These bookcases have been “almost done” for over a month now, it seems. That last 10% of the way took more than 50% of the actual time and effort, but Jeff made a real push last weekend and every evening this week to get these puppies done and installed. Right now, there are 3 shelves left to be varnished this weekend, but the bookcases and 9 movable shelves are totally done.

Here’s the point we reached that started to feel like we were almost there, when in reality we were still so far. Two bookcases stained, but lots left to stain and nothing varnished:

Finally, all the bits and pieces had been stained, polyeurethaned, lightly sanded, and polyeurethaned again (with lots of drying time in between those steps). Tuesday night, we glued and nailed the backs onto all three bookcases:

Then we moved them into their future resting places in our bedroom, not yet filling them up with shelves and books in case we decided we didn’t like the placement. Plus, they still had to finish drying.

And there they sat for 48 hours. Tonight, Jeff attached the earthquake straps (aka, “things that will keep our legs from being crushed in case of another Northridge”), and I set about correcting what has been the bane of my existence these last 5 years: books stacked vertically in TWO ROWS so you couldn’t see them all at once. Blasphemy! But look – see how pretty it is now?

So, was it worth $500 in materials and tools, countless hours of Jeff-labor (and a few hours of Anna-labor, but honestly, mostly I just watched), and three months of having bits of wood scattered all over the apartment as we hauled parts inside and outside week after week? Well, they certainly put our remaining Ikea furniture to shame (take a look at the shabby dresser in that picture – doesn’t it just look sad?), and they actually look like Real Bookshelves instead of dorm room furniture. I’ve seen similar, slightly smaller shelves at CostPlus for about $200 a pop, but they’re never quite what we want – this way, we got to totally customize them, and they’re built much more solidly than anything we’d buy in pieces and screw together.

Or so Jeff tells me. I’ll let you know how they look after 10 years and a couple of moves.

We couldn’t have picked a better weekend to dive the Northern Channel Islands. The weather was sunny and beautiful, the swell cooperated, the sea lions were in a playful mood, and we had a great bunch of people signed up for the limited load trip on the Vision. 14 out of the 21 divers were with Ken Ashman of California Digital Diving, and of those, 6 of us were from the Sole Searchers dive club. The Vision, an enormous boat to start with, normally takes 40 divers. For about an extra $100 apiece, we got so much room to spread out as to make it completely worth it; empty bunks to store extra bags, two galley tables devoted entirely to camera rigs, and plenty of room on the dive deck for everyone to gear up.

Basically, we were on the ideal dive trip.

Sunday dawned flat and beautiful at San Miguel, the channel island farthest to the west and most susceptible to high swell and rough weather. We knew it was going to be an outstanding trip when we heard the first dive site was at Wilson’s Rock, a favorite of ours from previous trips, and a tricky site to dive unless conditions are perfect. As the boat slowed down and approached the dive site, sea lions started leaping out of the water to greet us, as if to ask why on earth we were taking so long to come amuse them.

Visibility at most sites we hit was anywhere from decent to outstanding, and there was little or no current. There actually was some surface swell, but extremely long-wavelength, making it easy to get in and out of the boat – but creating some pretty deep surge, which made the photographers’ jobs harder.

Still, we really can’t complain. We got dives in at some of the most amazing and hard-to-reach sites around San Miguel. On Sunday we hung out at Wilson’s before moving over to Castle Rock, where I spotted our first ever wolf eel.

My wolf eel!

Monday morning we headed out to Richardson’s Rock, a pinnacle that comes up to about 30 feet, with most of the dive site around 60. The top layer of water was a bit murky, but as we descended down the anchor line the entire dive site suddenly popped into view. We could see the entire topography of Richardson’s clearly; a wide plateau of rock with craters and crevices carving out most of its inside. Every surface was crawling with decorator crabs and anemones; we even saw one crab dragging away an octopus for lunch. There were strangely no fish in sight, but their absence was soon explained when a dozen sea lions popped into view, searching for breakfast. Instead, they found their second-favorite thing: divers! We did two dives at Richardson’s, and the sea lions performed on both, twirling around and blowing bubbles in imitation of the divers.

This really shows off the psychotic side of sea lions:

In fact, we saw sea lions on 9 of the 10 dives we did at San Miguel, including a night dive (it’s a bit alarming to have a sea lion pop up in front of your face in the dark). In between dives, they amused us with antics on the surface, jumping and splashing as if it was all choreographed, until anyone tried to get some video or a photo. Then they became suddenly camera-shy.

That wasn’t the case underwater at all. On our last dive at San Miguel, Jeff and I attracted the attention of a young sea lion towards the end of our dive, as we puttered around in 30 feet of water. This guy couldn’t get enough of us, dipping down to stare and blow bubbles, and coming closer and closer. He bumped his nose into the glass front of my video housing, and poked at my video lights. Then he went to check out Jeff’s camera rig, mouthing Jeff’s strobes as if to see if they were edible (he didn’t actually bite down, so no harm was done). I was laughing so hard my video is unwatchable from all the shaking – doh!

On Monday night, I opted out of the night dive (it would have been dive #6 that day, and I’d attempted a night dive the previous night only to be disappointed by lousy vis and terrible surge). Jeff buddied up with Carol and Ray, and I joined the other holdouts on deck to keep an eye out for returning divers. We were about a half mile off the coast of Santa Rosa, but every time the waves crashed into the rocks there you could see the glow of bioluminescence. Sometimes you’d see a flash in the water closer to the boat as some large fish made a fast move. Every now and then, the divers would aim their lights in the right direction, and the water would light up in a halo around their location. It was a pretty surreal way to spend an evening, and beautiful.

Random prettiness:

Tuesday, we stayed at Santa Rosa in the morning, visiting some of the pinnacles off shore to the east. The boat metered some reef structure they hadn’t dived before a bit to the west, and we headed back that way to check it out and see if it was a decent dive site. It turned out to be pretty cool; a rock plataeu in about 60 feet of water, dropping off to about 80 feet with a ledge-like overhang that you could poke around under in search of critters. I imagine they’ll visit it again.

Our last dives of the trip were over at Santa Cruz, an island we sometimes visit on the Spectre – but not usually the west end. At first it looked like a fairly mediocre dive site; shallow, so-so visibility, and lots of the ubiquitous surge. But near the end of our last dive, it suddenly turned into one of those nifty, memorable dives when I spotted a Hilton’s Aeolid on a little wall. We’d only ever seen one of these guys before, and they’re one of my favorite nudis. Then I spotted another. And two more after that. There was a whole village of Hiltons! Of course, Jeff didn’t have the macro lens on. After we tore ourselves away from Nudi Central, I found myself accosted by a very curious sheephead. Now, these guys are popular food for spearfishermen, and tend to be at least a little skittish. Not so this dude: he kept drifting right up into my mask as if he wanted to come inside.

Checking out his reflection?

In some ways, I wished it was a longer trip – I didn’t want to stop diving! On the other hand, three days is about all my body can take, at least when I’m cramming in 5 dives a day. I loved diving San Miguel in a dry suit (water in the low 50s, so it made a HUGE difference), but there were a few drawbacks. Less neoprene padding means it’s more painful to hit the water in a giant stride, and WAY more painful to crawl around on the metal swim step on your knees. I have an interesting array of bruises up my shins and knees, and on the last dive I barely managed to haul myself up the swim step stairs.

Even the ride back to Santa Barbara was fun; the captain slowed the boat down so we could all check out a school of grampus, which look like a cross between pilot whales and dolphins.

I hope we don’t wait a whole year before doing one of these trips again; it’s the best way to do California diving. Check out the rest of our underwater and topside pics, and hopefully I’ll have some watchable video snippets soon as well. If you’re really bored, my dive logs are here.

Lots of nice scenery from the boat:

We almost have new bookshelves – three of these puppies:

As promised….

My poorly-fitting, super-stylish drysuit:

About halfway poofed-up with air:

Jeff gets in on the poofing fun:

It’s been one of those lovely weeks where we’re booked solid every single night (and sandwiched between two fairly strenuous weekends, to boot).

On Monday night, I wandered over to Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena for an author event; Robert Jordan was there to do a Q&A and sign copies of the Wheel of Time series. It being Halloween, I was really hoping some hardcore geeks would show up in WoT costumes; alas, I was disappointed to see only a handful of vampire and Japanese schoolgirl outfits.

A lot of the excitement of the Q&A was gone because of the detailed reports everyone had posted on the internet since he started his tour a month ago – ten years ago, you could get away with giving the same spiel at every stop, but now we’re all spoiled in advance! Still, it was good to see one of my favorite authors still hale and hearty. He’s a little thinner than the last time I saw him, and a little grayer, and he wasn’t personalizing signatures – but he was posing for photos with the fans, which is new. He used to always wear a hat and dark glasses indoors, and seemed to dislike having his photo taken.

Getting my books signed by Robert Jordan:

He commented on my battered-up copy of The Fires of Heaven, which is dog-eared, fruit-punch stained, and a bit wobbly in the spine, saying he liked to see a well-read book. You’d think I’d take more care of first-edition hardcovers that I always make the effort to get signed, but you’d be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Books are for reading, not re-selling; that’s why I’m bummed he doesn’t personalize anymore, though it makes them more Ebay-able.

***

Tuesday, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the dive condition reports coming out of Laguna. Zero to one-foot surf, almost no surge, and 15-20 foot visibility. On a beach dive!! The reports had been steadily improving since Saturday, and I didn’t dare hope they’d last much longer. I jokingly sent Jeff an email asking him to ditch work with me Wednesday morning in favor of a dive – and we wound up heading down for a Tuesday night dive instead.

By the time we’d picked up tanks, packed up gear, and waded through rush-hour traffic on the southbound freeways, it was well past sunset. We pulled up in front of Shaw’s Cove at about 7:30 or 8pm, and I was delighted to see a few other groups of divers suiting up on the street.

It was dark down there. We’d timed our dive well to coincide with high tide, but it was also a new moon. Did I mention dark? The instant I hit the water, my octopus started free-flowing, and the bubbling/whooshing air was so distracting that I almost dropped a fin, which would not have been good in the dark. By the time I had my fins firmly attached and could pay attention to the octopus (one good whack set it to rights), it had blow through about 500psi of air; we still had plenty left for a long shallow dive, though, so we headed down to the reef.

All in all, it was only a so-so dive. We saw a little octopus, some skittish stingrays, and one little bat ray that floated slowly over our heads and then zipped away at an amazing speed – but that was really it, other than what turned out to be a whole lot of other divers bumping into each other and the sand. A class or two had apparently decided to take advantage of the nice conditions! Jeff also discovered that the macro lens’ autofocus really is not sufficient for night dives, even with a focus light, so he didn’t come away with any pictures. (On the up side, this means he won’t waste any of our night dives off the Vision later this month with the macro lens!)

It was midnight by the time we’d driven home, rinsed our gear and tidied up, and probably not really worth all the effort; I don’t think we’d do it again. But it’s cool to be the kind of people who just up and go diving mid-week.

***

Wednesday, Jeff and I split up again – he went to some sort of alumni/student networking event at USC, and I went drinking. Well, I went to a movie with some girlfriends, and we just happened to hit a local pub in time for happy hour in advance, and walking distance from the theater. Several cocktails in the space of an hour turned us into three very loud women (okay, not that different from usual), having intensely personal conversations in the middle of a crowded bar. I think a few barflies got an earful; every now and then we’d see a guy sort of twitch in our direction like he wasn’t sure if he’d heard correctly.

***

Thursday we finally had a “boring” day – we stayed home and did laundry. And watched Nikki’s video from diving in Borneo, 2004 – we’re scoping out the South Pacific for our big 2006 trip, and so far Tahiti is losing its lead (despite the 6 night stay Jeff won at the Kona Classic – the darned place STILL winds up more expensive than anywhere else!).

***

And now, Friday November 4, we’re celebrating two holidays in one: Jeff’s 35th birthday next Tuesday, which he’ll actually spend on a plane, and our 5-year “smoochiversary.” We’ve got a fancy dinner planned, and then it’s off to bed as early as possible (which won’t be very early, since we have 8:30 reservations) – tomorrow we’re doing our drysuit checkout dives at Catalina.

Jen blogged earlier this week about celebrating her “real” anniversary; the anniversary of the day she and Jeremy decided “they liked each other well enough,” as opposed to their wedding day. I feel sort of the same way; the day that Jeff finally decided to make a move in response to my endless flirting was hands-down the best day of my life. So I was pretty happy with the idea of celebrating tonight, even though it’s not his real birthday yet.

We made a point not to overbook ourselves this weekend, as it’s been a crazy couple of months with a lot of travel for Jeff. But since the next dozen or so weekends are spoken for, it turned into a bit of a hectic one after all trying to cram in various tasks and errands.

Yesterday was a cleaning day, and this time I won’t bore you with pictures of the process. I will, however, brag that the place is spotless – except for the sawdust all over the carpet. More on that in a bit.

Today, we kicked off the morning with the pool session of our drysuit class, which went pretty well. It was too hot to wear the fleece underwear, which meant the yucky drysuit fabric was sticking to my sweaty skin and the wrinkles dug into my skin from the pressure of the water. Other than that, it was actually more comfortable than I expected. The only real problem I foresee in using this particular rental suit is that the booties are too big for me, so they bend up unpleasantly when I pull the fins on over them. Plus, all that extra space in the feet is another place air can collect, and once my feet start to inflate the fins really want to go popping off. I’m going to try wearing a layer or two of wool socks to help fill out the booties in the ocean next weekend.

Pictures to come, I promise – someplace more photogenic than an indoor pool.

This afternoon, I ran more boring errands and then baked a bunch of cookies for Jeff’s office; I guess they do a big Halloween potluck and everyone is supposed to pitch in. (“Everyone,” of course, being code for “everyone’s wives.”) Not that I really mind baking cookies, especially when it’s from a mix. A little mixing, a little “dropping by heaping teaspoonfuls,” and I got to go straight to the fun part: smothering them in icing and badly-drawn Halloween motifs:

In the meantime, Jeff has been building me some new bookshelves. (Okay, they’re not just for me, but I’ll probably hog a pretty decent percentage of them.) We bought all the wood a few weeks ago, and Jeff started measuring and sawing out on our back patio.

He was able to cut all the shelves and sides in a day, but then he had some business travel – so all the freshly-cut wood, as well as lots of remaining wood (for the backs and the edging) came to live inside.

Our bar stools were moved aside to make room for all the cut wood; some of it is invisible behind the front rows of wood. This is why I’m not bothering to vacuum until the bookshelves are completed:

The backs – currently three 4×8 pieces of 1/4″ oak plywood, soon to be trimmed to roughly 3×6 – are standing up against the wall in our office in a most attractive manner. The edging – an enormous pile of really long pieces of wood, don’t ask me how long – went on the floor in front of the television, taking up space from the sliding doors almost all the way to the dining room table. Thankfully, Jeff cut those down to size yesterday.

Yesterday was all about routing (making all the grooves in the sides for the fixed shelves to slide into and the front edging to sit against). Today, he’s been drilling all the little holes on the bookcase sides that will allow us to position the remaining non-fixed shelves wherever we want. Here he is with his drill press:

And no, we did not rent that drill press. Alas, the drill press has a premanent residence in our closet. People go in there to hang up their coat, or see us scrounging around in search of tools or toilet paper, and they say things like “good lord, what is that thing in your closet?!” You have to ask Jeff why we own a drill press; I honestly can’t explain it.

Last night, Jeff and I went to Hollywood Divers for the classroom part of our drysuit class – the highlight of which was actually trying on rental drysuits to use for our checkout dives.

I guess compared to my first wetsuit experience, it went extremely well. My knuckles aren’t bleeding, and I only had to try on three suits instead of five or six. However, there was the same basic problem: all the rental suits are designed for men. Men that are straight up and down, and no curves. By the time you get a suit big enough to go over my more-than-manly hips and thighs, the darn thing is usually sized for a giant.

So while Jeff got to look all hot and sexy in a perfectly-fitted off-the-rack black drysuit (his first try), I wound up with the “Spiderman” suit, a blue and red concoction with several extra feet of fabric hanging around my waist, neck and arms. But still tight across the hips.

Ditto the fleece underwear (a one-piece jumpsuit). Jeff and I both wound up in the same size undies; his fit perfectly, while mine was stretched to the max at my hips and hanging in folds above my waist.

We’ll have to take pictures when we take them diving next week, so you can drool over Jeff in his manly-looking drysuit and mock my clown outfit.

On the up side, the latex neck and wrist seals were oodles more comfy than I imagined; I really barely even felt them. (Insert condom joke here.) On the down side, it is JUST AS HOT inside a sealed drysuit as it is inside a hot, dry wetsuit. Only you’re not allowed to pull on the neck and let water in to cool you off. And the pool portion of the class takes place at an indoor, heated pool. I’m tempted to skip the fleece underwear, but I discovered last night that wearing the drysuit over any bare skin makes for very uncomfortable sweaty-skin/drysuit adhesion, rendering it almost impossible to move around or get back out of the drysuit.

Now the trick will be to avoid the temptation of buying my own custom-fit suit long enough to pay off those credit cards we keep thinking we’ll get down to zero. We always use the “oh, but we’ll really use this ____” excuse to justify big purchases; too bad that doesn’t actually reduce the cost. There’d be no poverty on the planet.

I think I’m enjoying diving with other men a little too much.

Don’t get me wrong; I love diving with Jeff. We communicate well, I get to feel useful if I can help him get a great picture, and there’s nothing snugglier than a dive boat bunk after three freezing cold dives.

But I’ve done three or four shore dives with my dive club when Jeff’s been out of town, and I have to say that there are some serious advantages.

First, no camera. This may seem like more of a downside since it means I don’t get any beautiful pictures to remind me of the dive. But you don’t get a lot of beautiful pictures out of shore dives anyway. And if my buddy doesn’t have a big, fancy camera, he makes fewer stops (read: I stay warmer from moving) and has an extra hand free to help me get through the surf, about which I am a huge sissy.

Second, guilt-free bailing on dives. Although I always wind up doing just great on shore dives, I have a hard-wired, gut-wrenching fear of surf stemming from my first certification dive attempt, and I spend most of the drive to the dive site stressing out about what the conditions will be like. When I’m with Jeff, I have the additional stress of worrying that my deciding to bail at the last minute might ruin his day – he has, in the past, gotten just a wee bit grumpy about cancelled dives, especially after driving all the way to a dive site. (To his credit, he’s gotten better about this – the last time we had to cancel a dive, he didn’t mope at all.) When I’m with a big group of random Sole Searchers members, I worry a lot less about what my surf-sissy attitude will do to any potential dive buddies, and only have to worry about myself.

Kaz and gang seem relatively amused by my sissy attitude, since I then march right in everytime and do just fine. But unlike Jeff, they haven’t had to listen to me stress out about it verbally for the entire week leading up to the dive.

Last night, Lars, Kaz, Jimmy and I all drove down to Laguna together in Lars’s monstrous 4Runner. This thing holds four people and all of their dive gear comfortably – at least for a shore dive, when you don’t have to pack for several days on a boat. We met up with three other guys around 6:30pm as it was getting dark, and the mostly-flat ocean put my internal surf-sissy to rest.

Gearing up with Kaz

I triple’d up with Kaz and Jimmy, but all seven of us pretty much stayed together throughout most of the dive – a pretty amazing feat for a night dive, and a beach dive at that! The visibility was decent, probably better than most daytime dives I’ve done at Shaw’s Cove. We scared up an octopus, an enormous (and totally unafraid) lobster, lots of scorpionfish, and half a dozen small stingrays in the sand, plus a larger thornback ray and one bat ray that cruised right over Kaz’s head.

As night dives go, it hardly compares to diving in, say, Kona. But it’s still always pretty darned cool. There’s something incredibly peaceful and surreal about wading into the ocean at night, identifying your dive buddies by the types of lights they use, watching the bio-luminescence in the water stirred up by your fins.

(The part where you’re wading in is made a bit additionally surreal for me thanks to the fact that I have poor vision, so everything’s a bit blurry until I descend and my HydroOptix mask kicks in.)

At one point about three-quarters of the way through the dive, I was getting extremely cold and uncomfortable, and starting to wish we’d be done already. I started to stress about keeping an eye on Kaz and Jimmy, about not running low on air (those two are both air conserving machines), about whether the surf might have picked up between our entry and exit. And I realized how ridiculous it was to be down there stressing over essentially nothing, instead of appreciating the experience completely. Such a small fraction of the planet’s population ever gets to explore underwater like we do; an even smaller fraction gets to see it at night, or bothers with southern California diving. It’s such an incredible privilege to be down there, shining my light on the anemones that are opened up to feed at night, getting my face inches from a nearly-translucent stingray, seeing fish trying to sleep in their crevices.

Round Stingray, about 9″ across

Of course, it also helped relax me when we rose back above the thermocline and I wasn’t freezing anymore.

Post-dive, I started to miss having my usual dive buddy around. We all went to have dinner at Ruby’s, and it kind of felt like cheating. Here I was, having a great evening of diving, followed by cheeseburgers and milkshakes, while Jeff was probably at some sort of work-related function. (Or possibly eating at a delicious Italian restaurant and getting drunk at a fancy New York club. But hey, that’s still less fun than diving.)

When I made it home at 11pm, I really missed Jeff as I began to rinse out the dive gear. Of course, there’s only half as much to rinse, but it just feels like more work when only one of us is doing it.

Well, maybe Jeff can tag along on the next Sole Searcher’s beach dive.

The rest of Lars’s pics, if Jeff would like to see what he missed, are here: Shaw’s Cove 10/22/05.

9:00am, on the garden-ish pathway from the parking lot to IPAC, in light rain.

As I turned the corner onto the walkway that leads to my building, I discovered that it had been transformed into a river of mud. There was quite a lot of rain Sunday night, but the rain gutters on the road didn’t show any signs of being overworked, and I’d never seen quite this level of sludge on the path before even after harder downpours.

The drainage in IPAC’s backyard is a bit of a mystery, as we discovered last year when a sinkhole suddenly opened up between the walkway and the picnic area. It turned out that the track dumped all its drainage into a little “rock river” just behind IPAC, which in turn emptied into a pipe which we all assumed went to the main storm drains. Instead, the pipe dead-ended in the ground below the new sinkhole. Over the summer, they extended the pipe and repaired the sinkhole – again, we assumed the extended pipe now went to some form of storm drain.

My eyes followed the source of today’s sludge to a bit of PVC pipe poking out of the ground near the ex-sinkhole. I guess our walkway is the new storm drain.

1:30pm, looking out my office window.

Angela and I were suddenly struck by how incredibly dark it had become outside. All day long it had been gray and drizzly, or gray and pouring, but now it was dark – it looked more like evening than early afternoon.

Then we heard it: thunk… thunk thunk. Last week, a bunch of workers were repairing the IPAC roof, and stomping around in boots; this sounded a little bit like that, but much more random than footstpes. thunk thunkety thunk-thunk. We exchanged puzzled glances. “Hail?”

The thunks turned into a steady rattling, and now we could see ice bouncing off the street outside and ricocheting off the parked cars – including my own, parked just outside the building. I began to wish I’d parked in the new covered garage instead of just out front, but in the pouring rain at lunchtime the parking spot 20 feet from the front door was awfully appealing.

Half a dozen IPAC’ers careened down the hallway to the front of the building, and stood outside gawking and cursing at the marble-sized pellets slamming into cars. I thought about Anne’s VW Golf, which actually looked like the surface of a golf ball after it encountered some Texas hail. Luckily for me and my Honda, “marble-sized” was as big as it got.

It did put a few dents in poor Serge, though, one of my co-workers who bikes into the office in the early afternoon. From Glendale. At least he was wearing a helmet when the hail hit.

4:45, in the gym locker room.

I thought the gym would be packed on a rainy day, but it seemed like no one wanted to make the walk down here. The weight room and cardio machines were as deserted as I’d ever seen them on a Monday, and when I staggered back downstairs to shower and change, I was the only one in the locker room. While I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair, I could hear thunder in the distance, and thought about how incredibly dark it would be in the locker room if we lost power. I wondered if I could find my way over to my locker again by touch; wondered if I would want to grope the walls of the shower and locker room that much.

The lights were still on as I towelled off and pulled my clothes out of my locker to get dressed, and I was looking forward to drying my hair before going back to work. I pulled off my towel and wrapped it around my hair, and reached for my underwear, when

Talk about getting your pulse up! The only thing louder than a fire alarm? A fire alarm in an echoing, tile-filled locker room, when there’s no one else in there but you.

It was still pouring outside, making shorted wires much more likely than an actual fire. But there I was, stark naked and all alone, and suddenly it crossed my mind that I might have to decide between naked humiliation and burning alive. Even if I’d smelled smoke, I think I probably would have done what I did: yanked on my clothes as fast as I could, tossed my deoderant and comb in the bag, and dashed barefoot out into the lobby. I was still pulling my jeans up where they’d snagged on my hips to one side, and untwisting my bra straps, when I joined the entire population of the gym milling about to the loud honking of the alarm until it finally silenced a moment later.

I can’t wait for the next round of thunderstorms to hit this afternoon.

I arrived in Denver around sunset, just in time to miss the hourly bus to Boulder. This gave me an opportunity to catch up some reading, as well as to make some new friends among my fellow bus-travelers, which helped pass the time once we were actually on board and rolling westward.

By the time I reached the Boulder bus station, where Ben and Kathy met me, it was completely dark. I noticed lots of people bundling up in thick jackets, and started to worry that my pile of layer-able sweaters might not be enough. Surprisingly, it turned out to be a pretty warm evening; I didn’t even need one sweater for most of our walking-around, and was even feeling warm enough to have ice cream after dinner. Of course, I’d eat ice cream in the middle of a blizzard.

We drove up to Nederland in the dark, and stopped by Jen’s place for a short visit since Jen and Jeremy were heading out of town for the rest of the weekend. It’s too bad I didn’t get to see her place in daylight, but I was impressed enough in the dark! They’ve had a lot of fun decorating, and the house was beautiful to start with. And I finally met Jeremy! Next time, hopefully I’ll get to hang out with him for more than 30 minutes.

Then it was on to Casa Del Brantley, where I was equally impressed. Nederland has some seriously gorgeous houses, and they’re not exactly small, either. I drooled over the enormous kitchen; Jeff and I might actually cook more often if more than one of us could squeeze into the kitchen without bumping into things. Then I drooled over the space-age washer and dryer. I drooled some more over the balcony with the hot tub on it, though I couldn’t fully appreciate it in the dark. By the time we got to the master bath, I was running out of drool – you could fit four of me in their bathtub!

Speaking of drool, Bonzo was extremely happy to have a new person to bounce around, and even Chaco seemed to remember me this time. At least, he wasn’t constantly backing away and looking nervous, like usual.

Saturday morning dawned bright and warm – after all my fear of freezing, the temperature was comfortably in the 70s for most of the day. We puttered around the house for a few hours, taking pictures in the “backyard” (in quotes because it’s a whole side of a mountain, for crying out loud) and getting some more drool out of my system.

Ben and Kathy had mentioned they had a view, and they were not kidding. Here’s my somewhat shoddy attempt at a panorama, just to give you an idea of what their “backyard” is like:

We had lunch in Nederland, as cute a little mountain town as you ever saw. There was the requisite “Rock Shop,” a supermarket slightly larger than you average Trader Joe’s, and a Nepalese/Indian restaurant that seemed rather out of place. (No bookstore. I couldn’t live there.)

Ben decided to spend the afternoon working on the aquarium plumbing, so Kathy and I grabbed Bonzo and our cameras and went for a walk up at Long Lake. It was supposed to be a short, flat kind of walk; something we could both handle easily (Kathy tires easily since the stroke, and I had trouble with the altitude – just going up stairs had me panting). It turned out to be a little bit longer than she remembered, but still pretty flat and not too hot or cold. There were patches of snow by the sides of the trail in spots, so Bonzo got his first chance to play in (and eat) snow. He seemed a bit befuddled at first, but quickly figured out that snow was fun, and pounced on every patch we passed by as if it was some sort of tasty animal.

Stream running out of Long Lake:

Slightly more than two hours later, we finally finished the circuit of the lake. I was tired from the altitude; Kathy was worn out from the effort of holding Bonzo’s leash, which is a workout in itself as I soon discovered. We decided we’d had enough, and it was time for some dinner and hot tubbing.

First, we had to drive home – and Bonzo was MUDDY. Of course, we’d forgotten to bring any sort of towel, so we just sacrificed my jeans (actually, this was just my sneaky way of making sure I’d get to try out their fancy washing machine). Muddy as he was, he was also extremely cuddly, and I was quickly covered in doggie drool and mud that I told myself contained 99% dirt and surely only a very tiny fraction of poo. (I couldn’t quite convince myself of this, after seeing how eagerly Bonzo would seek out any sort of poo by the trail; I don’t understand why dogs think it’s edible!) Despite the mud, he was awfully cute, and completely exhausted.

Sunset from the Brantleys’ balcony:

Snow was predicted for Sunday, but we woke up to boring gray skies and drizzle. Kathy and I opted for a Gilmore Girls marathon in their TV room (more drool ensued), snuggling up on enormous beanbags with Bonzo while Chaco barked at moving objects on the screen.

A few hours before sunset, the promised snow finally rolled in, and we immediately headed out onto the balcony to snap some photos and enjoy the first snowfall.

Photo by Ben:

Then it was out front to play with the dogs:

We went for a drive in search of good photography opportunities, but I was pretty out of my element taking pictures in low light and falling snow. I think it might be time to shell out for a better wide-angle lens! Ben and Kathy both got some lovely shots, and I came away with one or two that I’ll dump in my gallery, but nothing too special. Guess I’ll have to go back for more practice!

By Monday morning, there was a good six inches of snow on the ground, and it continued to fall.

I like this shot because it shows Bonzo’s enormous ears:

Chaco turns out to be a world-class snowball-catcher. And he never gets tired of it. We all took turns hurling snow and snowballs at him, distracting him so Bonzo could get a chance, and photographing the action. Bonzo doesn’t quite have the hang of catching things yet, and Chaco won’t be giving him much of a chance to try!

Kathy and I started to worry about getting the car out of the steep, snow-covered driveway and up to the plowed road, since we had no snow shovels and no gass for the snow-blower. Ben managed to maneuver it up with minimal slipping, and we headed down the canyon to Boulder for lunch.

It’s too bad I didn’t get a chance to admire the view coming up the canyon, because it would have been cool to compare the pre- and post-snowfall versions. No pictures; the snow was coming down pretty steadily, and we’d neglected to bring plastic bags to hold over the camera.

We had a mellow afternoon in Boulder – well, two of us did. Kathy had several physical therapy appointments, so Ben and I passed the time in a Barnes and Noble. Books for me to browse, and wireless internet for Ben; what more could you ask for?

There was just enough time for tea and snacks at an Indian/British-style teahouse in Boulder before I had to head back to Denver. I said goodbye to the Brantleys at the Boulder bus station, and had an uneventful drive to Denver.

Alas, the airport was slightly more eventful. There was no snow on the ground in Boulder, but as we got closer to Denver there started to be several inches visible on the ground. Sure enough, the first snowfall of the year had thrown the airport schedule out of whack earlier that morning, and everything was running late. I was one of the lucky ones, with only a four hour delay – and plenty of company in my waiting!

Once we landed at Ontario, I still had to get my car and drive back to Glendale. Suddenly, taking a shuttle started to make sense again. At least there’s no traffic on the 210 at 2am!

I think Kathy was worried she wouldn’t be able to keep me entertained enough since she was in recovery mode, but I had a wonderful visit. I’m perfectly happy to do one or two interesting, out-and-about things, but spend the bulk of my time sitting around chatting with the people I’m there to visit in the first place (or even just sitting checking email, watching tv, and petting dogs, for that matter).

I really enjoyed my stay; it’s too bad Jeff’s allergies would do him in if he ever came with me! We’ll have to schedule another Brantley-visit on dog-free turf somewhere so Jeff can tag along, but I’d love to head back to Nederland sometime on my own. Just not to live! Much though I enjoyed the dogs and the snow, they reminded me why I love living pet-free and in Southern California, and I’ll be keeping it that way for a while. :)

More pics here: http://gallery.thelaitys.com/v/anastasia/200510_colorado/