family renunion '05 - san francisco

This past weekend we had a family reunion in San Francisco. We originally reserved a mini-van that was to carry my parents, Darren, Jessica, and Andrea, the Trevor, and me. The morning of, we found that Enterprise was so kind as to upgrade us to a more expensive vehicle: a Ford Explorer. Unfortunately, this meant that our luggage would have to stay home. My brother ended up driving separately, so it all worked out in the end. The Explorer was more comfortable than a van would have been.

Friday night was a dinner for my Grandmother, Dr. Dorothy Au (Chiu) which meant lots of relatives I'd never met before... representatives from the Au, Cheng, Hom, and Chiu families (among others). Some of Jenn Runyan's relatives were there as well. The food was pretty traditional Chinese banquet fare (seafood style)... baby octopus, jellyfish, shark fin soup, fish, lobster, and shrimp w/ mayonnaise sauce, along with roasted chicken, noodles, etc. Good stuff, but the non-Asians were kind of weirded out by some of the items (like the octopus).

I've never been to a Chinese banquet where someone didn't play with the fish head and/or chicken head, and this one was no exception. My cousins spent some time walking around our tables with the aforementioned heads skewered on chopsticks.

My mom's older sister designed shirts that everyone "had" to wear on a couple of our outings. When my mom found out, she said to my dad, "Jeff and Darren will wear those, right?" He replied, "You don't know them very well." But I didn't want to be a party pooper, so I agreed.

During dinner, we found out that the hotel we reserved (we meaning my relatives, not us Ewings) was in a pretty bad part of San Francisco. It reminded me of that part in Pilgrim's Progress where Christian travels through a dark and dangerous place only to realize the next morning just how bad it was, because when the sun came out, we were pretty shocked.

This is the view from our hotel window. Yes, the hotel was bright pink. Apparently, it's considered "Mediterranean." I consider it "ugly."

More graffiti from around town. I wanted to take a picture of a youth center/church we saw but I couldn't get one. It was covered in christian tagging, with things like "FAITH" and "SALVATION" written all over the walls. The area immediately surrounding our hotel seriously reminded me of skid row, with more homeless people than non-homeless people walking around and congregating around street barbecues and trash cans.

Here's another view out the window and up the street

The sign on the other side of this place advertised their specialties: BAGELS, DONUTS, COFFEE, CHINESE FOOD

We did Alcatraz like good little tourists.

Back at the hotel, I caught a glimpse of a wannabe rapper from our window. He had his ghetto blaster out there with him and was practicing in the reflection in the car window. Every time a car passed, he stopped. At one point, he was (apparently) really into it, because he didn't see people walking up the street until they were practically across the street from him. He then spun around and ran into the building. It was hilarious. I did get video of him going at it, though, so maybe I'll put that up next time.

On Saturday afternoon, we were stuck in the hotel, so that night, I did what I needed to do and told my family we wouldn't be making it for dinner. Instead, Andrea and I went on a date in the Fishermen's Wharf/Pier 39 area (with Trevor in tow). I'm learning to really treasure those times and make the necessary steps to keep them happening. We had clam chowder bread bowls at Boudin's. These were taken from the Sea Lion docks on Pier 39.

We hit up a candy store just for the fun of it and walked out with a bag of saltwater taffy. Andrea also got a crepe from a crepe chain.

Back at home (So Cal), we found this in our bedroom

Tonight, we had yummy fish tacos with homemade tortillas. I have the best wife in the world. One in a million. I'm constantly amazed at her willingness to look for new recipes and try out new things. It bums her out to not have dinner ready by the time I get home, even though I don't mind waiting. She sacrifices lots of time and effort in the kitchen and I'm a happy recipient of the benefits. Oh, and to all of you because I got her and you didn't. Heh heh.

(Thanks to Lisa for the fish recipe)

Sorry...this was a little more long-winded than I expected (even for me).

Finally, here are more Trevor pics from the weekend. He's got 4 teeth now.