A tasty blogger evening

Click to see video.	Click to see video.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Min Jung, so we got to catch up. She knew all about Gargle, and when she won the raffle for a box of Charles Chocolates, she graciously gave them to me in celebration. Thanks, and great to see you!!

There was a neat capella music performance by the Stanford Harmonics. I had never seen such. Unfortunately, my video attempt is horribly meager. I was a bit distracted at how perky they all were. It was part of the show, I'm sure, but I kept noting their college-youth energy. It was almost inspirational!

The dinner was delicious, but I think the guests really enjoyed the flowing wine. I know Dav did ; )

By far, what I enjoyed the most was an underwater photography show by Eric Cheng. He's got some really cool shots that blew us all away. Some shots made me think of a Dr. Seuss sort of weird and wacky world. He has pictures from swimming with whales and sharks too. At the end, he opened a silent auction for some of his pictures. I was immediately drawn to an extraordinary picture of a turtle and made a bid. After getting outbid, and making sure I bid again, Dav and I were happy winners (actually, the out-bidder understood how much I wanted the picture and graciously didn't re-out-bid us).

Anyway, Dav and I absolutely LOVE the picture. Eric explained that it's of a baby turtle that had been found distressed. It had been taken in by some organization for care, and the photo was taken when it was first released back into the wild. Can't you feel the turtle's excitement and thrill in that expression? We named the turtle "Charles" and have him taped on our closet in front of our bed to enjoy - and we do. He makes us very happy. We'll get a very nice frame for Charles soon.

Then, just as we were leaving for the night, we bumped into a couple who had a 7 month old cutie baby. We discussed the ins and outs of pregnancy and parenthood, and discovered they are planning on going to Burning Man for the first time this year. Very good to hear that they have a baby and are planning this; gives us hope that not all ends when you have a baby!

We told them that we're veteran Burners, but we'll be new at the parenting thing. So we're definitely going to follow-up and share information, and hopefully get to know each other more. Totally cool couple (the woman is an avid Live Journal user), and we are quite pleased to have met them!

So it was one of those evenings that started so-so...not sure what we were getting into, not expecting much. But then we got to laugh with Min Jung, Dav enjoyed lots of wine, we found Charles the turtle, and we met new friends. Not bad, eh?