Weekend celebrations

It was a weekend of celebrations, starting with yesterday's 20th anniversary of the introduction of the Macintosh and the successful landing of the second Mars rover. As a 20-year user of the Macintosh, I'm happily typing this post on a Macintosh PowerBook, which represents a group of products that has gotten faster, smarter and better looking over the years. I wish I could say all that of myself! See my previous post for links to moblog posts made while watching NASA TV's live broadcast of the landing. It was worth staying up to take in one of the few opportunities of a lifetime to be one of the first to see a new place on another planet.

Our daughter Cianna is two months old this weekend, and she has been smiling a lot lately. Here she is on my lap grinning at daddy and strengthening her visegrip hold on my heart.

Instead of driving down to DC to see the Chinese New Year parade, we went after lunch to the celebration at Grace and St. Peter's Church here in downtown Baltimore. The lion dance parade started at 2:30pm, and a group of about 100 people followed the little budda around the block as he teased the two lions with the Qing ball. The parade ended with the traditional offering of Hong Bao (lucky red envelopes) and cabbage to the lions. Here's a photo gallery of the parade and a small QuickTime video (2.3mb, 320x240, 62 seconds) of the lions.

We also ran into artist and professor Sam Christian Holmes, his wife Pam, and son Michael, which gave us a chance to introduce them to Cianna. Pam gave us some good tips on local pre- and elementary schools.

Our last bit of weekend celebration is for tonight's steadily falling snow that should amount to 3-6" by morning.