Apple Jack's Day with Dad

We're working on doing some last minute fixes on my house before my house warming.  Apple Jacks and I were having some trouble with the big slider, to the point we called re-enforcements, Dad.  

Once Dad came down, we all realized there were some parts that needed to be picked up from the hardware store.  What a great opportunity for Apple Jacks to take Dad on his motorcycle!

Dad's fist is in the air.  He made it back alive!

"How do I get this off?!"

Oh, yes, my dad, Mr. Tough Guy

Here they are, after the parts have been retrieved, using cooking spray and the drill, trying to get a new hole in the frame of the sliding door. At least Apple Jacks gets to use his Dremal Tool!

Fishing the Lower Sac

Dad, Tao, Ian, and I got in the car in the darkness of 6am to head up to Redding to go fishing.  It turned out to a be a beautiful day to be on the river, high 70's low 80's light breeze.  It was just the four of us in two boats each with a guide, Me and Dad with the main guide, and Tao and Ian with Chris.  Right off the bat i caught a fish, a rare thing to happen so quickly.  It was a fat sucker fish, but still a fish that made it all the way to the boat.  The day continued and Dad kept losing his fish before he could reel them into the boat.  

The highlight of the day was when I caught a Steelhead.  It took me 10-15 min to reel it in.  It kept running and fighting.  This was the first time I caught a fish with fight like this.  When I finally got it to the boat we had floated quite a bit away for Tao and Ian's boat and Ian was the only one with a camera, so he has to long distance shot of me landing this 7 pound fish.  

This is what it looked like, a bit brighter, and head a bit uglier.  But it was a big fish.  I'm use to landing maybe a 12ft rainbow this was twice as big and weight at least 3 times as much.  It was cool.

In the front yard this morning

Here is the whole family, Dad, Mom and Baby.  

Don't diss the picture quality, it's though a window with a flash.

The Arcade

Last night a small group of friends and I wen to an arcade.  They were very excited to play "Hyperbowl",  bowling game where you spin a suspended bowling ball though a "course" to hit the pins.  We stupidly picked the expert level, Tokyo. We had to get our ball though a Tokyo street. We did have the advantage that the street was straight, but we had the disadvantage of maneuvering around cars, buses, and motorcycles.  There was also a time limit to get to the pins.  

The true challenge was that you had to smack the ball around to get it to roll along the course.  As Apple Jacks said after he bowled only about half his frames, "I feel like I've been clapping nonstop at a concert." 

But he got his revenge.  He got Ms. J and I on a horse racing game.  That wasn't the sneaky part.  He some how got us to pick the longest distance around the track.  To say it was exhausting is an understatement.  Ms. J and I were humping and bumping and rocking these "horses" back and forth for maybe 90 seconds, but it felt like 5 min. We were both out of breath and Ms. Jen even felt like she was going to vomit from the  exertion. She did beat me, but in my defense, its nothing like riding a real horse.  All is all, between bowling and the horse racing, it was quite a work out.

Some More PIcs for Ms. E's wedding

Here we are.  My first close friend to get married. I'm so so so very happy for her!

 

Someone had to fluff the dress properly

Apple Jacks dancing with Bella, a daughter of Ms. E's best friend

My speech... it was a little nerve racking but it went well

OMG I read an Oprah article

Apple Jacks and I have recently moved in together.  It's been a bit hard 'cause my roommate is still here.  Wouldn't be a problem if a) my roommate didn't have TONS of stuff b) Apple Jacks "liked" him (not that Apple Jacks likes anyone really but still) c) this dislike didn't completely make me feel the same way and cause every little thing that my roommate does to drive me nuts d) it meant one of these two boys, yes boys, picked up after themselves, dish into the dishwasher... really is it that hard?!  Just a few more days and the roommate is out! 

Anyway, I was of facebook and one of the ads on the side said something like "a boyfriend test".  (yes at times I am that person.  Oh, a test on what movie star I look like.  What type of mythical creature would I be? ) It lead me not to the desired test but to a female bonding site (no NOT bondage).  Blogs about being pregnant and "my kids messes" and stuff.  Well, there was a thing about moving with your significant other.  It was a little video of this women who had moved from Kentucky to live with her boyfriend.  She had the whole twang and everything.  This is what did it.  At the bottom is said, "read more" and I clicked it.  It lead me to THE OPRAH WEBSITE! 

I am not an Oprah person.  Hell, i have trouble spelling her name.  The most time I've spent with an O magazine was when I had to rip pages out for a writing assignment during my student teaching.  I've seen the Tom Cruse jumping on the couch thing on YouTube or The Soup but never really watched it live.  Dear god, please don't ever let me find the oprah website again... next it will be Good Housekeeping or something! AHHHHHH!!!!!

Emily's Wedding

Emily and Steve doing the deed! Happy Couple!

Apple Jacks and I before we try to drive though the storm coming across the lake.  It was a doozy!

I got my hair done

And this time I like it!

Breath Easy

Today is the first day I can breath easy.  The sky is blue.  Now, I don't live in LA or anything.  Northern Cali, but the smoke smog from all the wildfires has been so bad over the past few weeks we've had several spare the air days, flights were delays due to lack of visibility, they have had warnings not to go outside, and the sunlight has been orange.  But today, after about an hour of watching Willie sit in the sun and romp on the lawn, i noticed something different.  Something different yet normal.  The sky is blue today.  The sunlight is sparkling clean. 

This doesn't mean the wildfires are contained in any way.  The two biggest that are near by, out of the 300 still burning, were around 60% contained last night. This is all good new.  Up north the weather has been cooler and the winds quite, which will help the hard working fire crews.  But we're not in the clear year.  In CA the fire season is normally fall.  After the long hot summer has dried everything out.  But this year, despite the flooding, we didn't get a lot of rain and now we're are having a VERY early fire season.  If we're living in an inferno now... what's it going to be like in October when we normally have fire season?

Pictures from Spruce

Here are all my pictures from Spruce Meadows.

Spruce Meadows Skyliner

This week at Spruce was the Prix de Nations.  I was riding for the NorCal team.  There are four members on the team but we were one short so we adopted a SoCal person for the day. It was a good thing too 'cause she was one of the top riders for our team.  The top four teams come back, do the course again, then jump off. 

Walking the course for the 1.30 meter Prix de Nation in Spruce Meadows Meadows on the Green felt intimidating, yet exhilarating.  The first jump was a yellow triple bar.  After two more fences making you do a U-turn you came upon this red triple combination made up of rails with white horizontal stripes that looked like a sea of rails.  Then you jumped a white wall that was so bright it you needed sun glasses.  If that didn't seem like enough optical illusions there was a green and yellow one stride with green boxes set on the outside under the first element and then green boxes set together in the middle in the second element. You couldn't tell where the bottom was. 

There were 17 teams on at the 1.30 level. I went 11th, being the lead rider for the team. I had two rails, but considering the first rider stopped out, meaning she was eliminated and the second rider had 3 rails and no one had gone clean, I was still proud.  The other members of my team did okay.  One girl stopped out herself, but the other two, the SoCal one included, went clean.  With the eliminated score dropped we had 8 faults.  

The exciting part was waiting for the scores. Each team would go and we would count up their totals.  Until the bitter end were in the top four.  I ran back to the barn to pull a sleeping Stella out of her stall to get up to the ring.   As Stella and I walk up to the ring I see Lindsay holding a 6th place ribbon.  We just missed the final 4. As I walk back to the barn the adrenaline leaves my body.  After counting faults and cheering and watching with baited breath and waiting, I wonder if I had it in me, if we, if the team could go and do it all again.  If we did, would we be able to fix out mistakes without losing the challenging parts we did so well?

Here we are, the whole NorCal team. All the teams, meter 1.10, 1.20 and 1.30 placed in the top 6 teams. Go Girls! These are our sponsor jackets.  We got jackets, hunt coats, hats, tank tops, saddle pads, and ear covers for the horses.  Thanks, it was a good time had by all!

Here's where you can see some pictures from the first week. 

Why I Work For Myself

I have just gotten back from a meeting for the tutoring company I work for.  It all came about because I wanted to know what format we were going to used to tutor this summer, because I've heard several different things from several different people. The meeting started at 1pm with two center directors, two educational directors, the owner and myself.  

The meeting ended at 3pm.  What did we accomplish? Nothing.  I have been told the same stuff I knew.  I have a slightly better idea about what the end goal is, but not clue how to get there.  The owner wants SO much he can't put his finger on what needs to get done now.  None of the center directors know much or do much for the tutoring program we were meeting about.  The educational directors write lessons, but they don't ever teach them.  I am the only one who writes lessons and teaches them.  They also pointed out that I'm also the only person who teaches my lessons.  There for, they might be a bit too focused for my teaching style.  

I don't know.  It all felt like a waste of time.  I felt like I was the only one organized and with an idea of what I wanted from the program.  AHHHHH!!!!! doesn't everyone one know my way is best... god! 

Amy's Wedding

A women that I ride horses with got married this weekend.  We are all very excited for her.  She's an amazing women and deserves to be super happy.  One another note, the barn has chosen to buy Susan, the women who takes all the horse pictures, a new fancy camera.  She was testing it out at the wedding.  Here are a few of the pictures she took. 

Here's Dan & Amy

Yes, we are probably making snarky comments

Here we are at cocktail hour. Me, Apple Jacks, Ms. J and her boyfriend

Waiting for food, please note the look on Apple Jacks face.

Undercurrent

Here's another picture of my mom's horse.  At home we call him Uri.  For a show name we picked Undercurrent.  Our, my, tradition is to keep with the Dutch tradition.  They name their horses based on the year they are born.  First letter tells you what year they were born.  Tsunami was born in 2000, Undercurrent was born in 2001.   I'll make sure I don't buy a horse born in 2004... that would have to start with X.  That would be harder then U was.  

I guess Normal is relative

Last night there was a 3.9 earthquake in Vallejo.  Nothing major happened.  Things shook, people freaked out, and some stuff fell off shelves.  Of course it was on the news ENDLESSLY 'cause really, how often do they have "something" to really talk about. 

Well, Vallejo is about 30 miles from where I live, so I thought nothing of it.  Whatever, it's California, earthquakes happen.  I was getting read for bed and looked into the corner of my closet and there was this.  (Now, i still haven't found the cored to my camera so this is taken with my phone.  To see better you might want to squint.) This is a crack in my well.  This is a new wall, kind of.  It's sheetrock over the original adobe brick.  My guess, the brick moved and the sheetrock didn't... leading to a nice crack in the plaster and paint of my wall.  

Do I get to count this as earthquake damage?

You know My house is NORMAL again when...

you stand at the edge of the lawn to see momma and two spotted baby deer looking up at you with wide eyes and big ears.  Ah, suburban nature!

My Birthday

Okay, so yes, my birthday was over three months ago, but Apple Jacks had some technical difficulties.  So three months later my gift arrives. Here's the picture from Etsy.  They are much smaller then they look here, but due to the fact i can't find the cable for my camera I can't show you what they look like in my ears. They are fun and funky and I love them dearly. 

Many things

Many things have happened and I haven't really been keeping up.  So Ms. E was here and we did stuff.  Like wedding dress shopping. Yet, despite what felt like 57 hrs of dress shopping, no dress was found, but she did find a potential wedding band to go with her ring.

We also went to a baseball game.  I know the Giants were playing, 'cause we were at their stadium but who they were playing... well I think they had red on their uniform... The giants did win, which is a rare thing this year.  We had a good time, drank beer, enjoyed the sun, and eat churros. 

This is the "awesome" picture Apple Jacks took, (he was all proud of himself talking about how he got an A in photo class in high school, that was like 500 years ago).

Ms. E is Coming!

I'm excited and nervous, as to be expected.  She' getting married, we hope, later this year and needs to find a dress.  Since she lives in Iowa, at the moment, she hasn't been exposed to much culture or well... anything other then corn really.  So I made her come out here.  We'll see how it goes.  Her budget is tighter then a Henry the VIII style corset. Thats going to be her, our biggest challenge.  I just want to have a good time and be silly trying on dresses.  We'll see.  

Worst part is, she's here the same time my driveway isn't.  Now, i have a driveway that's about 100 yrd long.  (might be slightly off).  The lay the gravel on Wed. and Thur. Pave on Friday and we can't touch it Sat.  Ms. E gets here Wed night, and leaves Sunday am.  Maybe she'll get to take the first steps up the new asphalt. That would be good.  She was the first college friend to see my house pre-remodel.  Ms. T came during remodel and now Ms. E will see it post remodel but not 100% done.  Will it ever be 100% done... I'm not so sure at this point.  Anyway, the "guest/roommate office" room is ready.  The bed is made and there are even hangers in the closet.  I tried to make the comforter smell like lavender, we'll see.  I get into the hostess thing.

Abbie, Ian, Violet Totem Pole