life's more fun together
Ok, Ash and I did not go to the middle east and do some crazy exotic hiking. We went outside of Atlanta to a mountain called the Arabia Mountain, a small hard rocked mountain and did a couple hours of hiking and a picnic for my Birthday. The day was beautiful, blue clouds, calm and cool fall air. We brought some fruit salad and other snacks with us and had a great time.
Ashley and I have been jogging together for almost a year now. We started doing it in California. At first it was my idea to start jogging more frequently and Ashley got into it as well. It’s really nice jogging together. We like jogging through PiedmontPark a lot and this time I brought the camera with us to capture this special time we have together.
This is the lively intersection near our place, Piedmont Ave and 10th St. Ashley’s blurry image is in the corner.
Here’s me running in Piedmont Park, actually I am pretending to run since we could not get a good action shot so I had to pose.
Piedmont Park’s great lawn at dusk. You can see the signature buildings of Midtown Atlanta in the background.
And finally home!
I doubt anyone knows it but the title of this post comes from “Oliver!”, the movie musical adaptation of Oliver Twist filmed in 1968, directed by Carol Reed. The move opens with the orphans singing this catchy tune. Anyways, enough about that… I have been getting more and more into photography. Food photography is especially interesting. Here are two of mine and these are home cooked by the way!
Marinated beef rib eye with a side of brown rice and fresh tomatoes covered with a sweet sesame mayo dressing.
Shrimp, turkey and vegetable wonton’s – so good and home made by Ashley (I helped wrap some). These are not yet boiled.
Finally after many weekends of almost nothing but studying and work, Ashley and I finally had a full day to hang out. So, with much excitement we went on our first road trip yesterday to check out Savannah, Georgia. About 260 miles away from Atlanta, Savannah is a coastal city filled with history and old beauty. It was a great day for a road trip in the south, a comfortable 80 degrees and blue skies all around.
We packed a few goodies for a 3.5 hour ride and set out looking to see what this famous southern city was all about. We arrived in Savannah in the early afternoon and hopped aboard a tour trolley. The tour was awesome, our guide truly had a southern personality with an accent so thick that Ashley said she could barely understand.
The tour brought us through the central historic district of Savannah passing what seemed like square after square of historic monuments and fountains. Ashley and I both loved the wonderful elegant 19th century homes. The tree lined roads and numerous parks reminded me a little of the best parts of Boston’s Beacon Hill mixed with the Back Bay.
One of my favorite parts of Savannah was the wonderful oak trees with the hanging Spanish moss. It seemed like every scene could have been part of a southern painting. The Spanish moss as you see in the picture above casts such a hazy sleepy glow around everything especially through the rays of the afternoon sun that I spent many shots trying to capture the feeling that I got while there. Unfortunately the best I could do are in the pictures below, and they really don’t quite do it justice.
Like I said earlier, there were many squares in downtown Savannah. These squares were really miniature parks. So after going down one or two block you would end up in a square surrounded by these wonderful old homes and walk another two blocks and see the same thing. Near the edge was what is the historic district of Savannah where we toured a wonderful fountain, that was actually mail-ordered I think in the early 19th century through the Sears Catalog!
Ever heard of the phrase “Keeping up with the Jones”? Well we finally found the origin of that classic American phrase. Here in historic district was a street called “Jones St.” During the 19th century the lawyers, businessmen, and doctors would all live on this street, so for everyone else who wanted to make it big and keep up with the high society, they would have the keep up with “Jones St.”
Here’s one of the homes I was able to snap a picture of. The house were so magnificent compared to the others around the area. But nevertheless it was a very nice street to live on.
Savannah was a lot of fun and what was even more fun was our car ride up there and back. After such a long time, Ash and I were finally able to just relax. We even brought the laptop with us and watched (listened) to a couple of episodes of “Everybody Loves Raymond”, Ashley’s favorite sitcom. 🙂 On the way back Ashley and I had a great conversation talking about our future and doing some family planning. We’re thinking about where we will be moving to next and where we’d like to raise our children. I have to say I am excited to both move and also raise kids with Ashley, though the time to be a father is still a few years away. All in all, it was really a great road trip and I had such a nice time with my huney.
There is something I truely love about Sunday afternoons. Maybe it’s because I never had one growing up with Chinese School filling up the time slot or maybe it’s the thought of the quiet before the storm of the imminent work week. In any case, nothing is better than the orange and golden afternoons at our condo. Here’s our little Cappy basking in the sunlight coming in from the living room windows.
This Sunday was particularly nice and I took a picture of a beautiful Orchid we bought at the local Publix. I am especially proud of this picture because I thought our old 2 mega pixel point and shoot camera was too crappy to take a nice photo but look!
