June 18 - July 17: Caltech again, chess, granola bars, Anime Expo, a fossilized shell, washed car, family cruise to Alaska

Greetings from Seattle! I was hoping to blog after Anime Expo and before the cruise … oops. Here are some highlights since my last post:

From Caltech

June 18: My friend Andreea, from Caltech, flew in from Chicago for a wedding. I was able to catch up with her and some other Techers. Clockwise from the left, it's Jon (Andreea's boyfriend), Andreea, Erik (fellow Avery alum), Habib (another Averyite), me, and Diana (Erik's wife).

Also, my old clamshell phone was dying, but Habib happened to have exactly the same model that he wasn't using. Habib, thank you!

From Jim & Mark

June 21: Uncle Derek came to visit. He's actually my blood-uncle's wife's brother, so not technically my uncle, but whatever. Anyway, some of my aunt's side got together to see Uncle Derek. Derek makes his own board games, notably Telepathy and Color Fever. During the get-together, my cousins Jim and Mark played a classic board game: chess.

June 30: Anime Expo was coming up, then my drive up to Seattle. I wanted some snacks for both of those. At Albertson's, I came across some granola bars. Little did I know that these would lead to the most epic series of grocery coupons I had ever seen.

Look at the sale signs for the granola bars. The first is that the bars are on sale at 2 for $5, vs. $4.19 for one. That seems like a great sale.

But additionally, the signs say, "Save $5 on your next shopping trip when you buy 4 participating General Mills products in a single transaction using your Preferred Savings Card." I was confused that "$5" was being used for two different things, but it seemed that I could buy 4 boxes for $10, and it would essentially cost me $5. I decided to try this.

At checkout, I paid $10 for my 4 boxes of granola bars, and the coupon dispenser gave me a coupon for $5 off my next purchase. Sweet!

And then it gave me the label shown.

It reads, "Congratulations! Now save even more! Buy Nature Valley Granola Bars. Buy (3) & get $1 or buy (4) & get $2 or buy (5) & get $3 coupon off your next order."

Attached to the label was a second coupon, for $2 off! (Since I had already bought 4 boxes.)

From Granola bars

Then the coupon dispenser gave me a third coupon!

It reads, "Free: Up to $4.50. One gallon of milk. Compliments of General Mills."

I have no idea why this third coupon appeared, but I wasn't complaining.

So would these coupons work? And could I use them all at once? Could I use them to buy more granola? The answers were yes, yes, and yes. I went back and bought 4 more boxes of granola and a gallon of milk. All three coupons worked, so I saved $11.50. (The milk coupon actually deducted $4.50 off the total, so for a $3 galloon, I saved an extra $1.50.) 48 granola bars and a gallon of milk suddenly cost ~$2.

Then the coupon dispenser gave me the same three coupons as before!

In the end, I left Albertson's with a couple hundred granola bars, a couple gallons of milk, a couple coupons for free milk, and a rotisserie chicken. (I had to spend my last coupons on something other than granola bars, or the cycle would never end. :-)

Thank you to Albertson's and General Mills!

July 1-4: Equipped with my vast collection of granola bars, I went to Anime Expo, at the LA Convention Center.

A lot of the fun of Anime Expo is seeing people in costume, both from anime (Japanese cartoons) and related genres (comics, video games, etc.). The people in costume, known as cosplayers, even self-organize by theme. Here is the Pokemon cosplay gathering. (Check out the guy dressed as Giovanni, right side in the orange suit.)

Anime Expo also has a lot of premieres. They showed the first episode of "Last Exile 2" ("Fam, The Silver Wing"), even before it was released in Japan! This photo is of a life-size picture at the Last Exile booth.

The girl dressed as a sky pirate (right) was handing out "Last Exile 2" posters, but one had to do what she said. She told me to do 15 jumping jacks. Exercise, and a free poster! Win-win!

This cute couple dressed as the Ice Climbers from Nintendo.

Ganondorf from the Legend of Zelda series.

There were as many anime costumes as video game costumes, but I haven't watched a lot of the newer anime series, so I didn't recognize a lot of the cosplayers.

Sazh from Final Fantasy XIII! This is my friend Godric, from the Game Developers Conference. Godric, great costume!

Anime Expo has a large "Dealer's Room" where you can buy any and all anime merchandise.

Some of the merchandise isn't even related to anime. This booth sold "Giant microbes," plush versions of microbial organisms. Things like HIV, penicillin, and yeast.

From Anime Expo 2011

For a niche company, they sure had a lot of giant microbes. Included on the list are a brain cell, chickenpox, gangrene, red tide, sleeping sickness, toxic mold, and an ulcer.

Note the upper-right: "Catch them all!"

From Fossil

July 7: After Anime Expo, I drove to Sacramento. My friends Joe and Glenn helped me tune-up my car. Also, I borrowed Joe's chisel to break apart a rock that I had found on the beach in San Diego.

Inside the rock were fossilized seashells! The biggest shell in the photo is about one inch long.

From Car shiny

Joe and Glenn gave my car its 60,000-mile tune-up. (Joe's a Toyota mechanic.) They also helped me vacuum and wash my car, so it was clean inside and out for my drive to Seattle!

July 10 - 17: Cruise from Seattle to Alaska, on the Sapphire Princess. This was a Hom reunion, and there were 35 of us!

My sister Mary. In the background is the Seattle skyline.

I had started a gluten-free (no wheat, etc.) diet a few days before the cruise. At first, I was bummed about this. But then I thought, "At least on a cruise, they should have plenty of options!" Here, the waitstaff brought me gluten-free bread (left). The regular bread is on the right.

Our first stop was Ketchikan, Alaska. And my first stop there was the McDonald's! Thank you McDonald's for free Wi-Fi and refills on soda!

I saw this sign on the Ketchikan docks and immediately thought, "PSP: PlayStation Portable." But it's actually an alert for Paralytic Shellfish Poison.

Ketchikan was full of seaplanes. As a kid, I loved watching the Disney cartoon, "Tail Spin," which borrowed heavily from the Miyazaki anime film, "Porco Rosso," which is one of my all-time favorites. Both make seaplanes seem *awesome*.

The cruise ship had many entertainment options, including fancy shows in a theater. This photo is from the Cruise Staff Talent Show. On the left is the Cruise Director, who is in charge of entertainment. I can't really describe this skit adequately, but it featured lots of water spitting and the Enya song, "Only Time." Actually, the skit was clever, cute, and funny, and my favorite entertainment memory of the whole cruise.

After Ketchikan, we went to the Tracy Arm Fjord.

The scenery was breathtaking, literally.

The bright white part in the middle-top is a glacier, slowly melting to the water below.

At the end of the Tracy Arm Fjord is a huge glacier. This was as close as we got, but I think other cruises have gotten much closer. Maybe next time!

I think one reason we turned back was that we saw this pregnant seal on an ice floe. (The onboard naturalist said she didn't run away when the ship got close, because she was about to give birth.)

The ice floes in the fjord were amazing. Apparently they had all come off the glacier that day. Some ice floes had this amazing sequence of blues.

Here, you can see the melt-off from the glacier mixing with the existing water.

During the cruise, we had a couple of Hom gatherings to make sure that we didn't just keep to ourselves. You might have to know us to appreciate this photo, but it's several different Homs just hanging out with one another. Love it.

After Tracy Arm, we sailed to Juneau, where we saw the Sea Princess, an older Princess ship that still looks great. I find it fascinating a ship can be so large as to carry other ships on it. The orange boats in the middle of the ship are called tenders. Here, the tenders were being used to ferry people to shore, since there weren't enough ports.

In Juneau, I did a little souvenir shopping. I really liked these piggy-bank variants: moose bank and …? They were only $13, but I realized I didn't need a piggy bank. Er, moose bank.

On our ship, my mom, Mary, and I slept in one room. But we had a great room with a balcony. In the photo, look at the sizes of the balconies. Notice the ones in the middle have larger balconies (and thus larger rooms)? One of those was ours; I think they're for handicapped people. My mom didn't need a walker or wheelchair on the cruise, so I think we just lucked out with an upgrade.

After Juneau, we sailed to Skagway. They have a small but dense museum, which includes this bear.

Notice the shadow of the bear. Isn't that interesting?

The Skagway museum had an old map showing where gold was in Alaska. The map seems to indicate that gold was everywhere, which would make the map a bit irrelevant.

Uncle Well and my mom rest from walking around Skagway. Skagway is a small, quaint town of 700. I really liked it; it felt like the show, "Northern Exposure," in a good way.

Skagway has a train that runs for tourists. Next to the train is this ice digger, which just looks awesome. Like something out of a Jules Verne novel, except this was real!

A couple nights on the cruise are designated as "formal nights," in which everyone is supposed to dress up. It's a good opportunity for formal pictures. Here is a small fraction of the Hom generation after mine. Five families (out of 30+) are represented here.

On the cruise, one can eat at a buffet or experience "traditional dining." We all had the latter, so we would eat together. This fancy appetizer had caviar and salmon eggs.

On the last night of the cruise, some of us gathered together to eat some more and play some games. This is nine (or ten) Homs, from three different families, playing the game "Sequence."

I hauled that game up all the way from LA. (Kristen and Mike, thank you for letting me borrow it!)

The last night wasn't over yet. My sister wanted to check out the "Farewell Party" in Club Fusion on the ship. She said no one else was dancing, so we should. Surprisingly, some of my other relatives really wanted to go, too, and I also went. Here are my Auntie Valerie, cousin Jonady, cousin Adrienne, and Mary dancing. In the background is Uncle John.

There's actually a video of this scene. (I can't believe I'm linking this.)

From Hom cruise 2011

A post-cruise tradition: checking our cell phones. This is my mom, my cousin Lance's wife Jonelle, and my cousin Lance.

This was our second Hom-reunion cruise; the first one was to Mexico in December, 2005 and had ~60 Homs. That cruise was life-changing, but I enjoyed this cruise to Alaska just as much.

Thank you to Uncle Al, Aunty Loretta, and everyone else for organizing such a wonderful time!