CLOGS

When the Blog Bug Bites

2011-11-30T16:29:00.001-08:00

Phew. This is the last day of NaBloPoMo. I have come to the easy conclusion that I'm not a regular blogger and I prefer to blog whenever the blog bug bites me rather than do it regularly everyday. Its more fun to write when the spirit moves me than at a designated time. I suspect I will continue to blog at my usual snails pace of one or two blogs a month. NaBloPoMo has not inspired me to blog more or to become more excited about blogging. I'm not sure what I got out of it. Perhaps the satisfaction that I made a promise to myself to do it and I succeeded. Now that I know what it is like I probably won't participate again. It was an interesting experiment and I'm still digesting what it told me about myself and my urge or not urge to write.

I'm off to watch a Stanford Women's basketball game tonight. I nearly forgot about it until I got an email from the Stanford Women's Basketball publicity person reminding me of the game. It was on my calendar also but I hadn't check the calendar out yet before that email. I hate to miss a game as I paid good money for the tickets and the games are fun. I do wish all the games were on weekends but alas about half of them are on work day evenings. The PAC-12 games generally fall on Thursday and Saturday evenings every other week or starting in January till the beginning of March. Tonights game is against an out of conference foe, UC Davis.

I got a new computer at work today and spent lots of time getting all the software upgraded that I need to do my job. I didn't get much new work done but in the long run the new more powerful computer will help me do my job more efficiently.

Boring

2011-11-29T20:19:00.001-08:00

Spent today figuring out sequence commands at work. It sounds sort of boring but the main thing was I think I finally understand how the commands work. Its fun to figure out something although a bit frustrating when the figuring out hasn't really resulted in any specific work getting done. I have to think of the future when I'll be able to solve and fix the problems more quickly because of the time I spent to understand the commands. Tomorrow I'll start using my new knowledge to debug the actual problem!!

After work, I went shopping at the drug store to get dental supplies. I have been approaching the end of the plaque rinse, the fluoride rinse, my dental floss, and my toothpaste. Usually these items run out at different times. I got two of everything at the drug store. The grocery store doesn't carry the fluoride rinse my dentist recommends so I visited the neighborhood Walgreen's drug store. As I was buying the stuff I remarked to the clerk that my teeth would be very clean. I was hoping she would crack a smile but she didn't.

Head in the Sand

2011-11-28T19:15:00.001-08:00

There is a part of me that just wants to stick my head in the sand when it comes to the Occupy movement and I'm feeling really guilty about that. I have friends and family who are passionate supporters of the Occupy movement. Perhaps I envy them their sureness that this is the right way to start fixing the unequal distribution of wealth in this country. I am not as sure because I don't understand what is accomplished by camping for a long time in front of public places and I wonder what needs to happen before the occupiers will stop occupying public places. I should probably get my head out of the sand and go read the Occupy movements web sites to further educate myself, eh? My family has even admonished me to do so :-) I should go search out that email and check out the web sites and put my head in the cloud rather than the sand!!

Restful Day

2011-11-27T16:07:00.001-08:00

I was going to go on a long hike today but I woke up feeling so tired that I decided to just spend the day at home. I watched the Jets vs Bills game in between falling asleep on the couch! I managed to be awake for all but one touch down. I'm presently listening to the Raiders play the Bears. If I hear excited announcer voices, I turn around and watch the replay! I'm not usually a big football fan but today I'm enjoying it.

I spent part of the afternoon transforming my dining room table from "where my lap top sits and mail piles up" to a clean table top with a jig saw puzzle spread out on it! I had to sort through tons of junk mail. Then I spent some time shredding this junk mail. I had to take a break to clear jams from my shredder. I guess I was working it too hard! With the jam fixed, I shredded the rest of the junk mail and carted the shreds to the recycling bin in my condo complex. Then I moved my lap top to a small dinner tray right next to the soon to be puzzle table.

I got out my hardest jigsaw puzzle and have spread all the pieces out on the table and I'm in the process of putting together the edges. I find that doing jigsaw puzzles is very much a solitary pleasure for me. When I do it with other people I have control issues. I want them to do the puzzle exactly how I do it. All the pieces must be spread out before you start putting any together. Then you do the edges. Then the middle. I get frustrated when these procedures are not followed.

I also got the dishes done this afternoon and made myself a nice turkey sandwich with the left over turkey S. so kindly let me take home with me after the dinner last night. The dinner at S's house was great. She is an excellent cook and made many delicious dishes. We also had some high quality wines with dinner and port to finish off the meal!

Hiking and Thanksgiving Two

2011-11-26T07:38:00.001-08:00

Busy day today so I better get my NaBloPoMo post done early this morning. I'm going hiking with the Loma Prieta Gay and Lesbian Sierra Club at Alum Rock park. The park is in southeast San Jose. We are going to do the Boccardo loop trail and hike on the south and north rim trails. I believe we are pretty much going to hit most of the trails in the park. In all its supposed to be an 8 mile hike with roughly 1500 feet of elevation gain. It will be good to get some exercise and burn of a small portion of my second Thanksgiving dinner after the hike is over. When the hike is over, I'll scurry home for a hot shower and then drive to south San Jose to a friend's house for a second Thanksgiving dinner. Hopefully the hike will end as advertised at around 4 p.m. That gives me just enough time to drive home, shower, and drive to south San Jose. Dinner is set to start at 6 p.m.

I have a hiked planned tomorrow but so far no one has RSVPed so I may bag it and sleep in and go on a less rigorous solo hike and perhaps go Christmas shopping. Hopefully the black Friday crowds will have dissipated a bit. I'm not real keen on shopping but I would like to get it done early this year and have packages in the mail by around Dec 10th. I thought I might drive to downtown Mountain View and walk up and down Castro street stopping in shops there. It might be nice to give business to the smaller shops rather than the big mall shops! I suspect I'll end up in book stores buying books as presents. Its hard to go wrong with books in my family and we are nearly all avid readers!

Launches and Losses

2011-11-25T21:53:00.001-08:00

Nearly forgot about my post for today but its 9:53 pm and its still Nov 25 so on with NaBloPoMo. I went to the satellite launch today at Space Systems Loral. It was fun but I have to admit I was disappointed that they did not have a t-shirt in my size. After most launches, SSL and the customer who ordered the satellite usually make a t-shirt and give it away to those that attend the launch. Today there were no t-shirts in my size. Instead I ended up picking up an Asiasat7/SSL coffee mug. It has a picture of Hong Kong (where the Asiasat company is located) on the mug with SSL and Asiasat logos in the corners of the picture. I guess you can tell one of the things I like about launches is the free gifts!

The launch itself went well but as usual it was standing room only in the cafeteria and I was shifting about to try and get a view of the screen. I managed to get on my toes and see the liftoff pretty clearly. As it lifted off we all cheered and then watched for maybe a minute and then many of us rushed for the swag line so we could get good stuff. I'll have to check the web site tomorrow a.m. to see if the satellite has started its maneuvers to get in the proper orbit and get all set up. Its probably a week or so till you know the satellite is set up how it should be and working properly.

I got in some exercise today by walking to and from work for the launch. Its 1.6 miles to the cafeteria at work from my condo door. It took me about 35 minutes to make the walk. I was most surprised with how sweaty I got. I wore a sweatshirt and a heavy rain jacket. About half way there I removed the rain jacket. I never needed it. I would have been fine with just the sweatshirt. Oh well. Does being sweaty burn more calories? On the way home I carried the coffee mug and poster and jacket all the way home. I should have brought my backpack with me so I could put everything inside it and not have to have everything in my arms! It was a pleasant walk home. I spend the afternoon relaxing and in the late afternoon decided to bake some more chocolate chip cookies.

I took a small bag of the freshly baked cookies with me to eat while I watched the Stanford vs Cal women's volleyball match. The first three sets were really tight. Stanford took the first one. Then Cal won the second. There was a half time break. Then Cal came out and squeaked out the third set. Then the wind fell out of Stanford's sails and they just couldn't get it together for the fourth set and Cal won it easily. So the final score was 3 sets to 1 with Cal winning. This was the last regular season game of the season. The first week of December the volleyball national championship tournament starts. Stanford has a very good chance of making it into the tournament. This Sunday, the brackets for the tournament will be announced. Stanford will probably host a first and second round at their home court and I plan to buy tickets to see the games.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T08:33:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving has gotten off to a wonderful start with being able to sleep in. I stirred at 6:20 a.m. and had the wonderful realization that I did not have to get up for work but could keep sleeping. I ended up sleeping till 8:05 a.m. Now I'm eating breakfast and writing this post. I figure once I jump in my car and drive to SF for Thanksgiving with my brother's family, I won't have time to get on the internet and write something. I probably won't get home till around 11 pm I'm guessing.

Here are some things I'm thankful for ...

(1) My parents are still alive and healthy at 83 and 88.
(2) I have a good job that pays well and I like the work
(3) My health. Except for being a tad bit overweight, I'm feeling healthy.
(4) The asexual community I have found on line
(5) The Loma Prieta Gay and Lesbian Sierra Club section
(6) Good friends
(7) Books and the authors who write them!

No Traveling!

2011-11-23T21:14:00.001-08:00

Enjoying the fact that I'm not traveling on this busiest travel day in the US. I did brave going to a grocery store after work. It was crowded but I managed to pick the right line and only had to wait for one person to be rung up before I was. I purchased four bottles of Martinelli's as my contribution to tomorrows feast at my brother's house. Nine people will be there: my brother, his wife, a neice, a niece and her boyfriend, a sister-in-law and her boyfriend, me, and .... I don't know who the 9th person will be. It should be a jolly group. We plan on going walking rain or shine on the beach before dinner. The dog, Faith, needs to get her energy used up before dinner! The weather forecast is for rain. Maybe we'll get out there in between showers. I'll bring my raincoat and maybe some extra dry cloths.

The day after Thanksgiving I'm going to work to watch a satellite launch. It will be televised on a big screen in the cafeteria. The actual launch will happen in at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. The launch is scheduled for 11:10 a.m. but there is a number to call to be sure the launch is on schedule. The launch celebration includes some speeches by project managers and then watching the launch and after that its time to pick up the free goodies: usually t-shirts and posters. Its the anticipation of the launch, the holding of your breath that everything go well during launch and being around people who have worked on the satellite that really make it a fun event. The actual launch footage is usually the same. Often you view it in the dark. So you see the big launch pad all lit up. Then you see the rocket launch and watch a light go up in the dark sky. You can't really see on the TV screen that its a rocket with a satellite in the nose. At some point the camera's picture is just a small dot so they often shift to simulated pictures to show what is going on in the launch.

Books

2011-11-22T16:29:00.001-08:00

I have been reading books that I own for the last three months but I finally finished reading the one's I wanted to read and now I'm looking forward to a visit to the library to pick new books out. I think I will continue my reading of mysteries. I'll have to log into my library record and see where I left on what authors. I love to find an author and read all the books they have written. I'll be looking for books by Donna Andrews, Robin Paige, and Stieg Larsson to name a few. And I'll just be browsing.

I love to be in libraries. I like the quiet. I like the huge amount of books on the shelves. I like the smell of books and the feel of them in my hand. I just get excited thinking about all the books I haven't read that are just waiting there on the shelves for me to check out. I fell in love with libraries at first sight. I remember going to the children's section at the Beechwold library in Columbus, Ohio and then later to the adult section. I remember being excited to learn how to drive so I could drive myself to the library! I also liked the library at school and it was my favorite place to go to study during my free periods.

When I got to college I discovered the joy of stacks. The library was so big you could lose yourself in the many floors of books. I liked to do my studying in the english literature section. Although this often backfired on me as I would spend more time reading a British novel than doing my engineering problem sets. But the stacks were quiet and you could really get away from other people if you went to the stacks. Sometimes I miss having a huge library.

I love my current library. I still think of it as the fancy new library but realized that it actually has been more than 10 years since it was redesigned and rebuilt. I like how open it is to the sunlight in the reading areas and it does have more room than it used to. It also has lots of computers I can use but I rarely do use them since I have a computer at home! I volunteer at my library and now I'm signing off this post as I have to delivery books to a home bound patron. I'll chat with her and then head back to the library to return the books she gives me and to select some books for myself!!

2011-11-21T18:40:00.001-08:00

I'm stymied about what to write about today. Every time I think of something and start composing it in my head it becomes too personal. Perhaps today's post will just be very short and about not being able to figure out what to write. I just keep running into stuff that is too personal. Just wrote a sentence and erased it as it was too personal. Arg. Perhaps its a problem of dwelling on a personal problem and not being able to get away from it to write about something else. I guess today this will be my post. Kaboom. Done.

Decade Memories

2011-11-20T20:57:00.001-08:00

OK just for grins I'm going to write about the first memory that pops in my head for each decade since I was born.

In 1965 when I was four years old my family spent a year in England while my Dad did research for his book at the British Museum. We rented a house and this house had a staircase that was covered in carpet. This was a new experience in my short life as our staircase was hard wood. I then discovered the joy of sliding down the carpeted staircase on my tummy. It was incredibly fun and I sort of remember that stomach dropping feeling it gave me.

In 1974 we had a big old elm tree in the front yard that was afflicted with Dutch Elm disease. To attempt to get rid of the disease my parents had half of the tree cut down. There were two big branches coming out of the trunk and they had one lopped off. Then my big brother threw a rope around the stump of the cut off branch and climbed up the tree to the stump. I was 13 years old and he challenged me, my younger brother, and my neighbor friend to climb up the rope. The first of us that could do it, he would give a quarter to. We tried and tried and I was thrilled to be the first one to succeed and the proud recipient of a quarter!

In 1983 I was a junior at Purdue. I knew quite a few seniors and got invited to a graduation party. I went to it with some trepidation as I was usually a wall flower at parties and felt very shy and awkward. But somehow this party felt different. I felt like I belonged and for the first time in my life I managed to shed some of my inhibitions and had a fabulous time dancing down a dance line. Two lines of people lined up on either side of the living room and we took turns dancing down between the lines. I don't know why this time was so different than any time before or any time since but I just let go of my worries and let my self go and danced and danced. I often wish I could recapture that moment.

In 1991 I just turned 30 and had been doing a lot of thinking about who I was and what I wanted from my life. And I made a decision on my 30th birthday to check out this group meeting I saw in the San Jose Mercury News about a Palo Alto Lesbian Rap group. This was not a musical rap group but harkened back to the 60's meaning of rapping which was getting together and talking. I went to the group and was amazed to find a group of women dressed like me in jeans and t-shirts and I immediately felt comfortable. I also happened upon a night in this group where the discussion topic was being new in a group. So I felt doubly welcomed as I could talk about being new to this group! But the main memory is just that I felt that I had found my people and this was an amazing feeling.

At 12:01 a.m. on Jan 1, 2000 I was in London, England to greet the New Years with my parents. We went to a party at a friend of theirs and at 39 years old I was the baby of the party. It was a surreal but fun experience. I remember eating a pasta that was just chock full of the most delicious shrimp. At 12:00 we all spilled out doors to glimpse fire works going up around London. Then my parents and I headed to my parent's flat in London and I remember staying up late watching TV as the New Year came to the U.S. cities. And it was all very impressive since it was the millenium!

On June 26, 2011, I marched with the Asexual meetup group in the San Francisco Gay Pride parade. A young woman in the group did a fantastic job of making the group look cohesive. We all had similar t-shirts on and we had these great big silver ballons that spelled ASEXY if carried in the right order and we had a wonderful banner. I really felt like part of group that was doing something important in raising awareness of asexuality by participating in the parade.

Garin and Dry Creek Hike

2011-11-19T20:32:00.001-08:00

I went on a hike at Garin and Dry Creek parks today. I thought it would be a small intimate group as only one person showed up at the car pool location. She and I drove to the park to meet D the leader. When we got there five more people showed up so we had a nice group of eight for the hike. I volunteered to be D's co-leader and did the sweeping. We headed off on the hike with blue sky scattered with fluffy white clouds.

The first part of the hike was fairly flat and we crossed creeks about four times on these narrow bridges. I told D he should rename the hike the narrow bridges hike. D showed us a place next to the creek sort of hidden behind thick bushes where he has visions of bringing a romantic date to make out. I have no desire to make out there but it would be a nice private cool space for a nice long intimate conversation on a hot summer day. After checking out this secret spot we headed off to Jordan pond where we stopped for a snack. Lunch was planned at Gossip rock which was a ways off yet so this snack break was to fortify us for a late lunch.

After our snack we took advantage of the porta potty set up near the pond picnic area and then headed off up the hills. There were wonderful views of green hillsides, blue sky, and white clouds as we made our way up the hill to Gossip rock. We reached the ridge and walked along the ridge a bit. You could see San Francisco bay and Silicon Valley from the ridge on one side and wilderness on the other side. We soon reached Gossip rock where we saw small bowls carved into the rock where Indians used to grind grain. We had lunch at Gossip rock but we did not gossip. I got bonus lunch items offered by my fellow hikers: dried mango, licorice, and Dove chocolate.

After lunch we started heading downhill. It was steep but the ground was fairly dry despite yesterday's rain so there was good footing as we made our way down. The sky started to get a little more cloudy with more gray clouds rather than the fluffy white ones. There was one more slight hill before we reached the bottom of the park near where our cars were parked. We got to hike through some small canyons in the woods and that was a nice change from the open hill sides. We finally reached the bottom and hiked to the trail head and had time left to check out the gardens right at the entrance to the park.

I'm not a gardener so I can't tell you all the names of the flowers that were there in the late fall but it was pretty and I took lots of pictures in the garden. It was a nice way to finish off the hike with a small walk through the garden. After seeing the place, we all said our goodbyes and S and I drove back to the park-n-ride lot where we said our goodbyes and I came home to a nice hot shower and good memories of the hike.

Cutting it Close

2011-11-18T21:56:00.001-08:00

I'm cutting it closer and closer on getting my daily NaBloPoMo post done. Only 2 hours to get this one done. Although admittedly, its just because I had a busy day. I had lots to do at work. I had to run home for an hour to meet my handyman and get the oven installed. Then I had one hour after work before I had to head to Stanford to watch the women's volleyball game and I chose to play with my new oven for that hour. Then Stanford ended up playing 5 sets in the volleyball game and losing in the end. It was rather tortuous watching the match. It wasn't that Oregon played super well but that Stanford did not play very well. It is not as much fun watching a match full of errors as it is a match full of great rallies and shots. After the match I had to stop at a gas station to fill up the car for tomorrows drive to Garin park. And then I walked in the door and realized the trousers I want to wear for tomorrows hike needed washing so I got a load of laundry together and its churning away right now. By the time I got around to this post it was a bit before 10 p.m. !!

I'm wondering just why I'm participating in this NaBloPoMo. I'm not a professional writer. Its not even a huge hobby. I just like to prattle on about this and that and I don't always care how well its done. I want to say that I don't care if anyone reads it but that is not entirely true. I'm certainly not counting on anyone reading it but it is way fun when someone does read it and makes complimentary comments. But I don't care enough about having readers that I feel a need to promote my blog or tell people to read it. I also decided to do NaBloPoMo to be part of a group of people also doing it and sharing in the trials and tribulations of posting everyday for a month. Its just fun to share the challenge of it and get "atta girls" when I succeed!

Keeping Appointments

2011-11-17T16:25:00.001-08:00

Sigh. My handyman forgot to come to our appointment. He abjectly apologized but this is not the first time he has done this. I'm beginning to think its time to find another handyman who is more reliable at keeping appointments. You would think when you run your own business that keeping appointments with customers ranks way up there in important things to do to keep your business viable. I might like to find a handyman that is more internet savy also and will communicate with me via email.

On the other hand my handyman is well handy. He is very good at what he does when he shows up to do it. Also I pay him in trade sometimes by working on his web site for him. I haven't done anything to it in a long long time but it was sort of cool to trade skills with him and not have to deal in cash. I created the web site and he fixed some plumbing for me! All in all he is a great handyman but not a great business man.

He is supposed to come by tomorrow at 11 a.m. I think he will make it as he felt so bad about missing our 2:30 pm appointment that I believe the 11 am time is branded in his brain!

2011-11-16T21:32:00.001-08:00

My new range arrived today but it doesn't quite fit in its slot and the plug doesn't quite reach the outlet. So I need to have my handyman come in and fix things up. I'm asking him to saw off a part of the ledge above the stove so it will fit and cut a whole in the cabinet so the plug can be pulled through it. The plug right now has to be threaded under the cabinet and then up through a hole in the floor. It probably could be done but it would have been very tedious and I decided I wanted to make it so it is easier to unplug in the future and bringing the plug directly into the cabinet will be much easier. If I had appropriate tools I would be tempted to do it myself but I don't have the tools.

Albert, my handyman, will be here tomorrow at 2:30 pm. So I have to take time off from work again. Its annoying. I wish the range had fit in the slot and was all set up. But ... C'est la vie. I also expect that Albert might not be able to do the actual work tomorrow. This is more of a visit to find out what I need and give me an estimate for the work. So I will have to make due with my toaster oven and my microwave oven for a few more days. Ug.

New Range

2011-11-15T16:15:00.001-08:00

My new range is supposed to be delivered tomorrow. I hope the delivery goddesses are on my side and the range arrives when scheduled. I'm always nervous about deliveries. It seems like a fairly straight forward thing to do to deliver a range but then I don't know what the deliverer will be up to before my delivery time. My delivery time is between 9:30 am and 12:30 pm. I have brought home a pile of work so I can work at home while I wait for the range to arrive. I really really hope it arrives at 9:30 am but I suspect it will arrive at 12:30 pm. I have bad luck when it comes to deliveries being close to the beginning of a range of time. What lucky soul gets that first delivery of the day! I hope its me tomorrow.

I have purchased myself a GE 30" Free-Standing Electric Range. I got myself a new range because I finally got tired of my old oven not working or rather only baking at 350 degrees F. I broke my temperature setting knob in 2008 and have been stuck with only being able to have the oven at 350 for 3 years now. My handy man Albert looked at it and the only way to fix it was to replace the entire thermal setting device (not just the knob) and that would have run me around $300.00. I decided at that point that I might as well buy a new range. It just took me 3 years to get the desire to purchase it and get it installed!! I seemed to be happy with just using the stove, my toaster oven, and my microwave the past three years for my cooking needs. Finally this fall the desire to bake combined with having saved up enough money for a range conspired to push me to buy the range!

I think I shall go grocery shopping tonight and get chocolate chip cookie fixings so I can bake them in my new range tomorrow or the next day! That will probably be the last baking for a bit. I'm really not a cook. It doesn't capture my imagination to dream about cooking stuff and come up with recipes. I would rather dream up software or dream up new hikes or do a challenging jigsaw puzzle. Cooking is just not high up there on things I like to do for fun. If I cook, it is usually really simple easy stuff that doesn't require much planning or thought.

Snooze City

2011-11-14T16:41:00.001-08:00

Its been a rather dull Monday. The alarm went off at its usual time of 6 a.m. on a work day. I muttered and moaned about it till 6:20 and finally hauled my butt off the bed. I had a quick breakfast and got to work at 7 am. I spent the day studying how code works. Its a rather tedious chore but one that I need to get done. I'm supposed to update the code so its important I understand how it works. Its much more fun for me to design code and write code than to figure out how someone else's code works. Although there is a sense of accomplishment once I do understand the code and successfully update it. I think I have a couple more days of work before I will feel good delving into the code and making the needed updates.

I'm starting to think about Christmas shopping more seriously. I have ordered 5 presents so far since mid October. I'm planning on giving about 15 gifts mostly to my siblings, parents, nieces, and nephews. We are a book loving family so probably most people will get books from me. A few years ago we all did a book exchange at Christmas. We exchanged books we already owned. It was fun and affordable! All we had to pay for was postage to get the books to each other! It was also fun to get a peek into my siblings and parent's book selection and see what they read. It does take lots of communication and a bit of work from everyone and I think that is why we haven't done it recently.

I'm struggling to keep myself exercising and eating well. I get home from work and just want to collapse on the couch and read or watch TV. I don't want to get into my gym cloths and head to the gym. I know if I can get myself there I'll enjoy it. I just feel draggy. I hate to say it but it does feel like a touch of my chronic depression raising its head. Ug! I hope I can throw it off and get back to being more healthy. Depression and exercise do and don't mix well. They don't mix well in that the depression robs me of my motivation to exercise. But they do mix well because exercise really helps the depression.

My Sunday

2011-11-13T20:10:00.001-08:00

I got to sleep in today. It was nice only I forgot to turn off my alarm from the day before set for 8:30 a.m. So I woke up briefly at 8:30 and then turned over for some more sleep. I only slept 15 or 30 minutes more and then got up to go to the bathroom. I came back to bed and read for an hour or so before getting up for the day. I'm reading a book about the Race Across America, an ultradistance bike race across America. Its a fascinating book about the race and what motivates these folks and how much they suffer in this race. I'm about two thirds done with the book. I'm sure I'll finish soon as its very gripping.

I got up finally around 10 ish for a late breakfast and a nice cup of coffee. I popped on the TV to watch something and discovered that the Family Channel was showing Harry Potter movies all day long. I just finished the last book of the Harry Potter series yesterday and was sort of delighted to get to watch the movies and see how they match with the book. They are showing 5 movies today. I set my DVR to tape them. I watched the end of the first movie and then started in on the second movie until it was time to turn off the TV and go to the Stanford women's basketball game.

The basketball game was fun. Stanford played Gonzaga. Gonzaga kept close to Stanford all first half and ended up one point a head at the half. Whatever Tara said to Stanford during the half time break worked well and Stanford came out and started to dominate Gonzaga. They won by 12 points in the end I think or maybe more. It was a fun game to watch. It is nice when your team wins but not so easily that the game is boring!

After the game I returned home for more Harry Potter. I finished up watching movie number 2 and now I'm watching the thrid one, Prisoner of Azakaban. I have movie 4 taped and movie 5 will start in 40 minutes. I think I will let movie 5 tape too and watch both later this week.

Hidden Villa Hike

2011-11-12T18:33:00.001-08:00

I led a hike at Hidden Villa for the Gay and Lesbian Sierrans today. It was a very mellow hike on a gray but dry day. The slightly dull weather seemed to cut down on the use of the Page Mill park and ride lot and for once we had an ordinary park-n-ride experience of meeting there and being able to park and then ride somewhere! We reached the park at about 11 a.m. and I did my hike start spiel and we introduced ourselves. There were 7 people on the hike four women and three men.

We started out by hiking the Long Bunny Loop trail. The trial starts out following the Bunny creek which in November was quite bone dry. Not a water fall or creek to be found as we hiked up the trail. It was very different than the spring time hike where the water was cascading over the rocks with a wonderful gurgling noise. Now it was just quiet, but even with out water the creek was still beautiful. At the top we stopped at a nice bench and had a water break and rest. We had a view of the Hidden Villa valley from the bench that was nice.

We descended the Long Bunny Loop trail and had to take a slight detour at the bottom where a portion of the trail was closed due to a rattle snake den being near the trail. This was the first time I have ever seen a trail closed for a rattle snake. I thought it was cool to give the snake its space and keep people off the trail. I assume that at some point the snake will leave this den and they can reopen the trail. Our detour was easy and short though and we soon left the rattle snake den behind.

We hiked along the beautiful and relatively flat Adobe creek trail. The Adobe creek was big enough to still have some water left in it. We walked next to the creek and ambled along having fun talking and keeping an eye on plants. Someone spotted a plant with white pods on it. One of us said it was a berry plant of some sort. It really did look rather alien. Shortly after spotting this plant, we Adobe creek trail melted into the Ewing Hill trail and we climbed steeply to Ewing Hill.

On Ewing hill we found a flat spot on top of the hill and sat ourselves down for a nice lunch with a view of the valley below. Lunch seemed to be dominated by people with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! My co-leader passed out his traditional Dove chocolate candies at the end of lunch and we shared the little sayings written on the Dove wrappers.

After lunch we did very slight up and downs to make our way to the Hostel trail. We had many views of Silicon Valley from the trails. The valley was in the sun while we were still in the clouds. It made for interesting views like the valley was being highlighted for us. As we descended Hostel trail down many switch backs to Hidden Villa the sun started to creep out from behind the clouds. We soon arrived at Hidden Villa and passed by the gardens and the hostel to the parking lot where our hike was finished.

It was a very mellow comfortable hike. I think everyone had fun and were looking forward to the rest of the day to get chores done or just relax. One fellow stayed at the park to scout out future hikes while the rest of us headed back to the park-n-ride and went our separate ways.

2011-11-11T16:32:00.001-08:00

Its Veteran's day. I am not close to any veterans. My Father was a conscientious objector in World War II and served in the civilian public service camps rather than go to the war. My Mom's brother was a staunch pacifist and refused to serve in or support WWII in anyway and was sent to jail. My own brothers managed to be born in a time where they did not get drafted. They were too young for Vietnam and too old for the Gulf War. My ex-girlfriend had veterans in her family but I never got that close to them. I wonder if the holiday means more when you are close to a veteran. I expect it does. I do appreciate all the veterans out there who fought in wars to keep the world safe. I wish that fighting wars was not the way to make the world safe but as long as it continues to be so I thank the veterans for making that sacrifice and serving their country.

I did not get Veterans day off from work. I used to get time off for it when I worked at NASA Ames Research center because it was a federal government facility. Now I work for a commercial satellite company so no Veterans day off for me anymore. It was always an odd holiday in that if it fell on a weekday, that was when we had the holiday. So sometimes you got a day off in the middle of the week. I rather liked it as it gave me a day of rest. Usually holidays are smashed up against the weekend and I often have big travel plans for them and although its fun I get worn out. With a random day off in the middle of the week, I usually just sleep in and enjoy being at home and getting rested.

Random Purposeless Questions and some Answers

2011-11-10T18:12:00.001-08:00

The directions on frozen dinners say to carefully remove the dinner from the microwave oven. Has this bit of instruction really prevented someone from carelessly removing the dinner from the oven and getting hurt?

How did the questions "what's up" come to mean what is going on? I annoyed a friend of mine by always answering this question with "the sky".

What really provokes you but you find it hard to defend your reaction? I have a strong reaction to anyone who talks to me about dressing a certain way to attain some goal. It seems like my reaction is over the top and I find it hard to defend why I'm so irked.

Has anyone ever thrown you a surprise birthday party and did you like it? My Mom threw me a surprise party for my 18th birthday and I liked it.

When I have high expectations for travel, I often don't enjoy it as much as when I have low expectations. When I was about 21 years old, I went traveling to Wales to a town called Portmeirion. I had no clue what it was about but one of my chums wanted to go there. It turned out to be a really fun unexpected surprise. Have you ever had this experience?

How many things can you think of that you could "come out" about? Have you or would you want to come out about them?

Do you have a favorite blanket? I do. Its a lavendar fuzzy down comforter. I like the fuzziness and the warmth!

Are you a bumper sticker fan? My car has no bumper stickers while my last one was rather plastered with them. I have been going back and forth on whether to add bumper stickers to my current car.

Go with the flow

2011-11-09T20:34:00.000-08:00

I don't seem to be able to settle on one particular thing to write about so I guess its yet another go with the flow post and just see what comes out on my key board.

I have been thinking about the movie "Its a Wonderful Life" today. I wonder what the angel would show me. Whose life have I touched in a way that made them go in the right direction when if I hadn't been there they would have gone the wrong direction. I'll never know but I really would like to know. Sometimes I do feel like if I wasn't here, no one would really notice. That seems a bit maudlin. Am I just fishing for people to tell me I'm important and matter to them?? Probably.

Its Wednesday night and as usual I'm sleepy. I routinely stay up too late and so as the week progresses the sleep deficit builds up. I love to stay up to 11 p.m. and watch TV. Then I get in bed and feel compelled to read for about 30 minutes or until I can't keep my eyes opened. So I don't usually get to sleep till 11:30 p.m. Then I'm up at 6 a.m. for work. 6 hours and 30 minutes of sleep a night is not quite enough sleep for me. By Wednesday or Thursday, I'm yawning lots and telling myself I should get to be bed early but rarely do I listen to that sensible advice.

I took a four mile walk at Palo Alto Baylands tonight. I started at 4:05 p.m. and finished at 5:25 p.m. It was beautiful as the entire walk was during sunset and the start of moonrise. I especially liked it when the sun dipped behind the Skyline ridge and turned the sky a wonderful pinky red color. I plodded along and just got to look and look at the sky. Then I peered to my left and there was the moon rising and it was reflected in the bay also. It was quite incredible to see sunset to the right and moonrise to the right. I also saw coots, ducks, and pelicans on the water. Moments like this make me appreciate life more. Its amazing that I live somewhere like this where I can be admiring the ocean, mountains, etc. just minutes from home.

My Dad

2011-11-08T17:11:00.000-08:00

My Dad's birthday is this Thursday. He and his twin brother were born on Nov 10, 1923 in Changsha, China. Uncle David came out first followed by my Dad. My Dad is not Asian though. He was born in China because his parents were there as Missionaries. He spent the first two years of his life in China. He doesn't remember any Chinese but he does remember growing up in Seattle Washington and having Chinese immigrants stay in their house and his Mother ended up using her contacts in China to open a Shop of China in Seattle WA and became a very competent business woman which helped the family get through the depression. In China my Dad's nickname was Di Di and my uncles nickname was Go Go. I'm not positive but I think Go Go is the first twin born and Di Di the second twin born. My cousins call my Dad Uncle Di Di and I sometimes call my Uncle David, Uncle Go Go. And I believe they called each other these nicknames all through their childhood.

My Dad was a mountaineer and skier as a young man. He hiked to the top of Mt Rainier and skied down it! He backpacked all over the Cascades and Olympic National park in Washington state. He would tell us stories about building shelters and cooking over fires all of which now are considered not environmentally sound. He had no fancy light weight equipment. He carried an army rucksack and cooked dinner in a number 10 tin can with the lid taken up and a wire threaded through it to serve as a handle. The food was usually plain rice and beans. I don't envy him not having the modern comforts of backpacking but I do envy how wild the wilderness was when he was out adventuring. He didn't have to worry about getting permits or reserving campsites. He and his friends could hike for days without seeing another party. I envy that. It would be so nice to have the wilderness to myself for a bit of time like that. It can be done now but you really have to work at it to find a vacant area.

My Dad became a historian. He went to Washington University and Whitman College. He got his PhD at Cornell University and three of his kids followed in his footsteps at Cornell (but not in history): me and my two brothers. And now his grand daughter and a grand nephew has also gone to Cornell. He met my Mom while at Cornell and they fell in love and got married in 1952. He then worked as a professor at Ohio State University for 30+ years. He wrote 4 books and many papers and managed to publish and not perish! So yours truly grew up in Ohio.

His has been retired for a while now. I lost count. I think he retired at 67 so that means he has been retired for 21 years. At least he retired from teaching. He continued to write history till a couple years ago when he finished his final book. He is now looking for a publisher for it. Its hard as the publishing world has changed a lot since he started this book. He would dearly love to get it published but he is not having much luck. I hope he finds a publisher eventually. I think he mostly just enjoyed writing it over the last 10 years or so. Sometimes it stressed him out a bit but it kept him motivated and happy in his retirement. Now he enjoys doing less intense writing. He writes us kids once a week. He writes lots of letters to the editor for the local newspaper. I very much look forward to his weekly letters. He has been writing us letters since we left for college. That's nearly 30 years of weekly letters!! Now that's a blogger, eh?

Lag Time

2011-11-07T18:48:00.000-08:00

Uh oh. I'm beginning to lag in when I write my daily posts. At the start of the month, I had 2 done in advance for the first two days. Then I had one in advance. Then I did the posts in the morning. Now I'm doing the post in the evening. We'll see if I can stop the lag and meet the goal of blogging daily in November. I'm really not quite sure why I am doing this. I'm not terribly concerned with becoming a better writer. I'm not that concerned that people are reading my writing. I just like to ramble on and write stuff and I like to be part of a bunch of people who have committed to writing daily. Eee Gads. I am succumbing to peer pressure at my age? Whatever, I'm enjoying myself and that's good.

Just finished a one hour workout. All last week I did not make it to the gym so I wanted to start this week off on the right foot and get in a workout. I did 30 minutes on the elliptical machine and 30 minutes on the treadmill. It was quite uncrowded at the gym on Monday at 4:30 p.m. I didn't think I would get to exercise on my favorite elliptical machine. My favorite machine is in front of the TV with the sports on it and it is well lubricated and does not make lots of squeaky noises as I pump up and down on the pedals. I burned 330 calories on the elliptical machine and 250 calories on the treadmill for a grand total of 580 calories. That's a decent workout!

Now its time for dinner. I have some pork which I'll probably microwave. And some asparagus to microwave too. I'm a lazy cook. Whatever is quickest, least effort, and uses the least dishes is usually how I roll . I sacrifice taste for ease of cooking. Maybe when I get my new range, I'll be more motivated to really cook something. I bought the range 9 days ago but it has not been delivered yet. I'm hoping it arrives this week. I have a call into the appliance store asking about the latest status of it.

After dinner I'll settle down to Monday night TV. I suspect I'll be bouncing back and forth between the Sing Off and Dances with the Stars. Its going to be a light night of TV watching. I have my DVR set to record both shows. I start watching one show till the first set of commercials. Then I watch the other show (via DVR) till the first set of commercials, when I return to the other show till commercials appear, etc. etc. Two weeks in a row now I have been able to watch both shows in a little more than 2 hours and see no commercials! Its a kick!

Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve hike

2011-11-06T17:41:00.000-08:00

The hike at Sierra Vista Open space was meant to be a grand exploring adventure today of originally 15 miles but now changed to 10 miles. The intrepid hiking crew of me, S. and E. all showed up promptly at 9:30 at the Rustic Lands parking area in Alum Rock park. It wasn't that rustic but there was lots of land around. We bundled up a bit as it was a cool morning, put on some sun screen, visited the restrooms and then headed off on our adventure.

We started on trails at Alum Rock: North Rim and Todd Quick trails. At the end of Todd Quick trail we reached Sierra Vista Open Space preserve. We went through the gate (to keep the cows in the right place) and found the Bocardo Loop trail. We decided to do the loop in a clockwise direction in order to do the steeper section uphill and the less steep section downhill. The Borcardo trail was very exposed with wonderful views of San Jose in the distance. We got rained on twice as we made our way to the top of Borcardo but it was not very light rain and went away quickly.

When we reached the top of the Borcardo loop we were excited to find the new Sierra Vista trail and start our exploration of the trail. Alas we were thwarted in our attempt. The heavy rain of the night before resulted in the trail being closed. What a bummer to hike 3 miles uphill and not get to see the trail that was the whole motivation to hike here. Oh well. We obeyed the sign and decided to head up to the top of Borcado hill to have lunch and enjoy the view. It was a wonderful lunch spot but we ended up finishing up lunch quick when the wind started to blow and we got cold.

We headed back down the Borcado loop trail on the less steep bit. It was a wonderful section of trail that took lazy long switch backs down to the loop beginning. When we got back to where the Todd Quick trail intersects the Borcado loop trail we decided to add some miles to our shortened trip by exploring the Weather Loop and more of the North Rim trail. These trails took us down to the Penitencia creek trail. It was only an extra mile but was fun. We arrived at our cars at 2 p.m. In all we hiked for 4.25 hours with about an hour stopping time for lunch, admiring views, and finding some geocaches. We hiked 7.38 miles according to my GPS.

All in all it was a marvelous hike but disappointing that we did not get to explore the newest trails of Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve. S. and I may return later this month or in December to try again. Unfortunately E. doesn't have free time for further exploration till January.

Random Writing

2011-11-05T11:54:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what to write about today. I guess I'll just let it flow and see what comes out. I got to sleep in today. It was nice. I initially stirred at 6:45 a.m. and had the wonderful realization as I peered at the clock that I did not have to get up and could just turn over and sleep some more. I slept about one more hour when biology got me up. If its light outside, I have not managed the art yet of getting up to go to the bathroom and not waking up. So once I was up to take care of biology, I was up for the day.

I have spent my morning so far puttering around doing little stuff and watching TV. I have gathered all the dishes from my dining room table and coffee tables in the living room and put them in the sink. I have gathered various junk mail and shred it with my trusty shredder. I folded up the cloths I was drying on the dryer rack ready to be taken upstairs. I messily sewed a rip in the couch cover. It is a see and do morning. I saw something that needed doing and did it.

I have been watching reality TV this morning. I watched an episode of Flip This House and now I'm watching an episode of Hoarders. Unlike other episodes of hoarders these two folks seem to be much cleaner. They have clutter but no really disgustingly dirty stuff in it. Well, they haven't really gotten to the bottom of their piles yet so maybe I'll see icky stuff later in the show.

At 1 p.m., I'm off to go see Stanford women's basketball. They play an exhibition match against Vanguard. I got to see them play last Wednesday night against UCSD. That one was a blow out. They won 106 to 56. I wonder if this one will be the same or if Vanguard will do better than UCSD. Stanford has six new freshman on the team this year and it was fun to watch them play on Wednesday. I also enjoy seeing the upper class women play and see who takes over the leadership position on the team.

After the basketball game, I will get ready for the hike tomorrow. My hiking buddy and I are going to do some geocaching while on the hike so I need to get the caches loaded into my GPS. Oh and I need to do laundry tonight. My hiking trousers are in the washer from last weekend. I always dump them in the washer after a hike to wash off any poison oak oil I might have rubbed on during the hike. I'll pack my maps into my backpack and pack a lunch. Which means I need to go the grocery store as I have no bread for a sandwich. Plenty to do!

Asexuality and Intimate Relationships

2011-11-04T16:09:00.000-07:00

As an out asexual, I get asked how my relationship with another asexual would be any different than just being friends with that person.   Being asked this question makes me sigh inside.   It rubs me wrong.   I find it devalues friendship with the word “just” and it seems to indicate that I can’t have a intimate relationship with someone if I don’t want to have sex with them.

Just what are intimate relationships? There is physical intimacy.   There is emotional intimacy. Must an intimate relationship be physically and emotionally intimate to be a true intimate relationship or can an intimate relationship be just emotionally intimate? Does physical intimacy have to include sexual intimacy or can it be physical intimacy like cuddling that doesn’t involve sex? For me, an intimate relationship is mostly emotionally intimate with a component of non-sexual physical intimacy.    I don’t believe sex has to be a part of an intimate relationship to make it legitimate.

But that still begs the question of how my relationship with another asexual would be different than a friendship.    Well, first off, it might not be different. It really depends on how you define friendship. If part of your definition of a friendship is declaring that you love each other and only want to be with each other and put care for each other first before family or other friends, then my vision of my asexual relationship will be no different than a close friendship!   I’m cool with that. Friendships can be as deeply intimate as any other kind of relationship! But if that is not how you view friendship, then my asexual relationship is different than “just” being friends with the person.

Planning Hikes

2011-11-03T06:37:00.000-07:00

I thought I would write about how I come up with hikes today. When I first started, I got most of my ideas by going hiking on Sierra Club group hikes and other group hikes. Someone else actually did the picking and route planning and I just showed up for the fun. And then later, I led the same hikes myself. I also co-led hikes where I was the assistant and did the sweeping on a hike (hiked in the back of the group and made sure we didn’t lose anyone) and learned the hike that way. I also bought myself hiking guide books to the San Francisco bay area and would lead the hikes described in them. After doing many hikes this way, I got my hike leading experience.

Now I often pick hikes by picking a park and looking at the trails in the park on a trail map and finding a route to do. Then I call on a hiking buddy to go scout the hike with me and see if its any good. To tell the truth this is my favorite part of the whole process of planning and leading a hike. I love going somewhere new and seeing whats there and finding the route. I also pick new hikes through word of mouth from other hike leaders. They let me know about really cool hikes and I’m off to the races to hike there.

The latest hike I am investigating I found out from a newspaper article in the San Jose Mercury news. A new portion of trail was completed recently that connects Alum Rock Park to the new Sierra Vista Open Space preserve in southeastern San Jose. I’m now dying to go out and see it and I found some crazy friends that are willing to give it a go with me on Sunday! The reason I say crazy friends is its a challenging looking route: 15+ miles and around 4000 feet of elevation gain. We’ll have to move fast enough to avoid finishing up the hike in the dark. Three of us will attempt it. One friend has said she may bail on the hike if its too much. If both bail on me, I’ll bail too as I do not do tough challenging hikes solo. Its just too much risk. I don’t want to be stranded with an injury and no way to contact someone to come help me (I never count on there being cell phone reception in the wilderness).

2011-11-02T06:43:00.000-07:00

Caste Rock State Park hike

This past Sunday, Oct 30, I met my friend L, and we went hiking at Castle Rock State park. This is a state park that was on the list of California state parks slated to be closed next year (2012) to save the government money. I want to be sure and hike there lots before it closes. When we arrived there, the parking lot was nearly full and the off street parking was also filling up. We parked across the street about 50 feet from the entrance. The ranger actually asked us to move the car. L had parked it parallel to the street and the ranger requested she park it perpendicular. L decided to park across the street as there was a big ditch on the side we were on and she did not want the nose of her truck to get stuck in the ditch.

After getting the parking figured out, we walked to the restroom and then headed out to the Ridge trail. The first beautiful sight you get to see on the Ridge trail is a deck built right next to a water fall. We went out on the deck and admired the view of the falls and the view from the ridge top. We had the deck to ourselves for the short time we were there. We then continued on the Ridge trail with our eventual destination being the Castle Rock campground. I love this portion of the Ridge trail. It meanders slightly up and down and has many many lovely views of the mountains and valleys of the Santa Cruz mountains At one point it has a cable set up to help one scramble up a rocky portion of the trail. I love rock scrambles so felt right at home.

We soon arrived at the campground and discovered that the old trailer with a make shift office in it had been removed since the last time we ventured here. Instead there was a nice picnic table in its place. We chose to sit at the other older picnic table in the shade. Soon another party of hikers showed up. This was a collection of adults and boys. The boys were very rambunctious and were having the time of their lives hitting trees with sticks while the adults settled at the picnic table to eat their lunch.

After lunch we retraced our route back to the car. We enjoyed the hot afternoon sun shining on us when we reached the exposed sections of the Ridge trail. We had gotten a little chilled sitting in the shade for lunch. There is nothing quite like hiking on a beautiful trail with the sun warming you up and the blue sky making for stunning views. It was so peaceful and so toasty warm. We got back to the car at around 2:30 p.m. We probably hiked about 6 miles.

Pictures from the hike are at https://picasaweb.google.com/cdrdash/CastleRock_1030_11?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCIHe1PmCxcr0Dw&feat=directlink

Russian Ridge Hike Report

2011-11-01T06:22:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I went on a hike with the Loma Prieta Gay and Lesbian Sierrans at Russian Ridge. Russian Ridge is the park at the top of Page Mill Road above Palo Alto. Our trip started with an adventure in the park-n-ride lot. Six of us showed up at the appointed time to car pool to the park from the Page Mill Park and Ride lot just off highway 280. I got there first and there was not a parking spot to be found in the lot. I decided to hang out in my car for a while to see if someone would leave and a spot would open up. While I was doing this I saw a woman walking across the parking lot. She came to my car and said hello and asked if I was there for the hike. I’ll call her M. I asked where she parked and she had driven up the road a ¼ mile and found street parking and had just walked back to the lot. As we were chatting four more folks showed up for the hike each in their own car. We had one of those group moments of confusion as to what people should do since there was no parking.

In the end these folks headed off to the street parking that M had found. I volunteered to stay at the lot in case anyone showed up. As M and I were standing there waiting, my cell phone rang and I pulled a typical blunder on my part and tried to answer the phone with the “hang up” button. So I hung up on someone obviously calling from the street parking to coordinate with me. Poor M got to witness me struggling with my cell phone that I rarely use and cursing the fact that I couldn't figure out how to phone this person back!! As I was doing this, the hike leader showed up in her car and told us that she would wait at the lot and we should go to the street parking area. So off M and I went to the street parking. We arrived and a few minutes later the hike leader showed up. There was enough parking at this street location for all our cars. We finally got organized and tumbled into 2 cars to car pool to the park. I do believe it is time to give up on this particular park in ride lot as a hike meeting location.

The drive to the park was up a narrow twisty road. As we started up we saw a deer with brand new horns growing in. We had to make our way slowly up the road as it was full of bike riders and blind corners. So we had to slow down to the bike rider speed till we got around these blind corners and see that it was safe to pass them. I had volunteered to drive and my passengers said they were glad of it as they don’t like to deal with twisty roads and bikes! I just poked along up the road and only passed the bikes when it was safe to do so. We got to the park in about 30 minutes. Thankfully there was plenty of parking in the Russian Ridge lot!

We all visited the rest room and then headed out on our 5.5 mile hike on the ridge top. We hiked up a mild hill and had marvelous views of Silicon Valley to one side and the Pacific ocean and Portola Valley to the other side. The wind was blowing hard on the ridge and we saw a young girl having fun flying a kite. After about an hour of hiking we reached a wonderful deck built by a boy scout troop on the hill where we had lunch. The sun was out and the sky was a pure blue but the wind blowing over our now sweaty shirts gave us a chill at lunch. Some of us pulled on our windbreakers to stay warm. After lunch we headed back on different trails. We dove into the woods at one point where I had to be careful of poison oak. Its easy to spot in the fall when its often a bright red color. In the woods we stopped to oogle at a very large lizard. Lizards abound on the trails in the bay area parks but this particular lizard was huge and worth stopping to look at. After the lizard siting we came out of the woods and had pleasant half mile climbing up the hill and then descending to the parking lot.

The trip back to the street parking was easier as the bikes had pretty much left the road by the mid afternoon. I dropped off my riders at our street parking location and headed home for a nice warm shower followed by an impromptu nap in front of the TV!

Pictures from the hike: https://picasaweb.google.com/cdrdash/RussianRidge_10_29_11?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCNHqwdys4cGDbg&feat=directlink

Henry Coe Vasquez Peak hike

2011-09-25T12:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went on a 13 mile hike almost to Vasquez Peak at Henry Coe State park with the gay and lesbian Sierrans. After three weeks of resting my right ankle which I sprained on Sept 4, I felt ready for a long challenging hike. I discovered two things: resting for three weeks and not exercising much at all erases some of the conditioning I built up with all that training for the Whitney hike in the summer and my ankle was not as healed as I thought.

We started our hike on a nice flat section of the park in Hunting Hollow. We crossed three bone dry creeks till we reached the Lyman Wilson trail junction. We then pealed off to start the long uphill 2 miles up the Lyman Wilson trail. It was on this uphill climb that I realized how much conditioning I had lost due to the three weeks of resting the ankle and getting very little exercise. I was puffing on the steep hills but it wasn't as bad as the puffing on Whitney! I enjoyed all that wonderful oxygen at altitudes below 3000 feet! The ankle seemed to be holding up really well on the up hill hike. Lyman Wilson ended at the junction with Steer Ridge road. We then had a short flattish bit on the ridge trail head to a nice looking lunch stop under a big tree with a nice view of Hunting Hollow way down below. Lunch was uneventful except for an aggressive squirrel that ran past our packs hoping for a snack. It ran into the back of one of the hike participants and gave her a small fright. I saw it dashing off after she cried out.

After lunch we headed down the Steer Ridge trail to Vasquez Road which we took to the Long Dam Trail. At that junction we were about 1/8 of a mile away from Vasquez Peak but we decided to skip seeing the 2210 feet peak as the hike leader, R., said it was just a boring flat peak with not much more of a view than we already had. On this section of trail I discovered that my ankle was not as healed as I thought. Going downhill was hard on it and the Vasquez Road and Long Dam trails were not very well maintained. Lots of grass was growing on the trail and it hid little gullies. I nearly tweaked it about three times before I figured out I needed to slow down and set my right foot down carefully in the long grass. The ankle didn't hurt at all but it did feel weak and my lower leg muscles were complaining with the compensating they were doing to protect the weak ankle. When I wasn't staring at the ground on these trails, I did enjoy the views of Edith and Long Dam ponds. And because I was staring at the ground I spotted a praying mantis bug. I had never seen that a Henry Coe before. It was cool!

At the end of Long Dam trail we got on to the Wagon Road trail and much better maintained old ranch road. I didn't have to watch where I set my right foot down any longer. That was a relief. We descended down the Wagon Road trail to yet another bone dry creek crossing. Then we headed up a mile to the Phegley Ridge trail. We took a rest at the intersection and saw some other hikers who asked about water. They had not brought quite as much as they thought. Unfortunately I don't think they were going to find any water on the trail. I hope they got back OK and were not too dehydrated. Its a hot dusty park in the fall. I drank all my water (2.5 liters) on the hike. After a rest we headed off on the Phegley Ridge trail. It started with a mild uphill section and then it started to go down down down to Hunting Hollow. There were several really steep descents and this was just killer on my ankle. I had to go at a snails pace to maintain control so I didn't lose balance and have to land hard on my right foot. My right ankle and leg started to ache a bit. I was very relieved when we finally reached Hunting Hollow and only had 2 miles of flat hiking on a well maintained ranch dirt road.

I was running on fumes those last two miles. It reminded me remotely of the end of the Whitney hike. There is something weird in my personality that likes to push my body like this and meet hiking challenges. I am glad that my ankle came through OK but realize that next time I probably should choose a slightly less challenging hike only three weeks after spraining an ankle! It was good to finally reach the cars and be able to rest. We drove back to our car pool location and then I had to drive myself home. Much to my chagrin I got stuck in traffic on the way home. There was a concert at Shoreline that I didn't know about and I did not get off the freeway in time to avoid the backup at the Shoreline exit. I managed to get off at the exit before Shoreline but I was stuck in stop and go traffic for about 20 minutes. Arg. It was good to finally get home and have a hot shower and then sit down to a nice dinner of Mac-n-Cheese!

Pictures from the hike are at https://picasaweb.google.com/105234689104952250166/HenryCoeVasquez_9_24_11?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCNHh5Jro_qSlCg&feat=directlink

Mt Whitney Adventure!

2011-09-01T12:47:00.000-07:00

Bob, my brother, and I made it to the top of Mt Whitney at 1:15 p.m. August 30, 2011. We got up at 2:00 a.m. and were on the trail at 2:30 a.m. We hiked for around 3 and 1/2 hours in the dark. It was a bit surreal to be hiking with just the light of our headlamps showing the trail. It was just a lot of uphill hiking without the benefit of wonderful views. We did hear lots of water and had to cross several streams on logs and by rock hopping. It was nice when the sun finally rose and we could put away the headlamps. We reached Trail Camp around dawn I think.

At Trail Camp, I felt altitude sickness. I was slightly nauseous and not hungry. Bob also felt the altitude and was a bit dizzy. We sat there for a long time resting and I was thinking about quitting and turning around and going back. Bob finally spoke up and suggested we keep hiking till noon and turn around if we were not close to the top. I agreed to that. Then I used the WAG (Waste Alleviation and Gelling) bag to take a dump. I had hoped to not need to use the WAG bag but I'm glad I did use it as I started to feel better after doing the deed. The WAG bag was designed well though as it was not too hard to use and once packed away in the opaque olive colored zip lock bag did not smell or anything. It was rather bizarre to know I was carrying my own poop along with me to the top of Whitney! Its a requirement to hike Whitney that you pack out your waste.

We started hiking up and up the switch backs to Trail Crest. I didn't count them but someone else on the world wide web did and reported that 97 switchbacks wind back and forth gaining 1,600 feet in 2.2 miles. It was a slog. We just kept going back and forth and back and forth. I had to rest often to catch my breath. The hardest thing for me was when I had to take a big step up. I dreaded running into those big rocks I had to really pull myself up. It just took my breath away and I would have to pause to let my heart rate reduce and to get some much needed air. Bob never complained about my stopping but I expect he needed the rest too! At Trail Crest there are some pretty spectacular views. Its a pass of sorts so we now could see behind the other side of Whitney that was invisible until we reached the crest.

After trail crest there is a small section of down hill trail. You would think that would make me happy but it did not. I wanted it to be entirely up hill all the way to the top so on the way back I wouldn't have any uphill. Oh well. We descended to the intersection of the Mt Whitney trail with John Muir trail. We stayed on the Whitney trial and now had 1.9 miles to the top. About half way up this 1.9 miles it was noon. Both Bob and I decided that we were not turning around and heading back since we were almost there. We kept on and made it to the top of Mt Whitney at 1:15 p.m. I was so exhausted on top that I just wanted to sit and rest a while before I stood up to wander about and admire the views. I finally did wander about and took some photos. We stayed up there about 15 minutes. The views are just awesome from the highest point in the lower 48 states!

The hike down was a study in putting one foot in front of the other and just keep going. That downhill portion I complained about was a bit tortuous for me on the way up. I would go a few steps and have to stop to breath for a while and then continue on. Bob went ahead of me and when I finally got to the top of this little section of trail, he gave me a hug. That made me feel better! Bob said it well towards the very end of the down hill that his legs were just programmed to keep moving. We did get the satisfaction on the way down of seeing the bottom portion of the hike that we did in the dark. Surprise, there was a beautiful water fall. And surprise there was Mirror Lake and Lone Pine lake.

However, the last hour of the hike was in the dark again. At about 8, it got too dark to see the trail so we put on our headlamps again. We did however, scout the bottom portion of the hike the day before we did the hike. My friend, Tina, suggested we do that. We got lots of good pictures on that little scout of the bottom portion of the hike that we would end up doing in the dark both going out and coming in. The last bit of the trail seemed to go on forever but we finally stumbled into Whitney Portal, where the trail begins and our car was parked, at 8:50 p.m.

After a pit stop and throwing the WAG bag in the human waste disposal bin we headed to the car. We drove to our campsite and packed up everything into the car and headed to Lone Pine to the Comfort Inn. We each had a nice hot shower and then attempted to go out to dinner. We had no luck. Lone Pine pretty much shuts down after 10 p.m. on a week day. We ended up stopping at a gas station with a mini-mart. Bob got some beer and I got some chips and a soda. We returned to the motel and sat and talked till we were done with our "dinner". We were so tired that I don't think either of us really cared that we didn't get a proper dinner. We enjoyed having real beds to sleep on that night after having spent the last four nights at campgrounds.

Yosemite Hiking, June Lake Camping

2011-08-21T17:34:00.000-07:00

I had yet another marvelous weekend hiking at high altitude. This time I hiked exclusively in Yosemite National Park near the eastern entrance of the park. I managed to escape work (with permission of my manager) at noon and drove to the Oh Ridge campground at June Lake on Friday.

I arrived at June Lake at about 5:30 p.m. and checked in with a friendly lady who was glad I showed up as "someone was Jonesing for my site" and she was glad she stuck to her guns and kept telling them someone had it reserved. That someone being me. I was at site 53 at Squirrel loop. This was a very well signed campground and it was very easy to find my site. I set up my tent and then had a lunchy dinner meaning I ate lunch food for dinner. I had salami and swiss cheese on crackers and a bottle of Super Food orginal. Yum.

As I sat eating I discovered the flaw of Oh Ridge campground. A stiff wind blows off of the lake in the evenings and it gets chilly quickly when the sun sets. Oh well. I wasn't really camping for fun but camping for a cheap place to sleep and this campground did the trick. I was warm inside my tent all night. It just wasn't conducive to hanging out at the campsite to read a nice book in my lawn chair. Instead on night two at the campground, I read my book inside my car where the wind didn't seep in and it was nice and cozy. Friday evening I did take a short walk to June lake and saw the beach where one is allowed to swim if one so desires. I never did because it was chilly when I got back from hikes.

Saturday morning I got up early and ate a quick breakfast and headed to the Mobile gas/store/restaurant at Lee Vining where I got myself a nice hot cup of coffee and sipped it while admiring the view of Mono Lake out the window. After coffee, I drove to Tioga Pass and into Yosemite to the Mono Pass trailhead parking lot. When I got there there were only about four parking spaces left. I snagged one and used the restroom there and then sat down to put on my hiking boots and find a nice spot to settle down and wait for the Ranger led hike that was set to start at 9:15 a.m. It was 8:15 when I got to the lot. I managed to wander around the lot and the trail head amusing myself by day dreaming and trying to find a spot where the mosquitos would not find me. I finally found a spot and sat there till Ranger Salli arrived. She arrived at 9:05. For the next twenty five minutes we chatted and she spoke to others at the lot and found one other taker for her hike, M. She gave both M. and I a chance to spray insect repellant on ourselves and we both accepted.

We set off on our hike to Mono Pass at 9:30 a.m. The first bit of the hike was through beautiful woods and meadows full of "spring" wildflowers in August! We had to cross two streams but with Salli's knowledge we had very easy crossings (she knew where the hefty log was located to get us across). The first portion of the hike was ever so slightly up hill. Salli told us all about the plants, the animals, and the history of the trail. It was an animal trail originally and then became a native american trading trail and then the Europeans arrived and started using it and hoped to find gold, silver etc. to mine. She told us about the ground squirrels, an animal called the pika, the birds we saw, and some stuff about geology. I got a little overloaded on information at times and tuned her out a little. But it was great for me, a very active hike leader for the Sierra Club, to have a chance to be a follower and not be responsible for anyone but myself!

The last bit of the hike to Mono Pass goes up hill. My heart got beating really fast because of the high altitude (the pass is at 10,599 feet). We reached the pass and it was beautiful. We could see a lake in a green meadow and great views of Mammoth Peak, Mt Gibb, and others whose names I forget. We hiked .3 miles past Mono Pass to Sardine lakes and a great view of Mono Lake. We had lunch here. Ranger Salli was accosted by a gang of men with tons of questions and while M. and I enjoyed our lunch she patiently answered all their questions. She did a very good job and loved being questioned by them. While she did her job, I borrowed her binoculars and scanned the hillside of Mt Gibb for Big Horned sheep. Salli has been told that they hang out there but she has never seen them. I did not see any either. Both M. and I finished our lunches and when Salli was done answering questions we retraced our steps back to the parking lot. On the way back we saw a deer and we saw an old miner's cabin that we missed on the way out because we were admiring an incredible meadow full of wild flowers across from the cabin! In the last quarter mile, my feet started to complain but not the rest of me. We arrived at the lot at 4 p.m. I did not dilly dally and talk more with Ranger Salli as the mosquitos were thick at the trail head so I wanted to pop in my car to escape them and start heading back to my camp.

I drove down to Lee Vining and decided to stop at the Mobile restaurant and have dinner there rather than cook something at the cold windy campsite. I had a big half pound burger, french fries, and a coke. Not very healthy but oh so satisfying. It felt good to sit down. I munched on my burger and fries while people watching. It was very crowded. The food was decent but I believe it was crowded because the location is so good. All those people streaming out of Yosemite and folks driving north and south along 395 stop there to eat on their ways elsewhere. After finishing I drove the 11 miles down the road to June Lake and spent a couple of hours in my car reading. At 8 p.m. I shifted to my tent and continued to reading. By 8:30 my eyes were closing so I put the book away and went to sleep.

On Sunday I was up at 6 a.m. I took down my tent right away and packed up the car with most of my camping gear. I then had a bowl of cereal and banana at the campsite picnic table while gazing at the lake. It was not windy in the mornings but was still cool until the sun came up. I finished up my breakfast and packed the rest of my gear in the car and left the campground. I again stopped at the trusty Lee Vining mobile station for another cup of coffee. Then I drove to Tioga Pass and parked in the little lot there. Just past the Yosemite entrance gate is a little lot that holds maybe 10 cars. At 8 a.m. there were several spots still left. I snagged one, stuffed my cooler into the bear locker, used the restroom, put on my sun screen, and headed off on the Gaylor Lake trail to, surprise, Gaylor lake.

I had the trail to myself. I went at a slowish pace as the trail starts at 9943 feet and climbs about 600 feet to a saddle of sorts just below Gaylor Peak. The views from the saddle were incredible and I took lots of pictures. I then descended to Gaylor Lake. It was so blue and so gorgeous. When I got to the lake I followed a trial to one end of it and then followed a use trail next to a creek. The mosquitos were thick there so I nicknamed the trail mosquito alley. If I kept moving, they didn't seem to land on me so I kept up a good pace on the trail till I reached what I think was middle Gaylor Lake. I took a quick picture of it and then continued my quick pace. When I reached the end of the first Gaylor Lake, I finally ran into another hiker. It had been a treat to have the trail to myself for the out portion of my hike. As I retraced my steps I ran into 4 other parties of hikers. But it didn't feel crowded like some of the more popular hikes at Yosemite feel. I reached the cars at 10 a.m.

I retrieved my cooler from the bear locker, used the handsome restroom a second time, and hit the road to go back to the bay area. I decided to stop at Olmstead Point on 120 to admire the view of Half Dome, Clouds Rest, and Tenaya lake. Olmstead Point is this big old parking lot off of highway 120 within Yosemite with awesome views of the valley. A Yosemite conservation volunteer had set up a scope today aimed at Half Dome. I took a look through it and saw it was focused on the cables on Half Dome and I watched some people climbing up the cables for a little bit. I then snapped several pictures of the views and had one of the volunteers take a picture of me. Then I hit the road again. I made a few more stops: a bathroom break at a wonderful vista point/rest area just outside of Yosemite and a Starbuck's stop in Oakdale for an iced mocha to perk me up for the boring drive on highways 205, 580, 680, 237, and 101 to home!

I took scads of pictures and posted them here

Rock Creek Weekend

2011-08-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend of August 13-14 camping with a couple of friends, T. and C., at Rock Creek French Camp campground in the Eastern Sierras. This was the first of three Eastern Sierra mountain weekends I planned to get in high altitude training hikes to prepare me for my August 30th attempt to day hike to the top of Mt Whitney and back!

I put in a couple of long days at work on Wednesday and Thursday so I could leave work at noon on Friday and drive to Rock Creek and get there before dark. I had a very uneventful and pleasant drive to Rock Creek and arrived at 6:15 p.m. at site number 9 at the French Campground. My buddies, T. and C. had already been at the site for a couple of days and were not there when I arrived. I got my tent set up and loaded all my food into the bear locker and then set off to figure out where the restrooms were located, where the dumpster was located, and where the water was located. When I got back I sat down and read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets until my friends arrived back from their day of hiking. They kindly fed me a nice dish of gnocchi, red peppers, basil, and a red sauce and left out the chick peas at my request. I felt very spoiled and very content to be out in the woods with friends. After dinner we chatted about the next day's plans. C. decided to go exploring on his own as the hike T. and I wanted to do was a bit tough for him. T. and I planned to hike from the Little Lakes trail head at Rock Creek to Mono Pass. After the plans were firmed up we all headed to our tents around 9:30 p.m.

We were up shortly after dawn and I cooked myself some oatmeal and had some General Foods instant mocha. It was a bit weak. Next time I need to add more heaping teaspoons than four! T. and I then loaded up our day packs with food, water, extra layers, a small first aid kit, and some bug repellent and then put away our other food in the bear locker and headed to Little Lakes trailhead. Before we got there we stopped at the Rock Creek lodge in the hopes of having some of their famous pie. We arrived there at 8:30 a.m. way before they serve their pies. The pie service doesn't start till 10:30 a.m. and ends when the pies run out or at 3:30 p.m. I did a little shopping at the general store and got some much needed lip balm for the weekend. After our short stop we drove to the trail head and the main parking lot was already full by 9ish. We did find parking at the first overflow parking lot which was lucky. It added maybe a quarter mile to our trip. We hiked to the trailhead restrooms, put on sun screen, packed away our wallets/keys in a safe place in our day packs or pockets, and headed off to Mono Pass.

The first half mile was on the very popular Little Lakes trail and went up mildly but my heart started beating fast. The trail head started at high altitude, 10,200 feet! I managed to keep a steady pace while my heart beat fast and there were enough little flat spots to give me a chance to get my breath back and for my heart rate to slow down a bit. When we felt uncomfortable we just stopped and the view filled us with energy! The view of the lakes and mountains was incredible.

From Rock_Creek_Camping_8_13_and_14_2011

T. is in great shape and she never seemed to need to stop because of being out of breath but she did need to stop to eat more often than me. After a half mile, we turned off on to the Mono pass trail. For about a mile or so it was a steady up with flat spots to rest at and wonderful views of the Little Lakes valley. We met other folks as we slowly made our way up to the pass. Everyone was really friendly and in a good mood. The typical greeting was “where are you heading today?” Some were day hiking to Mono pass like us and some were backpacking futher into the mountains. We reached the Ruby Lake turnoff junction at 11,200 feet and that is where the steeper part of the Mono Pass trail starts.

We hiked up switch backs for a good while. We got passed by a horse led burro train taking supplies up to the mountains for someone. Finally we turned into the rather narrow pass. Big old granite walls rose up around us spectacularly. I had to rest lots on this section as we approached our destination at 12,000 feet. The air was getting thinner and thinner! But stopping was nice as it gave us time to gape at the views and neither of us were in a great hurry. We finally reached the top after a last bit of hiking on snow. The really late rains and snows in California have made conditions in August more like those found in July. However the snow trail was well trodden and easy to follow. We had lunch near the top and after lunch hiked a tiny bit to Summit Lake and then turned around to head back.

From Rock_Creek_Camping_8_13_and_14_2011

On our way down, a fellow caught up with us and we offered to let him pass but he declined. He looked like a sherpa from Nepal and much to our surprise he was a sherpa from Nepal on vacation in California. He looked as if he was talking a walk in a park up there. He told us he lives at a place higher than Mono Pass. He lives at 4000 meters (~13123 feet) and his Father is a sherpa on Mt. Everest. He was very nimble on the snow. He was with another man who we never got close enough to talk to. He left us when he saw that his buddy had gotten ahead of us. Quite amazing the people you meet while you are hiking.

The rest of the way down was so much easier for me. I wasn't gasping for air hardly at all and my knees were just fine. I have always had pretty healthy knees and they hold up well going downhill. On really long downhills I will start to notice some knee soreness but this 3 mile descent did not cause me any knee soreness. I was happy though to have done all that uphill hiking to start getting my body used to hiking uphill at high altitudes. The Whitney hike starts at ~8400 feet and goes to ~14,500 feet.

We arrived back at the trailhead at 3:15 p.m. and were hoping we could make it to the Rock Creek lodge for pie by 3:30 p.m. We did make it to the lodge by 3:30 p.m. But alas, the pies had been sold out since 1:30 p.m. Instead we bought ourselves something to drink (I got gaterade) and then drove down the Rock Creek road in search of a nice spot on the creek to sit down and soak our feet. We found a wonderful spot with a comfy spot of green grass to sit on right next to the creek and even better it turned out to be mosquito free too! We soaked our feet for 15 minutes. It was marvelous to be sitting together with our feet in the ice cold water, drinking our drinks, chatting, and to boot we head this section of creek all to ourselves.

From Rock_Creek_Camping_8_13_and_14_2011

After the soak, we headed back to camp and spent some time doing our own thing. I read more of my Harry Potter book. We would not start dinner till C. got back from his day of hiking. He returned around 6:15 and told us stories of his day at Convict lake and we told him about our hike. T. cooked a dinner of ravioli with roasted red pepper sauce. I volunteered to help and was put in charge heating up the store bought roasted red pepper sauce to mix with the ravioli. It was a delicious dinner. Somehow food at a campground tastes better than it would if cooked at home. Its probably because we were exerting ourselves all day and were hungry and would have liked almost anything. After dinner T. and C. got busy packing as they had to leave at o-dark-hundred the next day. T. had an appointment in the SF bay area at 3:30. They left at 5 a.m. I heard them taking the tents down and just turned over and fell back asleep for another hour.

I was up at 6 a.m. In typical camping fashion what got me up was I had to use the restroom. When I came back from the restroom I felt fully awake so I decided to have a small cold breakfast and then pack up my gear and head back to the Little Lakes trail head and hike on the Little Lakes valley trail for an hour and then turn around and hike back. While shaking out my tent, I saw what I thought was a bug on the ground but on closer examination it turned out to be a scorpion. I was sort of glad I slept in a zipped up tent so the scorpion could not crawl on me! I soon finished packing and I got to the trailhead at 7:10 a.m. and this time I got a parking spot there and did not have to go to the overflow parking.

I made a quick stop at the restroom and then put on sun screen and headed off on the Little Lake Valley trail. It was gorgeous. I was happy to be giving my body another taste of high altitude hiking albeit a more mellow taste than the day before. I passed by Mack, Marsh, Heart, Box, and Long Lake. At Long Lake I reached my one hour turn around time and started heading back.

From Rock_Creek_Camping_8_13_and_14_2011

It was a wonderful solitary hike on the way to Long Lake. I did pass one backpacking couple but they were so quiet that it felt as if I had the trail to myself the whole way. It was a different story on the way back as I ran into more and more people. I got back to the trail head at 9:20 and the lot was full and folks were hiking up the road from overflow parking. I got in my car and headed to the Rock Creek lodge to have a more substantial breakfast. I was too early for pie but the cook at the lodge made a mean short stack of pancakes. I filled up on 2 huge pancakes and had a freshly brewed cup of coffee. While I was at the counter a Dad and his two small sons were there also. The sons were delightful to talk to. They were friendly and so excited to tell me all about their fishing trip with their Dad. Dad was there too but he was more quiet. He would just speak up to add bits to the stories his sons were telling. They also wanted to see a bear but not get eaten by a bear. It made for a nice breakfast to have their company. I finished up at 10 a.m. And started on my long trip home.

On my way home I did something very unusual for me. I was turning off of highway 395 at Lee Vining and there was a young man hitch hiking with a brown card board sign saying Yosemite and a big backpack. He looked friendly and I decided to risk it and give him a ride to Yosemite since my drive was on 120 which goes right through Yosemite (the Tuolumne Meadows part of Yosemite). I almost never pick up hitch hikers for fear I'll pick up a lunatic hitch hiker and get attacked or something but I decided to risk it for this guy. I picked him up and he was excited to have gotten a ride. Before we started up the climb on 120 to Tuolumne Meadows, I stopped at the Mobile station to get some gas. As we drove up 120, I found out he was from Brazil and had 7 days left in his vacation in the U.S. and wanted to spend it exploring Yosmite. He told me his name and I had trouble pronouncing it. I'm not sure how to spell it. It sounded like “hanough”. He works as a computer technician and was impressed that I write software. We had fun chatting as we waited in the long line to get into Yosemite at the top of the pass. I dropped him off at the visitor center in Tuolumne meadows after we finally got through the wait to get in.

The rest of my drive home was more ordinary. I stopped at Oakdale to have a late lunch at McDonalds. There was a Starbucks right door so after lunch, I got a iced mocha to go. I sipped it as I made my way to Manteca. At Manteca I had the last sip. At Manteca, it was back to freeway driving and no stunning mountain views anymore. I got home at 5 pm so the drive took 7 hours. All in all it was a great weekend of hiking and camping. I hope next weekends trip to June Lake in the Eastern Sierras goes as well although it will be a solo trip. It will be fun to spend the week planning the hikes I will do from June Lake.

Blogher'11 Blues

2011-08-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

I was looking forward to the Blogher'11 conference and meeting lots of cool women and going to the famous parties. All the posts and all the chatter about previous conferences conjured up a picture in my head of an incredibly fun inspiring event. I imagined all the women I would talk to and all the things we would have in common. I imagined sitting around a table with several other women sipping drinks and laughing up a storm about who knows what. It was all so wonderful in my head.

I did get to meet lots of cool women. I didn't get to know them very well. All my interactions were short. The boogie woman of social anxiety reared her ugly head. I just knew that all these women were doing me a favor to even deign to converse with me for a few minutes. I couldn't shake the feeling despite my rocket scientist brain telling me it was bull.

Thursday night I really tried hard to pretend I was OK and not anxious in the hopes I could fake it until it no longer felt fake. I managed to get through the People's party and part of the Queerosphere party before throwing in the towel and retreating to my hotel room at the Best Western in Chula Vista. I felt relieved to be out of the crowds but also lonely. I escaped to my Harry Potter book to forget my woes and be entertained. It worked.

The sessions and speakers on Friday went better for me. I felt less fear when there was a topic to be talked about or an expert to be listened to. Its always been easier for me to be social when being social is not the only thing going on.

I decided to skip the Friday night parties as I couldn't face up to the fears. I decided to save that energy for Saturday's parties. I enjoyed the voices of the year speakers and headed back to my motel in the hopes of a hot tub soak. Alas, the hot tub was broken so I settled for a nice long shower and watching some TV. I was alone but not lonely.

Saturday was a struggle at times. I was getting creeped out by how much social anxiety I was feeling at the conference and I started to dwell on that instead of putting energy into making a space for myself where I was comfortable. I started to think what I loser I was. I would search for tables with no one at them and then bury my nose in a book or in my iPad so no one else would join me and I could be alone. Its like someone just turned off my courage faucet and turned on my fear faucet. I did enjoy the speakers and the sessions I went to and giving blood but the interim times were icky.

The Saturday party I chose to go to was the Aiming Low party. I figured it was aiming low so there wouldn't be as much emphasis put on being super social. But I arrived to find out they were playing a sticker game where the sticker says “You are _________” and you fill in the blank and stick it on a stranger. I guess it was a ice breaker sort of thing but to me it was something I just was not wanting to do. As the sticker woman went away, I got rid of my sticker and I sat there sipping my wine alone at a table until two women asked if they could join me. I said sure and talked with them a bit but my mind was a million miles away dealing with this mountain of fear. I felt tears of frustration that at 50 years of age I'm still dealing with this damn fear I have had since I was 5 years old. Before the tears threatening to spill down my cheeks I excused myself and headed to the restroom to let the tears eke out a little. After I had them under control, I hoofed my way through the hotel lobby to the parking lot and dived into my car for more crying. Sigh. It was all so deja vu.

This isn't the first conference that I have gone to with high hopes of tremendous fun so I don't know why I thought Blogher'11 would be any different than the other conferences I have gone to. I'm mystified as to why I still seem to get this urge to go to conferences. I guess I keep hoping that as I get older I'll kick this social anxiety problem and things will be different. The fantasies of what it will be like are just so good that I overlook the past realities. If the conference did one thing for me though, it did inspire me to write this and that is something good.

Peters Creek Hike at Portola State Park

2011-08-01T18:13:00.000-07:00

Saturday I led a hike for GLS to Peter's Creek redwood grove at Portola State Park. The day started in typical bay area fashion with there being no parking at the park-n-ride lot. It was full at 9:00 a.m. I parked on the side of the road just outside the lot and after about 5 minutes someone left the lot and I ran like a bat outta hell to my car and managed to get that valuable parking place. By 9:15 the other hikers showed, just three of them. One had to leave their car along the side of the road. The other, my co-leader, volunteered to drive to Portola so we all tumbled into his car. It was four in all.

We wiggled our way up Page Mill road and down Alpine road and Portola road and got to the park at 10:00 a.m. We paid our state park fee and were off on our hike. The hike started on a paved road in the park that took us to the Summit trail. We hiked up the trail to, what else, the summit. Then we were off on Slate creek trail which runs along a wooded ridge to the Slate creek backpack camp. It was nice to have an outhouse for a bathroom break rather than finding that private spot behind a bush without poison oak! After a short break we hiked on Bear Creek trail three and a half miles when we stopped just short of Peter's Creek trail at a little water fall on Bear Creek with a great log for sitting and eating lunch.

After lunch we hiked the last little bit of Bear Creek trail to Peters Creek trail and then we did the lovely one and a half mile loop around the grove. It is an nearly pristine redwood grove since its so far from the beaten path. The only thing that makes it seem not quite pristine is the memorial signs for patrons who supported the park and of course the trail. There are no names for the trees like in other redwood groves that are more accessible. There are no fences to keep one from walking right up to the trees. Its a wonderful place to hike.

After our wonderful loop around the Peter's creek it was time to climb back up the big hill we descended to get there. I decided to hike up the hill at my fastest pace and planned to wait at the top for folks to catch up. But everyone followed me up the hill at the fast pace. I think we all wanted to get it over with quickly. I did stop once or twice on the way up to admire the views I missed on the way down.

We retraced our steps the rest of the hike. I plodded along for the rest of the hike trying to ignore my sore tired feet and enjoy the quiet of the redwood forest. We finished up our hike at 4 p.m. and were glad to sit in the car and take a load off our feet, me especially. My feet don't usually get this sore on a 13 mile hike but I think I just over did my training for the big Whitney hike the past couple of weeks and did not give my poor old feet a chance to recover. Thankfully the rest of the body served me well. I really can go up hill a blistering pace these days! Its fun to do long day hikes and have energy at the end of the day!

RIP John F. Wilkinson 1940-2010

2010-08-17T19:49:00.001-07:00

A really good hiking buddy, John F. Wilkinson, died yesterday. Rest in peace John. You will be fondly remembered by me. I loved it that you kept asking me to be your co-leader on these long challenging hikes despite my slow pace. I felt like we were a good team with me doing the sweeping and you up front with the fast folks. Somehow it was never a problem that I was slow and you were fast. It made for a welcoming hike for all participants. I also loved the Lost Coast backpacks I did with you. I'll remember the long steep hikes up to the ridge tops and the rain soaked night on the beach. I'll miss your stories of hikes I wasn't on where you talked about all your backpack trips and the adventures that ensued.

From CLOGS

Kings Canyon and Book List

2010-08-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

Just spent a weekend at Kings Canyon. I drove there after work on Friday and arrived at 8:30 p.m. to discover that there was a forest fire burning in the hills above the canyon. From the campground I looked up and saw an orange glow on the hill side in the distance and after watching for a while saw flames! If you are familiar with the trails in Kings Canyon, the fire was burning around the upper part of the Don Cecil trail. I had hoped to hike on the Don Cecil trail this weekend but obviously no can do!! The smoke from the fire ended up messing up my plans to do two tough hikes this weekend.

Saturday we ended up driving out of the Canyon to the General Grant grove to escape the smoke from the fire and to see the giant Sequoia trees. The trees were very impressive and beautiful but the short 1/2 mile trail was full of tourists from tour buses. It was not exactly a wilderness experience with the trails so crowded with people. We ate our packed lunch at the trees though and enjoyed ourselves. We mostly enjoyed being able to breath deeply and not breath in smoke. After the hike we headed back to the canyon and found a section of the King River that was far from the smoke and spent a couple hours napping, reading, and watching the rapids of the King River from a warm flat rock right next to the river. At 5 we headed back to the campground. It was still smoky. It was a slow burning fire and the smoke will probably last till next weekend according to Deb, the fire expert ranger. I finished off the day by having dinner at the snack bar in the air conditioned snack bar area. I had a BLT, potato chips, and a glass of orange juice. When I returned to the camp ground we sat around the camp fire talking. It seemed odd to be sitting around a camp fire with a big fire burning on the hill in the distance. I hit the hay at 9 p.m.

I got up at 6 a.m. this morning and decided to escape the smoky canyon and drive home. I couldn't see trying to hike in the smoky canyon area and I had seen enough of the stuff that was away from the smoke. So I drove the 4 hour and 45 minute drive home at 7 a.m. I got home just before noon and had marvelous afternoon snoozing and watching the PGA golf championship.

I'm off on vacation soon and this afternoon put together a nice pile of books to bring with me to read. Here is the list:

Killing Orders by Sara Paretsky
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
The Bostonians by Henry James
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton
Animythical Tales by Sarah Totton

I doubt I will get them all read in 10 days but I would rather have too many books than too few!!

Last Weekend's Hikes

2010-05-18T23:09:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went on two hikes: Pogonip in Santa Cruz and Pinnacles just east of Soledad.

The Pogonip hike was with Gay and Lesbian Sierrans. Only three of us showed up and all of us were hike leaders so we decided to make it an unofficial trip and do a route that was slightly more adventurous. At the start of the hike, the others told me that the Pogonip name stands for POlo, GOlf, and NIP as in have a nip of a drink. Pogonip used to be the home of a golf course, a polo course, and a clubhouse with a bar. We hiked past the old clubhouse which was abandoned but looked like it might be fixed up at a later date. After passing the club house we were surprised to see several people playing bike polo on an old tennis court. Alas we did not see anyone playing any kind of golf but we did see an overgrown field that was probably part of the old golf course. We continued our hike to the other end of Pogonip and left the park to wander back to our cars through the university of Santa Cruz. Its a beautiful campus and we managed to stay mostly away from the roadways but not away from the asphault. Still it was nice to see UCSC. We saw a swim meet going on and saw students with banana slug sweatshirts. The banana slug is UCSC's mascot. After the athletic fields we paused to check out the map on the GPS to figure out how to get back to Pogonip and the cars. We figured it out quick and made our way back to the cars in about 5 minutes. After the hike we had a nice lunch at a place called The River. I had a delicious turkey, bacon, avocado sandwich. It was a very pleasant mellow hike.

Sunday was Pinnacles. I went hiking with my hiking buddy, L. We left at 8 a.m. and made it to the western entrance by 10:30 a.m. We headed up the Juniper Canyon trail. There were many purplish magenta flowers that neither of us could identify. There was lots of very healthy looking poison oak too but all of it easy to avoid. The trail switched back and forth uphill to the high peaks. I was happy to be in good condition and not feel like I was gasping for breath as we climbed. At the high peaks we talked to the ranger there and a field biologist who studies condors. There had been a condor chick born at Pinnacles but they had to remove the chick from the nest last week as it had high levels of lead in its blood stream. The chick is now being raised in captivity at an LA zoo. We had a fascinating conversation with the field biologist (who L knew well) all about condors. Well at least L. did. I must confess to listening for a while and then wandering off to look at the old nest and enjoy the high peaks. After chatting with the field biologist and ranger we headed off to explore the high peaks and hike on the cool part of the trail where steps were blasted from the rock and poles have been installed on steep sections. Its an incredible feat of trail creation. We found a nice shady spot at high peaks and had our lunch there enjoying the view of the green hillsides from on high. After lunch we descended back to the Juniper Canyon trail on the tunnel trail. It had been ages since I had been that way and it was fun to see the tunnel again. We got back to the parking lot around 2 p.m. It was quite a glorious day at Pinnacles. The weather was cool for May which made the hiking super comfortable. We got back to San Jose around 4 p.m. and I was home and in a hot shower by 5 p.m.

Palo Alto Baylands

2010-05-09T20:18:00.000-07:00

Palo Alto Baylands is sort of my home park. Its just a five minute drive from my condo. When my hiking buddy, L, cancelled on the Pinnacles hike we planned today, I decided to go on a solo hike at the Baylands. I had a blast.

When I started the hike rain arrived, but it didn't last that long. I got just a bit damp but not soaked. The sky views were incredible all day long as the clouds and blue sky and rain rolled in and out. Gnats were abundant at times and seemed to come in clouds. I saw the usual small airplanes landing and taking off from the Palo Alto airport and I saw some jets way up in the air on their way to and from the SF airport or the SJ airport. I saw the usual assortment of sea birds: ducks, geese, pelicans, coots, gulls, herons, egrets, and more whose names don't roll off my tongue. I saw one hare disappearing into the bushes but that was my only wild mammal sighting of the day. I did see quite a few dogs being walked and of course human beings enjoying the park as I was. I saw quite a few snails.

I made it to the nature center around 10 a.m. I always enjoy walking out the board walk and seeing the San Francisco bay, the Coyote Hills, and the Dumbarton bridge. On the way back I stopped by at the duck pond and took some pictures of the Bird Migration Sanctuary that I never really knew was there before. Discovering new stuff on a hike you have been on lots of times is fun. I then hiked back to the small dam and crossed it and headed back to the cars while watching some very dark clouds approach. About a mile away from the end of the hike the wind picked up and ripples covered the water and then the rain just came pouring down. I was poured on for about 5 to 10 minutes and it was wet wet wet and cold cold cold. Phew! But before I knew it, it was over and heading off across the bay to the east bay. I kept up a very fast pace to stay warm as I hadn't really worn the proper cloths to stay warm when wet. I was somewhat amazed though that before I ever got back to the car, the blue sky returned and the sun came out. Wow. What a fast fierce storm! I reached the car at 11:30 a.m. and headed home for a nice hot shower. It was a fun hike and it felt very adventurous to have been poured on so vigorously.

El Corte De Madera Hike

2010-05-08T21:15:00.000-07:00

I went on a delightful hike at El Corte De Madera open space preserve today. We met at the Woodside park-n-ride lot and I managed to get the last available space. One person had to park on a side road nearby and the other person volunteered to do the driving so we were all set. We were surprised on our drive up 84 that there were not that many bikes. We reached Skegg's Point parking and there were still plenty of parking spaces there. We parked and headed off on our hike. One note: there is no bathroom (not even an outhouse) at Skegg's point. I had to make a visit to the woods a bit into our hike instead.

It was a very mellow hike with only three of us. I enjoyed that this park is not so popular so we didn't have to share it with lots of people. We mostly ran into mountain bikers but fortunately all the bikers were polite respectful bikers not the kind that go too fast and nearly run over hikers. Wild flowers are still wonderful and we saw lots of forget me nots and some others that none of us could identify but all of us enjoyed! This was a hike through the woods. We saw madrones and maybe second growth redwoods and oaks. I enjoyed that feeling of being surrounded by the woods. We didn't see any wildlife of significance. I'm sure wildlife was there but we just didn't see it.

I mooched a wonderful lunch at our lunch stop vista point. I forgot my lunch and was planning on just enjoying the conversation while others ate but both my companions offered me food. I got half of a delicious cheese sandwich, half of a banana, and a quarter of an apple. Pretty good mooching, eh? After lunch, we reached Skegg's point pretty quickly. We were done with the hike around noon. It was just 5 miles but it was a beautiful five miles.

Hiking at St Joseph Hill park in Los Gatos

2010-05-06T16:48:00.000-07:00

As summer approaches and the days get longer, its time to hike in the evenings again! Tonight I'm hiking at St Joseph Hill with GLS. We are going to do a 4 mile round trip hike up the hill and back. I have been on this hike many times but its a great way to spend an evening just steps from Silicon Valley!

The hike was great. There was a nice blue sky and sun for most of the hike. We saw deer, a bob cat, a rabbit, California poppies, and Lupin among other things. We also saw lots of bikers and other hikers at this popular Los Gatos park but not so many towards sunset. Here is a picture of the bobcat

New Hiking Shoes!

2009-04-16T19:23:00.000-07:00

I bought myself some new hiking shoes today. They are called Merrell Moab Ventilators. I feel like a little kid that just got a new toy. I can hardly wait for Saturday to come so I can try them out on a hike. They fit wonderfully and are light weight but have good foot support. I'll be hiking with L on Saturday at Nissene Marks near Santa Cruz. Then on Sunday I'll be on the GLS hike at Windy Hill. Woo Hoo. I love to hike and I love my new hiking shoes.

Getting in shape

2009-02-17T11:55:00.000-08:00

So I'm slowly getting in better shape this year. I started going to Gold's Gym about four or five weeks ago on week days after work and climbing on the aerobic machines for about 45 minutes. I do different machines although lately I mostly go on the Precor elliptical machine. It has a nice smooth feel and doesn't stress my achilles tendons. I do like the ordinary treadmill but it does tend to stress my achilles tendons. The stationary bike is my least favorite but it does the best job on not stressing the tendons. I'm still recovering from a bout of achilles tendonitis which is why all this going on about stressing my tendons!

On weekends I prefer to go hiking to get in shape. I have been hiking at Windy Hill, Henry Cowell, Henry Coe, Shoreline Park, and Castle Rock over the last several weekends. This past weekend the hike I had hoped to go on was cancelled due to the rain. So I put on my raincoat and went to Shoreline park and hiked for nearly 2 hours on the paved bike paths. Only a few people were out there braving the cold and rain. I had a good time although walking on pavement was not a good idea for my achilles tendons. They were sore when I got home so I iced them and rested. They feel fine today.

I have lost four pounds since January 1, 2009. I weigh 180 pounds today. I have been recording my weight at fitday.com. According to them I am now only overweight and no longer obese. Hurray. I need to get down to 150 to get out of the overweight category. The exercise is really helping with the weight lose but if I want to lose weight faster I'll need to change my eating habits. I'm giving myself some slack for now on the eating. I don't want to suddenly restrict myself. I want to gradually work into eating more healthy foods and less calories.

Just checking in

2008-12-09T07:56:00.000-08:00

Just checking in to my own blog. I'm here. I'm tired. I am looking forward to a nice nap after work.

So tired ...

2008-10-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

Breaking up is hard to do and its also exhausting. With so many things on my mind about the break up and C. moving out I have been having trouble sleeping at night and seem to be perpetually tired. Perhaps when C. finally is moved out I will just spend a week going to bed at 8 p.m. and getting oodles of hours of sleep. I feel as if I have this huge sleep deficit to make up. Do you think congress could bail me out and give me some hours of sleep??

All of life seems a little bit on edge these days. C. and I are of course on edge with each other and the break up. Then there is the U.S. financial crisis. That is certainly on the edge. And the presidential election is putting people on edge. A day rarely goes by at work when someone doesn't speak up passionately about some aspect of the presidential race. And the prop 8 stuff has the gay community on edge. I find myself just wanting to bury my head in the sand.

Changes

2008-09-09T18:06:00.000-07:00

So ...my life is full of changes at the moment.

I am dissolving my domestic partnership with my significant other. Essentially we are a same sex couple getting a divorce. She will be moving out in a couple of months. Its tough. I won't say much more in this public forum about this other than its a very significant change in my life and worth a mention in my blog.

Another change in my life is that I am beginning to fall into new identity of asexual lesbian. I know to some that seems a contradiction in terms but I have found a small group of like minded folks in an on-line community who understand and identify with the term. I love woman. I love to be around women. I want a serious relationship with a woman. I just don't want to have sex be part of my relationship. I have been posting and reading at the AVEN (Asexual Visibility and Education Network) site lately too. Its a new adventure of sorts. Although I must admit this having to face "coming out" again is a bit tedious. I seem to be more reluctant to come out as asexual than I was to come out as lesbian. Something to explore further.

Something that has not changed ... I'm still struggling with toe fungus, Achilles Tendinitis, and being out of shape, and generally not feeling well physically. It is a bit frustrating as I sorta know what I need to do but I just don't seem to be able to get motivated to do it. I think I just need to take things slow and worry more about not letting things get worse before I worry about making them better.

Body needs repair ...

2008-06-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

Long time no blog but after checking out my nephew's Lego Blog I am inspired to write something in my own blog.

My body needs the following repairs:

reduce cholesterol level in blood
fix Achilles tendons
get rid of toe nail fungus
better eye glasses to improve vision
probably a tooth or two needs filling

Last week I went to the foot doctor. He did a ultrasound of my achilles tendons and said that they look structurally OK. Or in other words, no damage from the tendinitis yet. He has told me to not hike this month or walk to work in order to rest the tendon and let it heal. Bike riding is OK as long as I don't stand up on the pedals and stress the tendon. He also has me wearing heal lifts in my shoes. He took samples of the toe nail fungus also and sent it to the lab to find out what kind of fungus it is. He will get the results back towards the end of this month and then he'll let me know what can be done for the fungus.

This week I visited the ophthalmologist and got the happy news that my eye pressure is fine and that my retina is still very much solidly attached (was detached in 1988 and fixed with emergency cryo eye surgery). I do need new glasses as my current pair is not quite the right correction. I ordered them and they will arrive in a week or so.

Soon I'll visit my general doctor about the cholesterol. I have started to cut out fatty foods and high cholesterol foods and have been eating food shown to help reduce cholesterol like flax and oat bran flakes. I did fall off the wagon so to speak this past weekend and had a wonderful juicy fatty hamburger with guacamole at Clark's burgers.

I will see my dentist in late July when she opens her new office. She is taking a break from all but emergency dental treatment until then. My teeth are not hurting but based on my abysmal dental hygiene for the past few months I suspect I have a tooth or two that need filling and some gums that are probably in bad shape. Got to get back to regular brushing and flossing and swishing the fluoride rinse.

I simply have not been caring for myself properly the past several years. I hope I can find the motivation to fix my body and keep it better maintained in the years to come.

Amusing Screen Saver

2007-10-16T07:05:00.000-07:00

Watch Hilary bounce around:

http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/hillary.htm

Dogs and Squirrel

2007-09-17T08:32:00.001-07:00

Sunday the dogs caught a squirrel in the backyard. Charlotte raced out to save the squirrel and yelled at me to come help. I went out and pulled Astro off of the squirrel and was holding him in my arms while Charlotte held Cosmo off of the squirrel. When I looked for where the squirrel ended up, it was climbing up my leg (I had on blue jeans). Eee Gad. Who'd a thought a little old squirrel would give me such a fright. I had to put Astro down so Charlotte could hold him and I could get the squirrel off of me! While I was passing Astro over to Charlotte, the squirrel climbed up to my stomach. After Charlotte got Astro, I flicked the squirrel off of my tummy with my hands. It flew a few feet from me and landed on the ground and headed to the fence and climbed up the fence and got away. It was a young squirrel according to Charlotte and very stunned and frightened. Both Astro and Cosmo had got the squirrel in their mouths according to Charlotte but thankfully there was no blood on either the squirrel or the dogs. We took the dogs inside and blocked their backyard doggy door. They were besides themselves with excitement for the next 30 minutes or so wanting to go back outside. We didn't let them back outside until they had calmed down a little and we were sure there were no squirrels on the ground.

Another Silly Quiz

2007-09-04T08:24:00.001-07:00

Your Life is 46% Off Track

Right now, you're taking things one day at a time.

Some things are going well, but you can't help but wonder if you're getting the most out of life.

It's time for you to slow down and reflect a little. You can change your life - but it's up to you!

Are You Living The Wrong Life?

Root Canal and Antibiotics

2007-08-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

The story of my life the last week ... the affects of a root canal and antibiotics. I had a root canal started on Wednesday last week. Part I of the root canal lasted one hour. It was too complex to finish in one sitting so part II was scheduled for Saturday morning. I was sent off with a prescription for Motrin for the pain and an antibiotic to keep infection away. I was grateful for the Motrin. After the Novocaine wore off, there was pain. The Motrin took 10 minutes or so to kick in but worked like a charm once it did kill the pain.

Part II on Saturday was a long 1.5 hour session in the dentist chair. The dentist asked her assistants to take x-rays so she could be sure not to go past the end of my root canal. Well the assistants took about 7 x-rays before they found the right view for the dentist to see where my root ended. Sigh. I was exhausted and glad when it finally ended. I had more pain after the Novocaine wore off yet again. BUT within a day the pain went away and I was able to stop popping Motrin capsules. Hurray! Finally no pain in that tooth. Ever since the dentist drilled the tooth and put a crown on it the tooth it has been hurting.

The antibiotics have been a pain in the butt and the gut. Those nasty little things did keep any infection at bay but they also destroyed all those valuable bacteria in my innards that keep my digestion going well. I have been suffering from the runs from the day I started the antibiotics. UGH! I don't wish this on anyone. Thank goodness that I only have one left to take and then I'm done. Hopefully my good old bod will then let those good bacteria back into my system and my digestion will go back to normal.

Brown Rice, Brocoli, Carrots, Walnuts, Raisons ... oh my!

2007-07-27T11:58:00.001-07:00

C. kindly made me a yummy lunch today that I am munching on right now. The title describes it. I'm drinking a new Crystal Geyser juice squeeze flavor called Pomegranate Lemonade. It is tasty.

The new job is going well. I have been doing lots of reading about satellites and the particular satellite software I will be working on. At the end of today I hit my 2 week mark at Space Systems / Loral. I got my first pay check for last week today. They conveniently have a Wells Fargo bank machine in the main lobby of SS/L so I was able to deposit the check here at work. In the future direct deposit will kick in and I won't have to worry about depositing my check in the bank.

Besides new work the other thing that has been going on lately is visiting the dentist. I got a temporary crown on my tooth about a week and a half ago. The tooth was painful so this past Wednesday I went in to have it looked at. The dentist put a different type of temporary crown on the tooth (acrylic instead of metallic). If the pain doesn't go away in a few days, it looks like that tooth is destined for a root canal. Ug. If so ... it will be my first root canal. So far the pain has not gone away and this is day two. I'm supposed to get the permanent crown on the tooth on Monday but it is looking like I may get a root canal that day instead. I have been popping Advil the past week and a half when the tooth gets painful and happily about 15 mintues after a couple of Advil, the pain is gone. Advil is my friend.

I took my first ever Yoga class last Tuesday. The class is at the Mountain View California Yoga Center. I enjoyed the class (level 1 class) and like the instructor, Lisa, and will give the class another try next Tuesday. I decided to give Yoga a try as I want to be better connected to my body, become more flexible, and learn to deal better with stress. Yoga seemed to be a perfect choice to help me with these things.

Wen tagged me - Fivers

2007-07-25T13:52:00.000-07:00

OK ... Wen tagged me to give this a shot ... I'm game.

1. Five favorite days of the year

Christmas
Thanksgiving
My birthday
Labor day - because that usually means a camping trip!
Memorial day - again sometimes means a camping trip!

2. Five things you watched this week

The Soprano's season 3 on DVD
Export Control training (truly boring)
The Yoga instructor, Lisa, at California Yoga in Mtn. View
The latest Harry Potter movie
DVD about ants and termites (more interesting than it sounds)

3. Five things you don't want to do, but should

Eat more fruits and vegetables
Desist eating McDonalds french fries
Revaluate my investment choices in my 401K
Read preliminary design documents
Get my toe fungus checked out by a doctor

4. Five things you want to learn

JAVA
Yoga
How to play the piano
How satellites work
How to put the brakes on while going backwards on roller blades

5. Five animals you've had as pets or who have impacted you

Georgie Girl and Timothy, two family cats we had while growing up in Columbus, OH
Barney, my first pet I was responsible for, sadly I did a less than perfect job and Barney escaped, got in the furnace duct some how and died.
Sappho & Sascha, two python snakes that my partner had when I met her.
Kalamozoo, and Punzel, my brother's cats that I loved to visit and cuddle with
Cosmo & Astro, our dogs that impact our lives everyday

6. Five favorite pieces of clothing

Aslo Hiking boots
New 40-50 SPF sunproof long sleeve shirts
Stanford Blood bank t-shirt
Brown shorts with lots of pockets
Blue REI fleece vest

7. Five things you enjoy in the summer

the longer amounts of day light
warm sunny weather
vacations
hiking
camping

8. Five foods you don't like

beans
jalepeno peppers
humus
mushrooms
lentils

9. You are given $50,000 to pass out to 5 people in $10,000 cash gifts. Who do you give it to, and why

Charlotte, my sweetie, so she can increase her cash reserves.
David, my brother, so he and his wife can decrease their debt or start saving for my nephews' education
Bob, my brother, to help cover the cost of my nieces' education
Cecily, my sister, to help cover the cost of my nieces' education
My parents, just to thank them for all the financial support they have given me over my life.

10. Five things that are not where they belong

The key to my safety deposit box
My passport
At the moment my eye glasses (they are not on my face)
A stack of papers on my desk at home
Perhaps my dog, Cosmo (he has a knack at going where he does not belong

Five, Ten or Fifteen People you want to complete this:

no one
no one
no one
no one
no one

I got a job!

2007-06-22T17:04:00.001-07:00

Hurray! I got a job. Space Systems Loral offered me a job this week and I accepted. I start on July 16th. My current job ends on June 29th. So I have a blissful two weeks off with no major worries. I need a vacation so this is great.

C. and I will visit Kings Canyon National Park the weekend after my NGC job ends. After we get back we are toying with the idea of a road trip up the northern California coast with the dogs. We haven't done a major trip with the dogs yet but I think it will be fun and educational. We may rent a car big enough to put the dog's kennels in so they can be safe and have more room than the tiny kennels we have in the Prius.

Month of Interviews

2007-06-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

This has been the month of interviews. I had 5 last week. One on Wednesday with Lockheed Martin. One on Wednesday with BAE. One on Thursday with Quark. Three on Friday with Lockheed Martin. Quark is pursuing other candidates or in other words Quark is not interested in me. I don't want the job at BAE and I think the chances are slim they would offer it to me. I was just not a good match for the job. I'm still waiting to hear from Lockheed Martin. I felt good about three of the Lockheed interviews and luke warm about one.

I am also still waiting to here from Loral Space Systems since my interview with them on May 16th. I would really like to work there but the longer I don't hear the more I feel like they won't be making a job offer.

I am very tired of interviewing and job searching. I just fervently hope each day to get a job offer. I worry more and more when I don't get any offers. Sigh.

The diet I had hoped to be in the midst of has rather plateaued. I seem to be hovering around 180 lbs. Oh well at least I'm not 186 anymore. I'm hoping once I get a new job lined up I'll have more time and motivation to do the "diet" right (eat healthy, exercise more, no more I feel bummed junk food snacks).

The camping trip to Kings Canyon in July will be a nice break even though I am the campout leader for Loma Prieta GLS. It will be nice to be out in nature with C., get a break from work, and get a break from the dogs.

So the diet begins ...

2007-05-07T20:36:00.000-07:00

TODAY.

I am keeping track of my weight lose, exercise, eating habits, etc. using fitday.com. For those curious about checking out my progress day to day I'm keeping a journal at fitday.com. So I'm starting at 185.5 lbs and shooting for 150 lbs on Sept. 9th. Possibly the one thing I like about dieting once I get started is keeping logs and records.

Just blathering

2007-04-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

I got a replacement cell phone. No more chew marks on my little Cingular Samsung phone.

I weighed myself and I'm nearly as heavy as I have ever been at 183 lbs. I think I got up to 186 five years ago. This is motivating me a little to be healthier. I had a healthy salad for lunch yesterday and a veggie sub for dinner with fizzy water. However I lacked getting exercise yesterday. Today I had a good lunch and breakfast but gave into a yummy mocha on the way to work. I did take the dogs on a 30 minute walk so got a little bit of exercise.

Job searching carries on. I had a phone interview yesterday with Apple that I believe will lead to a face-to-face interview. I have another phone interview today at 4 p.m. with Mellanox Technologies. And I have a third phone interview on Monday at 8:30 a.m. with another group at Apple. A SWE friend of mine is pushing my resume to hiring managers at Loral in Palo Alto.

At work I am having to work the 2nd shift which I just don't like very much. I am working from noon to 10 p.m. M-F. I miss my evenings with C. We do get mornings now but it just doesn't feel the same as the evenings. Two people at work have recently found jobs. I'm so envious!

One Year Gap

2007-04-05T12:50:00.000-07:00

Oh my ... it has been over a year since I got to my poor blog, Cathy's LOGS.

Updates ...

The household has grown from 2 to 4 as of Feb 2006. 2 furry friends have joined us, Astro and Cosmo, extraordinary basenji dogs! Astro and Cosmo are nearly 1 year and 4 months old now.
Work is closing down the SJ facility and moving the work to Illinois. As a result, I'm out of a job as of June 29th. If you ask me how I am, I'm likely to bore you with intense details of how much I hate job searching.
Consumer Report -- We got a brand new 2007 sage (green) colored Toyota Prius in October and a big old King Sized bed in February. Both items are quite luxerious. I am enjoying being able to drive in the car pool lane.
I have cut down my hiking from once a week to maybe once a month. Instead I do more dog walking, working, or movie watching. I want to get back to hiking but need to decide what to do with the dogs (take them with us on the hike, put them in the pet hotel, find a pet sitter, etc. etc.).
C. has added another volunteer job to her list. She now volunteers at Sally Leibers office once a week for an hour or two. She also spends lots of time at the dog park with Astro and Cosmo much to their delight.
My weight is 178 lbs. I want to get back in better physical condition and lose 30+ lbs at a nice slow rate. However ... I seem to be having difficulty find the motivation to do this. I continue to hover around the high 170s. Oh well.

I just put money in the soda machine looking forward to a Mountain Dew and instead a diet iced green tea came out. This is a decided dissappointment when you are looking for a Mtn. Dew.

Cosmo chewed up my cell phone last night. It fell out of my pocket on the couch unbeknownst to me and he found it later and had a chewfest. The front little screen with a nice clock time was punctured but the inside screen still works and the phone works. It just has loads of teeth marks on it. We got insurance on our phones with just this kind of event in mind. Perhaps I swing by the cell phone store after work and see if they can replace it with a new one.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2006-03-24T10:19:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday to me.

Happy Birthday dear meeeeeeeee!

Happy Birthday to me!

I'm 45 years old. For more info than you ever wanted to know about your birth date.
You entered: 3/24/1961

Your date of conception was on or about 1 July 1960 which was a Friday.
You were born on a Friday under the astrological sign Aries.
The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2437382.5.
The golden number for 1961 is 5.
The epact number for 1961 is 13.
The year 1961 was not a leap year
Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 2/15/1961 and ending 2/4/1962. You were born in the Chinese year of the Ox.
As of 3/24/2006 1:23:57 PM EST
- You are 45 years old.
- You are 540 months old.
- You are 2,348 weeks old.
- You are 16,436 days old.
- You are 394,477 hours old.
- You are 23,668,643 minutes old
- You are 1,420,118,637 seconds old
Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 6.43287671232877 years old. (You're still chasing cats!)
There are 365 days till your next birthday on which your cake will have 46 candles. Those 46 candles produce 46 BTUs,or 11,592 calories of heat (that's only 11.5920 food Calories!). You can boil 5.26 US ounces of water with that many candles.
In 1961 there were approximately 4.2 million births in the US.
In 1961 the US population was approximately 179,323,175 people, 50.6 persons per square mile.
In 1961 in the US there were approximately 1,523,000 marriages (8.5%) and 393,000 divorces (2.2%)
In 1961 in the US there were approximately 1,712,000 deaths (9.5 per 1000)
Your birthstone is Aquamarine
Your birth tree is Hazelnut Tree, the Extraordinary

Charming, undemanding, very understanding, knows how to make an impression, active fighter for social cause, popular, moody and capricious lover, honest and tolerant partner, precise sense of judgement.
The moon's phase on the day you wereborn was in its first quarter.

2006-03-17T13:09:00.000-08:00

You Should Weigh 171

If you weigh less than this, you either have a fast metabolism or are about to gain weight.
If you weigh more than this, you may be losing a few pounds soon!

How Much Do You Weigh?

Pretty spooky ... I weighed 170 lbs yesterday and 171 only a couple days ago.

2006-03-17T13:01:00.000-08:00

You Are Sunshine

Soothing and calm

You are often held up by others as the ideal

But too much of you, and they'll get burned

You are best known for: your warmth

Your dominant state: connecting

What Type of Weather Are You?

2006-03-16T13:11:00.000-08:00

170 lbs

2006-03-15T16:05:00.000-08:00

171.0 lbs

Despite not working out much, I am losing weight. I think it is because I haven't been eating big meals.

2006-03-10T15:21:00.000-08:00

173.0 lbs

Finally got to the gym! Had a decent workout.

2006-03-02T18:42:00.000-08:00

Work is still busy but I have a couple days vacation tomorrow and Monday. Phew. I'm here at work late trying to finish up my latest assignment before I take off for vacation. I haven't been able to fit in work outs. Phooey.

2006-02-28T13:47:00.000-08:00

173.5 lbs

Work is incredibly busy so I sacraficed the work out yesterday but managed to squeeze it in today.

2006-02-24T12:38:00.000-08:00

173.0 lbs

2006-02-22T13:16:00.000-08:00

173.5 lbs

2006-02-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

175.0 lbs

2006-02-20T13:00:00.000-08:00

177.0 lbs

2006-02-17T16:25:00.000-08:00

177.0 lbs

Worked out at the very end of the day today. It felt good to get right back in the gym after missing day.

2006-02-16T13:00:00.000-08:00

I was too busy at work today to fit in a work out. Sigh.

2006-02-15T15:45:00.000-08:00

178.0 lbs

Bad day yesterday at work. Today was OK but I'm still recovering from yesterday. It wasn't a very good Valentine's day although dinner out after work was nice. Poor sweetie of mine got an earful on the bad day at work though.

2006-02-14T13:00:00.000-08:00

177.0 lbs

2006-02-13T15:39:00.000-08:00

179.0 lbs

I led a hike for GLS on Sunday. It went well. The weather was awesome and the scenery was nice. It was a mostly woodsy hike with some exposed parts with nice views of the woodsy valleys. We saw some nice big redwoods in the valley on the Pomponio trail.

2006-02-10T15:58:00.000-08:00

177.0 lbs

Ah shot ... puppy class is cancelled tomorrow. The instructor has a back injury and has been forbidden to go back to work this weekend. So the lessons will start hopefully next Saturday (if her back is well).

2006-02-09T14:25:00.000-08:00

177.0 lbs

Don't you just hate it when the sunny days fall during the week when you are stuck indoors. Grrrr! I hope the sunny weather holds out for my hike on Sunday and for puppy training class on Saturday.

Its my night to cook. I would like cooking better if I could walk in the kitchen and the menu is all planned out with instructions on how to cook it. It is the deciding what to cook that I don't like so much. The actual cooking isn't so bad once I get started. I much prefer washing dishes. I wonder what the ratio would be of folks who woud rather cook than do the dishes vs those who would rather do the dishes than cook.

2006-02-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

176.0 lbs

2006-02-07T13:01:00.000-08:00

176.0 lbs

2006-02-06T16:09:00.000-08:00

177.0 lbs

Astro and Cosmo

2006-02-03T08:31:00.000-08:00

178.0 lbs

Here is a picture of the new puppies on my lap. Astro is the reddish brown and white puppy while Cosmo is the black and white puppy.

2006-02-02T15:26:00.000-08:00

177.5 lbs

The puppies are here. They are small and cute cute cute. They wiggle. They bite. They chew. They whine. They sleep. They cuddle. They play. They pee and poo -- the usual puppy stuff.

Cosmo is a bit of a bully while Astro is sweeter. But Astro will let Cosmo know when he is too rough. Astro lay on my lap and slept yesterday while Cosmo found Charlotte's lap. It was amazing how wiggly they were one minute and how still the next when they fell asleep.

I'm a bit overwhelmed by the puppies. I worry that I am doing things wrong in terms of training them. I'll hang in there and follow Charlotte's lead on training until we start puppy kindergarten on Feb 11th.

2006-02-01T13:07:00.000-08:00

179 lbs

The puppies are coming! The puppies are coming! Cosmo and Astro are on their way. In about 35 minutes they will be getting off the jet and be picked up by Charlotte! When I get home I'll meet them.

2006-01-31T11:33:00.000-08:00

180.0 lbs

2006-01-30T15:12:00.000-08:00

181.5 lbs

Got myself to the gym today after a lazy weekend. I was going to go geocaching Saturday but it was cancelled and all I ended up doing was running errands with Charlotte and not getting any exercise on Saturday. Sunday was spent getting to Berkeley and watching nieces Eva and Marlena in a gymnastics meet: an afternoon with my butt on a chair. Oh well. I'm back on track today.

2006-01-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

Another day of not working out. Uh Oh.

2006-01-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

I didn't work out today or weigh in. It has been such a roller coaster week that I decided to just rest today and not push myself to do anything in paritcular.

2006-01-25T13:00:00.000-08:00

178.5 lbs

2006-01-24T13:00:00.000-08:00

179.5 lbs

2006-01-23T15:09:00.000-08:00

Forgot my shorts today so no playing hamster on the treadmill. Running in jeans just doesn't work for me. Instead I took a forty minute walk along the Coyote Creek trail of which part borders my work parking lot. I decided not to weigh myself today after the walk. So tune in tomorrow for the latest weight.

Is TV bad for your mental health? Charlotte thinks so and a book I'm reading thinks so. The book is "Beating the Blues : New Approaches to Overcoming Dysthymia and Chronic Mild Depression" by Michael E. Thase, Susan S. Lang. But I love to watch TV. Is my love of TV making my mental health worse? Charlotte had me tipping towards trying to wean myself off TV yesterday but I'm not quite convinced yet. I keep remembering how much I enjoyed my TV before Charlotte came into my life and how it didn't feel like it was detrimental to my mental health. I find myself imagining ways to watch TV secretly so Charlotte doesn't know I'm doing it. Why do I feel a need to hide it from Charlotte? Maybe because I'm ashamed of my TV watching. I might wander around the internet and see what other opinions I can find on the affect of TV on mental health.

2006-01-19T14:10:00.000-08:00

181.0 lbs

2006-01-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

181.0 lbs

2006-01-17T13:00:00.000-08:00

180.0 lbs

2006-01-16T09:51:00.000-08:00

182.0 lbs

Name That Puppy!

We haven't picked out names yet for our puppies. Any suggestions? We have some in mind but could use more suggestions.

2006-01-12T07:53:00.000-08:00

181.0 lbs

CCC and I have purchased two male Basenji Puppies due to arrive on Feb 1, 2006. Here they are as of January 8, 2006.

We ended up picking this breed based on

desire for a dog that doesn't bark a lot - Basenjis don't bark (although they do yodel and whine)
desire for a clean dog - Basenjis clean themselves a bit like cats do
desire for a short haired dog
desire for a unique dog
desire for an intelligent dog
desire for a dog that isn't too large
we liked the pictures of the Basenjis in the books we poured through and on the internet

We got two dogs because there will be times we will be leaving the dogs at home (going to work, hiking at parks that don't allow dogs, etc.) and we didn't want to leave one dog all by his/her lonesome. We picked males because that was what was available from the breeder we choose to purchase them from. The dogs will keep each other company when we have to leave them home alone.

CCC will be roughly 75% reponsible for the dog care and I'm roughly 25% responsible for it -- mostly because I'm off at work 8 hours a day and CCC is home most days and she is the one who really really wanted to have pet dogs and she is more experienced with animal care. She has had many other pets in her life but never a dog.

We have stacks of books from the library about dog care sitting in the living room. CCC is busily reading them and figuring out how to prepare for the arrival of our new family members. I haven't started reading any yet but will soon. We also intend on signing up for puppy training classes.

For those who want to know even more about Basenji's check out the comments on this post with a link to a blog by two Basenjis: Scootis & Squish.

2006-01-11T01:00:00.000-08:00

182.0 lbs

2006-01-10T13:00:00.000-08:00

183.0 lbs

2006-01-09T13:00:00.000-08:00

182.0 lbs

2006-01-06T13:00:00.000-08:00

182.0 lbs