Cousins in Yosemite

by

My beautiful cousins from Florida are now living in CA, and they came to visit last weekend in Yosemite. It was wonderful to have a chance to catch up with them, and show them around. They were so thoughtful – they brought me a delicate orchid as a birthday present, and a birthday card. These … Read more

I went Rock Climbing!

by

Yesterday, after work Tom and I tromped out to a short piece of rock, roped up and went rock climbing. I tried to remember the last time I did this… last summer maybe, on the East Side somewhere? It’s been a long time. Surprisingly, the mental rust was more noticeable than either my recovering shoulder … Read more

When the Lights Go Out

by

The last few weeks have been all about working and trying to get the downstairs apartment ready for the renters who are arriving June 1. Fortunately, a few days ago we had a brief power outage – just a few hours in the evening, which gave me an excuse to do a bit of sketching. … Read more

Our Yosemite Rental House and etc.

by

The Yosemite House The steady churning of projects surrounding our new Yosemite vacation rental increased to a frenzy starting late May into early April. We have a nice stream of renters from VRBO who are planning to stay in our downstairs apartment starting on June 1, and the pressure to have everything in order by … Read more

Snow Creek to Mount Watkins

by

… and breathe… Between a Sisyphusean marketing workload with DNC, a conversion optimization class that operates heavily on the you’ll-get-out-what-you-put-in principle, volunteer activities at the Valley Visitor Center for a full day once every other week, a frozen shoulder that seems to be adamant about remaining stuck, and house construction (Tom’s been going nuts, and … Read more

Backstage at Bracebridge Dinner

by

After attending Bracebridge Dinner with the marketing group last year, I was so impressed that I resolved to volunteer to be in it this year. The Bracebridge organizers are (justifiably) particular about not allowing cameras during the performance, and I wanted to take pictures! I didn’t end up taking that many pictures after all, but … Read more

NaNoWriMo musings

by

I finished! During the month of November, I and more than 32,000 other people around the world each completed 50,000 words of fiction. This was just over 19% of the people who signed up. Collectively, according to the NaNoWriMo stats, the word count of everyone who participated and uploaded their writings to the NaNo web … Read more

Pumpkin Prince

by

With Halloween coming up, with the ever-looming prospect of kids with too much candy on their hands, I thought I’d share a brilliant idea that a co-worker told me about. When she was growing up, she and her brother were allowed to eat as much candy as they wanted Halloween night, but then, all the … Read more

NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month

by

There. I did it. I pushed the little sign up button on the NaNoWriMo page and now I’m basically committed to writing a 50,000 word novel next month. Hoo boy. Part of me is really excited about the challenge, and another part is wondering what the hell the first part is thinking. First of all, … Read more