Greg and Selena » awesome

Buying the Mazda3

Greg — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:03:15 +0000

Have you seen our new car? This is it here:

We were looking for a new car with four-doors and a big enough trunk to handle our growing family, but was still able to get great gas mileage so I could drive it from Rockville to Alexandria and back each day. So we went with the hatchback that has plenty of room for strollers and things, but also the new 2012 model that includes the Skyactiv engine technology which allows the car to jump to near 40mpg when on highways. I’ve already seen the difference in how much we’re (not) spending on gas each week.

A late addition to the must-have list (that I didn’t even know I had to have until I noticed it during the test-drive) was Bluetooth integration so I could listen to podcasts and music as well as take and receive phone calls in the car without extra equipment. I am loving this feature.

I’ve never bought a new car before, so when they handed over the keys and I looked at the odometer and it said 11, I found that just remarkable (especially since at least 4 of those were from our test drive).

Final stop in Califorina – Michelle’s Resort and Spa

Greg — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:33:57 +0000

One of my friends I’ve known the longest is Michelle. She was my closest friend in high school and although since that time, our paths have seldom paralleled, we’ve continued to make an effort to stay connected. She and her family moved out to the suburbs of San Francisco about a year ago, so I was excited to get the opportunity to visit with them, and we planned the final weekend we would stay at their place.

Unfortunately, the kids were visiting their grandparents on the East Coast and Michelle’s husband, Mario, flew out to collect them the same weekend we were visiting. We did get a nice dinner with Mario and Michelle earlier in the week in Fisherman’s Wharf, but for the weekend in San Ramon, it was two days of the Robletos visiting with just Michelle.

They live in an amazingly beautiful house, only a few years old, in a town that wasn’t much older. Everything was new and fresh and well planned with ornate outdoor shopping centers that had water running through them where you could feed the ducks to parks with water-features for the kids to play in as part of the playground. In fact, water-features were sort of everywhere, even on sides of roads and at entrances to developments. We asked Michelle and she said “There was one builder for this whole area… and he liked water features.” Amazing. In my conversations with Luke W earlier in the week we were lamenting the futility of trying to maintain a holistic design for an entire website, and here was a sense of aesthetic continuity, at a much grander scale, it was an entire town. Incredible.

Speaking of water-features, Michelle’s home had a water-feature too, a huge pool in the back with a hot tub attached. We gave Kaylee her first soak in a hot tub (with the temperature significantly reduced) and also took advantage ourselves after Kaylee was asleep. It was so relaxing, and I’m sure the few bottles of wine didn’t hurt the cause.

Speaking of wine, living in San Ramon, about an hour south of Napa, they were in close proximity to some great wineries. We toured a winery called Wente and were educated in the art of wine-making and wine-sampling. We did a lot of homework on that subject as well while we were there after Kaylee went to sleep.

We also visited with Michelle’s parents, who moved shortly after Michelle and Mario to the same area, to stay close to their grandchildren (hint, hint, Mom and Dad). They have a beautiful house too. Unlike their kids who have a yard big enough for a pool and hot tub, they have the more common home for that area where you can stand in the yard and with one arm touch the house and another touch the fence. Yards are that small! The house takes up the bulk of the land. And that doesn’t mean the houses are McMansion size. They are comfortably sized, but could easily get overwhelmed by a collector of things. Minimalism is the key. I was inspired seeing those beautiful homes so well put together. I was determined to come back and do a great purge. I feel our home could be that nice, if we didn’t have so much stuff in it.

We left from the weekend with Michelle for the airport, a red-eye flight home culminating two weeks in California. Over that time we’ve been leaving destinations every few days, but it was really hard to leave San Ramon. I realized later it was because after seizing every minute in Los Angeles and San Francisco to see the sights and experience the city, we slowed down in San Ramon. We relaxed, drank some wine, lounged around, soaked in the hot tub and shared stories and laughs with a close friend. Selena said “staying with Michelle was like staying at a resort and spa for the weekend.” Yes! It very much felt that way.

Michelle and Greg

Kaylee and her dad feeding the ducks

Kaylee in the water feature in the park in San Ramon

The whole family in the water feature in the park in San Ramon

Expiditions in Learning: Visiting great companies in Silicon Valley

Greg — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 22:53:11 +0000

For the past two years, I have had the privilege of being one of twelve people selected to participate in leadership training course internally at The Motley Fool. Every course lasts six week and is taught by a head of a department (CFO for Finance, CMO for Marketing, etc). We discuss their area of the business and take on relevant projects. In the end, after going through all the courses, we come away with a complete understanding of all the areas of our company.

There were also field trips out of the office to visit some other local companies in D.C. and one amazing trip to Austin back in June for a concentrated three days marathon of visits as a group with other companies. There is one more field trip that you have to make for yourself. Each of us were tasked with finding a company that we admire, and meeting with the person who does you role at that company. I went a little bigger, asking to go to Silicon Valley, which would offer me the opportunity to meet with numerous people, since so many great tech companies are right there. My proposal was accepted and our trip to San Francisco included taking Expedition in Learning.

Traffic was light getting to Silicon Valley from San Francisco so I stopped in and walked the grounds of Stanford. I will say now, that I approve of Kaylee going to this University, it was the most stunning school I’ve ever seen and combined with it’s impeccable reputation for success, I’ve made my new goal as a Dad to get Kaylee accepted.

Following my discovery of my parental mission, I drove to Sunnyvale to meet with my counterparts at Yahoo! While it’s true that Yahoo! has had some difficulties lately, they still are a top tier internet company but moreover I love how well they integrate your profile into every one of their products. I sought to talk more about that cohesion and had a fantastic lunch with my friend Cindy and her Yahoo! co-workers. We discussing design synthesis across products and I found they were being a bit hard on themselves, thinking it could be better still. We also hit on staying passionate as designers while working in a big company as well as how they measure success. It was a great informative meeting.

I then got another perspective on Yahoo! as well as eBay and the general design landscape when I went to Mountain View to meet Luke, for coffee. He had a lot of insights about how different design teams and companies in Silicon Valley run, and he personally has experience leading a design team at a large internet corporations. Luke provided so much good advice on topics like design patterns and process but also on design’s role in a company, and where he’s seems some of the traps are with regard to support from the top as well as strictly data-driven design. I learned so much from that meeting, and really appreciate that Luke took the time to meet with me.

Rounding out my day, I went to LinkedIn and found the designer I was to meet was double-booked. Instead of just talking design, Michal invited me to join her. She was participating in a exhibition of great In(novation) Day ideas. She and a team took advantage of their day of autonomous time to develop an iPad-oriented slide deck / application for their sales team. It was elegant and polished. I hope it won the contest. I really enjoyed the unity of the company as they watched and submitted one great idea after the next to make the business better.

Between my visits while down in Silicon Valley, I also did a drive-by of Apple and Google and stopped in at a Computer Science museum which was way too nerdy for me. I’m not that interested in the history of the circuit board or who invented the mainframe. What I am interested in, what always energizes me, is talking about the current and future state of the Internet and about design, and I was so thrilled The Motley Fool provided the opportunity to have those conversations with Cindy, Luke and Michal.

Greg at Stanford University

Touring around San Francisco

Greg — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 19:31:54 +0000

Selena went to San Francisco about 10 years ago when in college and amazingly was able to do nearly a week’s stay for only $500 (flights included). One way she cut costs was by taking the bus everywhere, (sometimes without bothering to pay) or by walking. This time around, we had a rental car. Somewhere around midday the first day “Wow, this morning alone we just saw everything it took me a week to see last time.”

We saw the Golden Gate Bridge, which is definitely impressive. On this day, the tops of the bridge towers were covered in fog, which both Selena and I commented make it look like a real world Photoshop gradient mask was applied to the bridge. We then did also comment that we are real design geeks.

We visited the Palace of the Arts, which, like the Getty Museum in LA, I loved not for the art inside (didn’t bother going in to see any of that) but for the architecture of the museum itself.. In a town that is hip and modern, I could easily see San Francisco green-lighting some over-designed modern expression to house it’s collections, something that seems gaudy and out-of-touch, like the Pompedeau Center in Paris, even before it’s completed and opened. But instead, they went refreshingly old-school to Ancient Greek/Roman style of classic columns and architecture. It was beautiful and a highlight of the city.

We also saw the Coit Tower on Nob Hill which overlooks most of the city and the bay including Alcatraz. Tickets for Alcatraz were unavailable so we didn’t get any closer to the famous prison than Fisherman’s Wharf. That first evening we went totally tourist and made our local friends Michelle and Mario ride down to the Fisherman’s Wharf on the cable-cars. I sat with Kaylee inside while Selena hung on the outside. It’s a fun experience that everyone who visits SF should try at least once.

Also on the try-once to-do list: drove down Lombard street, the windiest street in the world. It was like doing a downhill slalom in a car. That was pretty intense already, but it’s amplified by having to watch for tourists jumping out into the road for a picture.

We went to the Painted Ladies, which is this series of beautiful townhomes, each colored a different hue that I believe was used in the introduction to Full House. Across the street is a park where Kaylee played for a while on the playground that is shaped like miniature versions of the townhouses. Very cute

We also ate some good eats while in San Francisco. We went to a restaurant that served nothing buy garlic called the Stinking Rose that was surprisingly tasty. We expected to get seafood in Fisherman’s Wharf but the Boudin Bakery smelled so good we went for bread-bowls instead. But neither of those places made Selena giddy like she was surrounded the aroma of decadent chocolate, with delicious sweet treats abounded in Ghirardelli Square.

When I booked our hotel, I noted it was on the edge of Chinatown, what I didn’t know was how expansive the SF Chinatown is. It goes on for so many blocks in all directions; it is the largest distinctively cultural area of a city I’ve ever seen. We made multiple trips for food and trinkets, and eating delicious snacks and meals. We caught up with one of my good friends, Sam who knew all the best shops and locations, and ate fantastic authentic Chinese food there. Selena loved that too.

And what did I love? Momentarily forgetting that I was on this planet and not o n the forest moon of Endor from Return of the Jedi when we were walking among the trees in Meir Woods, the closest Redwood Forest to San Francisco. Those trees were awe-inspiringly massive. It was stunning to walk among them.

Here are some pictures to accompany all the touristy locations we visited while in San Francisco.

Golden Gate Bridge

Selena and Kaylee at the Golden Gate Bridge

The Palace of the Arts

Kaylee at the Palace of the Arts

A happy Kaylee at Coit Tower

Kaylee scheeming at Coit Tower

Selena at the Stinking Rose garlic restaurant

Selena, Kaylee and Greg hanging off the cable car

Dude who pretends he's a bush and scares tourists - he's famous.

Selena and Greg in Chinatown

Greg and Kaylee at the Painted Ladies

The family in the mini Painted Ladies playground

Selena at Ghiradelli Square

Greg on Endor, no that's Meir Woods

Kaylee looking over a bridge at Meir Woods

Selena and Kaylee looking up at the tall trees in Meir Woods

We’re going to Disneyland

Greg — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 01:41:22 +0000

Our last day in LA was the Monday after the wedding. Four couples (plus kids) stayed that extra day with the same intention. We’re going to Disneyland!

Disney's California Adventure

I have (literally) been in Disney’s theme parks in Florida hundreds of times, but this was also my first visit to either of the two California parks: Disneyland and California Adventure. I made a point to get the park-hopper ticket so I could experience both. Since I actually went to EuroDisney while touring around Europe in college, I am only one Disney theme park shy of completing the set. What I am missing is Disneyland Tokyo and we’re planning a trip to Japan for next year to see Selena’s brother Dean now stationed there, so that bucket list item may just get completed.

This was also my first trip to a Disney park as a parent, and that’s a very different experience. I was now looking at it through the lens of what will Kaylee enjoy. With that mindset we went on the Carousel, through Sleeping Beauty’s castle, watched some Princess stage show, rode the Snow White, Little Mermaid and Small World attractions. By the way, some friends and I disagreed on this, but I very much enjoy that they have inserted Disney/Pixar animated characters into the appropriate lands of the Small World ride. I thought it would ruin the purity of the ride, but since they are subtle and done in the style of the other Small World characters, I think it is well done and enjoyed seeking out those Easter Eggs all along the ride.

We didn’t do all Kaylee rides thought, we split up at time and I took my opportunities to ride the Indiana Jones ride, Pirates of the Caribbean, Monsters Inc, Muppets and Space Mountain. I will say this about Space Mountain, the LA version is darker, faster and more intense than in Florida. In Disney World it’s fun and all, at Disneyland, it was awesome!

For dinner we had reservations at the New Orleans themed Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney. Then we went back into the park after dark to catch the fireworks. I was actually separated from the group and was ushered not towards them but on this infinite loop around at the main circle at the end of Main Street USA in front of the castle. I had to take two full orbits around that circle before, seeing the Mouse ears that looked like a wedding veil and Katie wearing them, I ducked out of the herd and joined my family and friends.

The fireworks were fantastic and Kaylee loved them, which was surprising. (We expected her to be scared of all the noise). She loved so much of the day at the park, and will remember none of it – she’s not even two. Which just means we’re going to have to go back and do it all over again. To a Disney fan like myself, that sounds like a great idea.

Kaylee at Sleeping Beauty's castle

Kaylee and her Dad at Disneyland

Selena being attacked by a Yoda backpack at Star Tours

Kaylee and her Dad at the Matterhorn in Disneyland

Kaylee riding the Carousel in Fantasyland

Katie and Jeff wearing their Wedding Ears

Fireworks over Disneyland

Kaylee loving the fireworks

Recreating the Hunger Games

Greg — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:15:31 +0000

For my birthday this year, Selena put together a most fun event modeled after the book series The Hunger Games.

She had us all meet at Bellevue State Park in Delaware and had set up a circle with 16 starting points around a Cornucopia of supplies in the center. When she said “Go” everyone either ran in to grab supplies or ran away because they were trying to stay alive, which meant keeping on their flag football flags on.

From the start, like in the Hunger Games books, a few died quickly, many scattered and some came away with the supplies. But you were never quite sure why or when the supplies would matter, that would come later as the Gamemakers (Selena and crew) changed the game. As the game progressed, we received text messages from the Gamemakers telling us if they were entertained new rules.

One memorable rule change, at some point when the deaths were not stacking up quickly enough, was all participants had to gather in the center of the Cornucopia ring, link arms with a fellow player, and then the Gamemakers unleashed the kids to pull away as many flags as they could in a minute.

It was intense and exhausting, since the way to win was to get everyone else’s flags and that meant a lot of running and chasing, or being chased. I found myself being chased a lot, and one time, when Selena changed the rules to make my specific flags worth triple points. Iâ€™m pretty sure all the players in the game were running after me at top speed at once.

In the end there was a winner, our friend Jason, and a tie for second between our friend Joe and my brother Jeff.

Thanks to everyone who came out to play today in the cold and the mud, and special thanks to Selena and Beth for putting this fun event together.

Here are photos from the event:

Gathering supplies from the Cornucopia

You have to watch your back when organizing your supplies

Attack of the Kids

Tired from the chase but having a blast

The winners of Hunger Games

The participants in the Hunger Games

Everyone dies in Hunger Games

Planning a ski weekend in 15 minutes

Greg — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 03:02:09 +0000

Every year a group of our friends go on a ski trip to the Poconos for the last weekend in January. This year, as always, I had it on my calendar, so we packed up the gear, including all we needed for baby Kayleeâ€™s first ski trip. We even coordinated with our friends Tanya and Jason from further away, in Fredericksburg VA, who only a couple days earlier accepted our invitation to come with us. Everything was all set to go as soon as we got out of work on Friday.

It was Friday morning that I saw an email from Bill, whom I knew would be joining us in the ski lodge later that evening. He wrote â€œWho wants to come over my place tonight to play Rockband?â€ I started to write him back saying, â€œYou wonâ€™t be at home playing Rockband tonight, youâ€™ll be on the ski tripâ€, but then something gave me pause. I sent a text to my brother â€œHey, dumb question, but when is the ski trip, tonight right?â€ to which I got quick replies â€œNo, in two weeks.â€

Crap, thatâ€™s right, itâ€™s all coming back to me now. We changed the dates because they couldnâ€™t give us the full weekend. We had had lengthy discussions via email about that, and I weighed in supporting the new dates, but I never changed my calendar.

At that point I started a flurry of phone calls to Selena then Jason to let them know that even though our bags are packed and weâ€™re thinking ski slopes, we have no Pocono destination to go to this evening. Thatâ€™s when we all came to the same conclusion. What about Duke?

Selena and I, and Tanya and Jason have all been meaning to get together with our friends Duke and Lauren for a while now anyway. The six of us always have too good a time together but recently schedules keep conflicting.

But why call Duke today? Because Dukeâ€™s family owns a ski house in the Poconos. Would it be possible the house was available this weekend and that Duke and Lauren too could, at a few hours notice, pick up and go to the mountains for the weekend? Yes and yes.

And thatâ€™s how we suddenly went from a ski trip planned months in advance to a ski trip planned in about 15 minutes. It turned out great, we got to ski, laugh, play board games, and catch up with a lot of dear friends.

And bonus, we still have another ski weekend in two weeks.

Baby’s First Halloween

Greg — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 15:23:17 +0000

For babyâ€™s first Halloween we found an adorable cow costume, and then kicked it up a notch by setting the whole family to a Click Clack Moo barnyard theme. Here are some photos from Selena and Kaylee visiting Greg at The Motley Foolâ€™s office trick or treating, as well as from our front stoop from Halloween evening itself.

The Farmer and the Cow

Playing with the Chicken and the Egg

Now in her pumpkin outfit

The farm family

Sookie and dad in costume too

More pictures can be seen in the Flickr album of Babyâ€™s First Halloween.

Gifttrap â€“ Itâ€™s as if your Amazon wishlist was turned into a board game.

Greg — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 12:20:23 +0000

GiftTrap the game

I love the award-winning German board games that take forever to set up, but are still challenging, complex and fun to play (Iâ€™m looking at you Space Alert, Agricola and even to some degree Settles of Catan). So I was ready to be snooty and dismissive when I was introduced to a game that was â€œlike Apples to Applesâ€, but to my surprise, Iâ€™m a big fan of Gifttrap.

Gifttrap is a game of giving and receiving gifts. From a series of gift options, you have to determine what would be the best gift to give each other player as well as decide what you yourself would love or hate to receive.Â The scoring is based on the amount of matches on both sides â€“ giving and recieving. You have to be stellar at both to win the game.

Unique elements of the game are that it can be played with up to eight people, which is perfect dinner party size.Â It is simple to set up and easy to learn. But I think one of the most interesting elements is that you get to be yourself, not a medieval farmer or settler or astronaut â€“ you are you.Â To win the game you need to know yourself and what you like and hope that other people do too.

I recommend Gifttrap (available on Amazon) for just about anyone to own, but put the one caveat that you should probably only play it with people you know well, should know well, or want to know better.

Happy 3rd Anniversary, Selena

Greg — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 04:18:47 +0000

Three years ago today, Selena and I exchanged vows on a beach in the Florida Keys. That was just the beginning. Itâ€™s been quite a journey already. In no particular order, over the past three years since we got married:

We travelled to Saint Lucia
We bought a new home
Greg got promoted
Selena left her job at the Shakespeare Theatre
We became landlords
Selena studied karate in Egypt
Sookie joined the family
Selena started her own design studio â€“ Red Velvet Creative
We travelled all over Western Europe
Greg won the Foolâ€™s Errand (two weeks mandatory remarkable vacation)
We found out Selena was pregnant
Selena joined the Art Directors Club board of directors
We went to Disney World
We both taught part-time at Boston Universityâ€™s CDIA campus in Georgetown
Selena learned how to letter press
Greg masterminded a puzzle hunt
Kaylee joined the family

Hereâ€™s looking forward to many more great years to come. Happy Anniversary, Selena.