Big Sur Pictures, November 25,26, 2002

Linda and I left for our backpack trip to Sykes hot springs in Big Sur on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. The drive to Pfeifer Big Sur state park was very pleasant. When we got to Pfeifer we found out that we needed to pop down the road about 1/4 mile to obtain a campfire permit at Big Sur station before it closed. We got there in plenty of time and got our permit and checked out the parking lot where we would leave our car the next day and head to Sykes. Then we headed to our campsite at Pfeifer. We got a site that was near the restrooms. This was cushy camping. There were hot showers in the restroom. We got our tents set up and cooked some dinner and by the time we finished dinner it was dark and it was only 6 p.m. It was also a bit on the cold side so we turned in early to warm up and get lots of sleep. I ended up getting up 3 different times for a trip to the restroom because I had kept myself a bit too well hydrated on Sunday! On one trip to the loo, I saw a coyote trot by.

We got up at 6 a.m. and it was still dark. Ug. We had breakfast, packed up, and headed to the trail head. We got started on the trail at 8 a.m. The sky was blue and the sun was out. We had great weather the whole trip. The 10 mile trek started by winding through Pfeifer park. We got to spy on campers from up on a hill as we hiked along. Soon the trail started to climb. We switchbacked up and up until we reached Pine Ridge I assume since we were on the Pine Ridge trail. We climbed up 1220 feet in 3.9 miles. Phew! We passed Ventana Camp on our way up. After 3.9 miles we finally started some downhill. We passed a family of Mom, Dad, Daughter and Son and were envious of Mom giving Daughter a massage while she lay on a log! We did some more up and down hiking and stopped for lunch at a second creek crossing. While we were eating the family passed us. After lunch we passed Barlowe Flat campground and started another longish climb. We reached our highest elevation of 1640 feet at the top of this climb. Then we had a long downhill portion to Sykes camp and the Big Sur river. As we reached the river we saw the family wading across the river. We soon followed suit. Luckily we had brought wet shoes or sandles to wear for wading across the river. We had to wade across the river to get to the campsite. The water was very cold. Burrrrr! We put our boots back on and made our way to camp just yards away. We found a nice site that was last in a line of sites so had some privacy.

After setting up camp, we set off to find the hot springs. We hiked about 1/4 mile and discovered that we had to ford the river again. Ug. This time we had forgotten our wet shoes. We grumbled and whined our way across the river in bare feet. It was so cold and with bare feet we had to take it slower. After the crossing we hiked along and the trail got steeper and more narrow as we went along. We had to climb up steep muddy/dirty use trails and climb down a steep rock face right near the springs. It was a dicey little climb down but we made it. The hot springs were around the corner but alas our family beat us there and so did several other campers so we had to sit down and wait for a turn to soak in the hot springs. We waited about 20 minutes and then 3 folks left so we got to squeeze into the hot springs. It was very nice. There was a little water fall that filled the pool with hot water from the springs. Soaking felt very nice on the sore muscles. It was about 100 degree F which wasn't very hot but still enjoyable. We soaked for about 30 minutes till 4:35 p.m. when we reluctantly got out so we would have daylight left for the hike back to camp. Linda decided she didn't want to experience the dicey climb again so she waded across the river and made her way along the other side for a bit while I popped up the dicey climb and made my way along the use trail. We finally met up when Linda found a place to get back to the use trail. Then we had to wade the river again. More Burrrr! By the time we got back to camp it was very much dusk. By the time we cooked up our dinners it was dark. The dark and cold drove us to bed early yet again. I think we were in our tents by 6:30 p.m. It was a cold night but my winter bag worked well. I just didn't want to poke my nose out of it all night!

We were up at 7 a.m. and took an hour to eat breakfast and pack up for the trip back to the car. We had one last cold river crossing only this time we had our wet shoes with us. Linda got a great picture of me contemplating the wade across the river! That water made my feet ache so much. The trip back was beautiful and now we knew what to expect more. We stopped at Logwood Creek I believe for a snack break. Then we pretty much hiked the rest of the way back with some water stops and boot readjusting stops. By the time we reached the car we were both very sore and tired but felt good about having been able to hike 21 miles in two days: 20 of those miles with our backpacks on! At the car we sat on Linda's tail gate to get our packs off and then changed into clean cloths and started to head home. We stopped at a Bakers Square in Carmel for a late lunch. I had a delicious cheddar bacon grilled chicken sandwich and we shared a hot fudge sundae. We got back to the bay area around 5ish. The traffic wasn't too bad. It was a great trip but left both of us with sore tired muscles to nurse the next few days!

I spent a lot of time today working on the OAW newsletter and getting ready for the backpacking trip. The newsletter is done and ready to be snail mailed. I did take a couple hours off to watch "Boys Don't Cry." It was a well done movie but so foreign to me. Its a world so far from my own in so many ways. I also rented Star Wars The Phantom Menace and a performance by Sarah Mchlaughlin. I don't have to return any of the three till next Saturday. That's cool because it would be hard to watch them all in one night!

I'm having that pre-backpacking feeling I usually get of wondering why on earth I want to walk lots of miles with 35-40 pounds on my back. I know these feelings will pass once I get going on the trip on Monday. I really do want to see Sykes Hot Springs. We leave for Pfeifer Big Sur at 1 p.m. We have a campsite there for the night so we can get an early start on the hike on Monday.

I took a walk at Shoreline last night after work. I started at 4:15 and hiked out the trail on the levy to where the Charleston Project sign is and then turned around and realized that I was going to get to watch the sun set and it was a gorgeous sky for a sunset. Nice little puffy clouds that turned a wonderful reddish golden color after the sun sank behind the mountains. The water was also very still last night and the sun sparkled on it as it sank. It was also a bit misty and the mist hid the valley view so I felt like I was somewhere less civilized. Too bad I didn't have my camera with me. I finished up the walk at 5 p.m. and headed home for a night of fooling around on the internet and then watching TV.

I made reservations at Pfeifer Big Sur campground so Linda and I can spend Sunday night there and get an early start on our backpack to Sykes Hot Springs. It looks like we are going to get decent weather for the trip. I expect we will be hiking at a snails pace on Monday due to the long uphill hike to get to the hot springs. At least its just a one nighter so the packs won't be too heavy. I hope the springs are sufficiently hot for soaking. I have heard mixed reviews about whether they are hot or luke warm. Sounds wonderful to shed your pack, set up camp, and then go have a hot soak in the middle of the woods!

The past two days at work I attended presentations all morning. The AEE team (Advanced Engineering Environment) made presentations: each member for their discipline. I lucked out and didn't have to present anything as P. presented the geometry progress and K. presented the Thermal Protection System progress. I work on both of those disciplines. I was surprised to pretty much enjoy the presentations and not get bored. I really liked the feeling of team work in the room. I get isolated all day sitting in my cube. It was good to interact with some people for once at work.

Not sure what I am going to do tomorrow. If I go hiking I'll probably head over to the Nisene Marks hike. I do want to sleep in tomorrow though and I need time to put together the OAW newsletter and pop it in the mail and email. I'll have to reread the Nisene Marks description and see how time consuming it will be.

I had a nice weekend. I got to sleep in on Saturday. Saturday night I went to see Attack of the Clones at the San Jose IMAX theatre. The battle scenes and car chases were fun but conversations between people and intimate scenes were just a bit much on the huge screen and there were quite a lot of these scenes in the movie. My neck was really sore after the movie but I got a nice little massage from K.

Sunday I led a hike for OAW. We did a 7.8 miler at Calero County park. The weather was gorgeous: bright sun and a blue sky. Five women went on the hike (including me). It was a nice mellow hike. We had a great lunch stop at a conveniently located picnic table over looking a pond. As we ate lunch some folks on horses came up and they were interesting horses. It turns out they are an Icelandic breed of horse. They were short horses but sturdy looking and can have a big man ride on them just fine. In this case they were carrying ordinary sized women. It was odd to see the top of the women's head over the horses head. They also have a really good temperment because there are no horse predaters on Iceland. The women said they are often used to teach children how to ride because of their smallness and good mood. We also saw a lot of orienteerers at the park. There happened to be a meet at the park. We saw the flags on the courses and saw lots of folks wandering around with maps in their hands. The terrain of the hike is the kind I like. It was very roller coaster like. Up a short hill, down a short hill, up again, down again. It made for a good workout. I think everyone enjoyed the hike.

An aside ... you can (at least I can) reload the blogger page without losing what you have already written. Cool!

Lots of action on our family email list this week. My big bro started it off by posting a long letter about how he is feeling and about his struggle with wether or not he should take anti-depressants. Mom responded first with a "I need to print this out and give it a good read" answer. Younger bro, Dave, just wrote a nice reply to Bob today. I'm always tickled to hear from Dave no matter what the reason he sends an email. I'll have to pen a response myself soon.

Someone actually called little old me a "sick sick woman" today because I made a post pointing out to folks that the 69th board was about to archive. She was of course joking but it made me laugh. I have never been accused of being "dirty" so to speak before.

Gotta sign off for today to go help my staff member make some presentation slides!

I'm in an odd mood right now ... some things popping into my head

• Blog Blog Blog, Blog Blog Blog to the tune of the spam song.
  
• Are bullgirls the opposite of cowboys?
  
• How did an ant make it all the way up to my glasses to crawl on the lenses?
  
• Spam song is gone but now its been replaced with the "Getting to Know You" song from the King and I
  
  
• 
  Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?
  
  Optimus Prime --> Vast, red and ready to turn into a lorry at the slightest provocation, you are a robot to be reckoned with. Although sickeningly noble, you just can't resist a good interplanetary war, especially when Orson Welles is involved. You have friends who can shoot tapes from their chests. Tapes that turn into panthers. And other friends who are dinosaurs. Dinosaurs who jump out of planes. Will you have my children?
  
  
• Check out my emode.com
  ink blot test result
  
  Cathy, your unconscious mind is driven most by Kindness
  This means you have a deep desire to be kind and fair to others. You may even be preoccupied with finding kindness in the world around you, far more than you realize on a conscious level.

  
  It is possible that the underlying reason you seek kindness in the world around you, is that you fear cruelty, the opposite of kindness. That could drive you to unconsciously project kindness wherever possible into your world. Regardless of its origin, your steadfast adherence to being kind to others is felt by people you are close to.

  
  You are probably more susceptible than others to being overwhelmed by emotions Ñ both yours and others'. It is possible that your unusually empathic nature is a result of your natural sensitivity to others' pain, and your desire to help them avoid it. For this reason, things might affect you more than they affect your friends and family. To protect yourself from too much emotional intensity, you might want to keep an eye out so you can recognize it when it starts. That will allow you to slow things down until you feel grounded again.

  
  Overall, your strong orientation towards kindness gives you an optimistic nature, which translates into you seeing the best in the people around you. Because you're not one to be overly judgmental, others may seek out your company when they need a friend to talk to. People close to you likely know that you care deeply about the inner lives of others and can listen to what they have to say without imposing your views on them.

  
  Though your unconscious mind is driven most strongly by Kindness, there is much more to who you are at your core.
  
  
  

• Figured out my rising and moon signs today. Rising is Sagittarius and Moon is Cancer.
  

So my mind is all over the map. It really should be thinking about how to model a fuel tank with Open Cascade. I did make some progress today but probably should have made more progress. Time to go home. YAY.

Headline in the Astrogram (NASA Ames little newspaper) "F2M Town Hall Meeting set." I can't help wondering why they are having a Female 2 Male town hall meeting?? OK ... that's not what it is. To NASA F2M means Freedom 2 Manage. It makes me giggle though whenever I see that acronym bandied about.

My week so far: sleeping in on Monday, car trouble, ant attacks at work, and a break through at work. I had Monday off for veterans day so got to sleep in finally. On both Saturday and Sunday I was up at 8ish to go on hikes starting at 9:30 a.m. It was great to sleep in. I went to bed around midnight and slept till 10:30 a.m.

After lunch on Monday I drove my car to the auto repair specialist shop to have them try and fix my stalling, bucking problems. They kept the car over night so they could test it when the engine was cold. That's when I have the most problems with it stalling. I road my bike to work on Tuesday. The car was ready for me to pick up Tuesday after work but alas, nothing was fixed. They did readjust the clutch and accelerator and cleaned the throttle but they were not able to get the car to stall with any regularity so they could diagnose the problem. They told me to keep driving it till it stalls more regularly. It did drive a little bit better with the readjustments but this morning it almost stalled again in the grocery store parking lot. Thankfully, they felt bad about not being able to fix my car so they charged me $0.0 for the adjustments and clean throttle. There is an auto repair shop that knows how to keep their customers coming back!

There is an ant invasion in our building here at work. Luckily I am in a cube in the middle of the building not near windows so the ants don't really get back to my office. But the ants get inside the fridge in the common kitchen area. Ug. Last week I found an ant floating in my milk carton. I found a strainer in the utensil drawer and strained the milk through it to get rid of the ant. I wonder if ants are nutritious. This week they are worse and no one has taken the plunge yet to empty the fridge and clean out all the dead ants. They are wee little ants. I am bringing in air tight food for the fridge (no more milk cartons that the ants manage to crawl into) this week. I have a nice thermos container I can put my milk in with a screw on tight lid. Its amazing how many ants there are in this building. I guess the bugs are running out of food outdoors or are cold or something. They never showed up during the summer months inside the building like they are now. I know, I'll send the ants to Nebraska.

Yesterday I finally got my fuselage geometry to model correctly using Open Cascade software. Its been a long 5 months of struggle to get it to work. I celebrated by having a 20 fl. oz. bottle of Mountain Dew. I'm busy getting all the latest software checked into our control version system now so I can tell my superiors that the deliverable is finally there!! I'm also cleaning up the software and getting rid of all the debugging statements I put in while trying to solve all the problems that arose. I can't believe the number of problems I ran into and that I managed to solve most of them. I almost hope they do decide to use Open Cascade because I feel like I really am beginning to understand the package now!

Stanford basketball has started. I went to a game on Sunday and have another one to go to on Thursday night. Its another exhibition type game that doesn't count in their record. I wonder if I'll have the whole row to myself again on Thursday. On Sunday I was the only person in my row in the loge seats that came to the game.

I finally got my latest health care reimbursement to go through. Silly me ... I forgot to sign the reimbursement form and got a letter from Ceredian to that effect. I had to fill out another form, sign it, and fax it to them before they would make the reimbursement. I sent out another reimbursement form yesterday for my psychiatrist and medication bills (not too expensive since both were just Kaiser co-payments). I was careful to sign the form this time!

I voted in the Ventana GLS election. My envelope is on its way. I voted no for one person and yes for all the rest. I think folks reading this blog know who I voted no for!! Someone we tend to refer to as Nebraska these days.

Its a lazy Wednesday: no meetings at work, no Stanford volleyball or basketball games to go to tonight, its not therapy night, and I don't have to vote today. I'm looking forward to a quiet evening at home after work. I will stop at the grocery store on the way home from work since I ran out of shampoo and will soon run out of orange juice. I might peruse the paper to find out all the election results (or watch the news on TV). I think I'll do some mellow stretching too.

Well, I do have to write stuff for the contract proposal but Nancy called and said to put it aside for a while because she didn't have the resources she needed to give us so we can get started. So I have a reprieve. I was right about having to work on it at home and not during regular work hours. Sigh.

Starting tomorrow its going to be a busy week. Thursday after work I'll be going to the Stanford vs. Arizona volleyball match. Friday after work I'll be going to the Stanford vs. Arizona St. volleyball match. Saturday I'm off geocaching with Sharon (if its not raining hard). If it is raining, Linda and I might go for a wet hike somewhere. Sunday I'm hiking with Bob in the morning and then watching the first Stanford Women's basketball match of the season. Its just an exhibition but it will be fun to see the new freshman players. Monday I am driving to San Francisco to pick up Cynthia and we are going hiking in Marin county somewhere. I have Monday off for Veterans day. Phew. I think I overbooked but we'll see how it goes. Don't be surprised if I am pining for vedging time after this full schedule!

I had a great relaxing time this past Sunday soaking with Wen and Ki at Kiva. We hung out till women's hours were over. Three hours of lolling about, soaking, and chatting -- very nice! After Kiva I drove off to Long's Drug Store where Wen said I could find a UCSC banana slug sweatshirt. I bought a cute gray hooded sweatshirt with a picture of a banana slug on it for Maria. I also got her a bean bag banana slug toy just in case the sweatshirt is too small. Unfortunately my only 2 choices for sizes were adult small or kid small. There was no kid medium or large. After much debating I got the kid small as I think Maria would be swimming in the adult small size and it looked like she might fit in the kid small. She is only 6. If it doesn't fit her she can learn about charity and give it to a homeless shelter or the good will and enjoy the bean bag toy for herself.

A broken toe or not a broken toe that is the question! Its not until someone asked me if my toe looked deformed that I realized I did not really know what my toe looked like before. I don't think its broken though because it is getting better real fast. Its not as swollen and the bruise has toned down to yellow instead of black and blue. Oh well. I'll keep watching it and if it stops getting better, I'll have a docter look at it.

Ug. I have to go to a meeting tomorrow at work about the contract proposal writing. That means I'm probably going to be stuck writing parts of the proposal. Oh fooey. I try to keep my manager part of the job as small as I can but this adds to it. And to make matters worse we can't work on the proposal within contract hours which means they expect me to work extra hours for nothing.

Today is Halloween. I'm being a Halloween scrooge today. Bah humbug. I'm going to turn out all my lights and hide upstairs in my bedroom during trick or treat hours because I don't want to get candy to give out. I only average about 4 visits each year so I hardly get rid of the candy I buy. Then I end up eating the rest of it. Since I'm trying to shed pounds right now that wouldn't be good. So I'm hiding from Halloween!

Linda stopped by yesterday and gave me her old digital camera she earned by listening to one of those time share presentations. She bought herself a fancy one. Tonight I'll play with it. I'll take my lap top upstairs where I'll be hiding. It only has a 10 picture capacity but that's OK by me since I don't like to take too many pictures. I'm curious about the quality of the pictures. I'll take a picture of my garden and see how it comes out. Aren't you lucky that I didn't get this camera on Saturday because for sure I would have taken a picture of the hurt toe to add it to my gallery of injuries on my web page (well just one picture of my big leg bruise now so not quite a gallery).

I finally figure out how to play DVDs on my lap top yesterday so now I can finally watch "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Cats and Dogs". Part of my Dell computer purchase deal was I got my choice of 3 items: DVD movies or computer software. I chose those two movies and Scrabble game software. I need to reinstall the Scrabble software because the program won't run without the CD being in the drive. Aren't computers fun?

Oooo, I would really like a second cup of coffee right now, but I'm saving cup number 2 for after lunch. I'll make do with water till then. I got some extra sleep Saturday/Sunday because of the time change. That was nice but it still didn't keep me from falling asleep on the couch in the afternoon after hiking with Bob (older brother) at Wunderlich. Poor Bob is very depressed and upset. I gave him great big hugs before and after the hike. During the hike we talked about what was bugging him and how I handled/handle my own depression struggles.

I had a good time hiking on Saturday. I went on the OAW Castle Rock 19th anniversary hike. Only five people showed up for the hike but we all had fun. I was tickled to see Sharon and Gloria. I hadn't seen either of them in a long time. Sharon brought her GPS (Global Positioning System) and information about locations of two caches in the park. There is a fairly new outdoor acitivity called geo-caching. Folks hide a tupperware or metal box in the woods and write down the coordinates of it. They then post the cache coordinates on the internet. Other folks use this info to go find the cache. When you find the cache, you open it up and exchange trinkits (like match box cars, or key chain compasses, etc.). It is sort of fun although the environmentalist in me didn't know if it was OK to bush whack through the woods. Caches are also hidden in cities (Sharon says usually in woodsy areas like parks or creek beds). At lunch Sharon and I took off to find one of the caches. We bush whacked through the woods going up and down hills. The downhills were more like leaf skiing! I saw the cache first and Sharon made her exchange and will note on the internet that she found a this cache. We saw a trail from the cache site and went down to the trail and discovered we didn't have to bushwhack back to the lunch spot. We stayed on the trails. After the OAW hike was officially over, Sharon asked if I wanted to go find another cache just across the street. I said sure. Our just across the street turned into another three miles of hiking with some significant uphill and downhill portions. We finally found the cache. Sharon spotted it this time. I was pooped when we got back to the cars. Sharon is a fast hiker and I was doing my best to keep her pace instead of my own. Phew. That hot shower when I got home felt really good.

Unfortunately I ended my weekend by jamming my toe into the frame of the patio door on the way outside to turn on my sprinkler. It really hurt. I hopped around saying ouch for a few seconds. Then I continued to turn on the water and go back to watch TV thinking I just stubbed my toe and it would be better real soon. However, it started to swell and hurt more. Ick. I got out my Kaiser health guide book and followed its advice to ice the toe (its the toe next to my little toe on my left foot) and rest it and elevate it. I also taped it to the toe next door to stabilize it. What a pain. I can still walk around OK but I don't think I should go hiking till it gets better. I'm hoping it will be better by the weekend. Fortunately this weekend my calendar is bare so I can avoid hiking and give it some more rest if need be. Tonight I'll try bike riding to see if that impacts the toe or not. I hope not as biking will keep me exercising while I can't take long walks and hikes to get exercise.

I'm feeling good this week. I think my body has adjusted to the Wellbutrin and the side effects are wearing off. I'm not as stressed as I was for a while there. My jaw soreness is getting better. I'm not as tired either. I don't know if the itchy legs is gone or not. It hasn't been around for a couple days now. Knock on wood that itchy legs have gone away.

I cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed yesterday and cleaned the kitchen floor. So folks can now drop by unannounced and I won't be embarassed by all the dust and dirt. It was good to get it done as I had been putting it off. I also caught up on recording my grocery bills in my bank book (I use the bank card to pay for groceries) and added in my latest pay check. Yesterday was oh so productive.

Yesterday at work I did a major revamp of the type of code I use in my Open Cascade program to read in data from files. I changed about 4 or 5 different routines (well really classes) . Then miracle of miracles, in one afternoon I got all the errors worked out and the program compiled and ran!! No more memory leaks. Basically I replaced the old variables I was using where I was managing memory myself with Open Cascade variables that manage their own memory so I didn't have to worry about it. So now, I'm back to trying to model the fuselage. Ug! I have yet another idea how to fix it up that I wll start working on this afternoon.

My poor big brother, Bob, is feeling really down and lonely. Cecily told me that this morning. I sent him an email and asked if he wanted to go hiking with me on Sunday morning. I also let him know how much I care about him. He is trying to get the nerve to call up and make an appointment to see a therapist. I hope he does. He is really scared to make that call.

Oh I forgot, check out Clouds Rest and Pinnacles pictures at
http://home.attbi.com/~cdrdash/pinnandclrst.htm.
Cool, eh?

So I fixed the compile error in my program and then Eric swapped out the computers again and forgot to transfer the work I did to the new machine. I told him it was OK since I still remembered how I fixed the error before and it wasn't a big change (maybe three or four lines of change), but as a result I wasn't able to do the real debugging on the actual geometry design. Sigh. This program is settng my record for the program I have worked on the longest and not gotten it to work right!

I asked S. to scout a hike with me yesterday. We had a good time and boy did I get to hear a long story about her relationship with R. Then we got to talking about dating and it was very wierd to talk about it when it wasn't terribly clear if we were on a date. I thought about mentioning that but lost my nerve. It made me giggle inside though so it wasn't like I was stressing over it. I did get to know S. better though and I don't think I'll pursue her as more than a friend. She is older than I thought and a bit too fussy for me. I got the idea she was fussy from the long stories she told about R. and her. OK this may sound silly but she kept making a point of saying that there was a correct way to do laundry and you shouldn't just put your cloths in the dryer on high for 40 minutes. This was how R. did laundry. I sheepishly admitted that I did laundry that way too. Other things like that came up in the conversation where I just got the feeling she would be a bit too fussy for me about how things need to be done. Although I felt really bad for her from all she went through with R. R. sounds very unstable and self centered. I never liked R. when I met her in the first place but decided that's not something you tell someone who had a relationship with R. I probably will ask S. to scout more hikes with me as she is fun to talk to. I would like to be friends with her.

We scouted a hike at Pleasanton Ridge park near Pleasanton. Its a very long skinny park in the hills. You can see 680 from one side and nice hills on the other side. You could also see Sunol park in the distance. I'll probably lead this hike for GLS in January or February. It was about a 6 mile hike and started with a hill climb up to the ridge. Then we sort of circled around the ridge and the terrain was up and down and flat. It was a beautiful sunny day. We managed not to get lost. It wasn't too hard to follow the map as it had just about every junction labeled with a number on a post which corresponding to a number on the map. There was an excellent supply of maps at the trail head. We did get lost getting to the park though. I took the wrong exit and so the directions didn't make sense. We finally managed to see a road that the directions said we needed to be on and finally stumbled upon the 680 exit we should have used and from there got to the park easily.

Today I slept in till 10:30 a.m. Then I fell asleep on the couch at 3:00 p.m. I woke up when my watch alarm went off at 3:30 p.m. -- that's when I take the second Wellbutrin pill of the day. This tiredness is still dogging me. The Wellbutrin isn't helping much yet. At least I didn't feel tired on yesterdays hike. Although after the hike I lay in my hammock for an hour reading a book and it felt good to get rest like that. What finally drove me out of the hammock was the sun went away and it got cold!

I'm down to 165 lbs ... YAY. Only 15 more pounds to lose to reach my goal of 150 lbs.

I figured out how to fix up the compile error in my program but now I have a memory leak somewhere and it core dumps at the end of the program. The program actually runs and produces data before it barfs. I need to track down the memory error though as this program is possibly going to be linked to other programs which don't expect it to crash when its done.

I had a good time at Pinnacles on Saturday. I got to the park at 9 a.m. in plenty of time to meet up with my friends. We headed out on the Chalone creek trail heading towards the Balconies caves. It was a pleasant flat two miles or so. Then we hiked through the cave (well climbed a wee bit). I have been through the cave many times so wasn't freaked about it. Others were a little apprehensive but in the end everyone thought the cave was cool. At the end of the cave we found a place to eat lunch in the sun.
While eating lunch we saw a bizzare sight. A fellow hiked up and set his pack down and sat down. Then he pulled cramp-ons out of his pack and proceeded to put them on his boots. We were all amazed. It was 80 degrees out with no ice anywhere in sight! It was very odd. After getting the cramps-on on his boots he put on some old gloves and put on a desert like hat and tied it close around his face. Then he set off climbing up the climber's trail to go who knows where. We lost sight of him when he went around a corner. We decided he was a nut and we hoped he didn't hurt himself and got back safely from where ever he was going.

After lunch most of us headed off for the high peaks (about four turned around and hiked back to camp for a lazy afternoon at camp). We stopped at the ranger station to refill our water bottles before we headed up the Juniper trail. The Juniper was a long uphill trail full of switch backs. I had to set a pretty slow pace but happily had one other woman who also liked to go slow so we hung out in the back. It was a long hot slog. I sweated profusely but also made sure to drink profusely! We finally reached the top with marvelous views of the park. I had some more to eat and while we were up there another hiker pointed out brown smoke rising in the distance. There must have been a fire to the west somewhere. As we hiked over the high peaks ridge the smoke spread a little. We couldn't see the fire and when I got home I didn't hear any news that there was a fire. Hopefully it was a small fire easily controlled.

The last bit of the hike was the matching long downhill to the long uphill we did to get to the high peaks. I was much happier on the downhill portion. My knees held up well and I was glad to have gravity on my side this time! I took a bunch of pictures on this hike to use up the film on my camera so I can see the Clouds Rest pictures I took a couple weeks ago. I hope I got some good pictures. At the end of the hike, I drove back to camp with everyone and hung out around the fire ring (no fire though ... too hot) chatting with my friends. There is something wonderful about hanging out with your friends after a tough hike. At 5 p.m. I said my goodbyes and headed home. It was a good trip!

Sunday was couch potato day. I slept in till 10 a.m. Then I hauled myself out of bed, ate breakfast, and settled down on the couch for a hard day of napping and TV watching! I did have one interuption to this lazy day .... for some reason my lower legs started to itch like the dickens like they did when I was a teenager. I soaked them in lubriderm and that didn't help. So I got some cortison cream. That helped a bit but mostly what helped was climbing in my sleeping bag and getting my legs really really toasty. After an hour the itching finally went away. Thank goodness. It was driving me nuts. I was able to enjoy the rest of the day snoozing and watching TV.

Monday I got to sleep in again, but this time I only slept till 9 a.m. I wasn't quite so lazy on Monday. I emptied the dirt out of these old square wood boxes in my back yard that used to hold plants. The wood was pretty rotten so I threw out the boxes. Then I got my nerve up and raked up the old bee's nest. No bees in sight and I got the old ratty nest safely in a plastic trash bag inside the complex dumpster. So now I have a nice patch of dirt waiting for a plant (Hey Linda ... need more plants!). I finished by cleaning the dirt off of the patio with the hose and watering the plants. My yard looks really rather nice now except maybe for the barren spots of dirt. I also did some grocery shopping on Monday and dropped off my film to be developed. I'll scan in the pictures so folks can view them on the internet. I'll probably only scan the ones that come out nice.

My jaw is a little sore these days. I think I must be clenching my teeth at night when I dream. I have been having a lot of dreams since starting the Wellbutrin and they are often stressfull dreams. I clench my teeth when I'm really concentrating hard or under stress. I followed the advice on the Kaiser web site to get a towel wet with hot water and hold the towel on my jaw. It did feel nice. If the soreness turns to real ouchy pain, I'll talk to the docter about it, but it feels more like a soreness that will get better with time.

Only 20 minutes to my three day weekend!! Today was a bit frustrating at work because the computer I work on was upgraded and that meant the compiler I use was upgraded. My program did not compile with this new compiler. Before it gave me a warning about a line of code but now it gives me an error for that line of code. Boo Hoo. I'm not sure how to fix it yet. I made a few lack lustre attempts. Friday is a bad day to expect me to come up with brilliant solutions. My mind is firmly planted on the weekend. So I shifted to doing the more mundane task manager paper work -- a no brainer job.

I'm trying to psych myself up to go walking after work and get in some exercise. The last two days I have had to overcome the whiner in me that says "I don't wanna go walking ... I wanna lay down and watch TV." I'm still waiting for the Wellbutrin to kick in and hopefully make me less tired but so far it hasn't done much. I was real yawny on my walk last night and I still wake up in the mornings after 8 hours of sleep and feel like I need more. Maybe its not the anti-depressants or some mysterious disease but that I just have a body that needs more than 8 hours of sleep. Maybe I'll go surfing on sleep sites and see what they say about how much sleep a body needs. I hope its not that I just need more than 8 hours of sleep. That means I'll have to go to sleep at 9 p.m. which is pretty early. Either that or get up at 7 a.m. and work from 8 to 5 instead of 7 to 4. I hate working after 4 though. Argh!

Today is national coming out day but so far I haven't come out to anyone. I did post a story of a previous year's coming out on lesbian issues at iVillage. So I recognized the day in some way.

I'm down to 170 lbs now. Maybe being over weight is what made me tired. Just last month I was 179 lbs. Takes a lot of energy to haul around that weight. I want to get back down to 150 lbs and then figure out how to maintain that weight. Emotional eating was my downfall in this last weight gain -- too many pringles potato chips, candy bars, ice cream, and Mountain Dew when I was feeling down. I shouldn't talk about this .... now my mouth is watering!

Dang it. My Open Cascade program is still not working! I'm taking a break from trying to figure out for the umpteenth time why it is not working. I decided to see if I could get Open Cascade installed on my IRIX machine. It would be nice to have a computer running Open Cascade right in my office instead of having to connect remotely to the other computer when I want to work on programs. I can hear the disk rattling away on my IRIX machine as it installs all the necessary files.

My hike to Monument Peak for GLS went well. Dave and I got a nice mix of men and women. Like on the Clouds Rest hike I was the slowest going up hill yet again. I really worked hard to keep my pace fast enough so I could at least see the folks in front of me. As a result I was pretty pooped when I made it to the top. I was not last going down. Dave was last because of his bum knees. It was a hard descent on the knees. My left knee started complaining after a particularly steep section. However it has recovered fast since then and hasn't been sore. I think everyone on the hike had a good time. I got lots of thank you's at the end of the hike. I was just glad to be done with my leading duties for a while. My next lead is on November 16th or November 17th. Don't worry I'll figure out which day before November 15th!

On Friday and Saturday nights I went to watch Stanford Women's volleyball matches. Stanford is ranked 4 in the nation. USC is ranked 1 and just barely beat Stanford on Friday night. It was a long exciting match. UCLA is ranked 13 in the nation I think and they lost to Stanford on Saturday night. This game was not as exciting but it was good to see Stanford win the match. Pac 10 women's volleyball is packed with ranked teams so all the matches are very high quality and fun to watch.

Sunday I finally got a day home to myself. I slept in and in and in and in .... OK, I actually got up at 9:30 a.m. but it felt like it must be noon for the amount of times I rolled over to go back to sleep. I did my laundry. I did my computer chores. I watched some sports on TV. I actually watched football for a little bit but mostly watched a women's golf tournament. I had fun working on the design of my garden some more. I made a curved path out of the blocks that had been used under the old deck. Then I planted the two plants Linda gave me on the borders of the path. The path leads to two bigger blocks that arrive at the hammock. I thought it was cool looking and it was fun to putter around the yard and enjoy the results. I stood there and watered the flowers while admiring my work :-)

I have a mystery in my yard now. I have been keeping an eye on the bee nest (not sure if they are bumble bees or carpenter bees) that was under the shed for when the bees leave it so I can dig it up and use that space. Yesterday I peered out and it looked like the nest had been dug out by someone else. A bee nest looking structure is just sitting on top of the soil. My prime suspect for digging up the nest is Mr. Squirrel. I found lots of nuts strewn about and I see the squirrels all the time. They like my yard. But it could be a neighborhood cat or some other critter. I don't think it was someone of the human species. Now I have to get my nerve up and get that old nest into a bag and dispose of it. I just want to be sure the bees are done with it so I don't get attacked by an angry bumble bees when I pluck it up and throw it in a trash bag.

I'm feelng good today.Ê I finally got up the nerve to talk to my supervisors at work yesterday about the fact that I didn't make the dilverables set out for me.Ê Turns out they understand why I didn't get them done and told me not to worry about it.Ê No more worry.Ê YAY.Ê I didn't really know how much I was worrying about it till the worry went away.Ê

I'm going hiking after work with Linda at Rancho San Antonio. We'll do the usual PG&E trail loop. I'm hoping we'll be back around 6:00 so I can get home and participate in a computer chat tonight for my depression support list. I'm not sure what attracts me to this chat. Often its pretty boring but I keep coming back so there must be something of value in it for me.

I got back from the annual Yosemite GLS trip yesterday. My body is thrashed but I had a fairly good time. The Clouds Rest hike was pretty tough for me this year. I really was sucking air on the uphills and slowed down to a snail's pace. I was hiking at my top pace most of the hike as I happened to get a speedy group of hikers to lead on this hike. The leader, me, was the slowest of the bunch. The altitude also got to me a little bit and I had a slight headache at the end of the hike.

The weather was fun this hike. We got some sunshine, some clouds, and were hailed upon by these little itty bitty dots, and we got some rain. It made for just awesome views on the top of Clouds Rest but it also caused us to get off the top quickly when we started to hear thunder. Being on the top of a barren piece of rock at 10,000 feet is not a good idea in a thunderstorm! However the storm never did come to Clouds Rest. We did get some awesome views of clouds swirling around Half Dome. I took a picture and I hope it comes out.

After the hike I socialized a bit with the group but by 9 p.m. I couldn't keep my eyes open so went to bed. I slept hard for a good 10 hours. I drove home shortly after I got up as I had lots of chores to get done.

I'm feeling very blah today and a wee bit depressed. I just want to hide out at home and watch TV and read for a few days, but I don't have the time with work and the GLS Yosemite trip this weekend. I'm way behind on paper work at home and need to buckle down and get it done tonight. Yesterday I finally cleaned the kitchen and the half bath that were pretty darn dirty. I also need to get packed for the Yosemite trip tonight. That shouldn't be too difficult but it will take some time. I need to haul my bag of wood out to the car for the campfires this weekend.

I saw Dr. Shin on Tuesday morning. We talked about the fact that since I started taking prozac I seem to be more tired more often and lately it seemed to be getting worse. On the Loon Lake camping trip hike I just could not stop yawning. He said that most likely the fatigue is a side effect of the prozac medication. He has prescribed me some Wellbutrin to add to the prozac. I take the Wellbutrin twice a day. If it does the trick, he'll reduce or eliminate the prozac. Dr. Shin also ordered blood work for me just to be sure the fatigue is not due to something else. I just want to not be so tired so often.