he said. she said. a married couple's blog.

Thursday, September 29

All of the pictures from California are up in the gallery. They've been broken down into subalbums to make your life a little easier. The new version of the gallery is great, so check it out.

Friday, September 23

inadequate

About every six months, we have a New Employee Reception here at work. Usually, I don't go -- mostly because it means talking to other people, and often, I actually have work to do anyway. This time around, the IT department actually had a couple of people to introduce, and since I work closely with one of them, I thought it would be nice to go.

The food is always good. I should say, the desserts are good. I don't eat anything else. Cheese? Fruit? Who needs it, there are mini cheese cakes and chocolate!

Anyway, the people that get hired here most often are fresh out of college or grad school or something and they always have this huge list of awards, fellowships, grants and the like. And everyone takes it so seriously. Like, I went to an Ivy League school, graduated top of my class, had a fabulous internship somewhere impressive, got some great grant, wrote some very important paper and now, you lucky people, I have chosen to work here. Mostly it just makes me sick to my stomach, because it seems like a good chunk of those people hold on to that for as long as possible.

I did feel bad for this one poor girl though. She was being introduced by her center director, and he says "Donna* comes to us from," and he pauses, looks at her and says "did you ever graduate from high school?" She shakes her head no. "Well, she might not have finished high school but Prestigious University was kind enough to admit her, where she had three majors." At this point, she's covering her face. Then he goes and adds a hobby, "she will enjoy drinking with her friends this weekend.... when she turns 21."

*not her real name (because I honestly don't remember it anyway)

Sunday, September 18

i am mr. wilson

What is wrong with the kids in our new neighborhood? Honestly. At the old 'hood there was a group of kids -- they were all around 8 or 10 -- that would run around in the back in the woods and hit each other with sticks and stuff... Here there are kids at the hillbillies house on the one side of us, and there are a bunch on the otherside. They run back and forth in the front, and lately they've been coming up in our lawn. Everytime I see or hear them I feel like going out there and telling them to get off my lawn. It's just this instinctive, gut reaction that I have. I didn't even know I had it in me. It usually makes me more mad that I feel this way than the actual act of the kids being on the lawn. Today though, they were having some sort of water battle and now our deck furniture is wet! Bren went outside for a minute and some kid came up to him and pointed his water gun at him and told him he was going to shoot him. Bren told him he wasn't and to take his little game elsewhere. WTF? What do I do now? I want to yell at the little brats and tell them to play in their own damn yards. Of course if we piss them off then we're screwed. I've got a feeling that their parents won't really care, either. Something has to be done, though....

Wednesday, September 14

Updated Gallery

The gallery is now new and improved. It fits in better with our site, and is a whole lot more stable. Pictures from our trip to Ohio are up now, and the rest of the California trip should be up tonight or tomorrow. We'll see. The pictures at the end of the Ohio trip are of the 5 buildings that make up my hometown. Exciting, isn't it?

Monday, September 12

bum

Work is kicking my ass. It's been nonstop since we got home from our vacation. There's nothing that's worse than coming home from a nice relaxing vacation to a hectic workplace. It's only for a week, though. We've got another, and our last, meeting at SSA next Tuesday.

Plus it's review season. Yeah, my self-evaluation was due today. It's not done. It will be soon enough.

I need a nap before I go to bed.

Thursday, September 8

a few more photos

Thanks to Brendan's hard work and patience with the gallery, there are now a few photos from the San Francisco part of our vacation. (And when I say few, I mean 215)

I apparently didn't have my hood on all the way when shooting at Alcatraz, so there are some black places along the edges on some of them. I'm such an amateur!

Sunday, September 4

some photos

Since the gallery is down, I've put a few of our many many photos from the trip up on Flickr.

Saturday, September 3

Lassen National Volcanic Park & Airport

We spent the better part of today exploring Mount Lassen National Volcanic Park. Brendan is feeling much better. He had himself quite a large breakfast -- biscuts & gravy, eggs, toast, bacon, potatoes -- that is, once breakfast actually came. It was so slow that I got fed up with waiting and went back to the room to pack.

The park is quite large. We decided to take the 30 mile road that cuts through the western part of it and stopped along the way to see various things. The volcano itself isn't all that active. It last erupted in 1914 - 1921, but it's still got "all the elements" for another eruption. Whatever that means.

The big thing that Brendan wanted to see were the fumeroles and mudpots. We saw some at our first stop at the sulfur springs, but then hiked to what's called Bumpass Hell to see even more. It was actually quite pretty (although smelly). It wasn't too hot of a day either, we were at a decent elevation (7,000 - 8,000 feet) so it was only about 75/80 max at any given point.

We gave some thought initially to hiking to the peak of the volcano, but it's a 5 hour hike round trip, so we decided to skip it. On the way out of the park we stopped to see the rocks thrown and created by the 1914 eruptions.

Then it was back to Sacramento and the airport for our 11pm flight home. We were ahead of schedule by quite a bit so we decided to stop at a casino off the highway. Brendan now thinks that slot machines are my new calling. As soon as we got there, I sat down with $20 and made us $200. Of course, once I do that I'm ready to leave. We stayed around for a while, I spent some of my winnings, and Brendan played BlackJack until it was time to go. We had another small stop back at the Sonic next to the first hotel, "borrowed" their internet access and had Cherry Limeades until it was time to leave for the airport.

Friday, September 2

Mineral

Today was a big driving day. We're halfway back to Sacramento, staying off CA route 36 in the middle of nowhere just outside of Lassen Volcanic Park. Tomorrow we hike and otherwise explore the park before heading 3 hours south to Sacramento to catch our 11 pm flight home.

I drove the whole way here today. Brendan woke up last night "violently ill," as he put it. We figure he must have gotten some kind of food poisoning. Although, I just noticed he has some pretty bad sunburn on the back of his neck -- it's blistering and a little swollen -- that might have been a contributing factor. He seems better now, he's just really really tired since he didn't hardly sleep at all last night. It's a good thing that it happened in Eureka and not here. Our room here is spare. We have a bed (king sized, though), a chair, a few small tables, and a very tiny bathroom. At least I was able to sleep last night. If we were here, I don't think that it would have been possible.

We had planned to take it rather slow today and get here on the later side. We came through the mountains along the Trinity River. I don't really drive too much these days, so it took some getting used to. the car doesn't quite get up and go like my Jetta, so sometimes we were a bit slow coming up the mountains. People were going past me left and right. Plus, the road was super windy, and I was constantly pulling over into the turnoffs so people could fly by me. How anyone could stomach going much over 50 on that road, I don't know.

We were going to stop at some ghost towns along the way, but Bren was finally getting some sleep past a few and when we got to Shasta, the one he really wanted to stop in, he just wasn't up for it. So, we just kept on going pretty much nonstop until we got here.

When we first turned off the highway onto 36, the landscape was as close to a desert as I have seen. It was fairly barren, with some low hearty trees, and brown short grasses. The land was fairly flat, but with some hills here and there. Then we went up a mountain or two and the landscape changed and was full of pine trees. There's some sort of canyon to the west of where we are. The lodge is just past the park. Mineral is pretty darn small. According to the sign its population is a whopping 90. It seems like it's a ski destination more than a summer one.

Thursday, September 1

technical

Also, I should mention that we were having a few issues with our gallery, so it's offline for a while until we get it fixed.

Eureka Day 2

Today we drove up even farther north to Redwood National Park. A friend of Brendan's brother's has recommended that we check out Fern Canyon. I'm glad we took his advice. The park is about 50 minutes north of here. Instead of hiking 8 miles from the park offices, we decide to drive to a point that's less than a mile from the canyon. It's this little gravel road that winds around and down to the shore and down to the canyon. Did I mention we've rented a Seabring? It takes a minute for me to get my eyes used to the woods once we enter them. I'm startled because it looks like a black and white photo. It takes a moment to realize that the road kicks up so much grey dust that it has covered the ferns and the trees on the edge of the road. They are so thickly coated that everything is in shades of grey.

We make it to the end of the road and set off to first explore the beach. It's much flatter here and more like the beaches that I am used to on the Atlantic. We walk down to the water and take a few photos of the birds there. I am leading us on the way back and out of the corner of my right eye I see them: three elk, just hanging out. They weren't there when we started. I take a few photos, and as the shutter clicks as I'm taking one of the male, he turns, looks at me and takes a few steps. We were far enough apart that I wanted to switch to the zoom lens, but I thought twice about it as he moved towards us slightly again. I was satisfied with our Nature moment.

Then we hiked into the canyon. It is so beautiful. I know the photos won't do it the proper justice. As we rounded each bend it got more and more beautiful. We headed up a trail up a ridge and walked for a while. Once we got to the fork we had to make a decision: hike for 5 more miles and get back to town at about five or six, or go back the short way, maybe a mile and get back around two. Since we hadn't seen any of Eureka, we opted for the short route and made our way back to the car. The elk were still hanging out where we left them, and so I switched lenses and took a few more shots. The male was still posing for me (and the others who were even closer). A man getting into a car near me muttered something to his wife like, "People are more interested in the elk than they are in Fern Canyon!" I turned and said, "Oh, we've already done that." Plus, there aren't elk in our part of Virginia!

Back in Eureka, we decided to have a big lunch at a brewpub and skip dinner for the most part. Afterwards, we headed into Old Town Eureka. It's not really what we were expecting. There were a few blocks with a few shops, but not really much going on. There were a few coffee shops, a bookstore or two, a Restoration Hardware that seemed out of place, and a whole lot of scraggly, homeless looking people. The boardwalk was even more depressing. Evidently there are grand plans for shops and whatnot along it, but right now there isn't anything, just some buskers playing bad, loud guitar. It kind of reminds us of Sharon: once a big milling town and now sort of struggling. Admittedly, we've only seen a small part of the town.

Tomorrow we've got a long drive ahead of us. There probably won't be any more posting until we get home. Right now, we're borrowing access from someplace else (we thought we were going to have wireless here, but apparently there's not). We'll be in the middle of nowhere tomorrow on our way to Lassen Volcanic National Park.