4th of July Fireworks in COVID times

We wrapped up the BIL's family visit with an entire day at Great America theme park which finally ended with some amazing fireworks..

Given all the walking San had done to that point, she was now on a cast and in a wheelchair. So that was interesting in itself. Great America is not designed to be friendly for people who have casts but the kids who manned the rides did their best to accomodate. They gave a list of rides that were safe for her and we took her only on those rides. San was actually smiling most of the time she was being wheeled around.. the irony of the situation was also making me laugh every now and then!

Great America is a poor mans Disney.. and you get to see that the poor man who visits this park is at least 3 sizes larger than the average person visiting Disney. 4 of 5 people you cross are walking with a struggle, are obese and in general show poor health just by looking at them. We saw many rides go down because the rides got stuck or people got stuck in the seats and had to be retrived. That apart, we went on a handful of rides which were in general safe and were not going to get stuck. BIL, me and Jr. spent one hour on a line when they shut it down and sent us back. We still put on a smile and went about the rest of the day.

The place is beautiful with all the fountains and floral arrangements.. 

The smile from the kids made up for all the standing in lines and josting for space with the wheelchair.

While Jr., the little one and BIL made it through some of the risky rides, the rest of us split up and did different things. My MIL and me went on the rotating tower and got a birds eye view of silicon valley. My old office is right behind this part and my new office was also visible. 

the day ended with fireworks. We got great shots on an iPhone with the right setting.. 

A few shots of the fireworks in a slide show.. Most of them were taken on an iPhone

 

and a video of the highlights of this day trip.

We had a great time the entire day, except for the exit out of the park. The design of the exit and the procedure leaves a sour taste.. Everyone was trying to exit the park after fireworks. There were no traffic cops to get any order. It was a free for all towards the exit after being in a gridlock for 1 hour. Finally we made it out and home closer to 11:30 PM when the fireworks had ended at 9PM and we had sat in our car at 9:15! It is a 15 minute ride back home on a normal night! If there is one thing they could fix immediately, it is the directing of vehicles out of the park.

Our hope is that we eventually make it to Disney with the kids(?! at heart) soon, once the delta variant makes its exit. Till then, we will always have memories of this Great America trip, when it comes to roller coasters, fireworks and parking lot exits! 

Moneys worth for a local day well spent!

A Pongal that came and went..

Pongal was celebrated in our house three weeks ago! It just so happens that I still did not have a laptop and before we could say "pongaloo pongal" , Jr. was back to college.

So was her laptop which I was temporarily borrowing for blog posts. I am tepidly happy to say that my new Macbook Pro has arrived. Tepidly happy because it took more than a month to show up instead of the two weeks (Chip delays apparently.. which is a good thing for people in the Semiconductor business like me as prices are going up!) and the new Apple M1 chip has a lot of "compatibility issues" with things like Photoshop.. 

Had to go shop for a new Photoshop. The old DVD based installs don't work anymore with new Operating system, especially with the M1. All is well that ends well. So after spending some more time and a little money, we now have a functioning laptop that can finally recognize my external hard drives, do Photoshop and here we are.. posting about Pongal, three weeks later..

I also happened to have a double bone graft dental surgery which is still a pain in the face and have not recovered from it fully. Now that it is behind me, can blog in a happier note..

Where were we? Ah, pongal.. 

We made some delicious pongal, did a prayer and got some sun. . . 

of course there were vadais to go with the Pongal..

Then we tried a family portait.. it was a working day rush job.. but I was expected to have some "facial swelling" for a week.. so this was in anticiapation of that..

surprisingly there was no significant swelling post surgery. So we did get to take a decent family portrait just before Jr. was sent off.. they did co-operate this one for the photo on pity grounds.. so the dental surgery had one benefit at least..

There was no family and friends gathering to celebrate. Even last January, we had group gatherings to celebrate Pongal, before COVID did its thing. Hopefully by next Pongal things will be better.

Hope everyone had a good Pongal celebration. We live in surreal times.. we prayed for a better year!

A belated birthday present

The family co-operated as planned on the birthday present.. a family portrait.

The idea was to wear something we all have.. flannel shirts and blue jeans..

This was the first family portrait since Jr.'s graduation..

That middle aged man in the picture is happy for that moment. 

got this pic of Jr. as she was switching sides while doing the test shots.. she is always my test subject. 

We have another month to put enough fat on her and send her back to the midwest winter..

That that parent, that that worry! 

Hope all of you are having a safe and happy thanksgiving!