riparian

We've just come back from a 2-day trip to Yosemite Valley. The landscapes and scenery were pretty awe-inspiring. Here are some of the photos. I probably took over 700 photos in all but many of them didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. That's the great thing about a DSLR like the Nikon D5000, you can just keep clicking away and not worry about wasting film, and then go back and pick the best shots. Anyways we had a good time enjoying the natural beauty of Yosemite, and I had fun trying to capture some of that beauty with my camera. Oh and by the way the wide angle shots were done with a Nikkor 10-24mm lens I rented from http://www.borrowlenses.com/. It's a great way to get access to otherwise expensive equipment like this lens, which retails for like $1000.

spartan

Construction has started on our new home and our current place is still up for sale -- no decent offers have turned up yet. In the meantime we are kind of resuming our normal life although with a bit more economy and restraint. I've hooked the PS3 back up to the TV so we can at least watch some Blu-Ray movies.

Recently I watched John Woo's epic historical drama Red Cliff which runs a staggering 4+ hours across 2 discs. The film depicts the historical Battle at Red Cliff from 208 AD. Although it's a long film, I thought it was a triumphant return to form for John Woo -- the only disappointment for me was that long-time Woo collaborator Chow Yun-Fat withdrew from the film early in its filming.
But his fellow Hard-Boiled alumni Tony Leung does a reasonably good job playing the charismatic and wily commander Zhou Yu. Some of the memorable battle scenes feature the fearsome general Guan Yu, who to this day is deified by Chinese around the world, as the god of loyalty and righteousness.

Now I'm wondering if I should pull the XBox360 out of the closet as well -- next week the free multiplayer beta of Halo Reach comes out for Halo3: ODST owners... that would include me!  But that would mean I need to renew my XBox Live Gold membership which I let expire, so I'll have to think about it.  Not sure I'll have time to play games as work picks up again this summer...

In the meantime, I did take more photos recently - check out the collection below.  And we have a weekend trip up to Yosemite coming later this month, I am looking forward to seeing (and photographing) some spectacular scenery out there.



-p.

presentation

We've spent the last few weeks packing, throwing away old stuff, and lightly renovating the house -- mostly cleaning up and touching up the paint. We've been very low-impact on our home so very little needed fixing. Then came "staging" -- dressing up the place to make it look desirable to the maximum number of buyers. After a whirlwind tour of stores like Bed Bath and Beyond, Ross, Wal-Mart and Pier 1 Imports, we have decked the place out with all manner of new paintings, mirrors, lamps and bedsheets. Last weekend our place officially went out on the market and we held our first open house. Check out the photos, the place looks absolutely stunning if I may say so!



And if you're looking to buy a place and ours looks tempting, act quick! We've already got our first offer to buy over the weekend... we are still considering it.

Official Listing on our Agent's site

liquidation

As we get ready to sell our home and move to our new place we've started clearing out the extra stuff we've had lying around over the years that we don't really need. Less stuff to move = less trouble. It's not hard to imagine that I have quite a few auto parts stored away in the garage. So I've put up my original Lexus wheels from the IS350 for sale on craigslist. There's probably other parts I've kept around for no reason that will go to the dump or up for sale on craigslist, like extra exhausts, lug nuts etc.

Wouldn't you know it, the first three emails I've received about the wheels are all likely scammers. They either want me to click on some probably malicious link or spam that they sent me, or want to send me a cashier's check for the wheels, sight unseen. I just need to send them all my personal information so they can proceed swiftly with the transaction. The transaction of stealing my money, you mean? Yeah right sucker.

Check out this video at the Federal Trade Commission about filing a complaint online. I think it's unintentionally funny because everyone's all squinty-eyed until they get scammed, and suddenly their eyes pop open.

migration

Maybe I'm an optimist but I do believe that 2010 is the year that things turn around for us... and now I've put my wallet (and life savings) on the line to prove it. Last week V and I decided to buy a new house up in the Hayward Highlands. Right now it's still just a dirt lot on a hill, but in about 6 to 8 months our new home will be built and it's going to be very exciting to move into a bigger house. It's so big, the builder Toll Brothers doesn't just refer to them as homes, they are "estate" homes.

This is by far the biggest purchase we've ever made (eclipsing our current home by more than double the price) so it's really going to be a test of our financial strength. But it's all about risk vs. reward and we think it's worth the stretch. We've lived in our current home for 7 years, and this will be our home for probably the next 7 or more... and there's plenty of room so I doubt we'll outgrow this one. So here's hoping that in 7 years we are sitting on a big fat pile of equity.

Anyways we are pretty excited about moving to our new home, but some changes are in order before that happy day... we need to keep saving money to make our dream a reality and we plan to try and sell our current home very soon and move temporarily into an apartment to save even more as our home is built. It's certainly a real shakeup and turn of events for me, but I hope in the end it is worth it.