Donate

My friend, Allison (better known from the comments section as belsum), is doing a charity walk in Minneapolis for MS. I thought I'd post her donations page if anyone who reads this blog is itching to donate:
http://www.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR?px=3531245&pg=personal&fr_id=4481
No need to feel obligated, but I wanted to recognize her effort for charity.
Go bel!

Surreal

I know I already posted a Moab picture, but this one is from the second day of off-roading and shows a view so fantastic that it looks fake.

BTW, I am feeling better today. Perhaps it was the low barometric pressures that were contributing to the melancholy.

Discouraged and Melancholy

It amazes me that people manage to get together and stay together for any length of time. It seems to me that figuring out the logistics of personal standards of rhythm and space between two people is so discouraging as to be nearly insurmountable.

New Adventure

Just back from Moab, Utah. It was a blast. I went off-roading on an ATV for the first time. It was really fun and exciting. It would have been more fun if I hadn't had trouble with my hand cramping towards the end. Because the speed control is on a lever operated solely by the right thumb, by the time we were halfway through our 6 hour excursion, my thumb was starting to hurt. The next day, my right hand was not really working very well. I think it was a combination of the physical shocks my hand was taking as I held on to the handlebars and the grip I needed to manipulate the throttle lever. I've lost a bit of strength and dexterity in the hand, but I'm sure it's temporary. My hand difficulties meant that the next day I got to just ride along, rather than drive. Interestingly, I found it almost as entertaining, since I got to sightsee a bit more. The scenery was absolutely beautiful - red rocks and greenery against the bluest sky. The fact that I was strapped into a motorized 4WD vehicle with a helmet, goggles, and a lunatic driver just made it all the more vivid.
It was a really fun road trip. The car did very well. The extra space was really nice to have. The AC didn't really work (needs to be "charged"?) and the CD player only works when the car is cold, but other than that, it was great.

Meet Big D

About a month and a half ago, a car hit my car and did about $2500 worth of damage. My car being 12 years old and starting to look pretty dinged up (even before the accident), I decided to keep the money (plus a bonus I got from work) for a down payment on a "new" car. I never buy actual new cars, plus I like not having much of (if any) a car payment.
To my surprise, I found a car yesterday. He wants to be called "Big D" (the nickname of the USS Dallas, a submarine in The Hunt for Red October). He's a blue 2002 Subaru Impreza "Sport" WRX, with "all wheel drive," which was top of my list, along with small size. After I bought it, I realized I also got a bunch of cool modern features that I've never had before - a 6 CD changer, an alarm system (and one of those key chain lock button things - woo hoo!), a mirror that automatically dims when headlights are too bright behind you, wipers that you can change the delay speed on, etc. So cool!
Apparently, I went to the car dealer at the perfect time -- late in the day on a crappy, cold, sleety day. They hadn't sold many cars that day and were motivated to sell to me that day. I also traded in my car for a nominal amount (saves me from trying to have to sell it for probably about the same amount).
It'll be nice to have a new car on my road trip to Moab next weekend.

Too Fast!

The world is moving too fast right now. I had my birthday celebration last week and I haven't even blogged about it!

Here are the gorgeous flowers that my parents sent to the office on the day. They are still gracing my desk.
I got phone calls from friends and family and felt generally appreciated.
The squeeze and I went to the Buenos Aires Grill and had a yummy dinner.
My good friends had a birthday celebration on Sunday for me, with a beautiful and tasty cake. It was wonderful to spend time with them.
I got some cool DVDs and some biking gloves, but mostly it was the time spent with friends and family that I appreciated most.

Here's a little cuteness I meant to post after I got back from vacation: The cats making themselves at home in my half unpacked suitcase.

Vacation Heaven

I'm back from vacationing the past week in Roatan, Honduras. It's an island off the coast of Honduras, pretty much in the south Caribbean. It's best known to divers as a good place for inexpensive and non-touristy SCUBA diving.

The island was beautiful.
There were lovely beaches to walk or sun on. We stayed at a place called West End, which was near to some very good diving and further away from the resorts. This piece of beach was between West End and the next community over, West Bay. The coast that we saw was not generally as deserted as this appears to be.

The middle of the island was a rainforest. Here you can see the sea beyond the lush vegetation. We were taking a shuttle bus to the place where we could take a zip-line canopy tour (more on that later) and the bus driver kept stopping to show us the best views.

As might be guessed from the name "West End", we got to see many lovely sunsets during our visit. This is one from the first day there. The pier you see in the photo is the one immediately in front of our hotel (which had a dive shop attached). The boats tied up there were used for diving or taking divers to the bigger boat. The lounge chairs (often occupied by other guests) could be used for sunning in the afternoon and for watching the sunset.


Here is another lovely sunset taken a few days later. The boats that were usually anchored near the shore often provided opportunities for elegant photo compositions (if I can get some of my friend's photos, you'll see what I mean).


One of the non-diving activities that we did was to go up to a place called Gumbalimba Park and take thier zip-line canopy tour. This was a tour through the rainforest at the canopy (or tree-top) level on metal cords called "zip-lines". You were strapped into a climbing harness and attached to the metal cord by a carabiner. You then slid along the line through gravity (since the lines were at a downward slope). You used thick gloves to protect your hands when braking. It was a hell of a lot of fun. The photo here, taken with my camera by one of the guides, was me doing a manuver called the "superman" (for obvious reasons).


In Gumbalimba park, they also had a history and ecology tour. The history part they had in a cave-like construction that reminded me of Disneyland. The ecology tour was much nicer and included encounters with monkeys and parrots. Here you can see my handsome friend with a parrot.

I'm sure there are other photos to be had, since my friend was taking pictures the whole time as well. We also took an underwater camera with us diving once also, so there should be photos from that once the film is developed. I'll also see if I can think of any other interesting things about our trip to talk about.

I Love the Mountains

This is a delayed posting I meant to post 3/6/07, but it's actually going up much later. What I delayed for was to post the description:

I went to Crested Butte, Colorado with some great friends of mine last weekend (March 3-4). JR and I went snowshoeing while the rest of the group shopped around historic Crested Butte. It was so beautiful. The sun was shining and the sky was a gorgeous blue. The snow and the trees made lovely shapes and there were mountains, loads of beautiful mountains! We went uphill for about an hour and a half, then turned around and came back down in about 45 minutes. It was so much fun.
Then, that evening, we went out for Stacey's birthday dinner. The food and the company was great, as I expected. A lovely cake, covered in fondant depicting a tea party, was the grand finale for the birthday celebration.
Thank you, to my wonderful friends, for inviting me down there.