1 Week, 1 Photo & 500 Words or Less (December 28, 2008)

Greetings from Newport Beach & West Covina, California, USA!
Photos taken on Wednesday & Thursday, December 24 & 25, 2008.

I was very careful on my budget for presents this holiday season. Ultimately I bought gifts for nearly 35 people, yet stayed within my limit of $200, the amount of the unexpected work bonus in November. In fact I did most of my shopping before December with the bulk done the week of Thanksgiving.

My job has an often frantic pace so for lunch I intentionally leave the building and almost always take a full hour. The office is within throwing distance of the South Coast Plaza shopping center and I go there at least a couple of times each week. I grab a quick meal somewhere, and then window-shop to decompress from the first half of the day and fortify myself for the second half.

Because of this routine, I found a lot of good buys very early, thus avoiding the searches for parking spots, the waits in long lines and all the other holiday-related stress. Instead my December was spent gradually distributing presents to friends and family. By the week of Christmas I barely had any gifts left to deliver. On the Tuesday evening before Christmas two friends stopped by my place for their presents with the first one visiting for an hour or so. The second guest came later and stayed for several hours.

With lots of gift wrap, bows, etc. left over from the Adopt-A-Family “wrap party”, I invited the second friend to wrap her family presents far away from her kids’ spying eyes. For the past few days my throat had an odd feeling, typically my first sign of a cold, so the mimosa became the drink of the evening, - the orange juice to fend off the potential cold and the champagne to, well… We’re adults. No excuse needed. Sometime past midnight we finished the mimosas, wrapped some two dozen presents and used up much of the wrapping supplies.

Closing out the year and keeping with my last few entries are another pair of pictures. Taking in the wee hours of Christmas Eve, the first photo shows a display unit, its contents of glass containers, liquor and barware festooned with ornaments and lights. It is a sampling of the pervasive reach of the holiday decorations throughout my home.

Meanwhile the second picture is a sequel to last year’s Christmas week photo as both were taken on December 25 and showed the trio of pine trees in the front yard of my parents’ house. This time my car is in the foreground instead of the background and it is raining although it is hard to tell in the photo. The shot is not remarkable but included for sentimentality.

Onward to 2009!

Angelo

1 Week, 1 Photo & 500 Words or Less (December 21, 2008) SPECIAL EDITION

Greetings from Newport Beach, California, USA!
Photos taken on Sunday, December 21, 2008.

If December is not the busiest month, we must have a thirteenth one that has eluded me. Nevertheless as busy as it was, I noticed a discernible drop in the number of festivities. Because of the economic recession, people have cut back on parties or at least their guest lists. In fact earlier this month, instead of an off-site holiday party, my company hosted an office brunch. However bleak the times, various annual events endure and ensure the resilence of humanity. Two examples are the Balboa Island Christmas House Decorating Contest and the Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade. I saw both this weekend.

First for the uninformed, the city of Newport Beach includes a handful of islands such as Lido Isle and Collins Island. While most of them are purely residential, Balboa Island is visitor-friendly with a microcosm of shops appealing to locals and tourists alike. It also has a good mix of permanent and seasonal inhabitants. I once lived in house there with four college classmates. We leased it for the nine months of the off-season. During the summer months, the owner rents to vacationers on a weekly basis.

If you can afford the waterfront acreage, then you can afford building a mansion on it. Then during December you can afford th electricity bill for the thousands of lights in decorations. The island’s tight-knit community even does a contest for it. Not to be overlooked, the coastal city’s ships and boats string up lights, then cruise around Newport Harbor for several nights as well. This year marked the 100th edition of that boat parade.

A friend of a friend owns a home on Balboa Island and I was invited to a party there on Sunday. Before the parade a group of us walked around the island to view the decorated homes. My favorite is shown in one of my two accompanying photos. The palm trees set it apart from the rest. Many people wrap lights around tree trunks but only the best will also adorn the branches - or palm fronds in this case - and that gets my vote.

I missed most of the parade. After the tour I returned to party, lost track of time and went back out to the shore to see just the tail end of it. This means no boat parade pictures but I do have fireworks. The pyrotechnic display was originally scheduled for Wednesday, the parade’s first night, but postponed to the last night because of rain earlier in the week. My second photo is of Balboa Peninsula with fireworks bursting overhead. To the left is the Balboa Pavilion building (which is lit up like that every night, not just the holidays) and to the right is the Ferris wheel in the Balboa Fun Zone. Need I say that this night was a blast?

Angelo

1 Week, 1 Photo & 500 Words or Less (December 21, 2008)

Greetings from Costa Mesa, California, USA!
Photos taken on Thursday, December 18, 2008.

If asked to describe an average day at my job, then I would NOT use this Thursday as an example as it was far from typical. How unusual was it? I can summarize it in two words: Playdoh & gingerbread.

My department has a meeting scheduled for an hour every Thursday morning. In the first part of the meeting we discuss the traditional office stuff – updates and changes in company and department policies and procedures; personnel hirings, departures and promotions; blah, blah, blah. The remainder of the hour is miscellaneous chitchat – the latest movies, vacation plans, etc. This week the meeting agenda was completely clear. With nothing to discuss, one manager decided to pass out her Christmas gifts: Playdoh.

Have I yet to mention that I work in the CREATIVE department? We used the hour crafting various things until someone suggested a bar and the idea caught fire. I have two weekly photos – yes, two – and the first one shows the output of our meeting. Beneath the Stoli (Vodka) sign is an assortment of beverages – a pink margarita with fruit slice, a martini with olive, a blue mug of beer with white foamy head, a blue can of soda with straw, etc. We also made a hamburger on a blue(!) bun, a pair of orange flip-flops, a pink mouse with a wedge of cheese, an orange toilet with poop, cigar with ashtray, a pair of orange dice and so on.

Next we had a company-paid lunch before an afternoon of team building between two departments. The holiday-appropriate activity was decorating gingerbread houses. Teams were randomly assembled the previous day to give time to plan their strategies. The contest would last two hours and have two winners in the categories of best use of materials and best curbside appeal.

We had eight teams and Santa’s sleigh had eight reindeer. But instead of Dancer, Prancer, et. al., teams had names like Candy Canes, Frosty and Rockettes. But we did have a Team Rudolph. In the second weekly photo are four of the decorated gingerbread houses, including the one for my team the Snowflakes who, pardon the pun, planned to bury the competition but that didn’t happen. We did not win in either category but my team and I, and everyone else, surely had a sweet and sticky great time.

Angelo

1 Week, 1 Photo & 500 Words or Less (December 14, 2008)

Greetings from Newport Beach, California, USA!
Photo taken on Sunday, December 14, 2008.

Adopt-A-Family (AAF) is a popular project during the holiday gift-giving season. Its essence is for people to provide presents to low-income families, especially the children. Various community organizations screen applicants, then qualifying families fill out profiles regarding household members, sex, age, clothing sizes and wish lists. This info is forwarded to the groups and individuals who “adopt the family”.

I participated in it intermittently for more than a decade, mostly through the Newport Beach Junior Chamber (NBJCs or Newport Jaycees). Unfortunately the NBJC’s Project AAF had been dormant for the last few years but I successfully pushed the group to restart it, getting over 25 participants to adopt 5 families.

Although I was a big advocate in resuming AAF, I did not want to be the chairperson. Nevertheless I was active in the project committee and even opened my home for use. In the past we were able to delivery the presents directly to the families. But now gifts were dropped off at a distribution center, eliminating the human interaction, especially the sparkle in kids’ faces when seeing all the presents. To fill the void, I suggested and offered to host a “wrap party” where participants can wrap up the gifts as well as wrap up the project.

Like last year I planned to decorate my home for the holidays and the wrap party gave more reason to do so. The event was on Sunday and I spent several nights after work decking the halls. On Tuesday I put up the tree complete with lights and ornaments, on Wednesday I put up the outdoor lights and on Thursday I put up indoor lights throughout the first floor – living room, dining room, kitchen and staircase. Did I go overboard? Let’s just say sunglasses required and sunscreen recommended.

As if all this was not enough, I even baked! I made a red velvet cake for the first time and the results were okay while the strawberry cake was a bit better. I also made two cheesecakes both with white chocolate chips, one top with blueberries, and was pleased with them.

The wrap party was lively and well attended. Participants were told to bring gift-wrapping supplies as my own stock would be far from sufficient. After clean-up the leftover paper, ribbons, boxes and tape exceeded what I had before. As for the number of presents, this week’s photo shows just a sampling of the Adopt-A-Family gifts underneath my Christmas tree, clear proof that generosity remains strong, recession or not, and I say “Amen” to that.

Angelo

1 Week, 1 Photo & 500 Words or Less (December 7, 2008)

Greetings from Orange, California, USA!
Photo taken on Sunday, December 7, 2008.

While my workweek had nothing noteworthy, several holiday-related activities filled the weekend. On Saturday was a shopping trip to the outlet stores in Carlsbad, a city about an hour south of Newport Beach and near the border between the counties of Orange and San Diego. I am participating in the Adopt-A-Family Project and my team took an afternoon excursion there to shop for our adopted family – as well as ourselves.

My evening went from one party to two. I had a last-minute invitation to a farewell party. A friend, who I knew through volleyball, decided to move back to his hometown of Santa Barbara. His send-off at a local restaurant & bar had a who’s who of fellow volleyball players in attendance. Also someone brought a volleyball for everyone to sign as a very fitting parting gift.

I could stay only an hour before leaving for a holiday party. It was hosted by the same friend who had the Halloween one, which I missed because parking was impossible at her apartment complex that night. I was determined to be at this party. While I enjoyed the social, a notable memory was of three pregnant women in attendance. When walking through the front door, my initial impression was the waiting room of an ob/gyn office.

I had one activity on Sunday – the Tree Lighting Ceremony in the City of Orange. A friend hosted a pre-event gathering at his house before we walked a handful of blocks to Old Towne Orange. Because of the area’s small town charm, I was expecting a low-budget community-theatre level presentation but was pleasantly surprised by its higher caliber. The city didn’t break the bank with a big budget Hollywood or Broadway musical production nor was it cardboard cutouts, squeaky sound and bad lighting. The scope and tone were perfect and the ceremony was enjoyable. My weekly photo captures the choir in a spectrum of robes, the orchestra in the foreground and the Christmas décor behind them all.

Because of the warm weather earlier in the day, I was wearing shorts and, except for a jacket, brought no other clothes. The evening temperature was dropping as I sat, listening to the performance. My legs had gotten very cold but warmed up on the walk back to my friend’s house. Nevertheless while I was sitting, an odd thought crossed my mind. I wondered if the numbness of my lower half was similar to the epidural given to a woman in labor. Like I wrote before, the three pregnant women from the previous night left a lingering impression. What else can I say?

Angelo

1 Week, 1 Photo & 500 Words or Less (November 30, 2008)

Greetings from Los Angeles, California, USA!
Photo taken on Saturday, November 29, 2008.

Despite all my time in Southern California, I have never gone to the L.A. Auto Show nor the L.A. Convention Center where it was held. So I killed two birds with one stone by attending it. Speaking of feathered duos, I had a pair of turkey meals on Thanksgiving Thursday – an early dinner at a friend’s house and a late dinner with my parents – but my many hours of walking at the Auto Show surely burned off those calories and then some.

I severely underestimated the time that I ultimately spent there – some 5 hours – and still did not see everything. In fact when looking through the event program at home, I saw that I completely missed a showroom. Fortunately it held only auto-related exhibitors, not more cars, so I don’t feel that I missed out on something important.

With dozens of vehicles on display, I made a list of my top three favorite autos at the show. But first an honorable mention to the one and only motorcycle there, a 2009 BMW R 1200 HP2 Sport priced at over $25,000. Actually I’m partial to the even more expensive Ducati brand and I should check for a L.A. Motorcycle Show.

My choice in automobiles does not favor the traditional passenger car. My last two cars, a Ford Ranger truck and a Jeep Wrangler, reflect my interests in a distinct look and strength over speed. At the show the Ranger was nowhere to be found but the Wrangler was in abundance and takes the number 3 spot on my fave list. Recently a four-door version has come out that looked like the offspring between a Hummer and a Jeep but, with the hard top off, it still resembled its Wrangler parentage. Meanwhile the tank-like look of the Hummer has softened with each generation but has yet to win me over.

Number 2 on my fave list, the Mini Cooper, first caught my attention in the movie The Italian Job. It is the top contender for my next car, which looks to be two or more years away. Its one large drawback is the low profile. In my Wrangler and the Ranger before it, I was seated high with a view overlooking the typical car.

I return to Jeep for my favorite car at the show. In the weekly photo is the Renegade, a concept car. Its information sign says it best, “Suited for the all-weather delights of off-roading and dune surfing” and “designed for those who want to enjoy the earth while taking care of its future.” While you can sit in many of the cars, the Jeep Renegade was off limits – a minor disappointment quickly cancelled out by an overall great experience. The show had one big side effect on me though. I want a new car!!!

Angelo