Trekking: Skyline to the Sea Day 1

a three day backpacking adventure of about 30 miles through Castle Rock and Big Basin State Parks
Day 1:

Saratoga Gap (the intersection of hwy 9 and hwy 35 in Saratoga California) to Waterman Gap trail camp. Total of 6.4 miles. 7 for us because we started on the wrong trail. D’oh! Face palm!

I got to My life is Chaos’ house in Santa Cruz around 9:30am. Her husband and wild child dropped us off at the wrong trail head, which I thought was the right trail head by 11:00-11:30am. After of course we had to first go to New Leaf market (super hippy grocery store that you only find in places like Santa Cruz) because she hadn’t had breakfast yet and husband needed coffee and she had eaten the chocolate for the trail already. Then after wild child's second coconut water, realized she had forgotten to pack the apples and carrots for the trail. So back to the house of chaos. Finally on the road, up hwy 9.

Got to the intersection of hwy 9 and 35 and thought there would be some sign or obvious trail head at the obvious parking lot, but nooooooooo. Chaos’ husband needed a cigarette by then, so parked there and let us loose. So here is us at the wrong trail head. See how happy and clueless we are?

After a bit down the wrong trail, Chaos needed to pee and kept saying “this doesn’t feel right, I think we are going the wrong way”. Fine. After her first squat in the woods I got the map out and sure enough... wrong trail. Went back up the trail and back out to the parking lot, crossed hwy 35 and started walking down hwy 9 and saw the right trail head sign. Here we are at the right one. Yay!

Almost the entire first day was next to hwy 9 and crossed it several times. Only saw two day hikers. We stopped for lunch at the Sempervirens (have you googled this yet, Chaos?) Point lookout. Which was not quite our first day halfway point. A lady came by and asked us where the entrance to Castle Rock State Park was (we were in Castle Rock) and I felt really proud of myself when I busted out the map and knew where we were and where she needed to go. Boo-yeah.

getting lunch out

our view during lunch

back on the trail

Made it into Waterman Gap Trail Camp by 2pm.

There was only one other person there. Ms. Chaos said we should go talk to him in case he was a serial killer. Because apparently if you talk to a serial killer, he is less likely to serial kill you. Ok. He told us there was a camp site down the hill if we wanted. We went down there and saw this:

Chaos decided it was made by meth cookers and that she will not sleep anywhere near it. So back up the hill to where we initially decided to set up camp. Our potential serial killer was listening to the Giants game on his radio. After talking with him, we decided he was not a serial killer and just a short, retired IT guy who loves gadgets and gizmos. He is training for a 21 day backpacking adventure with his daughter on the John Muir portion of the Pacific Crest Trail. He is out “testing” his equipment. You go, little IT guy!

We set up the tent, no problem. Got the cook stove out and hooked up the little propane tank and got dinner started. Gourmet dinner of ramen noodles! I bumped the stove and spilled all the ramen and water out. Oops. Luckily, Chaos had packed extra. So started over with new water and ramen noodles. After dinner, little IT guy came over and showed us his cooking equipment and what he had for dinner and told us about the raccoons. I knew that raccoons would get into our food if we didn’t properly store it. He suggested that we put it in the bathroom. It was the cleanest bathroom ever, just didn’t have any toilet paper. (Chaos brought a role though, so all was right with the world) So we did. He also put his bear box in there too. He said he didn’t want to hear the raccoons scratching at it all night. He has a gadget to repel raccoons, by the way. Ok.

By 6pm, the mosquitoes were so bad that we retreated to the tent. The Deet was not working. Not knowing what to do with ourselves at 6pm inside our tent, we were both close to sleep by 7pm. How sad is that? Not even dark, and Chaos is snoring.

The first day wasn’t too bad. Our backs were sore from the packs, but my feet and legs felt good. Saw two banana slugs, heard the raccoons and some deer once it got dark. I would sleep for maybe an hour or two and then wake up, re-adjust, and sleep another few hours and wake up again. I did not get cold though. I always get cold when camping. That was the one thing I was most paranoid about this entire trip, was being cold at night. But it was all good. Even after I had to break out of the cocoon in the middle of the night to go relieve the bowels. Yay!

Day 2 coming soon: where Chaos gets a name change and tries to throw me off a cliff.

I'm so sorry

My sincere apologies... to all 20 of you who actually read this. For? Writing on and on about my exercise routines and workout progress. I don’t care about yours, so why would you care about mine? I don’t care that you did yoga today at the beach or ran your fastest 5k or that you’re training for your next marathon. That’s great and all, and more power to you, but still, I don’t care that you can do 200 squats or that you rode your bike 30 miles, and I certainly don’t need to see it.

So why in the world would you be even the slightest bit interested that I can now run a 5k and still breathe normally? You’re not, are you? I didn’t think so. So I promise from now on I won’t write about it. Unless it’s funny. Like today, I almost inhaled a bee and almost tripped over grass. But that’s not entertaining enough. So you won’t hear about me running or anything else unless I do actually inhale a bee and get stung on my tongue or trip over grass and do a face plant into dog shit. Or get chased by a rabid chihuahua and run smack into stop sign. That’s funny. And trust me, all of these scenarios are likely in my future... trust me.

So again, I’m sorry for torturing you. Now on with the drivel about other stuff and such.

thinking positive

I woke up this morning and told myself, "It is going to be a good day". I said that several times to myself while forcing myself out of bed.

And it turned out to be a good day. Who knew. Why?

1.) My favorite show is on tonight *fangirling

2.) Fun stuff was on twitter and tumblr today *made me lol and lmao literally

3.) Perhaps most importantly, but still #3 on my list is I got a job today.

It's just part time, minimum wage-ish (slightly higher, I hope) at a coffee shop. But it will help pay the mortgage, get me out of the house, and give me barista skills (read latte artist) for when I get my shop going.

So yay for positive thinking in the mornings. Maybe I should do this every day.

Must.Create.Something.

My creativity has been stifled as of late and it’s been driving me nuts. Bonkers. All the BatB stuff and peeps I’ve been looking at have inspired me to do something. But I just can’t figure out what and in what medium. I’m no great artist. I don’t consider myself an artist at all. My first thought was to draw a stick figure comic-like blog about me fangirling about something. Then I realized that I have a hard time even drawing stick figures, and there are some really good stick figure comic artists on the web. Some are down right hysterical! Check out this one. And her too. Then I thought well, I’ll do something with gifs. But photocapping is a long process, and it would be much easier to steal other peoples gifs than create my own and I’d have to find free software and stuff, and ugh. And again, there are some really funny and talented gif-ers out there. So I’m stuck. I came up with a cool idea for a book if anyone wants to write it. I finally signed up at Tumblr but haven’t posted anything. I’m collecting pictures of some actor dudes thumb to trace the act of him smashing it in a door or something to it finally healing through episodes of his tv show. I’m playing detective, it’s kinda fun. Twitter and Tumblr have been my saving grace but I'm still creatively frustrated.

What I really need to do is get up off my ass and really do something about the shop. It’s almost to the point where I either engage and really go at it, or drop it and move on to something else. Several drinks and gelato flavors have been popping into my head and art pieces to create for the book side. I need to engage but can’t seem to make myself do it. What is holding me back?

LA Adventures

So haven't been getting many hits on the blog lately. Not that hit counts are why I do this anyway. If it was, I'd be a complete failure at this whole blogging thing. Anyway, I'm here today to share with you want I did this past weekend... with my mom. So no bar hopping or crashing of movie sets or playing I-spy at the beach. Mom's not really into that sort of stuff... I don't think.

A while back I had posted on Facebook that I wanted to go to a book festival where the guy that makes the Simon's Cat videos was going to be. And my mom actually said she'd take me. And she was serious. I kind of made that post in fun thinking no one would actually take me.

So Thursday noonish she came by and off we started on our drive down to Los Angeles. I drove us down through LA and on to Orange California where we were to stay our first night. Why Orange? Well, the festival didn't start til Saturday and it was now Friday. She was going to visit two old friends. (old as in they are old and they were friends for probably close to 50 years!) And both of them live in Orange County. And Orange just happened to be smack in the middle of where they live.

I had mentioned that I had the best Chicken and Waffles in Pasadena. Mom was like, "Wha? Chicken and waffles??" I couldn't remember where it was and neither of us have smart phones so she texted my sister. Got the address from her and plugged it into Broomhilda the GPS. Short detour to Pasadena for dinner. She loved the Chicken and Waffles combo. And it was just as good as I remember.

So mom left Friday morning to visit old friend number 1 and I called my good friend Pancho (not his real name) and say "hey, where you at? Wanna play?" So he of course said yes. He drove out from the Inland Empire and picked me up and we went to Downtown Disney. It's where I met my new boyfriend. He's really fit. Even his muscles have ripply muscles!

Pancho and I had a good time catching up and hanging out. He needed to get back home and left me around 2pm. Mom came by and picked me up and then we went to visit her old friend number 2. The last time I had apparently seen her I was 12. She has stage 4 cancer and had radiation treatment earlier that day. If you didn't know she had stage 4 cancer, you wouldn't know it by her exuberant personality and enthusiasm. She's quite amazing for being 81 with stage 4 cancer. I hope I'm half what she is by that age.

After leaving the home of old friend number 2 I drove mom and I into Downtown Los Angeles. We were to stay at The Sheridan. Fancy. Got totally snookered. But I had known that, but mom didn't. I know that the fancier the hotel, the more you will have to pay for amenities that you get for free at other places. Anyway. I had to drive around the block a few times to get into the parking and loading area for the hotel. It didn't help that Buena Vista Studios was setting up for a night shoot on the next block and so the streets were blocked off. Silly movie people! But I had a great view of the cater truck from our window. Ooh exciting. (I'm being sarcastic here)

Next day was our day at the LA Times Festival of Books on the USC campus. The whole point of me wanting to go down to this crazy place that I don't like visiting normally. We first drove a whole mile which took about 10 minutes to find The Last Bookstore. A friend had posted a link to an article about this bookstore on Facebook, and I was intregued. So I just had to go see it. I was here, so why not. Pretty cool place once we finally found it. But only had 20 minutes because the stupid parking meter ate my first $1.50 in quarters! They have a lot of books, but the cool parts were their displays. And apparently they have hidden rooms, where you have to find the right bookcase that happens to be a door. But again, the parking meter had eaten my money and we were missing the Festival of Books. So off we then went to USC. Besides the urine sidewalks in downtown are pretty smelly.

I finally get us into a parking garage on campus and we start the walk to the center of campus. I get mom situated in the shade at the Stage where all the authors she wants to hear are at and I go off to look for stuff. So many booths, so little time! I went off to get tickets to the "conversation" that Simon and two other authors were going to do. I finally find the booth selling the tickets. They are free! Woo Hoo. And they hadn't sold out yet. Sweet. I get two tickets and then go off to find a booth that is selling Simon's book. Wander wander wander. Ah ha! Found one. I ask the guy how much it is, he says it's on sale today for only $10.00. Sweet. I'll take it. Then he says, "oh here's Simon the author, by the way." Wha?? My brain goes stupid. All I get out is, "Hi, will you sign it?" He say's sure, and gets out his pen and asks my name and writes out "For Kelly, All the best" and then doodles the cat, kitten, and robin. I say, "thank you very much" and shake his hand. Oh, he also asked if I had any cats, and I said yes. If my brain had been working properly I would have told him about my cat Quirk. But it wasn't. I get back to mom, and told her what had happened, and said that my mission is complete! I stayed with her through the next author she was going to listen to. Oh my god! It was Debbie Reynolds. You know Princess Leia's mom!! She is in her early 80's and she is just a riot! Totally funny and genuine person. She talked about the early days with Gene Kelly and Fred Astire. And about her many husbands. It was just fun to listen to her. Truly. Again, if I can be just half what she is by her age. Wow. Oh and there was this old guy behind me that chatted with me for a while. He was so freakin impressed that I knew who the Smothers Brothers were. And the Kingston Trio. Thank you dad for introducing me to them. I earned major props with this old guy for that. He was fun.

After her talk it was time to go listen to Simon. The panel is Simon Tofield (cats), Lauren Scheuer (chickens), and Ken Foster (dogs). It was really fun. The moderator introduces them and asks each to read a bit from their books. The Chicken lady was hysterical. The dog guy was really poignant. Then it was Simon's turn. The moderator said, "This will be really interesting since there aren't any words in your book." He proceeded to do all the voices of his characters. I could talk a lot about the panel. But will say, it was really interesting and informative and I found out that the chicken lady is my sister's soulmate. After the panel they were going to have a signing. So I go out and buy her book. Since I already got Simon's autograph, I didn't need to stand in that line too. I told the chicken lady that my sister and I had chickens once. She signed the book to me and my sister and drew us a little chicken. So cool.

It's funny that I go to a book festival with all these famous authors there and movie stars and major publishers and panel after panel about writing, publishing, any and all genres, and I get most excited about a web comic artist and a crazy chicken lady. Go figure.

We were done at the festival after that. We then drove back east to Whittier to go visit my Grandmother at Rose Hills Cemetery. After seeing her marker it was probably close to 7pm. I then drove us out of LA and headed up the 99 to Bakersfield. I know, why Bakersfield? We were going to stay the night at some family friends who live there. We got in to their place a bit after 9pm. We chatted, went to bed, got up, they made us a great breakfast. Chatted some more, and then it was time to get home. We were both ready to go home. Of course mom decided she wanted to go home via 101. I said it will take longer, but she said, but it's prettier. Fine, whatever. I drive us over 46 and onto 101. Pull into my house around 4pm.

Awwww, nice to be home. When we first left on this adventure, I was excited. I needed out of the house. I had felt like a prisoner in my own home. It was good to get out. I needed it. I needed a jolt or a swift kick in the ass. By the end I was ready to be home again. I love my mother, but I was ready for my own room without a snoring person next to me. Next time: bring ear plugs. Because there will be a next time.

Fangirling, nerd alert!! Set phasers to stun...ing

So way back in... November I wrote about the two new cheesy shows I liked which happened to be Arrow and Beauty and the Beast, both on the CW. Check what I said then here. Now I still like watching Arrow, it's fun. But I am obsessed with Beauty and the Beast (BATB for short). No really, obsessed.

I watch a lot of television... A LOT. For instance I watch besides what is mentioned above: Castle, Revolution, Lost Girl, Nikita, Grimm, Burn Notice, Warehouse 13, Haven, Defiance (just premiered, I'm intrigued), Dr. Who and sometimes watch but not religiously Bones, Royal Pains, The Middle, Modern Family, Raising Hope, and Supernatural. I won't even get into Animal Planet, Food Network, DIY, or HGTV, or shows that aren't on the air anymore (Fringe). Of the shows I watch religiously, almost all of them are considered "genre" shows. In that they have some sort of mythology or running story ark through the entire series. In other words, you can just watch an episode and be entertained, but there is so much more going on and unless you know the "story", you're only getting half of it. "Genre" shows usually don't do well on normal tv. They don't draw the numbers like shows like CSI or Law and Order. You can watch those shows completely out of order and it wouldn't matter. You'd be really confused if you watched Lost Girl or Revolution out of order.

Anyway, I'm getting side tracked. I was telling you about my obsession with Beauty and the Beast. And it is an obsession. I have all the episodes on my DVR and on itunes. In my DVR the commercials are edited out, and all episodes are labeled with titles and episode numbers. And I watch them over and over and over again. Sometimes I just watch the parts with the two main characters (Catherine and Vincent) and fast forward through the other stuff. And if any of you #beasties out there are reading this, you know which parts I'm talking about!

I follow the cast, crew, and writers on Twitter, I go snooping in peoples Tumblr's (I especially like this gals snark Jacki Venezia), and I read what people are saying in the fan forums. I haven't joined any of the fan forums or signed up with Tumblr. I've been part of fan forums before and am hesitant to get into them again. One time the fan forum blew up and imploded on itself and many got burned and well, shit was flying, lets say. The other, I kept getting "modded" for my language and not being "P.C." There are young people here and we can't be talking about someones ass (oh sorry, posterior) or say things like shit. Please people, this is the internet!!! If a 13 year old found your fan forum, then they certainly found "other" things on the internet as well. Get off your moral high horse and grow a pair.

OK, now we know how I feel about fan forums. Where was I? Oh, right, BATB. I've been trying to figure out why I'm so into this show. It has changed quite a bit from when the Pilot aired. It started out as a genre/procedural/mythology/romance show. Now it's romance/mythology/ oh my god what the hell is going on show. I like that the characters are strong, especially Catherine. She can kick ass. But I also like that they are flawed. They aren't perfect. ( how Vincent dealt with Alex anyone?) It helps that everyone on this show is freaking gorgeous! But that's the CW for you. Everyone on any show on that network is drop dead gorgeous. And the CW is known for shows geared toward teens and young 20 somethings. But this one, much like Nikita, isn't. Don't get me wrong, the teens and 20 somethings are into it. But it's about two people one almost 30, the other somewhere in his 30's (we don't know his exact age yet) and they are dealing with grown-up things. Not high school boy/girl issues or prom or oh my gawd look what she's wearing and she slept with who? Ew. Gross. Like O.M.G. It's two people who love each other, and figuring out their "grown-up" relationship along with everything else in the world that is chasing/ hunting/ sabotaging them and so much more.

Hm, not explaining this very well. The actress who plays Catherine (Kristin Kreuk) said this about it:
Kristin teases that she “knows the whole thing” about how Season 1 ends, and she thinks that we’ll know more about Season 2 closer to May upfronts. “Because the show is performing decently but not like, exceedingly well, I think we’ve just got to wait and see,” she says. If Beauty And The Beast does get a second season, a lot of that can probably be chalked up to the show’s very loyal fan base.
“They’re rabid,” Kristin says. “I don’t know what we tapped into. It feels stronger than Smallville fans in some ways. I know! But, the intensity. It’s a smaller group, but the intensity of it is so strong. It blows my mind. I think it’s really wonderful how passionate they are about a love story. I don’t know how we did that. I really don’t, and I’m kind of in awe of it. Like, ‘Wow, they really are committed to this’,” she says. One reason for fan passion lately is that the show has not wasted any time in getting Cat and Vincent together — something that Kristin does not think was part of the original plan to happen so soon.
“I think [the plan was] to hold off. I think it really was,” Kristin reveals. “I mean, it’s obvious, we changed the direction of the show so much. I’m surprised, but I like it. I like exploring the relationship as opposed to, ‘ Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes.’ That’s not as interesting to me. Maybe it’s because I’m 30 and I just want to know. Let’s get in the relationship, let’s see where it goes from there,” she laughs.  Source here

There was something else... oh right. So BATB will be airing the last 5 episodes of the season starting this Thursday, (been on a 3 week hiatus that has been driving all the beasties bonkers) and I wont be able to watch it till like, Monday! Aaaaccckkk! I'm driving down to LA with my mom on Thursday so she can see some old friends on Friday and so we can go to the LA Times Festival of Books on Saturday at USC, then off to the inland empire to visit some other friends on Sunday. We're either driving back up late Sunday or Monday. So my hiatus is even longer!!

But I'm good at waiting. I waited a whole month before I saw The Hobbit in the theaters, and it has been out on DVD for over a month now, and I don't own it yet. Besides, it just means I don't have to wait as long for the next episode. bwahahahaahahhhaa And I'll definitely be buying the DVD of BATB when it comes out! 

*was going to insert some pics, but couldn't decide how inappropriate I wanted to be. Just go to Tumblr and type in vincat.

Red Runner post challenge

Catch up on what this is here:

So yeah. The actual final day is Friday the 19th, but I will be in LA that day, so obviously I won't be running that day, or probably the day before that either since that day I'll be driving down to LA. And well, the challenge went into the toilet by halfway through the second week of the 9 weeks. Yeah, so here's why.

Recap on what the challenge was: Short run on Monday, Wednesday, Friday (between 2 and 2.6 miles) and  six rounds of strength training of three 30 second intervals with a rest between each round. I would change the strength training routine every three weeks. So the first three weeks strength training exercises were:push-ups, squats, and lunges with hand weights, and the second set was curls, behind the head curls, and something else I can't remember now. I don't like push-ups, I'm not good at them. So at the end of week 1 my left wrist was hurting a bit but I was more impressed that my thighs were sore. Halfway through week 2, I had definitely aggravated the tendonitis in my left wrist. So no more push-ups or anything having to do with my arms from then on out.

And quite frankly I was having a hard time making myself do 6 rounds of exercises. Ugh. So when it was time to switch up for the next three weeks, I decided to focus on abs and legs. So, planks, squats, sit-ups, etc. It sort of worked. Some days, I didn't do them, some days I did. Weeks 4-6 were not fun weeks for me on many levels.

Weeks 7-9 I sort of gave up on the 30 second interval thing, cus I wasn't doing it anyway. So with my brace on I went back to arm and core exercises with the hand weights. And the last two weeks I just did the running because I was working at my parents house hand digging out a patio and fixing their garden and transplanting shrubs. Yeah, I'm old school with a shovel.

I have no idea if I lost any weight. Maybe I'll weigh in tomorrow or something. But although I would like to reach the weight loss goal I had set last year, I don't really care about it now. I'm more concerned about muscle tone and getting rid of the muffin top.

My crazy friend and I are doing the Skyline to the Sea Trail in mid May, which is the "fun" reward for reaching my weight loss goal. So I'm doing it whether I reach it by then or not. But like I said, I don't really care about that goal anymore. It is not a necessity or priority.

I bet that was the most exciting thing you have read... ever. Bwahahahahahahahahaahaha