Love this.
Love this.
Next week is Derek’s birthday, I’ve been trying to decide what to get him. Last year, we went on a road trip down the coast and just kind of crept around Santa Cruz, Monterey and Carmel exploring. It was really fun and spontaneous.
I’d really like to do something like that again this year, I was thinking Morro Bay. There is so much beautiful coast line in this state, and I’d like to see as much of it as possible while we’re here. We even bought a tent this summer that hasn’t been used once as I bought it for a camping trip and then ended up sleeping in the boat under the stars.
We’re so busy this month that we wouldn’t be able to go until November, but it’s California, how cold can it be by then, really? I’ve camped many a May long weekend in Canada where there was snow on the ground and nothing but red Sourpuss and Sky Blue coolers to keep me warm.
There is something so romantic and wonderful about just getting in the car and driving with no real plans. Maybe we’ll make it to the campgrounds, maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll visit Hearst Castle, maybe we’ll get mugged on the beach. It’s a mystery, but I bet you it will be a memorable weekend.
We’re seeing Matt Nathanson at the Fox Theater in Oakland tonight, I saw him last year at Now and Zen and he is great live, so great that I am willing to overlook his nose ring.
Also on the agenda for this weekend, a massage, book club, and making perogies for Thanksgiving next Sunday while I creep all over the internet trying to find season 4 of Downton Abbey because it doesn’t air in ‘merica until January.
I still don’t know my way around here very well, probably because I’ve been so dependent on technology that I’ve never had to learn. My phone GPS is broken right now, so on the way home from San Jose last weekend, we ended up getting lost and going through San Francisco, which worked out anyway because I had a friend visiting and she wanted to see the city.
It was a gorgeous day, not a lot of traffic, the sun shining and good tunes on the radio, and as we drove north on the 101 and came around the last curve and saw the San Francisco laying out in front of us, with it’s cute, colourful houses on the hillsides and the skyline off in the distance, I realized for the first time that I really love this city.
It would be just like me to finally notice that just as we’re starting to get serious about planning where we want to go next, but you can’t have everything in life. The transition to living here was definitely rough, I’ve never been so lonely and homesick in my life, including when I moved to an island in the middle of the ocean without knowing a single person.
It was a great experience for me in hindsight, nothing helps you figure out who you are faster than no longer have anyone around you to tell you who they think you should be. It’s scary at first, but once you figure out that the only opinion that really matters is your own, even if it’s because there is nobody left around you to have an opinion, it’s very freeing.
Looking back, I can pretty clearly see how each new place I’ve lived has changed me and shaped my viewpoint, and I know I’m very fortunate to have had the ability to live in so many wonderful places. I can’t wait to see what is in store for me when I get to my next new home.
While we were in Oregon, and the boys were off doing bachelor things, we decided to embrace our inner adventurers, so a group of us girls set off to check out the lava caves near Bend. We obviously neglected to do any research beforehand, so we arrived to discover that shorts, tank tops and flip flops are not generally the clothing choices of spelunkers the world over, especially as it was below freezing inside the caves.
We also failed to spend the $5.00 necessary to rent a lantern, deciding as a group that the lights from all 4 of our cell phones would more than compensate for the complete lack of light sources inside the caves.
We set out merrily enough, dodging a hive of angry wasps and avoiding the judging looks of the other hikers in their closed toed shoes and winter jackets, with their lanterns shining smugly as they shuffled by.
The first 100 feet went swimmingly, there were plenty of interesting rock formations that could just be made out by the light of my “World’s Brightest Flashlight App”, but things quickly went south. I felt a drop of liquid fall onto my head from the stalactites above that was almost certainly monster saliva (at your own peril will you suggest that it may have been only water).
A few more feet inside, all hell broke loose. The leader of our little band of misfits also got monster slobber dripped on her, and as she turned her arm to wipe it away, something (likely the beady, red eyes of the creature) reflected in the cover of her cell phone case, and she screamed.
That was all it took. The rest of us broke rank and sprinted for the mouth of the cave, every man for himself, as we stumbled blindly in the darkness, all of us hoping we wouldn’t be the one eaten first.
We eventually all emerged from the darkness, bruised, embarrassed and with a stubbed toe or two in the group, but no worse for the wear for the most part. And that’s the story of the time I was nearly eaten by a monster in a cave, for real.
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| Don’t let the camera flash fool you, it was absolutely pitch black inside this cave |
Watching this video really makes you want to book a trip. I was kind of on the fence about a trip I was thinking of taking next month, there are always reasons to say no and just stay at home, but I decided to go for it. I read somewhere that if you’re having trouble deciding what to do, you should do what you’ll wish you would have done when you’re 80 years old.
When I’m 80, hopefully playing bingo and skinny dipping every day, I think that it is much more likely that I’ll regret staying at home more than I’ll regret a crazy, expensive weekend in Vegas with my favourite girls, so why not?
I’m in Oregon for the long weekend for my best friend’s wedding. It’s so beautiful here and I’m having a blast so far. I could definitely get used to this view.
Last time we were down in L.A. I dragged Derek to LACMA. I like doing things like that, just going somewhere I’ve never been before and seeing something new. Some of the pieces in there were really neat, and now I’m even more eager to go to some of the amazing museums in San Francisco.
The only bad thing was that a lot of the exhibits were closed when we were there, and they had almost one whole building closed off for a Stanley Kubrick exhibit that you had to pay twice as much to get into.
But I did get to see the unnecessarily large amount of light poles outside, so all in all, not bad.
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| it’s right beside the La Brea tar pits, so you find random tar bubbling up here and there |
While we were in L.A. a few weeks ago I dragged Derek to the La Brea tarpits. I’ve had an awkward obsession with going there ever since I saw My Girl 2, so finally 16 years of yearning paid off. It was pretty neat actually, a lot of the area around the tar pits has been developed now, but it used to be acres and acres of tar, and animals would wander in thinking it was water, get stuck, and die.
They have tons of really neat fossils like saber tooth tigers, dire wolves and mammoths, and it’s pretty neat to see how it used to look in that area. It’s like seeing the pictures when Waikiki beach used to be farming fields.
The tar smelled pretty terrible, but other than that it was a really neat experience. They also let military in for free, so we didn’t even have to pay to get in.
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| la brea tar pits. looks cool, smells like feet |
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| it’s a sloth. but actually |
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| tar is sticky. fact |
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| cawwwwww |
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| dire wolf skulls. winter is coming |
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| here kitty kitty kitty |
A few weekends ago Derek had to work, and I didn’t have any plans. The pool wasn’t open yet, but it was really nice out, and I felt like getting out of the house.
I decided to drive a few miles to the next town over and grab some breakfast, and visit a little park I had spotted the weekend before. At the park, I saw signs for a walking path, and decided to follow it.
After about a mile, I came around a corner, and saw a beautiful view of the bay, and the walking path continued along the beach to a lookout point. There were a lot of couples out walking, and kids riding their bikes.
I am so glad I decided to go exploring, it’s amazing what can be right in our own backyards without us even noticing.
Some more pictures of our wonderful Hawaii trip. Derek graduated, we kayaked out to the Mokulua islands, went to Sandy’s, did the booze cruise, and stayed at a cabin on Bellows for 3 days. We ate at all of our favourite restaurants, and just relaxed.
It was heaven. Excuse the gratuitous beach porn shots, it was soooo beautiful I took like 500 pictures of nothing but sand, sky and water.
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loveliness. 