swdtls: part 3

(for an explanation of the swdtls series, see here)

yosemite in 3 hours
august 26, 2008

trying to see yosemite national park in 3 hours is like trying to figure out how to react when a bushy haired, bearded, 60yr old, 300lb guy carrying a beer bottle and a newspaper, wearing nothing but a cowboy hat and ragged gray fruit-of-the-looms staggers toward you along a beautiful meadow pathway ... in yosemite.*

kinda like that, anyway.

we were in sacramento, and decided to hit yosemite "on the way back" to portland. yosemite turned out to be a mite further south than we reckoned. but hey, it only added about 9 hours to our 12 hour drive ... so why not? (with that logic we could have hit tijuana, too.)

it was beautiful. we did the aforementioned scenic meadow walk, and hiked to a non-existent lake. apparently in august it turns into a dirt pit. it was a very nice dirt pit hike.

* you politely avert your eyes while your husband tries to figure out what brand of underwear he's wearing.

swdtls: part 2

(for an explanation of the swdtls series, see here)

the boringest city in the wild west
august 24-25, 2008

i think that when the city development people got together to plan sacramento in the 1800s, they figured that the gold rush was all the entertainment people would need for the next 2 centuries and planned their city accordingly.

they were wrong.

we were in sacramento for a 1 day class (the very beginning of a piano teacher certification course i hope to finish sometime in the next decade), and had only two short evenings to fill with entertainment. there were no museums, no hikes, no city centers, concerts, sports events, political rallies, rooster fights, staring contests... anything.

in all fairness, it had 2 things going for it:

#1: great restaurants.
#2: "old sacramento" - a few blocks of old west style boardwalk with cute, overpriced little stores. we went after they were closed and experienced "ghostly and haunted old sacramento," which was entertaing for all of about 20 minutes.

swdtls: part 1

swdtls: stuff we did this last summer.

in the summer, we're too busy doing fun and interesting stuff for me to blog it all.
in the winter, we're not doing anything interesting, ergo i have nothing to blog.

i have put my awesome deductive skills to work, and come up with a solution. my solution is...
the swdtls series! even though none of this is relevant now (was it then?), and most of it probably won't be interesting to anyone but me ... it's a shame to let a few good photos go to waste, don't you think?

so, we commence part one:

the ridiculously early morning hike to middle earth

september 6, 2008

one of the ways we celebrated our 4th anniversary (8-28-08) was a sunrise hike at punchbowl falls. it was beautiful, serene, and perfectly lonely.

we passed the time chatting, enjoying the beauty around us, and pretending that we were in middle earth and/or narnia (at least i did).

'twas a dark and stormy cliche...

i've decided that, since i'm still within a month of christmas, i'm posting my christmas updates in a perfectly timely manner.
(kind of like the 10-second rule, except it's the 1-month rule!)

today's christmas update has nothing to do with carols, festivities, presents, family, or the hypostatic union. it's about the holiday tradition of mortal terror.

joel's friend from waaay back was scheduled to be married in orange county on the 27th, so we decided to drive down, have christmas with joel's family (all in southern ca), and support the impending nuptials. due to the spitefulness of the fates (plus work conflicts) we had to leave at noon on christmas day.

the 24hr drive was a delectable potpourri of white knuckles, driving rain, terse conversation, lightning storms, ice, occasional nervous laughter, pea soup fog, snow, sheer terror, and total absence of any bathrooms in northern california.

maybe we could have found a bathroom sooner, had i been willing to stop at towns with names like "lost man's creek" and "cape sebastian" ... at midnight in the fog and ghostly trees in the middle of nowhereohmygoodnessifwestoptheAXMURDERERSWILLGETUSANDWEWILLDIE!!!

so um, no.
we finally found a bathroom. this one.

family christmas

a few photos from our multi-state, multi-family 2008 christmas!

opening presents with (from left):
joel, his step-dad richard, cousin daniel, uncle dan, aunt terri, grandpa, grandma, cousin morgan, her boyfriend jamie, and joel's mom karen.

christmas in snowy gresham with my parents and chip!

joel with his dad steve and step-mom kumi
joel's mom and step-dad
joel with grandpa john and grandma linda
all that snow ... ^-^

the transformation

before:

after:

...amazing how one little haircut can take you from "joel blagojevich" to "joel pitt."

some days...

today, during my beethoven symphony marathon

you know that part in the middle of the last movement of beethoven's ninth symphony where, after 4.5 movements of strife and dissonance, the choir comes full in with the "ode to joy" theme and the piece resolves into a joyous, celebratory, grand chorale?

at that exact moment, the sun shone out for the 1st time in a week and filled my office with glorious light!

totally made my day. :)

so, what are you doing to beat the january blues?

transcendent fliers & infinite tickets

when you work a church, everything is larger than life ... even the publicity for a women's conference.