(Click for all the photos!)

The photos from the second leg of our trip are up! After Connecticut we headed up to spend a few days with Amy's family in western Massachusetts. Officially we were our nephew, Logan's houseguests, and he was quite the host. We got to see all the toys (lots of trucks) and he made sure that we never got bored...after all there are lego cars to be built. But be warned, he's a harsh critic if you start putting wings and jets on your car :) That weekend was Amy's birthday followed by mother's day, so there was a big party at Lisa's for all the extended family to get together along with Amy's old housemates from Boston. I even got to operate Don's excavator, how about that for a party trick. Afterwards, with a little creative navigating on Liz's part, we went with Liz, Mike, Jason, and Sarah to Across the Border for dinner so the staff could sing happy birthday to her. It was a lot of fun. Sunday we hung out around the house, enjoying the surprisingly nice weather, and I even managed to get my camera high enough with my KAP rig for a bubble panorama of Lisa and Don's house. You can check it out on the Panorama Page. Finally, Monday before we headed out, Will got his Uzi from his nephew and we took it out back for a little target practice. There's nothing quite as frightening as seeing your wife fire an Uzi. Next up...Vermont!

(click for more photos)

Saturday evening was graduation, so Matt and I setup a picnic for a bunch of friends and family that afternoon. It's late May in Berkeley, so we had assumed the weather would be nice...we were wrong...kinda. The forecast was for scattered showers, so the fact that it didn't rain I suppose means that the weather cooperated. The winds were nice for kiting though, and not so heavy that we were freezing, so all in all we can't really complain. Lots of food was consumed, all the parents got to meet each other, and everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, so I'd say it was a success.

Last Wednesday Aram, Bill, and I went to the A's vs Rays game down at the Coliseum. Despite how long I've been out here, it was my first A's game. Sadly they were out of their promotional $2 Wednesday tickets, so we sat in the bleachers behind right-center field. It was a gorgeous day and in spite of a long losing streak, the A's busted out there A game and clobbered the Rays 9-1, with 4 home runs if I remember correctly. It was only a short, 2 hr game, but we managed to eat a disturbing number of $1 hot dogs and drink a whole lot of beer thanks to BART running straight to the stadium. All in all a very fun and relaxing day.

We're back from our east coast trip, and well rested. Now begins my adventure of sorting through all the photos. To give you an idea of what I'm up agains, I took 7.6 GB of photos. Sure each photo is about 8 MB, but that's still a lot of pictures. As you might imagine, Amy is quite sick of seeing my camera, so I don't think I'm going be allowed to take a picture with her in it for a long time. Anyhow, to make the processing and posting of the photos a little speedier from the viewer's perspective, I'm breaking the trip into three natural segments: Our time in RI and CT; Amy's family in Tolland, MA; and at the family cabin in VT. So this is the First segment in RI and CT.

We arrived Sat. afternoon and headed straight to Bristol to meet up with Rob and Betsy. Aside from a stop at a Dunkin' Donuts that had no donuts, that went straight forward enough. Our first day is pretty much a blur since I hadn't slept on the red eye. I'm pretty sure we did something or another and cards and cows were involved at some point...no, wait, the cows were the second night...see what I mean about it all being a bit hazy. The second day Rob's mom Beryle was down and with her and their neighbor Kristine we went to decorate cookies at a little non-profit run by a friend of theirs. The idea is that she bakes many, many, many cookies, and we all drop by and decorate them so they may later be distributed to various organizations around holidays such as the approaching Mother's Day. It was fun, and a good activity for our first day, especially since it was a bit wet out. If you'd like to learn more, check out the website at Ninecooks.com.


(Click me for cookie decorating pics)

The next couple days, Rob took off the afternoons to hang out with us which was nice, and in the evenings we got to have dinner and play cribbage with Betsy as well. Since it was Rob, of course one of our afternoons was spent flying kites at Colt State Park, where just as promised the wind showed up at 2:00 on the nose.

From Bristol we spent a day down in Newport, before ending up in Mystic, CT for a couple of days. In Newport we walked a pretty fair chunk of the Cliff Walk which goes along the coast line between the water and the mansions. We went far enough that the path turned from well paved concrete to mostly dirt and gravel, and we ceased seeing other visitors. It was definately fun to do on a nice day like we had. After the walk there was a quick bit where we ran back to Rob and Betsy's to retrieve my coat which I'd forgotten. Once back in Newport though we went down to the tidal pools by Brenton Pt. State Park and spent some time hopping around. We never saw much sea life, but it was still fun. Having had our fill of Newport we took off to Mystic so we could walk around town and get some pictures before the rain showed up. In Connecticut we mainly relaxed, had some nice meals (Bravo Bravo!, Capt. Daniel Packer Inne), visited my old advisor Stan at Conn, and checked out how the area has developed since our time there. All in all we did quite a bit in what was only the first leg or our trip, and you can see it all by clicking the pic below :)


(click me for the rest of the photos from the first leg of our trip!)

Check back soon for leg two of our East Coast trip - Tolland!