We were watching some West Wing last night while eating dinner. Jess got up and walked to the kitchen. I was still sitting on the couch when it felt like someone had walked into the end of the couch—a definitive bump, and small, but noticeable, jostling. I thought it was weird and mentioned it to Jess. She said something along the lines of me being crazy. Well, this morning I happened to overhear something about an earthquake. Turns out that at 8:30 p.m. last night (which would have been right around when the couch event occurred) there was a magnitude 3.7 earthquake right next door in Pleasanton. According to the Contra Costa Times people reported feeling the earthquake up to 60 miles away. Since we are less than 10 miles from the epicenter, I don’t think it is unreasonable to assume that what occurred last night was the earthquake.
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:
Jess playing in the water
Sea Monster!
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.
We went to the California State Fair on Saturday. It’s in Sacramento, so it was about a 1.5 hour drive away. But we had nothing else going on and somehow Jess has managed to never go to a state fair like thing ever. So we had to remedy that.
We went up in the evening once it was starting to cool down for the day. We’re still learning how the weather out here works and so far have concluded that we’re no good at predicting how it will go. Sometimes the sun sets and the temperature drops 20 degrees instantly (like when we went to the play last month), and sometimes the sun sets and the temperature barely changes (like at the fair). We had changed into pants and I carried around our jackets the whole time thinking it would get chilly. It didn’t.
Sadly we forgot to bring a camera and by the time I remembered that we needed pictures we were already half-way done. So all I have are a handful of cell-phone pictures.
First thing we did was buy cotton candy, a requirement for Jess anytime such a possibility presents itself. Then we wandered through some of the buildings to learn about all the fabulous crap that we never knew we needed (the life-blood of any state fair). Upon leaving one of the buildings we ended up on “the farm”. We went into the Insect Experience where we saw all sorts of gross things like gimongous moths and butterflies, hissing cockroaches, crazy stick bugs, and other such wonders. After seeing enough of that we went and visited the Kiwi vines (Kiwis grow on vines, who knew?). Then we rested our feet and watched them show off some of the horses.
By this time we were starting to get hungry and began questing for further fair-food. A funnel cake was a must, as always. It wasn’t great, but I think that just keeps up the carny-tradition of low quality food for five times the price anyone would reasonably pay. Not wanting to leave without the full experience of this motto we got some low quality French fries. With a large helping of ketchup we were able to finish those off.
Being filled with grease we were ready to head in to the Garden of MAGnificent Proportions (their capitalization). Here’s were I took some pictures:
Whose life is complete without a giant snail, giant frog, and giant radish and shovel?
We then wandered through the art exhibits and then my feet were ready to fall off. So we went and took a ride of the giant swings before heading home: I was going to try to take a picture while we were actually swinging, but they got us going at a pretty good speed and I didn’t want to watch my phone shatter into a million pieces.
That ends our trip to the California State Fair. It is gigantic. It seems vastly larger than the Utah State Fair and even the Big-E, and I hear that this year’s was smaller due to the financial problems, so normally it must be huge.
My official graduation date was August 2009. So I used the one vacation day I’d accrued and Jess and I went back to Provo so I could walk in the convocation ceremony. After the ceremony we walked over to the Talmage building for food. This was vitally important because an 8:00 ceremony after flying in late at night, getting 4 hours of sleep, and not having time to eat breakfast means that by 9:15 we were starving. So that food was good. In the lobby there they scroll through the names of people graduating, so we took the obligatory picture of me in front of my name: Graduation itself was fun, I got to wear a silly looking robe with a Master’s hood. Somehow we managed to not get any really good pictures of the hood. But we wouldn’t be done without a picture to show how silly the whole getup looks: We stayed in Provo until Sunday evening. It was good to visit our friends and such. On Sunday evening we hopped back on the plane and flew home to California. Anyone using the Oakland airport should note that the airport economy parking lot calculates the charge as far in favor of the airport as possible. Something I was annoyed to discover when the $16/day parking charge resulted in a $60 charge for 3 nights.
Tonight marks the first evening that Jess and I have spent away from each other. I must say it is strange. It is very quiet around here. For those that are just joining us here, Jess volunteered with the Utah County Rape Crisis Team when we lived in Utah. Eager to do similar volunteer work here in Livermore she found Tri-Valley Haven and joined up with their crisis team. Tonight was her first night of training, so that’s where she’s been all evening.
I decided that it would be a good evening to go for a run. I want to get back into running regularly, since I haven’t been running since some time in February. So I took off jogging down Livermore Avenue. Boy am I out of shape. I jogged for about 1.5 miles before resting and stretching. Then I walked a mile and jogged the remaining half mile to get back home. It was a good run, I’m just completely out of shape.
The rest of the evening I’ve spent working on some programming projects. I did some work to keep the Board alive, and got the code base setup on my desktop so I can start working on Board 5 again. I made dinner (exciting plate of spaghetti and a slice of toast). And now I’m finishing up this blog post. Jess will be home in another 30 minutes or so. Maybe I’ll play some Guitar Hero in the interim.
Also, unlike the cool weather Mike is having down in Sunnyvale, the weather here in Livermore is lovely: This is usually how the weather is, occasionally it gets cranky and pushes into the 90’s and even the 100’s, but that doesn’t usually last very long. I certainly don’t miss Utah summers.
