lizneely

Good weekend

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:28:16 GMT

Saturday we had another backyard burn and made more progress clearing out fallen tree branches; we also roasted hot dogs and brats over the fire - yum! Saturday afternoon my friend came over and worked on the raised bed/greenhouse structure he's giving me, from his old house. We got to the point where we needed to lift the heavy and awkward greenhouse top onto the fairly tall raised bed and summoned the neighbors. It's so nice living somewhere with such friendly neighbors, even despite the distance between houses and the large age gaps between us and the rest of the neighbors. With a bit of struggling the greenhouse top was eventually maneuvered into place!

Sunday I did more work on the raised bed/greenhouse - it's a large structure that was moved across town in pieces, after being in use for 15-20 years, so there are various wooden pieces that were either broken or rotted. My friend who built it originally did all the hard parts of reassembling it, there are just small things here and there that need finishing. I think now it's down to less than 2 more hours of work (not counting trips to the hardware store) before I can begin filling it with dirt!

Sunday afternoon I babysat my youngest friends (ages 2 & 4) while their parents enjoyed a very rare evening out w/o kids. I worked on cutting up the smaller branches of the fallen tree and the kids helped me put the pieces in the greenwaste bins. We got both bins filled and most of the branches cut up.

Mystery solved

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 06:22:55 GMT

We got a call from our neighbor accross the street (husband of the woman I talked to); he was leaving his driveway for the wedding he was working at and happened upon the FedEx driver who was pondering the fact that he couldn't get his truck past a fallen tree in our driveway. He (neighbor) offered to sign for the package for us, but apparently the driver misread his name or something when he told me who had signed for it. Then he (neighbor) decided he shouldn't just leave the tree accross the driveway because then we wouldn't be able to get in when we got home, so he got his chainsaw and cut it up enough to clear our driveway then rushed off to the wedding. He's out of town til tomorrow but I guess his wife called him and mentioned the mystery and he called us to let us know it was him. Good to know it was a good deed rather than someone with malicious intentions. I suspect he'll leave a note or call next time he does this type of good deed!

The mystery continues

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 01:07:52 GMT

The name the FedEx driver gave me as who signed for the package doesn't match either of our neighbor's names. I was thrown off because the first name is the woman next door's first name and the last name is the woman accross the streets last name, but both are also very common names. I've now talked to both women and neither one signed for the package. However, FedEx came at 11:50am according to their package tag and the woman accross the street said her husband left at 12:10pm so he may have seen something. He won't be home until tonight though so it remains a mystery for now. The message from FedEx said "a neighbor walked over and signed for the package." We really don't have any neighbors within easy walking distance other than the one accross the street, the one next door, and one a bit further down the street (who was not home when I tried to call and is often out of town.)

The mystery of the cut up tree

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:10:28 GMT

I'm working from home today but I was out to lunch for a bit less than 2 hours. When I got back from lunch there was most of a tallish tree (not tall by redwood standards, just normal tall adult tree sized) laying in the clearing near our driveway. I stopped the car there (still a ways from the house) to take a look. There were sections of the tree cut up and laying on both sides of the driveway. There was saw dust in piles accross the driveway. there was also a semi-rotten stump still in the ground, and the largest cut log was broken off on the non-cut side, and the break appeared to match the stump in the ground.

I called our neighbors accross the street to see if they saw or heard anything. Their daughter in law answered and told me she hadn't seen or heard anything and that the neighbors were out at a wedding (their profession.) But she also said where she lives (about a mile up the road), a pickup truck has been going around cutting down trees and taking the wood.

I called the neighbors next door and they didn't know anything either.

FedEx had left a package while I was gone, despite it requiring a signature, so I called and asked that they have the driver contact me and let me know if he'd seen anyone on our property.

I also called the Sherriff to report the tree and told them I really didn't know if it had been cut by someone intending to steal the wood or if it had fallen on it's own and someone cut it to unblock our driveway for us.

A while later the neighbor next door came by to look at the tree. He says it looks like it fell but he can't think of how or why it had gotten cut up. He also said most people end up putting gates accross their driveway to prevent tresspassing.

While I was talking to the neighbor, FedEx left me a message. The driver said he couldn't get to the house because there was a tree accross the driveway, so he had the neighbor accross the street sign for the package.

Our "List" from the weekend

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:36:26 GMT

So many things went wrong this past weekend we started just saying "add it to the list" every time another thing went wrong.

Here's the list:
- burnt out driver's side headlight
- damaged driver's side windshield wiper
- lost cell phone
- broken piece on car that holds large rubber thing onto front bumper
- 5am arrival due to heavy snow starting at low elevations, inefficient setup for chain-check by CHP, and various stops due to above problems (expected arrival time was around 11pm-midnight)
- broken tire chains
- paint scraped on both sides of car by broken tire chains
- spare chains for wrong car
- forgotten ski pants

We went to Tahoe to ski this weekend; this was our first ski trip of the season since a decent amount of snow had finally arrived. As always, I worked Friday then drove to Craig's work to pick him up; since he works an hour closer to Tahoe than I do, no point in him coming home first. I left the house at 5pm.

After it got dark, Craig commented that my headlights seemed dim and wondered if one was out. Next time we stopped we discovered that indeed, the driver's side light was out. We drove with the brights on as the police generally tell you to do if a headlight is out, and since it was raining fairly hard and would be snowing further into the drive, I wanted the car to be visible.

We finally got into the Sierras and it was snowing and traffic was being funneled into a single lane, although there were no "put your chains on" signs or stopping points yet. We finally got to the checkpoint that was causing the single-file traffic and they were telling everyone to exit the highway, get back on going the other way, take the first exit (so, the previous exit we had passed), get off there and put our chains on, and get back in line for the checkpoint. Uggh. But, we did as we were told, and eventually got back to the check point and were let through with our chains on. The speed limit was reduced to 30MPH, and we were not very far into the mountains compared to where we normally have to put chains on. This was going to take a LONG time; we usually got MUCH further into the mountains before they required chains and slow speeds.

We also had to stop along the road several times. Our windshield wipers kept caking up with ice and becoming ineffective and we'd have to stop and clean them. And the chains kept making noise so we kept stopping to make sure they weren't broken, but it always turned out to be huge ice dams in the wheel wells rubbing against the chains. Craig also discovered at one of these stops that a piece of the car that was supposed to be holding on a large rubber thing on the bumper was no longer holding it on, and the rubber thing was hanging loose. He used his leatherman to reattach it as well as he could.

After several of these stops, Craig realized he no longer knew where his cell phone was. We called it; no ringing was heard in the car. We searched the car as well as we could and didn't find it. Finally we stopped, backed up on the shoulder to the last place we had stopped to check the tire chains, and Craig looked through the snow as I continued calling it in the hopes he would hear it ringing. Then he jogged back to the previous place we had stopped (we were stopping a lot and traffic was very slow, so it wasn't too far back) and looked there; no luck. No point in going any further back because there came the snowplow having plowed large amounts of snow over anywhere further back we had stopped. We drove back a couple miles to a mini-mart we had stopped at and looked in the parking lot there as well as asking if it had been turned in. No luck.

We got back on the road. Eventually we go to the point where we were allowed to remove our chains; we got out and removed them and found that they were both broken in several places. Oh well, we always carried a spare set with us so we could use that for the trip home.

We finally arrived at our hotel at 5AM OUCH!! We normally get to our hotel around 11pm-midnight, even on trips where we have to put on chains. But we also normally don't have to put them on nearly so soon into the mountains and we normally get to take them off much sooner.

We talked about what to do: stay up and ski then sleep after skiing. Sleep 4 hours and ski a half day (any more than 4 hours sleep wouldn't give us enough time to make skiing worth the effort and cost.) Or sleep a reasonable amount of time and skip skiing on Saturday. We chose the later; we were going to ski Sunday anyway.

So we slept in. When we arrive at 5am on Saturday morning it was snowing and had been all day Friday. When we woke up later on Saturday, we looked out our hotel window and the parking lot, cars, and buildings were DRY. No signs of snow or rain. When we went back down to the lot, we could see water under the parked cars and ice packed into wheel wells, but still! The desert climate (Reno) is so strange!

So anyway, we ate at our favorite Indian restaurant in Reno, and hung out at the casinos. We got to bed on time Saturday so we could ski Sunday. It was snowing a bit, but the road was clear enough to not require chains, until we got onto the smaller road to the ski resort we were going to. Chains required. We pulled over and got out our spare set and they didn't fit. The only thing we can think of is we had 2 sets of spare chains and one was from the old Honda. The wrong ones must have found there way into the current Honda. We went back to Long's (drugstore) where I have bought chains before, and it was only a short way back from where we were, and got a new set of chains. We got them on and finally made it to the ski slope. We started getting our ski gear on and Craig discovered he had forgotten to bring his ski pants. He ended up wearing a pair of long underwear, a pair of fleece pants, and his hiking pants. Unfortunately not waterproof, but he stayed warm even though the pants got pretty wet.

We had a GREAT day skiing, the snow was great and it continued snowing all day. We did have to drive with the chains on for a while on the drive home, but eventually they let us take them off and the rest of the drive was uneventful.

Today I discovered spots on both sides of my car where the paint was scraped by the broken tire chains. I added it to the list LOL.

Meme from my sister's LJ

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:45:26 GMT

Make a list of things you can see without getting up: Computer Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, etc., Purse, Cup of tea, Phone, Hairbrush, Space heater, wood stove, LOTS of computer related stuff, a redwood forest, my deck, patio furniture, plants, a cat, hmm, I think this could go on forever, I can see a lot from my desk!

What were you like when you were five? very very shy

What are you wearing now? jeans, long underwear, shirt, fleece pullover, down booties

What story/book/novel have you read over and over again in your life? I don't tend to read something more than once although Craig got me a poker book for Christmas that I keep rereading.

What’s the last thing you read/are currently reading? I listen to more audiobooks than reading books; I'm listening to the Amber Splyglass right now.

Do you nap a lot? Never; if I try I just lay there thinking about all the things I could be doing.

Who was the last person you hugged? Craig

What’s your current fandom/obsession/addiction? Pokerstars

What was the last thing you ate today? A bowl of cereal - half Grape Nuts and half Raisin Bran

What was the last thing you said aloud? "Do you want some breakfast" (to my cat)

What websites do you always visit when you go online? Livejournal, CNN, Craigslist

What was the last thing you bought? Postage Stamps

What are you listening to right now? The wood crackling in the wood stove, my laptop fan, a bird squaking.

If you could have any super power, what would it be? I agree with Erica, teleportation. And I would like to be able to teleport people with me if I want to.

What is your favorite weather, and why? Summer, warm and dry; I love being outdoors but I don't like being at all cold. I also like being able to let fresh air into the house.

What time do you usually get up? usually between 6am-8:30am depending on work/etc. My body doesn't change schedules quickly so even on weekends it wakes me up early. On vacations I get on a later schedule after a few days and wake up more like 9-10am.

What is your most challenging goal right now? I don't really do goals but the challenging thing for me right now is trying to get good at poker; seems like it should be possible but I haven't figured it out yet!

Say something to the person who tagged you: Hi Erica!!

If you could have a house–totally paid for, fully furnished–anywhere in the world, where would you want it to be? Scotts Valley. I like living here and my friends are here and having the house paid for and fully furnished would relieve our huge financial burden!

Favorite vacation spot? Hawaii, no contest!

What is your favorite children’s book? One I remember liking a lot as a young child was Jean-Marie (not sure if I'm spelling it right.) I think it was about a child with a pet, maybe a lamb or something. Oh, also a book about a very small house wedged between large buildings that has a cookie recipe at the end. I think I still have both of these books.

Name one thing you just can’t resist no matter how bad it is for you: Too much chocolate at one time!

If you could meet anyone famous - dead or alive - who would it be? Hmm, no one comes to mind; I guess I'm not that into meeting famous people. I would like to meet my great-grandparents that I didn't get to know (I grew up near one great-grandfather and step-great-grandmother, but didn't get to know any of the others.)

What was your first job? Other than paid chores around the house, probably Kid Power, a "business" my sister and I started after reading a book about kids starting such a business. We pulled weeds, did odd jobs, babysat, etc.

What do you love to do? Cook, be outdoors in warm weather, sit around with friends, travel to interesting places, play poker online, crafts especially scrapbooking.

What cool or interesting website have you recently discovered? Instructables.com

What is/was for dinner tonight? Meeting friends at Fresh Choice (it's kid friendly and most of my friends have kids.)

Tagged: You're it!

THE RULES:
Step 1: respond and rework—answer the questions on your own blog, replace one question that you dislike with a question of your own invention, add one more question of your own.
Step 2: tag—eight other un-tagged people will be tagged. [I don't do well with rules, can you tell? *grin*]

More wood stove learning

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:13:46 GMT

Last week we were having big problems making fires in our wood stove. It seemed like no matter what we did, we ended up with a lot of smoke in the house. We tried warming the chimney pipe to get the draft going, opening a door in case the house was sealed too well, carefully picking very dry wood, using plenty of kindling; nothing seemed to help. Finally it got to the point where we could see smoke coming into the house through the seams in the chimney, so I shut down the bit of fire I had going and left a message for our chimney guy. By Sunday he had still not returned my call, so Craig decided to go up on the roof (yikes!) and take a look. We live in a geodesic dome so the roof is steep and rounded, but he managed to not slide off. He discovered that the spark arrestor screen we had gotten installed this summer was completely clogged up. That does explain to me why the previous owners didn't have a spark arrestor screen, but since I don't want to light the forest on fire, I want to keep it. Craig cleaned it out and put it back on. I did some internet research and found that cleaning the screen is part of regular maintenance (I wish the installer had mentioned that!) AND that burning paper can clog it pretty fast. Today was the first chance I had to try out the stove again, and the fire lit right up and all the smoke went out the chimney like it's supposed to; YAY! I didn't use any newspaper, I used something I read about online, a bit of dryer lint with some candle wax dripped on it. This worked GREAT, I think we'll stick with dryer lint and wax rather than newspaper! So, 3 new things we'd learned about country living:

1. clean the chimney spark arrestor regularily.
2. don't burn any more paper than we have to in the wood stove.
3. dryer lint and wax make a great fire starter.

yesterday's project

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:45:54 GMT

I had some rhubarb plants I wanted to plant so I chose a spot in the back yard. I started digging and hit cement. Hmmm. So I dug around the cement to see what it was and whether I could remove it. It's a 1 foot or so cement area with a perfect circle (cylinder) in the middle, about 3-4" wide. The center area was full of rotten wood and I can't tell how deep it is, I got about 6-7" deep before I stopped. I'm guessing it must have been a post of some sort. Maybe some day I'll attempt to remove it, but that seemed like a larger project than I wanted to attempt yesterday.

So I moved over a foot and dug again. I got the first rhubarb plant in the ground then realized that the tree we had been planning, for the past year, to remove would fall right on the rhubarb plant when we felled it (or if it fell on it's own). This tree was a large diameter trunk with 2 main branches, both about 8-10" diameter, leaning in different directions, 1 close to the house, and the other close to the studio. The tree was mostly dead and if it were to fall on it's own, the two branches were likely to damage both buildings; that's why we wanted to take it down.

I went and told Craig the problem with planting the rhubarb and we decided I should pull the one plant I had already put in the ground and fell the tree. We put upside down crates over the nearby strawberry plants since the tree could also hit them when it fell. We (Craig) sawed off parts of the high branches with the pole saw (manual) so when he cut the remainder with the chainsaw it would be smaller sections, less likely to hit the buildings. Then he sawed off the branch that was leaning towards the house. Since he had taken off the end of that branch, the remainder was short enough that it didn't hit the house when it fell. He then began making a wedge cut with the chainsaw in the remainder of the tree, so he could control where it fell, and discovered that the chainsaw blade was dull so off he went to the Stihl dealer to get it sharpened.

A bit later he got home with a sharp chainsaw and cut down the rest of the tree. It fell right where planned and scattered it's thin dead twigs all over the yard - it was almost like watching glass break the way the twigs shattered off of it! Then the project of cutting up the fallen tree began. I prefer not to operate the chainsaw, and Craig enjoys using it, so Craig did the cutting up and I did the moving stuff into appropriate piles. The rotten parts of the tree go into the yardwaste pile, the good parts that are large go into the "need to split this firewood" pile, and the good parts that are small go into the "not seasoned yet" firewood stack.

While Craig was still cutting stuff up, my friend and her 2 toddlers showed up. The toddlers were a bit hesitant when Craig would run the chainsaw, since it's so loud, but they were also facinated and seemed to enjoy watching (from a safe distance, of course.) My friend was happy since it kept them entertained and all she had to do was hold their hands.

Eventually everything was cut up, sorted into piles, and I raked up all the twigs and other debris and finally got my rhubarb planted just as it was getting dusky out!

trying again

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:09:32 GMT

I'm going to try again to post more often.

As we were dealing with a fallen tree a few weeks ago, Craig commented to me that we should be writing down all the stuff we do and things we learn about living in the country. And I thought, hmm, something I could put in my blog! Of course, not all of it has to do with "country", some of it is just homeowners stuff too, but still might be useful or interesting to someone, and it gives me something to write about :-)

Today's lunchhour project:

The previous owners had a humming bird feeder hanging on the upstairs deck. It was hanging on a piece of wood that stuck out at a right angle from the wall immediately next to the upstairs front door. The piece of wood was a bit rotted and loose where it was attached to the wall, but I hung my humming bird feeder on it anyway, and we get a lot of humming birds visiting it. But it's in an inconvenient place; both times we have had furniture delivered, it has been bumped and loosened even more. I finally went to Home Depot the other day and looked for a replacement. It turns out they have a decent selection of "plant brackets" that work perfectly for hanging a humming bird feeder. They are metal, so they won't rot either. I hung it today at lunch time and put it in a place where the birds will be visible from our large picture window AND it's way out of the way of getting bumped. As I was cleaning up the tools and step ladder, a humming bird came by and used the feeder :-)

career cruising

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:00:09 GMT

I got this from my sister's blog:

1. Go to http://www.careercruising.com/.
2. Put in Username: nycareers, Password: landmark.
3. Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions.
4. Post the top ten results.

Here are my top ten results. By the way, what I actual do "Database Developer" was #24 on my list!

1. Aquaculturist
2. Zookeeper
3. Shipping and Receiving Clerk
4. Nursery / Greenhouse Grower
5. Stock Clerk
6. Editor
7. Insulator
8. Plasterer
9. Security Guard
10. Arborist

Of these top 10, here are my comments:
1: no idea what this is but sounds interesting
2: yeah, I think I'd like that despite the smells :-)
3: I think I'd get bored
4: I'm pretty sure I'd like this a lot
5: I think I'd get bored
6: I'd probably like this, but it might depend what I was editing; if it involved *writing* my own articles, I wouldn't like it
7: no idea
8: no idea
9: no way, I don't like bad guys, dark alleys, danger, etc.
10: I'd probably like this a lot

Silly waste of time :-)

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 03:42:57 GMT

I've seen this in a few other people's blogs, so here goes.

Rules: Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following...They MUST be real places, names, things...NOTHING made up! If you can’t think of anything, skip it. Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

1. Actor: Lucy Lawless
2. 4 letter word: Love
3. Street name: Littleway Lane
4. Color: Lavender
5. Gift/present: Locket
6. Vehicle: Landrover
7. Tropical Location: Lihue, Kauai, HI
8. College Major: Literature
9. Dairy Product: Lucerne Butter
10. Thing in a Souvenir Shop: Lighter
11. Boy Name: Louis
12. Girl Name: Lisa
13. Movie Title: Love Actually
14. Type of Alcohol: Liquor
15. Occupation: Lawyer
16. Flower: Lily
17. Celebrity: Letterman
18. Magazine: Las Vegas Magazine
19. U.S. City: Las Vegas
20. Band: Love and Rockets

Why am I doing a meme?

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 03:15:08 GMT

I have no idea why I'm doing a meme, I generally don't, but here it is.

5 things meme

5 things you are wearing
1. jeans
2. tie dye socks
3. tie dye underwear
4. long sleeved shirt with blue, black, and white stripes
5. blue dangly earings

5 things you can see
1. my computer monitor
2. the dish of barbeque sauce left over from dinner
3. one of my cats
4. the couch I hate
5. a tiny sign hanging on the wall that says "Work like you don't need the money. Dance like no one is watching. Love like you have never been hurt."

5 things you are doing right now
1. filling in this meme
2. digesting
3. thinking about stuff
4. making my way through another work week
5. listening to my cat crunch his food

5 things you ate in the last 24 hours
1. open face burger with swiss, bacon, peperoncini, and barbeque sauce
2. tater tots
3. pizza
4. chocolate cookie with fudge frosting
5. candy

5 things you did so far today
1. drove 2 hours (work and back)
2. worked all day
3. put out the greenwaste bin
4. researched parking regulations
5. heard some gossip at work

5 things you can hear right now
1. the noise my computer makes, I guess either the fan or harddrive
2. the sound of my typing
3. my cat meowing
4. cars in the distance
5. someone taking out their recycling or greenwaste bin

5 colors you can see
1. blue
2. grey
3. dark red
4. silver
5. purple

5 thoughts in your head
1. Do I have time to work on crafts tonight?
2. How much are the issues that pass going to raise my cost of living yet again?
3. Which neighbor complained about Craig parking his car backwards?
4. Are my contractors doing a good job rebuilding my carport?
5. Is anyone really going to read this meme?

Cute kitty picture

Sat, 06 May 2006 01:01:49 GMT

Sometimes Blitz and Sly like to hang out in their cat carrier, it's really cute when they get in there together like in this picture.

What have I been up to?

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 01:30:46 GMT

Since the last entry in my livejournal, we have been on 2 more ski trips. Even though there is still lots of snow left, that's the end of the season for us, the snow is getting slushy during the daytime and we've moving on to our summer activities.

Last weekend was my birthday weekend, so we took 2 days of vacation time to make it a 4 day weekend and went on our first 4 day backpacking trip. We went to Henry Coe State Park again. It might seem like that's where we always go, but the reason is that it's a wonderful place and it gets too hot there in the summer, so we've been going while it's still cool. This might have been our last trip there until after summer.

One of the things we love about Henry Coe is that it is so huge that you get the sense you are the only ones there. We saw 1 other person on a trail on Saturday, a few hours into our hike. We saw 2 people on a trail on Monday. Those are the only people we saw during our 4 days in the wilderness! We saw some wildlife: a rattlesnake, a beetle, 2 squirrels, 2 rabbits, a turtle, several frogs, lots of birds, and a horny toad. And some bugs and butterflies.

It's spring in Henry Coe right now and everywhere we went there were fields of wildflowers, all different types. Here's Craig walking through one of the many fields:

No promises, but I hope to get some of my flower pictures from this trip posted; if I do, I'll put a link here in my journal.

There is a place at Henry Coe called "The Narrows". It's between two steep tall hillsides, with a creek running along the bottom. The "trail" through the narrows requires crossing the creek, and is not really a trail as much as just travelling along the narrows wherever you can. It's only a bit over 1 mile, but very slow since it requires finding places to walk since there is no designated trail. It is not always passable, but we checked with the rangers and they said we would get very wet, but it was safe to go through. How could we resist? Here's an idea of what it looks like:

We really lucked out that Monday, the day we went through The Narrows, was somewhat warm and somewhat sunny, so we weren't really cold despite being wet. We probably crossed the creek 20-25 times, and some of the hiking had to be done in the creek, since there was no passable land on either side. We managed to find places to cross that kept our upper bodies dry, the deepest we had to cross was between my knees and the bottom of the shorts. And we only had to cross sections that deep about 3 times, the crossings were more often mid-calf in depth. Here's a picture of Craig at one of the crossings:

Here's a picture of our camp in the "China Hole" area, at the end of the Narrows; there wasn't much land availabe for setting up camp!

This is the strangest thing we saw during the 4 day trip:

We asked at the visitor's center what this was, and it turns out, many many years ago when Henry Coe was owned by ranchers, one of the ranchers would drag this wrecking ball behind his truck to clear paths through the brush!

We went skiing, finally!

Sun, 19 Mar 2006 06:14:21 GMT

Craig and I have been so busy doing stuff this year, that we hadn't been skiing yet, eventhough I got him new mini skis for Christmas. We finally went skiing last weekend, and boy did we pick a good weekend, it snowed the entire weekend!

We decided to stay in Reno this time, so we could go to Mount Rose. We hadn't been there in about 10 years, so wanted to check it out again. It was a really nice place to ski! The base elevation there is higher than the top elevation of many of the other Tahoe ski resorts, and Craig and I could both feel the altutide. I have problems with altitude everywhere we ski, but this was the first time Craig could feel it. It wasn't much of a problem really, just noticable (black splotches in front of eyes, slight quesiness, hard to catch breath, etc.) The snow at Mount Rose was VERY light and powdery, and it was snowing the entire day, so there were big puffs of snow everywhere. It was *hard work* skiing in all that powder, but we had lots of fun. We were so worn out by the end of the day that we didn't even go to any casinos when we got back to Reno! We did manage to find the energy to check out the Sierra Trading Post outlet store in Reno. Unfortunately, they were closing in 40 minutes, but we managed to get a few things. We'll have to check them out again next time we're in Reno. The next day we drove to West Lake Tahoe and skied at Homewood, where my co-worker is on the ski patrol and sometimes gives us free lift tickets. This time we managed to find him and drag him away from patrolling for a little bit so we got to ski with him for a few runs, and he showed us a run we haven't been on before that we really liked.

It was snowing and cloudy most of the weekend, so I didn't take many pictures, but here are a couple:

Another Henry Coe backpacking trip

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:29:13 GMT

We liked Henry Coe so much that we went back again this past weekend. It's such a huge park (87,000 acres) that it was easy to pick another hike/destination that was in a different area than where we were on the previous trip.

The weather forecast changed every time I looked at it, but it was supposed to be a little rainy on Saturday (forecast varied from light rain to t-showers) and partly cloudy to showers on Sunday. The predicted temperatures were highs of 56 and lows of 36. I was guessing that these predictions were for the visitors center, which is at a lower elevation than our destination, so I was expecting a little wet and very cold.

We left Santa Cruz a bit after 7am Saturday morning; it was raining. As we drove through the Santa Cruz mountains towards San Jose, it started SNOWING! It was actually snowing fairly hard for about 10 minutes of the drive, although the snow wasn't sticking to the road or ground. As we got out of the mountains, the snow stopped. We got to Henry Coe a little before 9am. We saw these as we got close to the parking lot area, we are guessing they are wild turkeys:

We started the hike with our raingear on since it was pretty cold and supposed to be raining on and off. The first 2.3 miles was fairly flat (nothing at Coe is really flat!) with many stream crossings. Then we got to the next trail on our route. This trail is 1.5 miles with 1200' elevation gain: that's VERY steep! We soon got too hot and removed our raingear. An hour or so later, it seemed like it was starting to drizzle, so I stopped to put my raingear back on. As I was putting it on, it started snowing!! The snow only lasted about 30 seconds, and the rest of the day, it varied between sunny, partly cloudy, and lightly raining.

Like I said, Henry Coe is BIG. I guess this is why many of the trails are seldom used. Sometimes it was hard to tell where the trail *was*. This is one of the "trails" we were on (it's the faint line in the grass):

The neat thing about this is that it really gives me the feel of making my way through the wilderness, everything I need carried on my back. Well, that's what it *is*, but it feels even more like that when the trail is barely there.

I took way too many photos to post them all here, but suffice it to say that the scenery at Henry Coe is beautiful. The only other mammals we saw were deer and cows, but we saw lots of indications (ie poop) that there were lots of other animals around.

Around 4 or so we got to where we had planned to camp and Craig found the perfect camping spot - this is wilderness camping so there are no defined campgrounds or campsites, which is nice because we get to camp wherever we want, but it can sometimes take some searching to find a spot thats flat enough! Anyway, Craig found the perfect spot and we got our camp set up. It was raining a bit and getting very cold, so we got set up quickly, got everything we needed unpacked into the tent, to keep it dry, and got everything else under our pack raincovers to keep it dry. We cooked dinner and ate in the tent, then got into our sleeping bags to stay warm. One of the problems we have not yet figured out about winter backpacking is that it gets very cold as soon as the sun starts to go down, so all we feel like doing is getting into our sleeping bags. But, it's way too early to go to sleep, and, if we do go to sleep, we wake up at 3 in the morning, no longer tired. We chatted and read and eventually went to sleep. I think it was a little after 8 when I went to sleep.

Around 1am, we both had to go to the bathroom. Fortunately, it had stopped raining, but it was still very cold. When I got back to the tent, Craig told me he had found my missing thermometer (missing since our last trip) inside my sleeping bag. I can't figure out how this could be, since I had looked everywhere, and I completely opened my sleeping bag and hung it to air out after the last trip! Anyway, this allowed us to check the temperature many times during the rest of the trip. It got down to around 30 inside the tent, and the following day, the temperature varied from 35 to 45 until late in the day when we got to lower elevations and the temp got up to around 50. BRRRR!

Here's our camp with Craig cooking breakfast in the "kitchen":

Most of the pictures with me in them are on Craig's camera, but here's one from my camera of us eating breakfast:

After breakfast we packed up camp and started the extremely long extremely uphill hike out of the valley we were in. It seemed endless! The views were very scenic and we stopped to look at them (and catch our breath and rest our legs) lots :-)

At one point, Craig spotted a footprint. We looked it up on a chart he had with him and determined it was a mountain lion footprint. I had trouble getting it to show up well in a photo, but here's what I got (my foot's in the photo for size comparison:)

We got back to the car at dusk and we were beat. We hiked a total of 17.5 miles over 2 days with over 2500' of elevation gain the first day, and probably about 1000-1500' gain the second day. And, of course, matching downhill elevation losses too, which normally I wouldn't consider a strain, but some of the trails were so steep that even the downhill was strenuous!

This was our most strenous backpacking trip yet, but we are still enthused about backpacking, so I guess we're just a bit crazy :-)

Our Henry Coe Backpacking Trip

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 04:00:54 GMT

Last weekend, we went backpacking at Henry Coe State Park. I've been wanting to go there for a while because it's highly recommended by backpackers in this area, however, everyone says to avoid it in the summertime due to high temperatures and lack of water.

The first 2 miles was on a paved road, fairly flat. There were tons of squished newts on the road, and a few live ones, walking very slowly, maybe because it was cold outside.

When we got to the trailhead (2 miles down the road), the signpost was very confusing. I had been warned that some of the trails at Henry Coe can be hard to find. As we were discussing which way to go, 3 mountain bikers came by and we asked them, and they knew the trail we were trying to get to and got us going in the right direction. Those were the only other people we saw the entire day, so we were pretty lucky they came along when they did!

It was slightly wet out when we started, so we had our rain gear on, but it wasn't raining and we got heated up pretty quickly, so had to stop and take off our raingear. It stayed dry the rest of the day, although it was somewhat cloudy. I had a little thermometer and the temp was in the low 60's.

The hike had quite a bit of uphill sections then one very long downhill section down to the lake (uh-oh, that meant going back up it the next day!) Here's a look down one of the many uphill sections:

The lake was very pretty and we walked around it to find the best place to camp. Here's the lake:

We eventually set up our tents, filled our water jug so our purification tablets could get to work, then we walked around looking for a good place to hide the letterbox I had brought. In looking for a good hiding place, we were examining a dead tree and Craig pushed on it to make sure it was stable, and it fell over!! We were all pretty shocked!

I found a different hiding place for the letterbox after that.

Then we entertained our selves for a while taking way too many pictures of a red winged black bird (I think we need to think about things to do when we arrive in camp several hours before dinner time!) It was hard to take pictures of them because they wouldn't hold still and we didn't have a tripod, and we were afraid to get too close and scare them away.

For reasons none of us can figure out, we weren't as hungry as we usually are after hiking all day, but
we eventually got hungry enough to eat our planned dinner, although we didn't make the dessert, then we went to sleep early because it was really cold outside and nice and warm inside our sleeping bags.

I don't know how John and Craig can sleep so long, but I woke up at 4:30am, no longer tired. However, when I looked outside, everything was covered with thick frost. My little thermometer read 29 degrees inside the tent, and it was probably a few degrees colder outside. I stayed in the tent looking out the window for a while since it was still dark outside and very cold.

But, eventually, I got up and went outside. I discovered my bandanas, which I had hung to dry, were frozen solid, and our 2 containers of water were now containers of ice. However, the sun was starting to come over the hills by then, and I was bundled up enough to avoid being cold. John eventually woke up too; Craig woke up but had trouble convincing himself to get out of his sleeping bag where it was nice and warm:

Eventually we were all awake, ate breakfast, and broke down the camp. All that stuff fit back into our 3 backpacks, amazing! Then we started the very long hike up the hill we had hiked down the previous day to get to the lake. At the top of the hill, we encountered 2 mountain bikers. Those were the only other people we saw that day, until getting back to the parking lot!

I don't know if the area of Henry Coe we were at is always so empty, or if it had something to do with it being Super Bowl weekend, but it sure was nice to have the place to ourselves!

Here are 2 more "wildlife" pictures. This is a slug, we aren't sure if it's a banana slug that's not yellow (can that happen?) or if it's some other variety of extra large slug:

And this is a dead rodent we saw on the road on the walk back to the car. We think it's a kangaroo rat:

John also has some pictures posted from this trip:

Click here for John's pictures

All told, I thought this would be our toughest hike yet, because of the extremes in elevation changes both up and down, however, maybe our bodies are getting stronger, because, while we were tired at the end of the weekend, we weren't as tired as we usually are, and we weren't starving the entire next week like we usually are, eventhough we didn't eat any more than we usually do on the trip.

We don't know yet when or where our next backpacking trip will be, but there's a different lake I'd like to visit at Henry Coe, Mississippi Lake, however, it's an 11 mile hike to it, also with lots of elevation gain and loss. That would be longer than we've ever done with backpacks on (we've hiked that far w/o backpacks before) in one day, but I'm pretty sure we could do it if we got started early enough. (We like to arrive in camp with enough time to get set up and cook and eat dinner before sunset.)

I still exist

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 03:22:03 GMT

I actually think about blogging a lot, I just never seem to actually do it. We just got back from a great backpacking trip at Henry Coe State Park, which I will hopefully write a blog entry about very soon!

Just a silly thing I saw on my friend's blog

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 03:04:01 GMT

(the lowercase is mine, the upper case is the ABCs to fill in)

A IS FOR AGE: 37
B IS FOR BOOZE OF CHOICE: i don't drink regularily, but it must be a sweet fru-fru drink for me to like it
C IS FOR CAREER: database programmer
D IS FOR DAD'S NAME: dad
E IS FOR ESSENTIAL ITEMS TO BRING TO A PARTY: snack to share, camera
F IS FOR FAVORITE SONG OF THE MOMENT: santa baby by madonna
G IS FOR FAVORITE GAME: texas holdem at the moment
H IS FOR HOMETOWN: santa cruz
I IS FOR INSTRUMENTS YOU PLAY: keyboard - clackity clack clack :-)
J IS FOR JAM OR JELLY YOU LIKE: almost all
K IS FOR KIDS: no kids, but i'll have a niece or nephew later this year, and i'm often surrounded by friends' kids
L IS FOR LIVING ARRANGEMENTS: house with my boyfriend and our kitties
M IS FOR MOM'S NAME: mom
N IS FOR THE NAME OF YOUR PET: blitz and sly
O IS FOR OVERNIGHT HOSPITAL STAYS: liver biopsy, i think, maybe other liver-stuff too
P IS FOR PHOBIAS: spiders, snakes, bugs, insects, scary noises
Q IS FOR QUOTES YOU LIKE: "work like you don't need the money, dance like no one is watching, love like you have never been hurt"
R IS FOR RELATIONSHIP THAT LASTED THE LONGEST: current one, 15.5 years
S IS FOR FAVORITE SODA: not crazy about soda, but sometimes a rootbeer or grape soda is good and every once in a while a caffiene-free full-sugar pepsi is good
T IS FOR TIME YOU WAKE UP: 6:30am weekdays, weekends depends when i got to sleep the previous night
U IS FOR UNDERWEAR: all different kinds; my current favorite is the tie-dye ones i got for Christmas
V IS FOR VEGETABLE YOU LOVE: i love lots of veggies, but eggplant is one of my favorites
W IS FOR WEAPON OF CHOICE: brain
X IS FOR X-RAYS YOU'VE HAD: arms, foot, teeth, chest, toe
Y IS FOR YUMMY FOODS YOU MAKE: lots and lots :-)
Z IS FOR ZODIAC SIGN: taurus

Our Gnomad

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 07:18:17 GMT

Craig and I got a Gnomad for Christmas. I can't really explain it, but you can check out her adventure journal here: http://www.gnomads.net/view.php?gnomadid=0d964f0922f5122b3f7973aafc000faf
We named her BB.

I think I will probably move this journal to a livejournal or my own website someday, but for now it's on www.gnomads.net. Post comments here on my livejournal if you want to try to guess where the mystery photos were taken :-)

Humidity

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 23:10:42 GMT

Craig and I have been wondering why it takes so long for our hand-wash to dry when we hang it to dry (either on the inside or outside clotheslines.) I checked the other day, according to weather.com, our humidity was 88%. It was not raining, nor had it rained that day.

Today it's nice and sunny outside, and the humidity has dropped all the way down to 64%. Uggh.

We had a good 4 day weekend

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 02:26:20 GMT

Still a few hours left, but thought I'd post here now. Here are some of the things we've done in the past 4 days:

Drove to Reno.
Found a letterbox.
Walked about 3-4 miles (roundtrip) looking for another letterbox (turned out to be missing.)
Saw a standup comedy show.
Played carnival games and won stuffed animals.
Played casino games and won and lost money (lost more than we won.)
Visited Virginia City, NV, the "original boomtown."
Visited Carson City, NV, the state capital.
Saw many large rainbows.
Drove through heavy snowfall and had to put on tirechains.
Cooked a thanksgiving feast and enjoyed it with friends.
Saw the new Harry Potter movie.

Today is our "relax" day; all we've done today is saw the Harry Potter movie and ate more thanksgiving food :-)

A Barn Razing and Raising!

Sat, 29 Oct 2005 18:10:43 GMT

Last weekend, I went to my friends' Sandy and Bela's place, "Ranch 101", for a Barn Razing and Raising, to take down their old barn (where their chickens sleep and lay eggs) and put up a new barn. It was a lot of fun, and lots of people showed up! There were people doing the destruction and construction in the barnyard, people doing the woodworking in the driveway, people watching the kids in the house, and people carrying things back and forth to the barnyard! Sandy and Bela's pictures are posted here: http://www.armory.com/~alexia/ranch101/barnraising and my pictures are posted here: http://www.armory.com/~liz/blog/BarnRaisingWeb/ .

Point Reyes Backpacking Trip Oct 1-3

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 07:26:12 GMT

I'm actually up to the current month in my blog entries now :-)

2 weeks after the Lake San Antonio camping trip, we went on our first 2-night, 3-day backpacking trip!

We went backpacking at Point Reyes National Seashore, which is a beautiful national park just 20 miles or so North of San Francisco, right on the coast! It's amazing to see this much open space so close to SF! This place is so popular that I had to make reservations way in advance.

Here's our traditional "before the hike" picture:

I should mention that my pack is not actually larger than Craig's; we have basically identical packs (the straps/harnesses are different, but that doesn't affect the size.) When we take our packs off and stand them up next to each other they are the same size. When we weigh them (loaded) they are approximately the same weight. We are guessing mine always looks bigger when we're wearing them because my hips are higher than Craig's and I'm shorter than Craig, so my pack is not only higher on my body, but it extends above my head. Since Craig's pack is riding lower on his body AND his head is 4 inches higher than mine, it makes it look like my pack is much bigger than his. On this trip, we even got some shouts from a group of women saying "her pack is bigger than his, go-girl!" It was pretty funny.

We didn't really know what to expect from this trip, we had never been on a backpacking trip that involved 3 days of hiking and 2 nights of camping, but it worked out very well. Our biggest concern was we didn't know how much hungrier than normal we would be on the 2nd night and 3rd morning, but we apparently guessed right because we had just the right amount of food with us! Speaking of which, the food method we prefer for dinners and breakfasts is to bring dried/dehydrated food that just needs water (either boiling or cold) added. The reason we prefer this is it's much lighter to pack food that has had all it's water removed, and it makes "cooking" meals easier when all you need to do is boil water! We haven't started doing this for lunches, as we don't really have a fixed lunch-time, but just nibble while we're hiking or during rest stops. So, our lunches tend to weigh more. I think if we were going to be on the trail for 5+ days, we'd have to do lighter-weight lunches too. Anyway, I've been getting these recipes for "just add boiling water" meals from the internet and from a backpacking recipe book we got at the used bookstore. Here are the "just add water" foods we had on this trip:

Clam Chowder - all dried ingredients except clams, which were in a prepackaged foil pouch

Hamburger Rice with Cheese Sauce - all dried ingredients; I dried the ground beef at home in my dehydrator!

Sasquatch Taters - all dried ingredients

Rice Pudding Soup - all dried ingredients; we call it "soup" because it's a very saucy and not very pudding-y rice pudding, but it's really good!

Morning Potatoes - all dried except a prepackaged pouch of precooked bacon

Anyway, the trip was great and I was really proud of all of us! We hiked about 6.7 miles the first day, set up camp, then walked about 3 miles along the beach collecting drift wood for our drift wood fire (more on that later.) The second day we hiked about 8.9 miles to our next campsite, with a fair amount of uphill since this campsite was at 1025 feet elevation. The third day we only hiked 3-4 miles I think, since that campsite was close to where our car was parked.

Our first night was in "Wildcat Camp", which is a camp that sits on a cliff above the ocean. We had a great secluded site, with our own private overlook to the ocean. One of the reasons I picked this campground was because, when fire danger is moderate or below, they allow driftwood fires on the beach! When we checked in to the visitor's center, the fire danger was just being downgraded to moderate, so we were able to get the fire permit! If we had gotten there 1 hour earlier, we wouldn't have been able to get the permit, so we really lucked out! The reason this is exciting is not just because it meant we could make smores; it was neat because most backpacking camps in the bay area don't allow fires of any kind other than little stoves (not sure if this is just a summertime rule; it might be year-round just to prevent all the dead wood from getting burned up in campfires.) The only problem with the fire rule at Point Reyes is that the fire can only be made from driftwood; you can't collect dead wood from the campground or trails for the fire. That means everyone who has had a fire had gone around collecting driftwood, so it was hard to find! We didn't find any really nice sized logs, but we got a couple medium sized pieces and lots of kindling sized pieces, and it was enough wood to make a fire for an hour or so, which was fine because I was ready to go to sleep before we'd used the last of the wood anyway!

Here's a view of Wildcat Camp from the trail above:

And here's John getting our driftwood fire going:

The weather at Point Reyes was bright and sunny in the mornings, and cool and foggy in the afternoon and evenings, then cold at night. Since I heat up when I'm hiking, I was constantly having to put my jacket on when we stopped, then a few minutes after staring up hiking again, I'd have to take my jacket back off. This meant first removing my 35 pound pack and finding somewhere to set it down, then getting my jacket off and strapping it to my pack, then getting my pack back on. I'm considering just getting a long sleeved shirt I can hike in that I can just roll the sleeves up when I get warmed up.

Here's a picture I like of a bird near Wildcat Camp; this is a *color* picture! It was just so gray and foggy out that it looks like a black & white picture!

And here's a picture of a snake we saw:

Since I'm always low on vacation time, I'm not sure when we'll be able to do a 3-night, 4-day trip; sometime next year I guess, since I'm out of vacation time and any days I earn between now and the end of the year will be used at Christmas time.

Believe it or not, we haven't planned our next trip yet; I think we were a bit overbooked in Aug/Sept and we're kind of playing catch-up on life right now!

Lake San Antonio Camping Trip

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:36:29 GMT

A week and a half after returning from the Alaska cruise, we had our "group hug" camping trip at Lake San Antonio. It was the "core" potluck group of friends, which was 8 adults and 4 little kids. We all had a great time! The campground wasn't very nice, the area was geared towards people who came there for the lake recreation, and not for nature/wilderness, so the campsites were all out in the open close to each other. But, despite that, we found a site that was perfect for our 3 tents and 1 popup-camper, and that was close enough to the lake to make the walk there easy even for toddlers but far enough away that the parents didn't have to constantly worry about the kids falling into the lake.

We got there Friday early afternoon and stayed until Sunday afternoon. We spent a lot of time playing in the lake, which was cool, but warm enough to swim in; I also brought my inflatable boat, which was a lot of fun. We didn't coordiate our meals with each other, so each family prepared their own meals, although there was some sharing too. Next time we'll probably coordinate meals, but since this was our first trip together, and most of us didn't have much camping experience, it was simpler not to try to coordinate food this time.

The scariest thing that occured was one night we were sitting around the campfire when someone spotted a huge tarantulla right near the campfire (see it in my photos, link below). Fortunately, Craig was able to chase it away with a stick. He chased it completely out of our campsite.

There were lots of pictures taken.
John's are here
Sandy's are here
Mine are here
(Sorry, my non-thumbnail pictures don't currently work on Linux, so maybe not on unix either; I'll fix it tonight.) They are working on Linux now; hopefully that means they are also working on Unix.