Today is Chinese New Year and even though I'm living on the other side of the globe from my family, we still get to spend time together, online, through iChat. So here it is, my big happy family - my mom and dad, my sister, my brother-in-law, their 3 boys and a girl, and my brother who's there on vacation, and me, up in the corner... it is ALMOST like we're all in the same room.
Last Sunday, Kevin threw a Sushi Party and invited us over. The party will be featured in the April/May issue of Kansas City SPACES Magazine. There were a photographer, the editor of the magazine and a writer interviewing some of us. Here are my own pictures. I hope there will be some with me in it on the magazine. I think the party was a success. The food turned out beautiful and delicious! It was especially fun to roll the rolls with the colorful mamenori or soybean paper. They're fabulous for photography.
At around 2pm today, the lights at work flickered a few times. This usually happens during stormy day, but today wasn't one of those days. However, it did seem rather gloomy outside. As I walked closer to the window, I realized that the was a huge plume of black smoke Northeast to our building over downtown. At a glance it looked like a big tornado. However, what seemed to be black cloud turn out to be the smoke from huge fire ignited by several exposions at the Northeast Bottoms. Later we found out that it was a chemical warehouse that burst into flames and apparently the nearby 5 block area had to be evacuated. Many businesses let their employees go early right after the incident in fear that the air could be toxic. Later I also learned that pieces of debris had fallen from the cloud of smoke, and we were urged not to touch the debris. As I was leaving today, I saw a mysterious black spungy object in a zip lock bag sitting right next to the mouse of our log out computer. It didn't come across my mind that it could be the debris from the explosion until now. Not funny! This is a snap shot from my office of the sky over downtown. Okay, I tweaked the color a little bit for drama, but it was pretty scary.
