Canada Got Me Drunk

Jay and I have been busy bees, and it's only December 2nd. We've gotten most of our Christmas shopping wrapped up, our annual Swiss Colony order has been placed, and we are doing our holiday cards this weekend. We're also hosting a Holiday Happening cocktail party this month with our friends here in Los Angeles.

Since we've been so busy, we decided to order dinner in tonight. We had sushi and watched an episode of the muppet show, as you can see.

This is one of our favorite ways to relax. Good food delivered to our door or picked up on our way home, giving ourselves a rare day off in the kitchen. Jay is an excellent cook, and I am passable. Every week we make our menu and buy our groceries. This is a great way both to eat healthfully, as well as to keep within our food budget. We save a lot of money by eating at home, and we rarely eat out. Cooking together is a great way to connect at the end of our busy days apart. But sometime we just want to crash, and today was one of those days. Los Angeles is home to some excellent sushi restaurants, and we love sushi. So we stopped on the way home. Our Muppet Show DVD was waiting in the mailbox. And as you can see, Jay was hoisting a glass of nice, dark Trader Joe's Special Ale. Which has a 9% alcohol content, and I ended up quite tipsy on less than a glass. Turns out it is made in Canada; those insalubrious Canadians. One of the many reasons I love them so (big I love you out to my family in Canada, Drew, Jo, Galen, and Raynham)!!!

If you ever get a chance to drink in Canada, I highly recommend several wineries in the Niagara Valley, and you should especially try the ice wines. I would love Jo and Drew just for introducing me to ice wine, but I love them for many other reasons besides. And now you all know that I get sappy when I drink.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just a quick note to remind myself, and all of you, how fortunate we are. I know it's almost become cliche to post/email/text message a generic "we have so much to be thankful" message, and it's usually grandiose, how great our lives are compared to the rest of the universe, how thankful we are for our soldiers, etc.

Now don't for a second get me wrong. I agree very much with most of the "stock" commentary. There isn't a week that goes by where I don't think about our forces overseas in danger, or that I hear about children in poverty in a 3rd world country, and I am thankful for what I have. But to me it misses the point. It's easy to say how thankful you are for those kinds of things. You damn well better be.

What about the little, mundane things? Or the things we appreciate for a time, but then quickly forget? Or the ones that we really, really appreciate, but don't always remember just exactly how much?

My 85 year old grandmother gave me a photo album a few years ago- with photos from my childhood, as well as some of my dad and grandfather when they were young men. I scanned all of them just in case something ever happened to the album, and came across them on the computer the other day.

I had pushed it to the back of my mind, almost forgot about them. But I will likely run across them every year or two for the rest of my life. Generations of my family will have the chance to see them. That means a lot.

April and I were able to run in a 5k race Thanksgiving morning- it raises money for a local charity. I am lucky to be able to help, and not need to be the one in need. I am thankful that I can help others.

So many of you, friends and family alike, mean a tremendous amount to me, and to April. Our wealth of people that care for us is so very deep, and for that I am thankful. But if all of you turned your back on me today, I am thankful that April would still be at my side.

Now don't get me wrong- in private she would use any means necessary (really, anything...) to figure out what I managed to do to turn all of our friends and family away, and make me fix it, but she would absolutely stick by me.

For that I am thankful.

Now all of you need to stop and really, truthfully, take a hard look at the person in your life who fills that role for you. Here's a hint- you would walk through hell with them and share your canteen. Probably give them the last swallow.

Do they really know how much you value them?

Time to make sure...

Major projects

I just hit send on the email carrying my newly written draft article to my principal investigator. She has given me a great opportunity, but it required a lot of my energy and focus, and I'm not sure it will be enough. The joys of life as a scientist, I guess. At any rate, this is where I've been parked for the last few days; in front of my laptop surrounded by outlines and articles. It's a good life, and one I enjoy. I get paid to make discoveries and learn.

But Meow has been feeling ignored, and the laundry has most certainly been ignored! As have a lot of things. I'm glad to be getting back to normal. And that includes getting some pictures posted!

We visited Jay's mom and attended a wedding in early November. Those pictures are up next. And then this week we have the 2009 Long Beach Turkey Trot (no, I haven't been training) and Thanksgiving, all of which will be getting a post. Whew! I've missed you guys.

Long time, no post... sorry! Things have been busy, busy, busy around our Los Angeles casa. I'm writing a review article, a major draft of which is due on Wednesday. And Jay just can't be bothered to post. So we'll be back after Thanksgiving, with more pictures and exciting stories about how much we work. Till then, I leave you with this recent exchange:

Scene: Our living room, watching the AMAs. Enter Meow stage left. She starts crying and staring at the couch.

April: Meow, stop it. Just get up here!

Meow: Meow! Meow! Meow! Meow!

April: (Patting sofa) Meow, get on the couch if you want to!

Meow: Meow! Meow! (Hops up on sofa and curls up next to April.)

April: I don't understand why she has to be invited up on the sofa every time she wants to sit with me. She's a cat. Why doesn't she just get up here?

Jason: She's a vampire. She has to be invited. I don't understand why you never see the obvious.

Sequoia National Park

So the Sunday after Kings Canyon NP, we were in Sequoia NP.

Big. Ass. Trees.

Okay, so there's more to it than that, but it really begins and ends with the Giant Sequoias that dominate the northern end, and higher elevations, of the park.

To the left you see April standing in front of a small stand of the giants. She's the little blue speck at the bottom of the photo...

This was taken at General Grant Grove, which is at the northernmost point in the park.


In the photo below, I am standing on the trunk of a fallen tree. Most of the fallen trees have been down for 50-80 years or longer. The wood has a very high concentration of tannic acid, making it very resistant to the parasites that cause bad breath and gingivitis...er, that's not right, is it? I guess it's the parasites that would normally cause the wood to rot.






So after seeing the the Grant Grove Saturday morning on the way into Kings Canyon, we headed south to the Giant Forest, aptly named, on Sunday. This forest of over 1,600 acres, contains more than 8,000 of the giant trees, and has more than 40 miles of hiking trails. We will definitely be back to enjoy them!


So as soon as we arrived at the Giant forest and began the walk down to see the General Sherman tree, we encountered a mother Black Bear. See below as she high-tails it off the trail. They tend to get the heck out of dodge when the rangers show up...












Here is the General Sherman tree. The damn thing was too big to get in one shot- the photo to the right is a composite of four shots...

Just to emphasize how massive these trees are, here is an outline of the base of the General Sherman:










After checking out the General Sherman, we went to Crystal Cave. It's a 30-minute drive at 10-15mph to get there, and then a 1.5 mile hike to the cave, yet there is still a lot of visitors that make the trek. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot at the trail head, it began to flurry a little bit. It was very strange to see snow again after almost 4 years away from MA, but it wasn't cold enough (yet) to stick, and it made the hike to the cave feel a bit like hiking in the foothills of the Appalachians in the fall, back in Georgia.

From the trail:

Stellar Jay

The tour of the cave was about 45 minutes long, and was worth it- we are hoping to find a geologist or cave scientist that can maybe get us into one of the other 250+ caves in the park that are off-limits to the public...

Marble Hall

So as you can see from the photos, we had a great time and saw some cool stuff for such a short trip. We intend to get back there next spring for sure, and do some serious camping and hiking. It's less than 5 hours away, and is worth it for a weekend trip!

-j

King's Canyon National Park

For our anniversary, we decided to get out of L. A. for the weekend. We headed about 5 hours north to Sequoia and King's Canyon National Park. Jay had booked a room for us at Montecito-Sequoia Lodge in Sequoia National Forest. The lodge was a fun place. It is used as a summer camp for children part of the year, and still retains a lot of that atmosphere. Meals are included in the room rate and you eat in the dining room buffet-style. We met quite a few interesting people during our stay! The only downside to our trip was that we knew we wouldn't have enough time to do all the things we'd like - another spot to add to our list of places-we-must-return-to! That list is growing as quickly as our list of places-to-visit-someday. I'm going to break our trip into two parts, King's Canyon on Saturday and Sequoia on Sunday.

We left Los Angeles on Friday afternoon and headed north on the I-5 to Bakersfield, where we picked up CA-99. This is where our directions went bad... I knew there was a road the lodge had advised us not to take. That road is CA-245. But somehow, that's the road we ended up on. I know that the curviest road in the U. S. is supposed to be in San Francisco, but I wonder if they considered CA-245 for that designation. It is incredibly curvy, and climbs over 2000 feet during your ascent into the Sierre Nevada mountains. Jay was driving, and he got car sick. Not a good sign at all! It was late and very cold when we finally arrived at the Lodge. We headed right to bed to get an early start on our day. When we woke up that morning, deer were grazing next to the pool outside our window. It was cold at 6000 feet, so we wore our parkas and hats and headed further north into King's Canyon. Our first stop was to see the General Grant tree, pictured to the left. The Sequoias are not as tall as the Redwoods we saw in Yosemite, but they have much more mass. Their size is difficult to convey in words, and actually quite difficult to take in even when you are standing next to them. They are truly majestic trees.



We spent some time exploring the sequoia grove before we headed further upward to the top of King's Canyon. We stopped to get a quick picture of the two of us together:



The scenery descending into the canyon was amazing. The road takes you right between the sheer rock face of the cliffs. We stopped many times to enjoy the vista on the way down. Our first stop at the bottom of the canyon was Boyden Cavern where we stopped for a tour. There are many cave systems within the parks, and most of them, like Boyden, are marble caves. Most are also not accessible to the public, to retain their scientific and ecological value. Jay got lots of interesting shots in the cave. The little girl standing next to him we think was German; she LOVED the cave, especially when we shut the lights off to experience total darkness. We also had an excellent guide who told us all about the discovery of the cave, and the different formations inside the cave. Another nice aspect was that it was warmer inside the cave than outside!

We then headed off for a hike in the Zumwalt Meadow to Roaring River Falls. We covered around 6 miles or so to the falls then back, and headed out to do the meadow loop. That loop took us beside Roaring river, into a grove of trees ringing the meadow, then over a boulder field back to the bridge. The grass on the meadow was turning gold, and the only sounds we heard besides our foot fall was the wind in the trees and the flow of water. So peaceful, and a wonderful way to start our anniversary weekend. To the right is a view of the meadow from the boulder field we crossed.

We then headed up to Panoramic point for an amazing view of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We got back to the lodge just in time for our dinner, and collapsed into bed at 7:30. Whew!

I'll post more about our weekend once I get my hands on Jay's pictures! He always takes much better photos than me!

Happy 7th Anniversary!

Happy 7th anniversary! It's been a wonderful year for us both, full of friends, family, and national park vacations. In fact, we celebrated this weekend with a trip to King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. Stay tuned for pictures later this week.

I still remember how happy I was the day I married you. That day was the beginning of a life together, and while I doubt we had any ideas about what really lay ahead, we've faced all of them together.

I love you, and I can't wait to see what our next year brings.