zoe passport

went to apply for Zoe's passport

it's a boy!!!

Taras, Katie and Lucy!

Taras, Katie and Lucy came over for some grilling today. It was ultra cute to see the little ones interact. I think Zoe is still not 100% ready to play with other kids, based on her clingyness, but she seems to be getting better. I showed off my new flip mini HD to taras: I predict that he will soon have one of his own.

The quest for tires

After a refreshing night's sleep, we all headed to breakfast in Dutch Flat, only to find that neither the Oddfellows nor the Hotel were serving breakfast! Catastrophe! We drove to Colfax instead and went to Mom's Kitchen, which was good, but not Oddfellows-deep-fried-bacon good. None of the tire places were open either, which was nice. We called around and discovered that the closest tire place was Roseville/Rockin, which is pretty far, but better than limping all the way back to the bay area. After discovering that Costco and the evil Wal*Mart did not have our tires in stock, we eventually ended up at Sears after fifteen minutes of circling the city sized Westfield Galleria mall. We had lunch at Il Fornaio, and then wandered around the mall for hours waiting for our car to be ready. When we finally got the call to pick up the car, I asked what had caused the flat, and it turned out to be a pretty large rock, which had somehow made it INTO the tire. I was too tired to quiz the tire guys on how it got in there

Alta, Salmon Lake, Exploded tire

We drove to Alta today after our customary stop at Awful Annie's for waffles etc. Zoe was in a fairly good mood, but has developed a new and slightly annoying habit of insisting that she walk up and down the restaurant when she should be eating. She is impossible to resist, though.

I did some chainsawing in Alta to clear paths down to the river and bucked logs until Terry arrived, and then we all piled into the Subie. We hadn't been to Salmon lake in ages, so it seemed like a good moderate hike to do after last weekend's snowfest. Unfortunately, the first part of the hike to Salmon Lake was also covered in snow,

and the trail as a whole was a lot longer than I remembered for some reason. We all enjoyed the lake for a while (no desire whatsoever to jump in though!) and watched a family try to catch small catfish at the North end of the lake. After slipping and sliding back to the car, we discovered that the left rear Subie tire was COMPLETELY flat. The car was parked on a muddy slope, which made changing the wheel a little dicey: the jack sunk pretty far into the mud. Happily, the wheel came off without a problem and I had the spare on in fifteen minutes or so. Next came the teeth gritting six miles of dirt road back to pavement. Ergh. We decided that it was late enough that tire replacement was going to have to wait until tomorrow. In the mean time... beer and blue cheese burgers. ZZN was a little backed up, which had been making her understandably irritable all day, and it was aggravated by her being tired. Happily, the dam reached a breaking point right before before bedtime, and chloe and I settled down to a relaxing night into the brand new tent with Zoe. By "relaxing", I of course mean a hellish night of crying, loud snorting noises and random kicks to the head. Zoe managed to rotate perpendicular to chloe and I and repeatedly kicked off of my face in order to head butt chloe. I lost count of how many times this happened, but suffice it to say that we will not be repeating the baby camping experience any time soon. I guess we will have to be happy with day trips. Here zoe is, looking tired after an exhausting night of parent abuse:

See how she feigns innocence with her thumb in her mouth!

new bike!!!

A hand built lugged steel frame with Campy Chorus components (bought used).

(image by Phil S., the bike's previous owner)

alea iacta est. ESPP suspended!

Chloe pregnant!!!!!!

chloe pregnant!

ugh

Yesterday we discovered that the workers had accidentally unplugged our deep freezer in the course of their work two weeks ago. And by "we", I mean that I found Chloe whimpering and pointing to the freezer and then to the obviously unplugged cord. Knowing that Chloe would practice a strategy of avoidance, I tackled the cleanup operation today.

Rather than go into the details of the olfactory assault that awaited my opening of the freezer door, let me just tell you what was in there: steaks, seafood, chicken stock and a few other things. The thing about steaks packed in paper is that they tend to leak when they thaw. Imagine what a standing pool of blood smells like after two weeks at room temperature. It was a nasty business, and hopefully the neighbors didn't get too freaked out. I had elbow length gloves on and was soon spattered with a mixture of Formula 401 and blood. Also, shuttling black garbage bags from the basement out to the trash might have looked a little suspicious. All I can say is that I take payment in Cooks Illustrated recipe brownies if, for example, someone wanted to thank me!

feijoa

One of our Feijoas is flowering!

Hopefully they will get fertilized and set fruit!

Freeley Lake

We drove up to the Carr Lake trailhead today, but discovered that it was completely snowed in! Not willing to give up, we parked the car a few hundred feet down from the trailhead and set off on foot, but soon got into the deep stuff. Even though we weren't sinking that much, it was tough going, and we gave up at the East end of Freeley Lake (mostly because we couldn't tell where the trail went). A few pics:




On the way back, I noticed a peculiar bluish-grey dust near the edge of some snow


and bent down to discover that it wasn't so much dust as a seething lawn of disgusting bugs:


We drove to Alta, where I was happy to see that the apple was doing well and had even sprouted new clusters of leaves. No sign of life in the grafts though. Zoe was too tired to even leave the car,

so Chloe stayed with her while I brought another 25 gallons of water up to the tree.

ugh

we were supposed to go to hawaii today, but missed the flight -- going to the mountains instead. :(

alta

We drove up to Alta from Sacto for the day and met Paul + family for a barbecue: blue cheese burgers, corn and sausages. We *finally* planted the fuji apple tree that had been sitting around in my parents front yard getting root bound for the past three months. Hopefully it will survive! I hand toted ~25 gallons of water from the river up to the apple tree's new home, so here's hoping it's not grafted onto super thirsty rootstock. I also set up a few grafts which are very very unlikely to work. I had been saving scion wood from the CFRG exchange back in January. Normally, I think you're only supposed to keep them around for a few months, so there is a good possibility that they are dead! The "rootstock" (i.e. what I was grafting onto) was a wild cherry tree, which was also quite a long way away from being dormant, so it will be interesting to see if any grafts take. I'm told grafting plums are pretty stupid-proof, but I wonder if they can be THIS stupid proof? Grafts completed:


Santa Rosa
Satsuma
Golden Nectar
Elephant heart (x2)
Inca
Beauty

rock and roll!

Mom's Opening

Mom had her gallery opening at the Sakata Garo gallery in Sacramento today. I have to admit that I've never had a very high opinion of Sacto, but that changed completely during this trip. The gallery is in a section of town lines but numerous and beautiful huge trees. It's super bike friendly, and there was even a huge street party this evening -- very cool.

Before the opening, we took Zoe to the pool in her new swimsuit, which was pretty adorable:







The opening went very well, and Paul and Nikki brought Emmett and Joshua up from their new home base in Davis. Zoe looked very cute in her new French dress:







I think I could easily live in Sacramento if I could do commute by bike. It has a nice vibe, and a small town feel to it, and as an added bonus, its closer to the mountains!

Chloe

four months pregnant

grafts

Most of my grafts (guerilla and otherwise) have worked, and it is amazing to see how fast they can grow. Here are some photos of the plum tree in my back yard:



And one to our pear tree

Zoe vs. Ladybug