It’s been uber-long since my last post. Mainly because I was trying to adapt to some formatting updates. Who cares at this point; I’d rather just post an update for those who still tune in to my little blog.
After 6.5 years at Yahoo!, I said “see you later” to my Yahoo! family (they will all forever hold a special place in my heart) and am about to embark on a new adventure with a company in Mountain View, Rhythm NewMedia.
My team and I were impacted by some big business decisions to lower costs at Y!, so we worked through 2 months of transitioning business before saying sayonara to the big purple. I feel fortunate in the sense that my team and I had a 2-month head start to look for our next opportunities v.s. receiving walking papers same day like some of our other dear Y! friends (to those friends, I say to you: things will look up for you soon if they haven’t already – less drama for your mama on the outside, I tell ya). I hold nothing personal against the company; it’s business and I get it. I’m beyond ready to move on.
Back to my new exciting adventure. I am officially taking one ginormous step onto a new career/life path as my first day with Rhythm is TOMORROW! The company specializes in Mobile Video advertising. I step in as Ad Operations Manager for a team of Campaign Managers. It will be interesting to jump in as a player-coach in a brand, spanking new environment with brand, spanking new tools, but I am eager to dive in and learn. I love, love, LOVE people managing so I’m hoping to get up to speed as quickly as possible to devote some energy into doing what I think I do best. Working on that 30-60-90 day plan for myself as I type, so wish me lots of luck!
I was coming back back from a morning run this past weekend and as I ran past our new rose bush, I noticed the awesome dewdrops on our beautiful yellow roses that just bloomed. Our gardener scored us this rose bush for our side yard because he saw that someone was going to toss it. Instead of leaving it to die in someone’s pile of lawn clippings, he brought it over to our house and planted it by our fence. I was sure the thing had no life left; it was brown, wilted, and looked simply pathetic. After a few weeks of water and sunlight…
Made my second toy drop this past Friday (this was before the aforementioned creepy lurker incident when life was simpler and times were happier). I tied a cute little cupcake to the side door of a tutoring center in Sunnyvale, CA across from Fremont High School.
Hope someone takes this little one home and sends a snapshot of its adoption…
As I was checking out and taking photos of the progress of our home addition in the backyard tonight, I saw this creepy lurker’s hand pulling down a palm frond from our tree outside of our side yard as if he was using it to leverage himself to peek over our fence:
Like an idiot, I shouted, “HELLO?!” and scared him away instead of waiting for my money shot of him popping over my fence since I had my camera pointed right in his direction. I shouted to Christian and had him look over the fence as the guy ran away and hopped in his car. I threw my arm with camera in hand over the fence that I couldn’t see over and shot the picture in hope of capturing his ugly mug. Well, the above was all I got and it was dark. Thank goodness for the magic of Lightroom, but it still isn’t a clear shot of what this creeper looks like.
I don’t know what he was doing for sure or what his motive was for even being by our side yard fence, but whatever it was, it was not for any good purpose because the dude scurried away because he knew he was doing something shady.
See a creepy guy driving an old, white CRV? Slash his tires and get that money shot for me, would ya? Thanks.
Thanks to a posting by a Facebook friend a few days ago, I made my way into joining The Toy Society (www.thetoysociety.blogspot.com) and made my first drop today. Read all about the purpose and how it all works on the Toy Society page. See below for the handmade bunny I made this weekend and dropped off today. I tied the toy to the doorknob of a kindergarten classroom at a local church that was hosting a great event called the Empty Bowls fundraiser to raise money for helping the homeless. It was perfect. Now to hope that my lovely bunny finds its way into a loving home.
It was fun and it made me feel good. Great way to end my weekend
On this, my 30th birthday, I’ve finally decided to take a moment to update my blog. I must say this about every other entry but an update is looooong overdue. I’m trying to write this up while watching Mad Men (the last thing on my birthday to-do list for the evening), so please bear with me through any grammatical atrocities.
Before I get into the awesomeness that has been my 30th birthday today, I want to share the story of my past 6 months.
30 pounds for my 30th.
At the beginning of this year, Christian and I decided to get our act together and make some lifestyle changes. I think we had both hit a point over the holidays when we realized how unhappy we were with how we were feeling and looking. I was probably at my heaviest that I’d ever been in my life over the Christmas holiday… and we all know how feasting over holiday meals go… In mid January, I decided that enough was enough. I started teaching myself some simple things about calories, nutrition, well-balanced diets, and Christian and I started our lifestyle change. I decided to join Christian and some of our friends each weekend to ease my way into the world of running. I’d run some, walk some, run some, walk some more. We started to eat better meals – homemade, properly portioned,well-rounded meals (home-cooked meals now take about a half hour to an hour longer to prepare because I measure and calculate everything out). We watched our balance of calories, making sure to keep ourselves accountable for everything we consumed and balanced our days with physical activity. Some of you are probably thinking, “oh, so they went on a diet” but no, that’s not really the case. As I mentioned a few lines earlier, we decided to make a lifestyle change, so this isn’t a temporary fad we put in place to drop pounds; this is a permanent transformation in our way of thinking and behaving to make ourselves healthier, happier people.
Six months later, I’m now officially thirty pounds lighter and ten thousand times happier. When I lost ten pounds, a good friend of mine suggested that the next time I go to the grocery store, I pick up two sacks of potatoes to see how that extra ten pounds of weight really felt. Well, I never remembered to do that, so the next time I remember when I go into a store, I need to pick up 6 sacks of potatoes to account for the thirty pounds. Ooooh boy. I’m happier, I feel loads more confident about myself, and I don’t mind seeing myself in a mirror or in pictures these days. I don’t really deprive myself of anything I enjoy; I just enjoy it in moderation and/or balance it appropriately with working out. It’s all about discipline and balance. And teamwork. If Christian and I were not in on this together as a team, I’m sure neither of us would have been as successful as we have been.
This lifestyle alteration also has me doing more physical activity than I’ve ever done before in my life. When I first started running, I’d run two sides of a block before I had to stop for a walk break. Eventually, the walk breaks shortened and now, I can run for 7 continuous miles on a good day. No, not training for a marathon or half marathon. And no, not enjoying running itself either. I just enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes after I’m done. The increased caloric capacity to shove more food into my belly is also a plus To think, when I was a chubby junior high schoool pre-teen, I struggled through a 14 minute mile a week because I had to do it for a grade. Now, I’m choosing to do a 10:30 to 11:00 mile for way more than just a mile. I’m nuts. At least I’m happily nuts.
One last thought on this life change: eating better and working out allowed for me to drop 4 pant sizes since January. I’ve spent so much money shopping in the past several months because I kept outgrowing (or whatever the opposite of outgrowing is…) my clothes. Totally worth it though because shopping and trying on clothes is actually a fun thing for me to do these days
All right, enough of that. On to something else.
What I Did for My 30th Birthday.
I’llkeep this portion as brief as I can because frankly, I’m sleepy and I wanted to get this blog posted on my birthday but it looks like I’ll be missing that by several minutes… OH WELL.
Christian and I woke up around 7ish and went out for a 7 and an half mile run. 7.6 to be exact. That’s the most I’ve ever clocked in continuous running miles *pats self on back*
After we got back home and took our respective refreshing and very necessary showers, we picnicked in our backyard under our nice ginormous backyard tree. I love picnics and so rarely go on them, so this was fun
After lunch, we headed over to the movie theaters and treated ourselves to Toy Story 3. Lots of kids, but it actually wasn’t as annoying to be in the audience with them as I thought. Great movie – very emotional, actually.
Once the movie was over, we dashed over to the Tech Museum of Innovation and enjoyed a very educational and interesting exhibit on Genghis Khan. We walked around some of the other Tech exhibit halls after that was done, but didn’t end up staying for too long because we were both starving.
Dinner consisted of feasting on some yummalicious baby back ribs at Henry’s Hi-Life by the Shark Tank. MMMMMmmmm… ribs, baked potato with a scoop of butter crack and sour cream, and super-delish garlic bread. Oh, there was a salad of some sort somewhere in there too, but that was totally forgettable.
Since we were sort of in the neighborhood, we decided to check out one of our favorite Target stores – the one off of Coleman is pretty nicely kept. Didn’t buy anything exciting, but I just enjoy walking around that store and looking at stuff.
We got home and had a small Mad Men marathon to close out the evening. I tuckered poor Christian out with my very long list of birthday activities but he’s a total trooper. I’m the luckiest girl in the world to have someone like him love me so much that he’s willing to go through all of the craziness and never-ending list of activities with zero complaint just to make me happy. Thank you for making me feel so special.
All in all, it’s been a really fabulous 2010 so far and a really fabulous start to my 30′s
My mom found a cute little Terrier mix laying on her front porch on Saturday afternoon and called me in a panic. She didn’t know what to do with the dog and wanted me to come over and work it out. Christian and I decided to take her in and clean her up while we are on hunt for her owners or find her a new home (no, we can’t keep her… my allergies and sanity can’t take it). She’s not potty trained and I don’t think had ever been on a proper walk, so we are working on that with her everyday (she needs to learn the rules if she’s going to stay in our house). She’s a fun, cute little girl who needs a loving home by Thanksgiving… Otherwise, we will have to take her to a no-kill shelter. I’d rather have her find a good home with someone we know or at least kind of know (friends of friends count) but since we’re heading out of town the day before Thanksgiving (we will be taking Lily with us – not both dogs), we need to figure out what to do.
Here’s a video Christian made of the dog (we call her Dottie for now) and Lily:
Help us spread the word and let us know if anyone would like to care for this cutie! Otherwise, we’ll be dropping her off at the humane society on Tuesday.
Soooo… we took Lily in to see the vet on Monday (the day after the seizure drama). Her checkup was good – perfectly healthy pup based on the initial exam. The vet took some of her blood to run some tests. He told us that the blood test could possibly reveal issues with the liver or kidney. It could also come back with nothing, which could possibly mean doggy epilepsy… whatever it was, we wouldn’t find anything out until end of day Monday or Tuesday morning. Ugh. Worry worry worry.
The vet tech called me this morning with the blood test results. “Perfectly healthy” was the verdict based on the results that returned. There is absolutely nothing wrong with her organs, nothing wrong with anything in her blood, nada, zip. She said that it could have been an epileptic episode, but I also asked if it was a possibility that she maybe swallowed something toxic because she was walks around our lawn and tends to lick paws clean (yes, like a cat… but she’s not a cat – I swear!) AND Christian had put some snail bait out two weeks ago. She confirmed that it was a real possibility that she could have stepped in some runoff that was tainted with bait and ingested that when she licked her paws.
So this means either no more lawn play time for a while or a really thorough wipe-down after each trip out there.
Oh, one more thing that the vet tech mentioned… A seizure once a year is nothing to be alarmed about (not like it’s okay, but it’s not an indication of anything serious). Anything more frequent than that and we might have to treat her with medication for the rest of her life. Praying that she stays seizure-free forever…
Today was a crazy, whacked-out kind of a day. I went walking with my good friend Kat this morning and when I came home, our dog Lily was acting strange. She was crouched over and ran around the kitchen that way for a bit, ran into the blinds for the sliding glass door to the backyard, then scurried under the kitchen table. I thought that she maybe needed to do her business, so I opened the back door and let her out. She darted out and headed for the grass. I could see that as she was heading out there, she was trying really hard hold her stuff in until she hit the grass. After she did what she needed to, she came back to me at the back door but was still doing the weird crouch walk. Figuring that maybe she wasn’t quite done yet, I coaxed her back out to the grass. Once she got back out there, she started walking around really strangely, then lost her balance, toppled over on her side, and kept trying to get up. It was as if the back half of her body was no longer in her control. She was shaking, kept trying to get up, but then just kept toppling over. She did this a few times until she managed to limp her way onto the concrete part of our patio and puked her guts out. Once she finished, she walked around a little more and headed back to the grass. I had no idea what was going on and was in a panic. Not knowing what to do, I yelled for Christian to come out so I didn’t have to watch this alone. I asked him to try and contact the vet as I watched her collapse in the grass. Her legs were bent funny, her body was shaking, and she starting whining. I could tell she was as freaked out as I was. I remembered that I had the vet’s number in my phone which happened to be in my pocket, so I called. I got a vet tech on the phone and told her everything that had happened and she said that Lily might have had a seizure or stroke. !!! The office was closed today, but she suggested that I take Lily’s temperature and if the episode persisted or if her temperature was over 102.5, that I take her to the emergency room (which she mentioned would be pretty expensive). While I was on the phone with her, I was able to get Lily to come off the grass and lay down on the concrete where I sat. She was shivering and weak. She laid her head on my lap and was drooling excessively. Her back half was still shaking and seemed a bit out of her control. I started crying on the phone because I didn’t know why this was happening and how I could make it stop, but the tech really helped talk me through everything and helped to map out my next steps. After I was done talking to her, I let Lily rest there for a few minutes and just rubbed her belly. There was nothing else I could do but wait it out!
After a little while, I was able to get her to stand up and walk back into the house. The episode was over and now she was just really weak. She went straight for bed and laid down. She still had some drooling issues, so I grabbed a towel and wiped her down. I sat with her for about an hour while she just laid there. It was so sad to think about all that had happened and watch her lay her, so weak. I couldn’t help but check her breathing every few minutes – I know, I’m crazy. At this point, she seemed tired but okay. I brushed her teeth and left her alone and she recovered some of her energy as the day went on.
Poor Lily had a hard day
Our friends Jason & Sharon stopped by so Jason could get a quick tutorial on some DVD functionality from Christian – nerd-type stuff. Our friends Justin, Natalie, and their son Jacob came by not to long after to drop off some things and catch up. It was a full house and I wasn’t sure how Lily would do with the troubled day she had. Little Jacob is 14 months old and is the cutest little boy! He has so much personality and such a charming little face.
Jacob being cute
He took to Lily right away and she let him chase after her until he tired himself (and her) out.
Jacob & Lily
Once everyone left, Lily was out like a light. She’s still out as I type. We’re taking her to the vet first thing tomorrow morning to get her checked out and make sure she’s okay. We still aren’t sure what happened or what caused it (which totally freaks me out) but for now she’s resting.
I’m doing a quick blog update while the boys are out shopping for nerdy computer parts (by boys, I mean Christian and our friend Kevin who is visiting from L.A.)
I baked my cinnamon bread last night. Yum again. Cross one off the list.
I had crocheted a few things that were not on my list before I created my actual list, and wanted to mention them here:
Moonfruit – for a contest that moonfruit.com was having:
Cheetos Giant Cheese Puffs for a Co-worker as a thank-you gift for my free iPhone case (Giant cheese puffs are an inside joke):
A slice of bacon for my manager who gave me a WWBD (What Would Bacon Do?) Spinning wheel from Kentucky:
2 Cupcake Scarves that friends of a friend wanted to buy (they look indentical, I know):
And finally, sushi (maguro, to get specific) that I made for Kevin (our friend in town): (JK – I hope this wasn’t disappointing. Glad I already had this one cranked out to show you!)
I’m currently working on some bookmarks, but also trying to re-read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince before the movie comes out Wednesday, so I might be a little slow in my crafting this weekend/coming week. We’ll see.
I’ve been sitting in the office/craft corner for 15 minutes debating about which craft project to start up next. I just finished making 2 cupcake scarves for some friends of a friend (first time selling stuff I’ve made and it’s kinda weird, but whatever). Now that those are done, I have a bazillion other things I want to make – just not sure where to start…
Here’s my list:
Crochet sushi
Crochet turkey drumstick
Crochet pear
Crochet ice cream sandwich
Crochet ice cream cone
Crochet chocolate chip cookies
Crochet strawberries
Crochet bunny rabbit
Crochet roses
Crochet Sack Boy
Crochet mini-monkey
Crochet blanket (that’s a huge project)
Make Cute Stuff tote
Make Cute Stuff sack
Bake bread (to be done on 7/8)
Sculpt Fimo cupcakes for glazing
Sculpt Fimo ice cream
Make bookmarks
Finish scrapbooking the rest of 2008 (I left off in March 2008 – another huge project)
Make Iron Man blankets (2)
Make pocketed skirt (haven’t decided on red or blue yet)
Make bubble skirt
I’m sure there’s more to add to the list. Those are just the first few things I was able to come up with immediately. Each project has a purpose and several have more flexible timelines than others.
I keep looking at my notebook every few days and come so close to finishing up my Scotland blog experience, but then I look at the amount of stuff I wrote down and it totally turns me off. There have been multiple occasions when I have found myself wanting to blog about something not Scotland-related, but then decide not to because I don’t want to “interrupt” the flow of my blog. I’ve decided to say “screw it” today. Why torture myself when I don’t have to? I’ll come back to the rest of the Scotland trip someday. Just not today.
So many things have happened in the past several months, I don’t even know where to begin…
I got an iPhone. It’s super-fantastic and maybe I’ll blog from my phone one day. We waited for it at 5AM at Valley Fair. They opened the doors at 6 or so (they were originally scheduled to open at 7) and we had our new phones before breakfast. I had some phone number porting issues, but that’s all squared away now. WOOHOO! Oh, it was also the day after my birthday. Great birthday gift to myself (well, technically, the Vander Wals made it happen since they picked me as a winner of the iPhone for a work contest
Speaking of birthday, I went to work on that day and we went to St. John’s for lunch – great turkey burgers! Christian took me to Straits for dinner and then we went to Frozo for some froyo after. It was a great birthday! We took Friday off and lined up for our new phones. We pretty much spent the day setting up apps for our phones. Nerds, I know.
That evening (we’re on the evening after my birthday here), we and a few friends went to a Filipino restaurant called The Intramuros in South San Francisco. A former chef at Yahoo! is co-investor in the restaurant and we dined with him and his wife that night. They are such wonderful people and the restaurant is AWESOME. The atmosphere was so classy and the food was SOOOOO good. Please please PLEASE get out there if you have a chance. It doesn’t look like a whole lot from the outside, but the inside will knock your socks off. I can’t wait to go back.
We hosted a nacho party that weekend to celebrate my birthday with a few friends. It was delicious and fun.
This past weekend, Christian and I shot engagement photos for some friends. It was our first engagement photo session ever, but I think we did fairly well. We went to Golden Gate Park and got some fun shots. We posted some on our Flickr for preview. Depending on when you view the following links, you will see either a few samples, or the entire collection (his and mine are separated, so you’d have to look at both links.) http://www.flickr.com/photos/remfan/sets/72157620756053296/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/sleepyeve/sets/72157620792948846/
That’s all I’ll blog for now. Promise to have more soon since I’ve been keeping myself busy!
I’m averaging about 1 blog every two weeks here… sorry about that. Special apologies to Jen since she wanted me to make sure to update often so she’d have something interesting to read
Day 5
Day 5 of our Scotland trip was our last day in the Strathyre cabins. We woke up early, cleared everything out of the fridges and rooms, and checked out. Christian showed the rangers at the front desk photos of the pine marten. They were so excited and gave us their email address to send photos to. Too bad the address was just a hair illegible enough for us to not be able to figure out what the correct address is supposed to be…
Clearing out the cabin means finishing up the milk…
Hogwarts Express Trestle
Once we checked out, we headed north towards Inverness to check out Loch Ness. We stopped in Killin to take in views of the falls where I proceeded to FALL. Yes, I fell flat on my butt and my camera came down with me. At least I was able to spend a good 15 minutes taking some great photos before I went down. I had slipped on a wet rock and my entire right foot landed in a puddle while my camera crashed against a rock, making a tragic “crack” sound. It was sad, depressing, angering, embarrassing, and any other negative -ing you could think of. My first concern was for my camera – I made Christian rescue it before helping me up. He opened up the the lens cap and the glass on the lens filter was shattered to bits. I had no idea whether or not the lens itself was okay (the lens that we just bought a week before the trip). Next up was me. I was fine – no broken bones or bruises. Just a hurt ego. My right shoe was soaking wet and the entire butt of my jeans was soaking wet and black with mud. I hate dirt. I hate mud even more. This was disgusting. Luckily, since we were traveling, we had all of the clothes that we packed for our trip to the cabins in duffels in the backseat of the car *whew* And THANK GOODNESS that I always pack a spare pair of underwear and socks because both were soaked with gross, muddy water. I even had a spare pair of shoes – go me.
Falls of Killin… before I fell
After I got changed in a random inn’s restroom, we headed up the windy road to Inverness. Very long, windy road. Not ideal for those prone to car sickness. Like me. After a 3 hour drive, we made it past Inverness and headed to the Loch Ness Hotel & Lodge to experience the official Loch Ness Visitor Centre (which we thought we were getting in for free, but ended up only getting a slight discount). The experience was LAME. Don’t ever go there – it consisted of a boring, out-dated, uber-cheesy movie and then hallways of posterboards covered with Loch Ness myths/stories/legends. I was pretty disappointed, but Keith was pissed.
LAME
We continued up the road to seek out a castle that we saw from the drive up, hoping to get a better view of the Loch and to, of course, check out a cool old castle. Once we found it, we discovered that there was an admission cost (which was pretty stupid considering how much of it there really was to see). Needless to say, we didn’t go in; we just took lots of pictures around the place (which was a little challenging with all the fencing that they put up).
Urquhart castle with Loch Ness in the background.
We decided to drive back a bit and check out the town some more before stopping for lunch at a small cafe. The food was very so-so. I had battered haddock fish with a baked potato and veggies. We ordered a side of fries that never arrived. That was lame too.
After lunch, we were all pretty fed up with Loch Ness and Inverness in general. Keith was exhausted from the drive and considered looking for a hostel to spend the night in instead of making the long drive home to Edinburgh. The cafe folks had mentioned to him that there was a youth hostel nearby right up the road that we were on, so we followed the directions. After about 15 minutes of driving, we saw nothing that resembled a youth hostel, so that was the breaking point and Keith decided that it would be best to just head home. He downed a TON of Coke Zeroes during the drive and we all played name the celebrity for about 3 hours in hopes of keeping Keith awake for the drive. We made several pit stops (too much Coke Zero for Keith) before finally making it back to Stefania’s flat in Edinburgh. I did a much needed load of wash and had to wash the pants I fell in twice before the stain started to disappear. I even threw my sneakers for a good wash. Felt good to get stuff cleaned.
We spent the rest of the night playing MarioKart and watched a DVD of comic Michael McIntyre (funny guy). Loooooong day. Day 6
We all slept in the next day (a Saturday) and I think I slept in too much because my back was hurting by the time I got up. Christian and I played some more MarioKart and checked out the weather on the Wii to pass some time while waiting for Stefania and Keith to get up. Once we had breakfast (and tried French Fancies), we all headed out and hit the Royal Botanic Gardens. We took lots of pictures and explored lots of neat and interesting plants. We explored the giant greenhouses there and ran into some humidity issues – our camera lenses were fogging up too much to take decent photos in there.
A plant
Greenhouse
Bananas!
After the greenhouses, we went to the Terrace Cafe in the gardens for lunch. I had a scone and chicken soup. Both were quite tasty
Scone!
Once were done with lunch, Keith drove us to New Berwick beach. The clouds were amazingly puffy and the sand was very gingery-colored. It was a neat little beach. Stefania and the boys had ice cream. Christian’s was an ice cream sandwich of sorts. It looked tasty.
New Berwick Beach
Ice cream… mmm…
As we headed back to the flat, we made a stop at Keith’s grandmother’s place where Christian and I hung out in the car while Keith and Stefania paid her a quick visit. She hadn’t been doing very well health-wise, so this was important to Keith.
When we got back to Stefania’s flat, we had hummus and carrot sticks. What a great combo that I had never thought of. We didn’t want to have a full dinner because we made plans to see “Gran Torino” and get hot dogs later that evening.
“Gran Torino” played in a movie theater right behind Stefania’s flat called the Dominion Theater. The place was BEAUTIFUL. The theater that we were in had leather loveseats and little tables with a small can of pringles for each patron. I had a hot dog, sweet corn (kettle corn), and a sparkling water. Our seats were in the very back under a canopy of “stars.” It was so awesome. The movie was great as well! Surprisingly funny.
The Dominion Movie Theater Seats
The Dominion Movie Theater
We headed back to the flat and watched more Michael McIntyre while playing Apples to Apples – British Isles Edition once we were done with the movies. Once we had our fill of fun and games for the night, Christian and I gave Keith the birthday gift we brought over for him (cordless Wii sensor bar and several bars of Ghiradelli chocolate). And that was that for day 6.
Day 7
Sunday AKA day 7 was Keith’s actual birthday. We went to Montpeliers Bar and Brasserie for a Scottish breakfast. I had a mixed grill breakfast which consisted of: Sausage, bacon, eggs, potato scone, haggis, black pudding, tomato, mushrooms, and baked beans. It was a full breakfast! I had a bite of the black pudding and gave the rest to Keith. Not a fan of that one… Christian had french toast. It looked yummy too… if I cared for french toast.
My Scottish breakfast
Christian’s Scottish breakfast
Scone! (Christian’s)
We decided to have a casual day and hit up an electronic store, potentially shopping for a television for Stefania… and then we went to the Forbidden Planet Comic book store – Keith’s hangout They had a doll of Blanc Neige in the storefront window. I took a photo of it because I voiced that character for a game called Shining Tears. Thought it was pretty cool.
Blanc Neige at Forbidden Planet
Keith drove us to Hollyrood Park and we decided to climb Arthur’s Seat. Keith and Stefania decided to stay in the car and wait (smartly so, we later realized). Arthur’s Seat isn’t a super-long way up; we just happened to pick a steep side to climb. Once we were about halfway up, the wind decided to pick up suddenly and I felt like I was about to blow over. The closer we got to the top, the worse the weather turned. The wind decided to pick up even more and then pellets of rain shot down at our faces. It felt like thousands of tiny razor blades cutting against my face. Ouch. Once we got to the top, we held on for dear life and tried to take as many pictures as we could without falling off. We had hoped to get some beautiful shots of the city, but the weather had turned so bad that there wasn’t much of a view left. Trying to make our way down was scarier than trying to climb up. Wet rocks were now in play and the wind was still blowing strong. We eventually made it back down, and it felt very rewarding in the the long run. I felt rather accomplished.
View from Arthur’s Seat
At the peak of Arthur’s Seat
On our way back from Arthur’s Seat, we decided to hit a few more electronic stores (Curry’s, PC World – both of which looked like CompUSA, but with appliances… poor CompUSA.) We also went to a catalog store called Argos and then a Borders. Came away with nothing.
When we got back to the flat, Stefania decided to give Keith his birthday from her and several of his friends – Guitar Hero: World Tour. He loved it and started playing right away.
Keith the Guitar Hero
Stefania made reservations at Karen Wong’s Chinese restaurant for Keith and his friends (as a surprise to Keith), so we took a taxi there. Karen Wong was very energetic and happy! She was very eccentric and so very entertaining. The food was slightly different from Chinese food you’d find here. I had a lemon sorbet for dessert. Keith had an upwards of about 5 beers or so. He had a very happy birthday!
Karen Wong – A Scottish Chinese Woman
A very happy birthday for Keith… after about the 5th beer.
So it’s been how long since my last update…? Sorry about leaving folks hanging on day 3. It was a really long day, so you have to understand that I was just trying to give you a feel for what it must have felt like for me on that bike trail
On to day 4 – This was a busy day. It started with a freaky deaky dream I had about a little girl who needed medical help and ended up dying while doctors focused their efforts on someone else. It was really sad and disturbing, but thankfully, was also only a dream. We didn’t sleep in too much that day since there was a lot on our to-do list for the day. We decided that a distillery tour was a must for this trip, so we made our way towards Perth in search of one. We first stopped at a cool looking place called Deanston Distillery; they didn’t have tours, so we moved on. They were able to recommend another distillery to us before we left though, so that was incredibly nice of them. We headed to Blackford to Tullibardine Whiskey Distillery and made a tour appointment for 3 PM. Since it was still something like 10 or 11 AM, we had a lot of time to kill before the tour and ended up wandering the rest of the strip mall where the distillery was located. There was a Baxter’s Soup shop we wandered into that had some really tasty looking goodies. Baxter’s is like the equivalent of Campbell’s soup for us, I think. They had tons of stuff there, ranging from whiskey to soups to jams. They also had a gift section with lotions, candles, books, etc. There was a mini market section with refrigerated goods as well. The place was huge.
Deanston – Didn’t tour this.
Tullibardine – We toured this one.
Once we got bored of the strip mall, Keith drove us all through Perth to find something interesting to check out. Nothing stood out in Perth, so we kept going until we hit Scone. We pulled into the obscure parking lot of Scone Palace and decided to walk around. The place was pretty empty as it seems we hit it during an off-season, so they didn’t have any tours going. That meant we were pretty much on our own, so we wandered around for a bit. We saw peacocks, an old coronation site, a very old graveyard, giant trees, and a cool outdoor maze called Murray Star Maze. Not too shabby for being on our own.
Scone Palace Old graveyard
One of the oldest gravestones there
Murray star maze
Peacock – reminds me of Titania in her bower
We finally took our tour of Tullibardine and had to opportunity to sample whiskies. I passed on the sampling, but Keith, Stefania, and Christian tried a few sips. It was a neat tour, though. I bought my dad a bottle of whiskey as a souvenir and some Tullibardine chocolates for my co-workers.
Tullibardine
Old whiskey barrels 1488 - King James passed through to pick up some whiskey
Whiskey tasting
After Tullibardine, we headed to Stirling and hate a super-late lunch at The River House restaurant before dricing up the hill to the castle. The late lunch deal was faaaaaabulous. I had angus steak and french fries – so tasty and super-duper affordable (7 pounds or something). We didn’t expect it to be great or anything because of the price, but were so pleased that the food and service was so good (it looked like a pretty hoity toity restaurant).
Tasty dinner
View of Stirling castle from The River House restaurant
When we got to Stirling castle, we walked around town I took a bunch of pictures. Stirling castle was closed because it was off-season, but the view was still cool.
Loch Lomond was next on Keith’s list of to-sees, so we headed there. We were racing the sunset and got there just as the sun was going down. The view was beautiful. The sky was colored with pinks and oranges galore and there were no power lines in sight. Beautiful.
After the sun went down, we headed back to the cabins and watched lots of TV to unwind (it was a really eventful day!) We made salmon and pasta for dinner and watched hours and hours of “Scrubs” and “Supernatural.” At one point, we heard some noise on our balcony, so we paused to see what was out there – lo and behold – it was the pine marten again! It made two appearances that night while we watched TV.
We went to bed early that night since our plan was to get up early the next day to travel to Loch Ness (3.5-hour drive) and head home afterward.
Our second day at the cabins was an uber-active one. I didn’t take too many photos that day because I wasn’t man enough to haul my camera bag around. I started the day with another dose of Weetabix…mmm…
After breakfast, we went down to the main office to rent bicycles. It was a nice, sunny day – perfect day to be out and about. I was a little nervous about hopping on a bike since I hadn’t been on one that wasn’t stationary since I was maybe 11. I couldn’t keep my balance very well with my camera bag so I had to dump it back at the cabin. Boo on that since that meant I couldn’t take any pictures of the painful inclines and curves I encountered during the bike ride (Yeah, I’m a baby. So what.) We pedaled our way to the tiny little town of Strathyre and encountered some Highland cows, sheep, and some scary, curvy dirt paths – crappy to walk a bike up through and really terrifying to ride a bike down through.
The bike route we took into Strathyre.
Once we finally did make it to Strathyre, I was dying of thirst so we stopped and the first market we saw and bought some refreshing sparkling water. After we all cooled down, we walked our bikes over to a little old inn called the Munro Inn. It was a rickety little place that had absolutely no patrons that we saw. I ordered my first scone – a fruit scone, and Christian ordered a plain one. It was deeeeeeeelish. The cream, the jam… so yummy. We also shared some garlic potato wedge – also surprisingly yummy. The innkeeper appeared a bit shifty and rickety… much like the inn. He was a skinny, lanky older man who needed to scrub his fingernails. Nice guy though, I guess. Once we were done with our mid-afternoon snack, we headed off to a nearby playground (they call it a play park); we couldn’t resist the tire swing (though I didn’t play on it).
We started heading back and decided to stop at the nearby stream to skip some stones and race some branches. Super-simple fun (even though I really suck at skipping stones). Keith decided to take his shoes and socks off and test out the water. That was pretty funny considering the water was ice-cold, he jumped out as fast as he jumped in.
Once we got our fill of stone skipping and freezing, we rode back. Christian swallowed a bug (second one he’s swallowed in his lifetime). We retrned the bikes and headed back to our cabin. Everyone went to rest and I was still hyped up on energy despite the embarassingly painful bike ride, so I decided to go on a lone mini-hike and take some photos. When I came back, Stefania and Christian were up and decided they wanted to go on a walk to, so I was all for it! We took the short walk down to the loch (Loch Lubnaig as mentioned in my previous post) and took some pictures.
Christian & Stefania
We made pasta with red sauce and roasted veggies for dinner. No dessert on this night, but we were pretty full off of pasta (had tons of leftovers). After dinner, we dove into some more episodes of Supernatural (yay!) and played with the Wii. While we were watching Supernatural, I heard loud shuffling outside on our balcony (I sat right next to the window). Our visitor was none other than the Pine Marten! The critter came to pick up the peanuts we left for him/her. Christian pulled out his camera and snapped some so-so pictures of it. It was so dark and scurried away as soon as we opened the door. Oh well. Still neat that it visited us though. We were told that it was a frequent visitor of cabin 26, but no one else ever really reported seeing it anywhere else. So yay us!
I’m able to blog about each day we spent in Scotland post-trip because I kept detailed notes on what happened each day (a journal of sorts but with bullet points). The last two bullet points I listed for day 3 were:
The showers have no water pressure (it’s true – took forever to wash soap off).
Keith is a bit sick – the bike ride did his asthma no good
I’m a bit backlogged, but here’s a recap of day 2 of our Scotland trip.
After a long and eventful day one of traveling and sight seeing (I missed mentioning the crazy Yew tree we went to see before heading to the Forestry Commission yesterday – see pic at the bottom of this blog post), Christian and I decided to sleep in for 12 hours before starting day two. His sister Stefania lives in 2 bedroom flat with her roommate Catherine, but they also have a box room (not allowed to call it a bedroom because it doesn’t have a window – true story). Stefania placed a blow-up king sized air bed in there and it turned into a great guest room, so we took full advantage and slept as much as we could. Once we finally did get up, we had some Weetabix cereal. This is something I have not seen in the U.S. and I wish we had it because it was really tasty and healthy. We had the Weetabix Mini Chocolate Crisps. Mmmm… Mr. Weetabix, please export your Minibix Chocolate Mini Crisps straight to California, thanks.
After breakfast, we all packed up Keith’s car with our duffels, Keith’s bag of technology (consists of Wii, controllers, and media box filled with tons of shows and movies) and enough food to prepare meals for our 4-day (3 days, really) cabin stay. We headed up through the little town of Callander to our cabin in Strathyre (on the edge of Strathyre, I imagine… the place was somewhere between Callander and Strathyre). We checked in at the main office and drove over to our cabin – cabin #25. It was beautiful. There was a bedroom and bathroom downstairs as well as upstairs. We claimed the downstairs one that had two twin beds separated in the room, so we tried to push them together to make a nice king-sized one. The kitchen was stocked with silverware, glassware, cookware, and a little fridge. The balcony was very large – enough room for two round tables and 4 chairs at each table (they were out there, but we didn’t use them). We had a great view of Loch (lake) Lubnaig. We were yards away from the loch; it was awesome. The weather was beautiful and the water was incredibly still. The Loch was like a large, long mirror that reflected the mountains on the other side of us and the bright blue sky above us. It felt pretty unreal to be out there in the middle of so much natural beauty.
Our cabin – #25
The inside of the cabin
Loch Lubnaig
We decided to sign up for a night hike later that evening, so we headed to Callander to shop for some flashlights (they call them torches). We parked by Callander Meadows and took in the sights and then walked into a few shops and looked around. Once we found our torches and hit a few other little stores, we headed back towards the cabins. We stopped along the way to visit Hamish the Highland cow. Hamish was huge.
The night hike was a light to moderate hike with a few slight inclines and two painful sets of stone steps. Our guide was one of the park rangers (Ranger Will) and was uber-knowledgeable about the surrounding plants and animals. He taught us about the Pine Marten, which is a ferret-like animal that eats grey squirrels (remember the Pine Marten for next few blogs). He pulled a few sprigs of pine and put them in a thermos of hot water to brew us some pine needle tea. Apparently, you can brew tea out of almost any thing out in that forest. He also told us about these red mushrooms with white spots (you may remember them from Super Mario) called the Fly Agaric which I found to be super-interesting. These mushrooms are highly poisonous and psychoactive. According to Will, the Santa Claus with flying reindeer story stems from hallucinations as a result of accidental consumption of this fungus. Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is also tied to these fungi because deer can safely consume the Fly Agaric and they actually turn their noses red after consumption. The deer that consume these mushrooms filtered out the poisons but their pee still contained the hallucinogenic chemicals, so people would take advantage of this during the winter and eat yellow snow to get their highs. Weird, kinda gross, but neat, right? The overall hike was about 3 miles. Towards the end of the hike, we hooted and listened for owls, had sonar sensors to listen for bats, (zippo results for both), and played a bit with our night vision. Once the hike was over, we all headed back to the main office and tried out some of that pine needle tea that Will made earlier in the hike. It smelled really nice, tasted a little weird, but totally worth trying. We walked away with a bucket of peanuts to bring back to our cabin to see if we could lure a Pine Marten over to our cabin.
Once we got back to our cabin, we put some peanuts out on one of the plastic tables on our balcony and then had dinner. We had salmon with garlic & onion, roasted mixed veggies, and Cadbury eggs that we picked up from the store earlier that day. We also pigged out on Winegums. These are gummy, fruit-flavored candies that are a cross between Swedish Fish and Jujy Fruits, I think. They’re really good and I wish we had them here in the U.S.
Peanuts on the table for the Pine Marten
After dinner, we relaxed on the couches and watched “Superbad” and an episode of “Supernatural.” I crocheted while watching these and managed to finish the cupcake scarf that I started working on just before we left.
And that, my friends, was the end of day 2 (you see why I’ve taken so long to blog about the trip???)
I haven’t been able to make much time to blog about the trip as I go like I was hoping to… Boo on me for that. It’s just been busy and by the time I get on for some quality internet time, it’s 1 AM here (like right now).
We went to Arthur’s Seat today. It’s a really high hill in the center of Edinburgh that provides an amazing panoramic view of the city. Unfortunately, the weather’s been the coldest it’s been since we’ve been here (we were pretty spoiled with warm weather) and the wind decided to pick up a LOT while we were about mid way up the hill. It’s a little bit of a steep climb, so having the wind try to blow me off the rocks as I was climbing up was a tad scary. I didn’t think I would last, but I made it to the top of the peak and was abused by wind and pellets of rain for a few minutes while Christian and I sat on the monument up there. It was a little scary trying to move around and get into position to take pictures. Climbing down was also freaky since the rocks were kind of slippery from the rain that knocked us around. Christian and I had to brace each other at one point in order to take some quick pictures. Sounds ridiculous, but it was pretty wild wind.
Lots more to write about from today, but I think I will just have to do a detailed blog of each day when I get back.
To think, when I was a chubby junior high schoool pre-teen, I struggled through a 14 minute mile a week because I had to do it for a grade. Now, I’m choosing to do a 10:30 to 11:00 mile for way more than just a mile. I’m nuts. At least I’m happily nuts.
