Part #2 of Staycation 2008

Alright, we have gotten a little ridiculous about this staycation business.  Sat and I have been talking about writing about the second half of our mini vacation for the longest time but were both too lazy to write.  So here it is for you - albeit, a condensed version.

Day 3:

On Saturday we got a slow start but left to pick up my parents at their hotel around 11 since we all had to be checked out by noon.  On our way over we stopped by Vons to pick up some breakfast and some tape (dad’s luggage split on the way to CA).  After we picked them up we headed to Long beach to check out the aquarium and Queen Mary.  The aquarium was pretty cool - but BUSY.  As some of you already know, I don’t do well with crowds, they make me a little crazy.  Had I not been having my crazy anxiety and personal space issues I probably would have really enjoyed it. (I’m sure Sat will post some pictures to compliment this text, but if not, check out his Flickr - they should all be there.)

Continue reading »

Staycation 2008 Recap: Days 1-2

Alright, I’m afraid it is getting to the point where if I don’t make a post about our vacation last weekend that I won’t get around to it at all. Motivation is such a weird thing sometimes.

For those of you who missed our last post—honestly, how could you when its been about 2 weeks ago!—Colleen and I set out on a so-called “Staycation” in beautiful Southern California. Colleen’s parents were in Newport Beach for a conference all week so we decided to join them on Thursday and Friday to provide them with hours of entertainment. We were pretty excited to check out Orange County for the first time (for something other than driving through, that is). In preparation for the trip, we decided to plan out some fun things to do while we were there. That’s when it dawned on us: Orange Country kinda sucks. Sure, it’s got miles of nice beaches but, guess what, San Diego does too. The unfortunate part is that it doesn’t have much more than beaches and shopping, two things that aren’t particularly exciting to us.

I suddenly got the wise idea to check out Catalina Island since its one of the major attractions in the area. We could spend a whole day there and pretty much avoid the whole Orange County scene. There was just one minor hang-up: we’re cheap and the boat ride to Catalina isn’t. Continue reading »

So Long, Summer Session I

While I am not officially out of the woods yet, Summer Session I all but wrapped up this weekend. I was TA’ing for both CSE20 (discrete math) and CSE120 (operating systems), two very different courses in many ways. I hadn’t TA’ed for either of them before so it was a bit of a challenge to get up to speed with material I hadn’t seen in years. Summer sessions are only 5 weeks long so they cram a lot of material into not a lot of time and it leaves both the students and the instructors scrambling to keep up. I had the pleasure of working with a couple of pretty cool grad students, AA and CBL, who were the instructors for the courses so things were much better than they might otherwise have been. Still, I am glad that I won’t be TA’ing for Summer Session II as I am pretty burnt out on the whole thing.

I got all of my exam grading out of the way yesterday so I was able to spend this morning with Colleen. We had a pretty big weekend last week and we’re going to have another big one this coming week so I decided to play it low key and not force the issue on going out adventuring. Instead, I suggested that we wander down to REI for some “window shopping.” (For our East Coast friends, think Eastern Mountain Sports but in the Western U.S. and in the form of a co-op.) This might have been well and dandy had it not been for one pesky fact: Colleen and I are terrible window shoppers. Now, I’m sure there are multiple ways to be a terrible window shopper, but in our case it is because we always end up buying stuff. So, what was it today? It might be better off to ask what wasn’t it today?

Continue reading »

The Challenge!

So I swear, we really did get tagged for the challenge.  I told Sat about it and then he went to check it out and the tag was gone - thanks for making me look like a liar, Lola! ;)  anyway, i accept the challenge that you kind of made. . .

The rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you (i.e. me)
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write 6 random things about yourself
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger (me) know when your entry is posted

6 random things. . .

1. I’m a Libra - nice and balanced.
2. If I could live in another time period. . . I think it would be 18th century-ish.  But then again, I really do like modern conveniences. . . but I kind of like the “structure” of behavior.  plus, it would be cool to learn more about the gnitty gritty of the time period.
3. I’ve lived lots of places. . . and have wanted to live lots of places. . . Portland might be fun. . .
4. I would in the library that houses the personal papers of Dr. Seuss/Theodor Geisel.  How cool is that?
5. I wear size 7-8 shoes.
6. I like fun socks.

Alright, I punked out near the end. . . but Sat came home so I have to go and play with him!  As for the tagging. . . well, maybe I’ll come back and do that later.

~C

A little news for you. . .

It has been forever and the reason there are such huge gaps between posts and is that once you stop writing, starting is hard again.  You never really know what to write about.  So today is going to be a “in the news” post.

1.)  EARTHQUAKE!!!  Here in SoCal we had a 5.4 earthquake up near L.A.  I happened to be at work at the time and got to enjoy the rumble (yes, we felt it) in the building that “no one knows how it will respond to a big quake”.  Let me just say, it was interesting.  I thought that someone had run a cart into the empty shelving outside of my office, but as the shaking persisted and I started to feel like I was getting pushed out of my chair I figured out what was going on.  But it was pretty cool.  The building didn’t fall and all is well.  My boss did say that she saw the bridge into the library swaying a bit. . . scary much?

2.) PAYCUTS!  Yup, that is what I said. . .  the terminator signed an executive order on Thursday slashing the pay of state employees to minimum wage and laying off 20,000 temporary/seasonal workers.  Evidently the order also calls for laying off student employees statewide and a hiring freeze.  Why should you care?  dude, I work at the University of California, San Diego!  And guess what, I am a state employee!!  Luckily, the governor doesn’t have direct control of the University (thank you Regents!) so he can’t impose it on us but he has asked the the UC’s “support his efforts”.  We’ll see what happens. . .

3.) SAT IS AN OLD FART!  Our little 1/2 Mex cutie turned 26 yesterday.  He is now in a different age bracket than me. . . what an old-timer. . . At least he still has a hot young wife!

And for tomorrow. . . a response to Lolageek. . . and maybe that meme I saw a while back and wanted to try. ..

~Colleen

Fatigue

I’m not sure what it’s been but the last few days both Colleen and I have been extremely tired. Colleen has been passing out on the couch at 8 or so every night and I’ve overslept on two occassions this week. As a result of our fatigue, we haven’t been as active as we would like, and that includes writing blog posts. Rest assured, we are trying to keep you updated and entertained the best we can

Last night I was able to draw some energy from my reserves in order to make some cookies. Pink Haired Cyn suggested I put my white choco chips to use in some white chip macadamia cookies and I thought that was an exceedingly good idea, so I went for it. Continue reading »

Recall!

So we got a recall notice for our car in the mail yesterday.  Normally when you get one of those the immediate reaction is anger, followed by frustration in trying to plan when to be without a car.  Me though, I laughed.  A lot.  I think the guy walking behind me thought I was nuts. Continue reading »

Long Weekend Comes To a Close

The only bad thing about a great, extended weekend is that it eventually has to come to an end. Luckily the weekend was able to end on a positive note so hopefully this coming week will be a happy and productive one.

Today I was itching to get out and do something outdoorsy. Our default activity when doing something outside usually involves going geocaching so I used that as a starting point for our day. Unfortunately, I’ve been (unsuccessfully) trying to catch up on my sleep deficit so we couldn’t get an early start to the day we would need to go somewhere slightly farther away than our normal UTC/La Jolla/Mira Mesa stomping grounds. I have a whole list of local places that I want to go geocaching but it’s been slow getting through them. (On a side note, if you aren’t using Gubb to handle all of our listmaking, you are really missing out!)

Since the plan was to be around for 12:30 mass, we played it conservatively and tried to get a couple caches we couldn’t locate a couple weeks back. After going one for two (damn you, “Short, Steep Stop”!), we decided to head to the mall so I could fulfill my desire for new t-shirts. After spending some time at Sun Diego, I was ready to call it a day and head to church with Colleen but she apparently had other plans. I think she was just trying to make it so we didn’t go 3 weeks in a row (what evil machinations could be in that head of hers?) but whatever the case, we ended up forgoing church for some more shopping. For all of Colleen’s talk about cutting back on spending, she sure does like to browse It was another beautiful day out though and since the Westfield UTC mall is an outdoor shopping center, it wasn’t a soulless experience.

After spending way too much time at the mall (and buying a couple Stansport Expedition Trekking Poles at Sports Chalet in the process), we came back and decided that the good weather called for more BBQ’ing. We had hoped to work on rearranging the furniture in the office today but Colleen got sucked into watching The Tudors (on DVD) this afternoon so we didn’t get much done after that. As a result, I still have plenty of stuff on my todo list (the one on Remember the Milk, not Gubb ;-)) including bike maintenance and fixing some more cookies. I also placed another cooking task on my list: make a vegan “cheese” cake. I’ve found a promising recipe but since Colleen isn’t a big fan of lemon cheesecake, I’m thinking that we’ll end up doing something similar to SusanV’s eggnog modification but with orange liqueur instead. I’m looking quite forward to it!

Well, it is getting late and I don’t want to add onto my sleep debt any more so I think I’ll wrap up this little (and, admittedly, bland) post now. Please check back tomorrow when I am hopefully successful in convincing Colleen to write an exciting post.

- Sat

Celebrating Independence

Yesterday I celebrated independence…  from crappy, over-processed vegan sausages! Yes, it was 4th of July, one of my favorite holidays. Why do I love it so much? Well, just ask yourself this question: how do you not love a holiday that revolves around BBQ’ing and fireworks?

Usually we like to have people over to BBQ with us but Continue reading »

Losing One Addiction, Gaining Another

Back long, long ago when Colleen and I were in our engaged and before Colleen moved out here, she mentioned that we shouldn’t get cable. It would make us lazy and anti-social, she reasoned so it was best to not even have it hooked up in our (then) new apartment. Of course, I didn’t listen and things turned out a lot like she expected.

Who would have thought that it would take the purchase of a fancy new HDTV before we finally were ready to give up our cable addiction?

Continue reading »