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It was possibly the most amazing movie I have ever seen, and it probably only helps that we went to a 3D showing.
I do plan to try to see it again in the theaters and again in 3D.
And beware what you read about it, I've read more wrong descriptions than correct ones.

Things I never got to...

In months past we have:

We bought Rock Band 2 for the 360. We are considering bringing it home during Christmas to play.

We got a Wii (for Angela), I have no real intention of buying any games for myself for it. Currently we have Wii sports (I think) and Wii Sports Resort.

Tree!

Its alive, and we are going to try to keep it that way. Angela is still looking for a topper that looks sized for it.

New camera

We finally got a camera (for Angela mostly), haven't used t a whole lot yet, but I like it so far. We got the silver version. 12.1 MP and it takes 780p video. Then we bought an 8GB memory card that will allow Angela to take some 2400 pictures without offloading them.My biggest problem with it is that I now have to scale down the photos I post here.

Another Month

I think I worked the least in November that I have worked since starting my job. We headed to NM at the beginning of the month for Angela's best friend's wedding, so I took the 3rd-5th off. While on the trip I pulled a back muscle, by the end of the trip I also had a good cough to go with it. Between that and a holiday day the next week, I was out of work the entire second week. I did make it to work for all of the third week though...I think. Then back to NM for Thanksgiving. All in all I worked 10 days last month.

Pictures:
Angela's sister has 5 chickens, if you lean over the speckled one will hop up on your shoulder:
We got into Flagstaff just around dark on Saturday with it starting to snow, by the morning it looked like this:Luckily (or unfortunately) it was not enough to stop us from getting home...
And the car passed 40k miles, actually this was just leaving NM. That's 13,000 miles in less then 7 months, hopefully this car is good for at least 200,000 miles at this rate.

Well, I missed October...

October is over, with me never making a post. I think it was probably because I can't think of anything really great that happened last month. I'll use what the camera time stamped for dates.

Matt and I went for a hike on the Pacific Crest Trail on the 10th. We probably did about 5 miles, would have done more, but the first hill we went over was a: not something we needed to go over, and b: really steep.

Looks like on the 18th we were somewhere in a hotel with a nice sunset...

Ah, I remember, we went down to Ontario and Angela did some shopping on Saturday and then we went to the Pamona swap meet on Sunday (15 miles of cars and car parts), where I got a new dash board and a new in box center console body for the Trans Am for $120...or roughly $300 less than I would expect to pay for them elsewhere. Most of the stuff there was for cars that were much older though.

I think all we did the weekend before Halloween was look for some costume stuff.

We went to a party on the 31st with the usual people and then some. There was way to much eating with some games mixed in...which also involved eating. We took truffles and cupcakes, I decorated this one:

The next morning we got up and I had the largest bowl of Grapenuts ever (roughly 4 servings) using the leftover rasberries from the truffles Angela had made.

Big Bear Cruise II

This weekend along with Angela's business moving to their new office, we went on the F-body cruise to Big Bear Lake. We left Ridgecrest a little after 7:30 am on Saturday and headed for Wildwood Park in San Bernardino. We got there first just before 10 am, and cars came in until about 10:30 and we headed out.

This was the slowest cruise I have been on going up the mountain, mostly because we got stuck behind some slow traffic going up. It was a little before lunch when we got up the mountain and the group headed for the Alpine Slide. Angela and I both went down it once - its kind of like a single person bobsled without the ice. Then we all broke for lunch and whatever around town since the scheduled dinner wasn't until 5. We ate at Boo Bears Den, just a normal family style restaurant. After lunch we just walked around the town and checked out the shops. After an hour or so we headed to the lodge, where we found everyone playing pool and watching TV. Angela picked up a stick and proceeded to beat everyone that was playing. We ate at 5 and sat and chatted for a while longer and then everyone headed home. We took off north out of Big Bear through Lucerne Valley, Apple Valley and on up 395.

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Other things that have happened were a trip to NM to see family, but most who read this already knew that. Angela flew to Abq for a bridal shower for Jen. I built a stand for shooting targets...and proceeded to shoot one of the legs off it on the first outing.

Anniversary Trip

This last weekend was our planned one your anniversary trip. On Thursday we both took the day off and headed to Monterey. Friday morning we ate breakfast at our hotels resteraunt and watched the otters out in the ocean while we ate. Then we headed to the aquarium at the bay on Friday. We were able to see a lot of it before it got to crowded. They had a special sea horse exhibit open and they have a huge jelly fish exhibit. There were also a lot of otters and seals, and we got to watch the penguin feeding.

Monterey Slideshow 103 pics

After the aquarium we ended up going to see an X-games 3-D show at the theater that we had seen previews for on TV the night before. It was pretty cool.

On Saturday we did the 17 mile drive around Pebble Beach. After that we headed down the coast on the 1 to Pismo. We got there in the late afternoon and it was rainy, so we ate at the Marie Calendar's and then checked into our hotel room and relaxed most of the rest of the day.

17 Mile Drive, Drive to Pismo Slideshow

102 pics

Sunday we had a rental set up with Sun Fun Buggies at 11, so we headed to their shop. This turned out to be the biggest pain during the trip. When we got to the shop at 10:15 the sign on the door said closed though their hours were starting at 9 - we called the phone # and they said they were going to pick us up at the hotel - this was never mentioned to us when making the reservation (thank goodness they didn't), but we had already checked out so we drove ourselves over to the beach - having to call them 3 different times to get directions that were different every time :(. Finally we got to the beach and one of them came and picked us up and took us out to their staging area. We got out there (~1.5 mile drive) and got ready to rent, only to find out they didn't have our reservation info (made over a week before). To make an already long story shorter we ended up walking over to the business next to them and renting a 2-up atv for the same amount of time for half the price, win. The thing that made me really glad about this later was seeing at least 3-5 of the buggies stuck in the dunes and one having to be towed back to the trailers. The atv was great and we had a blast riding all over the dunes. The people we rented the atv from (http://stevesatv.com/) were nice enough to give us a ride back to the car after our rental was over and we headed on home down the 1. A few spots of bad traffic adding nearly 2 hours to the drive home was the only bad thing after that.

That was our weekend, and if you watched the slide shows it was about 1/3 of the pictures.

Happiest Place on Earth

The weekend before last, Angela and I both got eye exams on Friday, got some new trial contacts and ordered new glasses. Then we headed down to Anaheim for the weekend. One of my friends (Thanks Matt!!) had gotten 3-day park hopper passes for Disney Land/California Adventure and only used 2 of the days, it was a nice anniversary present. So we spent the Saturday all over Disney Land, we got there when the gates opened at 8 am and left the park at midnight. We stayed in a hotel that was about 4 blocks away, so we didn't have to worry about parking or anything.

^This is what an LED flash does^

Short Post

This is what you want to do when you live in the desert. I was just glad that it cooled into the double digits this weekend so that I didn't fry while watching some of the race. The race was only full size ish vehicles from stock Volkswagon Beatles to large trucks and buggies that probably ran in the 6-700 horsepower range. They ran 3-5 (class dependent) laps of 44 miles each. The race started at about 7:30 pm, I think we left around 10 or 11.

Friday I went riding, its been so long that the battery had gone dead on the Pred and I had to go get a new one. Bouncing across the desert also made for sore arms for 3 days - not to bad though.

We also saw GI Joe this weekend at the theater, I thought it was good, but I hear the critics are giving harsh reviews. Umm...thats really all I have for now.

Quad Cross

On Sunday we drove down 395 to the nearest motocross track to watch the ITP Quad Cross. We stole our neighbors camera, so these are some of the best pictures I have ever had. At a minimum this is the camera I had been planning to get, so I will be getting one pretty soon.

Not all the riders were big...

And then we went and bought a TV.

40", 1080p, 120 Hz, 80,000 Contrast ratio.

Kayaking

Last weekend was full of adventure. First we had an ESDP kayaking trip to La Jolla (hoya) , Angela didn't want to go so I went alone. I left with the group at 8 Friday morning and we arrived just before noon. our tour wasn't scheduled until 2, so we hung out on the beach for a while. At 1:30 we headed for the rental shop to get our gear.

Then we headed back down to the beach to get our kayaks. Most of us were paired up and a few went by themselves. I think there were only 3 that got overturned, and one of those was riding the surf back in.

We went back to the beach after the tour and played in the water until we decided it was time to eat. One in our group tried surfing, he never got up more then on his knees...in the water anyway...

We went to a mexican restaraunt for dinner "El Charro," I had 5 rolled chicken tacos and some of their hot salsa (Pace medium is more of a hot salsa then this was), it was all pretty good though.

I decided to split the weekend up, so thats all for this post.

Heat

How hot??? I just burnt my feet when I took the laundry out to the garage. I took a shower 30 minutes ago and didn't turn on the hot water. You can tell where cars have recently been parked in the parking lots from the indentions from the tires.

Just 2 more months and we should be back out of the 100s.

4th of July Weekend

For the 4th of July we decided to get out of Ridgecrest (106 degree weather all weekend) and go North. We drove up to Mammoth Lakes to go camping. Camping in CA is a learning experience because 1. There is pretty much no such thing as getting away from other people (its like camping the Little Walnut Picnic Grounds, but more populated), 2. It costs as much as a cheap hotel for a camping spot, 3. Even in the places that say they don't take reservations, many of the spots are reserved, 4. Watch for bears - there were at least 3 chased away from the area we were in - we never saw one, 5. BIC lighters suck (I don't think that applies only to CA), 6. ...I'll think of more.

We left late on Thursday, so late in fact that we only made it to about Big Pine the first night and slept in the truck on the side of the road. Its probably a good thing since it took us a few hours to find a camping spot the next day.
After we found a spot, set up the tent, and offloaded all our food into the bear box we headed back into town to look around. We went to the Village at Mammoth. Lots of shops and restaurants and such. We decided that the next time we are up there we might try the bike park since we wont have the scheduled events. We ate lunch right there, went back to our camp site to catch up on sleep for a while and then headed back to the Village for a fireworks show, it was small, but what do you expect in the middle of town off the roof of a building.
On the fourth we went to the parade, which I found out Angela has never done before :o, and then to the park to watch some of a concert that one of our friends was playing in. After that we went back to camp for a while and then on a drive around the lake that we were camped at. [The fireworks were shot off the first peninsula]
That night we went down to Lake Crowley for a fireworks show, it was the best that I have seen in a while, it lasted about twenty minutes. Then we met up with some of our friends and went back to the campground and had s'mores and roasted marshmallows.
The next morning we packed up and headed north to drive a loop that Angela wanted to see around June Lake. We stopped and had a really good breakfast along the way.

And now from a Cuteness point of view:

dadadaaaaa!!

First off, I would like to say that I was not allowed to proofread any of what Shane wrote. ;)

We spent about 4 hours trying to finish packing for our trip to Mammoth Lakes. First we didn't have food, second we didn't have a mattress to fit in our truck bed, and third, we couldn't decide whether to leave right then or not.

We got on the road at about 10pm, wide-eyed and wide awake. At about 10:30pm we both started getting sleepy, but we didn't stop until we reached Independence. After debating on whether we should pay $20 to stay overnight at a campground, we opted for a cozy spot on the side of the road. When I awoke at 5:00am, I realized that we were parked in a residential area. After I quietly tried to open the truck door to get water from our truck bed, the alarm went off and woke Shane. So, I decided we should head out.

We arrived at Mammoth Lakes at 6pm and proceeded to look for campsites for a few hours. Finally we found a spot near Lake Mary and settled into our spot. Instead of using our truck tent, we decided to use our regular tent since we used our truck bed so much.

After several trips to Von's, we finally settled in and make a trip out to the Village. The shops were gorgeous and the mountain air was so refreshing. The first night we decided to try to make hamburgers. Our charcoal wouldn't stay lit, so we burned as many papertowels and make do with what we had. Our neighbors even offered to let us borrow their grill, but we decided we'd rather "rough" it.

The fireworks in town were beautiful, but not quite as nice as those over Crowley Lake. I had a good time saying "awww" at every dog that walked by. We woke up the next morning, enjoyed toasted poptarts (well, at least I enjoyed them) and then headed out to town. We attended the parade right off of Meridian St. Thank goodness we had our umbrella otherwise we would have been severely sunburned and drenched. Again, there were really cute dogs left and right, so hopefully Shane added a few photos.After exploring the area, and yet another trip to Von's, we tried to make burgers again. This time, our firewood would not catch on fire due to the wind. Thirty minutes later, we enjoyed nice burgers and then headed out to Crowley Lake. I had never been to such a beautiful fireworks show. We were so close I had to hold my ears. After taking our turn in traffic, we headed back to our campsite and had s'mores with friends. The whole time we were worried about bears, but enjoyed our time nonetheless.

After a restful night, we woke up, packed up our tent, and headed to June Lake Loop. We weren't sure where to eat breakfast, but managed to find a place called the Double Eagle Restaurant and Spa. The food was phenomenal (I know Shane is laughing at me for using that word). We headed out and met a few people on our scenic tour of June Lake. Shane made fun of me for taking pictures of dogs playing in the water. I guess it made me want our own dog even more.After we rounded the loop, we headed back to Ridgecrest, but not before stopping to see Owen's Gorge. Unfortunately, we could not find the right area to be, so we decided to head back. We had ice cream in Lone Pine and I drove the last leg to Ridgecrest.

It was a great first camping trip full of bears, trips to Von's, and lots and lots of hamburgers. I can't wait to do it again.