A few weeks away...

I am very, very ready to leave the US and begin taking in the sights and smells and sounds of China.  I am a little bit bored over here not working, it's hard to fill the days.  I have had some fun playing softball and winning another t-shirt or two (wooo!) as well as doing a little bit of hanging out with friends.  I went up to Sonoma County and saw Jenna again (also met Sarah for the second time, as well as her husband Mike and her sister Amanda for the first time).  We all had a lot of fun hanging out on the Russian River, as well as eating and drinking plenty over the course of a few days.  If anybody is ever in Santa Rosa, "Flavors" restaurant downtown has some amazing hamburgers.  A bit pricey but sooo good.  Should have taken a picture of our food.  It was amazing.

After hanging out with them a few days I hit the road and drove up the Sonoma Coast and took a little mini-hike through Armstrong Woods.  I stumbled upon a momma deer and her beautiful fawn while walking through the woods.  A couple of people were loudly walking up behind me as I tried to get some pictures of the deer.  I tried to get their attention before they got too close but they were practically yelling and were stomping around like a couple of donkeys which scared the deer off.  They said they thought I was trying to get their attention because I had kids on the trail.  I wanted to tell them that that didn't even make sense but I thought better of it, plus they just kept on walking by and talking so loud it likely scared off any other animal I was likely to see on the hike.  Not really sure what they were doing walking in the woods if they weren't going to relax and enjoy it a bit.  Morons.

Next, in the spirit of this "Adventures in Asia" blog, I went up to San Francisco the other day to the Chinese Consulate to put in my Visa paperwork.  Afterwards I spent the majority of the day in the city taking pictures (my first genuine attempt at street photography).  I got a few dirty looks, as well as what I feel are a few decent pictures.  A few are attached below.

Finally, I recently got the Snapseed app for my Ipad.  I screwed around a bit with it and turns out for 5 bucks it is a really powerful, intuitive and fun tool for editing photos.  Below is the before and after of a shot I tried my hand at editing using Snapseed.  I'm quite fond of the results.  Maybe let me know what you think?