memorial day weekend at spruce knob

had a great time with bree, kevin, and louie. we have yet to get together and share pics, so most likely the ones they took with their SLR are better. and they were the only ones to take pics while climbing... but here's a few to document the weekend. 

after a great afternoon of climbing/driving in the sunshine, we arrived at our destination to find our campspot snagged, and then the sky unloaded sheets of rain...

(checking Louie for ticks)

 but finally the sun came out, just in time to set.

 and we had a lovely misty walk around the lake before it got dark.

back at camp, we borrowed a crazy looking axe from our awesome straightupwestvirginian neighbors...

 to make a fire and tin foil dinners and...

 banana boats!!!!

and the next morning the sunrise was gorgeous!

and we went on a hike to a waterfall all day... 

(i love him so much i didn't mind that he was soaking my pants with muddy water in this picture)

our final morning we checked out Spruce Knob itself, and the views were amazing.

clearly this was a CAR camping, not a backpacking two-day trip... haha.

 after unloading the car, we went to the Wax Museum to make all my birthday dreams come true. (meaning, only as a birthday present that was about to expire would Alex do something so cheesy as go to the wax museum. i loved seeing the presidents in real life. plus, they had gummy strawberries at the end.)

 same height, not the same weight...

 good times.

historic triangle weekend

 we started the weekend with Jamestown. 

 thanks to bob's hangthecamerainatree trick, we got a group shot:

though we visited yorktown, we didn't get many pictures... just one of us at the beach...

the yorktown onion - illegal to pick, FYI...

... and a pretty treegrowinginabrickfence

 in williamsburg, we went to church, saw the pretty gardens and the governor's mansion, watch (briefly) some military marching, and had delicious food and fudge.

then off to monticello... it was much cooler than i thought.

 every night wrapped up with a fierce game of Ticket to Ride. 

we miss bob and merri already!

Unconventional Wisdom

i loved this interview article...

Unconventional Wisdom

Yvon Chouinard, loving life. Photo: Davis

Interview by Brad Melekian
You can’t be a happy person without using your body. That’s the reason you feel so good after surfing, even if you’ve had a shitty day.
I started surfing at 16. I made my own board out of balsa. Eventually I traded the board for a Model A Ford engine. I drove that Model A all over the place—Canada, Wyoming. It was a fair trade.
There were so few surfers. I’d drive from the Valley down to Malibu, and guys coming back from Malibu would give you the thumbs up or down. Now they give you the finger.
The surfing itself hasn’t changed at all. There’s still a wave and a board and a wetsuit. But the equipment has gotten a lot better. I used to surf Ventura overhead in February with no wetsuit, no leash, and when somebody lost their board, you’d have to follow him in and make sure he made it.
Personally, I try to lead a simple life. I don’t walk around with my hat on backward looking like a surfer. My Patagonia clothing, some of it is 20 years old. Just because I have a clothing company doesn’t mean I have closets and closets of brand new clothes.
Sure, it’s a consumer society, but you don’t have to be part of it. I hardly ever spend any money. Consumerism is just people trying to make themselves happy by consuming. And that’s wrong. Doesn’t work.
The secret to happiness is to be working at your passion. If you want to be miserable, lead a desperate life like everybody else where they drag their asses to work everyday because they hate their job.
My wife and I give 50 percent of our salaries away to charity. I don’t need the money. I don’t hang out with other businessmen. I’m a surfer for God’s sake. The only reason I hang on to this company is that I’m totally pessimistic about the fate of the planet. I feel like I couldn’t sleep at night unless I felt like I was part of the solution.
What’s wrong with just accepting the fact that there’s a beginning and an end to everything? I’m perfectly comfortable that I’m going to die.
I just live right now. You ask me about the past, you ask me about the future, the only way to be happy is to be living right now.
Everybody I know who’s studying the fate of the world is totally pessimistic. There’s no reason to be optimistic. We’re not going to get a handle on global warming, we’re way too late for that. It’s just a matter of knowing that you’re doing what you can, and so be it.
It’s not too late to start. I give talks to young people, and I can just see what’s going on in their heads. They’re thinking, “Oh yeah, when I get rich, I’m going to give a bunch of money away.” But it’s all relative. Ten dollars given away now is worth more than a hundred given away ten years from now. So you don’t have to be rich to be a philanthropist, or to do good.
I’m going to be in that seventh level of hell for using so much jet fuel. I don’t have the strength of character to say, okay, I’m going to quit traveling.
The whole history of America is you despoil your area and then you move west, right? Once you hit the bridge, you become multi-national and screw up the rest of the world. We’ve got to go back to absolute local living. You protect what you love, and how can you love something when you’re just looking for new loves all the time?

iPhone photos lately...

flaming lemongrass soup at Little Viet Garden in Georgetown. mmmm.

View of the White House as I walked home from an IIDA meeting

Phase 1 of my latest painting update. No more brown with overlapping squares....

this guy was texting on the stairs of this huge, stark space. it was just a scene that i wanted to capture. he looks so alone.

pink lights on the boats in the harbor, for Cherry Blossom Festival

the screen i stare at all day. with 15 people working in the same file, designing 9 million square feet, Revit gives me the blue pinwheel a LOT.

took a break from work to go out on the roof and see the space shuttle fly by.  

Easter in a nutshell

we thought we'd try natural dyes. turns out i have no idea how to use them. we ended up buying the toxic kind instead after all.

the Easter bunny was very healthy this year. other than 3 chocolate eggs (which yes, i did open and eat before documenting the good news), i received only healthy things. and lovely flowers that make our whole apartment smell lovely.

 

the Easter bunny didn't bother bringing Alex any candy. he still has Christmas candy in his not-so-secret hiding spot under the bed. so, he got plastic eggs filled with notes instead.

my mom was nice enough to mail us these! a tradition of our families has been to have these eggs in our baskets for as long as i can remember. when the lady stopped making them, my grandma and mom had to learn and make them themselves. it's been a lot of disasters over the years, but this year i think they were perfect. the true definition of Egg Hunting was discovered by me this year, as the act of finishing my own egg and then ransacking the house to look for my husbands chocolate egg. i don't think he appreciates them quite as much as i do. or so i tell myself to justify sneaking a taste of his.

happy late easter!