Monterey vs. Taiwan

So I had another business trip last week. However, instead of the usual Asian tour, this time it was stateside. In fact, I even traded one of my Asain adventures for a kicking it in Caly. This was for "Bacus" aka, SPIE Photomask (http://spie.org/x6323.xml). It had exciting topics and presentations such as:

Mask blank material optimization impact on leading-edge ArF lithography

193-nm radiation durability study of MoSi binary mask and resulting lithographic performance

MegaSonic cleaning: possible solutions for 22-nm node and beyond

I stayed at the local Marriott, which luckily was offering a discount to all conference attendees (quite convient since there was a direct connection to the conference center via a walking bridge). There were also multiple sessions in the Monterey conf rooms (including our lunch and dinners).

If you know Monterey, you know that it's famous for it's aquarium. One of the dinners was at the aquarium after it was closed to the public. They have lots of exhibits talking about how too much fishing is going on in various places, depleting the ocean's fish population. And yes, they did server fish at dinner.

Here are some pictures of a really weird looking fish (it looks even weirder in person). I think it was a sunfish.

Here are some of the seahorses they had on exhibit

Here's a picture of the bay from the pier. If you can believe it, the last day I even walked around some after the conference finished!

Girlites

It's always fun getting a different perspective. Suzy was at some women's celebration deal with Kate last Saturday, so Faith, Jace and I got to spend some quality time together Sat. morning. I had put Jace down for a nap, so it was just Faithers and I. After racking my brain for what to do (we had already colored, eaten and played a game), I came up with a great idea! We'd make paper airplanes and fly them.

Faith was just as excited as I was, even running to get the paper. We worked together until we had 2 beautiful airplanes. I immediately jumped up, and said, "Let's go see how they fly!".

Faith wasn't quite so ready, "Daaaad! We haven't even decorated them yet!". How could I forget the most important part? I called mine "the electric tornado" after completion. Faith's was "Diamond Pearl Rose" after the beautiful flowers and jewels that she drew on hers.

What is one difference between Faith and Kate? Have you ever read those books that say you should always give your kids choices? Kate and Faith were ready for a before bed snack. I was willing to shell out some crackers and cheese. I asked Kate, would you like 4 crackers? Response, "Sure dad."

I asked Faith (knowing she was a bit harder, and thus deciding upon a stratagem), "Would you like 3 or 4 crackers?" Faith's response? 5. This is quite typical of our little negotiator. Although negotiator would imply compromise at some point.

Three Wishes

On occasion, we play a game where we pretend that a genie is giving us three wishes. We were in the car, and I was the genie in this case. We let Kate go first. She was conflicted, since she really wanted two things. A castle, and the ability to fly. Suzy offered to use her wish on flying for the whole family (a very nice thing for her to do, also a common wish for the family).

Kate was able to get her castle, with an elevator. It replaced our house.

What did Faith wish for? A magic flying cactus. That's right, a cactus. We're still not sure why. Maybe so we can having something nice, natural and green to be around while we fly?

If we ever find a real genie, Faith DOES NOT get one of the wishes at this point. We'll keep practicing though.