learning lessons

Back in February friends of mine who have property in a place called Borego Springs, and who have grapefruit trees on this property, gave me some fruit. It was too much to eat by myself, so I tackled turning the remainder into marmalade. It turned out pretty great!

So, as a thankyou, I gave my friends a jar of marmalade. It was gone in a week, so I gave them a 2nd.

Then, when they returned from Borego Springs a couple of weeks ago with a "present" for me, I realised what a mistake I had made!!! So, with 5kg of grapefruits in my kitchen and no assistance (Kiki actually counts as minus-one assistant) - I learned some lessons:

• always sharpen knives BEFORE your hands are covered in sticky citrusy pulp
• even if your hands are covered in goo, it is better to stop and sharpen the knife than to carry on hacking away and getting blisters on your fingers
• rubber gloves are NOT heat proof, and even if you are wearing them, it does not make your hands invincible against boiling water to pull marmalade filled jars out out of the sealing pot
• don't bother cleaning your kitchen before making marmalade
• the pot is never big enough
• trying to share marmalade from one boiling sticky seething mass into a 2nd pot to prevent disaster is messy, dangerous, and not recommended for one
• when buying sugar in the USA, always read the fine print to find the weight in kilos - or get some grasp of what 10lbs feels like, and that it's HALF of 9kg
  
• 5kg of grapefruits makes 24 pints of marmalade - anyone want to buy some?
  

wedding

Yesterday Texas Gal, Emarathoner and I scuttled off to the coast (San Luis Obispo) for that wedding we (I) made the quilt for.

We stayed at the Vagabond Inn, which had this super map on the back of the door. Please note the geological aspect of it (at the top).

In the morning, on the way to the ceremony, we stopped at the Farmer's Market to get a snack to stave off hunger before we would see food at the reception. Here I saw the awesomest of parking spots! Wheee!!!

The three of us upon arriving to the vineyard where the ceremony was held. (I, the short one, was the only one NOT in heels... *sigh* - of course, I was also one of few who had no desire to remove my shoes due to discomfort)

Having just been "pronounced" - the happy couple go skipping off to sign multitudes of forms.

unicorns

At the end of a particularly good exam was a little present for me. Yay!

And, while we're on the subject of unicorns. Subject yourself to the silliness below - IF YOU DARE!!!

pre exam fun

On Monday evening I gave my first exam. Now I am faced with an Everest sized pile to mark.

*sigh*

So, rather than dig in and get the red pen out, I will post a short entry on my fun (TIRING!!!) hike (uphill climb in the blazing heat) that I did on Monday BEFORE giving the exam. I sat in my own sweaty stink for 2 hours while my night class plugged away at their questions...

en route to Packsaddle cave

a sign that we were going in the right direction!

a butterfly satisfies a salt craving by feasting on Bird Nerd's thumb

our destination! the cavern just went on and ON and on!!!

and the view looking back down the mountainside.

wedding quilt

Well, next weekend 24th St Cafe Girl will be marrying Captain Kindness. Texas Gal, Emarathoner and I are all going. In my usual tradition of ignoring the registry, I suggested we make them a quilt. This of course meant that we (mainly, I) had to squeeze in hours of cutting and sewing in our already hectic schedule... especially since I insisted on doing a reversible quilt... with "wedding" side and "traditional" side.





Nonetheless, last night, fueled by snacks and wine, we got through the bulk of it and this morning I finished up. Kiki "helped" too.

and then we made pasta

What's the sense in having a pasta machine if you're not going to use it??? None! None at all! Especially not when Extreme Chef (below - giving instructions to Apollo) has one too.

Hard at work making tortellini, tortelloni, ravioli, and other creatively stuffed pastas in plain, beet and spinach noodle.

Despite a few distractions, I got creative with the dough making... check the parsley out!

Tada!

Introducing: ridiculous! (Ridiculously CUTE that is)

Oh... and also procrastination central.

The quote from the site:

"shivering kittens is a panic-inducing puzzle game for Mac OS X, where you must rescue kittens from their icy imprisonment! A block-matching puzzle game, shivering kittens tasks you with forming lines of frozen kittens to release them from their icy imprisonment, and then with forming groups of those thawed kittens to rescue them!"

Where to get it: shivering kittens

I apologize in advance to all you MAC users.

Grossest Cake EVER!

As the semester draws to an end in the next couple of weeks we have goodbyes and retirements to attend. Tonight is the party that celebrates the departure of our dear friend "Hot Hands" before he runs away to Wyoming.

For such a momentous occasion, and for someone who manages to bring up poo at almost every meal, only the best of cakes could be made.

This week I purchased a new litterbox and scooper so that Anthro Girl and I could make the "famous" kitty litter cake. With a few variations, of course.

Behold!


Ugh!

4 of 4: The Old Mojave Road

Last weekend a crew of us went out to drive the Old Mojave Road.

Our fearless leader, walking on water, who I called "meat hooks" because he has the biggest darn hands EVER. They were the size of my head, I'm sure of it.


We followed wagon routes that seemed impossible - but had clearly been used a lot in the 1800's - grinding wagon wheel grooves into the bedrock (one more prominent to the left, and the other just beneath the boot tip on the right).


We also frequently got "the little engine that could" unstuck from places, trying to not let it lose too many bits and pieces (although, in the end it did). Watch it being pushed out of a wash here. And below, how it earned the new name of "the yellow submarine".





At Indian Hill aka Indian Well aka Indian Spring - a big pile of rocks covered in petroglyphs - we set up camp the first night. I found a nice level spot up in the rocks to spend the night while everyone else went down into the wash below. This was great until 3am when I heard a crew of coyotes shrieking (howling) and sounding like they were just on the top of my hill...


We tasted Joshua Tree fruit. I don't recommend it. Licking it, it sort of tasted like cucumber - that's as far as I went (despite tasting it being my idea) - for some reason almost everyone else actually bit into it, and they were all spitting and gagging and trying to find antidotes in the form of trail mix and gum. It was pretty funny. Well, for me anyway.


We explored an amazingly intact mine, that was run from 1914-1926 for limestone and iron, what appears to be a plank road is the remains of the rail line. It went on forever! We were duly impressed by the size and lack of vandalism at it.


Easily one of my favourite spots was Rock Spring - named for obvious reasons - there was an astounding quantity of fresh water here in this little oasis in the deep desert. The scene was surreal. It was, for one year, a military outpost to protect the US Mail!!!

To see more from my trip click here.

Mojave: 3 of 4

Last field trip of the semester... and a perfect sized group for it. Ahhhh, sweet relief!

Jumping for joy in the lava tube (Aiken Mine Rd.) - beneath the stream of sunlight from a cave-in hole above.

In preparation for the last trip to Mojave this month, I finally had the tow hook installed that the previous owners had given me when I bought the Wrongler from them. Now it is known as Snaggletooth.

After many tasted the brine trench with looks of revulsion on their faces, we finally gathered a group for a snowy-looking photo.

Mojave in April: trip 2 of 4

Cadiz Summit on rte 66 (pit stop?)

The camping crew: K-man, G.O. Joe, me, Bird Nerd (Cadiz Summit)

Why limit s'mores to graham crackers?

The campsite while preparing for dinner.

The campsite in the morning.

Rather old SPAM container from Udsogn Mine site.

Lizard.

Bird Nerd collects souveniers from Danby rail site.

I take quick nap on the Mother Road.

Sands Ghost Town Adventure

Welcome to Afton Canyon, known (believe it or not) as the "Grand Canyon of the Mojave". HH and I took a perilous detour through here on our way to find a ghost town. We drove through the Mojave river, which is a joke on maps being as it runs through a gigantic desert... but up close and personal, it gave the Jeep quite a bath and us quite a shock.


After much rumbling on dirt roads, dry river beds, railroad sidings, washes, etc - we eventually made it to Sands:


Sands was once a ranch, from what we can tell, located on the cusp of "Devil's Playground". The only building that still had a significant portion remaining is the barn. Huge timbers were brought in to build this place and of course many parts seemed to be hand-tooled. It was truly awesome to look at this wood and imagine the hard work that someone put into this many many years ago.




What we couldn't figure out was where the ranch house and windmill went. We saw a picture that showed the barn, with metal windmill in background, in a fairly similar state as we saw it. There were no roof remnants when we got there, unlike the picture, and also unlike the picture, there was NO sign of the windmill. Where did it go? The ranch house was even more of a mystery. The only thing that looked like it could have belonged to it is the post below that might have been part of the frame. We thought that maybe the ranch house was torn down for some reason by the rail company. Bizarre. I intend to find out more.


I rather enjoyed the glass that was probably deposited here in the older days... Below, parts of a classic 7up and I think, Royal Crown Cola. (RC label below seems to be circa 1950s according to inter-web... and it seems as though the orange-back 7up label is from the same vintage)