busy week

highlights from the last week:

8:30am monday--interview for job with arizona game and fish dept. it was kind of strange, more like a test than an interview. i had 50 minutes. they asked me 10 questions. they would repeat the question, but would not elaborate on it. i was done in something like 35 minutes. then i asked them a few questions and they asked me like one other non-test question and i was done. supposed to hear something late this week or next week.

9:30 am monday--get to the airport as fast as possible.

11am monday--flight to LAX for our cruise.

monday afternoon to friday morning--our cruise. it was fun but not all we had hoped for, but we learned that we are not the cruising type. the food was good, but nothing special, and i felt we could do better with most of it (i know i have made some way better desserts, for example.) but the soups were all delicious, something i don't usually make. there was always food around. i felt nauseous the first night and got these accupressure armbands and after that i felt fine. tim felt somewhat nauseous most of the week. (it took more than 48 hours for him to get his land legs back.) we were on catalina island (one of the channel islands off the coast of california) on tuesday, where we went coastal kayaking. we saw harbor seals and/or sea lions (too far away to tell for sure) and lots of orange garibaldi fish. we were in ensenada, mexico, on wednesday. we wandered around, ate the best food of the whole trip at a little restaurant (we were the only non-mexicans) and went for a horseback ride. there we got some very hot and tasty salsa that tim loved. they gave him a cup to take back with him, and he ate too much at once and was on fire for awhile. thursday (turkey day) we had a "fun day at sea". shuffleboard winner = tim. putt putt winner = liz. turkey and such for dinner. canadian tim was not a very amusing "name that tune" host. it was cloudy and windy and chilly. but it was nice to relax. that's pretty much the whole excitement of the cruise.

hope you all had a fun thanksgiving. on friday we had a thanksgiving dinner that our friends allen and shu-ching cooked. it was better turkey than on the ship.

tim and his horse, habanero (it kicked the guy behind him twice)


our cruise ship was docked right next to the queen mary, which is a haunted hotel ship i leard about from flava flav.

happy late thanksgiving

more soon.

bacon, healer of all ills

p.s.--i have an interview for a job with the arizona game and fish department. they just called today. woo-hoo!

cats can be dumb

luna likes to play with plastic grocery bags, and she's never suffocated so i just let her do it. keeps her entertained. occasionally this happens...



it doesn't hurt her or anything, she just gets freaked by a bag that follows her around the house. she walks all sneaky-like, as if she can fool the bag and get away. after she starts acting kind of pathetic (or i get bored of watching her) i take the bag off and she's back to normal.

fun for the whole family!

election day

well, today i'm back in arizona. it was a good trip back east! i am glad i got to see my friends and family, even if i missed out on the fall colors. and had to wear sweaters and hats and socks. we're having a bit of indian summer here, highs around 90 this week. i think now we are getting to the season where i will like arizona better because it is warm, even though phoenix is awful. so if you want to visit, now is the time! we can actually go outside during the day!

anyway...

today we voted. we went mid-morning, and there was no line at all. tim was prepared to wait, he brought reading material. but we just breezed right in. we voted on 18 propositions. good thing we got a 100-page booklet in the mail telling us what they were about because if i had to actually read them on the ballot i would have been (1) perplexed how to vote and (2) really slow. but i decided ahead of time and wrote down my choices. among the things we got to vote on were making english the official language of arizona, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, having all elections done by mail, two different smoking bans, and establishing a lottery that you are entered in when you vote and one voter will win $1million each election. we also voted for the govenor, some other state positions, state representatives, and US congressman and representative. we'll see how it turns out.

on the way home, we saw a dead northern flicker (an ant-eating woodpecker) in the street. i learned that they come in red-shafted and yellow-shafted forms (the color on their wing feathers), and the red-shafted form is in the west while the yellow-shafted is in the north and east. that is probably why tim said, "hmm, i think they are usually more yellow."
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Northern_Flicker.html#map

the old stompin' grounds

i'm back in the midwest this week for a visit. i have to say, the landscape here is easy on the eyes. even though its freaking cold, and most of the leaves are actually on the ground already. but to look out the window and see things growing, its nice. yes, i know cacti grow, too, but when most of what you see is rock it is just different.

highlights of my air travel--
strangest thing: small child (3-4 years old) with a large stuffed rat puppet named thomas
things i thought might be confiscated at security but were not: 4 oz. bottle of contact solution (the limit is supposed to be 3 oz.), granola bars
number of pretzel packets given to me on the plane: 2
number of people who told me i am crazy to miss the midwest because arizona is so much better: 1