California Driving

Well, I just spent the last 5 hours driving from Williams to Salinas here in California and I have a few things to report on.

1. The drive from Williams to Salinas is rather uneventful, boring, and all together not all that exciting. Once you've done the first few miles there's not much difference in scenery. I would compare it to driving from Calgary to Lethbridge or to Edmonton. The only change of scenery was that there were a few hills but they were still covered in brown grass speckled with little green trees. Nothing like the drive through the majestic redwood forests like the days before. I did have a bit of a surprise when I crested a hill to see a ton of huge ships sitting in a small lake. At first I thought it was a "ship graveyard" but in fact I believe they were all still sea-faring vessels. The second surprise came after crawling in traffic for an hour (I covered a whopping 2 miles!) to discover that a truck spilled its load of lettuce all over the freeway!

2. The "California Lane Change". While driving today through San Jose on a 6-lane freeway I had the privilege of witnessing this awe-inspiring event. I don't know if I was impressed or scared for the life of the driver and those around me but I watched a car go from one side of the freeway to the other in one swift motion...no signal and a hard crank on the wheel that put them in their desired lane. The crazy part was the traffic was so heavy I don't know how they managed it in one motion!

3. The two dumbest words in California Road Law. LANE SPLITTING. Can we just talk about how dumb of a rule that is. I had a good number of motorbikes go between me and another car while flying down the freeway. Just the other day on my way back from Abbotsford a guy tried that and now he's going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. A good reason for why it's stupid, refer to #2 above with the famous California Lane Change.

Driving in and around the Bay area has brought back memories of driving in Ontario along the 400 and 401. All I have to say is I'll be glad when I don't have to drive here anymore and it reminds me of why I'm glad I decided to move away from that part of Canada.

D

Demolition Man...er...Woman

On Saturday for part of the afternoon, I helped my dad beat up an old shed. Probably doesn't sound that exciting, but really, it was. I don't exactly know why, either. I got changed into grubby clothes and went out weilding an 8 pound sledgehammer! Look out shed, here I come! There needed to be some strategy to this so that neither of us got injured, and after figuring that out, the shed got quite the beating. Originally I held the roof up, and dad was going to pound out the walls, but I figured that if the wall came unattached, and I was under the roof, it might fall on my head.

I got dad to hold the roof instead...he's stronger, and slightly taller. Therefore, I got to beat the rotting wood to pieces! We were able to slowly lower the roof after I kicked the wall down, and take it off safely. Oh yeah, and dad found a wasps nest under the overhang, so he had mom come out and beat it off! This was before I was out there to help. One thing to note: dad is allergic to stings! Another thing to note: those wasps were severely mad! They hung around for most of the process, sniffing around for somewhere else to hang their next home. Dad was fine, and nobody got stung...but they're still buzzing around out there, even today.

Today dad and I loaded the pile of rotting shed into his truck and trailer, and headed to the city dump. We had to stop a couple of times to adjust and re-tie things because going over bumps had made our load in the trailer shift, and we didn't need stuff all over the road! It cost about $13.00 for our pile, and then we were out of there! It was good to "get in there and get dirty" for a change. My job as a demolition woman has been mighty fun!

Don't Bother to Read...

Just putting up a picture for our profile. Stupid blogger doesn't allow a profile picture to be just uploaded, it needs to be on the web somewhere. UGH!

He Doesn't Even Care...In my Own Defense

Well, this is my first post on the blogger and I think I need to start by defending myself a little...It's not that I didn't care that Karyn had just set up the new blog site, I had just finished working two days that were 16 and 10 hours non-stop respectively and I was not really with it in the evenings! It's not that I don't want to type out things about what's going on, I'm just not the sort of person who will give a play-by-play of my day if nothing exciting has happened...Not how I do story telling.

So, for those of you who don't know, I'm currently in California and have been here now for almost a week doing a system installation and then traveling to libraries to meet with them and present our product. It's been a good trip so far with some interesting things that have happened. I'll do a quick breakdown of each day since there has been something interesting every day.

Day #1: Got to the airport in Calgary at 4:30am and was in San Francisco by 8:30am. After a brief disorientation to get my rental car I was off on the I-80 North to St. Helena where I managed to get my first glimpse at the Golden Gate Bridge and I went on the Bay Bridge...You've never experienced bridges until you go across one of these types of bridges since they're so long!

St. Helena is located in the Napa Valley, known around the world for their wine. Serious money in that region and a lot of the homes looked like mini-castles. Kind of made me sick. The St. Helena Library is an interesting library as well since they are probably the only library in North America that has their own vineyard and have bottled wine! They lease out the land but their name goes on the label!

So I ended up doing training with the director and his tech assistant and set up one of the machines at the library as well (they purchased 6 from me). It ended up being kind of late and I got back to the motel sometime around 7:30pm and I was beat! This was partially due to the fact that I didn't really sleep much on Sunday night as I was unpacking from our West Coast Trail Trip and packing to go to California for a week and a half. Another reason...it was HOT! About 42ºC actually!

Day 2: Started out the day a little late as my wake up call didn't come through but ended up at the library around 8:30am. I spent the entire day setting up the remainder of their computers and doing some troubleshooting as I was setting up a different type of system than I was used to. At the end of the day I decided to set up my demonstration machine that was shipped to me as well that I was planning on using for my "tour" after. I took it out of it's travel suitcase, set it up, and turned it on. It stayed on for about 5 seconds before shutting off and did that once more...then it never turned on again. I tried to open the case to look around a little and found out it had been damaged during shipping...What gave it away was the huge dent in the bottom of the computer (looks like it was rammed with a forklift). Well, Userful's own fault for shipping stuff in suitcases. I ended up borrowing an extra system from the St. Helena Library that I'll be shipping back once I'm done my tour and it saved me from having a week here in California without a demo system. Again, it was 42ºC

Day 3: This was my day of training and presentations at the St Helena Library. I trained their staff on our system in the morning, did some fine tuning for their systems in the early afternoon, and then presented to a few libraries in the afternoon that made the trip from as far as an hour away. Once I was done that I drove to Red Bluff which was about 180 miles away. The drive was good and bad...The good part was the road was a mountainous one with nice curves and the like. The bad is it was 42ºC again and I was roasting! When I got to Red Bluff I tried to find my motel (Super 8) but couldn't. I ended up going into another one and asked where it was and it turns out that this motel was switching to a Super 8 in a month and a half and someone got a little excited to put it up on the Super 8 website. Ugh...Well, I went for dinner and the walk there was long as I was pretty tired, probably dehydrated from the drive, and hadn't eaten in 9 hours. Got a nice sunset picture though!


Day 4: My day started with breakfast at Shari's. The motel clerk told me that I shouldn't go to Denny's and Shari's was much better...Yeah right. It was like Denny's with a different name. I ate breakfast but it did not agree with me at all. I did a presentation for the North State Library Cooperative members (some people drove like 3 hours to come see it!) and then had the afternoon to drive about 4 hours to Eureka on the coast. Again, it was really hot and the drive in that regard was miserable! It was 39ºC when I left Red Bluff. The drive itself was one of the best I've ever done. Very windy roads through the mountains and beautiful scenerey. I would have loved to stop and take pictures but it was too hot! I ended up stopping 2 times at convenience stores for a 500ML juice to keep myself hydrated. When I did end up getting to Eureka I had a serious case of swack and swass, actually it was swody, but the temperature had dropped on the coast to only about 13ºC. I was kind of cold. That evening I went for a little walk around Eureka and had a quiet night in the hotel room watching Clear and Present Danger on the wall (a 4 foot screen) thanks to having the projector.

Day 5: I started out the day with a local breakfast place and could not believe the situation I got in. I went to a place and decided I wanted pancakes (note plural). I ordered 2 pancakes and the waiter said "Are you sure? They're pretty big!" I said, "How big is Big?" At this point you can refer to the picture! It's no wonder Americans are fat! I only managed to down half of this before I was finished. One could easily feed two people! I did my presentation at the library and hopped in the car for my next presentation in Crescent City, about 2 hours up the road at the most Northern Tip of California. The drive was spectacular as I ended up going through some old redwood forests. When I got to Crescent City I went to the library and asked for the director and found out she was not at the library. I though she had totally forgotten about our meeting and I was a little disappointed as I had driven all the way here to do a presentation and it was a waste. I walked out to the car and when I got there I decided to go back in, take a quick look around and get an idea of the library's computer program, drop off some information, and then do a web demo when I got back to Canada. Well, I did all that and as I was dropping off the information the guy in the back overheard the conversation I was having with the reference librarian and as it turns out he was expecting me as he deals with the computers! Good thing I didn't leave. Anyway, this guy turned out to be really annoying but I did my presentation, grabbed some dinner, and called it a night.

Day 6 (Today): Today was my day to explore Crescent City and the surrounding area. I had plans to go on a hike here, take some pictures in the Redwood National Forest, and enjoy myself. Well, as it turns out I woke up at 11:30 to housekeeping knocking on the door and decided I wasn't ready to face the world until I watched I, Robot and The Chronicles of Riddick on HBO. Around 3pm I emerged from my room and went on a drive to the forest. I stopped along the way at a river where there were people cliff jumping. It looked like a lot of fun and I took a few pictures but they didn't really work out that well. Needed a better zoom lens. While I was there I learned from someone that poison oak is all over the place around here which made my plans to go on a hike (in my sandals) less attractive. I decided to just drive through the forest and take some pictures. Well, it was quite the drive! The trees are massive here and it sure did make me feel small! The area that I was in had a very narrow road winding THROUGH the trees and in some spots it was JUST big enough for a car to fit! This is also the area that they filmed Star Wars: Return of the Jedi so that was kind of neat. On my way out of the forest I was passed by a truck that had 4 goats in the back in a cage. It was an odd thing to see someone driving into the Redwood Forest with goats! I went and took some pictures from a lookout over the ocean as well as a couple beach shots during my 2 mile walk along the sandy beach. On the way back through town I took another couple shots of an old lighthouse and boat in the harbour with some success and grabbed some dinner.

Tomorrow I drive all the way back to Eureka, through Red Bluff, and then down to Williams (8 hours) after which I go to Salinas and then back to San Francisco to finish off my trip. Looking forward to the rest of the trip but more importantly getting home. Sorry for the long blog but I had a lot to say (for once!)

Cheers!

Shopping Day!

While I call this entry "shopping day", I must say it wasn't much of one...I didn't buy a thing! Boy, would Duane be proud :) Yesterday, I spent the morning waiting around for my parents' neighbour to come home so I could show her pictures of our trek on the West Coast Trail before she left town for 10 days. Once she arrived home from her errands, and Carene and Dave arrived at my house, we traipsed over across the street for the viewing session. That was all said and done after a good 45 minutes. It really wasn't supposed to take that long(sorry Dave & Carene!), especially since we had limited time to shop! I felt the need to explain everything in great detail...big surprise, I know! Though, if she's going to hike it, it's good to know what you're getting into. We left there in a hurry so we'd have more time to shop at IKEA! The time that was spent there was much more than intended as well...I think we were there for over 2 hours! Oops. But really, how can you go into a store that big and NOT spend that much time? We barely did any browsing; it was more a trip for specific things Carene and Dave wanted. Poor Dave. He just really wanted to go to a mall and shop. My pain was similar. The fact that I was shopping without money was quite tragic...and much to Duane's surprise, I'm sure. It was quite tough. Though, it's not like I had money I SHOULDN'T spend...I really didn't have any AT ALL! Like, the ATM wouldn't let me take out $20 'cause of "insufficient funds". Boo that. I've been one of those people to say "I can't go out, I have no money," when really, I do have money and I just shouldn't spend it. I hated that phase. When I have money, I want to spend it! Also, I'm one of those people who THINKS she's getting a good deal on things that say they're on "sale"...but, when it all adds up, it really wasn't a sale and I've more than likely been gypped! Dang those retail advertisements! Anyway, the few things I could have bought at Ikea went by the wayside because of lack of money, and also because I had Duane in my head saying "you could really get that cheaper in Calgary without the extra tax, you know." Why is he in my head? Normally, I wouldn't care and I'd buy things anyway, but the simple fact that my money is tight probably played a big part in my lack of shopping bags at the end of the day. I even wanted to buy things for Duane but I couldn't, and his sense of practicality weighed heavily on my head. I can't wait for my first paycheck when I get back to work in September! I do imagine I'll have some catching up to do, however, so my personal spending habits will, again, have to be stifled until I've had a chance to pay off some things and save a bit.
At the end of the day, after spending too much time at Ikea and none at Guilford, we arrived in Abbotsford and made a short stop at SevenOaks Mall(where Dave and Carene were both able to buy a few clothes). I decided there that I wanted to buy a few things, but without money from my own account I wasn't sure how I was going to get away with it. I knew I had to have money for the Imax show that night, so I decided to go ahead and take money out of the account Duane and I share. Hmmm...now, was that smart? At the time, I figured he might mind, but what was I to do? So out came $40 from the money we share(to be used for things like gas in the car, household items, trips, etc.)to be used for me and me only. Oops. I figured I could pay it back after the paychecks start coming again. Well, after the movie which, by the way, was great, we headed back into Abbotsford to spend some time at Tim Horton's with Andrew and Michelle since they couldn't come to the show.

I really do have a point I'm getting to, it just takes some time...details, you know!
That's how I remember my evenings being spent before I moved to Calgary...at the Tim Horton's at the AutoMall just chatting with friends...late at night.
It was decided that at about 11 some of us were too tired to keep our eyes open, so we said our goodnights and headed for home. I was dropped off and I was going to head to bed, but remembered that Duane was supposed to have emailed me(since I wasn't home to talk to). I came to the computer to find my sister on MSN, so I booted her for a couple minutes to check emails, which she graciously approved. There I found an email with Duane's suggestion to use $100 from our joint account! He's had a really good month at work, and he knows I'm short on cash, so as a gift, he said it was ok to use some money! What a great husband. Good thing I hadn't even told him about having to pull out $40 earlier in the day! I fully intended on letting him in on that, but I hadn't even had the chance before he "let" me access more :) Now I can go back to the mall and buy that purse I wanted *wink*

He doesn't even care!

How disheartening! I set up this site and I'm all proud of myself...kind of worried Duane might be annoyed that I did it alone...when I find out, after talking to him, that he doesn't even care! I thought we were switching so he'd actually like the new site, want to write more, etc, but it turns out that it really didn't matter at all, and he doesn't feel any importance in writing to keep friends and family up to date on our lives. I might as well have stayed at the other site. I just don't like how, at the other one, I'm limited to how many pictures I can post...but I do like the fact that I can have an actual album there, as opposed to not having one at all on this one. Anyway...that's my sad news. Not really that sad, but kind of annoying to me!
Today turned out to be completely different than I thought. After going on last night about how I was supposed to be working all day in the heat with dad, it turned out that he had forgotten to tell me he didn't need me at all! I was only going to be needed if he had to put two days worth of yards into today, but I guess that didn't happen, so I wasn't needed! Yay! No alarm clock for me this morning, and in fact, I slept in until 11:30! Wow. It's already 3:00, and I've really done nothing but eat, watch a movie, and do dishes(LOTS of them!). I do feel the need to go to the beach, however, so I think I might walk to the mall to get my mom's car so I can, in fact, get to the beach! But she's done work in just over 2 hours, it takes me half an hour to get there, and I'd only be able to be at the beach for an hour before I'd have to turn around, pick her up from work, get her home, and have the car available for her tonight when she goes out. Dang. Maybe I won't go. I should've called Andrew and Michelle to go out to Cultus Lake today!

Look at Me Go!

Yay! I'm amazing. I set up a new blogsite and everything! Ok, I realize it's not rocket science to do such things, but the point is that I did it without any problems! AND I did it without consulting Duane first :) We'd talked about switching sites 'cause the other one is dumb, but we hadn't really settled on where to go from there. I settled on here when I noticed how many other people had set up camp here lately. Hopefully Duane's ok with it! It will be a fairly boring site until I can figure out how to spice it up a bit, though.
Well, I think this will be all for now...just a starter blog to let everyone know we're here!