Happy Texan New Year!

Right after Taiwan, I stopped off at home for a couple hours to 1) make sure my aquarium was still somewhat alive, 2) dropoff lots of luggage for a carryon, and 3) grab a scrumptuous lunch at Hobees with Chang, Andrew, and Gina before embarking on a trip to the less distant but equally foreign land of Tejas.

It was quite the subdued New Year celebration as both Ruth and I were pretty tired of travelling (she had just driven up from Houston), so we stayed in and watched March of the Penguins, courtesy of Andrew. I liked it so much that I kept it in my DVD drive and took it home with me to Mtn View.. muahahhaha.

As uaual, the Dallas trip was filled with both shopping and food as we visited both the Galleria and Northpark malls and ate at random places ranging from Arby's to Tom Tom to Cheesecake Factory to Thai Lotus Kitchen. The last place was with Jer and Tiffany.. a small little place, but with some tasty noodles. The waitress was a little out of it, as she brought the wrong order to our table twice. That might be understandable in a large restaurant, but there were literally a total of six tables and two or three other customers, so it was quite an accomplishment. She was, however, pregnant, so we attributed it to that.

The highlight of the trip (besides sitting in on a scintillating Intro to Phys lecture) was an excursion to the Dallas Arboretum.. a nice place, but probably not in its most glorious form during the depths of winter. It was nonetheless a nice place and good to take a walk and catch up.

Before we headed over there, Roothie got a makeup job from a freaky looking chick at Neiman and the results, although they look fine in the photo, were a little scary in person:



Strangely enough, I don't have any photos of plants from the Arboretum, but I do have a picture of Rooth getting in touch with her roots in front of the teepee:



Finally, we also took a pic in some random wagon. I had to set up the camera, run all the way to the other side of the wagon to get in, and then make it back to the opening... all in under 10 seconds! Good thing I'm so in shape!



Some arboretum, huh?

Oh wait, I do have a picture of one amazingly pretty flower...













Hahaha.. that was so money!

Oh yeah, a belated Happy New Year to all the potential lurking readers! :)