osheas::blog

We are taking a week semi-off (we have our computers and cell phones with us) and going to visit family in Colorado. We drove out with a friend who was dead-heading a car to Aspen. We just spent two days in Aspen (awesome! who needs winter in Aspen when there's summer in Aspen?) running and biking and staying at a wonderful B&B (they were great - we had new cameras shipped there and they had no problem signing for them & holding them for us) then took a bus to Glenwood Springs today where we have already had massages and a lovely dinner at the Hotel Colorado, which I have decided (this being my third trip)  is one of my favorite places on Earth.

Yesterday quite by accident we had the chance to go on a walk-through of a brand new 10 million dollar house in the foothills above downtown Aspen. Wow! I've never been inside a 10 million dollar house, but if this place was any example - whoa! Six bedrooms, seven and a half baths, two media rooms, three fireplaces, two master bedrooms (one was a guest master bedroom); the list of amazing stuff went on and on. We spent some time contemplating who among the people we know who we might coerce into joining us in investing in the ten million dollar house. In the end we decided to  look for something in the under ten million dollar range. So it goes.

Pics so far are here.

It was lots of fun and as cool as I thought it would be. The food was yummy and the atmosphere so pleasant AND you get an amazing view of Fantasmic.

The iPhone is one year old today! Happy birthday, little buddy!

Some time ago a friend introduced me to the term serendipitous sarching, where looking for one thing leads to another thing, which leads to another thing, which leads to another thing... It put a name to something I had been doing for years. Serendipitous searching was why I got a graduate degree in Library Science, so I could get paid to spend my life looking for things that would lead me to look for other things. Awesome!

So there I was as the afternoon wound down today, reading my latest blog feeds - something I try to do several times a week. (And I try really hard not to just select the Mark All News As Read option which is cheating but when the New York Times feed alone has 385 unread items what the hell choice do I HAVE?!? But I digress.) Anyway, I was innocently plowing through the Huffington Post feed (huff, huff, huff) and ran across an uncharacteristically lighthearted subject line that read: Ed Martin: Watch Weezer and Test Your Viral Video IQ. That grabbed me so much that I clicked on the subject line and the whole entry popped up in Firefox. It was all about a new music video from Weezer called Pork and Beans (alert: this tune is seriously catchy! you will hear it in your head for some time if you listen to it!!) and how the video incorporates sntaches from all sorts of Internet memes. Okay, that was bad enough and I of course had to go listen to the video then go back and check out the Weezer website. But then the post also referenced an episode of South Park called Meet the Internet Stars (which I had to go and watch, which led me to check out more Season 12 episodes (and let me just say, "Whoa! South Park has been on TV for 12 seasons!?!"). Between the Weezer music video and South Park, I was alarmed by how many of the memes I recognized, but there were a few that were new to me. Like Numa Numa (15 million views - okay, 15 million and one). Or Miss Teen USA 2007 (26 million views).

The Internet is such a wonderful thing! I'm going to go watch Numa Numa again. Or maybe Peanut Butter Jelly Time (6.9 million views). Or the Llama Song (4.2 million views).

This just in from the "Should This Make Us Feel Better about the $$$ We Just Shelled Out for That New PC?" department: Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, has announced that anyone buying a new computer with Vista as the OS can downgrade it to XP for free if they don't like Vista.

I was thinking of Norman MacLean's book A River Runs Through It the other day, and the last line, "I am haunted by waters."

I am haunted by poodles.

Greetings! It was quite a weekend, this weekend just past. Actually, it was just a hell of a day. It started early with the 15th annual running of Chuck's El Prieto Handicap. This was a downhill year, which means a good part of the course (a lot of which was single track trail) was, well, downhill. STEEP downhill. On trails that haven't been maintained since the mid 1980's. Given these facts, it may seem odd that I should have even attempted the course. But hey, if Chuck and all of his friends can do it so can I!! This is the second time I've run it downhill and this year I got cocky. I got to feeling like Daniel Day Lewis in the opening sequence of Last of the Mohicans when he's running like his feet never touched the ground through a forest.

So there I was, running like my feet were never touching the ground when one of my feet, which were in fact touching the ground, tripped over a rock and I went SPLAT! on the trail. I slid along the trail and whacked another rock with my knee then slid on the same knee a ways down the trail and as always threw out my left hand to catch my fall. Not being a wimp (and being horribly embarrassed), I jumped up and said to nobody in particular (one or two runners stopped to see if I was okay), "I'm fine, it was nothing!" and kept going. The knee was throbbing some, and I knew I had scraped it, but figured I'd just ignore it - it didn't hurt that badly. So there's the kneecap.

Continuing along the trail, about a mile further along, I was again leaping like a gazelle through a particularly rocky patch, when my left foot stepped wrong and I felt my ankle go WAY over in a direction that didn't seem good. It certainly didn't feel good. I thought I was done at that point, and once again, a couple of people stopped to see how I was doing. Again I said, "It's okay, I'll walk it off. It's not bad." And sure enough, after walking about an eighth of a mile, I was able to slowly start working back to a run. The ankle felt okay, but the foot hurt like a son of a gun. Since nothing was swelling, I figured I was good to go. So there's the ankle.

I made it to the end without falling again (yay, me!). When I got to the end, Chuck's only comment was that I had dirt on my face. That's how much he loves me (kidding, honey, kidding!). At the finish, we noted that my boss, her husband, and our good friend Carole, who were all hiking the course, hadn't finished yet, so I went back up the trail with Mia to find them. They were at the start of the last portion of single track trail, all doing fine, just going slow and enjoying the day (smart plan!). They had their dog Mac with them. He's a big love of a German Shepherd who is inordinately fond of water. So there we were, walking along the last bit of trail, when Mac sees a pool of water just off the trail on the other side of a bunch of boulders. Off he goes and throws himself in the water, happily paddling around. Then he tried to get out and couldn't. Uh-oh. I should mention at this point that I had been running with my iPod nano in the back pocket of my running shorts. So when we saw that Mac was stuck, since my running shoes were already all wet from crossing the streams earlier in the course, I volunteered to get in and help Mac. Mia heroically jumped in with me, paddling around both of us and getting herself out (what a good dog she is!). We got Mac out safely after I was submerged almost to my shoulders and that was that. Until I went to get in the car later and remembered the iPod nano that had been in my back pocket. When I jumped in the water. Uh-oh. And in case you're wondering, no they are NOT waterproof. So there's the iPod.

When we got home, I showered and cleaned up my knee, and Chuck started cleaning up the yard in preparation for our traditional after-the-race party. After showering, I saw that he had the backyard in hand so I started cleaning up the house. When that was done, I moved on to prepping the food. It was a hamburger/chicken menu, so I started to cut up the tomatoes and onions. You can see where this is going, I bet. I made it through the tomatoes uneventfully and was more than halfway through the onions when WHACK! I missed and sliced into my ring finger. Deep enough that blood spurted. And kept spurting (thank goodness they were red onions!). I grabbed a paper towel and applied pressure. Then grabbed another paper towel. When I bled through that one, too, I decided to get Chuck's opinion. He took one look and said that we had to go to the urgent care clinic. Argh! So with company coming, I spent an hour and a half at the urgent care clinic to see the doctor just long enough for him to say, "Dermabond, no stitches, and a tetanus shot." So there's the finger.

Other than all of that, it was a great day! Pics are here (no bloody ones).

We took this past weekend off (no work! only one computer!) and drove up to Solvang for the second annual Santa Barbara Wine Country Half Marathon, which is fast becoming a personal favorite of mine. That's despite the utter lack of organization in the registration process and finish line. Last year we thought they needed to wok on a few things. Apparently at their debrief after last year's race, they got together, reviewed what they did right and vowed to be sure NOT to do those things again this year. Example: last year, they had mile markers. This year there were none. You read that right. There wasn't a SINGLE mile marker the entire way. At the mile 11 aid station somebody said that we had two miles to go - that was our first real indication of how far we had gone (that and we knew Los Olivos was near the halfway point). So it goes. It was still a great race - the weather was perfect, there was lots of water on the course (at least they got that right!), and at the finish all we had to do was turn right, go half a block and we were at the place we were staying, the Storybook Inn. It's a really cute place built in 1993 to look old and quaint. It's a bit pricey, but the rooms are very nice, they have free wireless, the breakfasts are lovely, and you're in easy walking distance of downtown Solvang. We finished in 2:21, a much better time than we'd anticipated as we hadn't trained as hard as we ought. Our friend Mary came in third in her age group, and our friend Dave came in first in his age group (I will keep their age groups to myself - but if you look at the Flickr photos or the website, you can figure them out pretty quickly).

After finishing the run, we showered, came back for the awards ceremony then headed out for lunch and some wine tasting. We hit Babcock and Melville on Saturday, and enjoyed them both. Dinner was at Bacchus in Solvang (yum! ow! $$). Sunday we drove along Foxen Canyon Road, ignoring all of the big name wineries and finally stopping at Foxen, who sent us on to Riverbench (thanks!). Foxen is grand, and well worth the drive. They're sold out of their signature Pinot Noir, but we tasted and bought a really super Syrah. Riverbench is new but worth keeping an eye on. They were doing tappenade tastings as well - yum!! Their Pinot Noir was really good. We wound up the day at Alma Rosa which is a new winery owned by older winemakers: Richard Sanford sold his Sanford label, and is now making wine again under the Alma Rosa label (it's organic!). They use screw top bottles (so it's really easy to open!), and delicious! The tasting room is the old Sanford tasting room which was confusing to Chuck but also a trip down memory lane as he remembered tasting the old Sanford wines in the same tasting room.

Luckily we drove the Mini so our total purchases were limited to two cases. We've decided, given the scaled back purchasing of the past year, that our annual party this summer will be the Sorta Good Shit Wine Party, as we may need to supplement the good shit with some cheap shit.

Pics of the weekend are here.

Oh, I nearly forgot: on Saturday we were driving around and wine tasting with our friends Mary and Gerry. We were headed back to Solvang and as we drove by Ostrich Land, we all thought it would be interesting to stop. Once Gerry saw that he would have to pay FOUR WHOLE DOLLARS to see the ostriches he said, "Forget it!!" so we drove away without going inside. :-(

The next day, having dumped their sorry asses (ha-ha! we love you guys, just a little dramatic effect here, really! ;-), as we drove back to Solvang Chuck and I passed Ostrich Land again, and this time we stopped! And Gerry, this video clip says it all about what you missed. Eat your heart out! The next time we say, "Hey, let's stop and see the ostriches!" you may not be so quick to pooh-pooh the idea! If you have kids (or are a big kid) you can't miss this place; it is too cool for school!

We spent the weekend in Solvang and ran the Santa Barbara Wine Country half Marathon. More on that later - the really BIG event of the weekend was our visit to Ostrich Land in Buellton! You pay $4.00 to get in the door and look at the ostriches and emus but for only ONE dollar more you get to feed them! This was far more exciting than anticipated. I'm scared of horses, so let me tell you, those hungry ostriches were downright frightening!