Da Vinci at the San Jose Tech

Yesterday we headed down with Lindsey and Matt to the San Jose Tech Museum to see the special exhibit, "Da Vinci: 500 Years in the Future." By the end of the exhibit I was convinced that Da Vinci must have been a very eccentric man and most certainly a genius. The sheer volume of designs he made, buildings he built, paintings he created was over-whelming. The exhibit had a bunch of replicas of machines that he and other Renissance designers created. It was amazing to see how they created complex gear, pulley, and screw mechanisms to accomplish pretty much everything.

I was also really impressed with the rest of the museum. They had so many hands on exhibits! If I wasn't already tired from the extensive Da Vinci exhibit I probably could have spent many more hours playing with all of the exhibits. They even had one where you could inject genes from jellyfish into bacteria to make them glow! We also watched their "Adrenaline Rush" IMAX film. It was all about base-jumping and sky-diving which was really neat on the IMAX screen. They also built a copy of Leonardo's pyramid-like parachute and had a professional sky-diver test it out. They dropped him from a hot-air balloon at 10,000 feet and it worked! However, they didn't make the guy land with the 200 lb structure which I think would have been the real test to see if it really "worked."

Done!

Finals are done and I am now officially a holder of an MS in Mechanical Engineering - hurray! Now I just have to figure out that little question of if I want to stay for my PhD ...

Gingerbread House and Waterpolo NCAA Championships

What can be better than an afternoon of candy-house building and a brutal waterpolo match-up? We started the afternoon off getting into the holiday spirit by going to the graduate students' gingerbread house making get-together. They gave us a great kit that had all the gingerbread pieces and, of course, tons of frosting and candy for decorating. I think we did quite well (Dan would like to point out that he decorated the little man ... nice job hubby!). Of course, he also doesn't mention that there were 2 little men. I wonder what happened to the other one?

After decorating the house to our hearts' content we headed over to the water polo stadium to watch the National NCAA Waterpolo championship game between Stanford and USC. The stadium was completely packed. Sadly for Stanford, USC finished off their perfect season undefeated. Stanford gave them a pretty good run for their money but, in the end, it just wasn't enough.

Two Strikes We're Out

Unfortunately, our IM season came to a sad end last night. Somehow, 2nd place just never quite feels very satisfying. We lost both of our IM final matches in tennis and table tennis. Table tennis was a lot closer than tennis - we lost in a close battle in the third game. The graduate school of business team dominated in tennis - needless to say, they were very good. Oh well ... there is always next quarter.

Second Times the Charm!

Woo hoo ... we won our intramural table tennis match tonight and made it into the finals! The tournament is double elimination and tonight we played the team that beat us (badly) the first time. All of that lack of practicing must be paying off! We did make them play in the sketchy, bumpy, tilted table in our basement so we did have "home table" advantage. Wish us luck in the finals. We're also playing in the Team Tennis finals on Thursday night ... however, we're playing against the Business School team who look more like professional tennis players so it could end very badly. :)

21 Pheasants + "A Beard" = Dan's Perfect Thanksgiving

While I was home in Colorado last week for Thanksgiving, Dan headed to South Dakota to meet up with his dad, brothers, and dogs for a week of hunting. South Dakota is the "bird mecca" of the West and after his first day of hunting Dan commented that he had seen more birds that day than he had collectively seen the rest of his life while hunting. Pretty much everyday Dan and his family maxed out their hunting quota of three birds per person. All the while they were spoiled at the farmhouse they were staying at with 3 delicious meals a day and they even cleaned and vacuum packed their meat for them!

At the end of the week they had 42 pheasants, 1 grouse, and 2 very tired dogs. 21 of the pheasants made it back to California along with my very hairy husband who didn't shave all week ... not a bad beard :)

A Christmas Tree in Palmer Park

Thanksgiving morning we headed out to the big, natural city park behind my house where I grew up to decorate one of the pine trees with Christmas decorations. Hopefully it will help to spread a bit of holiday cheer to all the hikers and runners in the park:

I can still breathe at 8000 feet!

My parents decided that a great way to celebrate my homecoming to Colorado would be to climb May's Peak, one of the small peaks that sit in front of Pikes Peak. We headed out early in the morning in sub-freezing temperatures up to the trailhead on old Gold Camp Road where we met up with some family friends. Although I was convinced that after living at ~40 feet above sea level for over a year everyone was going to have a good laugh at my lack of lung capacity I'm happy to report that the hike went smoothly ... the views of Colorado Springs and the surrounding mountains were gorgeous and although I could feel the final climb it wasn't as bad as I expected! Hurray for high altitudes!

I still don't understand modern art ...

We ventured into San Francisco with some of our neighbors today to try out some Ethiopian food and check out the San Francisco Modern Art Museum (MOMA). The Ethiopian food was delicious and a lot of fun to eat. They put a big round platter in the middle of the table with all of the food and then you use sour pancakes to eat it with your hands.

I entered MOMA with pretty low expectations but although there were a few pieces such as "Three White Panels" (self-explanatory) that I really don't understand, they had a few exhibits that I thought were pretty cool. The exhibit "Brought to Life" had beautiful pictures of some of the original pictures taken of snow flakes through microscopes, amazing lightning shots, x-rays, and a lot of other more scientific pictures that I wouldn't have classified as modern art.

Just about when I was getting tired of looking at art they also had the "Art of Participation" exhibit which was a great break for just looking and actually getting to play with some "art." My favorite was the giant golden bead curtain.

Halloween Puppies

Our family dog Joy and neighbor's dog Daisy didn't miss out on the Halloween action. I thought these pictures were just too cute not to post.

I don't see how they got Daisy (the dalmatian) to sit still long enough to put on the costume as she is usually bouncing wall to wall. Joy, on the other hand, is tolerant as always and looks a bit like a drugged-up clown.

Pumpkin Carving

I've always thought of pumpkin carving as a traditional activity that most of us have done annually since we were young enough to dig gooey seeds out of a pumpkin. However, the majority of foreign students in our building have never carved pumpkins before which makes a night of careful pumpkin design and hacking all the more interesting. Dan and I picked up about 25 pumpkins from Safeway the day before along with some giant pumpkin pies and plenty of whip cream. It didn't take long for our small lobby to completely fill up with newspaper spread everywhere, seeds flying around, and some very intricate pumpkins being carved.
Dan and I went for the classic smiley faces (guess whose is whose).

Halloween at Great America!

After running around planning and organizing a conference since 6 o'clock in the morning yesterday I figured I might as well completely exhaust myself and so joined our fellow Escondido Village CAs for a free night at Great America's Halloween Haunt. I honestly didn't even know we had an amusement park just 20 minutes south of us. It is a nice park with some pretty big roller coasters. For Halloween the whole park was decorated and there were tons of people running around in a little bit too-creepy costumes. They also had about a half-dozen scary mazes and rides set up. I think Dan just about had a heart attack from laughing so hard at how high some of these people could get me to jump and scream while he never seemed to even twitch. I never seemed to be able to catch on to the fact that behind every dark corner there was going to be a freaky masked person. At least it was a great way to relieve the stress I'd built up running the conference all day. Despite repeatedly making a fool of myself we had a great time and explored the park until around 11 when I was just about ready to collapse and headed home. I'm not sure if I would go back if I had to pay for myself but it was a fun one-time experience that got me into the Halloween spirit.

BCATS = Done!

Over the past 6 months or so I've been helping to plan the annual Biomedical Computation at Stanford conference (aka BCATS). The big day was yesterday and I'm glad to report that everything went off without a hitch. We had about 250 attendees from around the bay area including 60 poster presenters, 10 talks, and 3 keynote speakers. Although I admit I only understood about 5% of the talks during the day it was still a great experience to learn about all of the other topics and research areas within biomedical computation. Our keynotes were great as well and included a talk on medical imaging from Harvard, a local molecular diagnostics venture capitalist, and a professor from UCSD who does drug discovery for infectious diseases ... all pretty cool and complex stuff. You can check out the website for the conference at http://bcats.stanford.edu . For now I'm just glad its over so I have a bit more time to devote to other things. Yay!

Wieners & Losers

Dan and I hosted the Escondido Village tennis and 3v3 basketball tournament this past Saturday. We had a great turnout with 6 basketball teams and over 30 tennis players. We only had three tennis courts so it took a while to get through all the games but I think everyone had a good time and there were some pretty good games. Dan played in both the basketball and tennis tournaments and did great in both but lost in the end.

We decided to keep our losing tradition going on Sunday as we went to the #4 Stanford vs. #5 Cal volleyball game. It was a really close match but Stanford just doesn't look as strong as they did last year. I find the student support here so disappointing sometimes .... I think there were more Cal students at the game then Stanford students! After the game we went to an Oktoberfest on campus where we ate some amazing sausage and pretzels and listened to a funny band of old German men. Once we were stuffed full of wieners we figured it was a good time to play our IM ping-pong match. Unfortunately this ended just like every other sport this weekend but we had a great time playing once we figured out how to get out of eachothers way (you have to alternate hits). All in all not too successful of a weekend but it still went by way too fast.

The Hidden Watermelon

Dan decided that today was the final day of life for our sad looking watermelon plant on the deck. None of the watermelons had gotten over a 1/4 of an inch wide before dying and now it looked like the whole plant was dying. Dan started to rip out the plant but one of the tendrils that ran back behind the orange tree (yes .... we have a dwarf orange tree on our deck) wouldn't budge. He figured it had just grown under the pot so he moved it to the side and lo' and behold we have a watermelon! It is just about the most misshapen watermelon you've ever seen but it still tasted amazing.

Cucumber!

Today we picked our one and only cucumber that was growing on the deck. See those white little dots ... don't let them fool you ... those are sharp little spikes all over the surface.

Day in SF

While Dan has been out of town chasing his deer I went down to SF for the day on Sunday (it seems like I only go up there when he is out of town ... too much city I think). A few of my more ambitious friends ran the Bridge to Bridge early in the morning while the rest of us made a trip to Tartine for yummy morning pastries. After picking up the runners we headed across the city and over the bridge to Treasure Island to watch the dragon boat races. I wasn't quite sure what to expect at this festival but it was entertaining watching the long, skinny boats with dragon heads paddled furiously down the course. They had divisions for everyone from high school to companies.

After the festival we headed back into the city where we met up with my friend from Colorado, Caryn, who happened to be in town for some training this coming week. We went to the "Stinking Rose" for dinner ... a place infamous for its excessive use of garlic .... and it was delicious. Obviously we hadn't had enough food for the day so we made one more stop at a small bakery in Chinatown for their egg custards which came fresh out of the oven ... delicious! Every time I go to the city I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoy it but by the end of the day I am just as excited to get out and go home - nice place to visit but I still don't think I could live up there.

Good-bye Bambi

For all of you animal lovers out there I'm sorry to announce that Bambi's dad did not survive Dan's second hunting excursion. Right before dusk last night Dan got his buck. From his official report: "Pacific Fork. Shot at 30-40 yards on Oct 4th about 10 miles east of Myers Flat, California on the Chase Ranch. Biggest blacktail I ever shot." It is probably a good thing his mom was accompanying him this weekend to help with the dirty work which I'm still not sure I could handle (Dan says I'm in denial about where my food comes from). Anyway ... yay for Dan, yay for good meat!

Wine, cheese, and board games

Arum and Steve hosted our most recent CA event for the building last night with tons of wine, cheese, and other goodies to complement a night of board games. We got a surprisingly good attendance with over 30 people stopping by. We played Taboo and Cranium with the whole group which was made even more interesting with our large population of foreign students who are still learning English. My favorite Taboo moment from one of our wonderful Japanese neighbors: "Not Old England but .... New England!" It was a great night to get to know our neighbors better and enjoy some good eats.

Apple Picking + Volleyball = Good Day

For Lindsey's birthday we headed down to Watsonville south of Santa Cruz for u-pick apple picking! Lindsey had prepared an amazing picnic lunch for everyone that we enjoyed with some fresh squeezed apple juice and then we headed out into the fields to pick. The trees were loaded with apples (and suprisingly short .... no more than 7 feet tall). We picked red, yellow, and green apples before calling it a day. The other great surprise was that they also had strawberries to pick! If you're interested in u-pick (and cheap strawberries) this was a great place and I think they should be open for a few more weeks: http://www.pickyourown.org/PYO.php?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gizdich-ranch.com/


We finished off the day going to our first Stanford women's volleyball game of the season. The Stanford women are amazing to watch and they dominated Oregon in three straight games .... enough said.

Chipotle to the rescue!

Monday night was our first official CA event of the year for Barnes (our apartment building). We had a beautiful set-up planned - Compadres Mexican dinner in the back picnic area of the building. We chose Compadres as they were a favorite local restaurant, offered great Stanford discounts, and were close by for pick-up. Everything seemed to be going perfectly until 4pm on Monday afternoon (two hours before the event!) when I got a call from Compadres announcing that they were locking their doors and closing permanently. What?? So you aren't going to be able to fill my order for 70 people in 2 hours (are you even allowed to do that?)?? On Tuesday the local news wrote a story about it, but no real explanation has been offered about the sudden closing: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=9380.

Luckily Chipotle came to the rescue and made 85 burritos in an hour, gave us a discount, and threw in free chips & salsa. I always knew I loved Chipotle! The event went great, everyone loved the burritos and didn't even notice the panic and mania of a few hours before. Yay!

Bambi Lives!

Unfortunately for Dan, but fortunately for all the cuddly-creature lovers out there Dan was unsuccessful during opening weekend of hunting season this past weekend. Although plenty of critters were around - including lots of does and fawns, 2 skunks, 2 turkeys, quail, and even a coyote - not a single buck (you can only hunt the males in California) ventured out. As he silently prowled the hillsides I contented myself camping and hunting out fruit trees.

We didn't leave empty-handed as we came home with a full box of pears and bag of blackberries from the ranch. I tried to tell Dan that this is good enough for me but he still craves his venison and will be venturing out again in the weekends to come.

CA Retreat

Dan and I are now officially CAs (community associates). Basically we get paid (not much but still something) to plan a few fun events for our apartment building each quarter. Our plan ... lots of free food, sports, outdoors, etc. To officially become CAs we went to training this last weekend in a hostel up in the Marin Headlands. The Marin Headlands are right on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge and offers good hiking and views of the city. We also ventured up to Muir woods to see the big redwood trees. One of the activities was completing a photo scavenger hunt which included building a human pyramid. Here are ourselves and our partner CAs:

To the Northwest!

For the last week I've been galavanting around the Northwest with my mom and it was wonderful! From Seattle to Victoria the whole area is gorgeous and there are a ton of things to do. Here is how my mom and I kept ourselves busy through the trip:

Day 1: San Jose to Seattle to Anacortes
To begin with the flight from San Jose to Seattle is absolutely beautiful on a clear day. You pass right over Mt. Shasta, Crater Lake, Mt. St. Helen, and Mt. Rainer with great views. Once I arrived in Seattle my mom and I actually found each other without too much trouble (she finally has a cell phone) and headed off to our first destination ... REI :) A few pairs of sale shoes later we headed down to the famous Pike's Market to look around a bit and have some lunch. The amazing bouquets of flowers and the energetic folks throwing around fish make the overwhelming fishy smell of the market worth it. At this point we were done with the city and headed up to Mukileto to catch the ferry over to Whidbey Island. We spent the rest of the day driving up the narrow island stoppint at wineries and farmers market. We went for a quick hike at Deception Pass, a narrow and supposedly dangerous narrow passage between islands, and finally called it a night at the northern tip of the island at Anacortes.
Deception Pass

Day 2: Anacortes to Vancouver Island
The next moring we got up REALLY early to catch the first ferry over from Anacortes to Sidney. After the 90-minute ferry ride we ventured over to the Butterfly Gardens where we peacefully watched all the butterflies and birds float around (my favorite part was the venus fly traps and carniverous ferns). There was even a special moth that after 5 years had just come out of its cacoon. The guides said the moth would only be alive for 3-5 days ... that's a lot of waiting for not a lot of life! From the butterfly garden we headed over to the Buchart Gardens, a huge old limestone quarry that had been turned into an amazing garden. Here we had I think my favorite part of the whole trip, an afternoon tea. The tea, food, and views were just too good to forget. We ended up liking the gardens so much that we came back in the evening for dinner and to see it lit up in lights.

"The" Moth

Day 3: Exploring Victoria
Just about 20 miles south of Buchart Gardens is the capital of British Columbia, Victoria. We decided the best way to explore the city would be by bike so we rented a couple and rode down the Galloping Goose Trail (that is really what is called) to Hatley Castle at Royal Roads University. The 60,000 square foot castle was amazing and looked like it had been plucked right out of medieval Europe. We hadn't had enough castles for the day though so we headed over to the Craigdaroch Castle that sits on the highest point in Victoria. We spent the evening exploring downtown and then relaxing at our amazing bed and breakfast which sat right on the water and even had a hot tub.

Mom on Galloping Goose

Day 4: Zip-lining and forts
For our second day in Victoria we decided to head over to the town of Sooke and try ziplining. My mom has been bugging me to do this for years (wouldn't you think it would be the other way around) so I finally let in and we went. After an ATV ride through the forest, 8 ziplines, suspension bridges and two hours of beautiful views I have to say it was totally worth it. It may not be quite the adrenaline rush that it might have been in Mexico where you are unsure if your equipment is going to hold up but their added saftey measures means they can get their ziplines going really fast and the harnesses let you lay down, spin around, or do whatever else you want. In the afternoon we went and explored an old fort and light house before heading back downtown for dinner in Chinatown.

Day 5: Back to the mainland
Well ... the morning of this day didn't start out too great. We had three hours to get to the ferry station on the northern side of the island at So, we took our time, explored some cute little cities (one of which had an amzing amount of murals) and in the end we ran into some construction and missed our spot on the ferry by three minutes! They use a reservation system where you have to be there 30 minutes before the ferry leaves and we were exactly three minutes late which meant we had to wait 2 more hours for the next ferry ... oh well, we learned our lesson about dawdeling. We finally got out of Nanaimo headed to Vancouver about noon. For the afternoon we headed up "Vancouver's Mountain" (aka Grouse Mountain) on a cable car. At the top we were greeted with pretty views, a fun and corny lumberjack show, grizzly bears, a bird of prey show, and a delicious dinner. For anyone heading up this way and planning on going up the cable car this is last point makes it totally worth it! The dinner is expensive ($35-40) but if you are planning on going up anyways thetickets for the cable car are $30 so you might as well get a gourmet meal with a beautiful view for a few extra bucks (or loonies or whatever they call them). Reservations are required though.

Crazy Logger

Day 6: Vancouver
Our first rainy/foggy day of the trip (I guess the Helen hot-air, high-pressure zone really does work ... my mom likes to talk ... a lot). We started off the morning going to Lynn Canyon which has a gorgeous suspension bridge over a deep gorge with waterfalls and crystal clear waters. We did a big figure 8 loop around the park. Continuing our outdoor theme despite the rain we decided to rent bikes and make the trek around Vancouver's Stanley Park. The trail goes right along the coast of the park and makes a circle past totem polls, cool bridges, cliffs, and lots of blackberries (like everywhere else in the Northwest). Also in the park we went to the Vancouver Aquarium. I forgot how excited dolphins, whales, and cute sea otters make me ... what ever happened to becoming a marine biologist? They even had a baby beluga whale that was just too cute. At this point it was time to head back into the United States. After an easy drive over the border we decided to end the trip and style with a dinner at the top of space needle. It turns out my mom and her mom did the same thing 43 years ago when my mom was just starting her first summer at Boeing so it made it a nice, memorable end of the trip. As one would expect the views and food was amazing. Dinner on the top of the space needle

Day 7: Homeward bound
All good things must come to an end and I hopped on the plane at the early hour of 6am back to San Jose. I guess the one good thing about leaving the husband at home is it makes you super excited to get back home although I don't think I'll be leaving him behind again any time soon (build up those vacation days honey!).

Where's my husband?

Well I haven't gotten to see my husband much lately as he has been off traveling around. It started with a trip to Houston for work last week where it sounds like he watched different pieces of equipment explode and malfunction (not on purpose) and then visited with some old Mines friends in the evenings. From Houston it was straight back to Colorado for another wedding. Dan was the best man for Qiwei and Soncirae and from what I hear he gave a great speech and even danced ...how did I miss this! I can't wait to see pictures.

In the meantime I've been "teaching/helping" (or figuring out how much I don't know) about the software my lab helped to develop to a group of experts from around the world. I got to see models of everything from sprinting to a t-rex. The software is called OpenSIM and is a free, open-source program for musculoskeletal modeling. You can check it out (or even download it and try out the fun tutorials ... I promise they are easy) at https://simtk.org/home/opensim.

I guess I can't complain much about Dan being gone lately as I'm leaving in just a few days to go to Canada with my mom. Oh well ... we'll see each other someday soon.

SF twice in one weekend

For how much I usually avoid going into the "big city" of San Francisco, going twice in one weekend is quite an event for me. It started off Friday night with a birthday celebration for fellow mechanical engineering student James at an SF bar. Tucked behind a nondescript front, this bar had a great back patio packed with tons of picnic tables and people. The highlight of the bar though was the tamale lady who sold sketchy but delicious tamales out of her little ice chests.

I must have been feeling more confident after "braving" the city Friday night as I agreed to go into the city a second time on Saturday with Lindsey. Another friend from Mines, Sara, just moved to the area to attend pharmacy school at UCSF so we met up with her to do a bit of exploring in her new home. We had an "urban hiking" experience of sorts as we visited the farmer's market at the Ferry Building and then walked all the way up Market St. to City Hall to check out the Slow Food Nation Festival. Meant to encourage people to get their food more locally, the festival seemed more like a decadent/specialty farmer's market with a hippie-bent to me ... but it was still entertaining and had a lot of great samples.

After we were completely full of delicious peaches, plums, pluots, and hibiscus lavender lemonade we headed over to see Sara's new apartment. I had never really been into the more residential areas of SF before and I was pleasantly surprised at how much more relaxed and laid back it was than the crazy busy city I usually think of. It was amazing how many amazing restaurants were located within walking distance of her apartment too! I'm afraid I would want to eat out every night if I lived down there and had all of those options.

So after a weekend full of the "big city," San Francisco, I must say I was very pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed it and may even be willing to go more often in the future. However, I'm still not quite ready for the city-living experience and it felt great to get back to the little bubble of Stanford, pick some fruit from the garden, and open up the windows and not hear the city noise.

Stanford defeats the Beavers

You know that fall is right around the corner when football season swings into gear. Last night Stanford stepped out of its usual gloomy season outlook with a win! The whole game was pretty close but Stanford came out on top with a score of 36-28. Who knows ... maybe this could be their year (ya right).

The last couple of days my lab has been hosting an "OpenSIM Jamboree." OpenSIM is a free musculoskeletal modeling program that a group at Stanford has developed and our job was to teach a group of modelers from around the world how to use the program and delve into creating new features. Luckily ... as my brain was fried after a day of constant questions ... we took a break at 4:30, had some dinner and drinks and then headed over to the football game. Sitting around with a bunch of biomechanists at a football game I heard some rather interesting talk ... "so the quads co-activate when ..." "the strength of those muscles ..." Definitely a different experience!

I actually stayed for the whole football game as they promised a "Pyrotechnic Musical Spectacular" (aka fireworks) after the game. It wasn't quite as spectacular as I was hoping (nothing can beat the fireworks at the Colorado School of Mines) but it was still a good show and end to the evening.

Gold Country

For Dan's birthday this past weekend I surprised him with a weekend get-away to California Gold Country. About 2.5 hours west of us is the California "motherload" where millions of dollars in gold was mined from the hillsides and where many people insist millions more exist. I had done a little bit of digging around on-line and found a few possible sites for panning and so we set out early Saturday morning to find gold (or at least go exploring)!

We headed to Mokehulmne River just outside of the "town" of Electra, CA. The river was great ... awesome rocks along the shore, cool water to wade in, and even huge crawdads. So did we strike it rich in this pretty river .... nope, not even a speckle of gold. We found a few pieces of what might be copper and an old bullet but that was it.

After a picnic lunch we decided it was time to move onto different endeavors and we headed to the huge Ironstone Vineyard just a few miles away. With over 1000 acres it seemed this place had a little bit of everything including, most importantly, lots of wine tasting. We tried a bunch and mutually agreed that we still haven't quite found the allure of wine but it was a good place to relax after our busy morning.

For the night we stayed at a cute B&B in the town of Columbia, CA. This whole town was turned into a State Historic Park to reflect the days of the gold rush and is filled with cute shops, stagecoaches, and museums. Across from our B&B was an old school house that just happened to be having a "Back to School Night: 1861" event that evening. The whole event was adorable ... little kids dressed up in old-fashioned clothes, mock classes, and even homemade ice-cream!

Sunday was another full day of exploring the many small mining towns around the area. We visited Sonora, Jamestown, and Chinese Camp. We tried to find more water for a little bit more panning but being the dry season we were out of luck. Finally we decided to call it a day and head home.

As we were driving back through Palo Alto we stumbled upon the Palo Alto Fine Arts Festival. We stopped by for a quick walk through and gawked at what all the talented people can do. One of the coolest things was they had a whole street filled with chalk drawings. These pieces of art in the middle of the street looked like professional paintings ... I wish I could do that! Now that it is Monday and we're both back at work I can't help wishing we were still up in the hills exploring but we'll just have to start planning our next get-away.

Hydesville, CA

While I was lucky enough to be taking a final exam from 7-10pm last Friday night (isn't that ridiculous!) Dan picked up his two younger brothers from the airport and headed up north to see Tina (Dan's mom). They made it there safely by one o-clock in the morning and settled into Tina's "new" house. It is an absolutely adorable old pink cottage out in the country of Northern California complete with white gazebo and palm tree.

The dogs have a great yard to run around and tear up. There are tons of beautiful flowers and besides taking the dogs to the beach and gambling at the local casino, the boys did some great yard work to help clean the place up. The weekend ended with a berry-picking extravaganza where from the look of the scratches I think Dan dove head first into the thorny bushes. However, his effort was well rewarded with a delicious homemade blackberry crisp which I was lucky enough to get a piece of brought back to me (yes ... it actually survived the whole ride down to the bay area without being eaten!). All in all the boys had a great weekend and I can't wait to visit Tina's cute pink house in the near future.

Racquetball!

Dan and I finally played our first game of racquetball last night since we moved to California almost a year ago! Stanford finally finished building the courts so now we have four bright, shiny courts that are ready for me to scratch up.

Our racquetball wasn't quite as sad as we were expecting after not playing for over a year but we still definitely had more strikes than normal. Dan took an easy win in the first game but I rallied back to lead the second game 12 - 2 only to lose the game in the end 17-15 (I think he was messing with me). However, by this point I think I had him tired and was able to pull off a win in our third and final game.

We're looking forward to playing a lot more racquetball on these pretty new courts and hopefully finding some people to play with us. Yea for racquetball!

Wonderful Wunderlich

While Dan and his brothers were up visiting Tina for the weekend Lindsey Quinlisk and I went hiking at the nearby Wunderlich County Park. Besides the strange name the park itself was beautiful! Set up in the hills west of Palo Alto nearly the whole trail was shaded underneath huge redwood trees and willows. After a little bit of a climb you pop up on the top of the hills in a great meadow with views of the bay. On the way back down you pass by Salamander Flats - a random green-gooey filled cement pool that is supposedly a breeding ground and home to a large number of newts (Salamanders?) however we saw no sign of life.

After finishing the hike we had a quick lunch of peanut-butter and honey sandwiches until we were rudely interrupted by a stubborn yellow-jacket who wouldn't go away and decided that it was time to head back home.

Anyone in the bay area looking for a great day hike should go to Bay Area Hiker at http://bahiker.com/index.shtml . It has a great google-maps layout showing TONS of bay area hikes with great details and descriptions. Check it out!