Goodbye 2012
Well, another great and eventful year has passed, complete with ups and downs, as in a big move from up North to down South; trips to Arizona and Virginia; and remodeling our CA home. Goodbye 2012, it was fun.
Driving to Saratoga CA
Thursday, March 22nd, I head out on a mini driving adventure from Redmond, Washington to Saratoga, California.
I’ll be driving out there to start my new job with Roku, and Steph and Darius will join me once our WA house sells. I’ll make two overnight stops along the way in:
- Newport, OR
- Eureka, CA
With a nice casual and scenic drive down Coast Hwy 101, I should arrive Saturday afternoon-ish. I’ll take pictures along the way and post them here.
Before leaving, however, I had a total of 55 things on my “to-do list”!!! Not social things mind you, but chores and home improvement tasks (you know, for curb-appeal =). I got about 10 left to take care of Thurs morning before I head out =) Whew… exhausted.
Goodbye 2011
Like most of you, we’re wondering how 2011 seemed to fly by so quickly! We were just talking with a long time friend about how the years go by faster as you get older. As a kid, even a day seemed to last forever. Now, there simply doesn’t seem to be enough hours in a day. Goodbye 2011.
In Love Again…
After I graduated from UCSD, I fell into my first relationship with a car. I truly loved it, lost it, then fell in love again after a long dry spell.
Injury Trend
I’ve enjoyed a wide variety of sports and activities my entire life. I’ve fully engaged in several different forms of martial arts, fencing, horseback riding, cricket, diving, swimming, sailing, skiing, softball, golf, soccer, tennis, volleyball, skateboarding, cycling, and mountain biking. Throughout my life I’ve had the good fortune of avoiding major injuries. Even when I bungie-jumped, parachuted, or went white-water river rafting with the Alabama Bomb Squad in class 3, 4, and 5 rapids I emerged intact.
Unfortunately, this injury-free blessing has now been replaced by a different trend… mountain biking injuries! This last week, I was out enjoying a ride on a Tiger Mountain trail when I took a 2-foot jump, landed it, avoided a tree, then hit a patch of soft dirt and lost control. My handlebars twisted and I hit the ground pretty hard on my right side, knocking the wind out of me. Xrays revealed 2 fractured ribs on my right side. Apparently, my right arm/elbow got between my ribs and the ground and may have caused the injury. As I’ve spent the last few days in a great deal of pain, I’ve had time realize that I’m 3 for 3. Each summer, for the last 3 summers, I’ve gone mountain biking and injured myself. Last summer, I wiped out and cracked a rib on my left side. The summer before that, I wiped out and bent my left pinky in a very unnatural way, resulting in bone-chips and months of occupational therapy to ensure full use and movement of my finger.
Mountain Biking at Middle Fork, Snoqualmie WA
McCuskers Visit
Top of Little Si
Adam, Christine, Amber, and Julie came to visit us for a week. We’ve been looking forward to this for quite some time now. We planned the trip many, many months ago and it’s finally here. Darius loves having his cousins here and is thoroughly enjoying playing “robot destruction” games with Julie. We have casual mornings with everyone waking up at different times; Christine is usually the first one up and Julie’s usually the last. Of course, Christine is also usually the first one out at night. Overall, it’s been great so far with lots of fun activities: Pike Place Market, Monorail ride, dinner at the Space Needle’s Sky City restaurant, hiking up Little Si, dinner at Caspian Grill, full day’s boating on Lake Union and Lake Washington (Julie took to piloting the boat like fish to water), and shopping for motorcycle jackets. On Friday, we went for a quick tour of the Microsoft campus and everyone had fun finding lifesize statues of characters from various Xbox games. We ended the day with Flying Saucer Pizza and Red Mango for dessert.
On Saturday, we drove to Puyallup for paintball! Wouldn’t you know it, the day we dress in long pants and long sleeve shirts to help add a layer of “protection” turns out to be the 2nd hottest day of this summer… about 80-something degrees. Yes, compared to the rest of the country, 80-something degrees is nothing, but for us it was hot. Nevertheless, we were having fun until another group of people joined in and they had their own equipment! Yup, automatic markers (paintball guns) that shot harder paintballs faster. That meant it hurt a lot more! Needless to say, we all got our bruises and welts. After quick showers at home and lots of whining about our aching bodies, we went out to an Asian buffet and stuffed our faces.
Monday morning the McCusker clan flew back home and parting was quite difficult. Darius was truly sad all day and our house was way too quiet. We miss you already and can’t wait ’till we get together again. Until then we’ll keep looking at all the photos as great reminders of the fun we had. Love always.
Vassigh Family Website Launches
Xbox Kinect Premiere
Hello world! After many, many years of communicating with you through more traditional methods we’ve finally created our own family website! Yay… We’ll do our best to keep it updated with stories and new photos, especially Stephanie’s scrapbook creations. It’s a bit sparse now, but we’ll keep adding more.