8 posts tagged “california”

 

A friend asked me the other day how I was doing.

I said, "How bad can it be? I live in California."

Despite being emotionally down the past few weeks and being more professionally pressured than I've been in a good long while, it's good to have the recurring reminder that I'm where I'm supposed to be, geographically anyway.

I spotted him, but Annabelle got the photos of this strange vehicle going 70ish mph northbound on Highway 280 this morning.

 

 

I took another internet quiz, this one asking what US state are you? 

As expected...

You're California!

In many ways, you are larger than life and almost defy description. You certainly love to shake, rattle, and roll with the best of them. You have a generally sunny disposition, but are capable of resorting to harsh extremes when pressed. You are more likely than most to become rich, or famous, or perhaps both. While you have the golden touch in so many regards, your respect for actors is a little over-zealous. This endless faith in actors needs to be terminated.

On the flight from From LAX ---> SJC. There's Catalina Island out the window. I'm headed back home. Yay!

 

My travel schedule this past week.

Tuesday through Friday = San Jose ---> Minneapolis ---> New York ---> Detroit ---> Minneapolis ---> San Jose

Sunday through Tuesday = San Jose ---> Santa Barbara ---> Los Angeles ---> San Jose 

This morning when I went out to the rental car to drive over to the conference and I thought perhaps it had snowed overnight. Snowed? In Southern California?

Nope. The car was covered in white ash. Flying in last night, the pilot told us that the thick haze out the window was smoke from nearby wildfires. We landed as if we were flying through a dark cloud.

My throat was already sore from all the traveling and starting to come down with the obligatory start-of-the-school-year cold, but this didn't help matters any.

I'm glad I brought some Throat Coat tea and Sucrets with me. I think I'll need both to get through speaking on this panel and making the drive from here to Los Angeles through the smoke and ash.

This is certainly a beautiful place, but I feel bad for anyone having to breath this air for more than a few days.

Our only plans for this long weekend were to go to San Francisco on Tuesday to see the fireworks from a boat in the middle of the Bay. So yesterday morning we decided that we should do something other than spend the day indoors at home.

We thought at first that we'd head down to Santa Cruz for the day, but reconsidered that idea fearing it would be too crowded. The general idea was just to enjoy the ocean sights and sounds, read, draw and generally hang out and relax.

I found Capitola in a quick web search for beaches near us. We hadn't been there before, and it looked quieter than Santa Cruz, so we got in the car and headed 40 minutes south.

We'll definitely go back. Capitola is a cute little town and even though there were lots of people there, we had just the kind of day we wanted to have.

The only downside was, despite 30 SPF sunscreen and a beach umbrella, these two very white girls both got weirdly patterned sun burns. 

I've taken the train to work every day this week. Tomorrow I'm working from home so there's no commute at all. And early early (6 am) on Friday Annabelle and I are flying to Minneapolis for my sister's wedding reception and the Mother's Day weekend.

This little fella has been the only traffic jam I've seen this week! And even though he was quite large, he didn't take up too much sidewalk, making him easy to get around when I walked out the door this morning. I did have to get down on the ground to take these shots and move him away from my newly planted Gerber daisies!

I really love living in California!