PAX

So my first PAX is over, and it was quite the experience.  We stayed in my parents loft in Pioneer Square, and it took us about 15-20 minutes to walk to the convention every day, but it wasn't too bad.  We met lots of cool people, saw some nice costumes, and Dave played some good games (I was generally too freaked out by all the people to sit down and play something in the middle of it all).  My two favorite things from the whole convention?  The Omegaclaw and Wil Wheaton.  First off, the Omegaclaw could not have been any cooler.  Secondly, Wil Wheaton makes people happy, and that's awesome.  And he made Dave extremely happy, and that's even more awesome!  I'll post pictures when they get developed.

San Francisco and the Grand Canyon

I finally got one of my rolls of film developed from the road trip! This one had pictures of the grand canyon and San Francisco on it, shot on slide film on my LCA.  The Elephant Seals we saw at a lookout point on the coastal highway.

The Golden Gate Bridge

The Grand Canyon

Elephant Seals in California!

Summertime

It's been a weird summer here in the Northwest.  The sun didn't really come out until last week, when it was in the 90s all of a sudden.  And although the heat is rather unpleasant, it means daily pool parties, and I do love the pool.  What's better than getting good exercise while having fun, cooling off, and hanging out with family?

New Blog

So I've been thinking about yarn again lately, and other crafts, and making more things, and potentially selling them.  So I made a new blog.  http://twistedweb.wordpress.com!  Sorry Blogger, the namespace I wanted was taken :(  I'll still be updating this with all the normal meanderings and stuff, but now I have a blog solely dedicated to my crafty life.

On a separate note, I'm sitting at Starbucks working on my laptop, and Dave is working, and he's pretty cute back there :)

Finally, an update!

So yes, I know it's been FOREVER since I updated this thing, but what can I say?  I've been busy :)  Dave and I got home and it's been go go go ever since.  Moving his stuff in went pretty smoothly thanks to the help of all of our wonderful friends and family, and since then we've just been settling into living together, which so far has been amazing.  Different, for sure, and not always easy, but worth every harsh word and compromise.  We push each other to live up to our potential, and we're both better people for it.  But enough sappy stuff, who wants to hear that anyway?  How about some pretty pictures?

We went camping a couple weeks ago at Salt Creek by Port Angeles, here is Tongue Point at sunset:

Gettysburg:

Road Trip Days 14-17

After getting very confused about the time change, we left Las Vegas, heading towards Los Angeles.  It wasn't an exciting drive, although I did see a Roadrunner!  It was cute, Dave was sleeping and missed it. We got a little lost trying to find my friends house, but he helped us get there and we hung out with a bunch of people in Santa Clarita, eating Chipotle (an old college favorite of mine) and watching Extract which was decent.

The next day we went to LAl; we ate at Cielito Lindo, the "best taquitos in the world!" according to my mom.  They were pretty good.  We went to a nice graphic novel store and then headed north.  We are getting a little tired and LA was too much.  We'll be back though.  We drove north and spent the night in Pismo Beach, where we got chowder in a sourdough bowl from the Splash Cafe, which was delicious.

We left Pismo beach and drove to Hearst Castle, which was really cool.  Then we drove up the windy coastal California 1, towards San Francisco.  We ate at the Monterey Bay Brewing Company, which was ok but not all that memorable.  We got to San Francisco late and just got a hotel.

San Francisco was great today.  We went to Fisherman's Wharf early so there weren't very many other people there yet and the air was still nice and cool.  We followed that up with a trip to Paxton Gate, a cool little store with wares that can only be described as "mad scientist-y".  We went to Flax, a big art supply store, and then Delessio Market for lunch, which was pretty good.  We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and heading north on the 101, which was long and beautiful.  The trees up here are beautiful.  We stopped at the Eel River Brewery and got some delicious beer (I had a stout that was very smooth and very flavorful, and Dave had an Acai Berry Wheat, which was also delicious) and the best chicken fingers I've ever had.  It was also St. Patrick's day today so our beer was green!  We finally stopped in Eureka and got a hotel for the night. Redwoods tomorrow!

Road Trip Day 13

Day 13 was Las Vegas.  We were going to stop at the Hoover Dam but it was a sunny Saturday and there were about a billion people there.  So we drove straight to Las Vegas where we hooked up with Aunti Lani and Uncle Brian for lunch and then a tour of the strip.  It was tiring, and when we got back to Treasure Island and our room we kind of zoned out and watched tv for a while.  But then we went back out and saw the water show thing at the Wynn and then ate sushi at the Palazzo which was really good.  It was a fun day.

Road Trip Day 12

We went to the grand canyon.  It was amazing, of course.  Spent most of the day up there, driving around and walking around.  It was very snowy though, and we both want to come back when it's nicer out and we're in better shape so we can hike the trails.  We ate dinner at a brewery in Flagstaff called the Beaver Street Brewery, where I had their bramble berry brew, which was a raspberry beer and tasted delicious!  The food was amazing too, I would highly recommend going there if you're in the area.  We had a warm pesto cream cheese appetizer and I had a pesto cheese pizza and dave had a sausage meal, and we were both very happy and full afterward :)

Road Trip Day 11

We went to Petroglyph National Monument in the morning, which was really nice.  We hiked a few short trails and saw lots of petroglyphs, it was cold and window but sunny and it was nice getting some fresh air and hiking in.  We ate lunch at the Chama River Brewing Company which had a good scottish ale and tasty sweet potato fries. We hit the road headed towards Flagstaff, but stopped at about 4pm at Petrified Forest National Park, which was beautiful, though we didn't have much time there.  The painted desert was amazing.  We hiked a short trail around the edge looking out over it, it was so beautiful!  We drove through the park and saw old pueblo ruins, cone-shaped rock formations and petrified wood littering the desert floor.  We were rushed a bit though, due to the park closing at 6.  We pulled into Flagstaff at 7:45 and got a hotel and ordered pizza and watched the Incredibles, which Dave had never seen but he really liked it :)  It was a good day yesterday, we saw a lot of cool things and got some nice hiking in.  On to the grand canyon!

Road Trip Days 9-10

Yesterday we drove for probably about 7 hours, through desolate parts of Texas and New Mexico, to make it to Santa Fe.  When I say desolate, I mean there was nothing for that 7 hours of driving.  Nothing.  Except Amarillo, where we stopped to eat at the Coyote Bluff Cafe, a little hamburger joint where I got a phenomenal Hickory Burger with bacon, and Dave got "the Burger from Hell" which just about killed him with spiciness.  He loved it though.

Santa Fe was beautiful.  It's a small little town at a very high elevation, and the views of the surrounding mountains are just incredible.  The plant life is beautiful too, with trees and cactus spread out sparsely.  It was a bit chilly though, and in the morning we woke up to 3 inches of snow, much to our surprise.  We walked around the plaza area before eating lunch and heading to Albuquerque.  I had a roast beef quesadilla which was quite good. 

Albuquerque is only about an hour southwest of Santa Fe, so we were there in no time.  We got a hotel and relaxed, visiting a yarn shop recommended to us by an artist in Santa Fe, and a comic book store that was pretty cool, before heading off to a nice dinner with my old friend Robin and her boyfriend.  I haven't seen her in probably at least 5 years, and it was great catching up.  We ate at El Pinto, and I had huevos rancheros which was delicious.  I'm glad we could hook up, it was great.  Now we're back in the room, relaxing before another fun-filled day of driving tomorrow.

Road Trip Days 7-8

We left Benton after eating a nice free hot breakfast and got on the road to Dallas.  We didn't really do anything on the way.  The day turned into a horrible rainy grey horrible mess.  We hooked up with a friend from WoW in Arlington, that was fun.  Always fun to just hang out with friends over a couple beers.

Today we got started really late, left the hotel at about 11!  We went to the aquarium which was fun, a bit expensive though I thought.  It had tons of birds and some monkeys, and a few fish.  I thought it was kind of weird, but I'm glad we went, it was fun.  And they had a really cool shark tank thing that you walk through.  Then we went to this bead store my mom told me about, and the biggest half price books ever.  I love that store :)  We ate at Whataburger, per Catrophy's recommendation (thanks cat!) and it was delicious.  We headed out at about 4:30 planning on making it to Amarillo tonight, but there was an accident and it took us 2 hours to get out of dallas, so we ended up only making it here tonight. 

Road Trip Days 5-6

Yesterday was a fun day.  We left Louisville in the morning after finding a weird little bakery where we had some delicious breakfast.  I had poacked eggs and proscuttio and dave had some sort of breakfast sandwich.  Really good food, not so good coffee.  We headed to the Mammoth Cave National Park, about an hour and a half away and spent all day there.  We went on two tours of the caves, one 2 hour one going through the big dry caverns and passageways, with all the history and stuff of the war of 1812 and such, and then one hour and 15 minute one through a wet part of the caves with cool formations and weird bugs and such.  It was really cool and worth the drive out to it.  After that we headed past Nashville and stopped in Dickson, TN for the night.

Today we spent most of the day driving.  We drove through Memphis and then to Little Rock, where we stopped at a brewery for a little sample, and then tried to find a hotel but there was a marathon and a concert or something so we couldn't get a hotel, so we drove more west and stopped in Benton, AR and got a room to relax in for the rest of the night.  It's a "takin'-it-easy" kind of day :)

Road Trip Days 2-4

Gettysburg was great.  We went to a fantastic little coffeeshop called Ragged Edge, where I had the best chai I've ever had and a delicious bagel.  We walked around the historic downtown area and then headed to the battlefield and spent all our tim in the visitor's center, which was huge.  They have a really nice movie about the battle and then the cyclorama was beautiful: a huge, 360 degree oil painting of the battle, from the 1800s.  It was amazing.  And then the museum took us about 2 hours and we rushed through part of it!  Really cool, I'm glad we stopped there.

We drove towards Indianapolis after that, heading down route 30 at first, where we found Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum and Candy Shop, which is exactly what the name implies lol.  I wish I could upload pictures but it's not letting me for some reason.  It also took us through some snowy mountain roads before we got to i-70.  It was pretty uneventful after that.  We stayed in St. Clairsville, Ohio for the night and headed to Indianapolis in the morning.  We stopped for lunch in Columbus but didn't have any time for anything else there.

We got to Uncle Troy's house at about 5:45pm and we all went to eat at their restaurant, which was pretty good but I ended up eating too much.  We talked that evening and talked over breakfast, and then we all parted ways again and Dave and I headed down south.  It was really good seeing all of them again.

It only took about 2 hours to get to Louisville, so we had time to go to the zoo when we got here, and then went to a couple breweries, which was fun.  We ate Kentucky Bison Burgers at the first place which were really good.  I'll update again when I can!  Sorry about the pictures, I tried!

Road Trip Day 1

We made it.  It was grueling, I'll say that, but we made it on the road.  I'd like to thank Dave's dad, Lynn, and their neighbor for the tremendous help they were in getting us ready to go.  We made it to Gettysburg today, like we had planned, but we got here a little late so we're just relaxing and refreshing so we can see the sights tomorrow before heading west. I'm so excited that we're on our way.  I promise I'll have pictures once we actually do something besides just pack and drive :)

Arriving in Albany... Again...

I took the red-eye out here this time.  Left Seattle at 10pm, got in Albany at 8am.  It was a nice flight though, smooth, everything was on time for the most part, and I managed to sleep most of the way.  Dave took me out to a diner for breakfast where I had some decent french toast, and we just sat and chatted for a while.  It's still sort of slowly sinking in that I'm not going to be leaving him again.  When I go home he'll be coming with me!  We've been having fun.  Lots of packing to do, but we've been taking it easy so far.  He's out getting bagels right now.  Nothing too exciting has happened yet.  We have about a week of packing to do and then we'll be off on our road trip.  My mom gave me a new flip video as an early birthday present so we might do a couple "interviews on the road," but we also might be having to much fun for that :)

Road Trip Preparation

Most of you probably already know that I'm going to be going on a road trip across the United States in about a week or so. I'm in fact heading to Albany tomorrow night, so the preparation for the trip is in full blast right now.

Trying to prepare my apartment for a month away, followed by another person moving in when I get back, is proving to be not quite as difficult as I feared. I'm fighting the urge to push off packing and cleaning in favor of road trip planning, though. I'm so excited to see the country, and to share it with the man I love. I hope the weather is nice for us, I plan on doing a lot of hiking. I'll try and post pictures and updates while I'm gone.

Wish me luck :)

Google Chrome

Testing a google chrome blog extension. This is the greatest browser ever by the way. It has so many great features, my favorite is probably the way you can move tabs between windows, and drag them out to form new windows. So cool! Well let's see if this posts correctly...

New York Picture Time

So Albany was fun. I definitely missed the green though. It's rather colorless over there in the winter. Not bad though, I just am used to seeing green all the time. It was fun getting to spend so much time with Dave though, and his family. Here's a picture from our walk through a park:



Dave's riding a dinosaur!


Times Square! Awww, yeah we're cheesy tourists :)

Hiking with Tiffany

I went hiking today with my sister Tiffany up at Cougar Mountain Regional Wildlife Park. We started at the Red Town trailhead and hiked up to the Coal Creek Falls, about 2.5 miles round trip. It was really fun! It's been so unseasonably warm that the plants think it's springtime:



The falls were really pretty, totally worth the hike up to them!


There was a cute squirrel at the end of the trail saying goodbye!

NYC and More

Albany's been great. It's been relaxing and fun and everything I hoped it would be. We went out to dinner in Schenectady the other day with Dave's dad and "step-mom" at a place called Aperitivo I think, which was really tasty. I had calamari followed by gnocchi and sausage. Tasty. Dave had prosciutto wrapped salmon if I remember correctly, which he loved. It was a very fun evening. Wednesday night we went to the Wishing Well in Saratoga which is where his dad works, and he used to work there too. It was such a great place. I can't wait to take my parents back there. It was just a very cozy nice feel. And they had great food but huge portions. I had almond crusted trout which was delicious. That was Dave's birthday. Earlier that day I showed him how to carve stamps which he instantly fell in love with. I'll post pictures later.

Yesterday we got up early and headed down to NYC. I wasn't feeling very good though which made the trip a little less pleasant than I was hoping, but it was still fun. Takes about an hour and a half to drive to Poughkeepsie, where you board a train thing for an hour and a half to grand central station. When we got there we just sort of wandered around all day. We went to central park which was pretty and all frozen and stuff, and had a snack at this weird place called Primeburger. We went to Rockefeller Center and ended the day in Times Square which was really fun at night with all the lights. We rode on the indoor ferris wheel in the Toys R Us store which was really fun, Dave was really excited about it :) And of course we had to go to the Hershey's store. We wanted to go see a show but we were worried about not being able to catch the train home again that late. We made it home finally at about 10:30 or 11, and we were both extremely exhausted. It was fun though, I'm glad we did that cause it was a little outside of both our comfort zones, going to a big city without a plan or anything. But it was really fun.

Writing in NY

Wind danced through the moonlit forest, carrying with it the songs of the dying spirits. It whistled and howled in anguish, reaching for the moon, the lifeforce. The spirits could feel the pull, the lunar yearning to take them away from a doomed existence. And they yearned for its soft embrace. The Earth would never let them go, though. It held them in its iron grip of gravity.

Arriving in Albany

Yesterday I made the arduous journey to visit my beloved in Albany, NY. The last time I did that my flight was screwed up and I had to spend the night in D.C., but yesterday everything went smoothly. I even had an open seat next to me on the long part of the flight (From Seattle to Newark) which made it that much easier to sleep.

My plane actually landed early and I got to see Dave about 20 minutes sooner than expected, which after almost two and a half months was a nice little treat. He was all bundled up because it is snowy here. I was hungry so he took me out for "real new york pizza" which he has been talking about since we started dating. The place he wanted to take me to was closed but we found some pizza anyway, and I have to admit it was pretty good. I had a white garlic slice, and the crust was very tasty, flat but not like cracker thin. Anyway... it's fun to see all the snow. I'll try and get pictures later.