Precious Moments

Honeymoon!

2011-10-21T14:27:00.000-07:00

For our honeymoon, we headed south to the San Lois Obispo area for a full five days. Mostly, we stayed at the Sycamore Springs Resort. There we had our own hot springs fed tub on our private balcony (not pictured). We went to Pismo Beach, where I fell asleep in the sun and got burned terribly. We also spent one night in the delightfully tacky Madonna Inn just outside SLO. We were able to snag the Pioneer America themed room. Everywhere we went I told people that we were on our honeymoon thinking that people would lavish free stuff on us. Sadly, we received no free stuff. But all in all, we had an amazing, relaxing time!
Here's some random picks.

Emily's doing her best not to get us lost on our seaside hike at the Montana de Oro State Park.

Throughout the honeymoon, we essentially subsisted on booze and avocados. When in Rome....!!

Emily enjoying a steak dinner in our booth at the Madonna Inn. As far as I could tell, the theme for the restaurant was "pink".

A honeymooner's paradise!! No dogs allowed at the thursday night SLO farmers' market.

More Wedding Pics

2011-10-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

Here's just a couple more wedding pics.

This is the full wedding party.

Don't be mistaken. That's not the groom with Emily, but some dirty hippy musician!

Bachelor Party!

2011-09-08T17:43:00.000-07:00

Last July, a group of super pals threw me bachelor party near Granby, Colorado, high in the Rocky Mountains. The choice of location was a little random. But it is a beautiful place and conveniently located about half way between Pike County and California. The guys went all out, and I had a fabulous time. It was just one weekend but we packed in a lot of activities, which, in retrospect, were largely wholesome in nature.

Here's the sweet cabin we stayed in right on Lake Granby. The cabin was about 8000 ft. above sea level, but only 5-10 ft. above Lake Granby level!

Lake Granby from the deck

We hiked the Rocky Mountain National Park. We pretty much covered the whole thing! Most of us took it easy and stayed on the trail.

Later, we bathed in the rejuvenating waters of the natural hot springs at Hot Sulphur Springs, CO. Check out Eric and I displaying the redonkulous beauty of our upper torsos!

After that, we hammered some fish!

Adam with fish!

We also did some pontoon boating on the lake (not pictured) and mingled with locals at the tavern where Chris performed an impromptu sketching to commemorate the event.

popcorn salt on bar table

Thanks for the awesome time guys!

Wedding

2011-09-08T17:18:00.001-07:00

I do look back fondly on that day we went to apply for our wedding license. It was quite a magical day.
We also had a wedding and some guy took a bunch of pictures. I haven't really gone through them yet, but here are a couple from the beginning of the DVD we burned.
We had a great time, thanks to all the friends and family that came out to support us!

Back to Blogging!!!

2011-09-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

We got married about a year ago. Actually, exactly a year ago sunday, so we decided to take a honeymoon hiatus from blogging. Now we're back!
Here's a couple pre-wedding photos of Ms. Emily getting our marriage license at the San Mateo county courthouse in beautiful Redwood City. We were pleasantly surprised to find that fictitious business names were also available there.

Mud Bugs!!!!!

2010-08-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago now Emily and I met up with some chums and feasted on crawfish, aka crawdads in pike county. If you're ever in San Francisco's Little Saigon portion of the Tenderloin neighborhood, I suggest popping in at "Red Crawfish" for some Cajun-Vietnamese fusion. I highly recommend the watermelon juice.

Here's Emily getting her eat on.

Big Basin Camping Trip

2010-07-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

I had also started a blog post about Big Basin! I'll go ahead and post it now even though Casey beat me to the punch:

To celebrate the visit of Erik and Joe to our fair land, we brought them to Big Basin State Park. Despite Joe's luggage being lost, we managed to put together a pleasant little camping trip. It was a beautiful weekend to be under the Redwoods, and we managed to grab a campsite far away from the cars, bathrooms, screaming children and piles of vomit. On the first day we explored the nearby area and visited some crappy waterfall, which you can't even see in the background. That's how crappy it is.

We found a big tree to investigate, while Eric sizes up the situation:
We successfully fit it the tree (almost. Sorry, Erik)
Erik discovered his love for touching water:
and his love of walking sticks! Here he is on day one, showing off his majestic walking stick before Casey's tragic whittling accident:
Here we are enjoying food and good company at our campsite. Note the remains of the glorious walking stick after Casey attempted to whittle it into a pointier walking stick. RIP.
On the second day we saw some real waterfalls, not like that crappy one from the first day:
Another beautiful waterfall!
Casey climbing the side of the waterfall and looking very glorious:

By the end of the trip we became much better at standing in trees:

Thanks for taking the pictures, Dipa, and thanks to Joe and Erik for visiting us!

Camping at Big Basin Redwoods State Park

2010-07-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago we gathered a large crew and headed down to Big Basin Redwoods State Park ( California's 1st state park) for some camping. We had a great time with good food and good company, etc.

I told Emily that we might see a waterfall or two on the hike. She didn't believe me!

Here's a good portion of our camping team taking a breather at a waterfall. Dr. P is trying to hike up it! What the ?.....

A photo from a distance of the highest waterfall in Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Berry Creek Falls.
For a little while, we thought Emily had caught beaver fever when she tried to dam up the creek with this redwood tree. She seemed fine later, though.

JB Visit!

2010-05-31T13:14:00.000-07:00

My old friend JB came out to the bay area for the American Chemical Society National Meeting. We had a great visit, and we learned a lot about science.

Here, JB is relaxing between sessions at a tree on Potrero Hill near Chris's apartment.

Emily and JB throwing back a few at the Pioneer Saloon in Woodside.

Cancer Cat-astrophe!

2010-04-26T15:01:00.000-07:00

Recently I found a scabby lump on Elsie's neck. Once the scab came off we realized that what I previously thought was a tiny wart had grown into a good-sized tumor. I brought her to the vet, who was able to immediately aspirate it and diagnose it as a mast cell tumor. The vet removed it during her lunch break and the pathology report was optimistic that it hadn't spread (but still a 25% chance of recurrence). Our little cancer survivor was back at home the same day and pretty unhappy about the whole ordeal:

Casey was very concerned about Princess Meowkins (no relation to Mr. Meowkins)
But after a few days there was no discernible effect on appetite for cat food (side note: Elsie has lost almost 2 lbs in the past year due to diligent dieting!)
or snuggling:
Hopefully this is the end of the story!

Pizza. Pizza Party.

2010-04-26T14:46:00.000-07:00

The flavor of eggs can vary greatly depending on the diet of the chickens. Casey and I have grown weary with these egg-flavored eggs. What if we could have pizza-flavored eggs? Awesome, right?

Actually we got a frozen pizza from Safeway that had obviously been thawed for days (weeks?) and refrozen so that when we cooked it, the meat was rancid (WTF Safeway!). So we passed it on to the chickens and they had a sleepover pizza party!

Even the new chickens got some pizza!:

Yosemite Trip with the Crablab

2010-04-22T13:26:00.001-07:00

While Californians are horrified to hear that people actually live in cold places (like Wisconsin), they simultaneously love, love, love to go up into the mountains and hang out in the snow. I guess it is really exotic for them. I got rid of all my winter stuff when I moved here, only to find that I now have to borrow jackets and gloves from Californians.

So...president's day weekend, Casey and I went up to Yosemite with a bunch of people from my lab and rented a house together. It was pretty fun, but since it was the most crowded day of the year for skiing, we went showshoeing instead. We went out a bunch of miles to some point where you can see the valley. Here is a famous rock, maybe El Capitan?

It was a long way down!
This I know, it's half dome! (taken from the parking lot at the ice skating rink, which was pretty lame compared to the lakes in WI)

Here's Casey, our intrepid leader, pointing the way to unexplored territory!

Here's me at Hech heche dam (where the bay area gets most of its water). Jokes about peeing in it abounded!

No pictures of Eric and Dipa in this post. I'm sure they will be relieved.

Thanksgiving Reminiscence w/ Drs. U and S

2010-04-18T18:04:00.000-07:00

The previous post brought back fond memories of Thanksgiving 2009 which we spent with E and D in beautiful Oakland. It was a totally awesome time. We prepared a super feast including lentils-cured pork products super dish, roasted capon, super fancy green bean casserole, cookie-cake-pie, coors lights, and probably some other awesome stuff that I can't remember. Here are a few photos.

A sampling of the spread. Some dishes are under aluminum foil or have yet to be prepared.

Brett Farve is salivating over that capon. It was that tasty!

Cookie-Cake-Pie

Oddly, I didn't photograph any of the attendees of this super party. But, I was able to find this old picture of our hosts at another holiday. Here's Dipa dressed as Jane Goodall and Eric as Don Draper from Mad Men.

Oysters!

2010-03-19T14:06:00.000-07:00

A month or so ago (if everyone hasn't already figured this out, every post is about something that happened at least a month ago) we headed up to Tomales Bay with Eric and Dipa to gorge ourselves on oysters. First we stopped at Point Reyes for some sundries. We got cheese, bread, wine, salami, fruit, and olives. Dipa tried a fresh olive straight off the tree. Apparently they were as gross as everyone always says. I didn't confirm this.

When we left the bay area it was rainy and cold. This really worked to our advantage, as Hog Island Oyster Company was totally empty on a Saturday when usually one would need a reservation. Plus, it was really nice weather up there. Here we are in front of the bay by our gorging table.
We shucked our own oysters (maybe 5 dozen total? I don't even know), and even tried grilling some. They were more poached in their own juice. I was surprised by how much I liked them prepared that way.
Then we headed to Point Reyes state park but the lighthouse was already closed for the day. So Casey chased some deer and we ran around on the bluffs.

It was really windy at the top.
Then we headed back to Oakland for some beer and pizza!

Kirk's Dikdik

2010-02-25T11:29:00.000-08:00

While it isn't well known, kirkburgers are traditionally made with the savory meat of the Kirk's dikdik, a small antelope found in eastern and southwestern Africa. Here's a photo of one I took in an exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences museum.

Kirkburgers

2010-02-24T14:25:00.001-08:00

Last month Casey and I took a break from work one weekend and headed to Kirk's Steakburgers for lunch. We've tried to go for dinner twice and have gotten turned away because they close at 8 and don't like to bend the rules even a little. It was pretty crowded even at 1:30 on a Saturday. We each had a delicious Kirkburger. They have an extensive condiment bar, but be careful as the Miracle Whip is not labeled and can easily be confused with mayo.

I don't know what else to say. Kirkburgers!

Rainy Season

2010-01-26T17:17:00.000-08:00

Lately it has been raining a lot here. They say we've been experiencing a "Pineapple Express", which means it rains a lot. The rain brings out interesting mushrooms and the banana slugs.

Christmas with Team Dykhuizen

2010-01-12T09:53:00.001-08:00

This year we headed out to the midwest for Christmas. First we went to St. Paul to see my family, then headed to Illinois to see Casey's family. We had a great time seeing family and eating lots of food! Here are my nieces, Greta and Miranda, opening Miranda's new YoGabbaGabba Keytar. Pretty cool.

2/3s of Boy Team taking a break from rocking out.
Marta and Erin and Mimi enjoying some new presents!
Thanks everyone for a great visit!

engagement trip

2010-01-12T09:45:00.001-08:00

Well, Casey and I finally decided to tie the knot, so we headed up to Mendocino to celebrate. I rented a little apartment on the beach where we could make dinner and hang out in the hot tub and then sit by the fire and play "Friends-Scene it!".

Here we are drinking a bottle of champagne, courtesy of Chris. It was a damn fine bottle of champagne, if I do say so myself (thanks again Chris!).

We took a stroll through a park by the beach and enjoyed a picnic lunch. Here's Casey exploring a hobo cave we found on the beach.
Nearby was a naturally occuring Hobo tunnel. Cool!
Who loves cats?
Casey loves cats!

Snack Time!

2010-01-12T09:09:00.000-08:00

Here we are having a swell time with some beers and fries.

Table and Chairs

2009-10-16T09:20:00.000-07:00

We finally got a proper table and chairs. No more eating off the coffee table. Emily and Elsie love it!

New chickens

2009-10-07T09:22:00.000-07:00

A lot has been going on that we haven't really posted about, but we either forgot, or didn't have the camera with us. Hopefully we will get posts up, although they will be all out of order chronologically. Oh well.

Anyway... this past weekend we drove to Half Moon Bay to check out the Fall 2009 chick collection down at the farm store. We were hoping to get some gold chickens, or generally anything different looking than the chicken we already have. We ended up with two golden sex-linked chicks and two Ameraucana chicks. I think the lighter ones are the Ameraucanas and the darker ones are the golden sex linked (a cross between a rhode island red rooster and a rhode island white hen, or white rock hen). I think the golden sex link is also called a Golden Comet. Chicken breeding is confusing. I am worried that one of these is male since they look so different in color (see below), but according to the internet, the males should be totally white, while the females are redder. Maybe the two chickens we have are both golden sex linked, but actually produced from different crosses. It's confusing. Here they are climbing onto their little nest:

Here's a shot of all four together. The two on the right are Ameraucanas. They will lay funny colored eggs one day.
Here's another group shot:

Here's a close-up chicken shot:
They like to run around and cheep like crazy and then they all fall over asleep as if they died on the spot. In this picture you can see one asleep with her (hopefully) face still in the food. Pretty cute.

They are only two weeks old so they are supposed to be under a heat lamp for another two weeks and then at room temperature for another month after that, until they are fully feathered. Hopefully we can still put them out in the barn before that point if it doesn't get too cold. At about 8 weeks old we start slowly introducing them to the Sullys. It's kind of a long process.

It's hard not to call them Sullys, but they are supposed to all have a different name than the original three chickens. We haven't come up with anything chicken appropriate just yet.

trip to Montreal

2009-08-16T16:12:00.000-07:00

Casey and I took a week off work last month and headed back to the heartland for a few days. I spent some time in Madison, which was great. I saw a lot of people, returned to the beautiful Wisconsin river, played with kittens and puppies and babies (well, just one, and he was actually sleeping), went to Noah's Ark (finally!), ate at the Weary Traveler and The Old Fashioned (in the same day!), and rocked the trivia (wearing my Gloria Vanderbuilt jeans right now! symbol=swan. We didn't actually win at trivia because of some grave underestimations in the worth of the Snapple company (apparently a lot more than $15 million). Turns out the ol' Reed College liberal arts education has a few cracks in it.) Unfortunately, I was having so much fun, I didn't return home with any pictures!

We were a little more diligent with pictures in Montreal, where we went to Annia's wedding.

It was great seeing all sorts of high school friends I hadn't seen in years. Casey and I also had the chance to explore Montreal some, and we had a great time. I recommend Montreal for vacationing, it's really easy to get around (there are even bikes as part of the public transportation) and there is plenty to do.

The first day we were there, it was raining, so we headed up to the world famous biodome. It was originally part of an Olympic building, and like many cities, Montreal has to figure out what to do with the crappy Olympic buildings dotting the landscape). Some of the olympic buildings are still actually used for athletics. Here's me in front of one of them:

The biodome had 5 ecosystems, some of them related to Canada and Montreal. Here is the St. Lawrence ecosystem. This beaver made a beeline right towards me and Casey.

Then flipped around and swam away.
This little guy was cute!

This bobcat just sat there and looked mad.
Here's Casey in his natural habitat.
We then went to the botanical gardens next door. They were huge and really nice. They even had a huge decorative produce garden that Casey liked. Here we are in the Chinese gardens.
Finishing the Borscht course at Annia's polish wedding.

We actually left the wedding before midnight to take the Metro home. The band was still there. It was shameful, but I was drunk and tired and we had to fly home early the next morning (which was miserable, as always).

All in all though, Montreal was a great time!

Yosemite Backpacking!

2009-07-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

For the 4th of July, we went backbacking near Lake Nelson in Yosemite National Park. We did some off trail hiking. It was a lot of work, but we had an awesome time. Thanks Molly and Jared!

Starting out.

Emily and stream. There were lots of streams (and mosquitos) but just one emily!

This is the path we decided to take over the mountain. It turned out to be a lot more difficult than it looks. The top was about 10,600 ft above sea level, according to Molly's altimeter.

The snowy pass was no problem for Emily.

Casey and the brown trout he caught.

Jared with all the fish. We wanted to catch more fish but this was about the limit that we could carry on the stringer.

Cock's Comb at dusk from camp at 9500 ft.

Casey cooking fish hobo style.

Visit from ma and pa

2009-07-14T21:27:00.000-07:00

Mom and I enjoying a day at the ball park for the Cardinals-Giants game.

Dad's favorite spot in California.

Casey and grapes!

Emily pushing away the paparrazzi in Napa.

Group photo at Mondavi.

My folks came to visit for a few days a few weeks ago, and we had some great times. The best was perhaps our visit to the old faithful geyser of california, which is one of only 3 old faithful geysers in the world. I have seen two of them now.

Eggs!

2009-05-22T16:15:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago we got our first egg! How exciting! Here is the tiny treat:

Casey and I cooked up a tiny fried egg for dinner. The yolks are so orange they are almost red.

After the first egg, there was a few days without eggs. Then we got a few more. Now we are steadily getting a couple eggs a day! These chickens are really starting to pay off. It's very exciting for us.

By the way, isn't it super cute when animals cover their eyes while sleeping?

recent activities

2009-05-22T16:04:00.000-07:00

We haven't had a lot going on. Mostly working. But the weather is getting nicer and we are making an attempt to get out at least every other weekend. A few weeks ago we went strawberry picking. It was the beginning of the season and it was incredibly muddy. The upside is that we were the only people there! We picked about 10 pounds of strawberries that were so ripe that they only lasted a few hours before turningto mush. So we (Casey) whipped up a big batch of freezer jam. We are set for the rest of the year, I think.

One unseasonably hot weekend we went to Santa Cruz for some R&R. Casey went surfing (we didn't get our act together early enough for me to take lessons). I read a whole book on the beach and got sunburned! Good times.

Chicken Tragedies

2009-05-22T15:35:00.000-07:00

All of what I am about to relate happened a long time ago, over a month ago now. It's just been too depressing to talk about on what I planned to be a fun, lighthearted blog.

This all started one morning when Casey came down and found an area dug out under the fenced-in area outside with a lot of black feathers around it. We thought our landlord was supposed to close the sliding door to their outside area at night, and I guess he thought we were going to do it. Anyway, Big Sully (the big, black hen) was not moving much, but was still alive. She had been attacked through the chicken wire and had at least one toe ripped off. I couldn't tell what other injuries she had, but her refusal to move much or respond made me very worried. It was a very hard time. Casey and I spent the next two weeks hand feeding her oatmeal and eggs with pain killers and antibiotics. Casey also sprayed her foot religiously with BlueKote antibiotic spray. After a week or so, she at least started getting up and moving around so we knew at least that she didn't have any serious injuries. Here is a picture of Casey's lab visiting the chickens while Big Sully is convalescing.

Then, about a week after this animal attack, we came home to find Red Sully missing. According to Bob, there was a commotion in the yard around 3 pm. When he got there, Red Sully was gone and the barn looked totally untampered with. Either Red Sully was able to fly out of the barn during the day, or Casey accidently left her out in the morning. It was very sad as Red Sully was everyone's favorite chicken. She was the prettiest and the nicest. She will be missed.

Several weeks after Big Sully's animal attack she is really doing very well. She still has a little bit of a limp, and favors her bad foot, but she is really getting along pretty well. What a good chicken!

Now we are very cautious of wild animals and Casey faithfully closes up the barn at night and keeps a close eye on the chickens during outside time. He is very diligent. What lucky chickens!

multi-purpose kitty

2009-03-25T10:58:00.000-07:00

Unlike Jack and Roxanne, who have three pets AND a baby, or Laurel and Demian with their 5 pets, Casey and I only have one pet (chickens don't count, although I have grown very attached to them). Therefore, Elsie is forced to fulfill many roles around the house.

Here is Elsie in a very popular role (with Casey more than Elsie) as a hat. Looking good, Casey!

Good save. It's a long fall for a kitty hat.

Casey also likes to get out his aggression with a round of kitty boxing. Here Casey is showing off his mean one-two punch:

That round went to Casey, although Elsie can be a formidable opponent.

Round 2:
Elsie is definitely doing some damage and gaining a lead on Casey.
until a DQ for biting:
Whew. All that boxing is tiring. Good thing Elsie makes a perfect pillow.

chicken update

2009-03-25T10:09:00.000-07:00

Well, the chickens just keep growing. Not much else is new with them. I actually took these pictures a few weeks ago to show how chicken-like they have started looking. It's hard to believe that they still aren't going to lay eggs for a couple months still. They were 4 weeks when we got them in January, which makes them about 13 weeks old now. They should lay eggs around 18-19 weeks. ugh. it's taking forever. Several weeks ago we started letting them outside during the day. They don't have the hugest outside enclosure, but they love it!
They also love being held! (This is a lie)

Here they are in the morning by their sliding door, waiting to be let out.
Here are a couple current pictures. In just a couple of weeks they have really gotten a lot bigger (maybe you can't really tell from the pictures)
They are supposed to be eating our produce scraps (but don't feed them eggshells or they will get a taste for them!), but so far the only thing they really like is this "miner's lettuce" that grows outside like a weed. I'm hoping they will start eating more of our garbage once they go off the chick feed and on to adult food. That chick food is probably like candy, and old potato peels don't seem that delicious in comparison. Why the weeds outside are so delicious escapes me, however.

I will post again as soon as they start laying eggs or generally start doing anything interesting, besides eating or pooping.

Monster Pomelo

2009-03-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

Casey and I have been getting a box of produce every week, which is really fun, but sometimes there just isn't enough fruit to satisfy Casey. So we went to the Milk Pail, which is this super-crazy (at least on a Saturday) "european style" market with cheese, produce, meat, etc. Casey found a really huge pomelo that he was very proud of.

We were all forced to pose with the huge pomelo:

Elsie hates pomelos:
When it came time to actually eating said pomelo, it turned out that most of the hugeness was in the skin:

Still, we filled up a large tupperware with delicious pomelo meat and ate it for several days. It tastes similar to grapefruit, but a little milder. you can read about pomelos on the internet: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomelo

Lake Tahoe

2009-03-06T19:17:00.001-08:00

Emily and I went to Tahoe last weekend and had an awesome time. Thanks Jared and Molly!

Pizza recipe

2009-02-27T18:54:00.000-08:00

Emily and I are now subscribed to a fruit and vegetable service, which delivers right to the lab. It's pretty sweet! Here's a pizza recipe I came up with to use some of our arugula (it's a vegetable).

1 safeway brand frozen pepperoni pizza

1 cup arugula chopped and dressed with ~1 tps olive oil

Bake pizza as directed. Mix with arugula. Enjoy!

Serves 2.

chicken update

2009-02-09T19:57:00.003-08:00

Well, it's been two weeks and chickens sure do grow up fast. During the past two weeks, Casey and Bob have been hard at work converting Bob's dilapidated goat shed into a chicken coop for the Sullys (so far, they are all named Sully), while the Sullys have been hard at work polishing off a ten pound bag of chick feed.

The plan is: during the evening the Sullys have access to the whole shed (except for a closet area where their food is kept), but are encourage to mostly hang out in the coop area.

In the morning, Casey and I will collect eggs and let them into their small, outdoor, fenced-in area via a sliding door.

The shed seems pretty secure, but I am still afraid of predators. The spotty Sullys seem to be smarter than the black Sullys, as we were able to teach them how to get up to their coop area relatively fast.

They all seem kind of dumb, though.

Here's a video Casey took!

Guess who got chickens?

2009-01-26T08:20:00.001-08:00

Me and Casey!

On Saturday, Casey and I drove to Half Moon Bay to the the Farm and Feed Store to pick up a few chicks. All they had left were some older chicks (about a month old), who are, admittedly, not that cute. We got two of the black sex-link (cross between a Rhode Island Red rooster and a Barred Rock hen) and two of the spotty ones, which are also a Barred Rock cross, I think.

Our landlord found this cage for them and is keeping them in his laundry room for the time being. Now we have to get serious about building a coop next weekend. They are already eating and pooping up a storm. In a few weeks, thy might even outgrow this cage!

Bob's dog, Haas (or Hoss?) is extremely interested in the birds. I'm hoping he become protective of them and will eventually fight off the plethora of foxes, raccoons, coyotes, and mountain lions that will inevitably try to eat them.

Animal Pictures

2009-01-16T08:31:00.000-08:00

It seems as though Casey and I end up taking mainly pictures of animals, instead of the people we know and care about. Anyway, we went to the city recently to catch up with a friend of mine from high school and came across this magnificent sight. Aficionados of CuteOverload.com will recognize this pair and we saw them in real life! Luckily Casey was smart enough to snap this picture:

Then last weekend we went to Half Moon Bay to look at a farm and feed store. Casey wants to get chickens and we wanted to check out their chicks and coop supplies. They had some adorable baby bunnies that Casey would not let me take home. They were really cute.
Couldn't you just imagine how cute it would be if I could train the bunny to sit on Elsie? Maybe something like this (without the cage bars on the bunny):
That would definitely get Elsie's fat ass on cuteoverload.

Patrick McGoohan

2009-01-15T08:59:00.000-08:00

David and Marta'a blog post about Ricardo Montalban reminded me of some recent sad news about someone very dear to us. Patrick Magoohan, or "Number 6" has passed away at the age of 80. This may be for the best, depending on how this AMC remake of The Prisoner (starring the guy who played Jesus) turns out. It is set to premier in November.
http://www.sixofone.org.uk/Prisoner-Remake.htm

precious holiday moments

2009-01-05T08:59:00.000-08:00

We had a whirlwind of a Christmas this year. We flew to St. Louis, drove to Illinois to see Casey's family, took the train to Minnesota to see Casey's brother, then drove to St. Paul to see my family. Here's a map depiction of the trip with pink for plane, green for automobile and blue for train. It was a lot of traveling, but we had a good time and were lucky to not have any major delays.
Although we did bring our new, green camera with us, we have no pictures from Illinois besides a picture of me with the fried chicken special from the local restaurant in Casey's hometown.
The rest of the pictures we have from all our travels were taken by my 7 year old niece using my iPhone (she says that it is her favorite phone). Here is sampling of the best pictures (if you can believe it. I have about 20 pictures where I can't even tell what she was taking pictures of-the iphone camera is not that great). Here's the family gathered in the kitchen.
My mom by the tree.

Casey holding the cat.
Marta (my sister) and Miranda (my niece).
and lastly, the highest quality picture is of Greta herself!
This is shameful. We need to get better at picture taking.

Hope everyone had a good holiday season!

Snow Emergency

2008-12-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

I am still receiving the snow emergency alerts from George Dreckmann, the recycling coordinator of Madison. This year they don't seem to be personally written by George Dreckmann, which is disappointing. However, what is not disappointing is that Madison is finally cracking down on Snow Emergency jerks! I have been wanting this for so long. I always get up after a snow emergency, dig out my car in the freezing cold (after it has been plowed in, usually), and sometimes even park it in a pay lot, just so that I can abide by the snow emergency rules. Then other people, take the $20 ticket, take a week to dig their car out, and as a result, leave huge piles of snow that never get plowed and make the street unparkable for the rest of the winter. This year, things are changing. They are giving $60 tickets and towing people! I wish I could be there to see it.

Robert C. Byrd

2008-12-16T09:21:00.001-08:00

I was just updating my CV. It's getting a little long for some purposes so I set to thinking about what things to take off. One option was this scholarship I had throughout college called the Robert C. Byrd Scholarship. I never applied for it, NY State just gave it to me. Maybe it's super crappy and they give it to everyone? So I looked up some information.

Many of you already know that Robert C. Byrd is a Senator from West Virginia. Here's his picture:

He's the longest serving senator in US history and the oldest current member of congress. He's been in the Senate longer than Obama has been alive.

In 1942 he joined the Ku Klux Klan, and was elected Exalted Cyclops (which is ridiculous. Cyclops? Wizards? Is the KKK even trying to be taken seriously?) He swears that he quit a year later and was never interested in the Klan again (but there is some evidence that it took a couple years to wean himself off). He was elected to the House in 1952 and has not left Congress since. As a dixiecrat, he filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (he says he regrets that), and voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965. By 1968, he started changing his mind and voted for the Civil Rights Act and decided to finally stop being a segregationist and racist. Then he did a bunch of other stuff, was called "The King of Pork", and launched this scholarship program. It is actually the only merit-based scholarship funded through the US Department of Education. They give out about 27,000 a year. Now I feel honored to have this award. I also take to heart Senator Byrd's 1997 advice to young people interested in politics (as should you all): "Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don't get that albatross around your neck. Once you've made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena."

New Camera

2008-12-11T12:12:00.000-08:00

After many good years with my not top of the line digital camera, I decided to get a new not top of the line digital camera. The lens on the old one kept getting stuck, resulting in severely out of focus pictures.

So here is the new camera. It is much smaller, and it is "wasabi green" (it was, like, $30 cheaper than black).
Admittedly, it is ugly. But at least it won't easily get confused with anyone else's camera (except maybe Shrek fans, or something). But all in all, I am happy to have it.

Can you tell the difference between my new 10 megapixel camera and my old 2 megapixel camera? Both files are the same size.

Flushy

2008-12-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

Many of you may have heard that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is in trouble. I was born and raised in beautiful Illinois, but I don't know much about the guy. I had nothing to do with this scandal and haven't lived in the state for about 8 years now. I do know he wasn't liked much by his downstate constituents. He refused to live in the governor's mansion in Springfield, which really caused a stink. Also, I know he didn't think much of Pike County (read God's country).

Emily and I were at a tavern in gorgeous Pike County once and overheard some old timers talking about the governor. Apparently, he had recently purchased the grand champion steer at the state fair and didn't know what to do with it. When asked about it he said that he might release it in Pike County let everyone there hunt it down or something like that.

I was curious about my memory of this story so I found the actual quote, via the capitol fax blog.

After reading the quote, I don't know if what he said was actually derogatory towards Pike County seeing that it is a popular hunting destination. But he certainly did not mention Pike County with the reverence it deserves. For example, Pike County is typically predicated with the adjective "beautiful".

Anyway, the quote does make him sound like a total crazy person or at least a drunk person. I wonder what he finally did with the steer.

Toby Keith

2008-12-07T15:23:00.000-08:00

A week ago or so, Casey and I were watching A Colbert Christmas and Toby Keith was one of the guest stars. He sang this song about A War on Christmas, and it's actually a pretty catchy song, and a fairly funny video. But I know almost nothing about Toby Keith, except that he got in a big fight with one of the Dixie Chicks and he loves Ford trucks. So was this song a joke, or not? Toby Keith doesn't look like he's joking. But he really portrayed almost no emotion whatsoever,so it was really hard to make any assumptions about his intentions. So this instigated a period of intense interest in Toby Keith.He's from Oklahoma, and very proud of it. He really does seem to be a genuine good ol' boy. He worked at an oil rig and played football in Oklahoma for a long time before his music career took off. He is intensely patriotic and very into supporting the troops (which I guess was the cause of the fight with the Dixie chicks) but is actually a democrat. The weirdest thing about Toby Keith is his unnatural Ford truck fascination. It is integrated into everything he does.

So, as it follows, Casey and I watched the movie he wrote and starred in, "Beer for My Horses". We actually enjoyed it, even though there are several parts that really don't make sense. He basically just tried to jam in as many parts for old country singers as possible, which led to scenes of him talking a plumber for no reason, or running into a circus troupe, etc.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

A Colbert Christmas: Toby Keith Sings

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

So, conclusion is, I can really see why Toby Keith is popular. He just seems like a really genuinely nice guy, and he does seem to have a pretty good sense of humor. He is very unpretentious, without making a big show of being unpretentious. He doesn't seem to really take himself seriously and doesn't seem to really think that his work is necessarily all that important, which I like in an entertainer. So, I learned a lot this week about someone new, although I did not buy any Toby Keith albums, in case you were wondering.

No more video chat

2008-11-24T13:38:00.001-08:00

During the past year or so while Casey and I were living apart, we would spend at least 30 minutes a day talking to each other on iChat. Right before I finally moved out Casey took a few pictures for us to remember the experience, since, hopefully, it won't happen again. I just figured I would pass the good times on to all of you. A little slice-of-life, if you will. Videochatting actually really helps a lot to make a long distance relationship a little easier.

Pescadero, Part II

2008-11-21T14:28:00.001-08:00

After eating a seafood lunch and browsing one of the two stores in Pescadero, we decided to stop by a local dairy that produces goat cheese. I love goats. I think they are very cute and their cheese is delicious. Here is a picture of me in front of the goats (and two llamas, I guess). They all seemed to really want to stand on a pile of dirt on the left hand side of the yard. It was getting pretty crowded over there.

We took a different route home and stopped at the beach.

The tide was out and we had a good time looking at all the plants and animals in the tide pools. Here is Casey looking quite dapper at the beach.

Good times!

trip to Pescadero

2008-11-21T13:58:00.000-08:00

After I got back into town, Casey took a day off of work and we took a trip down to Pescadero. It is a very small town on the other side of the Santa Crus mountains from where we live. On the way through the mountains, we stopped for a short hike at Memorial Park. It was a lovely day and the park was practically deserted, except for park rangers. Here's me next to a large tree. Very California. We are slowly accumulating a fairly large collection of pictures of us near large trees.

Here is a totally gross picture of a banana slug. There were a lot of them on the trails, and since it is fall, they look just like some of the yellow leaves that are falling.

Here is me thinking about slugs and barfing in my mouth.

I really don't like slugs. I guess I never have. I can remember going into the garden at night and coming back in with a slug on me and freaking out. They used to all crawl on top of each other to die in a huge pile when we set out cups of beer. But my true hatred came when I went to college in Oregon and there was a bad slug problem the first fall. They were all at least 6 inches long and I stepped on one on the way to the dining hall. It totally popped and I got slug juice on my shoe and it took weeks for it all to come off. These slugs were totally pavement colored, and shiny with slime. Ugh. I guess it really scarred me.

Casey and I were wondering, are slugs good eatin', like snails?

Also at the park was a much touted "swimming hole". Here is Casey next to it. Looks pretty weak to me.

I'm back

2008-11-17T17:11:00.000-08:00

I returned to California last week and Casey was at the San Jose airport to meet me and my 80 lbs of luggage. He brought me to a romantic little spot in Santa Clara called 99 Chicken. It is a Korean restaurant that specializes in, well, chicken. The restaurant was patronized mostly by Koreans and the waiter (Casey says he is the owner, but I'm not sure how he knows) spoke English quite quickly and confidently, although I couldn't really understand him. We told him that we wanted some beer and he told us that we wanted this:

1.5 L of OB (Oriental Brewery)! Here is Casey enjoying his first delicious glass. We also ordered the assortment platter of fried chicken, which included regular fried chicken, fried chicken with sauce (kind of a sweet and sour), spicy sauce fried chicken, and fried chicken with honey on it. This really was some of the best fried chicken I've ever had. All the varieties were delicious (well, "sauce" was kind of boring). Here's another picture Casey took of me with a huge plate of fried chicken in front of me to add to the collection:

From these pictures you can also see the interesting choice of wall decorations. They seem to be movie posters from Korea and pictures of people eating fried chicken.

We had a very good time and the food was delicious!

Hiatus

2008-09-25T10:27:00.001-07:00

Since Casey and I planned for this blog to be about our life together after I moved to California, and since I have had to move back to Madison for a few months, we have decided to put the blog on hold until I get back. It is a shame, and I am not very happy about my current situation, but hopefully it won't last too long and I can get back to California soon.

From these pictures of my current living situation, you might understand some of my malaise.

But, hopefully, when I get back to California, there will Precious Moments galore!

Slow Food Festival

2008-09-09T10:18:00.000-07:00

On labor day weekend, we headed out to the Fort Mason Pavilions in San Francisco for the Slow Food Nation Food Festival. Slow Food is an organization that works tirelessly to preserve access of fancy foods to rich people. We had a great time there and got to try some tasty foods and beverages. The best part was hobnobbing with San Francisco's elite. We even saw the mayor and his wife cutting in line for chocolate.

Here's the cheese plate.

Emily eating pizza in front of a snail bread sculpture.

Chihuly Time!

2008-09-04T11:31:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, Chris and Olivia were kind enough to bring us as their guests to the de Young museum to see the Chihuly exhibit. It was pretty awesome. Here are some highlights of the exhibit. Here are some big circular things called Persians:

Next is me and a random little girl in front of some basket like things that are different colors inside than outside. I think these were my favorite.
Chihuly also made a series he calls "chandeliers". Apparently the inspiration was his love of chandeliers. huh. Here's one we decided looks like bug butts.
Next is this huge platform with hundreds of different pieces. It was extremely impressive, although you get a bit of sensory overload.
Here's a close up of one of the pieces.
At the end was a screening of "Chihuly in the hot shop", which was extremely interesting. I think it has been broadcast on PBS if anyone caught it. In it, Chihuly brings back many of the people he has worked with in order to recreate some of his most famous pieces. It turns out that Chihuly has not actually blown any glass at all for over 20 years. He is really just an ideas man, and spent most of the time standing around in his oversized hawaiian shirt and crocs (i don't actually know if he was wearing crocs, but he really looked like the kind of guy who would wear crocs). He also drew some circles with about 20 pencils at once while his "gaffers" were rushing around directing like 30 underlings and blowing tremendous glass structures. Occasionally they would let him help and he would kind of poke the glass with a stick. He just looked really out of place in his own workshop, which led us to the conclusion that art of this scale probably runs a lot like a big lab. Chihuly probably never really even goes into the workshop much, but the sheer force of his name means that he gets the best glassblowers in the world. He kind of gives them some guidance and money, they do a bunch of work, and he puts his name on it.

Another entertaining aspect of this movie was that the subtitles were on and were transcribing both the dialog and the lyrics of the background songs. Reading the subtitles would go something like this:

"I met Dale back in 1974 while he was working on his basket series. Me and my boyfriend like to go to the park."

It was weird.

After the museum we had an awesome dinner at B Star in the Richmond, which was awesome. Thanks Chris and Olivia!

Harvest Season

2008-08-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

Its been a rough week or so, what with Phelps quest and the Bigfoot travesty. So understandably, blogging has been at a low. I sent the camera to Philadelphia with Casey so that he could take pictures during his ACS trip. All of the zero pictures Casey took should be posted soon. While Casey was gone, I spent some time in San Francisco with some college friends. We had a good time up there and hopefully I will get some pictures from them up on the blog.

In the meantime, we set out to the Stanford gardens to check on our big fall harvest. As many are aware, Casey has gardened every year of his life. This first summer in California was no different and it even seemed like a great opportunity to try some new crops. After all, California is nicknamed, "America's salad bowl". Similarly to UW, Stanford has community gardens with plots one can rent and garden. It isn't as nice as Eagle Heights and the plots are smaller and more expensive, but it is right near work, and one could potentially garden all year long. Casey just loves it. Here he is next to his plot, surveying his bumper dirt harvest.

Looks great! Here's where the gophers dug under the tomato cages and the somehow got full grown plants out. Maybe back through the hole they came in through, like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon?
This is the culmination of a long, noble battle Casey fought, and eventually lost (much to the amusement of his boss, who compared him to Bill Murray in "Caddyshack"). At one point Casey even tried feeding them Juicy Fruit because of advice he read on the internet. The people that run the gardens don't seem to be too concerned about their extreme vermin problem. I have never seen anything like this. We would have animals eat our produce in Wisconsin, but they never took the whole plant right out of the ground. Through an elaborate system of chicken wire, Casey did manage to protect one basil plant that we harvested on Saturday and ate on a pizza. yum.
I guess gardening is over for now. The whole thing is very disheartening.

obligatory cat pictures

2008-08-15T15:10:00.001-07:00

As indicated in the previous post, Elsie really didn't seem to care at all when we got home. After Casey went to work the next day,however, she had to be touching me at all times and spent most of the day sleeping on my legs.

While I promise that I am going to resist the temptation to just fill this blog with posts of Elsie pictures, I will have to post some, since that seems to be the only thing on my camera. Part of the problem is that I have a life long goal of getting Elsie on Cuteoverload.com. I really think that Elsie has what it takes and is way cuter than a lot of the cats on that site. Still, most pictures of her seem to look more fat than cute. The camera really does seem to add 10 pounds.
Okay, one last one for Casey. I assume he took this, since he thinks it is cute when she sleeps on her head. Also, Elsie is the only other one that lives with us, and she doesn't know how to use the self timer.

We have actually been in California for about 3 weeks and really have no pictures to post about. Casey is heading to Philly tomorrow to go to the ACS and see Russ and Rachel, and my friends Katie and Gordon are coming to town on Sunday. So hopefully, these events will make our life appear more exciting. I guess I should have posted about Phelps Quest, since that seems to be the only thing that anyone on television can talk about. I really feel like Michael Phelps is ruining the Olympics and that it totally isn't fair to call him the greatest athlete of all time. There is no other olympic sport in which a person is even eligible for like 50 gold medals. Why are there so many swimming events? Its ridiculous. I saw on the Today show, that he can basically live off of the money he is making from this olympics for the rest of his life. How is this possible? Who cares? Still, I have basically been enjoying watching the olympics, even though I now feel sorry for all the American gold medal winners who aren't Michael Phelps.

Home!

2008-08-13T14:46:00.001-07:00

After leaving Wyoming, we still had two days left in the car. It was sort of a blur. I remember that it sucked and it was hot and I was grumpy. I also got a horrible heat rash across my back. We pretty much drove straight for the last two days, stopping only for gas and food. Here we are at a KFC, where I enjoyed a KFC snack pack.

Casey really thought this picture was going to be hilarious. I'm not sure if it is or not. I guess it is sort of funny that I might have a huge plate of fried chicken for a snack. Anyway, the worst part of the drive was entering California over the Sierra Nevadas. The Corolla was really struggling with the trailer and downgrades were even more terrifying (until I turned off the overdrive and went down in third gear. duh.) I was really afraid that Casey and I would get stuck at Donner Pass and be forced to survive the winter on Wendy's. That would truly be a nightmare.
After the Sierra Nevadas, the rest of the trip was smooth sailing. Before we knew it we were home and enjoying a delicious bottle of California wine! Here we captured the warm reception we received from Elsie, who was eager to get right back to ignoring us.

Wyoming

2008-08-08T15:33:00.001-07:00

Wyoming really was pretty awesome. Here Casey took an informative picture about Wyoming Winds at a rest area, after a discussion with Marta about a windy rest area. We think this is what she was talking about even though it was, disappointingly, not windy at all that day.

We took a 30 min. detour off I-80 to a town called Saratoga, WY. Casey has been wanting to go to a hot springs since I have met him, and we have always been foiled. Actually, the truth of the matter is that he is always foiled because I veto the plan. We almost stopped in Colorado once, but it was snowing out and I didn't want to drive another 6 hours all wet. When we were in Mexica, we got on an unmarked dirt road to "Agua Caliente" but I vetoed that, too, because I didn't want to die in Mexico. So Casey found Saratoga on a hot springs website and made reservations for us at the hot springs resort in town. The resort was super cute, with about 30 rustic rooms surrounding the hot springs. They had a series of tubs of different heats, and I assume they all drained into this large swimming pool, which was a really comfortable temperature, like a warm bath. Here's Casey enjoying a Busch light:
Then they had some uncovered and some tent-covered smaller hot tubs. Some of these were almost unbearably hot, especially during the day. At evening after dinner, they all filled up fast, especially the covered ones. Most of the people at the resort seemed to be middle aged couples, we think from Colorado. Here's me enjoying the healthful benefits of one of the covered mineral hot springs:

The town also seemed pretty awesome and it seemed like it would really be a nice place to visit longer. There was a big river through town and they offered float trips, fishing, and all sorts of other outdoor adventures. There was also a public hot springs. When we got there, most people were actually in the public swimming pool, which was not free, even though there was a river next to the pool, and draining into the river, was the hot springs. So, if you are a traveling vagrant and don't have enough money for a chlorine pool, they also offered this option:
(The sign says "hobo pool", but the camera strap is in the way. argh)

As you can see, many wandering homeless people took a break from hopping freight trains to partake in the slightly murky water. It actually did seem like a really nice hot springs.

I would definitely recommend Saratoga to anyone traveling the mighty I-80.

I would also recommend listening to John Hodgeman's book, "The areas of my expertise" on audiobook. Underbakke turned me on to the audiobook version, and it made the whole trip (and visiting the hobo pool, in particular) much more entertaining.

Nebraska

2008-08-07T17:21:00.001-07:00

After making it through the glorious land of Underbakkes, we arrived in the great state of Russes and Rachels. The first (and only) item on the agenda was getting a Runza! Has anyone else (besides Russ and Rachel, of course) been to Nebraska? There are seriously like 200 Runza restaurants. They even had Runzas in towns of 300 people. So for dinner, we HAD to stop.

The Runza appears to be similar to many regional food items, in that there is smooshy dough with meat and spices and cabbage inside. They seem to have russian-german roots.
I guess Russ talked a bit about Runzas and even tried to make some? Anyway, during the Runza experience, Russ seemed to always be on Casey's mind.
Here we tried to share with you the inside of a Runza, not knowing that the inside of a Runza, much like vampires, cannot be photographed.

Getting Gas

2008-08-07T17:11:00.000-07:00

I assume that the trailer also compromised the gas milage, and it did seem like we stopped a lot more often for gas. Luckily, Casey was there to capture these precious moments on film.

I thought we were going to have to spend a lot of money on gas. I guess we did, but it was less than $400 for 2200 miles. So, that's better than 22 mpg. That's not bad.

Getting serious about blogging

2008-08-05T18:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, I have to start taking this blogging business seriously or casey-emily.blogspot.com will end up like caseyandemily.blogspot.com. They have one post from 2005 that says "hi yall". Thanks a lot, jerks. I hate Casey and Emily for taking the best Casey and Emily related blog name and wasting it!

Next on the agenda is the drive out west. The first thing you should know is that we drove all 2200 miles with a 2,000 + lb. trailer on the back of my 1996 Toyota Corolla. This was TERRIBLE, and we will never do that again.

It was impossible to go above about 60 mph with the trailer on the back. If we were going uphill the max speed was about 40. We weren't really counting on the trailer slowing us down that much and the trip took a whole extra day. In addition, having the trailer also made it difficult to stop anywhere that would require putting the car in reverse.

precious moments #2

2008-07-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

here's emily driving. she also drove most of the way so I could rest.

Precious Moments #1

2008-07-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

Welcome to our blog, which is full of precious moments! The plan was to begin with our trip out west starting in beautiful Madison, Wisconsin, and ending in gorgeous Woodside, California. Of course, we are already really behind on our blog. I am not promising greatness here.

First off we have a picture Casey took of me getting ready for my defense. I didn't give my committee all the Table of Contents, List of Figures, etc. because I figured that I would have corrections and have to totally redo it anyway. Well, Laura informed me at 8 pm the day before my defense that they all needed it to sign off on my thesis, so the morning was spent hustling on that.

After all that, the defense went fine. My mom came to town and Laura brought us to the terrace and then Casey, mom and I met Marissa and Michael for dinner. After that Marissa threw me an awesome party and my mom stayed up until after midnight partying! Now she really wants to get a Wii and Rock Band for the family. The rest of the weekend was spent hustling to get corrections done, get my thesis deposited, and getting my stuff packed into the stupid UHaul trailer. We have no pictures of any of that. It is going to take a little while to get used to the blogging lifestyle.