Hurricane

Marc and I donated to the Red Cross and to Noah's Wish, an organization that's working in Slidell right now to rescue and shelter all the abandoned pets. It's really sad to see dogs abandoned and stuck on the porches of their homes with no food and water. I wish there was more I could do.

I came across this video on a friend's blog, of Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, on "Meet the Press." He literally breaks down crying - it's heartwrenching.

This is also deplorable if it's true.

Labor Day Weekend

This weekend we went to Lake Tahoe with my parents. My mom had this big event with her Taiwanese alumni association, and about 1200 people were gathered for a weekend at Camp Richardson. We drove up Saturday morning. I listened to the Cal game on the way up.

My mom had rented a cabin for the four of us. It was tiny! And it was literally a wood cabin. No TV! There was some element of roughing it to this place.

We had a good time, though. It was definitely interesting. After dinner, Marc and I went to the Horizon to watch a movie. We were about an hour and a half into Four Brothers when the fire alarm in the theater went off! A voice was saying, "there is a fire in the building, please evacuate immediately." So everyone piled out of the theater, into the back parking lot, but there was no one out there to tell us what was going on.

We ran into a security guard, and he had no clue. He even called in and they said there was no fire. We went around to the casino part, and people were going about as usual (the theater is located inside the casino). We finally went back to the theater, and were told that someone had been smoking, and it had set off the alarm. So we asked the girl at the counter if we could get a refund, and she said no, and threw up her hands like we were causing her immense trouble or something.

It wasn't until we finally found someone else (after running around for a good 10 minutes), that we were able to get a refund, and it took a bit of wrassling.

We never did get to finish the movie. :(

Then we gambled like $20 before heading back to the cabin to sleep.

We woke up early Sunday and had breakfast with my parents at Carrows. They actually qualified to order from the SENIOR menu, which was a bit scary, heh. They both seemed pretty giddy at having to pay only $4 for a big breakfast.

Then Marc and I went horseback riding. It was a nice, 1-hour trail ride that we hadn't been on before.

We went back to the cabin after that, and went with my dad to do some shopping. On our way out, we saw a bear with her two cubs high up in this tree right next to the campgrounds! Everyone was watching, and I took a bunch of pictures (will get them up tomorrow). It was amazing, I'd never seen bears in real life before. I don't know what happened to them, because they appeared to be gone when we got back.

Anyways, I bought two bikinis on sale for $12.50 each! That was pretty sweet. The three of us went to lunch, and then back to the cabin, where I took a short nap.

In the afternoon we went on a boat ride to Emerald Bay. I think there were probably about 100 people on the boat. It was just us and my dad again - mom stayed back at the cabin to take a nap. At one point, our captain must not have been paying attention, because we crashed into the rocks on the shore. Insane. He had to get all the people to go to the back of the boat to take the weight off the front so we could get loose.

I think the three of us slept during most of the boat ride, hehe.

I napped again after that, and then we had dinner, and Marc and I drove back home (my parents stayed until Monday morning). One of the funny things about the weekend was that since this was a Taiwanese alumni event, Marc stood out like a white sore thumb. When we went horseback riding, someone asked him if he was the guide. When we went on the boat, the guy said to us, "oh, are you in our group?" It was pretty funny.

Monday we had lunch at the Cheesecake factory with Elaine, Leslie and her boyfriend, and Leslie's brother and ex-roommate. Then we all went shopping for almost 3 hours. After that, Marc and I took Bandit sheep herding. I managed to pinch my palm while closing a gate and gave myself a really nasty blood blister.

Well, I hope everyone else had a good weekend!