Last weekend Michelle and I went camping at Wheeler Gorge north of Ojai. We were worried that the Zaca fire would be a problem, but it turned out to be great. They had the road north of the campsite closed for fire trucks, so there was very little traffic. Also, lots of people had apparently been scared off. We had a whole loop of the site ( Read more... )

As part of my plan to do more hiking this summer, Mike, Michelle, and I went hiking on the San Ysidro trail. It goes all the way up to East Camino Cielo, but we only went up to a little waterfall that's beside the trail and a little way beyond, about 4.5 miles total. It was a beautiful day for hiking, since it was cooling off while there was ( Read more... )

This weekend was the massive gaming birthday party of ptevis.

( And there was much gaming )

I threw this together from some of the photos we took on our trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/rpollock/MadagascarSelection

Well, currently I am stuck in Madagascar. The national airline cancelled our flight from Tuléar to the capital yesterday with about three hours notice. Our international flight left in 14 hours. It takes a minimum of 18 hours to drive the 250 miles -- the roads are not exactly good, in fact, it took us over an hour to drive the 17 kilometers ( Read more... )

They have them in the back of the store, but they aren't selling them till tomorrow so they can have an "event" with people lining up outside the store.

That's the working theory, anyway. They won't know for sure unless they still have some fluid left from the synovial tap they did on Monday. I'm glad the doctor didn't think it was worth doing another synovial tap. Those things are not very fun. If he's right the new drug I'm taking will fix things up in a couple of days. Meanwhile, maybe I ( Read more... )

On the plus side, the flight over wasn't too bad, despite being in coach.

As part of a weekend of tasty food, we made salsa to have with our chili shrimp tacos:

.8 lbs tomatillos
1/4 cup onion
2 serrano chilies, seeded
2 T cider vinegar
1 t sugar
kosher salt
3 T cilantro
1 avocado
1 T lime juice

Chop everything and then put it in a food processor. It is nice and smooth and has lots of flavor.

Swiss Accidently Invade Liechtenstein