11/20/11
So, I guess I have a much greater respect for full-time bloggers. These people crank out posts every single day! Like without fail! And I can hardly write once a month anymore! I'm so pathetic... or too busy having fun with everything else to do in life aside from sitting in front of a computer screen... :)
Anyway, I realize that I haven't posted in awhile and really need to catch you all up on our lives so I can quit feeling bad about it. So, here's goes nothing... well, not quite nothing because we've been up to some stuff... :)
So, the weekend of 10/22-10/23, the most notable event was the Stanford-Washington football game. A bunch of our friends from church had a tailgate all afternoon, so we hung out for the afternoon with them and then went to the game afterward. The game was a blowout, which is always good when you're rooting for the team doing the blowing out. :)
Oh, and before that, I went for a run/hike with my friend John over in the East Bay. It was supposed to be a run, but about 50 feet in, I realized that while my brain may be getting quite a workout these days, but legs are getting anything but (infer any and all puns). So, we had a nice run-till-we-can't-breathe and then hike-till-we-could-breathe-again cycle. And that lasted about two cycles. And then we hiked the rest of the way up. :) But the weather was phenomenal. A crisp 45ish when we started and then the sun came out and heated the countryside up a bit. Just enough to break a nice sweat to fool me into thinking I was getting a really good workout. And the view from the top was great. I didn't have my camera on me (since I was running, remember?) so you'll just have to believe me. :)
Anyway, that was before the tailgate, which ended up being a good thing because I could eat the tailgate food without feeling guilty. Which probably more than negated the almost-workout I got on the trail. Quite a pity... But those were the most notable activities of that weekend.
10/29-10/30
My mom came and visited us this weekend! It was great! She came in on Friday morning and hung out with Bridget while she did her nannying and then met me on campus after I wrapped up. We had a nice campus tour, compliments of your truly. I still don't know most of the buildings, but can successfully navigate in a nice loop, so it feels like a genuine tour. :) We then grabbed dinner at an Italian place in downtown Palo Alto. I called ahead and put in a reservation for three. When we got there, it looked like they just added another chair to a 2-person table...and viola! - a 3-person table. Quite clever... So, it was a cozy dinner, but the food was great. The server even gave us half a loaf of sourdough bread to take home with us in the doggie bag. :) Major bonus. :)
On Saturday, we slept in for a bit. Well, I slept in and Bridget and my mom played games on their iPods. After that, we went hiking over by Half Moon Bay, which is west of Palo Alto. We hadn't been there before and it looked nice, so there we went. :) We took a trail that was a couple of miles, nothing too bad. And it was a nice mix of forest and prairie-with-a-view.
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| Banana Slug! |
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| View to the West |
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| Big Trees! |
After hiking, we went and walked around the tide pools at the beach. There is a relatively well-known area with a huge plateau of rocks that is filled with starfish and sea anemones and even saltwater trees! I didn't have my camera because I didn't want to drop it in the water, so that's just another reason to come and visit us yourselves!
After the tide pools, we grabbed dinner at a seafood place along the highway. Pulled up next to a pretty snazzy-looking Lamborghini. :)
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| Orange Lambo |
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| Amazing Sunset over the ocean |
On Sunday, we went to church and then headed into San Francisco. We had lunch at Fisherman's Warf (a must-do) and walked around Pier 39 (which is famous for its seals). And then we hiked around Lands End trail (mentioned previously) and then up to Twin Peaks, which is a cool lookout point from which you can see almost the whole city!
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| Photo Shoot on Pier 39 |
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| The Golden Gate almost shrouded by the clouds |
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| Twin Peaks |
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| Twin Peaks Panorama (click to see it better) |
Then off to the airport... :(
11/6-11/7
So, we went hiking this weekend with our friend Julie. We went hiking in a new part of the East Bay. A nice little hike around a lake and up into some hills. And aside from missing a turn onto the trail we wanted to take, the hike when flawlessly... :) (It wasn't a big deal, but still kinda funny) But the hike had some great views of the whole Bay Area. See pictures below. :)
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| Julie and Bridget made it! |
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| Panorama at the top |
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| The calm little lake |
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| Headed back down |
So, on the way back down, the trail took a strange turn and it was clear why, until we saw this tree that was literally hanging onto the edge of a cliff. Only it wasn't at the edge, it was
over the edge! It's roots were somehow keeping it anchored to the rest of the cliff-side. The trail used to curve over that way, but must have been diverted to keep people from falling off the edge or causing more erosion. It was pretty crazy...
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| Really?!?! |
On to the next weekend, 11/13-11/14. We honestly didn't do much this weekend. We both slept quite a bit. Stanford lost to Oregon in football. We went to a friend's house to watch the game, which was fun. However, another friend (who happens to be an Oklahoma fan) came to root
against Stanford so that Oklahoma would move up in the rankings. So, it was a tense game. Well, not really. Stanford was just out-played and we all knew it. On Sunday, Bridget wasn't feeling too well, so being a great husband I am, went to the drug store and got her some medicine and watched movies all afternoon. :) Not to toot my own horn too much though, because I probably would have watched movies with her anyway... :) And that pretty much wrapped up that weekend.
Wow, now this weekend. So, I ended up catching Bridget's cold/headache/sore throat
thing this week and was finally getting over it by Friday. So, we went hiking yesterday up behind Stanford's campus. There is a huge satellite dish to "look at whatever scientists look at". But there are a few miles of paved paths around there, so we grabbed some Chipotles, our picnic blanket, and our hiking packs and headed up. Only problem was there weren't any picnic tables or trash cans. So, we would have been like the only people picnicking (is that how you spell it?) in the whole place, or we could wait until we got back and go eat on campus. So, we waited. But, the scenery was gorgeous. We have been surrounded by fall colors for the last month or more and it seemed to be at its pinnacle. We could see splotches of colors all over the place. We could even see all the way up the peninsula to San Francisco. Totally cool. Here are some pics.
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| REALLY bright tree on campus |
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| View from the dish |
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| Bridget :) |
Then today, we went up to San Francisco with John and Julie. We hung out at Baker Beach and took some pictures of us with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. The weather cleared just as we arrived and it was fantastic! There was even a huge rainbow across the bridge. After that, we drove past the "Painted Ladies", which are a row of intricately decorated houses along Alamo Square. I guess the TV show "Full House" had these row of houses in its intro to suggest that's where the show happened. We just drove by, so I didn't get any pictures, but you can just type "Painted Ladies San Francisco" into Google. And then we headed to Twin Peaks again to show them the view before heading back south along the peninsula. It was quite the whirlwind tour of San Francisco, but alot of fun. :)
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| Panorama at the beach (which is pretty tough since the waves don't really "hold still") |
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| KABOOM! |
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| Double rainbow over the bridge! |
Well, that's about all I can type right now... hope you survived to the end! Hopefully I'll post again before Christmas. :)
Until then,
~ Jeremy
