Venezia is at that age where she is constantly learning new words, adding them to her vocabulary then attempting to use them in her everyday life and conversation.
Recently, when she was trying to persuade me to let her watch television, her convincing argument was to ASSURE me that whatever we chose to watch would be “appropriate” and “nutritious”!
If Venezia were a boy, I’d say this sounds like an Oedipal thing, but alas… this morning, we had a not-too-uncommon pre-dawn meltdown as Venezia insisted Medora get up with her. She proceeded to force the entire family out of bed, and later when I asked her why she did this, she responded: “I just love mommy so much. It’s makin me crazy over her.”
If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears I wouldn’t have believed it!
Venezia made up a cool new game with her kids frisbee. First one person throws it, then both people run to try and get it. Then she asks “did you just throw it or did I” (of course she knows the answer but it’s part of the game to ask anyway). The person who didn’t throw it last gets to throw it next. Fun times!
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| Medoras Photos |
This past weekend I celebrated my 36th birthday. On these kinds of holidays, it’s assumed that it’s up to the celebrator to choose what he or she wants to do. For instance, on Father’s Day, Tony wanted to sit home, have a big breakfast, watch the US Open, and practice his guitar. On my birthday, I’d rather just have some donuts and coffee, and take a shower without having to schedule it with three other people first. Which is what Tony granted me in the morning by taking BOTH the girls out! How glorious! I was even able to make a few phone calls without editing my conversation!
Speaking of taking the girls out, Tony has been a Super Dad in the last couple weeks by watching both Venezia and Sadie, while I have tiptoed out to enjoy a few moments of “me-time” and to reclaim a life outside of spit-up, tantrums, nursing, poopy diapers and Dora the Explorer. The first time he watched them was for me to take my first hip hop aerobics class since having the baby. He also watched them both while I redeemed a gift certificate for a heavenly 90 minute post-natal massage, and also when I went back to teach my first hip hop class at the University since being out.
Finally, (back to my birthday) he watched them while I went to take a Bhangara/Indian dance class and also while I took a relaxing shopping trip for 3 hours! This meant I was able to shop at non-marathon speed, take the time to try clothes things on, and actually THINK what I was doing instead of being sidetracked by Venezia climbing into the clothes racks pretending she was taking a shower.
So it was a great birthday thanks to Tony’s williness to take on the job of watching 8 week old Sadie, and 3 1/2 year old Venezia…both unpredictable, with different needs, at different times, with the ability to scream and cry simultaneously really loud, yet who are still really cute–when they’re sleeping….just kidding! Of course they are ALWAYS cute!
COMING UP: Dance camp for Venezia….a trip to Portland…Mony and Chief visit San Francisco! Stay tuned!
Happy Holidays, and welcome to our blog! If you haven’t heard from us in a while, you might need a couple of updates. First, what’s this about Berkeley? 
Well, last year I decided that it was time to move on to another challenge in life, and thought that business school would be a good way to delay the actual decision. That’s why we’re in Berkeley–I’m in my first year at the UC-Berkeley MBA program. Things are going swell, although a little busines than I thought… oh well, Medora and Venezia love it in the Bay Area, as you can see from some of the posts in the archives of this blog.
Other news? Medora is expecting our second in May! We won’t know boy or girl until then, just like with Venezia–it’s a great surprise at the end. Venezia is sure that it will be a girl, but we have no idea! So now that you’re caught up on the big stuff, enjoy this site by looking in the archives, checking out some pictures, and living vicariously through the Internet. Oh yea, one more thing–be sure to comment on the blog so we know you’re around… we love to read comments!
Hope to see you in Miami or Portland over the next month… Love, Tony, Medora and Venezia
Wow, I always wanted to do this… sit on the couch on a Saturday morning, drink a cup of fresh-brewed coffee and write a blog post on my laptop. Seems so luxurious. I don’t think I have until now because it always seems like there’s another project, paper, case study or something else that I should be working on instead. Not any more! I turned in my last final paper on Thursday after a brutal combination–accounting final to the midsection Wednesday from 12:30 to 3:30, then an upercut of a 12-page marketing final paper due Thursday at noon. Needless to say there wasn’t much sleep Wednesday night. But the paper (a case study on Goodyear’s Aquatred tire) came together in time, and *just like that* the semester was over.
I gotta say I was a bit surprised at the intensity of the classwork in the first semester. I enjoyed all of it, but my one lament is the sheer lack of time to absorb all of the material. My finance class was particularly intense since I didn’t have any prior experience with the material–I’m considering a future finance 
class next year. Our final project was to play the role of a private equity firm and place a valuation on Berkeley’s own Peet’s Coffee. We were to use anything other than Peet’s stock price and other market information, but we could use things like financial reports, analyst reports, and a personal presentation at Haas from Peet’s CEO, Pat O’Dea. It was a great project, and I know more about Peet’s coffee than I ever thought I would! For those of you not familiar with Peet’s, their focus is high-quality coffee beans, rather than the “third-place” (after home, work) strategy that you see with Starbuck’s. If you order Peet’s coffee online, they don’t grab a bag of beans off the shelf; rather, they roast it to order, then ship it out that day. Freshness! Well, back to my cup o’ . . . you guessed it, Peet’s Holiday Blend.
Today is another crisp, clean morning. So far the Bay Area winter has been gorgeous, with mornings in the mid to high 40s and sunny days around 60. It has definitely been less hazy and overcast than most summer mornings. We’ve had a couple of drizzly days since November, but not many. Nevertheless, it’s kind of a tweener climate where you need more than one layer, but not really a full-blown jacket. Coupled with my transient nature during the day, the climate presents a wardrobe dilemma–what kind of outerwear is necessary, and where do I stow it? Really I’m not outside much, although when I am it’s usually during the more crispy times–morning and evening waiting for the bus. Funny side note: I wore a windbreaker pullover the other day, and one of my Chinese classmates gave me a funny look while feeling the material. He thought it bizarre that I would wear this water-resistant material on a sunny day. I’m sure it won’t be the last fashion-related funny look I get this winter.
Living in Oregon, we did not have to deal with hardly any bugs, pests, or critters. Occassionally in the summer, some powdery mothes would fly into the house from a door left open. But we certainly did not have the humongous, disgusting cockroaches that you find in the South. We didn’t have loud crickets, or cute fireflys. The only outdoor critter that ever really caused me stress and to say a few cuss words outloud, was a deer that came trampling through my yard and beheaded my beautiful tulips which I had painstakingly planted the fall before, on my hands and knees, each and every bulb, which I nurtured, and and cared for, and lovingly grew. Until one morning I looked outside in horror to find that my precious little tulip garden was now a bunch of tiny little green stumps! I will never find deer “cute” again.
Down here in NoCal, we also fortunatley lack any sort of large, disgusting, animals, critters or bugs in or around our home. However, our apartment complex does have a large problem with …..ants. Now, I’m not new to ants. We had Oregon ants. We had sugar ants. Whatever. But I have never seen an ant problem like we have here.
The ants come in when you leave food around. but not just “food” like a leftover piece of hot dog, or a big cookie, or a big slab of watermelon. No, they huntdown a microscopic drop of butter that melted, and is now invisible on the counter–making it impossible to know that it is there in order to clean it up. They will hunt down, in armies, that one grain of sugar that the sponge just barely missed when you were trying to wipe down the counter thoroughly.
Fortunately, our kitchen is clean the vast majority of the time. And this is quite a heroic effort on my part, you have to understand, because we do not have a dishwasher!!
There are occassions, however that something gets left out….a cup with leftover coffee, some toast crumbs, a piece of food that hopped out of a pan, underneath the burner, and is now dried up and is unidentifiable. you know, the usual.
This past week, in a haste to leave the house (we were meeting friends to go to the pumpkin patch), I did the unthinkable and left out the papertowel that I had used to blot the turkey bacon with. It so happened, that there was a little piece of turkey bacon left on the grease-soaked papertowel too. Of course I didn’t realize this huge mistake until I got home. (that’s usually how it goes…”Damn! I forgot to clean out my cereal bowl!” or “Damn! They found the peanut butter!”) So, as you can guess, when I got home it was “Damn! Ants like turkey bacon greese!” Of course, I didn’t say that because Venezia was with me so I said, “Ooooh, want to see some cute ants??”
Well? Do YOU? Because I took a picture!
If you are an international student/visitor to the US, doesn’t it pretty much give you license to wear whatever strange outfit you wish, and receive a free pass along with it? While we may judge our American counterparts on their trendiness of dress (”what was he thinking this morning”), don’t we just look at someone from Russia, or Korea or Brazil and say to ourselves “I wish I could get away with those thick dark socks and high tops… I bet he’s a pretty cool person.”
true story: I wrote “dark socks with high tops” before I noticed an instance of this right next to me in the study room! So I surreptitiously captured the moment with my camera phone. Righteous!
Comments welcome.
Tony and I have really been slacking on the blog lately. Tony has a better excuse than I do since he started school! He’s working A LOT! In fact, last night I think he got 2 hours of sleep–literally!! But that is Tony in perfect Tony form: when he wants to do something, he does it RIGHT!! Afterall, he married ME, right??? ha ha, just kidding honey!
Ok, so back to the car story, if you didn’t read the last blog entry, shame on you! But you would have learned that Tony’s car got stolen! Well, the police called us about a week later to tell us they had found it! It showed up less than 10 miles from our apartment in a not-so-desireable area of Richmond. The ONLY major damage was they stole the passenger side air bag! They didn’t take the spare change, Tony’s sunglasses, CD stereo–nothing! just the air bag! If anyone has any info. on why this would be, please enlighten us! We are delighted yet curious at the same time! Anyhow, we have the car back. It’s driveable, a little dirty and now we have another car to pay California car insurance on! whoo hoo!
Other than that…I will entertain you with some links to a couple recent parties. The first one was a 1 year old birthday party of our Japanese friend’s daughter Aika. The second link is to the Labor Day BBQ we hosted in our small apartment for about 30 area MBA students and their families who live in our apartment complex.
Other than that, keep the comments coming! Otherwise we feel like we’re talking to ourselves! 
Click here for the Japanese birthday party photo gallery
Click here for the UC Village People Labor Day barbecue photo gallery
