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/