty good, especially since we walked there. I then updated the packing list for our trip. This is a picture of half of our stuff! I have never bought so much Gore-Tex and Capilene before in my life. :-)