Its early morning at work. I'm drinking my ritual cup of decaf coffee with cream and sugar. It is Peet's coffee but I'm thinking that the generic brands suit me just as well so I'll probably save some money and get a generic brand when the current bag of Peets runs out. I'm not much of a coffee connoisseur.

Mom and Dad arrive today. Bob is picking them up at the airport around 11 a.m. Tonight we drive to SF to see them. We are going to watch Eva and Marlena practice their gymnastics for a little bit and then go back to Bob and Anne's for dinner. After dinner is over we'll probably head home so I can get to bed. I'm off for another day at work tomorrow at 7 a.m.

Charlotte sent me this chocolate math thing. However it could also be called your age by asparagus math or by whipped cream math or etc. etc.

Your age by Chocolate Math

1. Pick the number of times a week that you would like to have chocolate (more than once but less than 10)
2. Multiply this number by 2 (just to be bold)
3. Add 5
4. Multiply it by 50 -- I'll wait while you get the calculator .
5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1755 .... If you haven't, add 1754.
   Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.

You should have a three digit number . The first digit of this was your original number (i.e., how many times you want to have chocolate each week). The next two numbers are your age! (Oh yes it is!!!!!) This is the only year (2005) it will ever work.

My result was 744. Yup ... I would like to have chocolate every day of the week and I am 44. I'm too lazy to figure out why this works but I'm sure I could.

Mmmmm ... organic Gorgonzola tomato soup with a nice slice of sour dough bread to sop it up with -- lunch at work this fine Tuesday at 11:40 ish.

I find myself squeezing into my trousers and lagging on hikes. I think its time to lose some weight and get back in good hiking condition. Charlotte may join me in this quest. The party this weekend didn't help much. We both downed lots of delicious pot luck food -- squash soup, a tasty salad (asparagus, mango, avocado, lettuce, tomato, and shrimp), brownies laced with espresso, maple/chocolate squares, a decadent chocolate cake, quiche, and cheese and crackers. All the leftovers are gone now.

This weekend Mom and Dad visit us. It will be a short visit packed full of driving and visiting. Thursday and Friday Mom and Dad will be in SF and we'll drive up after my work to join in the fun. Saturday we take Mom and Dad to Monterey and Carmel to visit with Charlotte's folks and have dinner at their house. Mom and Dad will spend the night with us. Sunday its back to SF for a day of visiting Anne's lab among other activities and then back to Mtn. View. Charlotte will probably take Mom and Dad to the airport Monday morning unless their flight is very early in which case I'll take them before I head to work.

The GLS newsletter is just about done. Being newsletter chair is one week of intense business followed by being mellow the weeks until the next newsletter. I do have to go to board meetings once a month. The next newsletter will be July/August so I'll be busy again at the end of June. Actually I'm volunteering at the gay pride booth and will be helping Tina get it nicely decorated. Come to think of it ... we are supposed to be meeting soon to talk about the ideas we have for the booth.

Happy Birthday to me

Happy Birthday to me

Happy Birthday dear Cathy

Happy Birthday to me!

I'm 44 today. I like being 44 so far. I'm actually roughly 44 years and 12 hours old right now. I was born in the wee hours of the morning ... 12:30 a.m. EDT March 24, 1961 in Columbus, Ohio at University hospital.

I opened some nifty presents this morning. Lets just say I'm all set to go shopping at REI and do a jigsaw puzzle. I got some cool birthday cards too. Charlotte found one that says "Happy Birthday, girlfriend." One had a cute picture of a little girl with a puppy. The third had a wonderful nature scene on it. Tonight Charlotte and I are off to the Fish Market for a birthday celebration dinner.

We were going to go backpacking for my birthday but I decided I didn't really want to go backpacking. It just seemed like too much work and I was worried we would get rained on and be wet and cold and uncomfortable. So I called off the trip. Maybe we'll go in April or May when the weather is a bit more reliable but still cool enough for Henry Coe where we planned on going.

Work is going well. I like the project I am assigned to.

I'm testing out the comments with this post.

Things have changed a bit since my last post. I have a job at Northrop Grumman. I have a domestic partner duly registered with the state of California, Charlotte, and we are living together. I have a gold ring on my left hand (ack ... me ... who never wears jewelry ... now wears a ring) signifying my committment to Charlotte. I have bifocals (the kind without the telling little line -- progressives) and new glass' frames which makes me look a bit more feminine so Charlotte says. I have a PDA now which I won in a raffle and I am having a grand time using it. I didn't get season tickets to Stanford women's basketball (Pac 10 champs again!!) this year but had fun at two games thanks to Moonshadow's generosity. I have gained weight yet again and am trying to lose it yet again. I am no longer at Kaiser after 17 years of giving them my business. I have been venturing out with my new insurance and seeing new docters this winter. The only constant in my life seems to be change.

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.
.