Family Foto

Ever since Built to Spill's first album came out back in the early 90's (see below), I always wanted to do a dorky "family" photo. Here are the results. The "daughters" in the back row are our friends Tina, Amanda, and Noreen, each of whom is trying to portray a child in a certain family birth order and Ailing and I are being the proud Dominican parents. This was actually meant to be a Christmas card photo but given the mail service here in the DR, you can imagine how far they got...

Baby Richaccia

Niño o niña? You be the judge; we're just gonna wait 'til July and find out. 19.5 weeks along and counting. All systems go and measurements within normal limits - it's like flying to the moon... ;)

36 - you just gotta make it look good

My good friend Stacy (looking short in the first foto) and I have b-days two days apart, so we decided to celebrate 'em together. After a fine Italian meal at Il Capo, we headed over to the famous Embajador casino (where some scenes in The Godfather II were filmed) for some gambling. Roulette was a no go for but blackjack treated me just fine.

10K - Hot and Sunny "Winter" Running

I pulled off my second timed 10k in around 52 minutes, 10 minutes less than my last one. Now if I can just shave off about 7 more minutes, I might actually beat that ba$tard Jeff Dungan (pictured with the donut).

SUPER SUNDAY FLAG FOOTBALL

Every Super Bowl Sunday at CMS is initiated by an early afternoon flag football game followed by a nice trip to Colmado Los Muchachos for some ice cold Presidente'. This year, the good guys in red won and I even pulled down two fairly sweet catches for touchdowns to earn MVP honors (truthfully, my friend Tasha (with the seattle u shirt on) deserved it for her stellar running and catching). Then, the Giants beat the Pats and all was right with the universe.

euro vaca 2

A few more fotos from the Europe. Most of these were taken on short day trips from where Ali and Paul live in the southern Netherlands: a trip to Maastricht and their great Christmas market and then over to Belgian city called Liege which is sort of akin to Glasgow - very industrial, but with an exciting downtown. Liege had loudspeakers set up all over the city center which blasted strange things in French; it was like having an afternoon story teller from on high. The narrator caused the Sunday pub denizens to periodically raise their glasses and say or sing phrases at the top of their lungs in unison - it was surreal. By looking at the last foto I am sure you are wondering... ok, we were tempted but didn't actually eat at "Hamburger Restaurant"!

Euro vaca with ali and paul - Berlin

All fotos are from our first ever trip to Berlin. After a long, long trip from the DR (Santo Domingo -- NYC -- London -- Amsterdam by plane and then Amsterdam -- Landgraff by train - Ailing had already been there for a week after doing Thanksgiving in Denver) we all caught about 5 hours of sleep and then hit the road for Berlin. What should have taken 5.5 or 6 hours from Paul and Ali's place in Landgraf in the south Netherlands took more like 10 because of traffic (needless to say, I was mighty sick of travelling at that point). We rented an apartment for three days, braved the bitter cold, ate copious amounts of brats and pomme fritz, and fell in love with the place.