Asymptotic Behavior

Elizabeth came up with this one. =) Enjoy.

1 14.5oz Can S&W Stewed Italian Recipe Tomatoes
1 14.5oz Can Green Giant Cut Green Beans
1/2 cup cubed Hillshire Farm Beef Summer Sausage
1/2 tsp dry rosemary
1/2 tsp dry oregano
1/2 tsp dry basil
red pepper flakes (to taste)
1/2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 lbs of your favorite enriched macaroni product

Add tomatoes to sauté pan with liquid. Cut any that seem overly large. Drain the green beans before adding. Add spices and olive oil. Start water heating for pasta. Simmer sauce until it thickens a little (25 minutes or so on medium heat), stirring occasionally. Finally, add summer sausage and stir once more. Serve with pasta al-dente.

Serves two.

Warning: Wusses may consider it hot

Day 0: Getting There

We started our day in Everett. Nathan’s sister Rosemary gave us accommodations for the night in a Best Western there. But it wasn’t just any Best Western either, it was the nicest Best Western we had ever seen; transportation themed with Boeing aircraft parts integrated into the architecture. The room was the nicest room we had ever seen too; a four room sweet with a jacuzzi tub and a Nintendo GameCube. Traffic in Everett was killer at 1:00am, thus we spent several hours in traffic and got there at two. Thus, to actually play with the toys in the room (Moose played too), we had to do so in the morning. Also, as evidenced by the photo, Elizabeth couldn’t get enough of her curley hair. At twelve oclock, check out time, we rounded up all our bags – which we had repacked to condense — and loaded up.

The documents we had received said we could board the boat between 2:00pm and5:00pm. So we had plenty of time to get to Vancouver.

On the way north, we stopped at Costco for gas, and impulse bought a Nintendo DS so that we would both have one for the long airplane ride home. We then went next door to Best Buy and used a gift certificate we received as a wedding gift to get an extra Wii controller, the game Cooking Mamma, and a gift for Rosemary as a thank you for all she had done for us. Then we got back on the road and went straight to the cruise terminal.

It was a good thing too. After a rather unfortunately long time at the border, we got to the boat at about 3:50, a full hour before we thought we needed to be there. Unfortunately, we never received our final paperwork, which change the boarding time from 5:00pm to 3:00pm – good thing we weren’t flying in! The boat was just ready to leave. We rushed though security where we had some problems with some of the prank gifts my groomsmen put in our car – specifically the handcuffs. This was a blessing in disguise though, because all the fuss over the handcuffs caused them to miss our bottle of Champaign – which should have been confiscated.

When we got to the gang plank, the crew was already roping it off to close the doors. We learned later that the only reason the boat hadn’t already left was that that someone else’s cruise line booked flight had been delayed. We were the absolutely last passengers on the ship. After getting through reception, we went to check out our stateroom. We have a lovely room – much smaller than the room in Everett but with a much better view. We didn’t stay there long because we wanted to explore the ship. We first went right up on deck because Nathan wanted to see the view and take some pictures. We were still in port, because as the gangways were gone, the moorings take a long time to draw in and secure.

On deck, there was a free BBQ buffet; all the food on board is included in the price of the cruise. We grabbed some food because we were so hungry, and sat down to wolf it down. There was lots of activity on deck: bar tenders selling fancy drinks, people playing in the pool, and band playing loudly, a line of about 70 people in their seventies dancing around deck, the food line, and other people eating. We did notice at this point that virtually every person we could see was a retiree. Maybe young people with jobs can’t get 14 days of vacation all at the same time. Anyway, by the time we were done with our food, the boat was moving.

We stayed up on the top deck to watch Vancouver leave. We sailed out and around Stanly park, then under the suspension bridge. The boat’s mast has very little clearance under that bridge – 15 feet or so – and it was cute when all the old people on deck gasped and ducked. We figured that the boat must have gotten in, so it must be able to get out. As we went under the bridge, we were followed closely by a Holland America boat. That boat turned south after we cleared the harbor; we turned north. Turning north was an odd choice as we were going to Victoria, but we figured out that the boat wanted to put into port in the morning, so we sailed north so as to burn time.

That night we unpacked, went in search of our missing bag, and explored the ship. I will leave details of the rest of the ship to later parts of the post.
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Our wedding day went great. We can’t express how grateful we are to everyone who helped and everyone who came. Special thanks go to: all our parents, Becca, Rosemary, Heather, Hillary, David, Krista, Kyle, Matt, Matt, Jonathan, Jason, Drew, Tony Sr., Tony Jr. Jasmine, Ryan, Michelle, Tim, Joanne, Seth, the Brasseure family, and God.

We started the day getting everyone together and having some pictures taken. The church required us to take all our pictures ahead of the ceremony, so I actually did get to see Elizabeth before she walked down the aisle. It was a surprise for me, and was captured by the photographer. We got all the important serious and fun pictures with family including FatBoy and the wedding party.

As guests started arriving we got all the paperwork settled, and I got a chance to mingle with people. People tell me the ceremony must have gone well. I hope so because I don’t remember much of it. I do remember Elizabeth saying her vows. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so sincere or so beautiful in my life. Elizabeth says she tripped on the way up the stairs, but no one, I included, noticed … shhh .

From our prospective, the reception was rushed and kinda a blur. There was food, we trust that it was good. There was cake, we trust it wasn’t poisoned. The cake looks cute in the pictures. There were a lot of people; I talked to a lot of people. And then it was over and we were getting in a car filled with balloons and other things and leaving. We must particularly apologize to Liz T. because she was the next in line to get a picture with Elizabeth when we finally got dragged out the door. Sorry Liz T.!

We got a few hours off after the reception. Our photographer took us out and took some portraits in some great locations. Elizabeth even got to have some pictures in her red Chinese wedding dress. These pictures should be available online soon, we will make another post when they are.

We rounded out our day with a traditional Chinese wedding dinner with Elizabeth’s family and the wedding party, and goodbye’s to both our parents. Before leaving Elizabeth’s house though, we did each choose one gift to unwrap. (There was a stack of 13.) I unwrapped a kitchen gadget (which those of you who know me well will know makes me excited!) but Elizabeth unwrapped a Nintendo Wii. WHEEEEEEE! =)

I’m sure other couples who have gone through it have already told you that planning a wedding is hard. Elizabeth and I started with vastly different expectations. Elizabeth’s parents wedding had on the order of 400 guests, while my parents had on the order of 10 including themselves. To resolve this, we first set a budget, and worked from there.

The first thing we planned was actually the honeymoon. We wanted to do something such that we could be alone together, have our privacy and have a whole lot of fun at the same time. We allowed half our budget to go for the honeymoon. For a long time I have wanted to go on a cruise to Alaska. Elizabeth thought it would be a great idea, so we went from there. We ended up choosing a cruise to Hawaii, rather than Alaska. The cruise is two weeks long, but a bargain because this cruise is while the boat is being repositioned from Alaska to Hawaii.

Before we planned too much more, Elizabeth’s parents very generously contributed a large amount to our budget. We actually planned most of easy things, cake, photographer, facilities, catering, and attire in January while we were still home for Christmas and could include Elizabeth’s mother in the planning.

Between January and September, we did not accomplish much planning. The most significant thing we did during that time is invitations and the website. We bought the parts at Michael’s Crafts and did our own printing and assembling. We were worried about printing on the vellum paper, so we bought a new printed that specifically said it could print on vellum paper. It turns out that it was not telling the truth. The new paper feeds so quickly, that it tears the vellum apart. We spent several hours on the phone with people at HP trying to fix this, alas, no solution. A few of the people at HP actually sounded like they knew what they were doing even. We eventually borrowed Elizabeth’s roomate’s printer. Her printer was a few years old and thus didn’t feed so quickly that it destroyed the paper. Ah, the irony.

In mid August Elizabeth and I got to spend a weekend in Seattle for our friend Matt’s wedding in which I was a groomsman. Interestingly, Matt was also one of my groomsmen. The precious little time when we didn’t have responsibilities were the only minutes of the whole summer we got to be together. Unfortunately, this time was almost fully consumed by meeting planning demands. Fortunately, we got to go back home and enjoy another two weeks of freedom – from planning.

The final two weeks before the wedding were both crazy busy and relaxed at the same time. I worked things with a to-do-list style. A few heuristics to determine what was important and a greedy algorithm meant stuff got done and we had time to relax, go for walks, and hang out with friends. Both of us received bachelor(ette) parties with our associated parties. Elizabeth’s cousin, Jonathan, couldn’t come to the bachelor party so he went to the bachelorette party. Both of our parties involved video games, mine Halo of course and Elizabeth’s had a Nintindo Wii.

Finally, the night before the big day we had our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. We choose to do a simple dinner. We had too much on our plates (har-har-har) to plan a fancy dinner, and an unfancy one allowed us to be flexible about numbers of people. This turned out to be a good thing as not everyone we expected was able to come. I am really glad so much of my family got to come because we really didn’t feel we had enough time to see everyone at the reception.

The Saturday following family camp, Elizabeth and I joined my older sister Rosemary, her boyfriend Brian, and a couple of their friends. (Forgive me, I can’t remember their names.) It was my first time at the Puyallup Fair (spell that ten times fast!), though I have spent much time at the Central Washington State Fair in Yakima.

Most of the day we spent apart, doing things as couples. We came together for a few things, most notably lunch and roller coasters. While on our own, Elizabeth and I spent most of our time browsing through the vendors’ booths, trying dips and olives, and looking at hair jewelry for our flower girl to wear. We tried to go look at boats, the power boat kind like you would take water-skiing. Unfortunately for me, the Puyallup Fair didn’t make room for boats, RV’s, or farm equipment, all of which are staples at the Central Washington state fair.

The Puyallup Fairgrounds includes two permanent roller coasters. For those of you who don’t already know, Elizabeth is a roller coaster nut, but I – Nathan – am not convinced. I knew I couldn’t avoid the roller coasters all together, but I could put them off a bit. Thus Elizabeth and I went on the sky ride. The skyride is like a ski-lift which takes you from one side of the fairground to the other. (I think the one in the Central Washington Fairground is longer, but I have never been on it because it is prohibitively expensive.) The view of the carnival is magnificent.

Later, we all met to go on the roller coasters. Rosemary and Brian wanted to go on both, but the rest of us only wanted to go on the big wooden one. So while they went on the first roller coaster, the rest of us went to see the Budweiser Hitch. The hitch is quite beautiful, though I was unable to get a good photograph. I was also very surprised how maneuverable the team of eight Clydesdales could be. After the Budweiser Hitch, several other hitches from around the state came out, most with draft horses, but one with mini horses.

After the horses, we went to ride the roller coaster. It turns out, the one of Rosemary and Brian’s friends is deathly afraid of roller coasters; his date was going to have to ride alone. I, of course, provided a solution. I let Elizabeth ride with his date, while he and I went to get some ice cream. They told me it was fun, but I’m not convinced. A side effect of our not riding the coaster, was that we had enough tickets left that we could all go on the farris wheel. I got some great pictures from the wheel, these were much better pictures than the pictures from the sky-ride because this time there was no dirty glass in the way.

After a fun day we stopped for some free chocolate milk in the Wilcox building, and watched some cows be milked. We then found our car, and headed home.

Nathan, Elizabeth, and Nathan’s sisters have all worked at Cascades Camps and Conference Center in Yelm Washington. The camp is a ministry of the North Pacific conference of the Covenant Church. For the last several years Nathan and his family have attended Labor Day Family Camp at Cascades. This year, Elizabeth joined us.

Actually, both of us flew into Seattle Tacoma International on Friday, August 31 around 10 PM, I from New Jersey and Elizabeth from San Diego. Rosemary picked us up at the airport and took us directly to camp where we unloaded our bags into a bright red boxcar. You see, Cascades has several dormitory like lodges; 16 or so log cabins at Timber Rock, a youth camp; and about 15 or 16 boxcars at Brightwood Station, another youth camp.

Camp was so relaxing; we went canoing, horseback riding, played a hot hot Latin rummy game, ate lots of junk food and generally relaxed!!! The speaker and worship leader at camp this year was Andrew Thompson. Andrew was my youth pastor from 6th grade through junior year of high school. It was really great to see him and his family again and hear him speak; he is a very dynamic speaker.

The weekend finished off with the yearly hayride and pancake breakfast at a Mount Rainier viewpoint. We really really hope we can continue this tradition in future years.

So, most of you already know that I (Nathan) spent my summer in New Jersey. Many have heard quite a lot about my summer, but I want to record it here.

I started my adventure landing at Newark Liberty at 6AM on Sunday June 24th. I had a spoken agreement to rent at a house in Summit New Jersey, about six miles from my workplace. Figuring out the train from the airport was easy enough; the ticket and gate system worked like the Washington DC trains. Once I needed to transfer to another train though, I found out how bad the whole system really works: the conductors are rude, and don’t always even understand how the train lines that passed though their stations work or where they go. When I finally got to Summit, no one was at the house I was supposed to rent, and they also didn’t answer their phone. I dragged my luggage around until I found a Starbucks, where I sipped a cold coffee while surfing Craigslist.

I found only one place that might work, in Chatham NJ about four miles from work. I called up, but she said she wasn’t interested in such a short lease. I put my phone down, but before going back to the internet I asked God to help me find a place. Before I got my head back into the internet, the lady I had called called me back. She had changed her mind and wanted me to meet her at the Chatham railway station (Pictured above). By the end of the day I was moved in.

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Today Hannah and I participated in all American Fourth of July fun. We started the day off going to a BBQ at Jerry’s house down in Mission Valley and had braughts and burgers. We also had some very tasty Korean BBQ spare ribs… maybe slightly less traditional, but very tasty none the less. Lunch was followed by some pool time where three of us (I included) swam while the rest watched and chatted. After swimming we went inside to play some spirited rounds of the family favorite ‘Guillotine’. Alright this may not actually be a family favorite, but I can’t think of a better French Revolution card game, well actually, I can’t think of another French Revolution card game at all…

This evening we went to church for fireworks viewing and a free concert by Trevor Davis. Trevor’s performance was pretty good, as was his creative movement style. By the end of the concert Hannah and I decided that he could give the ministry of silly walks a run for its money. After the concert was over we headed down to the lower level of church (which is still pretty high on the hill and doesn’t have trees obscuring its view) to watch the fireworks. San Diego actually has a fireworks show every night during the summer thanks to Sea World, however, for the Fourth, people dutifully come outside to watch. From our vantage point on the church balcony we could actually see about four shows, although the Sea World show was by far the closest. We watched for about an hour and happily ate our church provided ice cream sandwiches.

Last night (July 3, 2007) we (Hannah, Jerry, Qing, Mike, and I) went to the Del Mar fair. We bought discount tickets from Ikea which included ride and drink tickets, so we had a pretty good time. The drink tickets were only supposed to be good if we bought food with them, but the Qing and I were able to get two free lemonades with just the tickets alone, score! We spent the first portion of our fair stay looking at various farm animals until we realized they were being sold for meat… that made Qing kinda sad so we decided to look at flowers and rocks instead. We also attended a hypnotist show which was highly entertaining. One of the highlights was when the hypnotist convinced two guys that they were Olivia Newton John and John Travolta and had them dance to “The one that I want”. They actually did a pretty good job, especially the one who thought he was John Travolta… Olivia Newton John looked a little lost at times although I’m sure he tried his best.

Our main reason for going to the fair was that included in our ticket price was that evening’s concert starring none other than Switchfoot. Hannah, Mike, and I are huge fans and Jerry and Qing know at least some of their songs so I think a good time was had by all. We were in the front section and had a pretty good view of the stage although it was pretty crowded. There were an alarming number of crowd surfers and two were dropped on my head which made me kinda sad, but the fact that I was at a Switchfoot concert made up for it. While both of the people dropped on my head were full grown teenager-ish aged people there were also many small children crowd surfing which made me a little uneasy since it’s not uncommon for crowd surfers to end up suddenly on the ground on their heads. Mike caught several of these young surfers and placed them firmly, feet first, back on the ground.

We finished the night by going for a ride on the ferris wheel. It was one of those ferris wheels where you sit in a circular compartment with two benches, one on either side of the compartment. The ride was very relaxing and scenic until one member of our party wanted to see what was on the screen of another member’s camera screen. The first member got out of his seat and leaned to the other side of the compartment to get a better view. This caused the compartment to sway unnervingly while we were near the apex of the wheel and several, if not all, of the other parties in the compartment screamed in alarm. Fear inspired us to remain unnaturally still for the remainder of the trip.

Krista Oppie’s boyfriend Jason came down for a weekend a trip that was, no joke, inspired by a fortune cookie. This surprises me since the last several cookies I have received have not contained fortunes but instead general statements such as “you like the ocean,” and “people find you amiable.” However my recent fortune drought must not be too wide spread because several weeks ago Jason got a cookie containing a small piece of paper that said something to the tune of “you will have a great time visiting a new place.” He thought a moment about where he would like to go, and San Diego popped into his mind. Later that week he mentioned it off hand to Krista who coincidentally had a Southwest airlines travel voucher. She wasn’t going to be able to use it in the near future since Southwest does not yet fly into Minnesota so she graciously donated it to Jason’s travel fund.

Jason could only get a few days off work so he decided to fly down for the weekend. I picked him up at the airport Friday morning to start our San Diego packed adventure. We decided to first visit the University of San Diego campus where Krista did her undergraduate. After several minutes we both decided it was the prettiest campus we had ever been to. Jason kept murmuring “I can’t believe she went to school here” and looking about him with a dazed expression. We explored several buildings and gardens quite in awe of how nice everything was. None of Krista’s professors were there although we checked all their offices. Jason left a white board note on one of the professor’s office door.

We then headed to Old Town. Old Town is a historic site just outside downtown San Diego where tourist poke around in old restored buildings and shop for gifts to bring home. We were no exception, and spent a good portion of our time looking for a nice pair of earing for Krista. Jason did an admirable job selecting earrings and settled on a quite tasteful sterling silver pair. After our Old Town exploration/earing scavenger hunt we sat down to a nice dinner at Casa Guatalahara, which is THE restaurant to go to in Old Town. Jason ordered a large margarita, which turned out to in fact be alarmingly large . It was so large in fact that the two little old ladies sitting at the table next to us began whispering to each other in shocked and disapproving tones. Our food came shortly after and met all expectations of yummyness.

Click the READ link for more about Jason’s visit.

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