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Just got back from an awesome fun weekend in Sarasota, Florida.. Lynn and Hao got married, and it was a magnificent time.. Flew out on Friday — sheesh, Florida is kind of further than I thought, it takes like the whole day to traverse the whole SFO-ATL-SRQ trip.. I left the house at like 6:30am and didn’t get to my hotel until around 9pm… 12 hours, door to door. Someone should really get working on that transporter-type machinery quickly.

I’ve never been to Sarasota before, and I can now see why the snowbirds all retire there. It’s gorgeous. Saturday was spent on Siesta beach. The sand at Siesta Key is.. awesome. Hong has a great pic of it.. Supposedly, it’s made up mainly of quartz (99% according to a Harvard Geologic study), so it’s super fine, and incredibly white — which means that it reflects most of the sun, making it cool to walk on. It’s pretty awesome, and with the consistency of flour, it feels like you’re walking around on a comfy mushy surface. If I were designing a beach, I’d seriously just load up on that stuff, it’s awesome.

Sunday, incidentally, was my birthday.. so it was actually kind of cool to be able to spend it with a bunch of my friends in a sunny locale. My friend Dusty owns a golf course in Sarasota, so AJ and I played 9 holes in the morning. The last round of golf I played was last February in Vegas, so yah.. I was a little rusty (not that I’m actually any good when not rusty), but it was still fun. I think I came pretty close to hitting a baby alligator on the 7th hole. He was sunbathing just to the left of the tee box, and since Dusty pointed it out right before I hit, I guess I was thinking about it, and… the ball decided to shank off the heel of the driver and into the pond… Good thing momma alligator didn’t see that. The rest of the day was spent basking in the hot Sarasota sun by the hotel pool with Audris, frolicking in the ocean, and throwing the ol’ pigskin around with Korby and Mcc.

The wedding itself was in the backyard of the Crowley mansion, which is situated right on the water. Halfway through the ceremony, I felt the temperature drop, so I was looking around for the rain to come, but it never did, so the weather cooperated fully. Lynn and Hao have spent the past few years in various places all around the world, so this wedding was one of the most global crowds that I’ve seen… I really wonder how many cumulative miles were traversed for the event, but people hailed from San Francisco, New York, Zurich, Holland, London, China, and Chicago, amongst others… Pretty cool. Though I had aspirations of taking a ton of awesome pictures throughout the whole event, the frequency of my picture taking seemed to vary inversely with the amount of alcohol I consumed, so, I don’t have many pics of the dancey-general-goodtimery that I had near the end of the wedding.

Lynn’s mom was in charge of the music, and she found this live band that was really, really good. I actually haven’t been to many weddings with a live band before, and I was impressed that they were able to play music that appealed to a wide cross section of ages. Lynn’s grandma had a ton of friends there that were super good at dancing, so it was awesome to see them cut the rug to the many swing songs that the band played. I mean, the band didn’t play any live d’nb or anything approaching that, but I do think they did a good job of keeping the energy up and fun. Good work, wedding band.

Anyway.. my pics are here, mcc’s pics are here (he took some great ones), hong’s are here and korby’s pics are available good as well, but he doesn’t like me linking to them cuz then his veil of google secrecy is blown. That said, his picture set is the foil to mine, since his picture taking frequency actually increases with the amount of alcohol consumed.

Good times.

wee!

dan and robin got married! so fun! so happy! congrats you two. you guys are the best.

mer posted some awesome videos. here they are:

Dan + Robin’s wedding NOV 2 2007 from merpeck on Vimeo.

“born to be my baby” from merpeck on Vimeo.

I’ll post some more pics when I get them, but honestly, it just went by sooo quickly…

Sunnia and Mike got married last weekend up in Tahoe, and it was awesome. They got married on 07/07/07, which hopefully will be easy to remember… It’s apparently the most popular day of the year to get married this year. I wonder if next year’s 08/08/08 will be as popular. I’m guess not, since it’s a Friday. 09/09/09 is a Wednesday, but I think that’ll be super popular for Chinese peeps, cuz “9″ rhymes with “a long time” in Chinese. And wouldn’t it be neat to be married on a day that rhymes with “long time/long time/long time”? Hmm. Maybe I’ll just book a venue now, all I need is.. hmm.. someone to marry. Well, I guess I’d have a few years.

Anyway.. I was the best man at Masnick’s wedding, which was my first wedding party. So, that was pretty neat. I was tasked with a bunch of tasks, including setting up the chupah, carrying the rings, etc. etc.. The wind atop of Heavenly was not cooperating with my chupah construction, and it was doing its best to blow that thing off the mountain. But, armed with ropes and a few sandbags, we managed to get that thing secured.. somewhat. Apparently, it almost fell over when we all went back to prepare for our entrance, and thanks to Andy, it was saved. (Thanks Andy)

Even though it was hectic at times, the wedding went off perfectly. Sure there were fiascos: a huge fire threatened Tahoe, the hotel “lost” all of the reservations that were made for the wedding, some placecards decided to go missing for awhile, the chupah almost blew off the mountain, but all in all, it went off pretty well.

We rented a house up in Tahoe for a bunch of our friends, and we supposedly broke some stuff. Grrr. What the F? I didn’t notice anything broken at all, so I’m curious to see what we “broke” on the bill that they are apparently sending. Grr.

Anyway.. congrats to Mike and Sunnia!!

More pics from Paul, Korby, and Meredith.

Congrats to Angie and Matt, who got married this weekend.. It was a gorgeous weekend for a wedding, and the ceremony and reception were perfect. So this is the first of this San Francisco crew to get married off — I feel like SF people definitely get married a little later than the rest of the country (albeit Angie and Matt are a little younger than me)…

Also observed,

Sign #47 that you and your friends are getting older:
At a party with an open bar, you order a soda.

Woohoo. It was an awesome party for a terrific couple. All pics here.

I turned 31 this weekend. Woohoo. Ashley’s birthday was the day before mine, so we decided to have a joint celebratory party on Saturday.. After dinner at Lulu, we headed down to Shine for the main festivities.

It was an evening filled with fabulous drunkgiggery (yes, I just made up that word).. My friends are the bestest evar. It was SUPER crowded due to the Angels of Bass party, but Trip hooked us up with our very own VIP booth, complete with a fully stocked mini-fridge. Red Bull, Vodka, and Fernet. Woo. Check out the whole set of pictures here — hmm.. I need to get a diffuser or something for that flash.

On Sunday, I celebrated with my family down in the boro. Everyone chipped in to cook up a delicious dinner with all of my favorites.. my grandma’s potato salad, kalbi, clams and oysters, meatloaf muffins, brussels sprouts, and some new dishes that my dad made up that were super tasty as well.

Yah, there was way too much food.. but so tasty. Food coma for sure.

I can’t believe another year has passed already… yikes.

A bunch of us went up to hog island yesterday to stuff ourselves full of the delicious oysters and bbq.. Man, I love that place. The cold snap has finally broken, so it was a beautiful day up there (even though most of us were still bundled up. We were up there to celebrate the engagement of Matt & Melody and Clint & Renais. Congrats guys!

Clint really, really wanted me to take a picture of these horses on the horizon.. so good thing I had my 70-300 on me, cuz they were far, far away. So, here you go Clint.

It’s my favorite time of the year.. hooray for the holidays. “Dennis’ Xmas Mix 2006″ is done and ready to distribute (ask me if you want one), and I’m even almost all done with my holiday shopping..

This Saturday was Santarchy aka Santacon here in San Francisco.. Approximately 500 Santas descended upon Fisherman’s Wharf around noon, and then proceeded to wreak good cheer and mayhem upon the unsuspecting tourists and residents of San Francisco..

After starting off at Hooters, the group wandered up Hyde, and then to the top of Lombard, blocking traffic, of course, as we all meandered down the crooked street. After Lombard, we headed for Washington Square Park, where free beer and hot dogs were distributed (Santas are hungry and thirsty) and a wicked game of Twister was played.. But then.. when a wedding come out of the church on the park, we all mobbed like some sort of wicked swarm of red bees..

After leaving the wedding, we continued to North Beach, where we frequented several NoBe bars, ultimately ending up at good ol’ Larry Flynt’s place… Oh.. good times, good times. It was quite a scene.

Most of my pics are here. (Yah, ahem.. some aren’t posted.)

Saturday was Eileen’s birthday, which she celebrated at El Rio… A karaoke band, the Amazing Embarrassonics, were there… so, people got to get up on stage and sing karaoke… They were pretty good musicians, and were able to cope with the varying degrees of karaoke skill..

Andy did a great job conjuring up Johnny Cash with his rendition of “Ring of Fire”..

I was on the schedule to sing some Neil Diamond.. but, right as I was about to go up.. they announced… “Oh.. We’re done for the night.. See you in February!” Hmm. That’s not cool.

Woo.. Halloween in San Francisco is the best… I love how the whole city really gets into the spirit and everyone makes a conscientious effort to dress up in some sort of costume. We didn’t throw our usual Halloween party this year, Anna has moved to New York, and with Alan being out of town in London and Kane with a broken foot, there didn’t seem to be enough party throwing momentum to make it happen… Oh well.. maybe next year… So, instead, we headed over to the North Star, where one of Stephanie’s friends was throwing a party…

James and I dressed up as a Communist Party this year.. James was Kim Jong Il, and I was Mao-ish, and we donned party hats and passed out noisemakers.. Get it? It’s a Communist Party. (rimshot)

Meredith was a crafty genius, and made Stephanie a fantastic replica of Björk’s swan dress.. And for herself, when the jumpsuit she bought was too small, she fashioned it into a racing mini dress. Crafty, indeed. Andy wore my kart suit and some Nascar gear, and together, they were a racy couple.

Jablow and Ashley dressed up as Britney and K-Fed, respectively.. Paul refused to join the Communist Party, claiming that girls wouldn’t be attracted to a dude dressed as Stalin. So, instead, as the hunky football player, he had girls flocking to him within five minutes of us entering the bar. Well done, sir. Oh.. and as for other random costumes…

Anyway, the pics from the whole night are on flickr.. Tonight, I’m going to head down to the Castro and hopefully get some more pics of wonderful costumes… and then Thursday is Day of the Dead in the Mission, so that should afford some good photo ops as well…

Happy Halloween!

Today, Genentech (where both of my parents work) had a huge party to celebrate their 30th anniversary.. My dad invited me along since he thought it would be a great opportunity to meet some of the Genentech folks (and maybe drum up a little Techdirt business). A few years ago, they had a big party to celebrate something else, and they threw a huge bash with Elton John, Mary J. Blige and Matchbox 20 — so the bar had already been set fairly high..

It was a gorgeous day in South San Francisco, bright and sunny, temperatures in the 80s, and a nice, steady breeze so that it didn’t get too hot. I did get a nice tan though. So there was quite a lot of speculation about what bands were going to play the party — the management supposedly sent out a bunch of clues, encoded in various stages of encryption like ROT13, so people were furiously working on the clues trying to figure out who would be there. However, the biggest clue was given by Huey Lewis in an interview published in the Missoulian a few months ago. Although he calls the company “Genetex”, he sure did let the cat out of the bag.

So yah.. the bands that played the party today were The Foo Fighters, Bob Dylan, Black Eyed Peas and The Eagles.. Pretty damn cool for a company party, I’d say.

We weren’t allowed to bring cameras into the show, so I left my camera at home… That said, there’s already a few pics showing up on flickr from the event… (look, it’s the eagles)

So yah.. it was a really cool event. Probably like 10,000 people or so.. And, I got to meet the Foo Fighters and the Black Eyed Peas.. Both groups were actually very nice for like the few minutes that I got to chat with them. Fergie is super cute in real life.. I didn’t get to meet Bob Dylan or the Eagles though… oh well.

Anyway… actually, the highlight of my day was probably when I met Dr. James Watson, Nobel Laureate and co-discoverer of DNA. I’m kicking myself for not getting a picture with him with the ol’ cameraphone, but oh well.. I met him, and actually got to chat with him for a little bit. Nice ol’ guy. I mean.. meeting famous pop stars is cool and all, but famous scientists? Awesome. Wow, I’m a nerd for sure.

Happy 30th Genentech.. we’re the same age.

Update: As my dad points out.. “A minor correction, Watson was the co-discoverer of the DNA structure. It was the structure, not the DNA.”