Wedding Night

I had a lot of fun at the wedding reception tonight. I saw many old acquaintances, including my old boss Cam. Here's a picture of Farah's brother Kareem, Cam's husband Olin, and me before we sat down for dinner.

And here are two of me with the bride and groom. Neither turned out great, unfortunately. In one I was hidden behind them, and in the other the flash was too bright.

Rehearsal Dinner

I had dinner with the wedding party tonight at Mu Lan, a Chinese restaurant in midtown Atlanta. Here is a picture of (from left to right) Farah's cousin Maya, the mother-in-law to be (I forgot her name), and Farah.


And here's one of Farah's sister Nadine (left) and her cousin Alexandra (right).


I removed red eye with a nice piece of freeware called Red Eye Remover.

More Atlanta

Thursday, I went downtown for lunch with my old boss from Georgia Tech. In the evening, I went out to dinner with my old roommate and friend from law school Ken, with his wife Kathy, his brother, and his brother's family. Then it was off to trivia, where Ken and I took first place. I guess we still have the touch.

Atlanta

I just arrived in Atlanta. My friend Farah is getting married on Saturday. I knew my hotel room would have a king size bed, but I wasn't expecting this HDTV!

Heil Valley Ranch

Today I volunteered with the Boulder County Parks and Open Space's forest restoration project at Heil Valley Ranch. We mostly lopped branches off felled trees and put them in burn piles, but we also used hand saws to take down some smaller trees.

Chopping down trees is considered "forest restoration" because before we started preventing and putting out forest fires, Ponderosa Pine forests consisted of around 25 trees per acre, with grass and wildflowers filling in the spaces. Without the 3- to 10-year fires sweeping through the forests, there can be up to 2,000 Ponderosa Pines per acre, with little growing on the forest floor. So we helped thin out the forest to bring it to a more natural state.

Weekend Recap

Friday evening I again rode my bike to Louisville, this time for the Louisville Street Faire. I took the northern route this time to avoid the big hill. I met up with Sara, Lenore and Rich in front of the band stage.


Saturday, I went for a bike ride with Sara. Here's a bird I saw during the ride. The winds were pretty strong, and this bird of prey was hovering about twenty feet off the ground. Its wings and body would adjust with the wind to keep its head perfectly still.

Saturday night I went to a friend from NOAA Jessica's party. My friend John from work was also there, as well as a dozen or so of Jessica's friends.

Today, Rich, Sara, and Lenore rode down from Louisville to meet Ilana and me in Boulder. Ilana works at NCAR, which is how she knows Rich and Sara, and she interviewed with my boss this past week for a post-doc position.
The five of us rode around town and stopped for lunch at Lucky's Cafe in North Boulder.

And finally, tonight I thought the moon and clouds looked cool, so I tried to capture the coolness:

Concert in the park

Thursday after work I rode my bike to Louisville and met up with Sara and Rich at a park to hear some live music. Henry Butler, a New Orleans piano player, was supposed to play, but we were informed hours before the concert was to start that he couldn't make it. Instead we heard Jennifer Lane on keyboards, Mark Diamond on string bass, and Tony Black on drums -- a hastily-thrown-together band that apparently had never played together before. They still sounded pretty good.

Tennis, biking, and dinner

No pictures today because I didn't bring my camera with me.

This morning I played tennis with my boss's mother, who is a top-ten-ranked 75+ yr. old woman in the world. We played with another co-worker of mine (and one of three people I regularly play tennis with throughout the summer), Ken. We weren't able to find a fourth for doubles, so we rotated and played one vs. two. She was quite good, and we had a competitive match. Afterwards, we went to my boss's house for brunch.

After brunch, I went for a bike ride up to Louisville and back. The wind pattern was such that it took me longer to go down the hill than up; I rode home into a steady 20 mph wind, with gusts that would nearly bring me to a halt.

I made up for the extra workout with a big dinner. Steve, a graduate student at Georgia Tech during my time there, just got into town this evening. He, John, and I met up for dinner at a sports bar to watch the Celtics-Lakers (Steve is from New England) and the Cubs game (John is from Chicago).

Golden Gate State Park

I went hiking today with Sean and Sara at Golden Gate State Park, located a few miles northwest of Golden.



I took two group photos; one with me in Sara's right lens and Sean in Sara's left lens, and one traditional:




In the evening, I went out to dinner with Harald, Roya, John, and Safia to celebrate Harald's birthday. His birthday was a week ago, but he just got back from Germany two days ago, so we celebrated it tonight.

Cloud

I saw this cloud out my window and went outside to take a picture of it. My camera doesn't quite capture the cloud's orange color nor it's towering presence on the horizon.

Boulder 360

On Sunday, Rich, Lenore, Sara, Sean and I did the Boulder 360 (degrees, not miles), a bike tour around the city of Boulder. We started on the eastern side, picked up Sean a quarter of the way around, stopped at Pearl Street for burritos at Illegal Pete's, then finished with the Boulder 180 route to the south. But that wasn't all! After Lenore went home, the rest of us biked over to Superior, then up to Louisville for some vegan ice cream before Sean and I headed back to Boulder. All in all, I probably rode around 43 miles yesterday. I'm considering getting a road bike -- probably after I move this summer. Anyways, here we all are at the end of the 360: