Fast February!
Tons of short trips made the month fly by. Here are the highlights.
In the land of skiing and syrup
Rather than stay cooped up during the East coast winter this year, we decided to take a little trip on Presidents Day weekend. After borrowing a car and some ski gear from Cindy’s family, we drove up to Vermont. As you can tell from the picture below, Cindy was quite excited about this.
Did you know that Vermont is the largest producer of maple syrup in the United States? I learned this while reading interesting facts about Vermont during the drive. And trust me, you can tell based on how many stores have big displays advertising local syrup.
We got an Airbnb with some friends, a cute farmhouse on a hill. Fortunately, we took a car with all wheel drive, so making it up the hill in the snow wasn’t an issue.
The main event was Skiing on Mt. Snow, pretty funny name for a place where you ski, would have been so disappointing if they didn’t have any snow. This was the big test after Cindy’s first time skiing in Illinois on a much, much smaller slope. She did great but stuck mostly to the easier runs. I was a little bit nervous because I hadn’t seriously skied in a long time, but by the end of it I was able to get down the difficult slopes without falling.
The trip was a lot of fun. Shout out to Jialin and Jonathan for doing all the planning.
You’ll notice also the photo of me with a beverage. That’s from a detour we took to The Alchemist brewery in Stowe, VT which is a famous brewery that makes a killer IPA called Heady Topper. Per my request, we went a few hours out of the way to enjoy a tasty beer and pick some up for the fridge at home.
Bonus travel! Long Island, Mass MoCA
On our way be back from Vermont, we also stopped at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) which was sort of on the way. We spent most of the day checking out sculptures and wall art and the evening driving on some pretty icy roads. It was cool that some of the art you’re actually allowed to touch. See below for me touching the art.
Cut to two weeks earlier when Cindy and I went to a wedding on Long Island. Our friends Christian and Fran got married, and we got to come along for the ceremony, dinner, drinks, and dancing. Also invited to the wedding were our good friends Zac and Annie (soups) who you can see in the picture above.
You’ll also notice Cindy is wearing a tiny cowboy hat. Those were served on top of some of the custom cocktails at the wedding, and they provided us quite a bit of entertainment.
It was a fun wedding, but the most memorable part was the sheer quantity of food that I ended up eating. The Long Island cocktail hour was not messing around.
I added another photo from the ski trip of me and Cindy jumping because I didn’t have anything else to go there and I like that photo.
Spent time with family and work
It feels like I was away for most of the weekends in February. The other place I ended up going was home to Chicago for my grandpa’s memorial service. I saw a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a long time, and I gave a short speech at the service which got me sort of choked up. Overall, it was a good trip because I got to spend quality time with family.
Being completely honest, that last photo of me and my mom is from Thanksgiving, but I figured she would like it if I included it.
And in other miscellaneous news, my performance review at work went well. I got a raise, and my boss told me I’m exceeding expectations. I was pretty amped up after that call to be honest. I’ve been pretty happy at this job, so I’m mostly just trying to continue doing a good job while learning new tech and developing my skills.
-
That’s it for February! Fortunately, I was able to write this one before we got too far into March. Time to hop back into the part where I do stuff so that I can write about it later. Hope you all are having a great month so far. Cheers!
-Ian