Vancouver with Forrest and Ilona

Vancouver Building

Before Ilona's summer internship is over, she wanted to go to Canada. So last Saturday we did just that: see pictures of Vancouver!

Forrest had mentioned 3 weeks ago, when Ilona first talked about Canada, that we should make sure we had the car insurance paperwork Canada required. But we didn't do it right then, and so we all forgot about it until late Friday afternoon. Canada requires the original paperwork, not a fax of it, so there was nothing my insurance company could do at that point.

Luckily, one of Ilona's internship perks is $75 car rental reimbursement. Rather than cancel our trip, we rented a car that came with Canada-approved insurance. Disaster avoided! :)

We only spent 1 day there, so we didn't have time to do everything we were interested in. We did have a good time, though, doing various things:

• looked at the Holy Rosary Cathedral
• had lunch in Gastown (which reminds me of Seattle's Pioneer Square)
• ate some soft maple sugar candy (recipe and candy cooking terminology)
• went to the Vancouver Aquarium
• checked out Chapters (apparently Canada's B&N/Borders-equivalent; photo requires you to log in to Flickr and be my "friend")
• bought $7 worth of strange Canadian candy to try

Good Luck Comic by Alberto Montt

By Alberto Montt

I've been trolling Spanish-language sites recently, looking for input to improve my Spanish. I stumbled upon (heh, literally: I used StumbleUpon) this artist Alberto Montt who posts daily one-panel strips that sorta remind me of the Far Side.

The Spanish says, "Take this. I have the other at home. You'll see how good luck changes your live. I've found in the street: three rings, two pairs of gloves, and I've stopped biting my nails."

Unexpected Summer Vacation

Barley?

This post lies about its date. Hey, it's when I started writing this post, at least... :)

Driving to California

Since both Forrest and I are between jobs right now, we decided to take advantage of the freedom and have ourselves a summer vacation. We drove down to California to visit family and camp. We went through central Washington, which I've never been through before. There was a ton of grain; in fact, probably more than 1 ton. ;) We also got some pretty cool vistas of several Cascade stratovolcanos at once.

We took our time, camping one night at some state park whose name I don't remember, and then a second night at Howard's Gulch which had the most amazingly clean pit toilets I've ever used.

Camping in California

The third evening, we finally arrived at Calaveras Big Trees State Park, where my extended family camps in the Sierras*. Our first morning there, we woke up to discover that yellow jackets really love our orange backpacking tent! It was quite the exciting event, escaping from inside a tent swarmed by 10-20 yellow jackets! Not friendly little bumble bees, but angry carnivorous yellow jackets. :( We managed to get unscathed, thankfully.

The area has a lot of limestone caverns, so we took Forrest to see his first one! He commented that photos of cavern formations always look a little creepy, but when you're there in person they're anything but. So true! Caverns remind me a little of how cathedrals make me feel, actually.

Halfway to the Lookout

After camping, we drove along the eastern Sierra†, heading for Yosemite and eventually Santa Cruz. Forrest saw a road heading up a hill/small mountain; he wanted to check out the fire lookout tower at the top, so up we went. Up a rocky dirt road, in his lowered del Sol. I kept worrying that something important would be ripped out from under his car and we'd be stranded up this random mountain with no one around, but such badness did not happen, so it's all good.

We saw some hawks close-up driving up to the lookout. At the top of the mountain, we were actually above some of them. Pretty cool!

We had cell reception at the lookout, so Forrest called his dad to say hi and tell him where we were. Apparently Forrest's grandfather had worked in a fire lookout like this one summer when he was young.

Then we drove back down — again, without incident — and headed for a camping spot near Mammoth Lakes. We found a pretty awesome campsite, complete with all-morning shade and our own personal creek, in an otherwise dry and sunny Tuff Campground.

Gnarly Bristlecone Pine

Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest

While we were in the area, we checked out the ancient bristlecone pine forest in the White Mountains. These trees are short, stubby, and gnarly because at 10-11,000 feet, growing conditions aren't exactly ideal for big, fast growth. So these bristlecone pines grow very slowly and densely, and if one section of the tree dies, the rest of just keeps on growing around it, resulting in the gnarliness. They're amazingly long-lived — thousands of years old, in some cases. They're not as big as the giant sequoias of Calaveras or as tall as Santa Cruz's coast redwoods, but they have their own kind of ancient, twisted impressiveness.

And just in case you're wondering, everyone feels like a wuss hiking around at 11,000 feet!

Sunset Behind Bristlecone Pine Forest

After huffing around the quarter-mile trail near the visitor center, we drove out a 12-mile dirt road (in better condition than the lookout tower road) to see the rest of the forest. There were some awesome views of the eastern Sierra while taking an hour to go 12 miles, especially on the drive back through sunset. We even saw a horse, of all things.

The alpine environment up there is very pretty, in an awe-inspiring, stark kind of way.

Devil's Postpile

Sightseeing Before Santa Cruz

Another day, we checked out the Devil's Postpile. Forrest was disappointed at how Disneyland-esque it felt, since you have to ride on a shuttle filled with touristy types who look like they've never gone for a hike in their lives. The formation itself was pretty cool-looking, though. The basalt columns naturally form hexagons, which was weird to see.

Finally, we started heading to Santa Cruz to visit with Forrest's family. We drove through Yosemite, which I had only been to as a little kid and had no real memories of. Those are some impressive granite domes! Which I managed not to take any pictures of. Hrm. You'll have to ask Google for pictures of Yosemite. ;)

Deck Chairs Outside

In Santa Cruz with Forrest's Family

Forrest's family was doing a house-sit, so we stayed there rather than at the boat. The house was really nice! It had several outdoor areas that felt almost like rooms themselves, including the deck you see in the photo. We grilled some really tasty dinners there.

Forrest, his mom Sandy, and I went one evening to Fins Cafe to play Spite and cribbage (which I didn't-lose by one whole point!). This cafe makes its own chai mix and will blend spices to your liking. I still have trouble getting independent-coffee-shop mochas to be as sweet as I like, though... :(

I spent one evening plotted with Sandy about last year's NaNoWriMo story, which I'm still editing. In talking with her, I discovered that the end of that story is really just the beginning of larger troubles for my characters: I have a trilogy on my hands! Eep! But that's a good thing, right? At least now I know what I'm writing for NaNo this year.

Forrest and I had been planning on backpacking for our last week of "vacation" before returning to Seattle in time for my Amazon interview. But I developed this nasty rash on my chest, back, and neck that lasted a week. We figured a backpack rubbing against a rash would be Bad Times, so we canceled our trip. Really rather disappointing.

I was hoping the rash would resolve itself over time, but after a week I gave up and went to a drop-in clinic. The doctor took one look at it and declared that was hot tub rash if she'd ever seen it. She gave me a prescription for some cream that kinda reduced the itching — but more importantly, it cleared up the rash in the next two days! Too bad it wasn't in time to still go on a backpacking trip. :(

Inside Grace Cathedral

Forrest, Sandy, his brother Ari, and I went into San Francisco for the day. We had dim sum at the Four Seas like always, then visited Grace Cathedral like always. I kinda like their SF traditions. We also spent like 2 hours (well, it felt like 2 hours...) driving around looking for a magic shop that carried some special cards Forrest wanted. We finally found them, though, after he had searched for months to find them. And the card trick he does with them is pretty fun, so I guess it's all good. :)

Severely Menaced by a Pelican

We also went out sailing on their boat one day. Just around the coastline, but still, it was a beautiful day and I had a good time. Except for the part where we stopped at a dock and I was severely menaced by a pelican. Have they no fear?!

Point Arenas Lighthouse

Driving Back Home

Finally, we left Santa Cruz and started the long drive back home. We took Highway 1 along the coast, which is very slow going compared to I-5, but much prettier. We stopped to check out the Point Arenas Lighthouse and took lots of pictures; follow the photo link to see the rest of them, if you're interested in lighthouses.

We arrived home late Wednesday evening, just in time for my Thursday morning interview with Amazon. All's well that ends well!

* This has been something of an ongoing debate, me vs Forrest and his dad. They both insist that "the Sierras" would imply multiple ranges, whereas in my usage I'm only talking about multiple mountains within one range. It's the Sierra Nevada mountain range, with "Sierra Nevada" being just a name in English and thus capable of being referred to in the plural, like any other mountain range's name. I intend to write a longer post defending my position. ;)

† Apparently I say "the Sierras" but "the Eastern Sierra." What an odd mix.

I Quit! :D

I turned in my letter (rather, email) of resignation today. Man, do I feel so much happier! I've been pretty gloomy, moody, and irritable lately. I apologize for bringing anyone else down while I've wrestled with being unhappy at work. But next Thursday is my last day. Woohoo!

Okay, so it's also really freakin' scary, since I don't already have a job lined up and Forrest's still unemployed. Scary situation. But I've been increasingly unhappy at work for a year now. My mom and HR both commented that the headache-that-would-not-die could very well be stress-induced. The doctor said it wasn't impossible to be stress-related, though it's hard to prove that causal relationship in any given case. All I can say is that it finally cleared up over the weekend, after I started really believing I was going to quit work. And I do have some savings to pay bills for a while yet...

I feel positively giddy right now. I know it will wear off and the creeping fear of uncertainty will pop up, but right now I'm going with the happy.

Unintentionally funny: I logged in to Microsoft's internal Health & Wellness site to look up some benefit info. The top headline on the site was "Quit for Life Today!" Don't mind if I do! :)

Let's end this post with some links:

• Top 10 signs you're unhappy at work
• Find your quitting point
• Top 10 bad excuses for staying in a bad job

Week-Long Headache

Last Monday night, I developed a nasty headache. A sense of nausea came along with it — it felt like motion-sickness in my head, not like food-poisioning in my stomach. I went to bed, hoping to sleep it off.

But it didn’t go away Tuesday or Wednesday, even though I stayed home and rested. So Wednesday I went to one of those drop-in medical clinics. The doctor wasn't exactly sure what's going on. Her best guess was that it might be my first migraine. (Apparently only some migraine-suffers are sensitive to light and sound, which I didn’t know. Specific migraine symptoms are supposedly rather individual.)

But it might something else. Helpful, those doctors are. :( (As if humans are complex or something! Psh!) She said there's a stomach flu going around that does have headache and nausea as symptoms, but my stomach feels and sounds fine. (As I said above, the nausea feels located in my head, not my stomach.) She said it could be low thyroid. She said it could be related to my other weird neurological thing. They took some blood samples (botching up my elbow all bruisy while they were at it) to rule out non-migraine causes. Update, 4 PM: The blood work all came back normal. So "migraine" remains the most likely diagnosis.

The doctor prescribed some Vicodin for the pain, which I took on Thursday. Unfortunately, it makes the nausea worse. I'd rather have a headache than worse nausea, so I stopped taking them.

Now that I've had this headache and nausea for a week, I've noticed patterns. The headache is worse in the morning, right after waking up. The nausea seems motion-sensitive: I inevitably feel sick in a car, and just walking or pacing can bring it on, too. Update, 4 PM: Rapidly scrolling text also triggers it. Awesome! Sitting still makes the nausea go away and lets the headache recede to mostly-ignorable levels. If I sit still long enough, I feel pretty much normal. So I've found coping strategies. But it really should just go away, dammit! :(

Month and a Half of Doing Very Little

Lunch in the Backyard

What's been going on since I last posted a month and a half ago? Well, Forrest was away in California visiting his family, backpacking, and road-tripping it up. While he was gone, my days mostly consisted of work, bookstores, Battlestar Galactica, and more bookstores. I sure am exciting when left to my own devices! ;)

The weather was extremely nice while Forrest was gone, though. (He's brought the rain back with him, but I'll forgive him since I'm glad he's finally home. :)) But while the sunny not-too-hot weather lasted, I did try to enjoy it a little. For instance, I fixed myself lunch (that is, I heated up some frozen Trader Joe's food) and ate it in the backyard while reading a book. Very pleasant afternoon, that was.

Amy Finally Killed My Spider Plant

In less good news, my cat Amy finally killed my spider plant. A friend from work had given me a cutting of his spider plant a while back. I was proud of myself for not having killed it yet despite weeks on end of neglect, followed by guilt-ridden waterings. ;) Then I started noticing that its leaves had little punctures in them. Little cat-tooth-sized punctures. But I never caught either cat in the act.

Then one night, I was woken up around 3 AM by this great crashing, breaking sound. I jumped out of bed to see what the cats had broken this time. (They already have one ex-vase to their credit.) Amy was slinking out of the kitchen, and in the sink was the broken terra cotta pot that had held my spider plant.

The next morning, I transplanted it to the backyard. I haven't checked on it since then, so it's probably very dead by now. :(

Too Much Knotweed

I don't love all plants, though. For instance, knotweed must die. Japanese knotweed is a nasty, nasty invasive that grows on our neighbor's property and, along with their bamboo, sneaks under the fence and sprouts up all over our yard. It can grow 1 foot per week, and that's bushy too, not just straight up! It's Bad Times™.

So I spent some time hacking it all down. The photo is a pile from one afternoon's murderous knotweed rampage. Muahaha!

Strawberries on the Vine

Back to good plants. Like strawberries. Everybody likes strawberries! Last year, some critter was liking our strawberries, unfortunately. Just as the berries started to turn red, but before they were actually ripe enough for people to eat, something would munch holes in them and let the rest rot. So we didn't get to eat any of last year's crop.

We never did find out if the culprit was slugs or birds or what. In any case, they seem to be ignoring this year's strawberries. Yay! :) So we've enjoyed the handful of strawberries that the plants have produced so far. They're small but very flavorful.

Seattle Skyline from Blake Island

Finally, two weeks ago my team at work went out to Blake Island on a manager's 50' boat, the Henry Young, as a morale event. I have a whole set of photos from the trip.

Ozette Backpacking Overnighter

Sunset over the Strait

Now that the snow has melted and the skiing season is over, I'm looking forward to other outdoor activities. Like backpacking! Forrest and I took Jerry on his first backpacking trip: an easy, flat 6-mile roundtrip hike on the Olympic Peninsula.

The night before our backpacking trip, we camped overnight at Salt Creek Recreation Area. It was very windy on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Even though my sleeping bag claims to be rated down to 15°F and it must have been in the 30s, I was still shivering and waking up once an hour. :( Either my bag lies or I sleep really cold; either way, I need to upgrade my bag to something warmer.

Forrest and Jerry Hiking

We got a late start on Saturday, not getting to the trailhead until 2 PM. "Quick stops" at stores for last-minute forgotten items sure does add up to a lot of time! We only had a 3-mile hike out to Sand Point on the coast, though, so we weren't worried about the time.

It was quite odd backpacking on such a tame boardwalk trail. Forrest and I both felt that it was harder on the feet. At least the boardwalk wasn't wet; we had been warned that it gets extremely slippery when wet, which is all the time in a temperate rain forest. But look at how dense the bushes are: I'm grateful there was a trail hacked through it and permanently held open by this boardwalk, 'cause there's no way you could hike through there without a machete otherwise.

We set up camp in the trees just beyond the beach. They provided a good windbreak, but we still had an easy trail out to the beach. Or at least out to the driftwood.

While Forrest and Jerry put up the tents, I went down to the creek to filter some water for dinner. I had remembered the task being tiring and boring, and pumping the water through the water sure was taking forever! I finally wore out my weak little triceps and was about to give up when Jerry showed up. He took over and I went back to camp to update Forrest on our slow progress. Not very longer afterward, Jerry returned to report that he must be doing something wrong, because no water was getting through.

Forrest asked us if we had cleaned the filter. I hadn't, because on our previous trips a fresh filter had been good for several water bottles before it had needed cleaning. And Jerry hadn't, because he'd never used a water filter before. Forrest went back with us to the creek to show us how to do things properly. :) It turns out that the water was so tanninized from running through the forest leaves that it clogged up the filter twice per water bottle! No wonder Jerry and I had such trouble.

Leaf Voodoo Stabbed in the Eye

We had originally planned on hiking the full Ozette Triangle loop trail (9 miles total). But we didn't finish breaking camp on Sunday until almost 1 PM, the weather was windy and chilly, my feet were hurting (wimpy city-slicker feet!), and we were feeling generally lazy. So we decided to hike back out the way we came.

On the hike out, we started passing several "leaf vodoo" faces. We suspect the boy scout troop that camped next to us was responsible. :)

I'm glad we went on a little weekend backpacking trip. I had fun, and being in the outdoors is relaxing after a week in an office building. Hopefully we'll do more trips!

Cross-Country Ski Skills Checklist

I found a good "checklist" of skills for cross-country skiing at the Snoqualmie Nordic Center. I'll be checking off the various techniques as I learn them.

Basic Beginner

Flat Skills

• basic diagonal stride, with poles
• star turn
• double pole

Uphill Skills (gentle slope)

• diagonal stride
• side-step
• herringbone
• traverse and turn

Downhill Skills (gentle slope)

• side-step
• straight run
• gliding wedge
• braking wedge
• stop at bottom with braking wedge

Advanced Beginner

Flat Skills

• proficient diagonal stride, with some glide
• kick/double pole
• kick turn

Uphill Skills (gentle slope)

• traverse with kick turn

Downhill Skills (gentle slope)

• steered turns with braking wedge

Intermediate Skills

Flat Skills

• efficient diagonal stride, with good glide
• marathon skate
• turn in place

Uphill Skills (most terrain)

• half herringbone

Downhill Skills (most terrain)

• linked wedge christies
• linked stem christies (parallel finish)
• stop on hills in wedge (parallel finish)

Advanced Skills

Flat Skills

• efficient and flowing diagonal stride, with good glide

Downhill Skills (all terrain)

• linked turns in open parallel
• linked turns in modified telemark
• stop on hills in parallel

As you can see (as of Feb 26th), I've been focusing on gaining techniques to let me control my downhill speeds. I dislike the adrenaline I get from zooming down hills without the ability to slow down. So I already have one downhill skill in the "intermediate" category.

Cross-County Skiing Every Weekend

Since we first went cross-country skiing in January, we've gone every weekend (usually both days) since then. Excepting one weekend where Forrest and I did a Wilderss First Aid course instead, that is.

So you might say that I'm really rather enjoying cross-country skiing. :) You might also notice that I haven't, ahem, posted about my trips after that first one. My bad. I do have ski photos uploaded to Flickr, at least...

At some point, expect back-dated posts to regale you with tales from the Learning How To Ski department. :)

Budgeting with Shared Expenses

I use Yodlee MoneyCenter to track my personal finances. Its UI isn't all that attractive, but it generally works pretty well. It automatically retrieves transactions from all my accounts, so I don't have to bother with data-entry. This is a huge plus for me; otherwise, I probably wouldn't do it at all.

But things fall apart when you want to follow a budget but you have shared expenses with someone. Say I've budgeted $200 for eating out. Yodlee can generate an "expense report" for that category, no problem. Except, what if I've only spent $100 on restaurants but my boyfriend has spent $400, half of which is my share? Then I'm clearly over budget, but Yodlee knows nothing about Forrest's accounts. Similarly, what if I've spent $300 on restaurants, but half of that is Forrest's share, so I've "really" only spent $150? Again, Yodlee has no way of dealing with this in its expense report or budgeting features.

On the other side of things, BillMonk is very useful for tracking who owes whom for shared expenses, but it has no personal finance reporting mechanisms at all (by design). So this doesn't really solve my problem either.

Enter Buxfer. As a former BillMonk employee, I feel like I'm "cheating" on BillMonk by even considering Buxfer. On the other hand, BillMonk never wanted to be a personal finance tracker, just a debt-between-friends tracker, so maybe I should let the guilt go. In any case, Buxfer does automatic transaction downloading and correctly understands how shared expenses affect budgets.

So I may be abandoning Yodlee and BillMonk in favor of Buxfer. Buxfer even has an API, so I should be able to whip up some script to take BillMonk's exported XML data and import it into Buxfer. (BillMonk almost released its API...) My group of friends still uses BillMonk, though, so I may have to write another script to keep my Buxfer account in sync with BillMonk.

I'll let you know how it goes.