On the morning of December 10th, 2011, I remained awake from the previous night determined to bear witness to the elusive total lunar eclipse which only showed it’s true colors every 3 years. I thought “I’m used to staying up into the wee hours of the night, why not do so this night and indulge in the beauty of the moon while the sun rises?” And I did just that. Here are some photos I managed to take. I don’t posses the creative capacity of capturing such wonders of the universe yet, but hope to continue to try as time goes on. Such wonderful colors in the morning hours.
Steve and I recently joined a local San Diego Reddit Facebook group and have been getting lots of fun event invites for all sorts of things from drink meet ups at local bars, rock climbing nights, foodie nights, and even some camping weekends and bonfires! So far we have been slowly breaking into it and meeting a lot of really awesome people locally. One of the most recent things we did was go camping in the Anza-Borrego desert this past Thanksgiving weekend. There were at least 15-20 of us there and we stayed for one night. We could have stayed for two, but we had some things to do on Sunday so we decided to come back on Saturday afternoon and only stay Friday night. We had a freakin’ blast there and I can’t wait to go back again with the Reddit crew.
When we got there it was just getting dark. We had some people help us with light as we set up our tent and then we made a b-line to the beer and camp fire to roast some weenies and marshmallows. We met everybody and I mostly remembered everyone’s name :) Around the campfire we played a game called Buzz Word which was awesome! Then we had some night caps and chatted with the few people that hadn’t already trickled off to bed.
In the morning the sun was up bright and early at 6am. At about 8am the sun had warmed our tent too much and it was time to get up.
First things first was brekky! Vance made everyone some awesome Egg-In-A-Holes with bacon on top to start every one’s day off proper. Our friend Brian and I split a yummy sticky bun that we roasted on the fire. It was good and had a hint of smokey flavor :)
After brekky some of the folks that brought their guns and ammo decided to go across the railroad tracks and set up some targets and shoot some guns! I had never fired a real gun before and have always wanted to at least go to a range and try it out. What better time to try than out in the desert with good company! There was a shotgun, a few handguns and some .22 caliber rifles. I got to fire each gun at least once and it was a blast. I’d say my favorites were the .22′s since the recoil wasn’t as bad and they were pretty easy to hold. The hand guns were heavier than I expected and certainly packed a mighty punch. It was so awesome for Rome, Andy, and (Matt I think?) to share their ammo and let us try their guns out. Check out these shots of us all shootin’ guns!
We all had a blast out there. We are going to make sure we can go for the full 2 nights next time. Everyone we met was awesome and really nice. Everyone shared everything and we all got along really well, I couldn’t have asked for better random company than some fellow Redditors! Hope to see you all again soon!
Birthday hiking trip!! Steve took me on a wonderful hike on my birthday yesterday to Pyles Peak in the Mission Trails Regional Park. We first hiked up a wide trail to Cowles Mountain which is the highest point in San Diego with an elevation of 1592 ft. We took a route up to Cowles Mtn. that was a little less crowded but just as steep. When we arrived there was a large radio/weather/electrical tower at the top and also a large plaque denoting the highest point in San Diego.
After we reached that point we kept on another trail close by that would take us to Pyles Peak. This trail was mostly downhill on the way to the peak, so on the way back we kept a nice slow pace to match the steepness of the trail. The summit of Pyles Peak was pretty awesome, it overlooked lots of cities within San Diego County such as Santee, San Carlos, and even the M.C.A.S. Mirimar Base.
We sat on some rocks and had a nice sammich picnic. Then Steve “found something under a rock” and pulled out a birthday present! I got Lord of the Rings on Blu-Ray! YES!!
The hike back was slow and steady, but my calves are painfully thanking me today for the exercise :) I can’t wait to go on our next hike!
Oh yeah…we also found this poor guy :( He didn’t make it through the San Diego summer heat that day. This is my little picture funeral for him.
So today Steve and I were invited to go hiking with one of Steve’s co-workers, Ryan, on the Pacific Crest Trail! It’s about 50 minutes West on I-8 from San Diego and was a great hike! Apparently this trail actually goes from the Mexico border all the way into Canada! Man wouldn’t that be a trek. Apparently people have done it :) We decided to do a few miles on the first little leg of the trek and check out some cool spots along the way.
It was pretty hot out, but most of the trail was fairly level, not a lot of steep climbs. Nothing like Tongariro :P But it was still incredibly awesome. I took some pictures along the way before we decided to stop for lunch.
We got about 2-3 miles in before we found a really neat stream running through a small valley a little bit off the beaten track. We climbed down and found a really nice spot to have some lunch near the water. We found tadpoles in the water with legs growing! Lots of frogs too and HUGE dragonflies. There was also a bee that really really wanted some of Ryan’s sandwich.
After we had lunch, we continued on the trail for a little while before coming to a really cool rock jutting out of the cliff side and took a nice break. While we were there we saw some very ominous grey clouds looming toward us, then low and behold it started to rain some fatty raindrops! We got a little wet and it felt really nice to be out of the blazing sun and get a nice little shower. The rain passed within minutes and on our way back through the trail we could hear thunder behind us the entire way back. It was so cool. It was also nice to have a little cloud cover on the way back to ease the heat off of us :)
I didn’t buy much of anything this year when I went to Preview Night at Comic Con, but I took a few cool pics. I was mostly there with some of my plushies I have made to promote my business! Check out these photos though :)
This is a Thank You card I made for my surgeon, Dr. Randal Vecchione! He was an amazing doctor and even though I cried like a little baby during part of my surgery and during suture removal, he stick by me and made sure my finger healed up nicely. Thank you Dr. Vecchione. You are the best!!!!
So I recently got a new tattoo that I am really excited about :D
I have known what I wanted to get for a while and decided to do some research on some local tattoo artists who could match the dotwork tattoo style I was looking for. Luckily I was able to find someone in San Diego who was known for her dotwork and new tribal style work. I met Gemma Pariente at Full Circle Tattoo in San Diego.
I love it :) It is a wing-like tattoo and it reminds me that the sky is the limit. I initially designed it myself based off of a tattoo I saw in a book called “Black Tattoo Art” but I was open to having Gemma take a stab at the design. She ended up making a beautiful rendition of what I was looking for and I went ahead and got it done. She had a lot of good ideas and I ended up choosing this one.
I highly recommend Full Circle Tattoo and their artists there. Everyone was friendly and awesome and I will hopefully be going back to have another tattoo designed by Gemma in the future :)
So Steve surprised me with a really cool date! We went up to Del Mar and went on a hot air balloon ride! It was SO much fun :D I thought I was going to be a bit scared since i wasn’t sure if I was afraid of heights or not, but then I remembered “Oh wait…I have freakin’ skydived before…if I can do THAT then this will be awesome!”
We got to watch the ground crew set up the balloon and get it ready for take off!
Then we hopped in and took off! after getting off the ground it was smooth sailing from there on out. We started rising and I got a video of the action!
When we started getting higher, we realized we were floating through the clouds and ended up on top of them. It was an awesome view!
And one of the best parts of the ride? Free chilled Champagne! And they also let the passengers BYO too! Another couple brought a bottle of wine and Steve and I brought a bottle of Delirium Tremens. Perfect for a cruise around in the sky :)
The decent was also pretty fun, we landed in an empty field and we had to brace ourselves for the basket hitting the ground. It wasn’t that rough at all and was actually kinda fun. The sun was just about setting around this time, if the clouds hadn’t rolled in that evening, we probably would have seen it better, but I thought it was beautiful out anyway. So much fun!!
