Ahhh the holidays have come and gone in a whilrwind of activity. One week in San Francisco followed by another week in Scotland. I've returned to England for one week and tomorrow I'm off to Shanghai for another week (work related). I might get inflated over my jetset lifestyle except I keep running out of underwear and that keeps me humble.
San Francisco was the most activity-filled for me. Firstly, Craig came with me to spend Christmas with my family. He met the aunts, the cousins, the cousins' kids, and the cousins' kids' dogs. Nothing much to note about the meeting except to note that there was nothing much to note. That is, I was extremely happy to see how easily he fit into the setting, as if he'd always been there. Ok, he might not have felt that way, but from what I could tell it went really well.
On top of meeting the Im/Kim/Chong clan, there was lots of meeting of the friends. In the past year I've met pretty much all of Craig's friends and they are about as obviously different as Scottish boys could be from California girls. I'm glad I've exposed him to them though, because sometimes I think I forget what it's like to hang out with girls and it's a side of me he hasn't seen before so it was best to get an extra concentrated dose to see the full blown version of Girlie Mims. He hasn't dumped me for seeing that, so that's a good sign.
Oh yes, the reunion, I know you wouldn't let me forget about that. It was... ok. I'm glad I went, and I got to see a few folks I wouldn't have seen otherwise but I was also a bit disappointed about some no shows. I found it interesting how little people seemed to have changed in 10 years but I suppose that really isn't that much time. It's just enough to get out of school and get started on some semblance of a career and maybe get married. I dunno if I can be arsed to go to a 20 year reunion.
Thanks to Angelina, Cindy, Kathy, Suse, Mabes, Angela, Stina and Leigh-Anne, for taking time to hang out and meet Craig (especially Mabes who came out 2 hours before my flight!). I'll be back in the bay in August so let's do it again! The August trip will include a soCal run so San Diego, I'm looking at you!
Scotland was expectedly busy and fun. New Year's eve (Hogmanay) was spent at Stirling Castle accompanied by the tunes of traditional Scottish music including bagpipes and The Proclaimers. Yup, you know, walk 500 miles and all Proclaimers. The finale was an almost excellent fireworks display set to music, but only almost excellent because of the blanket of fog that stubbornly set over the castle.
I was really terrible about taking pictures, but I've uploaded some in the album, mostly from the reunion. For those crazy weird enough, here's a link to the Flickr site with all the reunion pics.
