Home Dipu Massively Updated

If you've been paying attention, you've noticed I've been quietly adding new stuff in the left column of the home page of Home Dipu for the past few months. If not, welcome to the most massively massive update to Home Dipu in years, with 15 — count 'em, FIFTEEN — new albums! Also, welcome to Home Dipu version 2.2, now with 16% larger photos and 33% bigger thumbnails on new albums, plus a brand-new thumbnail grid! But wait, there's more! The biggest album ever, the long-overdue Alaska Cruise photos from 2005!

NEW STUFF: Alaska Cruise/Liu Wedding, Caroline Visits Austin, Omid's Birthday, St. Patrick's Day, Anita & John's Engagement Party, Super Bowl at Home Dipu, Andrew's Birthday, Anita's Birthday, Michelle B's Birthday, Trish's Birthday, New Year's Eve/Bob's 5-0, Bob's Birthday, Supper Club at Home Dipu, Cameron Visits Austin, Tom's Bachelor Party. WHEW!!

NAME INDEX NEWS: Brian becomes the first to scale 800 and maintains a comfortable lead for the #1 spot. Dipu (that's me) breaks 700, while Trish becomes the first gal to reach 600; the former #1 also moves up in rank for the first time in years as she passes Tim for 4th place. Anita tops 500, Kyle hits 300, and the Alaska Cruise helps both Matt K. (now in triple digits) and Barbara, who smashes 300 to sneak into the top 10 for the first time (knocking Amy K. to 11th).

This doesn't quite catch me up, but it's damn close now. So enjoy these literally hundreds of new photos, keep watching that left column for quiet updates, and as always ... enjoy!

http://homedipu.com

Tahoe Wildlife, Part 3

I was tempted to go to bed early tonight when I realized uh oh, I haven't blogged yet. Damn! So here I am, living up to my self-imposed Week of Blogging.

So, Tahoe Wildlife, Part 3? Just how many more photos of birds and squirrels can I post?! Well, fear not, no more animals this time. Well, no feathered or four-legged or insectoid ones. This time, it's wild life, two words. Or party animals. Or at least, the best that passed for us being party animals on this trip.

We didn't drink anywhere near as much as we thought we would over the course of the week, but there was our second night in Tahoe, when we took a sunset champagne catamaran cruise on the lake. An all-you-can-drink champagne cruise. And I took that to heart most of all for some reason. After that, we went to the Cabo Wabo restaurant for dinner at one of the casinos, where Michelle K. and I each ordered what turned out to be massively strong drinks. Everyone was in a good mood, in various stages of buzzes (good sport Matt had volunteered to be the designated driver, but he seemed to have a good time nonetheless), but no one was more hammered than me or Michelle. You know the alcohol is flowing freely when 9 photos of people sitting around a table are snapped in just a couple of minutes.

Clearly, we're not in our 20s anymore, as this was the only time on the trip that we really partied hard. Oh well. The price of maturity, I guess. Nevertheless, here are the photos from that one standout night, which are pretty much self-explanatory:

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Tahoe Wildlife, Part 2

At long last, the continuation of my excerpts of Tahoe wildlife photos (see Part 1 here)! So, without further ado:

A closeup of a Steller's jay, perched and alert in a tree near our resort suite:

Alert Steller's jay
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Part 1 showed you the local chipmunks. Here's one of the local squirrels, which are brown with gray necks:

Tahoe squirrel
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Tahoe squirrel
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One afternoon, Barbara and I hiked up the mountain trail from our resort. This was the only time I saw this gray and white bird, and only from a distance. And it didn't stick around long enough for me to get my telephoto lens on, so this is the best shot I got:

Gray and white bird in a dead tree
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Also ran across this fat pudgy bird while on our hike:

Fat pudgy bird
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Back at our suite, while relaxing on the balcony, Lisa and I spotted this big ant crawling around in the sunlit areas. Upon closer inspection, we realized it was carrying a piece of bacon, dropped by someone during breakfast:

Bacon-loving ant
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Another Steller's jay (they were all over), this one in silhouette:

Silhouetted Steller's jay
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But here come the predators! Or at least the scavengers. These were probably vultures, though they look like birds of prey from a distance. So, not very exotic; I can see birds like this in Austin. As with most of the wildlife shots, this was seen from our suite's balcony. Of course, keep in mind this was taken with a telephoto:

Vulture hovers
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Trio of vultures
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And can I just say, my God was the sky so deep, deep blue at our resort! Way bluer than it was even by Lake Tahoe itself! That extra 1300 feet of elevation made a huge difference.

On our last full day in Tahoe, I went off hiking by myself up the mountain our suite was on. It was only then that I stumbled upon my most colorful wildlife finds of the entire trip. I don't know what these birds are, but they were having a feast of insects:

A male ... something
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A yellow-throated whatsit
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Colorful male something with insect
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Colorful male something with insect
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Colorful male something with insect
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Less colorful female something
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And finally, I leave this update with yet another shot of the bird I saw most, though this was the closest I got to one; this Steller's jay landed on our balcony in the wee hours of the morning shortly before we left for home:

Steller's jay
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Part 3 of Tahoe Wildlife coming, yes, tomorrow! Not next week or next month, tomorrow!

Tahoe Wildlife, Part 1

Just prior to the Lake Tahoe trip a few weeks ago, I finally bit the bullet and replaced my trusty old 35mm SLR camera with a digital SLR. So this week, I'll post a selection of photos with the new camera from the trip. Of course, many of these photos will eventually end up on Home Dipu proper, but in the meantime, here's a preview.

Today's selection covers a sampling of the wildlife we ran into. And while I'm on the subject of wildlife, don't forget to check out Tom's BirdBrains of Austin blog, which he's updating regularly!

First, a really fat chipmunk, one of many living just outside our resort building:

Fat, fat chipmunk
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And part of the reason why he's probably fat (courtesy a donut tossed down by Michelle):

Mmmmmm, donut...
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We stepped out of the garage in our building and literally nearly ran into this tiny lost deer. As I quickly focused to take this photo, I realized that I was looking through a small viewfinder at a creature that was barreling in a panic in my general direction, and that that was probably not the smartest thing I could be doing:

Look out!
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Fortunately, the deer wasn't SO panicked that he ran blindly; he knew enough to flee well in front of us:

Barbara watches as the deer flees down the hill
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Heading for safety
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Here's a lone solitary raven we spotted in the distance near our resort:

Lone raven
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But not solitary for long:

Raven love
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A wounded raccoon accosted the cleaning crew as they left our suite:

Masked bandit
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And of course, Michelle fed it a donut:

Mmmmm, donut...
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I zoomed way in for a shot of this tiny green fly:

Green fly
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A squirrel in silhouette outside our suite:

Tahoe squirrel
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Steller's jays (like blue jays with black hoods) were the most common bird I saw outside our balcony:

Steller's jay
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Steller's jay in flight
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Steller's jay in flight
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Stay tuned for more Tahoe photos later this week!

Separation Anxiety

When you live alone for a long time, you get used to the freedom and independence, but you also kinda take it for granted. And you start to wonder if you'll ever be able to adjust to living with others again.

Last week in Lake Tahoe, three singles and one couple shared a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom suite. Unlike on the Alaska cruise 2 years ago, I can't exactly say that Barbara and Lisa were my roomies, as this time my "room" was the living room where the sofabed was, rather than one stateroom cabin that housed all three of us. But I still shared a bathroom and closet space with them, and they even let me into their drawers (heh), so we were sorta roomies. Plus Matt and Michelle were there to hang out in the living room and on the patio as well.

And sure, it's an adjustment being around people so much. But then when you get home, all that space and peace and quiet you normally crave feels a bit emptier for a couple of days. It's like getting your land legs back after a week on a boat (yes, everything comes back to the the Alaska cruise, okay?!). You're a bit wobbly on your feet at first. You realize that you can no longer simply turn your head and make a comment to someone, or share a laugh with them, or even ignore them because you know you'll talk to them later. Lisa put it best when she described the feeling as separation anxiety. Sure, this is old news for many of you, but for those of us who are perennially single, it's a bit more rare for us. Let's see, when was the last time I felt this way? Oh yes -- after the Alaska cruise.

And so, in conclusion, Alaska cruise.

I'm sorry, what was I saying...?

17 Hours from Tahoe

I'm used to traveling 16, 24, even 36 hours one way when flying thousands of miles internationally. Not so much for a domestic trip covering barely 1500 miles as the crow flies. Still, it could have been much worse. Despite sweating in a hot plane with power problems for over an hour, having our flight switched to another plane, being moved back to the original plane when they rerouted us Austin-bound folks because we'd miss our connecting flight, waiting again on the same stuffy plane while they finally fixed the power problem, then waiting on the ground in El Paso for a planeload of latecomers, we made it home fine. All our luggage was routed correctly despite arriving on another flight. And the Southwest personnel handled things as well as they could under the circumstances.

Still, it's draining when you're prepared for a 10-hour journey from the lobby of your hotel resort to your own doorstep at home and end up with a 17-hour jaunt, arriving home at 2 am. Although I've never quite understood why it's so tiring to just sit and wait all day. I guess waking up at 6 am doesn't help.

But if Barbara and I thought we were having some bad plane luck, we weren't alone, as Matt and Michelle also had 4-plus hours added to their journey, including sitting on a hot runway in a too-heavy plane for hours and then having an extra stop added to their trip. They were also on Southwest. Meanwhile, Lisa breezed home on United with no problems. I guess 07/07/07 wasn't a lucky day for Southwest Airlines.

So ended a week of vacation in Lake Tahoe, my first trip out of state in almost 2 years. (Yes, I didn't mention anything about it on here before; I don't like to announce when I'll be out of town on the web). Unlike that trip (the cruise), this one wasn't quite one for the ages. It was fun, it was beautiful, it was relaxing at times, but maybe I'd set my expectations too high. The Alaska cruise blew us away because we really weren't sure what to expect and had somewhat low expectations. This was a good trip, but I'd hesitate to call it a great one. Still, it had its moments, so stay tuned for more entries later this week...

HIV Anime

Hard to believe it's been more than 4 years since I spent 2 weeks on vacation in China (full story here). I long ago posted photos from that trip, but I neglected to post any videos. The other day I ran across the footage I'd captured; specifically, this short segment I filmed during my layover in Tokyo's Narita airport in Japan on the first/second day of my trip. Leave it to the Japanese to make even a public service announcement about AIDS into a cartoon. Yes, that's right, playing on a continuous loop in kiosks throughout the terminal was a cartoon about the perils of HIV.

I had four hours until my connecting flight to China and didn't want to chance napping and oversleeping (a peril of traveling alone), so one thing I did to kill time was tape this PSA. Maybe it was because I'd barely slept over the previous 24 hours, but I thought it was kinda funny. You can't really hear the video because of the airport PA system, but it's subtitled. The visuals are the main thing anyway (I especially like the depiction of the heroin addicts). And can you imagine anything like this being allowed to play in a public space here?! The religious right would have this shut down so fast (it mentions ... gasp! ... condoms!) you'd think someone had just seen the hint of a nipple for a quarter of a second.

So enjoy Japan's cartoon Everyman as the Narrator guides him through the perils of AIDS, dispels myths about transmission, and learns some valuable lessons about HIV:

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