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What a holiday-filled week it’s been! Rick and I went shopping for our Thanksgiving dinner supplies on Monday. He allowed me to take this picture of him in a Santa hat:

(I also have a picture of him in a leprechaun hat from St. Patrick’s day a few years ago. Am thinking of collecting pictures of Rick in strange hats.)

For Thanksgiving dinner, I planned to cook the turkey, stuffing and gravy from scratch and go with pre-prepared for rolls, mashed potatoes (the frozen ones from TJ’s are pretty good), sweet potatoes (microwave-in-bag), creamed corn, cranberry sauce (again, thank you TJ’s), pumpkin pie and whipped cream. The stuffing started out promising. Fresh marjoram, thyme and sage with minced and sauteed onions and celery. Sandwhich bread cut into 1/2-inch cubes and toasted in the oven. I put it in a casserole dish to bak during the last hour of turkey-cooking time. But the turkey took an extra hour to cook and I had beer and a headache and … it ended up burned. D’oh!

The gravy, which was to be made from drippings that cooked in the bottom of the pan with coarsely-chopping onions, celery and carrots, turned out fine. Even though I burned the veggies by not adding enough chicken broth in the first hour. While I napped on the couch, overwhelmed by all the burning, Rick supervised the last hour of turkey-cooking and turned out a juicy, well-roasted bird. Thank goodness. And then I burned the rolls in the toaster oven. Double d’oh!

Not too bad for a first on-our-own Thanksgiving, though. I had back-up stuffing in a box in the cupboard. And there were still rolls left over that I have managed to not-burn everytime we have leftovers.

I used the rest of the weekend to start on Christmas. Rick helped me put up LED Christmas lights from Costco:

View the rest of my Holidays 2008 pictures here.

And, I also got the jump on addressing and signing all my Christmas cards. Only have to get a few more Christmas presents and I can relax and enjoy the season. Woohoo!

I think I’m done traveling to LA for quite a while. Between Sushi Decompression, the Long Beach marathon, business meetings and seeing family I have already been down to LA 4 times this month and I. Am. Done.

Sushi Decompression on the 4th was a ton of fun, though. Seeing everybody wearing clothes, clean and with hair was quite a treat (as was the after-party at Robert’s house – thank you for hosting!) Here are some pics:

On the 18th, Rick and I celebrated Oktoberfest at The Old Vienna Inn with a couple friends. It’s a huge party, everyone eats family style and we met a very cool couple from Riverside who were celebrating their 1st wedding anniversary. Rick forced everybody to have Jager shots and a good time was had by all. The food was amazing, too (from what I can remember)

By the way, History class is going quite well. We had a test recently and I scored 60 out of 60. w00t! Who would have thought I’d do so well at a subject I always said I’d hated?

No plans for Halloween as of yet. The thought of relaxing, watching movies and passing out candy is quite appealing, though.

And for your viewing pleasure, here’s a picture of Rick’s cat, (Fat Man) Puddin’:

So, I went to Burning Man this year.

For those not familiar, Burning Man is a giant one-week festival in the Reno desert. You must bring everything necessary to live and have fun with you and you must take it all with you when you leave. The environment is extreme: mid-day temperatures exceed 100 degrees, winds can exceed 75 mph and daily dust storms (think The Mummy but without the gaping maw) are common.

I decided to camp in a tent instead of renting an RV. Being able to nap in a tent during the day required covering it in shade. I decided to build a shade structure out of PVC instead of purchasing an expensive steel structure pre-built. I chose to build a Puma Cave, with some modifications. The Puma Cave called for 10-foot lengths of 1-inch PVC. To avoid having to transport such long lengths on top of my Honda Fit, I cut each 10-foot length in half and used a 9-inch section of 1.25-inch PVC to join the 5-foot lengths together. The 5-foot lengths fit in the Fit nicely and assembly was fairly easy. Huge thanks to Rick for helping me figure out this whole thing

The large group of friends I went with, Debase Camp, was an established theme camp this year. This meant placement within the city and many fun events throughout the week, including Black Rock City Combat Club and Kundalini Yoga every morning.

I felt very different about this trip than my first time attending, in 2003. My life was so different at that time and Burning Man became a fantastical escape. Today, I am much happier with where I am in the “default” world. Burning Man 2008 instead was an opportunity to re-connect with old friends. It also turned out to be a very interesting reset in my own personal values. I believe that it helped me find more of myself.

View the rest of my pictures at my Burning Man 2008 photoset.

Rick and I went to the Mid State Fair in Paso Robles this weekend with a co-worker of his from India, Awi. We went around noon which was great to avoid the crowds but bloody hot – it was 100 degrees! While there we saw the world’s largest pig weigh in at 1000 pounds and checked out all the livestock from the 4H kids. We drank cold beer, ate some giant turkey legs and checked out some rodeo competitions.

On Sunday, I ran (only) 10 miles to keep up with marathon training. (View my route.) It was nice to do a long run in the cool beach air in Los Osos for a change. The knee is still doing well – I just need to figure out the plantar fascia pain that bothers me for a few days after these long runs.

In older news, my first foray back to college has gone well! I took a summer drawing class to get back into the swing of things and scored an A. Here are some pictures of our final setup and exhibition. Click the photos to visit the set on Flickr and you can hover over some of the photos to see which are mine.

And in random news, Rick and I found a heinous black widow outside his apartment. At first, I thought it was a garden spider because of its sheer size!

J and M invited us over to J’s parents’ for a 4th of July BBQ. Everything was great and J’s family was so nice. Afterwards, we all went down to Tidelands Park at the end of the Embarcadero in Morro Bay to watch fireworks. As always, it was foggy and we couldn’t see much but colored, glowing clouds for the first part. After a bit, the fog blew away and we could see more and then the smoke got so thick that it was back to glowing fog again Still, we had a great time!

Click here to view some more pics

(And I got to use my brand-new Canon SD870 IS to take pictures and put together this movie )

I read about the Couch-to-5k Running Plan over a year ago but wasn’t inspired to start it until I heard that a friend of mine, a busy working mom of two, had run the 5k Wine Run April 13th. I started week one April 14th but training was interrupted by my Chicago trip. So I re-started week one last week and have moved on to week two this week.

My previous experience with running consisted of jogging with Rick at 5 in the morning, running until I could run no more and hating every minute of it. This program starts off with running and walking and is much more tolerable. Listening to audiobooks while I run even makes it enjoyable. Getting the motivation to get out of bed is difficult but I’ve found that if I get out of bed with the intention of simply walking for 5 minutes to warm up and then stretching, the rest follows fairly painlessly.

I had been running in men’s New Balance 507s that I’d bought a couple years ago and had never really used. They were a little too long and made my feet sore. So today, I went Running Warehouse in SLO to get proper shoes. There, a saleswoman named Tara put me in some neutral shoes and got me on a treadmill to video my gait. I was over-pronating, which is a common problem. She put me in four or five different pairs of shoes, videotaping me in each one, until we found a pair that was comfy and supportive. It was a fun experience and I appreciated the time she took with me to find the right pair. I ended up buying a pair of Brooks Ariel shoes and will try them out tomorrow morning.

Gene and I are planning on running a marathon with Train To End Stroke, and organization local to California. I’m going to their information session on the 17th in Sherman Oaks. The Pasadena marathon is November 16th, which is about 6 months from then. Hopefully that’ll be enough time to train. In the meantime, I’ll continue the Couch-to-5k plan at a double pace.

On Monday Rick and I took the train West to the Chicago suburb of St. Charles to visit Rick’s parents. We visited and looked at boxes of pictures from Rick’s childhood. My favorite was a picture of Rick during his potty training days, sitting stark naked on the potty, grinning and covering his privates with an empty Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket on his head as a hat! Rick’s mom and dad kindly gave it to me to keep for blackmail. We all went out for a fabulous king crab dinner that night. I’ve never seen crab legs that big! So yummy.

On Tuesday, we caught a Cubs game with Rick’s dad. The scene outside Wrigley Field was like a huge party and sitting in the bleachers was even better. The weather was great and the Cubs kicked butt. Wrigley Field is amazing. Afterwards, Rick’s dad took us out for some ribs at Carson’s in downtown. The restaurant was very cool and old-school and the ribs were delicious. Wednesday, we headed back out to the suburbs to hang out with Rick’s childhood friend, his wife and son. We barbecued and shot some hoops and talked Warcraft.

On Thursday, we went to the Sears tower and had lunch with Rick’s Uncle Bill at a very cool restaurant in the lobby of a building downtown, one block South of the Sears tower. The lobby had a glass ceiling and a gorgeous fountain. It felt like an atrium. That night was a taping of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, one of my favorite NPR programs. They had a new panelist, Drew Carey, who was very funny. Moby was their special guest and, unlike most previous guests, showed up in person instead of calling in! Unfortunately none of my pictures turned out – the theater was too dark

On Friday we checked out the Art Institute which was AMAZING. They had a special exhibition of Edward Hopper and Winslow Homer that blew my mind. I wasn’t familiar with Hopper’s work beyond his iconic Nighthawks painting and the rest of his work really moved me. The style reminded me of Magritte’s work – although there were no surrealist elements, the style and composition made me feel that they were surrealist nonetheless. I especially loved one of his last paintings, Sun in an Empty Room. That night, Rick’s Uncle Bill took us out for ribs at Twin Anchors and they were the best ribs I’ve ever had in my life. The meat was so tender that it was difficult to eat – it just slipped off the bone!

Saturday was our day of departure and we had breakfast at Wishbone, a southern-style eatery near Oprah’s taping studio. Their salmon cakes with hollandaise blew my mind and the decor was very fun and cheerful. Afterwards, we went to O’Hare to check in where (surprise, surprise) my bag was way overweight. We had to wait half an hour to check-in with an agent because their check-in machines weren’t working for us and in the end, our flight was delayed by half an hour. I was worried we wouldn’t make our connecting flight because we landed with 10 minutes to get to the next gate. Luckily, we caught a ride on one of those electric cart things and made our flight.

In the end, I had tons of fun. Chicago is a great town (when the weather’s good) and I definitely want to go back to check out the museums we missed. However, I’m not too happy with the extra 10 pounds I brought back with me. Time to get back to my running program, eating veggies and working.

More pictures here

We left San Luis Obispo airport at 7:52am (Pacific) and got in to our vacation rental at 6:30pm (Central). The flights were uneventful and our luggage wasn’t lost, thank goodness. The condo looks just as good as the photos but smells a little funky. Turns out, it’s also super noisy in the morning if you keep the windows open. Oh well, it’s STILL better than Motel 6.

After we got in we unpacked and headed out in search of dinner. We were starving and ended up eating deep fried veggies and buffalo wings at a local bar. Pretty good. We went back to the condo to relax and make phone calls and then Rick found a cool-sounding Irish bar we could go to – The Emerald Loop. We rode the red line for a bit to get there and that was pretty exciting to a Chicago-newb like me

The Emerald Loop is a gorgeous old place in downtown. They have very pretty stained glass fixtures all over along with some very beautiful paintings. There’s one massive painting in the dining room that I couldn’t tear my eyes off of. The bar looks huge and old and gleaming. And the service was great. Our waiter, Mark, was very friendly and funny and we chatted basketball. Unfortunately we were too full to try the food (which they seem to serve as late as you like) but their Guinness draft is the best I’ve ever had – poured smooth and ice cold, like chocolate milk with a memory-foam head.

We ended the night with an Irish Car Bomb and haiiled a cab (!) to get home. That was fun.

Leaving on a jet plane. Don’t know when I’ll be back again…

Pictures and blogs to come