Matt Makes Me Crazy

 You know how there are some couples where one half of the couple has, maybe, a strong personality or a very conspicuous habit, and you can see HUGE pull that has on the other person? The sort of, "Wow, if I had to live with someone like that, I'd go nuts!" situation? Well, I think, in a way, I might be the other half of that couple- but probably not the way you are thinking.

It's not that Matt has a strong personality, but some how, living with him has desensitized me to some things I NEVER thought I'd be desensitized to. Here is just a punch list:

• While at speed on my bike, I collided with a squirrel, who was flipped into my pedals, bounced off my leg, before he ran away. I screamed a lot, (a LOT) and then rode my bike home.
• Sometimes, I deadlift.
• For more than a minute, I was considering the feasibility of running a half marathon. (I don't have any special love for running, it's just easy to do wherever you are.)
• I ran my first 10k. It took 1hr and 17 min. I repeat, I was running for an hour and seventeen minutes.
• Matt had a race that I didn't want to wait around for, so I made our friend Adam go on a 10 mile hike with me.(We saw the changing of the larches- which was beautiful)
• The previous two bullets happened on the same weekend. My hips are punishing me today. What kind of crazy person have I become??

You see, I live with someone who apparently rides 100 miles a week, who has at least one race booked for every weekend in the foreseeable future, and who gets really weird if he doesn't get a proper sweaty workout in every day. And of course, our friends support this crazy healthy lifestyle by participating in as much running, hiking and biking as is imaginable. It's inevitable that I'd get sucked into this craziness, and even forget that while I can sometimes do one epic thing, stringing them together doesn't make them easier. Ha! Of course, Matt makes all this look quite effortless. He will often ride 14 miles in a day in his commute, then run 5 miles before dinner. And maybe lift weights with me, if I need his help spotting anyway. He ran the 5K version of that 10K I ran, and he came in second. To Jeffrey. Oh, and they both decided to run the 5K, because they had a cyclocross race on Sunday. TWO RACES in ONE weekend. Living with He-man kinda makes you want to stay in shape.

But of course, now he is in the kitchen doing the dishes and singing along to MAGIC! and the pop charts like no one can hear him. ("Marry that girl, I'm gonna marry her anyway...") I suppose this marital influence goes both ways.

On perhaps a related note, I'm struggling to make my weight lifting goals (2-3 times per week, training to squat, deadlift and press my own weight). I'm about halfway there, but it's slow going. Does anyone want to be my virtual weight lifting buddy?

Mosaic of Happenings

A few short notes of no special relevance, in no particular order:

I rode my bike to work on Friday.
Matt rides his bike in every day- the 7 mile trip takes him 20-25 min each way.
My 9+ mile trip took about an hour.
My friend Adam drove me home, so we could begin our weekend adventures. Next time, tomorrow, I will be driving my bike past some of the scary/trafficy part of the ride, and still probably riding 6ish miles, in 45 min or so. But I have to ride home, too.

* * *

I've been running "a lot"* lately. I bought some new trail running shoes, since my knees report my old ones were wearing out. The first pair I bought were super light weight, looked like a unicorn puked them up (vibrant reds, purples and yellows all swirled together), and made my toes fall asleep when I ran. I traded them in for a blue pair that look like keds skate shoes. The new ones meet the approval of both my knees and toes. And ankles.

*I can claim to be running a lot based on my current Strava standings. Strava is an app that tracks your mileage, records, etc, and lets you virtually race others. I've joined a "how many miles can you run this month?" challenge every month this summer, and I've been in the  top half every time. That's right- I run more than some people!

* * *

This year we were invited to 4 weddings, 3 of them in August.
One of Matt's old roommates got married a couple weekends ago. They found a beautiful castle/B&B in Tacoma to get married in. They rented out the whole B&B for thier family, but most of the family decided to make the drive home after, so we got to stay in the castle over night.
Castle weddings are awesome.
Also, macaroons are a legit substitute for wedding cake, especially (but not only) if you are marrying a French person.

* * *

This weekend, we did a hike to Mt Shuksan and Lake Ann.The trail was storybook perfect, with long meandering creeks that had wide, flat, not-slippery stones at easy points across them, and switch backs that gently climbed us the ~2,000 feet over a ridge.
The appeal of Mt Shuksan is that there are glaciers there. I haven't seen a lot of glaciers not in Alaska. Mt Shuksan has "hanging glaciers." We tried to guess how a hanging glacier was different, and I wondered why one mountain would have more than one glacier.
The actual view looked like some bits of a big glacier were stuck on the side of this mountain- so little compared to glacier attached to ice fields.
Still totally worth the hike.

We also saw some pika.

* * *

For Labor Day weekend, I am going to a wedding in Toronto, and Matt is going to spend two weeks in Death Valley doing "summer testing" of a truck. I assume this means they stress test the truck- driving it hot and hard in the worst possible climate to see if they can kill it. This seems like the weirdest possible way to explore Death Valley, but I'm really excited for Matt to go on this trip.

I'm also excited for when he comes back- we might actually spend a weekend in our own house.
Or we might go camping. With mountain bikes.
I'm excited for both options.

Winter Wonderland!

For the last couple of years, Matt and I have managed to get in one winter camping trip. We usually go with Matt's bestie, but this year his family is too busy, so we decided we should just go ourselves. We booked a cabin at Wallace Falls State Park, as scant hour from our house, and figured we could have an early Valentine's weekend escape.

Things being as they are, this was exactly the sort of week where if we had not already made a reservation, there was no way we'd be going camping, even for one night, even an hour from home. It was a busy week, Matt has been getting "additional opportunities" (a management joke) at work, and I hadn't been feeling that well. Neither of us had any time for planning, but come Friday night we went to REI to buy ourselves a campstove, and Matt ran to the store for groceries (bagels, goldfish, and frosted animal cookies). The forecast seemed like it might be too cold for sitting around a campfire, so we opted not to pick food that should get cooked over a fire, and went for stuff we could cook on the stove. We rationalised that we could hike the falls on Saturday, and either slow poke our way home on Sunday, or admit defeat and come back whenever we were ready to wimp out.

Our evening activities included cataloging the species in the animal cookies.
Is the lower right a pig?

The hike up Wallace Falls is not that arduous, but I was feeling ... very... slow. The 5 mile, low elevation gain hike took more than 3 hours. We got to stop and look at lots of things. The tiny ice towers that form when water freezers under mud. The "snow" that forms along the river canyon from the splash of the falls. The icecicles that crowned every rock in the river. It was a really beautiful hike.

It was cold. He didn't want to pose for this picture.

Since I knew I was going to be moving slow, and that it was cold, I wore my heavy winter coat, and a layer of thermals under my clothes. I was quite toasty, and pulled off my hat and gloves when we were moving. Matt, however, always has a super high metabolism and forgot what cold is all about. He was wearing highly ventilated plastic pants, and a fleece he has had since high school that uses a technology he calls "wind accelerating." His hat and gloves were firmly in place the whole time, and only in the last mile did he concede to putting the raincoat he had (along with several other other layers) in his backpack.

The trail head to the falls is also where our cabin was. Our last winter camping was in a yurt, which is basically a big tent wearing a warm coat. It has a light bulb near the door, and an outclassed radiator chugging along all night. Last year's yurt slept 5, with a bunk bed and futon, but once we put a couple backpacks in there, the place was full. I had expected some variation of that, but this cabin was posh. It had TWO rooms. The thermostat was set when we arrived, so it was quite toasty. There were curtains on all the windows, and adorable log furniture, including the futon, bunk, end table, dining table and chairs. By this point, we were both happy to sit inside and read, slipping out as far at the porch (yeah, porch) to boil water for tea and warm up our soup. Well after dark, maybe 7?, Matt stepped out to rinse the stove of our soup, and mentioned that there was some "slow rain" falling outside. Sometime after that we realized that "slow rain" falling in the cold was snow!

Snow in Western Washington! Everyone Panic!

Actually, sitting in a toasty cabin with nothing to do but my knitting (and timing Matt to see how many pistachios he could eat in 60 seconds) was the perfect place to be on a snowy evening. The half inch or so that accumulated was still there in the morning. Matt has plenty of snow driving experience, even in his sporty little car, so our only concern was that outside of the state park, the weather may have prompted an Armageddon level of panic and mayhem. It actually seemed quite mellow. Wallace Falls is off highway 2, so most of the outbound traffic was heading up the mountains to ski, and the westboard traffic was light. There was a bakery in Sultan, WA keeping busy in spite of the weather. And we opted to stop at the Reptile Zoo in Monroe on the way home, too. (Did you know that not all lizards have limbs?? If your snake has eyelids, it might not be a snake...) It was a cool museum, that maybe Tyler would enjoy (unless one of his parents has a phobia about snakes, in which case, forget I mentioned it). It was kept nice and warm for the cold blooded critters there.

Two headed turtle at the Reptile Zoo, obviously.

There seemed to be even more snow- like a whole inch!- at our house. It's melting slowly, and I expect the pandemonium will have subsided in time to make it to work tomorrow.

Fall in Austin

For those of you returning after the last blog entry, yes, Jess did make it back just fine. Tyler seemed quite happy to see her, though he wasn't as deliriously beside himself as Jessie would have liked. Perhaps because it was the middle of the night for him. She picked him up to rock in the chair a little bit, then Tyler got out of the chair, walked over to his crib, and pointed at it. He's a really good sleeper.

Last weekend we went camping. It was a little bit spur-of-the-moment, we got invited out by Jessie's boss to spend a camping weekend out with a bunch of people from work and a whole lot of food. Don't get me wrong. We weren't rouging it by any stretch of the imagination. We drove right up to the campsite. There was no way I was carrying Tyler's travel-crib any appreciable distance, to say nothing of all the other stuff we needed to bring.

Early in the week was pretty cold, so we packed for cold nights. We even got a couple of hand warmers to put in the bed with Tyler in case it got really cold. Of course, this turned out not to be a problem, as it was very temperate most of the time, and occasionally even a little too warm. The main downside of the whole trip was that Tyler woke up on Friday night a little after midnight and didn't get back to sleep until about 3:00 AM. He wasn't fussy or anything, just chattery, and we didn't want to wake up nearby campers. After that frustrating spell, though, the rest of the weekend was great.

We were camping with about 8 or so other families, most of whom had kids in high school, though there was a second strata of a few kids still too young for school, so Tyler had some playmates, though he mostly stayed with us and explored. They had some hammocks set up that spent time between getting napped on by grown-ups and getting swung on by pre-teen boys. There were several different full-sized grills in attendance, including a smoker, and someone brought a flat-screen TV and a portable satellite dish to watch the important College Football games on Saturday. I'm just saying we weren't wanting for much. We joined in the food fest in our own small way. I brought hobo pouches for us to eat on Friday that were delish! Saturday we tossed in our hot dogs along with a lot of hamburgers, side dishes, and other random goodies provided by everyone else. It turned into a buffet.

Tyler liked exploring, as you could imagine. He was very interested in us setting up the tent, and then trilled by being allowed to run around inside it. He ran around with some of the younger kids, but his stubby legs couldn't quite keep up. There was a little playground nearby with a see-saw that we got to ride on with Tyler, he really liked that. And we even went on a short hike on Saturday morning, though we did mostly have to carry Tyler around with us. He still liked looking around, and it was great exercise for us. He also needed some alone time, because there's a lot to take in when you're that young, so we spent some time in the tent with him just reading old familiar books before bedtime.

We decided to head home Saturday night, reasoning that it would be better sleeping for both Tyler and us, and we were just going to pack up and head home in the morning anyway, so we wouldn't be missing a whole lot of campitude. So we put Tyler to bed in his little travel-crib like everything was perfectly normal, then picked his crib up, carried it out of the tent, and packed everything while he slept in his crib next to the car with a blanket tossed over the top. Then we said our goodbyes, woke Tyler up enough to get him in the car seat (and he was an absolute gentleman for the whole ride home) and made our escape back home. Only one night in a sleeping bag and already the bed felt more comfy than I remembered it being before.

I'm super-excited about Seattle. Jess and I have a few things we want to make sure we get to do, though we're keeping the schedule kind-of light so that we don't overwhelm the little one, though he's certain to spend at least a few days in the tender care of Nana and Great-Nana while Jess and I are off doing crazy things like...I dunno...probably learning about history or something.

Oh, and we voted. Got in on the Early voting which was great, because no lines. :) I got to hold Tyler while I made my selections and he watched. He was equally entranced by the touch screen I was using and by all the grandmothers staffing the polling place who kept giving him smiling faces. I think he liked the attention. When we were done, we gave him both of our 'I Voted' stickers and hung out for a while at the playground outside the voting area. He liked that. Yay for Democracy!

-N

NW Adventures

When we left Nana's house on Sunday afternoon, she loaded us down with chocolate bars and homemade cupcakes.  Why? Presumably this is payment for spending the day being such good grandkids.  What did we do that was so special?  Well, we took Nana up to see Anne Cox's beautiful boat and go for a ride in the San Juan Islands.  Yeah, we take really good care of Nana.

It was a pretty perfect expedition, in fact.  We've had unseasonable clear October weather, so Matt and I feel like it's the summer that never ends.  Going to spend a few hours toodling around the San Juans is a pretty fantastic way to pass the day.  We had amazing view of Mount Baker, of the for rolling in around Anacortes and the islands themselves.  Couldn't have been a better day, really.

We paired this Sunday activity with a good Saturday as well.  Our friends wanted to hike up Mt Pilchuk, a well loved nearby peak.  The bulk of the hike is skree and epic granite, which makes for some truly stunning vistas.  The very peak is covered in a jumble granite boulders, as if the whole mountain is just a pile of oversized gravel.  There is a lookout tower strapped across some of these boulders.  On a clear day, you can probably see into Canada from there.  We managed to see mysterious views of the inside of a cloud.  This did make the hike seem quite dramatic though.  After a nice hike, we went to play 19 holes of disc golf in Lake Stevens. Have I mentioned I am terrible at disc golf?  Typically, a sport that requires eye-hand coordination, throwing and trees was not going to go well for me.  Fortunately, there were enough trees that we all had a good laugh at each other.  There is something really hysterical about watching some one hurl a frisbee at a million miles and hour into a tree 10 feet in front of them (pro tip: this is not a good technique to "win" at disc golf either).  Or maybe we were just worn out.  Anyway, we wrapped up the day by meeting Shaoshu for Taiwanese food.

Taiwanese food has become the new concession to my new eating habits, since Szechuan cuisine is right out.  As far as the eating goes, I'm back on most food groups, but still avoiding citrus, spicy and alcohol, since these all appear to be solvents for the lining of my stomach.  Ouch.  Back to taiwanese food, it turned out to be auspicious since the Moon Festival was starting over the weekend.  We got to have some fresh moon cakes for dessert in addition to the already delicious foods.

In other news, we are starting to think more seriously about the possibility of someday preparing to shop for a house, you know, as a preliminary exercise to owning one.  There still seem too many other unknowns up in the air to make any actual decisions (will we be able to afford much of a house? where might this house be? Are there things we need a house to do in the future?  This last one is a thinly veiled way of saying "three car garage?" which leads to a lot of other talking that isn't much about a house, but a lot about a budget).  This is fine with me.  It seems like a big decision that a person should not make while being as remarkably ignorant as I am about all things on the spectrum of mortgages and property taxes to home ownership and maintenance.  Lots of learning to do.  As I told Mom, we'll probably be financially ready to buy a house before we are emotionally ready, and both are in the future yet.

Sorry, my gender roles are all backwards

I had another pretty busy weekend, lots accomplished, it was just all *girl* stuff.

Jess and I went on a hike on Saturday. There’s a national wildlife reserve up a bit north of us, and we got our camel backs put together (thanks, Sandlin!) and decided to check it out. It was all quite pretty, and we ended up wandering around a bit off the beaten path to check out some really neat vistas. They don’t call this area ‘hill county’ for nothing. I’ll try to put up some pictures later, but I’m pretty tired from everything else.

After we got back from the hike, I tried out an Alton Brown cooking experiment. I’d seen an episode on making pocket pies and had showed it to jessie, who agreed that it looked like the greatest thing since sliced bread So I cooked up a double-batch of pie crust and made a whole big bunch of pocket pies. Most of them were apple pies. It was my first time making apple pie filling, too. Turned out pretty good. I also made some Pizza pocket pies and a couple with chocolate inside. Then I baked some and pan-fried some more. They all turned out delicious, because it’s hard to go wrong with that much shortening and flower, but the baked ones were a lot more uniform. It also took a really long time, though I was cooking a double batch. I ended up with nearly 30 pies. We’ve still got a lot of them, they keep really well.

Then today, Jess and I switch genders. She went off and played some sports then came back to watch the big hockey game. I did some sewing.

Big thank you to Nana for teaching me how to use a sewing machine, I got a lot of use out of it today. We bought some curtains that we liked but that were the wrong size or configuration for our bedroom or bathroom. We were just going to get them altered, but the cost for the alterations was almost as much as it would have cost for us to just buy a new sewing machine. So we did. (Sew we did. Ha!)

Jess set it up and read through the manual, and then I did again today to learn a few extra skills, like threading bobbins and the like, and learning about all the completely bonkers stitches our machine can do. Then I did some measuring and put together some pretty nice stitches, if I do say so myself.

So yeah, pies and curtains for me, hockey and hiking for Jessie. I need to go, I dunno, build a deck, or something.

Micro news: The birds have returned to our backyard, with the inclusion of our new, covered bird feeder. We’re going through a lot of birdseed. I blame the squirrels, but they’re cute too. I’m going to try and work on the yard next weekend, I think it’s finally warm enough to start planting, and maybe even turning on the sprinklers. Exciting news at work, there is a new project starting up that I get to be a big part of. Not the technical lead guy, but one of the primary workers. I’ve worked my way through the first of my old music textbooks. I want to try a simple composition, either in SATB or piano style, and then go onto book 2.

-N

Some pictures, et. al.

Hi, all,

I finally managed to get the pictures off the camera and up on the internet for the sisters visiting for the weekend. You can check that out at this link.

The visit was a pretty rousing success. We went out for BBQ multiple times, with delicious results. We took kelsey out to Salt Lick, which was fantastic, and then all the Preecs siblings went out to Rudy’s later, which is also really, really, really good. We went down to South Congress, full of strange and fun local shops and bought a lot of candy and browsed a boatload of antiques and strange things at ‘Uncommon Objects’, a neat store. I spent most of my purchases at the local candy store. Smarties, Sweet Tarts, and Lemonheads, in case you were curious. The Alamo Drafthouse showed a Master Pancake Theater production of The Fellowship of the Rings, which was hilarious. For those of you that have never seen one before, a few people sit up front and tell jokes throughout the whole movie. It ranges from really funny to injuriously hilarious. (Score-amir!) Raucus laughter was enjoyed by all.

From Sister Visit & Hike

We also did some clothes shopping and played a lot of rock band. We’re a pretty musical family. Best singing award goes to Matt, best inability to determine up from down goes to Sandlin, best country music purchase goes to Kelsey, and sweatiest drummer award goes to me. Jessie gets the most lefty-righty flips award, and a lifetime achievement award for playing rock band with pretty much everyone that has ever spent the night at our house.

From Sister Visit & Hike

There’s some other pictures in there from this weekend, too. Jess had an ‘outdoor’ itch, and so we moseyed off to do some hiking this weekend. It was actually a really good day for it, a little overcast in the morning, and not too hot when the sun broke through. It was 7.5 miles overall, which is right about at the limit of our hiking ability, it seems. And we also get a bonus half-mile for hiking to the river afterwords and taking a cooling, refreshing dip. Good times.

From Sister Visit & Hike

Oh, and we saw a snake.

From Sister Visit & Hike

Most of the rest of the weekend has been resting. Though there have been some other developments. Just in case anyone hasn’t heard, Peachie, the family cat up in Alaska, was put to sleep this weekend. She was acting very strangely and had gotten down to 5 pounds, a very unhealthy weight. Ultimately, age just was too much for her, and so the parents made the hard choice and let her go. She was 19 years old, which is like a Methuselah cat, and she was an absolute sweetheart, as long as you didn’t care overmuch about the state of your furniture. The world is a slightly less fuzzy place without her in it.

From Sister Visit & Hike

Also, I’ve had to call in professional help, though they haven’t returned my calls yet, because it’s pretty obvious that our sprinkler system is leaking somewhere underground. I don’t want to cast aspersions, but the easternmost fence area in the backyard is pretty much a swamp, and I don’t think that’s traditional for Austin. It gets pretty wet around the west side of the house, too.

A few other bits of Micro-News, I’ve been doing yet more writing, attempting to do at least a page or two every day in an effort to finish my story so I can try and get it published and move onto another hobby: sound. I want to try and do a podcast with the siblings. That would be fun. Jess is off at roller derby, and has another game next week! You can actually watch it over the internet, and if anyone wants to know how, just e-mail me and I’ll let you know the details. My proposed next work-exursion to England has been pushed back to June. A nice time to get away from the blistering Austin sun and go hang out with some Sheep.

With love to all,

-N

Pictures from Skagway!

Pictures of our day trip to Skagway, AK include breathtaking views from the flight over the icefields are here.


Thursday, we had tickets from Wings to fly to Skagway. Matt and I honeymooned here. We had fun then, and thought we might like something mid-week to break up the Juneau of the trip. Turns out it was an inspired idea. Our flight over was a small turbo prop that seated 10 + pilots. We flew out over the Juneau icefields. Since the weather was, again, perfect we got some great pictures of the stunning views up there. We grabbed breakfast and, declining a ride out to the Chilkoot Trailhead, hiked up to Lower Dewey Lake. It was early, calm and clear- how restful. We lunched at the Red Onion Saloon- a former brothel that gives tours (thus the chorus girls). We did some shopping, and eventually wandered out to Yakutania Point, a point coarsely carved from granite. Both the wind and views were spectacular. We grabbed a pint at the Skagway Brew Co (yum!) before heading back home. The flight with Wings was overbooked, so an extra plane was sent from Juneau for the 4 of us. What they sent was a LITTLE 6 seater, that once again flew back over the icefields. Jessi was the co-pilot, and our pilot did his best to show off the sights on our trip home. We we got out of the plane, we hugged him, it was so amazingly beautiful (and slightly terrifying).

Still battling with one more online album, which includes pictures of Kelsey being a dork right here in America. Stay tuned!

Partial Alaska Update

Forgive me, I am having trouble integrating iPhoto, Picasa and Blogger. Since this was going to be an enormous post anyway, I'll post what is working tonight and get the rest out soon, I promise
Pictures from around town, including the Mount Roberts' Tram, our boat trip with Dennis and an insane beach landing are here. http://picasaweb.google.com/sandlin.preecs/Days4578Juneau
Watch for Orange Gumbi suits and a pod of orcas.

On Tuesday, Dad loaned us the Hospital's Tram passes, so we started the day up there. Unfortunately, record snows from the winter were hanging around so we couldn't hike. But Matt did get to demonstrate his glicading technique (these are pictures of him slipping down a snowy slope, and later a snowy bum). After buying stuff at Kelsey's work, we swung out to the Alaskan Brewing Co. for samples and a tour.

Our boat trip with Dennis probably merits an entire post of it's own, but I'll just cover the highlights. These include a beach landing at Sentinal Island to Explore the lighthouse. The belching Sea Lions of Benjamen Island were next, then another beach landing for a picnic lunch. We explored the tide pools here, before Dennis whisked us off to the Northern Passage. Since we had to stop the boat for a whale anyway(?!), Dennis taught us how to get into survival suits (yeah- orange) and put us in the water with nothing but a frosty Alaskan. As we floated out for a picture, a sea lion popped up a few yards off just to say hi. We floated out in the open water for about an hour before piling back into the boat. The rest of the way back was punctuated by innummerable Humpback Whale sightings- Dennis has a 6th sense or something- amazing displays, if not photos.

Friday was pretty mellow- we made it as far as the State Museum before heading out to visit Dennis with pizza and beer. Saturday, Dad took us on a Hospital Fundraiser Whale Watching cruise. Although I didn't think we could be impressed by wildlife after ur day with Dennis (just 9 sea lions? Please, they were hardly belching) I was floored when we found a pod of Killer Whale- 15-20 or them taking lots of air breaks for the little ones and keeping a steady pace that our tour boat followed for 45 min? Really incredible. Really the drama was supposed to end there, but while we were sitting at home procrastinating packing, a barge pulled up on to the break to off load several dumptrucks of gravel and some heavy equipment to our next door neighbor's yard. Wow!

If this isn't enough- you can find an additional 500 or so images on Jessi's site: http://jessibo.shutterfly.com/action/

Clearly, an incredible trip. We'll have to find more friends to take home and show off for soon.

Some of these photos were incorporated into the slide show- so keep and eye out. Regarding the slide show- it is currently linked from an album on my Picasa site. Anyone could either switch the album, to say, one of their own creation, or email please me images that I can drop in there.

A wet and wild weekend

Hey,

Well here's part of my weekend:



That, however, was only part of the longer weekend.

Tabi and Jeff took us out for dinner and a movie in thanks for taking care of their dogs. First we went out to Hutt's hamburgers, which had a wall covered with awards for their tasty food. I tend to agree, even if the onion rings were *literally* the size of a small plate. They were tasty.

After that they took us out to the new Indiana Jones move. It was pretty great, even if there were some plot holes here and there. I really liked the special FX. After the movie, though, they mentioned they were going out to Schlitterbahn the next day and they wanted to know if we wanted to come along. Schlitterbahn is widely considered one of the best waterparks in the country, and Jess is a big fan of waterpark fun. If you're wondering about the name, it turns out there are a lot of German settlements around Texas. Evidently they immigrated to the US and then all went down to Texas, bringing their superior waterpark technology with them.

Well we went out in the morning, slathering ourselves with as much SPF 50 sunscreen as our skin could hold, and then tore up as many rides as we could. The park was pretty great, overall. There were a couple of inner-tube rides that went on for probably 30 minutes, all told. Just lazily floating along, with occasional breaks for crazy slides down the hill. It actually takes you through the river, at one point. Pretty nice.

There were also a bunch of more modern rides, starting you up really high and taking you through all kinds of acceleration configurations before dumping you in the wave-pool below. Great fun. There was even one where they have water shooting up behind you, pushing you uphill and soaking you quite thoroughly. The lines were a little obnoxious at some points, but considering this was Memorial day weekend, the lines were pretty tolerable. I can immagine it only being worse had we still been in LA.

Also, it looked like one of the kitchens caught on fire while we were there. We were on top of the tower, waiting for our turn on the ride when there was a great billow of smoke from down on the ground. I'm not quite sure what caused it, but they shut down the rides while they made sure the fire was out. Eventually, it all got put out and everything went back to normal.

We managed to escape a full day in the hot sun with minimal sunburn. Mine is pretty much healed already, so is Jessie's. We went through a lot of sunblock, though. Overall, great fun was had by all, even if next time we think we're going to go on a day that might not be so busy.

And today? Today we're just resting.

-N