In typical fashion

Oh my gosh, this is my first post for 2009?!? This will be unsuprising to those who know me well - on Sunday we went to pick up my stimulus check/consumption voucher.* Pick-up times were from 9:30am to 5:30pm on Sunday. Of course, we wanted to enjoy a leisurely Sunday at home, so we slept in, had breakfast, made tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, surfed the web...until I looked at the time and realized it was almost 5pm. We hurried out of the house and Neil pulled up to the Post Office where they were distributing the vouchers and I hopped out and ran in through the door at...5:29pm. Talk about cutting it close!

In other news, I'm still not fully unpacked from our trip to the States, I still haven't posted pictures from our ski trip to Korea last year, and we got a new camera (Canon PowerShot SD790IS), which I love and am working on (slowly, of course) getting the photos downloaded to my computer and uploaded online for all to see.

Some highlights of our trip back:

Neil picking kumquats from my Uncle Ted's backyard.


Close-up of the kumquats.


AMAZING "Papa's Portobello" burger at the Veggie Grill, one of the best meals we had in the U.S. My brother Galen took us there. It is really good (and yes, I'm using omnivore standards here). Go, go! You will be so glad you did.


We ended up behind "Obama '08 / GO V3GAN" at an intersection in L.A.

More to come...I promise!

*Instead of cutting checks to the people, the Taiwan government have cleverly decided to stimulate the economy by issuing vouchers worth NT$3,600 (about a little over US$100; they come in NT$500 and NT$200 increments). These vouchers can be redeemed participating retailers around Taiwan - it's sort of like universal gift certificates. Clever, huh?