Locks of Love & Love of Grillin'

A few weeks ago I finally tamed my mane! Patrick was getting his hair tidied up, so I decided it was as good a time as any since I wasn't going to be one of those people who lets it grow to their knees and get dried out over 30 years' time. Besides, there are some peeps in this world whose circumstances have left them a bit short changed- and face it, I had plenty to share!

Quite a bit past my waist and nearly to my butt! Most days it took me 10 minutes to comb my hair after the shower, and it often got pinned under Patrick's elbow when I'd be rolling over in my sleep. There are definitely some perks to shortening things up a bit.


Unfortunately when I held up the chopped ponytail, it was thick enough that the center just slid out onto the floor since there wasn't enough tension from the rubberband. The hairdresser retied it and told me that even without the stuff that fell out, it was more hair than a lot of donors' locks.

Take 2- it's not falling out this time! I guess there's still a lot of hair there, but it was annoying that another chunk coulda been added to a wig. There's still quite a bit of hair on my head too- nearly enough for a second donation! I can put my elbow over my shoulder and not touch the bottom.
Modeling my new haircut, and our new grill! Thanks to my birthday money, we were able to enjoy grilled pizza, chicken, corn on the cob, zucchini, homemade soft pretzels, brats, and fruit over the course of the week. Delish!

The grill came with free installation from a cute chef. He set it up and made me dinner- that's the best deal out there, no doubt! :)

Britt and Mom's Visit

During the last week of June, my mom and one of my sisters visited us, but the corresponding blog entry kinda fell through the cracks since we left for MI ourselves just 2 days later! Well, it's about time I catch up and show a few pics from their time here:

Mom & Britt arrived on my birthday. I was a bit downcast because I realized I officially entered my late 20s, but Patrick made me dinner and cake, and I was spoiled with presents and my special guests so I didn't stay too depressed for too long. :)

Angel food cake from scratch- it turned out perfectly!

The next day we showed Mom & Britt Glacier Point and the valley floor at Yosemite. It is ridiculously busy there during the summer, but it's basically impossible to spoil the beauty of the park.

The ice cream was overpriced, but Mom said when else would we have the opportunity to enjoy a drumstick or ice cream sandwich/bar at the top of Glacier Point? It didn't take much persuading for the rest of us to give in.

Interesting lichen/branches, especially with a perfect sky backdrop.

Lovely flowers cascading over a rock ledge on the pathway to Bridalveil Falls.

The waterfalls are super-swelled from all the melted snow, so the splash/mist at the bottom was not forgiving! But the weather was nice and it gave us a thrill, so we didn't mind. In fact, it was mom's favorite part of the day!

I don't approve of the people who carved into this wood, but I did revel in the coincidence of their initials.

Our guests showed themselves around during the week since we had to work, but we did get a second Saturday to hang out together in Fresno. There was a lovely courtyard near the place we ate dinner, and later we went to a Shakespeare play in a park. Having Mom & Britt here was a real treat for Patrick & me!

4th of July with the Albins

I mentioned in the last blog that I didn't have all the photos we took in Michigan. But now that Patrick is back in town, I can show pictures from the first half of our trip.

We had a nice view of the Sierra Nevada mountains on our plane to Dallas.

We girls had some nice R&R during Cassandra's bachelorette party. My orange toes look pretty cute, but the best part of the pedicure was the massage chair. :)

We headed into downtown GR for dinner at the Bob. My veggie burger was delicious if you need a menu recommendation!

I booked a hotel room, where we sipped on pink champagne and played games- it was great fun to have a girls night!

Patrick, me, and my family went to a Whitecaps game. Dad was prepared in case of a fly ball, but Courtney was the lucky person to end up with one! Not without a little help from Patrick (bobbled it), mom (it then bounced off her back), and me (I covered her 3:00 when I unsuccessfully lunged for it). She did however earn it for keeping a tight grip when some punk kid from who-knows-how-many-rows-back, ran up and tried to take it out of her hands in her lap! "Stealing's wrong!" I should have yelled, but I thought it a few seconds too late. :)

Dad bought Britt a rather fitting souvenir for her, seeing as she had earlier been joining in on audience activities like the chicken and dinosaur dances. :)

Courtney- making mom proud with her cotton candy stained teeth. Mom had earlier joked, "The real reason for going to a baseball game is just to eat trash!" after I told her I couldn't eat anymore of an elephant year until I had some real dinner.

There was a great fireworks show at the end of the game. Oh- and the Whitecaps won, in case you wondered! (Partial thanks must go to the opposing team's shortstop who made error after error!)

Fourth of July BBQ at my grandma's house. Apparently grillmaster mommas was the trend this summer!

After watching the downtown fireworks from the bridge near my parents' house, we set a few off in the backyard that Courtney had bought.

We hope you all had a great 4th of July!

Summer vacation

It's been about a week and a half since we returned from our summer vacation in Michigan, which means it is overdue we posted about it on the blog! I currently only have access to a few pictures from our time with the Wombles since Patrick is out of town with the computer and one camera that contain a lot of the photos. But I'll give you the highlights of our two weeks in the homeland, and show some of what I do have.

As always, the trip went by too fast and we felt jipped on time, but we managed to cram a lot into it: Me and a pal from high school planned an impromptu bachelorette party for one of our best friends; Patrick scheduled a bittersweet last appointment with a Doctor-turned-family-friend he had been seeing since he was in 5th grade; my family had a BBQ to celebrate a few birthdays and Independence Day; fireworks; catching up with a few friends over lunch; and that doesn't even include our time at a rental home in Traverse City!

For the 3rd year in a row, Patrick's family rented a house (different each time) in semi-Northern MI for a week to offer the space and entertainment for everyone visiting from around the globe. This year, badminton was a main feature, played at least 1-5 times per day!

Grandma took the helm at the grill- MMM! Among traditional delectables like BBQ chicken, I found out I'm a big fan of grilled turnips!

Grandpa Denny taugh John a new trick with the Redi-whip!

As you'll see from the rest of the photos, the water was integral to everybody's time at the lake house! Here, Patrick, Mark, Calum & Isaac's canoe are towing Daisy and Jackie after they underestimated how far they'd paddled and how much work it'd be to get back!

Sally enjoying a cup of coffee on a sunny morning pontoon boat ride.

Daisy waving at us from her place on the paddle board as we're swept away on the boat.

The wind is fair, captain!

Calum had loads of fun and was on his way to being a pro with the paddle boards.

I loved being on the boat, but Isaac does a much better/cuter job of showing his enthusiasm!

Aunt Jackie left the beach chair for a more scenic reading location.

Life is good!

Here was a particularly interesting site on the lake: This balloon gradually lowered its elevation, and at this point we were pretty sure it was about to crash! Everyone on the lake's gaze was locked! But the pilot was either super lucky or super precise, as he recovered his height and never touched the water (although he was just about a foot away from it).

We had an awesome time in Michigan and already miss our loved ones and look forward to our next visit! I'm going back at the end of this month just for a weekend to be the matron of honor in my long-time friend's wedding, but otherwise our return probably won't be until Christmas. In the meantime, we'll keep you updated!

A few random updates

This week I started my new job at UC Merced, and already I am slightly overwhelmed! Basically there is a large hodgepodge of people I've met and tasks I will be responsible for that is requiring all my attention and memory to try to learn. Simple things like scheduling a meeting, sending an email, and using the printer/copier have taken larger amounts of time than they should as I reread things five times and ask about details that may or may not be relevant to make sure I don't leave something out or there isn't a tip/trick to it I need to know. But, I think I will eventually get the hang of it and the woman who previously held my position is still around and been a major help integrating and training me.

Outside of the office, we need to get used to managing our time and being more disciplined since I'm not home all day to clean and do the grocery shopping anymore. We've grown accustomed to taking it easy every evening, and let things slip. So next week the goal is to stay on top of chores and get a couple nights of exercise in after work.


Garden wise, survivors from the Slug Wars are starting to take off, and while we wait for them to mature, we've enjoyed seeing the plants that were already here upon move-in show off their blooms. You may recognize this flower from the last blog, but since then the plant sprouted a ton of these, as you can see from just this one side.


The tree indeed produced apples! They are smaller than we hoped, and keep falling off before they mature. It is disappointing they aren't ideal for eating fresh or on their own, however, we gathered the best ones from the ground and decided to make apple pie rather than let them go to waste!

We are not experienced pastry chefs. My mom's famous crust fell apart in my hands as I tried to move it onto the pie, so after major "skin surgery" and crust transplanting, it looked like this when we put it in theoven. Not as pretty as my mom's, but it still tasted good!

Steamholes in the shapes of our initials, and vanilla ice cream on the side. This dessert followed homemade pizza and a cold IPA. I started whistling "Proud to be an American" while we were cooking- lol.

This doesn't have to do with much of anything, but it was so weird I had to share it. While hard-boiling this egg, it started oozing out a crack. But mutant eggs still make tasty salad sandwiches.

On the health front, Patrick has been doing physical therapy to heal and strengthen the tendon along his right knee & hip and I've been wearing a brace for a month on my right wrist/thumb to finally heal inflammation I started experiencing last fall. Patrick is noticing a gradual improvement, and I'm scheduled for a cortisone shot to try to move things along. Wish these sorts of things healed faster as we're itching to do some hiking/climbing/kayaking, and even just knitting in my case!

I imagine we'll have slightly more exciting things to post and more pictures of ourselves soon (as opposed to disfigured food) since we'll be having visitors from MI next weekend, and a trip to the homeland ourselves in a couple weeks!

Pursuing backyard bliss

The weather has been nearly perfect lately, averaging a high of mid 70s to 80, with sunny blue skies and a sumptuous breeze. We're lacking backyard recreation equipment such as a grill, fire pit or gazebo, but we're making due with what we've got in the meantime to enjoy the outdoors.

Sipping on margaritas near the fence since it offered the only shade from the sun, which can get pretty hot beating on ya.

A pleasant surprise was the decorative grass bush things in our yard have sprung a bunch of lovely flowers. Two of the bushes have these flowers, and two have the ones below. They remind me of a hybrid between a lily and an orchid.

The downside of these plants is they seem to be a habitat for the slugs and snails. The battle with the invertebrates has been brutal- they ate/killed all of our black beans and green beans which were really starting to take off- but after a heavy assault and some replanting, we are hoping we've bested them for the rest of the season.

One variety of hops has broke the ground surface- hooray! Crossing our fingers the other type will too....

One day we'll get some patio furniture, but for now, flopping out on the ground with a red vine is one way to sunbathe. Later Patrick used his flip flops for a pillow. How very resourceful. :-D

Speaking of our outdoor wish list though, we may be able to purchase some of the items on it in the not too distant future since I was offered a job Friday afternoon! As the Assistant to the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Business and Financial Services, I will be offering office support in UC Merced's downtown building (not the main campus location that Patrick works at unfortunately, so we'll have to rethink transportation). I will receive the official start date and offer letter on Tuesday, but most likely it'll be June 1st or June 6th that we can start debating again which of us is "The Professional." :)

Happy Isles & Rockslide and Yosemite Falls

Saturday was our chance to see Yosemite during spring, as we had plans to meet up with some rock climbers via a mutual friend. Snowmelt and rain means the waterfalls are at their prime this time of year, hence, we were welcomed with this dazzling sight of Yosemite Falls.

Unfortunately, our meeting time and place was compromised by several factors, so after an hour of waiting and wondering, we decided to take off in the direction of a prospective climbing area to look for them before setting off to wander on our own.

The weather was gorgeous, and this area of the park was not frequented, so even though we didn't run into our friends, we continued to hike along the climbers' path. We stopped on the edge of an old rockslide for lunch.

To be adventurous, we decided to scramble up the rockslide in hopes for a good observation point. The view wasn't much better than at our lunch location, and we realized on our way up that not all the rocks were as secure as we'd have liked. But even though we wouldn't recommend it to others, it was still nice to venture somewhere new, and we noticed we were even higher than the rock climbers adjacent to us too!

Patches of wildflowers growing haphazardly among the rocks showed a gentler side to the landscape. Taking a snapshot gave my knees a moment to recover from the tedious and slow descent.

We found a pathway connecting us to an easy, popular trail we believed would lead us to Vernal Falls. On the way, we saw the rough terrain we had just been on, farther off in the distance (the gray rockpile making a small dome behind the pine tree in the center). I'm sure some of the people on this trail had to have seen me up there with my bright pink shirt!

Notice in the last photo I have tape wrapped around my wrist. A large rock came loose and started to tumble down the hill so I grabbed it to stop the movement. It was a little heavier than I anticipated so I instead tried to control and decelerate its fall. But as it slid from my hand, it sliced across my wrist. It doesn't look too bad here (taken the next day), but I was dripping blood on rocks until I could climb up to Patrick and have him bandage me up. We had to rip it all off and put on new gauze & tape by the time we got back down again too. It made me respect the risks a bit more and take more caution!

This sign was a little further along the easy pathway, so it was neat to find out more about the rockslide we had just hiked on, and give us more perspective.

We thought the path lead to falls because we heard loud water and saw a lot of people on a bridge from our perch on the rockslide. Turns out it was just the swollen river! (It will take you to Vernal Falls too, but it was a farther hike along the path than we decided to go.)

The above video, taken from the bridge, should give you a better idea of how fast the water is running behind Patrick. It is beginning to isolate a few patches of boulders/land, gradually creating tiny islands (hence the name, Happy Isles).

We took a shuttle to Curry Village, before heading out to a different path, thinking it would be a last and unlikely attempt to find our friends. When we saw them from the window, we couldn't believe it, and I ran to catch up after disembarking. By that point Patrick and I were a little worn out for climbing and the wind had picked up quite a bit, so our group decided to get a closer look at Yosemite Falls via a more leisurely walk. In the above and below picture, you can see both the upper and lower falls together.

Below: At the bottom of the falls, mist flooded the air!

The day didn't follow our original agenda, but you simply cannot go to Yosemite and not enjoy what you do see & experience, regardless if it was different from what you planned. Even after our fifth visit there is still so much to see, and we look forward to next time, whether its for climbing, more hiking- or whatever!