I think weekends should *always* be 3 days. By the time Sunday evening rolls around, I'm beat and need a day to just do nothing. That's what Mondays should be for. Some would argue that people actually do nothing on Mondays, even when they're at work.
On Saturday, Greg played in the AACO Sports Day volleyball tournament with some friends. When he got home, the first words out of his mouth were, "I'm too old for this stuff." I don't think it was the volleyball as much as it was the beer and sangria that he drank between games.
While he was having fun in the sun, I was volunteering at a Pound Puppy Rescue adoption event in the morning. There were lots of puppies; I'd guess about 30 puppies. I didn't have a foster puppy, but I helped out with the sign-in sheets and making sure everyone got interviewed. The majority of the people came to see the mountain bike litter, 8 lab mix puppies; 4 yellow and 4 black. They are C-U-T-E! If I was fostering this litter, I might have to keep one of the yellow lab pups so Tachi could have a little brother or sister as a playmate.
In the afternoon, I took Tachi to the Fort Funston with Ann, Newton and their dogs, Buttercup and Muffin. Tachi LOVES Fort Funston. We love it too because he always comes back really tired and messy. (Okay, we don't really like the messy part, but it's worth it).
On Sunday afternoon, we went to the Mountain View Obon Festival. A friend of mine was working the corn dog and french fry booth. I'd never been to the Obon festival, even though in college, I went to lots of parties/dances that happened in the evening after the festival. Greg told me he used to go the Obon festival at the Buddhist Church in Sacramento, where he spent most of his time at the game booths. We ate corn dogs and shaved ice (the line was super long for shaved ice), played Bingo (didn't win anything...boo), checked out the exhibits and watched a Taiko performance. We didn't stay for the Bon Odori dance, which seems to be the highlight of the festival. Maybe next year, we'll check out the San Jose Obon Festival, which is supposed to be bigger than the Mountain View festival.
Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts
Monday, July 20, 2009
Saturday, September 13, 2008
AVP San Francisco
Greg and I went to the AVP San Francisco this past weekend. It's not suprising that we ran into quite a few of our volleyball friends: Mark, Mee, Emi (Mark & Mee's 9 month old daughter), Henry, Marvin, Susanna, Ang, and Ryan. Mark was actually volunteering for the tournament, which is a great way to get in to the tournament for free and get some cool free schwag!
It was a little strange to be watching beach volleyball with the city skyline and Bay Bridge in the background, especially since there's normally no beach! They must truck a bunch of sand in for the tournament. I wonder what they do with the sand when the tournament is done. Do they dump it into the Bay? It's also a bit odd watching beach volleyball bundled up because it's overcast and windy outside. While it was overcast in the morning, the sun broke through and it turned out to be a pretty nice day...until the wind picked up.
We watched a lot of matches, including all 4 US Olympic teams. Kerry Walsh and Misty May-Treanor, Nicole Branagh and Elaine Youngs, Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser, and Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal. I hate to say it, but the Walsh and May-Trenor match was a bit disappointing to watch compared to the other matches that day.
I know Phil Dalhausser is tall, but when you see him in person it's ridiculous how tall he is. At 6'9" tall, he's almost a foot and a half taller than me. His height makes him a monster at the net. I managed to get this shot of him blocking a ball. His freakin' arm pits are above the net! When I jump, my finger tips barely get above net...and that's on a women's net! I'm glad that I don't have to play against someone like him in any of my volleyball leagues. =)
If you want to see more photos, click here.
It was a little strange to be watching beach volleyball with the city skyline and Bay Bridge in the background, especially since there's normally no beach! They must truck a bunch of sand in for the tournament. I wonder what they do with the sand when the tournament is done. Do they dump it into the Bay? It's also a bit odd watching beach volleyball bundled up because it's overcast and windy outside. While it was overcast in the morning, the sun broke through and it turned out to be a pretty nice day...until the wind picked up.
We watched a lot of matches, including all 4 US Olympic teams. Kerry Walsh and Misty May-Treanor, Nicole Branagh and Elaine Youngs, Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser, and Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal. I hate to say it, but the Walsh and May-Trenor match was a bit disappointing to watch compared to the other matches that day.I know Phil Dalhausser is tall, but when you see him in person it's ridiculous how tall he is. At 6'9" tall, he's almost a foot and a half taller than me. His height makes him a monster at the net. I managed to get this shot of him blocking a ball. His freakin' arm pits are above the net! When I jump, my finger tips barely get above net...and that's on a women's net! I'm glad that I don't have to play against someone like him in any of my volleyball leagues. =)
If you want to see more photos, click here.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Volleyball, volleyball, and more volleyball
The other day I was talking to a friend and realized that we play 5 nights of volleyball. I play on Sunday and Thursday evenings. Greg plays on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. And we play together on Monday nights. If you count playing outdoors on Saturdays with friends, that makes 6 days out of 7 days that we play. That's a lot of volleyball.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing volleyball. But maybe 5 nights is too much? It prevents us from doing anything else. When I shared my thoughts with Greg, he replied, "There's no such thing as too much volleyball. What's wrong with playing 5 nights a week?" I guess he doesn't think we play too much volleyball. =P
This past weekend, we played in Christi's annual Queen's Volleyball Tourney. It's a fun, very social volleyball tournament where guys can play as girls *if* they wear a bikini top. The first year Greg played in the tourney, he played as a girl and wore my bikini top. He even got a tan line because he didn't wear a T-shirt underneath the bikini! He hasn't been a girl ever since then. But I wonder if he missed playing as girl this year because he put a bikini top on, supposedly to show Eddie the proper way to wear one. See, here he is modeling in a bikini top:
Sexy, huh? And here is his playing in the finals:
Unfortunately, he and his partner didn't win. But we both had a lot of fun hanging out in the park, eating, socializing and playing volleyball.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing volleyball. But maybe 5 nights is too much? It prevents us from doing anything else. When I shared my thoughts with Greg, he replied, "There's no such thing as too much volleyball. What's wrong with playing 5 nights a week?" I guess he doesn't think we play too much volleyball. =P
This past weekend, we played in Christi's annual Queen's Volleyball Tourney. It's a fun, very social volleyball tournament where guys can play as girls *if* they wear a bikini top. The first year Greg played in the tourney, he played as a girl and wore my bikini top. He even got a tan line because he didn't wear a T-shirt underneath the bikini! He hasn't been a girl ever since then. But I wonder if he missed playing as girl this year because he put a bikini top on, supposedly to show Eddie the proper way to wear one. See, here he is modeling in a bikini top:
Sexy, huh? And here is his playing in the finals:
Unfortunately, he and his partner didn't win. But we both had a lot of fun hanging out in the park, eating, socializing and playing volleyball.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
A Very Active Weekend
We had a really active weekend. It's been a long time since we've been this active. And boy, could I tell. My butt still hurts from this weekend!
On Saturday, we paddled in Paddle for Life, a charity dragon boat race at Jack London Square. Most of the teams seemed to be corporate sponsored teams. Our team, Doggie Paddlers, was a rag-tag team of friends and friends of friends. We had a few folks who had paddled before, but most were newbies. As part of the race, the organizers arrange three practices so people can learn proper form, timing, race starts and commands. While our team did get three practices, I don't think our entire team was at a single practice. You can blame it on volleyball. =P
We won our first race (the American Bridal Community Cup), came in dead last in our second race and took second in our last race (we missed first place by half a second!). But we got lots of compliments on our team t-shirt, which Edric designed. It was a good fun for a good cause. Thanks for organizing the team, Judy! Can't wait to do it again next year. Woof! Woof!
BTW, Greg and I met at a dragon boat race. It wasn't this exact race, but a different race that's held in the early fall/late summer at Lake Merced in San Francisco. Greg was paddling on Christi's corporate team, and I was paddling on my friend Doug's team, Dragon Warriors. Christi needed some extra people for their championship race because a lot of people on her team had to leave early. So, I volunteered to paddle in their boat. I must've wooed Greg with my impressive paddling abilities! =)
On Sunday, we woke up early again to ride in the Tour de Cure, a charity bike ride benefiting the American Diabetes Association. I rode with Team Cisco/WebEx. Greg just rode along with me (e.g. he didn't register for the race). Why didn't he want to ride with Team Cisco? He "couldn't justify paying money to ride a route that he's ridden for free many times." But it's for a good cause? Blink...blink.
Anyhoo, we rode 75K or ~45miles. The ride started at the HP campus in Palo Alto, around Woodside and Portola Valley, out to Canada Road and back to the HP campus. Now, even though we've ridden this route several times before, I haven't been on my bike in about 4-5 months. So, my butt, legs and lungs were not ready for this ride. It didn't help that my left leg and butt cheek were sore from paddling the day before. Greg, on the other hand, was fine. Sigh...it's just not fair.
It's definitely been one of the more active weekends we've had in quite a while. We'd both like to have more weekends like this...without the getting up early part. =)
On Saturday, we paddled in Paddle for Life, a charity dragon boat race at Jack London Square. Most of the teams seemed to be corporate sponsored teams. Our team, Doggie Paddlers, was a rag-tag team of friends and friends of friends. We had a few folks who had paddled before, but most were newbies. As part of the race, the organizers arrange three practices so people can learn proper form, timing, race starts and commands. While our team did get three practices, I don't think our entire team was at a single practice. You can blame it on volleyball. =PWe won our first race (the American Bridal Community Cup), came in dead last in our second race and took second in our last race (we missed first place by half a second!). But we got lots of compliments on our team t-shirt, which Edric designed. It was a good fun for a good cause. Thanks for organizing the team, Judy! Can't wait to do it again next year. Woof! Woof!
BTW, Greg and I met at a dragon boat race. It wasn't this exact race, but a different race that's held in the early fall/late summer at Lake Merced in San Francisco. Greg was paddling on Christi's corporate team, and I was paddling on my friend Doug's team, Dragon Warriors. Christi needed some extra people for their championship race because a lot of people on her team had to leave early. So, I volunteered to paddle in their boat. I must've wooed Greg with my impressive paddling abilities! =)
On Sunday, we woke up early again to ride in the Tour de Cure, a charity bike ride benefiting the American Diabetes Association. I rode with Team Cisco/WebEx. Greg just rode along with me (e.g. he didn't register for the race). Why didn't he want to ride with Team Cisco? He "couldn't justify paying money to ride a route that he's ridden for free many times." But it's for a good cause? Blink...blink.
Anyhoo, we rode 75K or ~45miles. The ride started at the HP campus in Palo Alto, around Woodside and Portola Valley, out to Canada Road and back to the HP campus. Now, even though we've ridden this route several times before, I haven't been on my bike in about 4-5 months. So, my butt, legs and lungs were not ready for this ride. It didn't help that my left leg and butt cheek were sore from paddling the day before. Greg, on the other hand, was fine. Sigh...it's just not fair.
It's definitely been one of the more active weekends we've had in quite a while. We'd both like to have more weekends like this...without the getting up early part. =)
Saturday, March 29, 2008
The Napa Valley Trail Half Marathon
So, today was the half marathon that I signed up to run with Grace and Ann. I've supposedly been training for this run. I say supposedly because I wasn't nearly as disciplined as when I was training for the San Diego Rock-n-Roll marathon. I've been really behind on my training plan, and the longest distance I managed to run before this race was 6 miles. Let me tell you that running any race with little to no training is a bad idea. So, I decided that I should probably run/walk this one. Grace and Ann really didn't seem to mind either. =)
Unlike some of the other runs I've done before, this one was really low key. No corrals, timing chips or fancy finish line. It was also a well organized and supported event. We finished in about 3 hours and 30 minutes, which isn't bad considering we walked a good percentage of the course. The course was very scenic and peaceful with a few stream crossings. It was a bit tough in parts where there was pretty steep downhill and the ground was muddy. You could see where a few folks has slipped from the imprint on left on the ground. There were also some pretty steep uphill sections as well. I don't think I would've been able to run up those hills even if I had trained for this race. Even though it was a chilly start and slightly damp and muddy out, it was a fun event.
Before the race Grace asked me if I preferred trail races to regular races (e.g. pavement). I told her I'd have to let her know after this race because I've never really run a trail event before. While I thought trail running would be easier on my joints, the downhill sections really weren't that forgiving for my knees. Plus with the rocks and tree roots, it's pretty easy to turn an ankle or slip and fall. From a better-for-your-joints perspective, I think it's probably a wash. I think I prefer regular races because there's a different energy. There's always random people along the race route cheering you on. And that's pretty cool! I know there've been many times when I thought I couldn't do it, but then you'd hear someone in the randomly shout, "Good job! Keep it up!" And all of sudden, you get a burst of energy.
Aside from the run, the weekend was great! Not only did the boys meet us at the end of the race, they also prepared a delicious lunch for us girls back at our rental house! =) After relaxing for a bit, we went shopping at the Napa Outlets and then had dinner in downtown Napa. On Sunday, the boys slept in and the girls made breakfast for everyone. Kinda cute, huh? After packing up and locking up the house, we went wine tasting for a few hours before heading off to Oracle Arena. Greg, John and I met up with Dardy to catch the Warriors v. Mavericks game. All-in-all, it was a relaxing and fun-filled weekend!
Unlike some of the other runs I've done before, this one was really low key. No corrals, timing chips or fancy finish line. It was also a well organized and supported event. We finished in about 3 hours and 30 minutes, which isn't bad considering we walked a good percentage of the course. The course was very scenic and peaceful with a few stream crossings. It was a bit tough in parts where there was pretty steep downhill and the ground was muddy. You could see where a few folks has slipped from the imprint on left on the ground. There were also some pretty steep uphill sections as well. I don't think I would've been able to run up those hills even if I had trained for this race. Even though it was a chilly start and slightly damp and muddy out, it was a fun event.
Before the race Grace asked me if I preferred trail races to regular races (e.g. pavement). I told her I'd have to let her know after this race because I've never really run a trail event before. While I thought trail running would be easier on my joints, the downhill sections really weren't that forgiving for my knees. Plus with the rocks and tree roots, it's pretty easy to turn an ankle or slip and fall. From a better-for-your-joints perspective, I think it's probably a wash. I think I prefer regular races because there's a different energy. There's always random people along the race route cheering you on. And that's pretty cool! I know there've been many times when I thought I couldn't do it, but then you'd hear someone in the randomly shout, "Good job! Keep it up!" And all of sudden, you get a burst of energy.
Aside from the run, the weekend was great! Not only did the boys meet us at the end of the race, they also prepared a delicious lunch for us girls back at our rental house! =) After relaxing for a bit, we went shopping at the Napa Outlets and then had dinner in downtown Napa. On Sunday, the boys slept in and the girls made breakfast for everyone. Kinda cute, huh? After packing up and locking up the house, we went wine tasting for a few hours before heading off to Oracle Arena. Greg, John and I met up with Dardy to catch the Warriors v. Mavericks game. All-in-all, it was a relaxing and fun-filled weekend!
Monday, February 18, 2008
Chinese New Year Run
Yesterday we ran the Chinese New Year 5k/10K Run in San Francisco. Our friend, Juliana, organized a group of folks to run or walk the 5K. We got up really early to get up to the city by 7:00 AM. The upside of getting there early: no traffic and *FREE* street parking. I've never found free street parking in San Francisco, especially around SF Chinatown.
The run was pretty low-key. There were actually a lot more people than we expected. Apparently, this is the 30th annual run. The funniest thing about the run were the handful of Chinese grandmas who would cross the streets that the runners were on. They just shuffled right in front of everyone with no fear of being run over or bumped into. I wonder if something happens to Asian women who get past a certain age that gives them this fearlessness (or stupidity according to Greg).
We had heard that they gave each runner warm pork buns (the baked kind) after the finish line. So, that was pretty good motivation to run faster and get to the finish line. You can imagine how disappointed Greg was when we crossed the finish line and made our way up to Portsmouth Square to find that there were no pork buns. Only water, bananas, oranges and yogurt in tubes. Good thing we were planning to grab breakfast after everyone finished! Our yummy breakfast at Squat & Gobble more than made up for the lack of pork buns.
The run was pretty low-key. There were actually a lot more people than we expected. Apparently, this is the 30th annual run. The funniest thing about the run were the handful of Chinese grandmas who would cross the streets that the runners were on. They just shuffled right in front of everyone with no fear of being run over or bumped into. I wonder if something happens to Asian women who get past a certain age that gives them this fearlessness (or stupidity according to Greg).
We had heard that they gave each runner warm pork buns (the baked kind) after the finish line. So, that was pretty good motivation to run faster and get to the finish line. You can imagine how disappointed Greg was when we crossed the finish line and made our way up to Portsmouth Square to find that there were no pork buns. Only water, bananas, oranges and yogurt in tubes. Good thing we were planning to grab breakfast after everyone finished! Our yummy breakfast at Squat & Gobble more than made up for the lack of pork buns.
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