Tag: life

Today was the day we added a Christmas tree to our living room. Needing an authentic experience I found a cut-your-own tree farm in Castro Valley. So after work we zipped on out there to get a tree before dark. With my trusty GPS we found the place without trouble, obtained a trusty saw, and drove off into the wilderness. This tree farm isn't like we have them back in Connecticut where you park and walk around the property with a little cart. It's more like property which is up against the Chabot Regional Park. So you drive along an access road to the various lots which go out a couple of miles down the road. We drove out towards the back and found some good size trees to look at. We got out to take a look around, but left the camera in the car, so we don't have any pictures until we got Albert back to the car. Yes, sometime between cutting it down and carrying it to the car Jess named our Christmas tree Albert.

Anyway, there was a bunch of trees and they were all incredibly well pruned and full. I don't think we would have, growing up, spent hours in the cold if our tree farms had trees like these. They all had almost perfect shapes. I was very impressed.

So, we picked out Albert which only took about 5 minutes, cut him down, and carried him to the car. We came prepared with a tarp to put down on the roof to help prevent scratching up the paint, and some rope.

Jess was skeptical of my ability to secure the tree to the car properly. But I knew the secret of the tow anchor points (or whatever they're called).
After some adjusting and tying and knotting and such we had things ready to go:
Albert enjoyed his last stint of freedom and gave us no trouble on the way back (which involved a rather roundabout path in order to avoid the highway, I didn't think 70 mph would be much fun with a non-baled tree strapped to the roof).

We got the tree home and into the tree stand. On Jess' insistence we are not allowed to decorate it until Saturday when we will decorate it and then watch The Muppet Christmas Carol.
I told Jess that I wasn't sure our tree trip would count since we could still feel our toes and fingers when we finished, and there wasn't 3 feet of snow, and no one was crying; but she claims that it will count anyway.

Ok, we've been lazy about Halloween. Ok, Ok, blogging Halloween was _my_ job, so I've been lazy.

Anyway. The week before Halloween we went out to a farm in Lathrop which was supposed to have a pumpkin patch which would allow you to pick a pumpkin straight from the vine (unlike the "pumpkin patch" in Livermore which trucks them in and lines them up). So we headed out there for the pumpkin patch, and corn mazes, aand pumpkin CANNONS!

It turned out that the pumpkin was a bit lame. It looks like it had been an actual patch, but it looked like they had done their best to destroy any vines that had been there.

But we did still go through a corn maze:Jess didn't particularly enjoy the corn maze. She felt that if she wanted to be lost, she could just go walk around town for 10 minutes. After wandering for a bit we picked a wall and followed it all around until we got out. There were 3 mazes, but we only did one.

Then we headed over to the CANNONS! You get a bucket of small pumpkins that you can load one-at-a-time into your compressed-air cannon. It was getting dark and the lighting was crappy so the pictures aren't very good. In this one you can see one of the targets you get to aim at, a giant jack o' lantern. There was a good 6 feet of piled pumpkin remains at its base:And here's Jess:
So that was fun. The pumpkin cannons were definitely worth it.

We bought a pumpkin from the grocery store because it was cheaper than the "pumpkin patch". We didn't get around to carving it until Halloween. I began working on a top-secret pumpkin exo-skeleton project:It didn't work out very well. But the jack o' lantern was pretty decent:We sat about waiting for trick-or-treaters (with a big bowl of candy) but were rather disappointed in that regard. We had one family with 3 small kids come by. That was it. So now we have a bunch of candy to eat (and Jess got more for 75% off at CVS after Halloween). Since the door wasn't busy Dr. Horrible walked down to Panda Express for traditional Halloween cuisine (the new SweetFire Chicken Breast is awesome, I can't eat Orange Chicken anymore):

We wanted to do something to get out of the house this weekend. I found out about a program at Point Reyes National Seashore where twice a month they take a small group down to the lighthouse at night, give a little tour, and illuminate the lighthouse.

It sounded like fun. Then I found out that they were doing a sand sculpture contest the next day! We thought it'd be a fun way to spend the weekend. However, it being Labor Day weekend we couldn't find any way to spend the night anywhere near Point Reyes. Every campground was full, every motel, hotel, and inn. So we had to drop the full-weekend activity thing. But we did still get to go on Saturday and see the lighthouse.

We packed up and headed out around 1. We drove out to San Anselmo and stopped at a Subway to get some sandwiches. We bought a bag of ice and some sodas and put it all in the cooler and continued on our way to the seashore. Once we made it to the National Seashore we still had to drive out to the lighthouse which is on a tip of land which is actually on the Pacific tectonic plate.

So we reached the park which has no entrance fee (yay!) and continued driving out towards the lighthouse.

On the way we stopped at one of the beaches; Jess even played in the icy water; which turned out to be dangerous due to the monsters:

Once we finished playing at the beach (that is, once we got hungry) we finished our drive to the parking lot near the lighthouse. After our tasty, tasty dinner of Subway we still had some time, so we adventured out to the sea lion lookout point. By this time the fog was really starting to roll in and we were reminded of the Lord of the Rings when Sam and Frodo are wandering around in the fog.

There are supposed to be sea lions down below us. We couldn't see any, but we could hear some barking.

Finally it was time to head out to the lighthouse for the program. We saw some wildlife along the way, such as this deer:
I also was able to get some pretty neat pictures:

It was weird standing under the trees. The fog was so dense that it was condensing on the trees fast enough that it was actually raining beneath the branches.

We met up with the guide and walked down to the lighthouse (308 steps!). Here you can see the actual lighthouse and in the next picture is the currently used, automatic light which is operated by the US Coast Guard.

After some tour information it was finally dark so I got a fun picture of the automated light on our way into the lighthouse.

Inside you can see the inner workings of all the original gearwork that made the beams rotate. This is apparently a big deal, most historic lighthouses don't have the original gearwork. Even more impressive is that the gearwork still works too. They can't actually turn the structure at the moment though. Apparently there is a structural weakness in the roof and the rotating of the 6000 pound light structure could cause the roof to collapse. So they're working on getting funding to replace the roof (which requires removing the entire light structure piece by piece first).

Then the guide removed the curtain from the light and we got to see it all lit up. Apparently they keep the light on all the time to keep the building dry and warm (to help protect the equipment), so they have a curtain up to keep it from blinding tourists and confusing people trying to view the actual light, I guess.

Then we got to walk back up the stairs of Mordor. It was dark and cold and our legs were tired. It was so foggy you couldn't see more than a small section at a time.

Then we got to get in the car and drive all the way back. It was foggy for about half of the drive through the park, so it was slow moving. We stopped for some deer that were crossing the road and several rabbits ran across in front of us. But we made it home. It was a lot of fun.