stariel

Today I went to Silver Falls state park and hiked to some waterfalls. One of the great things about the PacNW is that you *can* hike through woods to beautiful waterfalls after a short drive!



The first waterfall we went to was the 177 foot "South Falls". It was a bit of a hike and we walked on the trail down behind the waterfall (you can see some people in the background there in the picture) and then around the front to a little bridge where I took this picture.

Next we headed to the smaller "Upper North Falls" - very descriptive names, huh?



And last but not least, my mom and I thought this sign was funny:

I don't know if there's any better way to solidify my desire to move back to Seattle than what happened today.

I arrived back in Boston from the balmy mid-40s weather of Seattle (complete with a bit of pouring rain) tired and dragging a suitcase, to find the same snow that I left here two weeks ago and a high of 11 degrees today.

Um... yeah. Walking home in 9 degrees feels like -5 (gotta love the wind chill) is not made at all better by the fact that it is bright and sunny.

And least the kitties are happy to see me.

This article is cool. That is totally something I would think about (as evidenced by the time travel post.)

And then there's another supercool one about optimizing toilet seat position by minimizing total cost and equalizing work.

In other news, I went to see Saves the Day tonight and will soon be going to Rhinebeck with the girlies (road trip here we come!)

Saves the Day was good - it was an acoustic show. They played lots of good songs but the fans were singing along very loudly and annoying Rachel and me. Grr... I didn't pay to come to a concert to hear you sing random fan person!

Ok, it is obviously far too late for me to be writing since I' can't seem to form a coherent thought.

Goodnight!

Well, I left off on Christmas morning when no one but me and my mom were awake. After posting that and checking the wakefulness of sisters again I decided to hop in the shower.

I was interrupted towards the end by Gina running in to throw up. A lovely start to the day.

We roused the troops and opened presents and ate some blueberry coffee cake.

My presents:

From mom:
blue star earrings (I picked them out myself)
a pretty mermaid with mermaid-unicorn mug
kitty socks

From meli88:
a pretty little blue box with a silver star

From my cousin:
a cocktail book

From my aunt:
candy and a promise of yarn :)

From hibrian:
marzipan fruits!

The rest of the day was spent sitting around knitting and playing Intrepid. And I watched V for Vendetta. :)

On the 26th we headed out to the outlet mall where I got some much needed comfy-yet-presentable black shoes and a T-shirt for myself. I contemplated and should have bought a jacket at Eddie Bauer, but I didn't. I watched Memoirs of a Geisha. That night we went swimming at a neat pool with tubes and a water slide, which was pretty neat.

I got up early in the morning to take a train back to Seattle...

Today for our after-Christmas adventure, my family (and meli88's friend Cortnie) went horseback riding.

We waited in the barn and got to know the horses:



And then it was time to ride, and we ventured outside into the light rain (which thankfully stopped soon!)

( Pictures behind the cut )

And after an hour we came back to the barn, and my mom snapped this picture of me on Jose just before I dismounted.

Well, it's been a good trip. Much fun was had, much favorite places were visited. I didn't get to do all the things I wanted, or see all the people I wanted, but I'll be back in a month and hopefully I can do it all again then.

hibrian has been my savior, providing much entertainment and companionship and all that. Far beyond the call of duty. And tonight the poor boy has to eat dinner with me again!

I'll be heading out early tomorrow morning, back to Boston which is surprisingly much warmer, to be with my cats, and my lab, and my school-knitting-girls and all that.

I miss Seattle. I don't think Boston will ever be home to me.

I'm here, after some slight travel adventures.

My first flight was really late. Late boarding, held up by the fact that the cabin pressure regulator-thingie was beeping even though pressure was fine, and then held up again after landing because another plane was in our gate.

It sucked for most people, but for me it just cut down on a very long layover. ;)

My second flight was also late boarding, but only arrived about 10 minutes late. Not a big deal.

So here I am, in Seattle, and feeling a bit strange because this trip will be a little different than past trips in terms of how I spend my time and who I spend it with. All of my friends are working or at school during the day, so a bit boring for me. :(

A couple of days ago one of the genetics students came and sat next to me in class and started sniffling. Now I'm sniffling. Gosh darn it stay home from school when you're sick or at least don't sit by me! (Either that, or robb54 transmitted me his cold via phone.) I'm still in the not-yet-sick stage, so hopefully it will stay that way.

Tonight the plan is to head home with Jessica after journal club and genetics happy hour. Nicole will meet us there, and we'll head to New York in two cars, bound for Jacob's aunt's house. Tomorrow we'll head on over to the sheep and wool festival while Jacob and Tesla go to a Pyrenes thingie. I'll try to email-post, maybe even with a picture of me in my hopefully-finished sweater. I'll be seaming it tonight, but there isn't really all that much to do. :)

I was away this weekend at the BBS retreat. (That's my program at school, in case you didn't know.)

On Friday I woke up and got the kitties ready for their time alone. Cleaned and refilled the litter box and big (1.3 gallon) water dispenser. Gave them much food, etc. Then I headed to meet my ride. The ride to Provincetown was uneventful, and once we got there we had some lunch and started practicing for the musical. When everyone else arrived I put my stuff in my room, went to the reception and opening talks, and performed the musical! Then it was time for dinner. After dinner were a couple more talks, and then Casino Night. I was a dealer and dealt blackjack for the whole time. My table was mostly (all?) new first year students and they were a lot of fun so that went well.

Then I went with the intention of knitting with some of the girls. One of our knitting girls was manning the Dance Dance Revolution, though, so we stopped to say hi and ended up doing some DDR. I played for the first time, but the pad I was using was wireless and the signal wasn't picking up so I have no idea how I was doing as it only said "Boo" for every move. ;) After that it was pretty late so I headed back to my room, chatted with robb54 (yay for coastal time zone differences!) and went to bed.

Saturday morning I got up, went to breakfast, and went to student talks. After lunch we had some free time so Alice and I went and hung around P-town. I've never been there before, so it was pretty fun. There are a lot of cute little shops, and a lot of hot gay guys. Sad for me. ;) I have enough trouble checking out gay guys in normal areas, and when you're somewhere where at least 70% of males are gay (ok, I admit I totally made up that statistic) it's even harder. We headed back for more talks (a couple of students and our awesome keynote speaker Craig Venter) and dinner. After dinner I set up my laptop for karaoke and did a bit of laptop babysitting, a bit of singing, and a bit of knitting. Once again it was too late to do the planned hang-out-and-knit with the girls so I once again went back to my room and went to sleep.

This morning I got up, had breakfast, went to the panels, and started heading back to Boston with Alice and Nicole. We stopped for a little shopping detour at Williams Sonoma and Crate and Barrel. I got a lovely silicone spatula. When I finally got home I fed the cats and took a nap because I was sooooo tired. I'm still tired, and I have to be up pretty early in the morning, so I'm about to go to bed.

In other news:

The kitties are settling in well and generally behaving well too. We've had a few run-ins about refusing to come out from under the bed hello spray bottle, but otherwise everything is great. The boy (still unnamed, I'm working on it) even came and cuddled a bit during my nap. The girl prefers to follow me from room to room and rub against my legs. The kittes aren't allowed in my room at night, though.

My short-but-jam-packed trip to Seattle was great. I saw Garbage on Friday (as I said before) and Dashboard Confessional on Monday. I also got to eat at all my fave Seattle-area restaurants (Savan, Saya, Taste of India, Bamboo Garden, Pabla, and Chocolati) plus a yummy Mexican place.

I got some jeans that fit, I went shopping with my "trying stuff on buddy" hibrian. We're awesome shopping buddies, very honest without being hurtful. Like when I told him the sweater at Express looked like Mr. Rogers would be wearing it. And I trust him to tell me if the pants I'm buying make me look fat. He would do it in the nicest way possible. :)

Oh, and for the second of two times the girl at Express thought we were going to share a dressing room. It's very weird how they do that. I mean, maybe they're assuming that neither of us 'swings that way' or something, but it's just odd. Then we were at another store and hibrian asked the guy if we could get a dressing room. And then clarified that we each wanted our own, all because of those crazy Express girls.

Well, now I'm back home and the kitty stuff has arrived before the kitties. They'll hopefully be arriving this weekend. Then I'll finally believe that I actually get them and take massive amounts of photos to bug you all. :)