Ack ... major non-blogging time since January. I would have thought being unemployed would leave me with lots of time to blog but ... no ... it doesn't. Job hunting is keeping me busy as is my new relationship that is almost one years old now (May 17 I'll have known Charlotte for a year).

Charlotte and I went on a backpack trip a couple weekends ago. We drove to the Henry Coe Hunting Hollow entrance on Wednesday morning and hiked 6.3 miles and 1500+ feet up to Kelly Lake. We set up camp there and did day hikes or hanging out for the next 3 days.

On day one we had a challenging hike to Pacheco Falls. It was a steep up followed by a long gradual down to the Falls. Then we had to retrace our steps to return. We climbed 2000 feet and hiked 9 miles. We got to see a nice garter snake on the way up the hill near the Falls. On the way we searched for two geocaches and found neither one of them. That was annoying. The falls did not have much water in them but were still beautiful to look at. The place where you could view the falls was riddled with poison oak so we didn't get to sit and eat lunch while admiring the view. I took a couple of nice pictures. Charlotte did a sketch but not of the falls.

On day two we just stayed at the lake all day. We did attempt to walk around the lake but found the route had too much poison oak on it so instead we found a nice shady spot in the trees with a view of the lake. I read allowed to Charlotte while she did a sketch. One fellow showed up on Friday so we no longer had the lake to ourselves. He was real quiet and unobtrusive though so it still felt like we were sorta alone. We got in a skinny dip!

On day three, Saturday, we went off on a day hike on an unmaintained trail. We failed to stay by the creek and lost the little indication of trail that was there. We ended up having to bushwack up hill through very thick dense bushes. We were both a little worried but after looking at the maps we realized if we just kept at it we would eventually find one of the three trails that surrounded the area we were in. We finally did break out of the bushes on to a delightful grassy hillside. We had lunch and revelled in the lack of bushes. After lunch we hiked up the grassy hills and found one of the trails and got back on course. Both of us had many wonderful scratches to show off our adventure on our arms and legs. We also tempted the poison oak goddess many times. After the hike we tecnu'ed ourselves and went swimming in the lake. That felt good. In the end Charlotte got a bit of poison oak and I managed to avoid it altogether. I'm not quite sure how I did that!! That night we gave each other massages while listening to the big group of 10 people camped on the other side of a hill from us. We missed our privacy of the previous nights.

We saw and heard lots of animals. Here is the list I made: garter snake, wild turkey, horned toad, mystery red bug, toad, mouse, turtle, coots, ruddy ducks, bats, swallows, red wing blackbirds, fish, bumble bees, ants, locust with orange wings, deer, hawk, turkey vulture, lizard, squirrel, frog, quail, dove, owl, malards, malard ducklings, orange red dragon fly, and a gopher. The gopher let us use his home for our kitchen ;-) It was cute to see his little head poke out of a hole nearby as we cooked dinner.

On this trip Charlotte and I got to know our camping routine together better. We figured out how we like to cook dinners (who does what and how we do it), ways to be more comfortable in the tent, etc. I got upset about some stuff and it all came out the day we were hiking out. I can say now that one unique way to get up a steep hill with a backpack on is to cry about stuff and discuss it with your girlfriend and use that to distract you from the discomfort of the uphill! The hill seemed to be over very quickly because we were so busy discussing things and working things out. Phew. We did a decent job of communicating and I felt better on the long downhill slog to the cars. It was a good trip. We look forward to doing more backpacking trips together.

I'm at a low point right now in my job search. That's because I got another rejection today. Those always hit me hard and it takes me a while to get my confidence back. This time I didn't get another interview because I didn't answer the "C" programming question with enough depth. Sigh. At least I did have a phone interview. I had a couple of real interviews in April but did not get the jobs. At least it was good to know that I could at least get job interviews. I need to keep plugging away. I have joined a group called
ProMatch. Its a nice networking, informational, and support group for finding a job. I highly recommend it to others searching for a job.

Oh ... pictures from backpacking will soon be up at my Webshots site. Look for the obvious folder which I will label something like Henry Coe Backpack May 2004. Feel free to check out other albums too.

OK .. so what has happened to me since Oct 15. I was indeed laid off at the end of October. My last day at work was October 31st. I have been searching for a job ever since.

I did most of my searching via web sites and some networking in November and December. With the coming of the new year I have been buckling down and really working on the job search. I went to an ASME meeting called "Building a Whole Career." At this presentation I heard about ProMatch and decided to look into what it was. I went to a ProMatch foundation workshop meeting the first Friday of January at a place called the Connect Center in Sunnyvale. It is a great resource center for job searching. They do workshops on resume writing, interviewing, networking, and career exploration. Last Friday I went to the ProMatch orientation meeting and filled out lots of forms and got on the ProMatch waiting list. The group is very popular and very effective in helping folks to find work. They estimated that it will be 5 weeks before we are contacted and asked if we want to join the group. While I wait, I'll be taking the free workshops at Connect center. I'll keep going until I have done all of them or found a job

I have been doing pretty well with networking. I sent an email to everyone I could think of in October telling them I was job searching. I also went to 3 holiday parties and mentioned to folks at these parties that I was looking for a job. I also networked at a FrontRunner's coffee after the Saturday morning run. I'm trying to get more involved with SWE again. I volunteered to be the SCV web master. I have been watching the meetings to try and attend them and also the monthly lunch get togethers. I'm slowly getting better at networking and understanding how to use it to my advantage in a job search.

CCC and I have had lots more time together since I was laid off. The honeymoon is over and we are both working hard at improving our communication and getting used to each other's foibles. This has taken up much of the time I am not job searching. I have little time left for blogging. CCC and I have gone on many wonderful hikes this fall and winter: Santa Teresa county park, Briones regional park, Diablo foothill regional park, Uvas Canyon, Point Lobos, Nisene Marks, Fall Creek, Skyline Open Space Preserve, Castle Rock, and Henry Coe are the ones that come to mind.

CCC and I went to Philadelphia for Christmas to my sister's house. My parents were there too. CCC got to meet half my family. Now the only person she hasn't met is my younger brother, David. I have met all of her siblings and her parents. We had a nice visit to her parent's in Carmel about a week ago. We hiked at Pt. Lobos and had a wonderful Thai dinner afterwards.

CCC is quite the movie buff so I have seen lots of movies on the big screen and on DVD or VCR. We have found the video section at the Mtn. View library and have taken out many movies to watch. Its free of charge although there is a steep late fee. We watched the Shipping News and Two Week's Notice recently. I liked the Shipping News. The scenery of Nova Scotia was marvelous and I liked the story. Two Week's Notice was funny and a good movie to cheer us up after watching Tuesdays with Morie earlier in the day.

Long time, no post. Things have been unsettled at work to say the least. First for most of September it was a waiting game to hear who won the ACITS contract. We never did find out in September. We found out in October who won the ACITS: QSS/Raytheon. Then a new thing to worry about arose. I found out that my task is going to be closed so essentially I'm out of a job when the task closes. That will probably be towards the end of October. Ug. I didn't seem to have any urge to blog through out all this.

I have another geocaching hunt under my belt. This past Saturday we went to Diablo Foothill regional park and searched out 8 caches in the shadow of Mt. Diablo. One cache was way up on a hill that took some steep bushwacking to get to the top. We also charged through this yellow plant that coated our pants legs with this sticky substance. CCC and I saw a tarantula. I got a picture of it. On Sunday CCC and I dragged her brother along with us to find an urban cache in San Francisco. We found it eventually but got off track when we didn't pay pay attention to the cache being only 140 feet away according to the GPS. We went up more when we should have gone down. I failed to see that there was a staircase to the downward side of the street. Oh well. We eventually figured it out. CCC's brother was jazzed about finding the cache. I'm up to 41 caches found now since I started geocaching last October.

Hey ... here is my resume in case any of my blog readers know of a position I might qualify for :-)

• 
  Cathy's Resume
  

Check this out ... sorta fun:

My inner child is ten years old!

The adult world is pretty irrelevant to me. Whether
I'm off on my bicycle (or pony) exploring, lost
in a good book, or giggling with my best
friend, I live in a world apart, one full of
adventure and wonder and other stuff adults
don't understand.

How Old is Your Inner Child?
brought to you by Quizilla

I have always told folks I'm an overgrown 10 year old!

I led a hike on Saturday to San Bruno Mtn. Park south of San Francisco. The hike started off overcast but the clouds burned off as the hike progressed so we finished up the hike with a blue sky and sunshine. We had many nice views of San Francisco from the park. We had a nice view of the bay bridge, the airport, a glimpse of the tops of the golden gate bridge, Candle Stick park, Mt. Diablo, Mt. Tam, Montara Mtn, the downtown buildings, and the Pacific Ocean. Only 3 of us did the hike but we had a good time talking and hiking together.

Sunday I slept in (ahhhhhh) and went to a barbecue in the afternoon with CCC. We left the barbecue early to head to my house to watch a DVD. I just got a new DVD player. We watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It was my second time watching the movie. I have my own DVD of it that I got when I bought my new computer a year and a half ago. I had watched it once on my computer. It was nicer to watch it on the bigger TV screen and with CCC.

On Friday and Saturday night we went to watch Stanford women's volleyball matches. Stanford beat University of San Diego on Friday night but lost to University of Florida (the Gators) on Saturday night.

My DVD player arrived but I was lacking the correct devices to hook it up. I have an "old" TV that does not have the proper outlets for the DVD cables. I just went internet surfing and bought a device to convert my old single cable outlet to a set of DVD compatible outlets. I will go pick it up at Circuit City this afternoon after getting the proper credit card from home for proof I'm me. I also got the two DVD's I ordered. I got myself the LOR movies. When the third one comes out, I'll buy it too. [LOR = Lord of the Rings]. Nothing is quite so frustrating as having a new toy and not being able to play with it yet.

Labor day weekend was nice. I got 30 hours of sleep: 10 hours each night.

Saturday CCC and I went to see Finding Nemo before heading to Rodeo to have dinner at one of CCC's good friend's, JJ. Dinner was yummy: roast chicken, asparagus, fresh baked bread, and some good wine. The conversation was somewhat dominated by T, JJ's friend. She had a load to get off her chest and couldn't stop talking about it. We all politely listened but CCC said later that she was disappointed that I didn't get to talk more with JJ. At 10:30 p.m. we said goodbye and headed to the Chabot science center to view Mars with a telescope. We stood in line for the telescope for 15 minutes and only moved about 10 feet. It was very crowded. We decided to bail and head home. We entertained our fellow line standers by describing what we saw when we took our glasses off and looked at Mars. I saw a snow flake. CCC saw a tree.

Sunday I helped CCC clean at her condo. Then she took me to see Matrix Reloaded as a thank you for helping her clean. I liked the special effects in the movie but found the plot just way too confusing.

Monday CCC and I went hiking at Skyline Open Space Preserve. We hiked from the Russian Ridge parking lot, past Alpine Lake, along the ridge, around Horseshoe Lake, and back. Its a beautiful little hike that not a lot of people know about. It was very hot though. We didn't get to the park till 2 p.m. when it was thoroughly baked by the sun. We still had fun despite the heat. We saw oodles of lizards on this hike. We saw some coots at Horseshoe lake.

My therapist has recovered and weekly therapy has resumed for me. I'm almost having to get used to it all over. I got accustomed to not going the last month or so.

Yesterday CCC and I did our usual walk from our neighborhood to Shoreline park. Then we watched the video, Chicago. Oh and CCC and I had dinner at my place. It is sort of nice to sit down and have dinner with someone instead of my usual cook a frozen dinner and then eat it while sitting on the couch watching TV.

Its been a nice week for the most part. CCC and I have been hanging out almost everyday. Wednesday we cooked our left over camp food for dinner and then last night we ate the last of the left over food. We had cheese tortellini with pesto sauce on it, corn on the cob, fruit salad, and mixed vegetables {with no evil mushy beans which I dislike ;-) }. We meant to have ice cream for dessert but we left it at CCC's house and we were eating at my house. Ah, but tonight we're eating at CCC's place and so will get that ice cream I imagine. After dinner we are going to go for a walk. I'm going to suggest we walk all the way to the dam at the Charleston Slough and back to burn off some of the much fat we ate the last two nights. We watched the video Songcatcher last night. I really enjoyed it. It even had a little lesbian content. I enjoyed the singing of the mountain people in Appalachia. This is a good movie to rent if you're looking for one.

I gave in to my desire to buy a DVD player to hook up to my TV. I bought it on the internet. It should arrive around Sept. 3. I was getting tired of watching DVD's on my little laptop screen and was too lazy to figure out how to hook up my lap top to the TV.

My kitchen sink drain is partly plugged. The water drains very slowly. If I leave the water on, its flow is faster than the drain flow so the water would overflow the sink. Fortunately I haven't done that! Its annoying so I expect soon I'll get a plumber to come in and fix it.

For once I'm staying home for a labor day weekend. I'm hoping to catch up on sleep. I may be able to sleep in tomorrow, Sunday, and Monday. That would be marvelous. Although I'm willing to get up a little earlier if CCC and I decide to go hiking or make a day trip somewhere. The U.S. Open tennis tournament is on TV this weekend. I might tune in to watch some of it.

I took a day off on Friday and CCC and I rented a red Mustang convertible and drove it through the Sierra's to Buckeye campground near Bridgeport, CA. It was a beautiful drive (after we got through the Sacramento valley part). We got there at 4 p.m. and spent some time trying to find where W. got a campsite. Turns out we were the first to arrive so we picked out a couple sites and left a note on the camp bulletin board as to where the campsites were. W. found us at 5 p.m. and let us know that it would be only 6 of us on the campout and that the remaining 3 were going to be arriving late that night.

We cooked our dinner and enjoyed chatting with W. and admiring the stars. We saw Mars. We went to bed at 9ish. While we were sleeping the other 3 arrived. We all slept in on Saturday. We ate breakfast and then headed to the Buckeye hot springs a mile down the road. We hung out at the hot springs for several hours. K1 and K2 left to go take a look at Mono Lake and do some shopping. CCC and I decided to walk back to the campground. W and K3 stayed at the hot springs for some one on one time. CCC and I had a nice walk back and then napped in our tent for an hour or so. We were being baked in our tent and decided to get up and walk down the hill to the Buckeye creek. While I soaked my feet in the cold water, CCC wandered around exploring the creek near where I plopped down. I had wacked my toe against a rock getting into one of the natural hot spring tubs ... ouch ... it was all swollen so I figured giving it a good soak in cold water would be helpful. We stayed about an hour and then headed back to camp to get our contribution to the evenings pot luck ready.

We supplied crackers and cheese (Brie and Blue Cheese), a bottle of wine, and a bowl of Strawberries. The other contributions were an excellent squash soup and a tossed salad. After cleaning up after dinner, K2 started a fire. W and K3 got out their drums and did some drumming for us. Then everyone got in a silly mood and started belting out all sorts of tunes. It was very fun. W then played her big drum and just kept going with a single beat. It made us all very sleepy so we put the fire out and headed to our tents.

Sunday morning we got up around 8:30 a.m. for a pancake breakfast. K3 brought buttermilk pancake mix and made pancakes for us that morning. I love pancakes and I had about 5 of them. Yummy. After cleaning up breakfast most folks started in on packing up camp and getting ready for the long drive home. CCC wanted to clean off in the creek so she went off with towel in hand. Meanwhile I packed most of our stuff into the Mustang. When I was ready to go I yelled at CCC to come up. She had missed saying goodbye to the others so I gave her a hug for each person she missed.

We finished packing the car and were on the road around noon. We had the top down and enjoyed the views and the sun shine as we drove home. We stopped at Pinecrest at the Steam Donkey restaurant for a late lunch at 3:30 p.m. We both had the chicken club sandwich. After lunch we pretty much drove right home except for a couple of gas stops or restroom stops. We got home at 7:30 p.m. It didn't take long to unpack the car. Then CCC and I parted company and went to our separate abodes to take showers and get some sleep! It was a long tiring drive.

It felt good to sleep in a soft bed last night. I didn't want to get up at 6 a.m. this morning. Tonight CCC and I are going to go walking probably at Shoreline park.

I'm taking a spam shower today. My Yahoo account is being peppered with those darn virus email messages. My delete key finger is getting tired. I'll be glad when this virus dies out. Ames Research Center has done a great job of filtering the messages so I'm not getting any on my work account.

I went to a Giants baseball game last night with CCC and my brother's family. The Giants beat the Braves 2-1. We had seats way up high in the nose bleed section. There was a great view of the bay bridge from our seats and we also had a nice view of the harbor right next to the stadium. CCC made a sketch of the bridge while sitting in her seat at the game. We got some of those yummy garlic fries to munch on later in the game because someone had bought them but didn't want them. CCC and I scarfed up most of them. We were game to play scavenger!

After the game as we walked back to the car I stepped on dog poop. When we got in the car, A. noticed right away the bad smell and that led me to discover the poop on my shoes. I did my best to wipe it all off with some toilet paper but it still made the car smell bad on the drive home. When we got to my brother's house, I left my shoes outside and went in to wash my hands. Then I went outside and borrowed a brush and the hose to clean off my shoes some more. I got most of the poop off this time. Although this a.m. I could still smell poop on them and discovered some stubborn poop in the small grooves of my sole. I believe I got all of it out this morning. I decided to wear different shoes to work today to be on the safe side.

This past Saturday CCC and I showed up for the GLS hike I was leading to Portola State Park (Peters Creek Loop). We were the only ones to show up but we did the hike anyways. It was a beautiful day. We saw very cool spider webs, two snakes, a lizard, and lots of poison oak on this hike. After the hike we decided to drive to Pescardero to have dinner at Duartes. I had some fish and chips and a cheese cake for dessert. CCC had some salmon and a olallie-berry pie for dessert. I tried her pie and found I didn't care for it. After dinner we drove back to my place and CCC offered to give me a shoulder massage. My shoulders had been aching on the hike from the heavy pack I was carrying (I was carrying extra water). The massage was wonderful and extended beyond my shoulders :-) It was a nice way to end a day with CCC.

Sunday CCC and I went to the GLS picnic at Sanborn. There was a fair turn out of people. The food was typical barbecue fare. The cool part of the picnic was the chocolate tasting. A baker gave a talk on the chocolate he makes (scharfenberger chocolate) and gave us three different samples to taste. It was delicious. After the picnic ended around 4 p.m., CCC and I went to my place and parted to eat dinner (I think) and then got back together to rent a video and watch it that night. We watched Go Fish. It was my second viewing and I had the same reaction that it was a good story but there was too much jumping around to different locales and scenes for me. After the movie CCC headed home and I went off to bed.

Monday we couldn't resist it and CCC and I got together again. We took a long walk to and in Shoreline park. We saw lots of Pelicans near the bay. We walked the last bit of the walk in the dark. We took quite a long walk.

An odd site but it might tickle your funny bone if you are sufficiently computer geeky

Well ... geez ... two therapy cancellations in a row which means four weeks without therapy. Instead I had hardware therapy. I popped over to the Orchard Supply Hardware from my therapist's deserted office and wandered about looking at all the cool gadgets. I ended up buying a foot stool for my kitchen, a rubber mat to put my little fridge on in the upstairs bedroom (if only the fridge would walk up the stairs for me), and this cool free standing thermometer/rain gauge. The thermometer and rain gauge are attached to a black metal pole with a point on one end. You pound the pointy part of the pole into the dirt till its solid and you have the height you want. I put it next to the cement patio corner in my backyard. Its big enough that I can read the temperature from inside the house.

Brain fart -- Hmmm ... another alternate therapy: hot tub therapy at Watercourse Way in Palo Alto. Maybe next time.

My weekend was fun. Friday night CCC and I walked to downtown Mountain View and had dinner at an Italian restaurant. I like walking to a restaurant -- you get to burn off a small percentage of the food you eat at the restaurant on the walk home.

Saturday I went geocaching with OAW. The usual crowd that has been showing up for geocaching was there. CCC and I got lost twice on the way to Briones park. The first oopsy was taking 580 East instead of 580 west to Oakland. I had to stop by P.'s house in Oakland to give her back her boots that she left in my car way back in early June. I realized I was heading the wrong direction when I saw signs for 680. So I got off the freeway and on it again in the opposite direction. The boots were safely deposited at P.'s home then we headed to 24 to get to Briones. We looked for the Happy Valley exit but it never appeared and what do you know, we ran into 680 again. We did another turn around and on the way back saw an Upper Happy Valley exit and took it. We finally got to the park at 10:50 about 50 minutes late. However the gang was still waiting for us as it turned out that almost everyone but our intrepid leader, S., was late.

The geocaching was fun. The second cache we found was hilarious. We spent ages wandering around looking for it. Finally CCC spotted an unusual looking cow pie which she thought might be the disguised cache, but she didn't want to pick it up to find out. So yours truly braved picking up a real cow pie to see if it was fake. It was fake. It was a very good plastic replica of a cow pie glued on top of a gallon container that was buried in the ground. I also got a vast amount of burrs in my socks and shoe laces while looking for this cache:

The rest of the caches were more typical. At one cache we left CCC behind to finish her sketching and when she came to find us she took a wrong turn and hiked quite a ways on the wrong trail. We got back to the trail and I was really worried when I couldn't find her. I ran up the hill to see if she walked up it and to get a view of the trails. No sign of her when I got to the top, but on the way down she popped around the corner much to my relief. We found one last cache and then headed back to the cars. We stopped at a group camp to drink some water. We were all quite thirsty especially SL's dog and SH's dog. It was good to find this camp and refill on water.

We went out to dinner in Orinda after the geocaching. We ate at a Greek restaurant. I had a gyro and Greek fries and a coke. It was an excellent gyro. The fries were only Greek in that some kind of Greek spice was sprinkled on them. Otherwise they seemed incredibly like French Fries or should I say Freedom Fries. For desert we walked down the street to an ice cream store. I had a single scoop cone of Almond Mocha Fudge ice cream. It was very yummy and a nice way to end the geocaching trip.

Sunday I got to sleep in. I went to bed at 11:30 p.m. Saturday night and got up at 11:30 a.m. Sunday morning. Hurray ... 12 hours of sleep in my comfy bed. I had breakfast for lunch and then headed to CCC's house. We drove over to Stanford to look at the New Guinea Sculpture Garden. It was a very relaxing afternoon and I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would. I sometimes get bored looking at art but with CCC, an artist, along it seemed more interesting. We also had fun making funny comments about the sculptures.

Sunday night I spent by myself cleaning house and watching TV. It was good to get my place cleaned up a bit. The floor was still strewn with backpacking equipment from last weekend.

I did laundry last night. One of the items to be washed was the underwear I dried out over the camp fire on the backpack trip. My oh my did it stink of smoke as did my nice fleece jacket. The wash cured the jacket of the smell but the smoke smell still lingered on the underwear. At least it was much less strong than before. Hopefully one more wash will banish the smokey smell all together.

Sleepy, sleepy, sleepy, sleepy, sleepy, sleepy, sleepy, sleepy, sleepy, sleepy, sleepy! Need coffee. Need coffee. Need coffee. Need coffee. Need coffee!

CCC and I are going to do something tonight but we are not sure what. Tomorrow we're going to S.'s OAW geocaching hike.

If anyone needs an acronym guide, let me know. I'm almost as bad as NASA is with acronyms.

Caribou Pictures in Caribou2003 album

The Lassen National Forest Caribou Wilderness backpack trip was fun despite one full day of rain. The trip turned into a base camp backpack. We hiked 2.5 miles or so to Emerald Lake on Friday. We set up camp with a blue sky and sun. We had a swim in the lake, ate dinner, and headed to bed around 9ish. CCC and I planned to sleep outside rather than in our tent but after 20 minutes it started to sprinkle on us so we moved into our tent. Soon the rain was coming down hard. It rained steadily all night. We woke up to a steady rain and a puddle under our tent and the decision from our leader W that we would not backpack to Triangle lake today because of all the rain.

First thing that morning we spent a good two hours or so putting up tarps to give us shelter from the rain for cooking etc. Three women on the trip decided to hike back to the cars that day and bail on the rest of the trip. 8 of us stayed. CCC and I took a walk in the rain while the 3 women were being hiked back to the cars. It was a gentle rain on the walk. We headed towards Rim Lake but never got there. We turned around before we found the lake to head back to camp. The rain finally started to let up a bit by dinner time. We had a nice dinner under the tarps. K. managed to get a fire lit that night with the few bits of dry wood we were able to scrounge up from the woods. That was one of the best camp fires I have ever stood around. We were all a bit chilled and it was so warm to sit around that fire. When we headed to bed that night it wasn't too rainy.

When we woke up the next day the sun was out and the skies were mostly clear. CCC, K., and I took a morning skinny dip in the lake before breakfast. If the weather was nice our leader, W., said we were going to backpack to Triangle lake, but W.'s plan was voted down with the alternate plan of staying at Emerald Lake a third night and doing a day hike to Triangle Lake that day. We had a marvelous day hike. Big puffy white clouds rolled in and out all day long. We got sprinkled on a tiny bit at lunch. We swam at Triangle lake at lunch. It was cold but fun. On the way back to camp we lost the trail and had to bush wack part of the way to Cowboy lake until we found the trail again. We climbed over lots of downed trees. We finally got back to Emerald Lake at 6:30 p.m. Most of us went for a dip in the lake again. We had another roaring campfire that night.

The next day we were hiking back to the cars. The day dawned to another day of big puffy clouds sprinkled in the sunny blue sky. We were all done with morning dips, breakfast, and packing up by 11 a.m. and had a very mellow backpack to the cars. In all we only backpacked about 5 miles but we day hiked about 12 miles and endured the day of relentless rain. It was a fun trip despite the rainy day. The drive home was nice. We didn't run into any traffic at all -- just zoomed right back to the bay area with no problems.

Sleepy, Sleepy, Sleepy. When will I ever learn that if I go to bed at 11:30 p.m. and get up at 6 a.m. I'll be tired all day. I just got sucked into TV last night: Big Brother IV, Last Comic Standing, and Law and Order. My memory seems to desert me at night as I keep saying "Oh I'll just stay up another hour, it won't be so bad tomorrow." Then tomorrow comes and ug ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Tonight CCC is coming over and we'll pack up our backpacks and put them in my car so we can take off right at 2 p.m. when I get off work on Thursday. Yesterday afternoon after work, CCC and I put up her tent to make sure all the parts were there and that there was room enough for two in the tent. There was and the tent did have all its parts. We will be camping or staying at a motel Thursday night. The backpack trip starts early Friday afternoon.

Tuolumne Meadows trip photos are up now. Go to my webshot page and select album Tuolumne2003.

Here is a picture of my cute new nephew, Max.
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My Yosemite trip was very fun but very tiring. I left the bay area at 11:30 a.m. on Friday. I made good time until highway 205 when I ran into stop and go traffic. I decided to take a lunch break at Tracy in hopes the traffic would improve when I got back on the freeway. I munched down a hamburger, fries, and frosty at Wendy's. I headed back on to 205. It was still trafficy but not as bad as before lunch. I drank lots of liquids on the drive to get well hydrated for the high altitude hikes. Highway 120 was free of traffic. I decided to give the Priest Grade road a try in the climb up to Groveland on 120. I didn't mind the driving conditions (steep and twisty) but my car minded. By the top my engine temperature gage had edged a little closer to the red zone. I stopped for a rest break, to get more gas and to let the engine cool a little just before Groveland. By the time I was done visiting the porta potty, getting something to drink, and fillin gup the car with gas, the engine temperature had dropped back to normal. Phew. The rest of the drive was uneventful but beautiful as I neared Tuolumne meadows. I arrived at the campsite at 5 p.m. to a site deserted of people but with lots of tents up. I figured most folks were on the Mt. Hoffman hike that started at 2:00 p.m. I put up my tent, got my food in the bear locker, and then fixed myself some dinner. By the time I was all done with dinner folks finally started arriving back from their day's hiking. It was a really nice group of people. We had fun socializing that night. I teamed up with one of the women's 10 year old daughter to try and start a coal fire. It was fun because the 10 year old was so inton it and hung on my every word. However we failed to start the coals. We had no lighter fluid or coal starter contraption so were trying to get them to start with newspapers. The papers just didn't stay lit long enough to catch the coals. The problem was finally solved when we found another bag of matchlight coals and this time these coals were easily lit with just a match. I head to bed around 9 p.m. as I needed lots of sleep before the hike on Saturday.

Saturday I was up at 7 a.m. after a fairly good nights sleep. I did have to rouse myself a couple times to visit the restroom because I had drunk so much liquids. I got myself some breakfast, packed up my backpack for the Clouds Rest hike, put on gobs of sun screen, and continued to drink water to keep me well hydrated. Everyone was ready for the hike by 9:30 a.m. We caught a shuttle to Tenaya Lake and were on the trail by 10:30 a.m. It was a beautiful day: sunny but with wonderful whispy white clouds wandering around the sky. The first challenge of the hike was rock hopping across a stream. Everyone managed it. Then came the big hill climb up the switch back trail. I just put my head down and trudged up it. At Sunrise junction (the top of the switch backs) we had a rest. Then we were off hiking the relatively flat portion. There were lots if flowers to gaze at on this section and one peaceful still pond. After the flat portion we started our climb up to Clouds Rest. It was so beautiful on top. We did have to coax several people over the scary rock scramble to the top. Two folks passed on the scramble and waited for us to return. About 4 folks were very glad they braved the scramble. There is an incredible view of Yosemite valley, Half Dome, and mountain peaks to be seen from Clouds Rest. There was a cute little chipmunk on Cloud's Rest wandering around looking for food handouts or crumbs. He got a raison I dropped on the ground. I didn't drop it for him but it was cute to see him nibble on it while holding it between his paws. I try to not feed animals in the wild but I have to admit it was very cute to watch this chipmunk nibble at the raison. After lunch and picture taking we started back to Tenaya Lake. At Sunrise junction we checked the time and it was 4 p.m. We started booking it down to Tenaya at that point because we wanted to catch the 5:30 p.m. shuttle. We made it to the Shuttle stop at 5:15 and caught the shuttle! If we hadn't caught the shuttle we would have been stuck there till 6:30 p.m. when the next shuttle was scheduled at the stop. Everyone was in good spirits and very pleased with the day's hike.

Saturday night I bought myself a burger at the grill and brought it back to camp and joined others who were cooking themselves dinner. We had many good conversations. Shortly after we finished dinner the sky started to darken and sporadic rain was dropping on us. We heard faint thunder too. Everyone was sort of rushing around to get rain jackets and put away stuff that needed to stay dry into the bear lockers. Then one of us noticed a rainbow in the sky. I walked out to a clearing and it was a double rainbow. I took some pictures and I hope they turn out! I headed to bed when the rain started to get more steady. I read the book I had brought with me for a bit until nature called and I had to make a trip to the restroom. I was back in my tent at 9 p.m. and went to sleep. I was woken up at 11:30 p.m. by a full bladder and noisy neighbors. I got up to go to the bathroom and maybe to ask the neighbor's to quiet down a bit. Fortunately when I got back the neighbor's had quieted down considerably so I didn't have to have a confrontation with them. I had another good nights sleep.

Sunday was the Mt. Dana hike. My preparations were a repeat of Saturday's. The only surprise was when I went to sign in for the hike, I had become a co-leader of the hike without anyone asking me if I would do it. I did say OK I'll co-lead. What they really wanted was for me to be the sweep. One of the other two leaders had her fill of sweeping the day before and the other leader didn't want to sweep either so it fell to me. I don't mind sweeping and find it more relaxing than being up front leading the way. Mt. Dana was the big hike for me. Last time I had hiked to Mt. Dana, I was mildly altitude sick and very dehydrated. I had finished the hike with a very painful headache. This time I drank like a fish all weekend to get ready for the Dana hike. I also took some aspirin before the hike and when I reached the peak. I tried to drink lots on the hike too. I drank two quarts of water but only managed to eat 2/3 of a Cliff Bar while on the hike. We had to skidaddle off the peak where I was going to eat lunch because the skies were darkening and we didn't want to be up there in a thunder storm! I had a slight stomach ache on the way up which made the last bit of the hike climbing over lots of large rock. I had to stop every 10 steps or so during the last bit to catch my breath and let my stomach settle down a bit. We determined that the stomach problem was not related to altitude because it wasn't queasiness. It was more like painful gas. Ug. When I got to the top and had a small rest and passed some wind so to speak I felt much better. I didn't have a headache. Keeping hydrated definitely helped a whole bunch. The hike itself was lots of steep switchbacks in the first half and lots of rock scrambling in the top half. It was very challenging and strenuous but two of us just trudged along in the rear trying not to think about how far it was to the top. The other woman stuck with me because she liked my pace. We made it to the top in about 3.5 hours. Then we motored down the mountain in 2 hours. I was very happy to have completed the hike without getting dehydrated or altitude sick this time.

After the hike it was time to drive home. I gave D. a ride home as his ride wasn't going to leave till Monday morning and he wanted to return Sunday night. We had a nice time catching up with each other's news. We made great time on the drive home. We ran into zero traffic. I got D. to his house in a little under 5 hours. I was home about 30 minutes later. I did do a scatter brained thing on the way home. I stopped at a gas station. I took my gas cap off and went to pump the gas when I discovered they didn't take a credit card. I had just enough gas to get home so I decided to leave and fill up the tank when I got to Mtn. View where I could use my credit card. If you haven't guessed it by now, I drove away without replacing the gas cap. I'm now short a gas cap. This afternoon I'll go to an auto parts store and see if they sell gas caps for my make of car. Oh well. It wouldn't be a proper trip without at least one snafu.

All in all it was a marvelous weekend at Yosmite. The company was good and I tackled some really challenging and beautiful hikes. I'm tired and sore this Monday but I'm not surprised. All that down hill really took it to my knees. I was groaning as I came down the stairs this morning. But I think the soreness will go away quickly. I should be back to my old self by the backpacking trip coming up this next Thursday to Monday.

I'll have pictures up by tomorrow!

Oh one last thing ... if you are going to buy a National Parks pass and are an REI member you can get the pass for $39.99 instead of $50.00 directly from the National Parks. I bought a new pass Monday.

I still haven't been called in to the court house. Jury duty feels like what being on call must feel. I'm stuck having to spend the week around town. This will mostly bug me tomorrow because I wanted to leave for Yosemite and the Double Trouble GLS trip at noon but jury duty might mess that up. I told J. I was driving myself and to expect me some time between 5 p.m. and midnight. I'm skipping the Hoffman hike (this trip could have been called Triple Trouble).

Going to walk to Mallard hill again tonight with CCC -- we need our fix before I head off for the weekend challenging myself on the hiking trails of Yosemite. After the walk I have to get the car packed with my car camping and hiking gear. I may end up making a late trip to the grocery store to buy last minute food and drink items.

I have jury duty this week. So far all it has consisted of is looking at the jury web page everyday to see if I am supposed to report to a court house. So far the only messages I have gotten on the web page are check the web page again between this time and this time. I'm hoping that this continues all week long and I don't have to be on a jury. I have a backpack trip planned Aug 1-4 and if I end up on an actual jury I may have to just backpack Aug 2-3 and I'll mess up CCC's plan to car pool with me.

Last weekend was fun. My hike to Coal Mine Ridge went well. 6 people showed up for the hike. That's a nice number. The Coal Mine Ridge trails were mostly in the shade and the predicted 100+ F temperatures didn't seem to materialize. We even had a nice breeze for the last bit of the hike. We had lunch under these two big trees that had a real nice hammock strung between them. I gave the hammock a try. It was very comfy. Later CCC also gave it a try. She liked it too. Everyone enjoyed walking around the green algae covered lake.

After the hike, CCC and I drove home. I got to see her condo. CCC only lives a couple blocks away from me. We logged on to her computer to find out when Winged Migration was showing. We decided to go to the 4:15 p.m. showing at the Acquarius theatre in Palo Alto. I headed home to take a shower before the movie. The movie was awesome. I highly recommend it. Its a film about bird migrations with incredible shots of all sorts of birds. At the beginning of the film the announcer said that all of the film was film of actual birds not special effects. They must have had truly patient filmers and ones willing to fly next to the birds way up in the air (maybe using an ultra light plane) to get the shots of them flying on the migration routes. After the film I dropped CCC off and had a quiet evening at home vedging and watching TV.

Sunday CCC picked me up at 1:30 p.m. I was off to a CCC family barbecue party with her. It was held at a retirement place for folks from the military near Fairfield. It was a pool party. The swimming pool was inside but there were lots of glass doors all around it so you could see outside. I liked this I got the sense of being outdoors but didn't have to slather myself with sun screen. We had fun batting around a big beach ball with all of CCC's nieces, nephews, cousins, sisters, and sisters' husbands. After swimming we all sat outdoors under the canopies and had hamburgers, potato salad, and the other usual barbecue fare. CCC's family is a very lively bunch. It was a fun party. I was happy that I felt comfortable and my shyness was not so bad that day. I was a hit with one of CCC's aunts because I was willing to take home some left over potato salad, chocolate cake, and soda. On the drive home CCC and I had a nice long talk. We disclosed a lot of personal stuff to each other.

Yesterday I went in for my estate planning appointment with Linda Silveria, a lawyer. She convinced me to set up a revocable living trust instead of a will. I weighed all the pros and cons and thought the trust was a better option. She will be drawing up the trust and call me to come in for another appointment to go through it and be sure everything is how I desire. Its gonna cost me about $1000.00. A will would have been cheaper but I deciced the trust was worth the extra cost.

I also went walking with CCC at Shoreline park yesterday evening. Unbeknownst to us while we were walking to and from Mallard hill, L. was having Max, her second baby boy. Baby Max Roberts was born at 10:30 p.m. EST last night. I now have two nephews: Sascha and his brother Max. Max weighs 8lb 2oz and was born with a nice head of light hair. L. was in labor for 8 hours which was much better than her labor of 30 hours with Sascha. She and baby Max are doing fine.

Dinner on Wednesday night with Wen and Ki was marvelous. We got to soak in Marcia's hot tub after dinner. That was a nice surprise. I ended up not getting the yummy dessert because I got all filled up with my boca burger with grilled onions, skinny fries, and a fruit smoothie. It was the fruit smoothie that topped me off so I didn't feel like dessert. I got to ride in Wen's new used truck. Its nice for a used truck. She got nice new wheels for it too.

CCC is coming on my hike tomorrow and then we are going to go see the movie, Winged Migration probably in Palo Alto at the Aquarius theatre. Although we may go for a late afternoon discount show in Campbell to save some dollars. CCC has seen it already. She said she would enjoy seeing it again though.

I finished filling out the estate value form sent to me by the lawyer I'm going to see about setting up a will (or maybe a trust). I'll call her some time today to arrange for an appointment to talk about it. My possible lawyers name is Linda Silveria. She was a referal from my Raytheon Life Resources benefit. If I like her I'll stick with her but if not I'll try another lawyer. So far I like her from dealing with her on the phone.

I'm going to finish up getting some chores done after work today. I need to go put my birth certificate and passport back in my safety deposit box at Wells Fargo. I had gotten them to prove to Raytheon that I was a U.S. citizen. Then I am going to go get the car washed. Its very dusty from the drive on the dirt road to Butte Lake in Lassen. Yesterday I got the oil changed in my car and the mechanic commented on how dirty my car was and sort of hinted that I should get it cleaned by suggesting I get the gas tank filled up at the Valero gas station and get the free car wash that comes with filling your tank.

I'm off to have dinner with Wen and Ki after work at Saturn Cafe. Last time I got together with them was on graduation day, Friday, July 13. Geez, its been almost a month. It should be fun catching up with each other. I think I'll have that yummy chocolate dessert at Saturn.

I have a hike to lead on Saturday for OAW. It will be at Coal Mine Ridge in a Portola Valley Town park. So far two folks have expressed an interest in coming on the hike. Sunday I'm off to a barbecue with CCC. I get to meet some of her kooky family (her description, not mine). One of the best things about this weekend is I get to sleep in both Saturday and Sunday. The hike isn't till 11 a.m. and CCC isn't picking me up till 1:30 p.m. on Sunday for the barbecue. I need a weekend where I can catch up on sleep

The meeting is over. We have action items set up. I'm glad that's done.

In 10 minutes I have to meet with F. at work to find out what work he is doing so I can write it up in the task plan. It will be good to get the chore over with. F. has worked with my brother Bob in the past and Bob says he is a cool guy. I need to get my brain in gear for this.

This is a first for me: my belt broke. It was one of these belts made of cloth and leather. The leather bits had the fastner while the cloth bit went around back. Well the cloth bit ripped away from the leather this morning as I was tightening up the belt. Oops. I had to fish out my green webbing belt. I always thought of belts as being some what indestructable.

Two days ago I got a lawyer referal from the Raytheon resource program (one of my work benefits). Yesterday I called the lawyer to ask about making a will and making an advanced health directive. She is sending me a form to fill out about my assets and then we will make an appointment to talk about if I should do a trust or a will (and whether I want to hire her). She seemed very capable and nice on the phone. I have already made a list of my assets so it shouldn't be hard to transfer the info to the form.

Found a funny list of questions today on the www. Poke on the link for a good laugh.

I'm going to go refrigerator shopping tomorrow. I'm hoping that I can get a new fridge with part of the deal being that they take away the old fridge. I think I'll go to Meyers Appliances in downtown Mtn. View and go check out Sears (where America shops). I want to buy a very energy efficient refrigerator. I'll have to measure the space I have for a fridge. The current fridge fits in the space almost exactly. I'm thinking I would like to get a smaller fridge so I can use the extra bit of space to store my mop, bucket, and broom. I'm getting tired of tripping over them in my little laundry closet.

I disposed of my broken monitor, broken radio, and broken VCR a couple days ago. I found a place in San Jose called the Computer Recycling Center. They will take old monitors off your hands for $15.00 and will take certain other stuff for free (like home electronics ... my radio and my VCR). It was cool to get these things to a place that might be able to recycle them instead of having them put in a dump somewhere.

Brother Bob shaved his head (but not his beard). I think I liked him better with skimpy hair but I was looking at pictures of him I have and most of the time he wears a bandana or a hat on his head so I don't really remember exactly what he looked like with hair -- so why not shave it off. I expect I'll get used to the new look pretty soon.

I had a nice time at Lassen. I was camping with Gay and Lesbian Sierrans and had signed up to lead a couple of hikes: one on Friday and one on Saturday. I did not have a nice time on the drive to Lassen: the traffic was awful despite leaving the SF bay area at noon. I got stuck on highway 680 and highway 80 for an hour. When I finally reached highway 5, the traffic was normal and I sped along at 70 mph. When I got close to Lassen I had troubles finding the Butte Lake road. The directions were not accurate and said to look for the road 44 miles from Redding on highway 44. So at 44 miles I started looking and slowing down at every dirt road I saw. It turns out the road was 70+ miles away not 44. After turning onto the Butte lake road, it turned out to be a dirt road and much of it was wash board. I finally arrived at the campground at 7:30 p.m. I found a nice spot for my tent and unpacked my stuff and sat and talked with C. and C. and then heading to bed around 9:30 p.m. Friday I led a hike to Prospect Peak. It was a 6.6 mile hike with 2300 feet of elevation. It started on the Cinder Cone nature trail. I only got 2 folks signed up (A. and C.) for the hike but that was cool as it is much easier to lead smaller groups than large ones. C. grabbed a nature trail description brochure as we started the trail. Fortunately she noticed that the Prospect Peak trail took off at stop number 9. If I hadn't know that I would have walked right by the trail. Fallen trees blocked the trail and the trail was not very obvious, but after wandering about a bit, C. saw a reflector on a tree and we figured that was a trail marker. We started the long uphill slog to Propsect Peak. It was a very steady uphill with no real steep parts. We took our time going up. It took a while to get to the top. We stopped for lunch just before the top as C. and A. needed to refuel. Both were quite tired. Lunch perked them up and we hiked the last little bit to the top of Prospect Peak. We found the peak marker and a peak log in a metal can. We got out the log and signed it. The views from the top were awesome. We could see Mount Shasta, Mount Lassen, Snag Lake, and the Cinder Cone. There was a snow melt lake at the top too (Prospect Peak is an old volcano so actually has a depression on the top which is where the lake was located). We took photos of each other standing in front of the lake and next to a patch of snow that was still not melted. Then we headed back down the trail and back to camp. It was much easier going down and we just flew down. We got into camp at 4 p.m. and had a nice time talking about the hike and all sorts of other stuff.

Friday night was potluck night. It took a while to get the potluck started. The food was good though and worth the wait. I went to my tent around 9 to do some reading before going to sleep. It was nice to sit in my cozy tent and read a good book while listening to the happy sounds of folks enjoying a camp fire after the potluck. I stopped reading at 10:30 p.m. and roused myself to make a visit to the bathroom. I returned to my tent and snuggled into my sleeping bag and fell asleep.

Saturday I led a hike to the Cinder Cone. The trail was easy to find for this hike. It is an extremely popular hike in the Butte Lake area of Lassen Volcanic National Park. This time I was leading a group of 4 and I had a coleader. We hiked to the cone and hiked around the back of the cone to come up the steep path in the back. We didn't know it was steep till we got there though. It was a beautiful hike going around to the back of the cone. You could see the beautiful brown orangy dunes up close. We all made it up to the top of the cone OK. It was quite a haul but worth it. The top of the cone is cool (another depression inside). This cone has very little vegetation on it and the hike up it is mostly on gravel that slips as you hike up it. At the top you could see Mt. Lassen, Mt. Shasta, Prospect Peak, Butte Lake and Snag Lake. We had lunch on top and got to witness a ranger at work. He came up to us and asked us to move to another area for lunch as he was about to site a group of people making their way up the trail for having gone off trail on the dunes below. We saw him give the tickets at a distance and the folks getting the tickets didn't make a ruckus or anything. They just took their tickets after, I imagine, a scolding from the ranger. We saw them later on the way down. They seemed to have managed to not let the ticket spoil their fun. I had a ball going down the Cinder Cone trail. We went down the front trail. It was wider and less steep than the back trail. I found it easy to bound down the trail as the gravel softened the landing on my legs and feet. I ran down the last of the trail. While waiting for the rest of the folks to descend three of us were standing under a tree for shade when we were suddenly enveloped by a dust devil (a little dust tornado). It was wild. It really blew hard. The sand hitting my legs felt like lots of little needle pricks. I put my back to the wind but the direction of it changed as it blew past and I had to quickly cover my face with my hat. The other two managed to get some shelter from the tree trunk. It was over pretty quick. The other folks said it was wild seeing the dust devil go over us. I thought it was a cool if slightly painful experience. The rest of the hike was uneventful. When we got back to the campground, I said goodbye to everyone and started the drive home.

The drive home was better than the drive there, but I was still frustrated to run into some traffic on highway 80. However, I made it home in 6 hours instead of 7.5 hours. I got home at 8 p.m. and took a hot shower. After the shower, there was a little pile of sand in the bathrub. That dust devil got sand all over me, especially in my hair. I had to wash my hair twice to get it all out. It was a very pleasurable camping trip at Lassen with two interesting and fun hikes and good company.

Ah. Donuts make me happy. I got myself a couple of them on the way home and now I'm munching them down.

Soon I need to get laundry started and pack up the rest of my stuff for the Lassen camping trip. I have a feeling its going to be a zoo at Lassen -- lots of crowds there for the holiday weekend.

I put some pictures from Trinity on my webshots page. I like the one where I'm standing on the snow. I also like the tall cedar tree and Eleonor lake.

My Trinity Alps camping trip was great. We left the SF bay area at 10 a.m. and made the 6 hour drive to Trinity Alps. It was a hot drive but not as bad as we expected with the weather forecast for a heat wave. It was good to get to our campsite where it was cooler. We camped in a tent only site on Lewiston Lake. From our tents we could see the lake. That was cool however it did mean we also had mosquitos to deal with in the evenings at dusk. The bugs were not too bad but we did have to fish out mosquito repellent and we both were scratching at several bites at the end of the trip. We had a couple of deer who would visit us by the lake each night. We also saw a little frog under our picnic table and a squirrel ran around with a great big bushy tail. On Wednesday and Thursday nights we did not have any neighbors in the campsite so it was wonderfully quiet and beautiful. Friday night a big group of folks arrived with tons of coolers, fancy camp chairs, big tents, hammocks, boats, and fishing gear. They arrived around 10 p.m. and made quite a lot of noise which was annoying. Oh well, we had two nice quiet evenings.

On Thursday we went on an awesome day hiking to Canyon Creek. We hiked next to the creek and gradually ascended to see some wonderful waterfalls. We had a nice lunch just past a small water fall. After lunch we carried on and saw the middle falls which were awesome. We hiked along the creek some more and found a wonderful swimming hole and decided to take a dip. It was very cold but refreshing. As we were finishing up a woman stopped by and told us that the upper falls were very impressive so we decided to go take a look. They were indeed awesome but hard to see through the woods and hard to get close to to get a better look. We turned around at 7 miles up the creek to return back to the car. The hike down seemed much longer. That seems to happen often on there and back hikes. On the hike out you are all excited and energetic and time and distance flies. On the way back sometimes the energy is gone. We finished up our hike at 6:30 p.m. We drove back to the campground. On the way back, L. suddenly stopped the car. She then pointed out a family of skunks on the side of the road. It was a Mom with her three kids. It was a very cute sight. The little skunks waddled along sticking to Mom's side. We were jazzed to have seen the skunks.

On Friday we went hiking on Blue creek. It was a long drive there and we got lost so added in a few extra miles. BUT, as we turned around to head back to the right road we got to see a bear lumber on to the road. It stopped when it saw our car and headed back to the woods but we got a great view of it. L. was really excited as she is a native Californian and had not yet managed to see a bear in the wild. After losing sight of the bear we headed back to the right road to the trailhead. It was a very small bumpy dirt road. The trail head was about 4 miles in at the end of the dirt road. We got started on the hike to go to Tangle Blue lake. It was 11 a.m. and the first couple of miles of trail were on fire roads being baked by the sun. We were in grumpy moods about that. We finally left the fire road and came to a wonderful meadow with Blue creek running through it. There were wonderful tall Cedar trees and very green swampy areas. We had lunch in the meadow. After lunch we discovered we had to make a stream crossing. I delicately wandered out on a log and lept the last 2 feet to the bank. L. was not up to that so took off her shoes and waded across. We continued on and ran into another possible stream crossing. I shed my day pack and wandered around trying to find the trail to be sure that we did have to go across the stream. I shimmied across a big log over the creek and wandered around and found the trail. But when I came back to fetch L. we both decided we wanted to go back to the meadow and not bother with the stream crossing and seeing Tangle Blue lake. When we got back to the meadow, L. left the trail to check out a yellow flower she saw in the swampy area. She was very excited to discover it was a Pitcher Plant. She had never seen them in the wild before. It was fun to share her excitement over them. We took lots of pictures of them and then continued on through the meadow and back on the fire roads to the car. L. declared the hike on the fire roads worth it to see the Pitcher plants. L. does not stand up well to very exposed hot uphill hikes. That describes the hike on the fire roads! After the hike we stopped at the Country Store and I got some ice cream and L. got orange juice poured over a tall glass of ice. It was great to sip on cold drinks after a hike. We had another nice evening in camp.

Saturday, we went hiking to Eleonor Lake and Shimmy Lake. We had another long windy drive on dirt roads to get to the trail head. It was a hot day. The first part of the hike was nice. We got to Eleonor Lake soon. It was a delightful little lake half covered with Lily Pads with marvelous white pinkish bushes of flowers bordering the lake. It was so very green. At the end of the lake we saw more Pitcher Plants. Then we continued on to Shimmy Lake. It was not a very nice hike. It was often exposed, there were quite a few uphill slogs, and it was hard to find the trail route. It was marked with red flags and cairns (piles of rocks). At times we had to wander all over to find the next cairn or ribbon. The last bit of the hike before Shimmy Lake was shadier and much nicer to hike on. We finally reached Shimmy Lake and renamed it Shimmy swamp. There was hardly any water in the lake. It was still beautiful but I didn't get the swim I was rather looking forward to. We dawdled around at Lake Shimmy for a bit and then headed back. On the way back we got lost because we followed the wrong flags. We found a fire road and wandered around on it and to our relief found a cairn. We followed the cairns and soon discovered that we were heading back to the lake so we turned around and continued on the trail being real careful to follow the right flags and the cairns. We got back just fine but were pretty tired and hot. It was a very hot day. Phew. We had another stop at a store for cold drinks on the way home. About half way home, L. suggested we drive home that night instead of on Sunday to avoid the 100+ temperatures in the Sacramento valley and to get away from our noisy neighbors. We mulled it over and discussed it and saw our last wild life of the trip. We saw a fox run across the road. We were amused that most of our wildlife spotting happened in the car. Any how, we did decide to leave that night. It was a good decision. We avoided the 100+ degree temperatures the next day. I also was tickled to get to sleep in Sunday and have the day to get some stuff done.

The tummy virus seems to be gone today. Thank goodness. I did feel OK enough on the weekend to have fun hiking on both Saturday and Sunday. Both days I just had a faintly quesy stomach after eating.

Saturday I did a 7 mile hike at Calero County Park with OAW. It was a fun group. Everyone was being very goofy and cheerful. The weather was great and we ate lunch while being serenaded by bull frogs. Towards the end of the hike we saw a young coyote ambling down the hillside. After the hike we had an early dinner at a Sweet Tomatos restaurant (salad bar place like Fresh Choice).

Sunday I scouted a hike at the Coal Mine Ridge area of the Portola Town Trails system with L. We had only one map and it was way out of date so we spent a lot of time exploring trails looking for the route I had picked out. We didn't succeed in doing the planned route but I do have a new route planned for the actual OAW hike. When I got home from the hike, I finally managed to find a good map on the web and figured out where we had gone.

For a good laugh, check out http://objective.jesussave.us/propaganda.html.

I'm slowly recovering from this awful stomach virus. I have been back at work for 2 days now. My stomach still feels ever so slightly quesy and on occassion hurts a little. I do feel well enough to be working though. I hope I feel better tomorrow for the Calero hike.

Sunday I'll probably go hiking with L. but also get ready for our camping trip to Trinity Alps. I need to stop by REI and get some fuel cannisters for my stove. While I'm at L.'s I need to find out if she wants her tent back or not. If she doesn't, I'll use it. If she does, I'll ferret out my old stand by dome tent I use for car camping. I'm taking off WThF next week so I will only have a 2 day work week. Hurray!

Oh my goodness did I get sick when I got home on Monday. I had no more "choice" about whether I would throw up or not. I threw up right when I got home (thank God I didn't have to jump off my bike and throw up on the way home from work). Then I was trying to sip water most of the night so I wouldn't get too dehydrated but unfortunately I just about threw up all the water later in the night. I have been home the past two days. I haven't thrown up (YAY) since Monday but I have been feeling quite quesy. If I move around a lot it gets worse. I am just not in shape to be at work. It bites that I am having to use up Paid Time Off on being sick. Oh well.

I'm not feeling well at all today. I am having a really hard time staying awake and I feel like I could throw up if I let myself. Put it this way ... eating is not appealing to me right now. I was feeling OK this morning at breakfast, but then I rode my bike to work and when I got here started feeling wretched. I am not looking forward to having to ride home feeling like this. I'm hoping by 4 p.m. I'll feel better. I have gotten some work done this morning but its slow going when my eyes keep drooping shut. My mind is not sharp when I'm this tired.

I did have a nice weekend. Wen's graduation was hot but fun to watch. We sat out in the sun for quite a while listening to speeches and watching professors hood all the graduate students. Wen had to kneel because her advisor is so short. I hung around a little at the reception following but passed on the department party. Saturday I led my hike to Montara Mtn. There were four of us in all so it was a very easy trip to lead. L. showed up and two new folks, K. and Y. I think they had a good time on the hike. The views on the way up were awesome. On top we had fog so there wasn't much of a view. It was blowing in and out so we did manage to see the San Mateo Bridge once while we were on top. We moved down lower than the peak for lunch. We found some sunshine and investigated this rusted out old truck. The hike down was nice too. It was a good trip. Sunday I slept in and then at noon headed over to L.'s house. We went hiking at El Sereno Open Space Preserve. Its up above Los Gatos. We saw nice views of the Lexington reservoir. The trails were pretty much all fire roads and it was quite an exposed hike. We only did about 4 miles or so. It was pretty and about the length we wanted. L. was checking out the new light weight boots she bought at REI the day before. This park wouldn't be very good for a group hike though as the parking was quite limited.

Oh geez ... I need to lean back and catch a cat nap in my chair. Adios.

I'm at home right now. Pretty soon I will be driving to Santa Cruz to attend Wen's graduation ceremony. I put on my Columbus, Ohio sweatshirt in honor of her parents who are from Ohio. I got my padded portable seat thingy for sitting on the hard bench to watch the ceremony. And I threw in some water, a book, and sun screen in my fanny pack. So I'm well prepared for graduation watching and amusing myself if I get there early (which is highly likely). I wonder if I still have my graduation cap. Might be funny to show up in it with my tassle hanging on the already graduated side.

They seem to have updated Blogger Basic although it works much the same as before. It looks cleaner in the journal entry portion and they put a Blogger help screen to the right in its own frame.

I'm leading a Loma Prieta GLS hike tomorrow to Montara Mountain. I'm competing with P.L. who is leading a hike the same day for Ventana GLS. Oh well. I have gotten two inquiries so far for my hike but not one "I'm coming for sure" commitments. I hope at least one person shows up so I can do the hike again. I scouted it with L. and its a fun hike.

This googlism page is fun. I plugged in Kieren, Wen, and Cathy. Here are some of the results that made me laugh for some reason:


kieren is the miner for the wob guild and she lives in the town of delucia where she mines the mountain range


wen is the glue that keeps the word "consistent" in our drunken vocabulary


cathy is perpetually single

A fun web site to play with Googlism that I saw on E's live journal. Here are the results on my name:

cathy roberts is an environmental scientist working within sulfide solutions business unit
cathy roberts is a 7th grade
cathy roberts is in her fourth year as associate athletic director for facilities and operations
cathy roberts is with them
cathy roberts is a cinematographer/operator with experience in the camera department on over 250 dramatic tv episodes and numerous documentaries
cathy roberts is a cinematographer/operator with experience in over 250 dramatic tv episodes and numerous documentaries

I like "cathy roberts is with them". Rather mysterious don't ya think? The typo on the 7th grade one makes me giggle. I am a 7th grade. That's one tiny school.

I have to head over to the library after work today and select books for Rhoda. The selection deadline date is tomorrow. I'll probably get myself some books from the library while I'm there. I'm reading the novel "Tipping the Velvet" right now. I bought it for myself with an Amazon gift certificate I got recently.

It was a tiring weekend for me -- emotionally tiring that is. Parties wear me out and I went to both of Wen's graduation parties. The small one didn't tire me out too much but the big one definitely filled my "being around lots of people" quota for the month. I also sat in the GLS booth at SJ pride for 2 hours on Saturday afternoon being social and talking up GLS. That was tiring. Sunday was not so tiring. I went on a small hike with Bob that was very relaxing and enjoyable. Then I had the whole afternoon and evening to myself. I napped. I watched Annika Sorenstam win the LPGA championship in a playoff against Grace Park on TV. She did a lovely little hoppy dance when she won the playoff! I also spent some more time fiddling around with the OAW web pages.

For Dr. Wen -- more horoscope like predictions to look at. *wink*: Angel Voice

Mine today ---> FIRE ELEMENT: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius

Your Guiding Angel today is: The Angel of Balance. Angelic Advice: It is time to allow - and enjoy - the natural inner balance of the personality and the soul. When you allow these energies to flow naturally, you can expect positive changes to happen. Picture your essence as a clear running stream - and follow the flow today. You will seek the right level. Your angels wish you joy in: Allowing yourself just to BE

Wen's today --> AIR ELEMENT: Aquarius, Gemini, Libra

Your Guiding Angel today is: The Angel of R.O.I. Angelic Advice: R.O.I. means Return on Investment. How are you investing the moments of your days and nights? Are you creating a return of great value? To have wealth that you value, you must first know what you value. Your angels wish you joy in: Value Clarification

The Angel of ROI???? Now thats a weird angel. Angel of Balance sounds more normal. I like the thought of "allowing myself to just BE"

My cold is almost gone. Instead of coughing, I keep clearing my throat to get the last little bits of guck out of my respiratory system. My nose isn't stuffed anymore, HURRAY. I am finally getting back to walking to work MWF and lifting weights on TTh now that the cold is almost gone and my achilles tendons are pretty much healed.

I wonder what my horoscope says today ... get ready ... here it comes, the Yahoo horoscope.

Communication with those closest to you might prove difficult today, dear Aries. You might end up playing endless games of phone tag. This can be a bit distressing, because you're feeling especially warm and loving toward them right now. You might even worry that perhaps they're angry and don't want to talk to you. This isn't the case. Keep trying, and you'll eventually reach them and receive the response you want.

Hummm. I hadn't planned on making any phone calls today so I seriously doubt I'll play phone tag. I am going over the hill to see Wen, Ki, and the rest of the usual gang. I hope everything goes smoothly for that trip over the hill. I'm glad to know that those closest to me are not angry at me and want to talk to me. Phew. OK, well really, that sort of hits home for me. I'm forever worrying that folks are mad at me and don't like me much. I know its my mental illness talking but it is nice to get reminders every once in a while that this is rarely the case.

OK lets check out astrology.com's horoscope:

Wait for someone's response to your moves. What you're about to learn could be revolutionary. A sudden change will probably shake things up for those who are happy with the present situation.

Well that's pretty vague. It is intriguing to think I might learn something revolutionary.

Caffeine, Sugar, Caffeine ... Zoom Zoom Zoom! I seem to have a sweet tooth and coffee addiction this morning.

I had fun yesterday playing around with redesigning the OAW web pages. I still have work to do on them. I want to throw in some cool backgrounds and see how it looks. I also need to understand why it doesn't look so good with Netscape on the SGI work station running IRIX. I found a web site where you can register for free and make yourself forms, formsite.com. I made one for OAW leaders to submit trips. I must confess I got so into the technical things that I didn't make a lot of progress on improving content or the visual appearance of the web pages -- just a nerdy techy dyke at heart.

A cute joke:

"An old cowboy sat down at the bar and ordered a drink. As he sat sipping his whiskey, a hot young woman sat down next to him. She turned to the cowboy and asked, "Are you a real cowboy?" He replied, "Well, I've spent my whole life on the ranch, herding horses, mending fences and branding cattle, so I guess I am." She said, "I'm a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about women; when I shower I think about women. When I watch TV I think about women. I even think about women when I eat. It seems that everything makes me think of women." The two sat sipping in silence. A little while later, a man sat down on the other side of the old cowboy and asked, "Are you a real cowboy?" He replied, "I always thought I was, but I just found out I'm a lesbian."

My Lost Coast backpack trip was awesome. We had great weather, great wild flowers, great conversations, and interesting things to look at.

We had a nice lunch at the Mateel Cafe before we started our trip. After lunch we drove to Shelter Cove to the Black Sands beach parking lot and the start of the Lost Coast trail. The sun was shining and we were all in good spirits. That day's hike was over mostly sand. It was tough hiking through sand with a heavy backpack. We also had to do a couple of challenging stream crossings that challenged our rock hopping skill or challenged the water proofness of our boots! We saw a beached boat on the way to our first campsite. A woman informed us that her boy friend had to beach it due to bad weather and she was there to keep an eye on it. They hoped at high tide to get it off the beach. It was pretty darn full of sand though so it looked like it wouldn't budge even with high tide. After leaving the boat we saw a sad site. A little baby sea lion was sitting on a rock looking sick. It did not move when we edged forward to look at it. There wasn't much we could do so we just continued on. We arrived at Buck Creek at 6:30 p.m. and decided to camp there rather than try to get to Shipman Creek as planned. The tide was getting high and the next section of trail was impassable at high tide. Also we were all pretty tired. We had to share the site with four teenagers who decided to skip their prom and camp out at Lost Coast instead. We all thought that was way cool! We got camp set up and dinners cooked before dark. While we were cooking we were visited by a couple of deers. They were about 30 yards away from us. They were getting their dinner too! We all headed to our separate tents as it got dark. I slept like a rock that night.

Day two we got up around 7 a.m. We ate breakfast and broke camp and were on our way by 9 a.m. J. and I (co-leaders) were a bit concerned that we hadn't left early enough to hike on the trail as the tide was rising. It turned out we were fine but we did have a few cases where we had to scurry around a big rock as the waves receded. The rising tide did give us incentive to set a fast pace. At around 10:30 a.m. we reached the part of the beach where the trail climbed up a hill to weave along a bluff looking over the beach -- no more tide worries! It was also nice to be hiking on solid ground for a while. We did have to start watching for poison oak at this point. It had smaller leaves than I'm used to and blended in with other plants rather well. You had to keep a sharp eye out to stay out of it. So far it looks like I avoided getting it. P. did end up with some poison oak (on her ankles and, shudder, on her left eyelid). We reached Big Flat at noon and J. suggested that we camp at Big Flat rather than Big Creek (another 3 miles north up the beach). This was so we wouldn't have to get up super early to beat the tide the next day. We set up our tents. Mine was quite exposed but on nice soft sand. I was careful to put rocks inside my tent and to put heavy rocks over the tent stakes also. This worked out great and my tent stayed in place even when the late afternoon winds blew up. After we set up camp and had some lunch we day hiked to Big Creek. It was a pleasure to get rid of the packs. Big Creek was beautiful. I was curious to see if the camp site I camped in with W. and K. last summer. I was amazed to discover that the site had been totally filled with big bits of drift wood and essentially no longer existed. I took a picture of it so I can compare it to last year's picture of the camp. We had a nice rest break at Big Creek. J. went off to explore Big Creek while the rest of us headed back to camp. We reached camp around 5 p.m. and started our dinners. It was a bit tricky getting the stoves to light because of the wind. I finally gave up on my blue tip matches and used one of my wind proof matches to get my stove lit. Everyone else got their stoves lit one way or another. While P. and I were starting to cook we saw C.P.'s tent be picked up and flipped over by the wind. We ran over to it to make sure it didn't blow away. C.P. saw the ruckus and ran over to restake the tent and put rocks inside of it. Then a half hour later, C.S.'s tent blew over. She decided to just put the tent away and sleep out in the open. After the excitement of the tents we settled down to enjoy dinner and good conversation. I got in my tent at 8 p.m. as I was getting chilly. I got in my warm sleeping bag and pulled out my book "Daughters of the Amber Noon" by Katherine Forest. I had a wonderful half hour of reading. Then I looked up and saw the sun setting. It was a great sun set. The sun was a big red ball in the sky and sunk down below the ocean. It was awesome.

Day three we got up around 7 a.m. again. This time we were ready by 8:30ish. Worries about the tide made us keep a fast pace again. We were now retracing our steps from the day before. We reached our last campsite, Shipman Creek, at 10 a.m. We got the site to ourselves. That was cool. We took the site with the driftwood shelter. We made it our commisary. It also turned out to be a great place to hang out in and read or talk as it created a nice bit of shade and Sunday was a hot day on the Lost Coast. We set up camp real slow and then ate lunch. Everyone but me then went to explore upstream on Shipman Creek. I was feeling tired from still fighting off my cold. I took a nice nap while they explored. They returned by 3:30 p.m. Then we had a very mellow late afternoon of conversations, reading, meditating (just C.P.), and ambling down the beach to look at the sea lions on Sea Lion rock. We all cooked dinner together around 6 p.m. Then more relaxing into the evening. We didn't get an awesome sunset this time as we were in a canyon and the sun popped under the canyon wall before we knew it. I think J. might have hiked down the beach a bit to see if he could see the sun set over the ocean. The chill in the air after the sun set again seemed to drive us to our warm sleeping bags. I had another wonderful night's sleep. I loved hearing the waves crash all night and looking at the stars when I stirred a few times during the night.

Day four was our hike back to the cars. We were all up by 6:30 a.m. and we headed south towards Black Sands Beach by 8:30 a.m. We had a very pleasant walk on the wet sand as the tide was low and there was lots of firmer wet sand to hike on. We passed by the sick sea lion cub again and were saddened that it hadn't moved since we last saw it. We also passed by the beached boat again. It was even fuller of sand and no one was around watching it. It looked like the couple gave up on trying to extract it at high tide. The stream crossings on the last day were easier because of low tide giving us a shorter crossing option and not a lot of rock hopping. We got to Black Sands beach at Shelter Cove at noon. We hiked up to the trail head parking lot and happily used the restrooms there and changed into clean cloths we had left in the cars. Then we finished off our trip by having lunch at the Mateel Cafe again. The hamburger I had tasted so good after three days of backpack food! It was a great trip.

Check out pictures from the trip at my webshots page in the lostcost2003 album.

Took 5 pictures of my garden this afternoon. Check them out at my webshots page in the "My Garden" album.

I made it to Trader Joes on Monday. I got 8 cliff bars. They have a new one called Black Cherry almond that I had on the Fall Creek hike a couple weekends ago. It was good enough to get myself two of them for this trip. I also got these deadly good dark chocolate covered caramels for desert. I'll get two after each dinner. I got some granola, non-fat organic milk, wheat crackers, and peanut butter while I was there. Lest you are worried -- the milk is not for the backpack trip.

A random thought "just because I'm not at my desk doesn't mean I'm not at my computer"

Congrats to Dr. Wen or should we say Professor Minkoff

The big pile of equipment on the floor is now in my pack. I just need to get my camp shoes and attach them to the outside of the pack with a carbiner and find a light paperback book to squeeze in there somewhere.

My cold is STILL clinging. I am so water logged because of drinking lots and lots of flluids. I have spent the weekend resting and doing chores. I passed on the Henry Coe hike which was probably a good thing. I think the cold would have made me really tired and grumpy on the hike.

I have watched lots of women's softball on TV. It is the college softball world series time. I watched about 4 different games. Today is the championship game: Cal vs UCLA. It starts in about 10 minutes.

I created and finished a new chore on Saturday. I was getting tired of sifting through maps in a box to find the one I wanted. I decided to move the supplies in the desk top file cabinent drawer to the left hand drawer and then file the maps in hanging folders. It worked out pretty well in the end. We'll see how it goes next time I need a map!

I got the usual clear the paper work off my desk chore done yesterday and I did laundry.

Bad news ... the refrigerator is acting up again. I put it on the highest cold setting and it still is only about 50 degree F in there. That's too warm for milk etc. Arg. I transfered my milk, juice, etc. to the little refrigerator I bought. I need to finish emptying the big fridge so I can drag it out of its cubby hole and unplug it. I'm thinking I'll buy a new refrigerator eventually. In the meantime, the tiny fridge will do.

I went to REI on Saturday. It was crowded since there is a sale going on this weekend. I was hoping I could buy a part for my backpack stove to fix the electric ignition, but they didn't sell the part. So I am going to have to light the stove with a match on the Lost Coast backpack trip. I bought a new filter for my water filter. And I bought a book on hiking in the Trinity Alps and a couple of maps of Trinity Alps and the vicinity. I hadn't planned to buy backpack food but it was on sale for 20% off and the kind I like was there: single serving Mountain House meals. I bought two: chicken and rice and pasta primavera.

Today I need to get myself over to Trader Joes to buy some Cliff Bars for the backpack trip and some crackers and peanut butter for lunches. I have a big pile of equipment sitting on my living room floor ready to be put in my backpack.

My cold is still clinging on. Its moved down into my chest. I have a cloggy chest but not a very useful cough. It did help when I took some cough medicine this morning. I'll redose later on today.

I got my Montara Mountain Hike pictures up on my webshots page.

I had a fun weekend but was slammed with a cold yesterday. I woke up with an ultra sore throat and a bad sinus headache. I stayed home from work all day and took aspirin, decongestion medicine, drank oodles of fluids, and took many cat naps. Today, thank goodness, the sore throat is gone and the sinus headache is gone. I feel much better. I have a mild cough and a mildly stuffy nose today but felt well enough to make it in to work.

I went on a couple of hikes on the weekend. On Saturday I was at Fall Creek where I did a 10 mile hike. We took a wrong turn at a trail junction and ended up having to bushwack through the woods and cross a stream to find an official trail. It was fun once we assured ourselves we knew where we were and how to get out of this mess! The one thing we wanted to avoid was backtracking to that junction as it would have been 1.5 miles up a steep trail. No one wanted to go up the hill we just came down!

Saturday night I went to a Gay and Lesbian Sierra club hike leader party in Santa Cruz. It was a good party. Many silly pictures were taken with Wen's digital camera. If any turn out good hopefully Wen will send them to me.

Sunday I scouted a hike with Linda. We hiked from San Pedro County Park to Montara mountain. It was a gorgeous day. I have pictures which I'll post later today. The wild flowers are still impressive and it was so clear. The sunshine sparkled off of the Pacific ocean. We had many wonderful views of the ocean. We also saw many rabbits. They were very cute little bunnies too not the bigger hares I have seen elsewhere in the bay area. Linda found one wild strawberry to eat, but there were no more so I didn't get a wild strawberry.

After the hike we stopped at Baskin Robbins. I got a chocolate milk shake while Linda got a Peach smoothie. I loved my shake while Linda was disappointed in the smoothie. She wanted a smoothie with chunks of peach in it and this one was mostly artificial peach taste -- no real peaches to be found. I had a taste of her smoothie and I liked it but I hope she hasn't caught my cold now. She is off to Greece today. I'm taking her to the airport in about one and a half hours. She'll be gone for 10 day or so. I'll miss my last minute hiking friend. Linda is great about be willing to go hiking at a moment's notice. Oh well. While she is gone I'm leading a four day backpack trip so I'll get plenty of hiking in!!

Here is a picture of Wendy Waters, a Rescue Hero toy I got myself because I grew fond of her when visiting my cute little 4 year old nephew. ;-)

I'm in a bad mood today. I woke up with a headache, ug. I just plain feel out of sorts. At least Aunt Flo is only here for a little bit longer. She is not nearly as annoying at the finish of her visits than at the start.

I think I have hit another wall in therapy and that is what is getting me down. I have this hopeless feeling that I am never going to have a significant other or learn how to just be really intimate with someone. I feel so much resistance to my therapist's suggestions lately. Something is bugging me and I think I'm afraid to look it in the face. Sigh. I'm hoping the GLS hike and GLS leader party will perk me up a bit tomorrow.

Linda and I have changed plans and decided not to go to Colorado but to go to the Trinity Alps. Linda decided not to take the industrial hygiene profressional test in Denver and that was really the motivating factor for going to Colorado. She didn't want to drive to Colorado and didn't want to pay for an airplane ticket when we would only be staying a couple days. So I suggested the Trinity Alps in Northern California. Linda liked that suggestion. We can drive there and not have to pay air fare. I thought about backpacking but suggested camping and day hiking instead. We can explore around the Trinity Alps and plan a future backpack trip.

I saw the Moon eclipse last night. I tried to take a picture of it but the digital camera just wasn't powerful enough and my view of it was right above all these field flood lights so the lighting was abismal. The picture looked like just a blob of light not the cool red colored moon it was. I could see it while lying on my couch so I was watching the TV and admiring the eclipse alternately.

My Seattle friends A. and E. were in town Wednesday and we went out to dinner at Frankie Johnnie and Luigi's. Its an Italian restaurant. A. and E. liked it. I had been there before and I have always liked it. I had a nice dish of Lasagne. A. and E. had calzones. They were huge so we ended up taking the left overs to my home and so I got a free dinner for last night. It was a veggie calzone and was quite good. I was a bit worried it had mushrooms in it but I think it was eggplant not mushroom. It didn't have that rubbery consistency mushrooms have that make me dislike them. We had a nice talk at dinner and caught up with our respective news. I was pleased to hear that A.'s cancer treatments seem to be working. She had radiation therapy and that seemed to really help. She looked fine and seemed happy that she was feeling well again. The cancer had been giving her back pain and that was pretty much all gone after the radiation. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she continues to get better. I talked about all my hiking and about my latests bouts of therapy and taking anti-depressants. It was a nice cozy visit. They headed back to Seattle yesterday and said it was about time for me to come north and visit them. Maybe I will but not any time soon. My summer is rapidly filling up with outdoor trips. I need some weekends to just hang out at home!

Its graduation time. I have been invited to two graduation celebrations: W's and my niece's, SK. I won't be attending my nieces graduation from Swarthmore in Pennyslvania. Its just too far away. I will give her a graduation present though. SK's official graduation day is June 1. I will be going to W's celebration.

My eyes have been dry and itchy the past several days. I would hazard a guess that is it a mild allergic reaction to all the new green stuff growing around because of all the rain. I might bring some eye drops to work tomorrow.

Last week my therapist, C., told me she has been treating me for avoidant personaility disorder. I went web surfing to check out APD. Here is the official DSM description.

A pervasive pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy & hypersensitivity to negative evaluation, beginning by early adulthood & present ín a variety of contexts, as indicated by 4 (or more) of the following:

1. avoids occupational activities that involve significant interpersonal contact because of fears of criticism, disapproval or rejection
   
2. ís unwilling to get involved with people unless certain of being liked
   
3. shows restraint within intimate relationships because of the fear of being shamed or ridiculed
   
4. ís preoccupied with being criticized or rejected ín social situations
   
5. ís inhibited ín new interpersonal situations because of feelings of inadequacy
   
6. views self as socially inept, personally unappealing or inferior to others
   
7. ís unusually reluctant to take personal risks or to engage ín any new activities because they may prove embarrassing
   

Well I must say that over my life time all of these have been true at various times but not all of them at the same time. And C.'s treatment has been working on me. So maybe I do or did have APD.

Yay. Mom got her computer set up in Canada. So I can send my Mom's day letter via email and it will get there in time!

I found out yesterday (after spending a half hour signing soooo many papers for the loan) that my townhouse was appraised at $328,000. Holy Cow! I bought it for $212,500. Its location scored me some big points. Its near a major freeway. Its near downtown Mountain View. Its near shopping. The home owners association board members would be pleased to hear that the appraiser felt the common grounds were well taken care of. He also measured the square feet of my abode. I knew it was somewhere less than 1000 square feet. He measured it as being 972 square feet.

My loan is due to close next Wednesday. My first payment will be in July. June's was covered in the initial loan set up and charges. As soon as I know what company has my loan I'll arrange for my mortgage to be withdrawn automatically from my bank account.

I'm leading a hike tomorrow for OAW to Sunol. I'm experimenting with a new car pool meeting location. Its the Moffett Park Light Rail station park-n-ride. Yesterday afternoon I drove over to find it and look at it. Its a nice place to meet except for the fact that the directions are a little tricky. We'll see how people do tomorrow in finding it. It is really convenient for me and for the particular park we are car pooling to this week. Its just down 101 about 7.5 miles from my town house.

Anatomy of Cathy's May 8th Aries horoscope

Though your mind may have felt a bit clouded over the past few days, today the fog might clear, and you might be feeling more focused.
This one doesn't really ring true. I'm not really feeling more focused.

Money matters might need to be handled, dear Aries, and you're in just the right space to dig in and take care of them.
This one is eerily smack on today. How did they know that today I sign my loan papers. Te. He. And that I got my cost of living raise today too!

Once practical matters are settled, however, this is a great day for spiritual studies or meditation.
Seems to me every day is a great day for spiritual studies or meditation. I don't plan on doing any spritual studies or meditation after I sign my loan papers.

Creative projects can also benefit from your increased concentration
Hmmm. Perhaps tonight is the time to write my Mom's day letter (it won't get there in time, but she'll still enjoy it).