With the quarter quickly approaching, this past weekend we resolved to do something we haven’t been doing enough of: have fun! We haven’t really been out geocaching much lately so I figured I would go through my gubb list of local geocaching spots and pick out something cool. Picking out a place was a bit tricky since it hasn’t been very hot here lately but it was probably too hot to go to some random canyon or desert. So, what did I pick? Palomar Mountain State Park, of course.

Palomar Mountain sounded very interesting because they claim it is the only “Sierra Nevada-like” place in SoCal. It also provided a stunning backdrop one morning this past winter when Colleen and I noticed its snowy peak (the first time we had ever seen snow around here). Colleen is a big fan of rocks and mountains so the choice was really a no brainer.

While Saturday has been our normal geocaching day, we decided to hold off until Sunday to go out this weekend. We were up bright and early, although we didn’t actually get out of the house until slightly after 9. I’m not sure why it takes so long for us to get ready for hiking but Colleen has no qualms about laying the blame on me I didn’t realize how long it would take to drive there—the 1 hour, 15 minutes from Google Maps was actually on the low side—but after a wrong turn that landed us at a Harrah’s Rincon Casino & Resort and a lot of winding up around the mountain, we finally pulled into the park around 11. The drive was actually quite interesting, even outside the beautiful mountain views, because we quickly found out where all the Indian Casinos are around here. Route 76 is seriously gambling alley.

I should have known things were in for a rocky start when, halfway through our drive, I realized that I forgot our camera. No worries, I figured, since we have our fancy 2MP camera phones as a backup. By some fit of luck, Colleen happened upon the “panorama” mode on our phones that lets you take three photos which it automatically stitches together into (you guessed it!) a panorama. Unfortunately we didn’t know that you had to manually line up the edges of the photos so most of the panorama shots we took ended up quite poorly. I was in a “ah, who cares?” type of mood anyway so I let this problem slide and we were on our way along the trails.

The scenery on the trails was quite nice but there was one thing that we didn’t take into account: flying insects! I’m not exactly sure what type of insect they were but they were swarming all around us as we walked. Luckily we had picked up some insect repellent during one of our shopping sprees so they weren’t biting us. Still, they made the hike very unpleasant as they were constantly buzzing around our face and going in our ears. The whole experience made me seriously consider buying a couple of these dorky bug hats to help avoid this problem in the future.

We were only out on the trails for a couple hours but that was long enough for us. I thought I was in decent shape from the jogging I do in the mornings but apparently I overestimated my abilities. Colleen was quite a trooper out there though, even thought she ended up with a strained muscle in her calf after the hike. We also made the rookie mistake of starting our hike from the highest point so the last half was all uphill. Colleen was extremely impressed by the quality of the restrooms though, if that matters to any of you prospective hikers out there.

This week has been a slow one for the most part. I’ve been handling some random CSE orientation business as well as helping to plan an outdoor movie for all the graduate students in the Jacobs School of Engineering. Colleen has been plugging away at work, doing that thing she do. It’s hard to believe that the summer is almost over. At least I have lots of yummy apples to look forward to this fall (oh, the joy of in-season eating).

- Sat

We haven’t been geocaching in a few weeks (thank you Wii) so decided to do a couple of errands and then hit some new caches as well as some “We’ve been meaning to” caches in our area. Well, our first stop went pretty badly.  I had decided not to print the logs because we don’t always use them and these caches were local and had no hints that would be useful anyway.  Our first stop was “Bison on a Bun” which was supposed to be at Chicago on a Bun down by UTC.  Well, we didn’t get out until almost noon so as you can imagine the place was CRAWLING with lunch-goers.  After about 10 minutes of looking like wandering idiots we decided that this just wasn’t the best time to be here so needed to come back later.  0-1.

After that we headed to Sears to go and pick up a few things.  We had seen an ad in the paper that morning advertising a microfiber car care set which we just happened to be in the market for!  Sat recently purchased a waterless car wash product that requires the use of 4 microfiber cloths.  We have them, but they are currently being used for other things.  But anyway, this package was on sale for cheap so to Sears we headed!  We had picked up a few other things and were at the check out and when the woman told us the total we were a little shocked.  We had forgotten to read the fine print on the ad. . . Who starts a sale on Sunday?!  I mean seriously!  So we passed on the car kit but Sat did score some new blue shorts and I got a belt and a new work bag.  Yay.

After that somewhat disappointing trip I was getting a little tired and. . . well, in my afternoon funk and Sat was mad that we went to Sears specifically for the one product we didn’t get.  We were both hungry and after a little bit of bickering (aren’t we cute?) we decided to try out the “new” Mongolian Hot Pot place on Clairemont Mesa.

We had seen this place a few months ago and wondered what it was (the main sign is not in English) but Sat had driven past it again later and seen that it was Little Sheep Hot Pot.  After doing some quick Google searching we realized that we HAD to try this place!  The reviews were great and it sounded like fun.  Hot Pot is just Chinese fondue minus the cheese.  Intimidating, but fun.  I was super nervous (as usual) and as we got to the place I was totally ready to skip it.  it is in this kind of seedy looking strip mall and doesn’t really look all that impressive from the street.  Parking sucked too – but it was 1 pm.  Well we found a spot and headed in (me so nervous I thought I would puke, but I think I hid it well. . .)

The place was AWESOME!  You walk in and you think that you are in this super upscale asian restaurant.  Clean lines, great pictures on the wall, plush boothes.  it was just really nice.  The servers were also super awesome.  They told us how it worked, gave us tips on how much to order, the order to cook things in, etc.  It was a really fun/neat experience and although pricey ($40 for the both of us at lunch but LOTS of leftovers), I am DEFINITELY going to have to take the next person that visits me there!

I just feel bad because we forgot to bring out camera in and though I did take a few pictures with my phone once the food got there we totally forgot to take pictures of it!  So I guess you will just have to go for yourself to check it out.  Oh, I should mention, Little Sheep is well known for their potato noodles and they will reccommend them.  Sat and I do not.  They weren’t aweful, they just were not that good.  I couldn’t chew them, no matter how long I cooked them, so if you like chasing a wide noodle around a hot pot of soup and then swallowing it whole, go for it.  But if not, pass.

Our Order:

1/2 Veggie Mushroom soup base – awesome if you like ‘srooms

1/2 House Original soup base – super awesome

Veggie Combo – it was okay.  Mostly leafy greens and cabbage.  I would order the veggies al a carte next time and not get the combo

Pork Loin Slices – AWESOME!  It is raw, thinly sliced pork loin that you cook yourself.  Super tasty and a LOT of it!  The picture on the menu, that is one serving. . .

Frozen Tofu – Sat liked it a lot, I’ll pass next time.  It is like eating a sponge.

Wide Potato Noodles – just thins slices of potatoes that you cook and eat like a noodle.  Not so good if you are used to “traditional” noodles.  Super chewy and difficult to get out of the pot.

Spicy Veggie BBQ Skewers – I think Sat is going to sneak off to LSHP at least once a week from now on for these.  He was in LOVE!   Great flavor, great veggies

Darnit, another long post!  The intro might be a little long but I think it is necessary to give you the info. . . who knows, maybe I will pare it down later.  We really do need to get better about posting.  Had we just forced ourselves to write every night we wouldn’t have these long posts!  Anyway, hopefully there will be more to come later today, either written by me or Sat.  We still have so much to tell!  I bet you are DYING to known about the “Lettuce Challenge”.

~Col

I am really bummed to be leaving SSHL and pretty scared about starting the new job. But I am excited. It is going to be really challenging at first but I know I am going to rock it. It is what I do.

Time to tell about something fun – VEGAS!! This past weekend Sat and I took a small trip to Las Vegas. We have been needing to have some work done on our bathroom that would require us to be out of the apartment for a few days and my parents were planning to be in Vegas this past weekend so we decided to book the repairs and hit the road. We had everything planned and taken careof, including houseing for the cats. Until the last minute. My buddy SB from work offered to take the cats a while ago and then just recently found out she was going to be housing some really young kittens during the time our cats were supposed to be with her. It ends up the kittens hadn’t been vaccinated and came with bugs so Sat and I decided to attempt to find alternate arrangements for our kitties. We couldn’t find anyone until the day before! It was super stressful getting that taken care of but MK from work saved the day!

And so the trip. . . I got off work on Wednesday at noon and the plan was to quickly drop off the kitties in North Park and head out. Well, those silly plans. Of course Sat was running a little late (he was working hard to get things together) and didn’t get to the library until quarter after. We ran quickly to North Park and tried to drop off the kitties as fast as we could. Well, have we ever told you that Roxy gets car sick? Probably not, because we didn’t know until we were on the interstate. So when we got there not only did we need to dro the kitties off and get them comfortable, but we also have to clean out the kitty keeper. Fun times.

We finally got on the road for Vegas around 1:15. Thankfully the ride is a pretty straight shot taking the 15 all the way. Unfortunately, that is not the directions we got from Google maps. And then there was the construction and the missed exit. So it was quite the comedy of errors. Luckily, the day was saved in Baker, CA!! We had planned to stop there for a little geocaching and to see the World’s Largest Thermometer. Well, what we DIDN’T know was that Baker is also home to Mad Greek!! I had seen Mad Greek on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on FoodNetwork and had dreamed of going but quickly forgot about it. Well, I got to go! And I had myself the best gyro in the US – for REAL! It was AWESOME. So it was definitely worth it. We did also get a picture with the World’s Largest Thermometer (see below) and also stopped by Alien Fresh Jerky (fun place!).

We didn’t get to where my parents were staying until close to 7, but it was alright. We had a chance to get settled and get some grub before having to see my parents. It ends up that my parents only got a 1 room place instead of two so we were welcomed by the site of our bed – the couch. Kind of a sad surprise, but it was okay. Or at least I thought it was until I touched the sheets. They were like SANDPAPER. So that made for a few sleepless nights.

On Thursday we spent the day wandering the strip with my mom (dad was in meetings most of the day). It was fun seeing all the hotels/casinos and how elaborately they are decorated. We had lunch at the Bellagio and then did a little gambling while we were there. At first we were all doing pretty well. Mom ended up on top I think, Sat lost it all, and I made $2.50. Sat and I haven’t been in a smokey place for a while (thank you, no smoking indoors in CA!!) so just the smoking got to be a little much for us. We finally left the strip around 6:45. If only we had known that the Bellagio lights go off at 7! So we did just miss the lights, oh darn. After all day on the strip we spent the night chillin and grillin. We had some pork chops, grilled chicken fajitas, and riblets.

On Friday we spent the day at Red Rock Canyon. I may not ever go back to Vegas for the strip, but I would TOTALLY come back for for Red Rock Canyon. It was BEAUTIFUL and had some really great trails and vistas. We had an awesome time just walking around and doing some geocaching. Although we had done some geocaching with my mom on the strip we got to show her what REAL geocaching is like in RRC. Mom did a really good job keeping up, dad only did a few caches with us. I think everyone had a great time. Dad found where he wants to build his retirement home (although he will never be able to build it in RRC). All in all a pretty awesome day.

After running around for a few hours we finally got home around 2 and had lunch and just hung out for the rest of the day. Mom and I rented and watched Brokeback Mountain which I have been wanting to see for a long time. Well, it was not at good as I was hoping it would be. I guess I had just built it up so much. . . and then it was an artsy film, not something I usually like. There were some really cool shots/pictures but other than that I really didn’t like it. Oddly enough, Sat didn’t think it was that bad (he started watching it about an hour in).

Alright, I need to go help get dinner ready. . . but I am SURE that Sat will finish the post for me! There is more – and there will be TONS of pictures on Sat’s Flickr soon too!

~Colleen

It hasn’t been all that long since our last post but it has been the end of the term and Easter was on Sunday so a fair amount of things have been going on. I’ll start from the beginning, namely the end… of the term.

As you might have gleaned from Colleen’s last couple posts, she was offered a job in the Mandeville Special Collections Library. She was a little depressed from being passed over for the other jobs she interviewed for but that made this offer even sweeter. She officially accepted the position today and she begins her new job on April 14. I know she is going to rock, just like she does in all aspects of life.

She got the good news the same day that I was proctoring and grading the CSE 141 final exam. As we did for 240A last term, Steve and I started grading immediately after the exam was over and didn’t stop until we were finished. We started around 2:45 nearly 6 hours later, we declared victory. We also could have declared legal insanity as grading for that long really takes a toll on your mental state. For shits and giggles, I decided to throw on a bonus question at the end that I stole from my Philosophy 101 professor at Drexel: “What is my favorite movie of all-time?” The question was asked about me and Steve. No one actually guessed my favorite movie, although the chance of someone doing so was exceedingly small since I never gave any indication of the answer. (I’ll bake anyone a dozen of cookies if they can correctly guess the movie.) The answers we received ranged from the mundane (e.g. random Tom Hanks movie) to the amusing (someone listed Buckaroo Bonzai). The exam itself was pretty challenging, which seems to be a hallmark of the tests that I create. I don’t try to make them very difficult, I just try to avoid boring “plug and chug” type of problems if at all possible. I was quite impressed with the scores, though. People were working right up until the very end but the average came out… well… average! It was a nice bell curve around 75%.

This Saturday I planned a trip for Colleen and me to Sycamore Canyon. Well, the place we went wasn’t actually part of Sycamore Canyon Open Space Preserve but it was close enough to call it so. I don’t know how I chose Sycamore Canyon but it seemed like it would be a nice hike and there were several of them fairly close to each other in the area. On the way there, Colleen and I saw something quite amusing: (what we assumed were) illegal immigrants hanging out at the corner looking for work. Living in California, you hear about places like this but when you actually see them, it makes you do a double-take. While on our way to the Canyon, we also got to see the main strip of Poway and Colleen was super-excited by all the stores she saw. I can’t think of anything in particular but there were a lot of places that she had heard about from other people but never knew where they were. If it weren’t so far out of the way, we might go there more often. Anyway, back to our geocaching experience.

We found the first cache fairly quickly, although it seemed like a minor miracle that we were able to do so. It was only a 1.5 or 2 start difficulty rating but the coordinates were off and the location was quite random. After that we headed off on the main trail to look for three other caches that I had placed on our GPSr. After a bit of a wrong turn, we backtracked and found the hiding spot for the 2nd cache. It took us much longer to find it that it should have since there was tree cover and that spells trouble for getting good reception. Colleen was already sweaty and annoyed by the time we found the 2nd cache and she was downright mad when I said I wanted to go for more. It was getting late in the morning, it was getting toasty and we were almost out of water but we still decided to trek on to the top of the mountain/hill. We made it up to about 1100 feet when we took a bit of a breather. There was absolutely no one else in the area so it was deadly quiet. The silence was broken by what, at first, seemed like a rush of wind and the rustling of leaves. The sound became more eerie and… *gulp*… it was getting louder. That’s when I saw it: a swarm of bees headed up the hill! I saw my life flash before my eyes but luckily the swarm avoided us and headed further up the hill. About 400 feet further up the hill to be exact. Did I mention that the next cache was about 400 feet further up the hill?

Not being one to tempt fate, I decided to call that one a “pseudo-find” and started our trek back down the hill. Before we descended, I snapped a couple of photographs of the surrounding area to give you a bit of perspective of how high we were. (The picture to the left is one of the pictures I took.) I thought the trip back down the hill would have been much easier but the trail was mostly loose dirt so we had to do what Colleen referred to as “controlled sliding.” That girl sure is full of useful survival information! At the end of our trip, we were both exhausted, but happy.

Sunday was, of course, Easter. Colleen and I haven’t been very good about going to Church–Colleen actually gets up at 7am on Sundays to watch mass on the Hallmark Channel–but we figured that Easter was as good of a day as any to go again. We invited Jenne down for Easter lunch/dinner so that forced us to go to the crowded 11AM mass at Our Mother Of Confidence. It’s funny to see the church fill up with all the C&E Christians, who promptly bolt for the door after they receive the Eucharist. I can’t say anything too bad though, as we were guilty of the same thing although, in our defense, we need to get back to meet up with Jenne.

Usually Easter is one of the holidays where I create a big meal, completely with Tofurky and about 10 side dishes and desserts. I didn’t really feel like doing that this year so I tried to go for a small Celebration Field Roast instead. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one at Whole Foods so I had to go to plan B: chickpea cutlet parmigiana. Colleen and I are gaga over the chickpea cutlets in Veganomicon so I decided to incorporate them into a new dish, which I thought up. It was very straightforward: create chickpea cutlets, slather on pasta sauce, dump on vegan parm, and throw some Follow Your Heart cheese on top. The result was rather tasty. I wish the same could be said of the chard I tried to fix.

Our refrigerator is packed with all these greens, which we have no idea what to do with. I decided to use the power of the interweb to find out what to do with our chard. I came up with a basic sauteed chard recipe. The problem was that I didn’t know how much chard actually used so when the recipe called for 2 lbs of chard and 1 T. of lemon juice (to garnish), I had to guesstimate how much of the juice I should use. I guess wrong. Very wrong. The result was a “make your mouth pucker” bunch of inedible chard. Someone needs to please enlighten us with a simple, yet tasty, recipe that calls for a fairly large amount of chard. Anyone? Please?!?!?

Jenne didn’t stick around for long after the meal was over (was the chard really that awful? ), so she didn’t get to see the magic happen. “What magic?” you are undoubtedly asking yourself right now. The vegan ice cream creation magic! Yes, I finally gave in and bought an ice cream maker this weekend. I have had it on my wishlist for a little while and I decided to forgo buying lunch on campus once a week so I could save up to buy it. I started with the simple vanilla recipe found here [Freshtopia.net]. This particular recipe called for a cashew base so I was able to witness the power of my new Osterizer beehive blender in making quick work of the nuts. After 30 minutes in the ice cream maker and a couple in the freezer, I had my first batch of homemade ice cream. The sad news was that it didn’t turn out all that well. I didn’t blend the cashews well enough–I was a bit cocky with my new blender–so the texture was grainy. Colleen thought it tasted way too much like cashews, which she isn’t a fan of, so next time I will try a soymilk based ice cream, like one of the recipes found on A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise. I might also try one of the ice cream recipes from Veganomicon, which all call for coconut cream.

Well, I guess that is about all I am going to say for now. There are other random bits and pieces to throw at you but it’s getting late and I’ve been writing forever so I am going to call it a night.

- Sat

P.S.
Don’t forget to leave a comment and try to guess my favorite movie of all-time.

As I said before the new ILL manager started last Monday and she seems to be doing pretty well. She is working really hard to see how we do things at our library and seems to enjoy the challenge. Unfortunately I haven’t really gotten a chance to get to know her better just because she always seems busy. The fact that I didn’t get the job might also be making me subconsciously avoid her, but that too will pass.

Today I will be attending part 1 of a 3 part training session for “Work Leaders” aka people that supervise student workers. RE didn’t enjoy the class when he went but I am going to enjoy it if it is the last thing I do! My next two sessions aren’t until the 25 and 9 so I have some time to recoup or forget about a bad first session anyway. I think that there will be other library people there too – but I am not sure so I’ll be surprised! It doesn’t start until 8:30 and instead of going to work for 1/2 an hour and then trying to get over to the training session I will be going straight there and then working until 5 tonight. LOOOOOOONG day for me.

Ahh, lets talk about the weekend. Sat and I had a fairly good one. I didn’t do anything on Friday, although I had made “hard plans” with a friend at work that we never really solidified. Oh well, it was a nice “me day”. I did finish the book I was reading, “Fallen“. It was pretty good. It was set in San Diego so it was cool to hear about the area and how much the protagonist loves it. Friday night Sat and I just hung out and did an “activity” to help us learn more about each other – “Turn on/Turn off” cards. Now I know how to annoy the crap out of Sat.

Because one of his “turn ons” was activity I got up before Sat on Saturday and planned a morning of geocaching for us. We went to San Diego Spectrum which ended up being a little business district with condos and did 5 or so urban caches. It was a pretty nice time, lots of walking, and we got to see a part of town we hadn’t explored. I did get a little sunburn on my chest though – super itchy the next day. We also found the COOLEST cache container while we were out. I can’t find a picture of it, but when I do I’ll try to post it! After going home and grabbing some lunch Sat and I went out again to hide our first cache in Doyle Community Park. High from the first find we decided to hide another cache in the Passive Park (on the OTHER side of our complex). So far people seem to enjoy the caches and are glad to see one in our area. We will probably have to replace the containers in the near future (we used glass which is evidently a faux pax and one is TINY). But it was fun to finally hide one.

I forgot to mention Stanley! My neice Curran is doing a project at school based on the book Flat Stanley. She mailed me a Stanley and asked that I show him around San Diego. I’m supposed to take pictures with him and then send the pictures and a one page essay about what we did together. On Saturday I took some pictures with him at the park, by the mormon temple and by the sign for our complex. On Sunday I took him to work with me and got a picture of him at the circ desk. And on monday Sat took pictures of us at the Dr. Seuss statue and with my building behind us. Hopefully I will be able to get a picture of him at the ocean today (my training center is right next to the ocean and Torrey Pines Golf Course (home of the 2008 US Open Golf Tourney!))

Well, I really need to get things together for class/work. Have an AWESOME Tuesday and we’ll still try to post more this week.

~Col

P.S. – did I mention I have a job interview on Friday? Won’t get it, but it is good practice!

Sat and I never get pictures of us together – it is always one or the other. But lookie what Colleen got this weekend. This is for you mom, happy early birthday! I guess most of you (you know, the two that actually keep up with this blog) are wondering what the heck I am doing posting in the middle of the day on a Tuesday. Well, last night we had my world famous french onion soup and for some reason every so often the soup makes me pretty nauseated the following morning. Like this morning. Sat was actually driving me to work when I realized today might be a good day to stay home sick. All those bumps with the bricks at the gate and then a quick u-turn that left my stomach reeling. So after another quick u-turn I called my boss and let him know I wouldn’t be able to make it in today. Although I still don’t feel a hundred percent Sat is positive that it is just my guilt at not going to work that is making me think that I don’t feel good.

Well, since I have this beautiful Tuesday at home I decided to get caught up on a bunch of things that I have been meaning to do around the house the past few weeks (working, but not at work, I’m sneaky). I spent the morning finishing the laundry that has been in the dryer for the past three days. It is nice to have clean jeans again! After about a week of research I also finally cleaned the washing machine and dish washer (yes, I cleaned our cleaning appliances). Both of them just look really gross on the inside and I couldn’t help but wonder if our clothes and dishes were really getting clean. I found some easy cleaning instructions online and it ends up that it is actually suggested that you clean both appliances monthly. Ours was clearly overdue. With a little vinegar, some baking soda, a lot of hot water, and the appliances natural motions both of them are looking mighty fine. Since I was on such a cleaning fix I also finally delved into the fridge and gave it the weeding and cleaning that it needed. Although we just took our compostables to Whole Foods on Sunday we already have another full bin to go. I’m just so glad that we have somewhere that we can take it instead of just throwing all that good “fertilizer” away.

Lets see, what is the big news for this week. . . Oh yeah, I have another job interview! Or I guess I should say I am going to have another interview. I had applied for a number of jobs the day I found out that I didn’t get the ILL Manager job (she started yesterday) and one of them actually wants to interview me! I got an email from LC in special collections thanking me for applying and letting me know that they would like to interview me but 1/2 of their staff is out with the flu so they are having trouble nailing down dates for interviews. But how exciting is that! I had kind of given up on that one because I know that I am not qualified for the position. I have lots of public service experience but no special collections experience. I have decided I can’t pass up the opportunity – not to mention it also lets the folks at SSHL know that I am serious about wanting a promotion and needing a raise. The more I think about the possibility of leaving the more I don’t really want to go but at the same time the more I really WANT to go. But enough about that. . .

Sunday was Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel)’s 104th birthday. We had a big celebration at work – cake and punch for 2,000, a big cat in the hat balloon and a giant birthday cake balloon. The cake looked awesome but I did my best to stay away (watching my figure, ya know). I was in class all day in the Seuss Room and all the tourists were milling around outside looking for some special room dedicated to Seuss. I just wanted to say, “Hey! it is just a conference room! We don’t have anything else available!” Oh, and the class – Reference Interview Skills for Academic Librarians – not so good. I mean, the guy was funny and he had us do a lot, but to spend an entire day on the topic was a little much. There were actually people that came for part of the morning, got bored and left. We paid for the guy to come! I stayed in hopes of some redeeming value, but I am still not sure if there was any. Oh well.

Let’s see, the other big news. . . I finally cut my hair! Or rather, had it cut. I have been talking about it for a long time and finally decided I just need to go and get it cut. I wanted something drastically shorter and different. Not exactly what I got. I think it looks a lot like every other hair cut I have had but people seem to be noticing this one a lot more so maybe there is something different about it. I wore it down and straight on Sunday and some people couldn’t even recognize me (for a few seconds). I told that to a friend of mine at work, SB, and now she wants me to wear it straight again – but it takes so long to straighten!! I told her she was out of luck. . . but in actuality, she isn’t because Sat posted a picture.

Sat and I also had a pretty productive weekend geocaching this weekend. Sat decided to take charge and plan our outing on Friday night and picked out Crest Canyon Park in Del Mar. It is a smallish park right by the race track. We got to do some bushwhacking (unnecessary but fun) and saw some great views of the San Dieguito Lagoon. I think we found 5 in total and had a pretty good time doing it. I got a little crabby near the end and didn’t even help find #5. It was noon time and I was STARVED and tired. I don’t know what it is but I am just no good after noon. My body just says, “no, you are done. go home and veg.” But did we? No. . . we ventured on to Jimbo’s Naturally! a natural food store in Del Mar. I had heard really good things about the vegan selections there and had been meaning to take Sat for a long time. So we swung by there on the way home to pick up lunch and check the store out. It was pretty little but had a really nice vegan deli with a bunch of different vegan wraps and sandwiches as well as salads and baked goods. We picked up a TON of food for lunch and even some other random groceries while we were there. Reminder: Do NOT take Colleen to a grocery store when she is hungry. We spent $70 on a “quick trip” and still had to go grocery shopping on Sunday. I think that is why I don’t normally go; I can rack up the bill in no time. I like food.

Well it is lunch time now and I am pretty starved. Just one favor to ask – If you read this post, please comment!!! Even if we don’t know you. We would like to know you and we would like to know what you think – and that you are there! And if you are a semi-regular that forgets to check for updates sometimes consider adding us to RSS. It is so easy and then you don’t even have to come to the page if you don’t want to (though you should to see our geocaching stats). If you don’t know how, let us know in a comment and I will contact you to help you set it up!Hope to see a note from you!

~Col

Well, Sat and I dropped Sarah and Collin off at the airport this morning around 5. It was a pretty awesome weekend. S and C flew in late on Wednesday night for the long weekend. We spent our valentine’s day mostly in bed – S and C resting from their trip. It was one of those rare rainy/gloomy days in San Diego but it seemed to work out okay for us. While S and C were waking up and getting used to the warm weather I went to the dentist and got myself a shiny new tooth.

I can’t remember if I posted about my last dentist appointment or not but let me just say it SUCKED. I got what they referred to as “the rush” from the Novocain. I guess there is epinephrine in the anesthetic and since I was nervous, had just run two BIG blocks and then got TWO shots of drugs I had a less than pleasant reaction – nearly passed out.

Anyway, back to the new tooth and Sarah’s visit. . . Had a nice long talk with the dentist when I went there. Decided to use the heart patients Novocain instead of the regular. I didn’t realize I was getting numbed this visit (Sat told me I didn’t need it! but since I didn’t get a root canal I did. . .) so it took longer than I thought.

On Friday the weather was much nicer so I took Sarah and Collin to Balboa Park while Sat went to campus for the day. We walked past the museums, through a few gardens, watch the fishes in outside the botanical gardens before roaming around inside, hung out by the fountain and then headed to the cactus garden. I had researched a little before our trip and found that there was a geocache in the cactus garden so we poked around a bit looking for it. Unfortunately it wasn’t an ideal place to go caching with an almost two year-old. Collin kept running around the cacti on this super steep hill so we had to concentrate on him not falling instead of finding a cache. Maybe next time I’ll take Sarah out by herself – I really think they would like it. Sat and I are planning to go back to the park later to find the cache.

After Balboa Park we hit up Doyle Park for a little time on the slides and to kick a ball around (hoping to kill some of Collin’s energy so that he would go down for a nap). Collin really enjoyed the play time and Sarah was just in awe of the park. We had to promise Collin we would go back for more tomorrow in order to get him to leave peacefully.

On Saturday all four of us made an early start for the San Diego Zoo. As much as I didn’t really want to go it was pretty fun. Collin got a slow start – didn’t seem to enjoy the zoo at first but about the time we were going to give up on getting him excited he just perked up and fell in love. I think that happen at the turtle tanks. the next few hours were spent trying to reign the little bugger in – he was running all over the place and constantly wanted picked up. As usual, I was the one to ruin the party. I’m never good after noon and this was no different. At about 1:00 it all just got to be too much for me. We left shortly after and just in time for Collin to pass out on the way home. And now Sat and I have a year of free visits to the Zoo and Wild Animal park (and 1 free quest pass!).

On Sunday we had a super lazy day – mostly hanging out at the house. We did go to the beach for a few hours to barbecue and play in the sand. Sat and I worked on getting the grill started while Sarah and Collin went to make a sand castle on the beach. We kicked the ball around, helped a family in distress (we think she broke her foot kicking a soccer ball – we lent them our ice pack), and had a few hot dogs. Later that night Sat and I came down with a super cruddy cold – the midwestern plague .

Monday was a slow start for the Garcia’s – we were really feeling the cold and not wanting to get up, but we fought through. We made a quick trip to Birch aquarium which Collin and Sarah loved and then swung by the library to show them where I worked and catch the view from the 6th floor. Stopped by to see my boss and let him know that I would probably be out today (which I am). We spent the rest of the day hanging out and just enjoying each-other’s company while resting up for the big travel day for S and C and clean up day for Sat and me. Collin, Sarah, and I did a craft and then made a scrapbook page for Stephen with pictures from the trip.

Pretty good visit, all in all.

I actually have a lot of other stuff to write about but I have been writing for a while and this post is already humongous. So here is the short version of the rest.

1. I didn’t get the job :-/
2. The Poetry Open Mic night was AWESOME and we are doing another one in April!
3. My cube in on the move at work – but where will it end up? I don’t know. . .
4. Sat made me the cutest card for V-day – I’ll try to take a picture of it and post it on Flickr.
5. I love you Sat!!!

Time to spend some time with the kitties – they are feeling a little neglected.

~Col

Colleen and I were back on the geocaching trail this Saturday when we went down to the Clairemont/Kearny Mesa border. How did we come up with that particular area to hunt? Well, we’ve been talking about going to Sipz for what seems like ages now so we decided to finally take the leap and try it out. Too bad only 50% of our trip was a success.

Things started off badly when we couldn’t find any of the geocaches we had programmed in our GPSr. We got totally off track to begin with when the waypoint I picked wasn’t correct and we ended up going way too far west from the 805. After getting the waypoint straightened out, we wandered into some residential area looking for an entrance to (what I think was) San Clemente Canyon. We ended up in about 500 cul-de-sacs before giving up on that cache and heading for another one. This one happened to be in a parking log behind Boomers and it was rated as easy so things were looking good. Of course, things wouldn’t be so dramatic if we had found it so we didn’t. Well, it wasn’t like we purposely didn’t find it but it was still really frustrating. I was in a foul mood, which put Colleen in a foul mood and everything went downhill from there.

Having become completely bewildered with caching for the day (and being hungry, to boot!) we decided to head to Sipz. There was just one problem: we didn’t know where it was. Colleen swore it was right off the 805 on Clairemont Mesa Drive but I never remembered seeing it so I had this strange feeling that it was on Balboa Dr.. Again, things weren’t looking good but you, our intelligent reader, will have remembered that I said we had a 50% success rate and breathe a sigh of relief. So, what got us to our destination? None other than GOOG-411.

As it turns out, Sipz was on Clairemont Mesa so after a couple minutes of looking around, we found it and there was much rejoicing. There was even more rejoicing after we got our yummy, yummy food. I had the “Siamese Shrimp” while Colleen went with the lo mein. She was in love with the lo mein and my dish was pretty tasty too. On the way out we grabbed some chocolate chip cookies and a slice of banana “cake.” The cookies were fantastic (Colleen even loved them!) but the cake wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever had. It actually wasn’t so much of a cake as it was a banana pie with some cake-like tendencies. I didn’t think it was bad but Colleen hated it, mostly because she hates bananas. Overall, our Sipz experience was a win though.

While we are on the subject of winning food, I want to mention the peanut butter pretzels that Colleen found on vegweb.com. She made them as a “dessert” for our meal tonight of tofu “chicken” nuggets and squash. They were fun to make, easy to make, and fast to make so they get good marks for that. I’ve included a picture to show the final product (well, some of the final product… we had gotten into them before that). The peanut butter taste was subtle but nice. I tried them plain, with some raspberry preserves and even with my homemade hummus. They were good any way I had them

Well, I am starting to lose steam so before I do I will leave you with one final bit of news. As Colleen mentioned in our last post, I went to the optometrist last week and got a prescription for reading glasses. I got a call yesterday saying they were in so I picked them up and the rest has been history. When I first put them on (at the doctors office) it was a little strange, almost like they were the wrong prescription. My eyes adjusted though and I’m slowly getting more and more used to them. I used them all today while I was on the computer/reading and they did seem to help my eyes. I remember growing up dreading that I would have to get glasses one day but now that that day has come, it wasn’t a big deal. I guess at least I didn’t have to deal with being called “four eyes” in school though, which is what I was the most scared of

On that note, I am out of here. See you in (hopefully) a few days.

- Sat

And now for day two, the exciting day! I didn’t feel like hunting yesterday so we took a little break but went out nice and early this morning. It had been raining earlier and it was still overcast so I was concerned about getting caught in the rain. We decided to take our chances – plus, that is what we bought the rain ponchos for, right? Well we hit the road around 10 this morning and this time we had a better idea where we were going. We had done a LOT of research on our day off including putting our coordinates into Google Earth, working with geocaching.com‘s Google map feature, and reading the logs and hints left about our destined locations. After a nice walk in overcast San Diego we got to our first location in about 10 minutes. We thought we were going the wrong way so we back tracked a little and got closer to the train tracks to find our cache. Right as we were about to be on top of it we realized that we should have stayed up top. We were close, but about 15 feet below it. We decided to skip that one for now and continue to the railroad crossing to get to Sycamore Surprise. And let me tell you, it was a lovely walk. I am not a huge fan of California landscape – it is all brown and dead looking if you ask me – but this was still nice. We found two scary looking half dead trees that were eerily beautiful (yes, we took pictures), and there was a nice bridge over a little creek. When we finally got to the cache spot it was at this beautiful sycamore. I can only imagine what it looks like when the leaves are still on it and it is green. It was really exciting getting to the spot of the cache. I get to run the GPSr when we are out in the field so I got to watch the count down to 0ft distance.. It was awesome. Almost right after I got to 0 ft I saw the cache!! It was hidden in the tree trunk of this giant sycamore. Sat and I got lots of pictures, so don’t worry. It was a lot of fun. On the way back we were on a high and DETERMINED to find Otto’s cache! And guess what? We did!! Unfortunately someone else had gotten to it before us and left it open and some of the items were on the ground. Because of the rain that morning it was also wet. We tried to clean it all up, wrote a note in the log and put the log in a zip top bag for them. We tried to hide the cache again, but I am pretty sure it will be pulled out again. It looked like someone was spending the night right across the way from the spot we found it, so I am sure it will be opened again.

Anyway, so that was our fun caching experience. We had a lot of fun and have a whole bunch more waypoints to hunt down. We are just working on what our signature item will be to leave in the caches that we hit. And next time we are going to have tissues and our ultrapod so we can blow our noses and take pictures of us together!

The cat is all up on the computer now, so I gotta really scoot. Make sure you check out the photos on Flickr!

~Cachin’ C

I hate to throw a lot of complicated math around here but here is a simple equation that most of you should understand:

Colleen + Sat + Target = Empty Pockets

Having two new things to play with (cats and a handheld GPS unit, for the uninitiated), that gives us two more things to blow money on at Target. The cats ended up with a litter mat (to wipe their paws on after exiting the litter box) and two level hammock. Our friends at Bone Appetit recommended that we wait to buy the cats bedding until they pick out a spot in the house that they like to sleep in. It took about 2 minutes for Rubi to identify the corner in the living room behind the chair as her favorite nap spot and Roxy was soon to follow. After a few days we put a pillow there and they seemed to enjoy in. The hammock was small enough to fit back there so we replaced the pillow with it. In order to entice them to use the hammock, we put the towel on the top level and sprinkled cat nip on the bottom level. Again, it didn’t take long for them to warm up to their new bedding arrangement with Rubi taking the top “bunk,” while Roxy snuggled in below. I’ll try to snap a picture of them sleeping there and post it here some day.

As for the GPS stuff, we picked up a bunch of little things that might be useful for when we are in the great outdoors. Glow sticks (sorta like the cheesy neon things you seen at lame frat parties sometimes), emergency ponchos, a mini compass (since the Garmin eTrex Legend doesn’t have a true one), and some waterproof matches all made it into my cart. I also picked up a Victorinox Sportsman Swiss Army Knife that could also be classified as outdoorsy. It was on my Secret Santa wishlist but since I didn’t get it I decided to buy one for myself (oh! the joys of Boxing Day). Today we searched for our first geocache and realized there were some items we still need but I will get to that later in this post or (most likely) in another post.

While at Target we were also close to buying an air filter but I wanted to do more research on them. A lot of the air purifiers they had there were labeled as “HEPA-type” which is very misleading since they aren’t really HEPA. (On a complete tangent: for some reason I can’t stop pronouncing it “hey-pa” instead of “heh-puh.” I guess it is the Mexican half of my heritage that is forcing me to speak like I know the language when i don’t.) I was also looking into getting a HEPA-rated vacuum cleaner when I realized something nice: the vacuum that Jenne gave is HEPA-capable. The filter that came with it wasn’t a HEPA filter but you can buy them (for about $5) online so I am going to do that. I also stumbled upon the user manual for our vacuum (a Bissell 8975) and found out that there was one filter we didn’t know about—the damned Bissells seem to have about 100 filters hidden on them. After inspecting it I found it completely clogged with dust, which was probably the reason why the last few times we have used it, it has thrown a bust of dust into the air (not so good for the allergies). I ended up spending about a half hour cleaning out all the filters and checking the brush for threads. I must say though, the fruits of my labor paid off because there was a noticeable improvement in the air being spit out while Colleen was vacuuming today. Hopefully the HEPA filter on the vacuum along with a new ifD filter air purifier will keep my allergies at bay.

Speaking of allergies, I haven’t been having many problems with them the past few days. I’m not too keen on the idea of popping allergy meds every day but I begrudgingly picked up a pack of the CVS-brand Claritin RediTabs. Claritin is labeled as some sort of wonder drug for allergy suffers but, as it turns out, the main inactive ingredient in it is lactose monohydrate, which is definitely not vegan friendly. I thought I was going to have to get a prescription for the liquid form of Zyrtec because it was the only one without the lactose. The RediTabs actually don’t have it but they have gelatin so they were out also. Luckily, after inspecting about 500 boxes I found that the CVS-brand instant-dissolve pills didn’t have lactose or gelatin so I was good to go.

I took one of the pills on Christmas Eve and the symptoms went away very quickly. I was expecting them to come back about 24 hours later when the antihistamine was supposed to wear off but, to my pleasant surprise, they haven’t been so bad. I occasionally have a runny nose but it wasn’t as bad as the time leading up to me taking my first RediTab. I have also been waking up with a bit of congestion but I am hoping that an air filter in my bedroom will clean up the stale air in there. Since I keep it closed to keep the cats out, air doesn’t circulate in there so there is an unpleasant scent that lingers there. It’s been a bit too chilly to keep the window cracked or I would do that.

Well, I suppose that I should wonder off to bed now. I was excited to talk about our first geocaching experience today but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Hopefully I can convince Colleen that she is a good blogger so that she starts writing some more. You can help out the cause by leaving a positive comment for her though

Until tomorrow, farewell.

- Sat