Wedding Photog's Blog Photos

It's been a while since the last, full official blog post was written. But obviously things have been really great for us. We got married last month on the 16th, and left quickly for our honeymoon in Fiji for two weeks. While we have some really amazing photos from our honeymoon, our wedding photographer just put up a new blog post from our wedding. Tyra is so talented and she captured some really amazing photos from the day. You can see the blog post by clicking here, or going to http://www.tyrableek.com/. :-) Enjoy! Photos from the honeymoon to follow soon!

Dear The Relative News,

Oh - how I've negelected you over the past few months! No updates amidst all sorts of exciting life events. Wine country, agility trials, wedding shower, dog injuries, and more... For some reason, "Oh, sorry, wish I could help with the wedding invitations, but I have to post another 30 pictures of our dogs and talk about their training shortcomings" is not a viable excuse to get me out of helping with planning or really anything related to the wedding...

But alas, the light is at the end of the tunnel. Neglect will ultimately transform into over-excitement once our wedding passes and honeymoon comes to an end. The bolus of photos and stories from our new life will certainly overwhelm my browser's bandwitdth, causing multiple "Internet Explorer Not Responding" messages and, ultimately, many many "power button" reboots.

Rest assured, TRN, your time will come. You will once again, like the Pheonix, rise from the ashes of your prior form and emerge a beautiful, powerful blog once again.

Sincerely,
Greg

On this Valentine's Day

As C and I get ready for our wedding, and it being Valentine's Day and all, I decided to share this article from the Huffington Post today. As we plan, C and I look to each other to stay grounded and focused on what's truly important...

You can find the original story here.

My Worst Wedding... Was My Own

By Rachael Hollis

I've been thinking about writing this article for a while, but pride may or may not have kept me from it. You see, I'm really proud of the reputation I've built up over the last eight years as a high end, stylish wedding planner. I have been known to, on more than one occasion, look down my nose at items I deem to be tacky wedding fare... carnations, tulle, DIY invitations. And yet, the wedding I'm most embarrassed of having planned, the one I'd never put into my portfolio, is my own.

A little back-story... I got married eight years ago this May at the ripe old age of 21. Back then we didn't have a ton of money, or a ton of taste for that matter. I set about planning a wedding that was nicer than what I'd grown up with but it turns out, lacking in several key areas. We picked a gorgeous locale on a cliff overlooking the ocean but I was hesitant to spend exorbitant amounts of money on items I didn't think were crucial. I can admit to you all now, albeit sheepishly, that we had plastic folding chairs at our ceremony... can you imagine? The "upgraded" chair was in our reception and even then it was white wood folding. The reception itself had ficus trees with twinkle lights, the cake table was skirted and piled high with fabric, the bar served beer in plastic cups, and yes, there may or may not have been tulle swathing each exit. Dear Lord, I shudder to think of it now!

I often joke with my husband that if we were getting married today I would put us into financial ruin with all of my choices. I would insist on custom everything and have my favorite wedding photographer flown out from New York. The floral costs alone would rival the annual operating budget of a small island nation and the bar would be top shelf with vintage wine flowing like the Nile. But, at the end of that lavish spectacular day, we'd be exactly where we are now: married. You see, as much as I can't stand to look at décor shots from my own wedding, I still wouldn't change a single thing about it. Our friends and family couldn't tell you what chairs we had or even what "skirting" a table means. They remember our hand written vows that made total strangers stop and listen on the bluff and then end up crying with everyone else. They remember the French fries and champagne we served during cocktail hour and that everyone danced and danced until the wee hours of the morning. They remember seeing two kids in love who might not have known what "high end" was, but who were so grateful for that sunny day and the opportunity to spend the rest of their lives with each other.

I think of this now when I have an indecisive bride who's paralyzed about something simple like whether or not to serve champagne at the toast or which shade of pink is ideal. Choosing elements for your wedding day should be fun, but these choices won't make any difference in the stuff that matters. For better or worse, you'll end that day married to your partner and that's the truly exciting part. Chances are in a few years your dress choice will be out of style, and the centerpieces you thought were so modern might look outdated. But the timeless photos, the ones that will always make you grin, are those of two people in love in their Sunday best ready to take on the world together. Those pictures are always in style.

USDAA Trial in Turlock

Crystal and I took the dogs to Turlock, CA for a USDAA agility trial this past weekend. Both West and Sonoma competed, and if you're wondering, yes they do compete against each other. The concept behind many of the agility organizations is that the dog starts at level 1, then moves to 2 when a certain set of criteria is met, then on to level 3 when that same criteria is met at the second level. Once in level 3, the dog competes to get its agility champion title of that organization by accomplishing a rigorous set of criteria. So for example, in AKC, the dog starts at Novice (level 1), then moves to Open (level 2), and finally competes in Excellent (level 3). Once you're in Excellent, you work towards your Master Agility Champion (or MACH). Sonoma started her agility "career" in AKC, and has achieved an Excellent title, and is currently working towards her MACH. We had heard that USDAA trials were a bit of a younger, more competitive crowd, so when West started competing, we decided to give them a try. So even though Sonoma is in Excellent in AKC, she has to start over again in Starters (USDAA level 1), alongside West, who has no titles in any organization.

So, this weekend we competed with both dogs in Starters. There are a lot of different "games" in USDAA agility, which means about 5 runs a day for each dog. In AKC agility, the dog typically only runs 3 different events. So if you think about it, we were used to sharing Sonoma's three runs per day in AKC, and now we have two dogs, running about 5 runs per day each in USDAA - a much different ballgame!! Overall, we had a lot of success (and a few learning opportunities). We walked away with a bunch of qualifying runs, and a few 1st and 2nd places. Both dogs are just one run away from their Starters title, and will hopefully be competing soon in Advanced (USDAA level 2). Here are a few pictures from the weekend. I must say, we have some really good looking dogs - but not that I'm biased...

West and Crystal competing. He doesn't knock this bar over, believe it or not, but he's taking a very short path around the course by jumping on the inside of each jump. Ideal placement for the dog over the jump in this circumstance :-)

You can see on the same jump, that Sonoma isn't hugging that inside of the jump as much as West. While she successfully completed the jump and made a nice turn, she probably lost a split second of time by taking a slightly longer path. And those split seconds add up. We'll work on our rear crosses (where the handler crosses behind the path of the dog to signal a turn) to tighten up that behavior.



Here's West and Sonoma each getting ready to launch! The "Sit, Stay" at the beginning of the course is probably the hardest behavior we ask of them out there. They get out on the course, the leash taken off (see it in the grass there??) and we lead out into the course somewhere. They are ready to RUN! West loads his legs up, and just wants to explode......... but he has to stay until we say the magical release word, "OKAY!"

At this point, Sonoma's "Sit, Stay" is much more reliable than West's... but rest assured, her heart is beating a million times a minute right now and her brain is firing like crazy! She's one step away from just letting her adrenaline take over...



Sonoma and me somewhere along the course. She's pretty serious.

One of Sonoma's best obstacles are the weave poles. To do the weaves successfully, the dogs must enter in between the first and second weave poles from the right to the left. They must alternate through each pair of poles, until they exit on the 12th on the left... Hmm, okay, I'll draw it out:

Sonoma having such reliable weave pole entries, allows us to be anywhere remotely close to the weaves and still have trust that she'll cleanly enter the poles and complete the entire set, without popping out somewhere a long the way.

And S coming out of the tunnel and making a nice tight right turn... Again, the tight turn out of the tunnel shortens the dog's path and keeps them from exploding out of the tunnel, adding distance (and ultimately time), and then finally turning yards away from the tunnel exit.

S jumping over the same jump (as before) a second time in the run, but this time heading straight instead of turning.

Before each event starts, the judge responsible for the ring will hold a "briefing". They will quickly review the rules of the game, answer competitors questions, and those types of things. In this particular briefing, our agility friends Matt and Penni, who both run border collies (Buzz and Einstein), are listening too. They are both in our Monday night class with West because their BCs are young, beginner dogs as well. Actually, their two dogs are siblings from the same litter and they just happen to train agility at the same place. It's fun to see the difference in the two dogs as they grow up with different handlers but are from the same pedigree.

Proof that 2 = 1 ??

Mathmatical proof that 2 = 1? Well, clearly 2 does not equal 1, so what's the deal with the math below?

See if you can figure out why 2, indeed, does not equal 1. There's something fishy about the math below... Don't cheat and Google the answer until you've at least tried to work it out (*cough*SARAH*cough*)...

Leave a comment and I'll update this in a few days.

a = b
a^2 = a*b
a^2-b^2 = a*b-b^2
(a+b)(a-b) = b(a-b) 
(a+b) = b
a+a = a
2a = a
2 = 1

HINT: Work though this as they teach you in school - show ALL your work.

2,000th Hit!

The Relative News turned 2,000 hits old yesterday!

Like last time, here's a graphic of where in the world people are accessing TRN. The darker the green, the more hits...

It took us a little longer to get from 1,000 to 2,000 than the original 1,000. I haven't posted updates as often, but trust me, the our lives have not slowed down. Actually, I consider it a function of having TOO much going on, that keeps me from having time or energy to put up posts. Anyhow, thanks to all our family and friends who like to check in from time to time. Feel free to use the comments feature too, we love getting feedback and hearing from our visitors :-)

My Drive In To Work

I've been waiting to do this for a while, just thought it would be a fun video to watch. I think it's cool, but let's be honest, when it comes to being cool, what do I know??

Football Time!

This weekend should be a fun one! First off, Crystal's mom is coming in to town. It's always nice to have visitors come in, but especially our parents. Also, this weekend is the NFL Conference Championships... or as I see it, the semi-finals. On one side (NFC, I guess) we have the NY Giants against SF 49ers. This will be a very exciting game for us. We've become Niners fans since being in the Bay Area, but also grew up with Giants fans. Looks like this game won't disappoint! On the other side (AFC, I guess, by elimination) is the NE Patriots against the Baltimore Ravens. Pretty sure the Pats are going to stomp the Ravens, but anything can happen. Either way, we'll get to root for either the Giants or Niners in the Super Bowl, and perhaps even the Pats... not bad!

Christmas and NYE 2011

I didn't intend on having one of those "It's been a while since I posted anything..." or "Long time, no post!" type blogs. Yet, worked picked up and available time to update the blog was swallowed up by protocols, reports, risk management, testing, and meetings. I don't really do too much work on a computer once I'm home either because I'm sick of them by then. And alas, blog posts become more infrequent...

Anyway, I've got a chance right now (it being a rainy Friday and all - meaning no work will get done) to upload some pictures from Christmas. We didn't end up taking as many as we probably would have liked, and a bunch were blurry and dark (must have been the wine), but there were defintely a few keepers.

Hmmmm, let's start off with one that really captures the Christmas spirit. Family, hanging out together, after a nice meal, a few glasses of wine, two shots of chartreuse, and - of course - group karaoke and air guitar.

We got to celebrate Christmas with our cousins... and the Easter Bunny?

Looks like Crystal was on the "naughty" list this year....

And of course, no Christmas is really Christmas without the family portrait....

And a few from New Year's Eve. I call this one "The Girls"

And if we just walk onto the roof our our friend Brandon's apartment buidling, we can watch the San Francisco NYE fireworks at the Embarcadero :-) Best display of fireworks I have ever seen, even if there were a few building tops making it harder to see the lower ones...

The fireworks really were fantastic. I remember back in the days of the Granville, MA fireworks show for Fourth of July, and they were awesome. But it was like "Ooooh! That one had TWO colors!" Nowadays it's like "WOW! That's a 3D box and a smiley face!" (Sorry, I didn't get any photos of the 3D box or smiley face fireworks)...

But I did get a photo of these smiley faces that night on the roof...

Pretty soon, TRN will be turning 2,000 hits old! I look forward to posting something then too, assuming work isn't too hectic of course...

Anyone know these dogs??

Saw them at the beach the other day....

Happy Halloween!

We carved pumpkins this weekend! Check them out!

Bark and Lunge

Last night, Crystal and I went to the first class of a six part series for dogs that bark and lunge. Sonoma has, over the years, not reacted wonderfully to other dogs in an on-leash situation, especially small, white, fluffy dogs. She tends to pull on leash anyway, but with the added stress of meeting another dog, she tends to, well, misbehave. So we’ve done a lot of research on how to fix this behavior and have really tried a lot of different approaches. Our hopes were that taking this “Bark and Lunge” class (which, mind you, is way up 101 in San Mateo at 6:30 on Thursdays) would expose us to really solid techniques to change her behavior. After the first class, we aren’t so sure we’ll get what we need.

See, the problem is this. You can read books, attend classes, watch DVD’s and so forth, all geared towards helping your dog’s reactivity. And believe me, we’ve done all that. But the methods taught in these arenas are simply ways to distract your dog to avoid having an over-threshold reaction in a certain social situation. For example, let’s say your dog is fearful of skateboards. You’re walking her down the sidewalk and you see some kid on a skateboard coming your way, off in the distance. You use this time to prepare a treat or reward of some sort, and distract the dog as the skateboarder goes by. This distraction essentially forces the dog’s attention away from the scary skateboard and onto the delicious treat. But the skateboard is still scary! The dog still doesn’t know what to do when a scary skateboard is coming, and still doesn’t know what the best behavior is in an encounter with a skateboard.

We need a class that gets to the root cause of the issue. I’m an engineer, and part of my work is to find corrections AND corrective actions to problems. There’s an important difference between the two. A correction is a way to fix a symptom of a problem. If your dog is fearful of skateboards, a treat in the face will distract the dog from turning that fear into barking and lunging. A corrective action is a way to fix the root cause of the problem. The root cause in this case is the fear of the skateboard. People with dogs that bark and lunge need to learn to fix the psychology of the dog, the root cause. And unfortunately, this class at the Peninsula Humane Society is only adding to or (at this point) refining our toolsets for dealing in corrections. There’s an actual business opportunity out there to provide a class where you address the root cause of the fear and practice techniques to change the dog’s internal wiring. There’s Behavior Adjustment Training (or BAT) where you can teach the dog how to release their own stress by giving themselves space between the trigger (the skateboarder in this case) and themselves. They learn to keep themselves below threshold, instead of the handler forcing them to stay under threshold. Either way, the result is a calm, nice dog that’s not creating a scene on the public sidewalk, but the difference is the dog internally is feeling better and less stressed. The dog’s learning to cope with scary situations and could even possibly transfer the techniques to other triggers (bikes, cars, small fluffy white dogs).

We’ll see where this class goes. After all, it’s only been one class out of six (and the first was without the dogs present). We’re hopeful that the discussion starts to take a turn towards science and behavior modification, but using the first class as a baseline, the content is “fluff”. Otherwise, Crystal and I have been self-educating. We’ll fix Sonoma’s barking and lunging once and for all. As we do this, we’re becoming well equipped to help anyone else who’s finding themselves in a similar situation. And if we’ve learned anything from these other classes and books, it’s that we’re not alone.

Volunteering at HSSV

Crystal and I recently started volunteering at the local Humane Society of Silicon Valley. There’s an incredible amount of training you have to do just to become a “Cuddler”, and that’s the level we’re at. Once we’ve put in 10 hours of cuddling, and passed the test (yes, a written test) we can become a “Dog Walker” and we’re allowed to take the dogs outside on leash! Anyway, the road is long to get fully trained, but here’s a picture of the dog we got to play with at our training on Tuesday. I already forget her name. She was so gentle with her mouth when taking treats from our hands. Perfect behavior for a pitbul.

I’ll put up more photos and talk about the training and volunteering experience in later posts.

My New Tool

During our visit to Cayman Brac in March, we did occasional hiking around the island to see what there was to discover. We saw lots of cool birds, terrain, a lighthouse, and amazing views off cliffs that just dropped off into the sea 1000 feet below. As we were walking along one particular day, I found a machete lying on the ground, and telling by its condition, it seemed to have been there a while. I picked it up and the thing was pretty heavy. Tip to tip, I’d say this sucker was at least three feet long, with a sturdy plastic handle. The blade was rusted pretty heavily towards the tip, and spotted throughout the rest. I gave it a few swings and the whole thing was so long and heavy the momentum was hard to control. After a few swings, it was obvious someone could remove toes – or worse! – with this tool if they weren’t too careful about both the speed and direction of their swings. (Maybe that’s what happened with the last owner and he abandoned the thing as he hobbled away for medical treatment.)

Anyway, I carried my “new” tool back to the car and showed off my new finding to Crystal and her parents. Obviously Crystal’s dad showed great interest in the find. He brings a machete on vacations like this to cut open coconuts, chop down bamboo, or whatever else may need to be hacked apart – you never know. He offered to take the machete back to the states and repair the metal as well as sharpen the blade. I figured it would be a good idea since I probably wouldn’t use it in its current state.

So skip ahead a few months, 7 actually, to this Wednesday when the mailman came by as I was leaving home to go back to work after lunch. He was carrying a long thin cardboard package addressed to me and couldn’t fit it in the box. Seeing it was from Crystal’s dad, I went in an opened it up. I pulled out a nice thick, black nylon sheath that obviously contained my machete. I undid the Velcro strap, grabbed the plastic handle and carefully pulled out the blade. If I know anything about Crystal’s dad at this point, it’s that something like this will have a SHARP blade. Sure enough, out pulls a beautiful, shiny, polished blade with a razor sharp edge.

He did really great work - it looks impressive. And the one detail you're not able to make out in that photo, he had it engraved to mark the memorable event that took place while we vacationed on Cayman Brac.

The blade is a bit shorter than it was originally (about 2 and a half feet now, total length) where a lot of the rust was removed, which will ultimately result in more accurate swings (and fewer missing toes). The unit as a whole is balanced nicely around the handle and the shorter blade lends to a lighter overall assembly. Of course I took it outside and quickly removed a few suckers from the lemon tree. It was like a hot knife through butter. I’m excited to bring it on our next tropical or camping vacation!

Long time, no update

It's been over a month (maybe two??) since I've last updated our blog. It seems like every night and weekend we have something going on that takes up a lot of our time and leaves none for sitting down with a laptop to type up a coherent blog post. Not that I'm complaining, I love our active lifestyle. But I guess it's more like if there's time to sit down and write a blog post, then I should be looking into wedding vendors or something instead...

But to that point, the wedding planning is going well. At this point we have decided on the venue, caterer, photographer, and wedding dress (which I have not seen). We are lucky to have such a dedicated family back East willing to help with the things that are basically impossible for us to do from California. Two weekends ago weekend Crystal's dad and step-mom were visiting us and we drew a mockup of the wedding layout on their property. We feel that an attention to detail will really help the event feel magical for everyone. Crystal and I know that regardless of the outcome, the wedding will be magical for both of us, but we want to convey that emotion to our guests as well.

I plan to write a post about our trip to Europe, if nothing else, to get pictures up online from the vacaion. But again, sitting down to write the post requires time which I hope to have this weekend or next...

In the meantime, I'd like to give a "shout out" to theotherrelativenews.blogspot.com. Sarah recently started her own blog, and titled it as a play on this blog. Now to be honest, I'm a little disappointed she didn't even give us a plug on the email she sent out, but she did at least make mention to the fact that we have one...

Tonight we're driving down to Turlock, CA for a Saturday USDAA trial. We're very excited because it will be West's first try at an offical agility trial. He's only running two events, Jumpers and Pairs. Jumpers is similiar to AKC, where it's all jumps and tunnels (but no weaves). Pairs is a game where you run half a course, and a a partner with another dog runs the other half. So we've signed up Sonoma and West to compete together in Pairs. All four of us will be out on the course at once - a first. We're very excited! Sonoma will be competing in four events. I'll let everyone know how we did after the weekend..........

Random pic from our last Costa Rica trip (2010)...