Dima’s Corner

I survived the first week after the holidays - yey! It was time to celebrate so on Friday we hit up Volume for Sehee’s birthday party. Then on Saturday I drove to Des Moines to visit Aleksey before he leaves for Florida (lucky bastard). Oh, and I dropped my phone once again and this time cracked the screen so I am getting a Samsung Intrepid. Nothing too exciting, but it works with my SERO plan so I did not have many choices. This coming week is going to be interesting, stay tuned!

This year I combined a few of my vacation days with our company holiday shutdown for a nice two week break. Dymka and I drove back to Ohio on the 19th and came back on January 3rd. Once back home, I mostly relaxed and caught up on some reading (C# and .Net Framework - fun stuff!). On the 23rd I went to a party at my buddy Andrew’s house - the guy I was hanging out in Newport Beach during my California trip just a week before. We also hung out with Justin and I drove down to Cincinnati one of the days. Most of the other time I spent with the family or shopping for a new coat. Good times! Happy New Year and Merry Christmas everyone!

I have been meaning to visit California for a long time now and finally all the stars have aligned - I found cheap tickets, Doug was going to be in town that weekend, and I could use the trip to get out of the Iowa cold and earn my last segment to get the Skyteam Medallion status with Delta for next year.

I spent  first night with Andrew in Newport Beach, just south of Los Angeles. We used to play soccer together in high school and have not really been in touch since then so it was nice to finally catch up. We started off the evening by riding a tandem bike to Fuji Yama for some sushi. Afterward we were joined by some of his friends for a glorious night of bar hopping next to the Newport Pier. Needless to say, the bike ride back was quite a challenge!

Next day I met up with my friend Doug and his girlfriend to drive down to San Diego. Since it was Doug’s birthday earlier that week, we decided to celebrate by going sushi bar hopping. We first got some dinner at Hive Sushi Lounge and it was some of the best sushi I have ever had, and cheap too during their happy hour (seaweed salad - $2.99, sushi pieces - $0.99, sushi rolls - $2.99 and so on) - our bill for three people was $34 . That included multiple appetizers, sake, and dessert! The only thing I was not impressed with was the white tuna - it tasted somewhat different from what I am used to, but oh well. Next, we made stops at RA Sushi, Sushi Deli, Wonder Sushi Plus, Katsu Sushi, and finally made it to the Gasslamp (party) Quarter. To be honest, we were not very impressed with our choices there. We walked around for a bit, then checked out Jimmy Love’s and rounded the night up at the Shout House piano lounge It was raining pretty hard on the way back to our hotel so we were all soaked and cold by the time we got back to our Days Inn.

Next day the weather finally cleared up and spent most of the day at the famous San Diego zoo (supposedly the best in the country). I did like it and there were a lot of animals. The layout of the park was kind of confusing thou. I still think the themed exhibits at the Omaha zoo were the best when we visited a couple years ago.

Once it got darker, we went to the Harbor Island to watch the Christmas boat parade of lights. It was actually really cool to see how some of the people decked out their powerboats, yachts, sailboats, and even a giant clipper. On top of that, many had music blazing and people dressed up in Christmas outfits causing spectators on shore to break out in cheers.

Afterward Doug had to drive back up to Ventura so I went to get my rental car and was pleasantly surprised to see that I was upgraded to a convertible Mustang, just in time for better weather. I went back to Hive Sushi Lounge to take advantage of their happy hour all day Sunday deal and then crashed at my hotel room for the night.

I spent the last half a day by driving around San Diego with my top down basking in the sunshine. First, I had some breakfast at Mimi’s cafe, which I was lead to believe would be a french pastry cafe, but instead turned out to be more of an IHOP with no pastry for desert. Oh well, I will know better next time. After breakfast, I drove around the harbor, the downtown, and crossed over to the Coronado island. It kind of reminded me of southern Florida - sunshine, palm trees, sky high gas prices… I definitely miss that (minus the gas prices).

Today was the annual Cedar Rapids Downtown Fire and Ice Festival. John, Melissa, and I first started at the Chili Challenge where we got to try a bunch of different chili from many of the local restaurants and vote for our favorites. Not a bad dinner deal for $5. Then it was time for the parade. We watched it from the corner of Second Avenue and Fifth street, right by the KCRG TV station building so there were cameramen running all over the place. The parade was pretty diverse including the appearances by tow trucks, local boat club, religious groups, and local car dealerships, neither of which I have seen included in the parades before. After an hour in the chilling cold it was over and we were so ready for some hot cocoa. Overall, I would say I probably won’t go to it again next year, but I will definitely be there for another Chili Challenge. And as the Ice portion of the festival, we did see some ice sculptures but there were only a handful of them and they were not very elaborate, so we did not spend much time there.

My parents came over here for Thanksgiving and we went to Des Moines to celebrate it with our friends. As everyone else, we have stuffed our faces on Thursday and then watched some Russian concerts on TV while I did some pre-Black Friday shopping online. Next day we avoided the Black Friday craziness and just went downtown to check out Pappajohn Sculpture Garden downtown and the Greenwood Park. Finally, before leaving Des Moines, we stopped by at a gun show and I got my first gun - Smith & Wesson 22A target pistol.