Busy-ness

I haven't posted anything for awhile.  Partly because we're very busy these days, and partly because all that busy-ness isn't all that exciting.

Meghan has started 10th grade, which is taking over our lives.  She is still homeschooling through the charter school we've been with, but has added classes at Monterey Peninsula College.  She is still swimming on the swim team, although a bit reluctantly.  She's never been much for competing, she mostly joined because her friends did.  But, the exercise is good for her and I promised to not harass her about how much sugar she eats if she swims at least three times a week.

Of course, everything is in Monterey, 30 minutes away.  She has seminary at Heather's in Marina (about halfway to Monterey)  from 6 to 7 am.  Then she's at the college from 9am to noon, Monday thru Thursday. She swims from 4 to 5:30 pm three days a week, at a pool about ten minutes from the church.  So we go to the Marina library (or somewhere) after MPC to do the rest of her schoolwork before swim practice. On Wednesday she goes directly from the pool to the church for Mutual.  Oh, and piano lessons are Wednesday mornings from 8 to 8:30 am.  Crazy.  Heather and Lysa both have kids going to either MPC or in the swim team.  So we've tried to work it out so that no one has to spend their day driving.  But trying to figure it out is like a complicated math problem:  If you have nine kids in three schools, on two different swim teams, two sedans and a van, how do you get everyone where they need to go and still have someone home to get the preschooler on and off the bus.  Throw in assorted doctor and therapists appointments for special needs kids, and you really see the problem.  But, we're managing.

Sam is still working at the temporary job.  He finished the board that they hired him for in about a week, but they contracted him for six weeks, so they gave him a few more projects.  He's finishing up the biggest one this week, and he hasn't heard if they have more to do.  In the meantime, we're still kind of hoping to hear from Cisco about the job he interviewed for.  He's also been getting calls from a guy he used to work for that we call Slimy Dave.  He's not exactly trustworthy, so we've been kind of putting him off.  We're praying we don't have to resort to working for him.  Today I have to decide if I'm going to pony up the $1300 a month to continue our health care coverage, or just give it up and hope we all stay healthy.  We've always paid it before, but Sam was getting a lot of contract work at the time.

The Stake Christmas started practices a couple of weeks ago.  The director picked some challenging music, so I've been putting in more piano bench time than usual.  The Elderhostel choir that I play for every year starts next week.  That's a crazy schedule on it's own and how I'm gonna integrate it into the school schedule is a mystery so far.  I suspect the sisterwives will help pick up the slack, because they are awesome and I don't know what I'd do without them. The extra cash will be nice, especially if Sam is unemployed again next week.

A couple of weekends ago, we took a quicky weekend trip to Carson City to get apples.  Really, we went to see the Halls, the apples were a bonus.  It was short, but it was nice to see them, as always.  We got our game of butthead in, ate awesome meatball sandwiches and sweet and sour Hawaiian haystacks, saw the Reno temple, had a lovely drive home on Hwy 4 through the Sierras and came home with enough apples to make twelve pints of strawberry applesauce and two pints of apple butter.  Yum.  Just because I don't believe in posts without pics, here is one that Sam took on the drive home.

OK, two.  I feel like this tree most of the time these days.

A Getaway

After Sam was offered the temp job, it was on condition that he be ready and available to start between the 10th and the 15th of August, they would call when the engineer was ready.  We had missed going to Arizona for my nephew's wedding the week before because we didn't know when our next money was coming in.  We're still paying off hospital bills, and we'd paid for the car for the kids, so we were trying to make the rest stretch as long as possible.  The temp job was a decent wage, but no vacation or holiday pay, so no days off after we start.  We had to miss another family function on the 16th, for which we caught some grief, but you can only do what you can do.  We aren't in a position to be turning down jobs.

However, we had about four days before his possible first day, so, we ditched Meg with a friend for a couple of  days and took off for a little road trip.  I didn't know where we were going, I told him just don't take me anywhere hot, we had a VERY limited budget for motels and gas, and I didn't want to spend hours and hours in the car.  So 2-3 hours away was the max. We packed food so we could limit eating out and headed out.   I thought we'd go up the coast...or down the coast.  But, he headed inland, where it's not just hot, it's REALLY hot.

He said that he wanted to drive over Tioga Pass to the Eastern Sierras, there were several things that he wanted to photograph there.  It's all at about 8000-9000 feet, so how hot could it be?  The drive through Yosemite was pretty, as always, but there were about three million people there.  Very crowded.  We didn't spend too much time in the Valley, but headed up to Tioga Pass and Tuolumne Meadows.  It was a little less crowded up there, and we saw a couple of huge herds of elk, which was cool.

We came down the pass to Lee Vining, where we found out that every hotel was completely full.  Nada.  (This is why I don't like traveling without reservations in the summer)  North up Highway 395 was a little town called Virginia Creek that we remembered had a really good Italian Restaurant and a little motel.  We were hungry, so we headed up that way.  We got there and the only "room" they had left was a tent cabin.  It had a bed, but that was it.  Showers and potties were communal.  It sounded pretty cheap until they told us that it didn;t come with linens, it was another $25 to rent those.  We decided to call around while we ate dinner.  Apparently, since the last time we ate there, they have changed owners.  The food was not great, but at least it was a lot more expensive.  But, while we ate, I managed to find a decent hotel up the road in Bridgeport.

The next morning we got up before dawn and head down to Mono Lake to take some sunrise pictures.  It's really a surreal place, an alkaline lake with "tufas"; towers made from mineral deposits.  A friend pointed out that since they are white and have seagulls sitting on them, they look like piles of seagull doo.  He's kind of right about that!   The sunrise was beautiful though.

We hung out at the lake until about 9 or 10 in the morning, when it started to get a little too hot for hiking around.  For us coastal-dwellers, anyway.  It was getting on up towards 90F.  My Arizona family will scoff at that, but I've been living in 65F weather for 17 years, I don't do "hot" well at all.  We decided to drive down to Mammoth Lakes as I've never been there.  There's a place near there called Devil's Postpile that Sam has always wanted to take photos of.  He hadn't been there in years....he used to ski there when he was growing up in Bakersfield.  When we got there, it was still pretty hot, even though we were at 8000-8500 feet.  But, we are definitely not used to the altitude.  I think we could have handled the heat OR the altitude, but the combination was hard on us sea-level sea-breeze dwellers.

Anyway, Devil's Postpile turned out to be a little bit over-hyped, but it was still an interesting place.  We waited until very late in the afternoon, so it would be a bit cooler and there would be fewer people around while he tried to photograph it.  Apparently, it is an area where basalt pushed up during a volcanic eruption, and then cooled slowly enough to create these long hexagonal crystals that are about 18 inches across.  It looks like a lot of columns lined up on the edge of this cliff.  At the base of the cliff is a long talus slope of hexagonal pillars.  It looks like someone carved them all.  Definitely like nothing I've seen before.

Earlier in the day, we had driven up to a lookout point called Mineret Lookout (or something like that).  As we were leaving Devil's Postpile, it was getting dark and we passed the turnoff to Mineret again.  Sam had been wanting to try and do some star photos somewhere where it was really clear and dark.  We decided this was the place.  We drove up to see if it was open at night.  Turns out that it was open, and a popular star-gazing place so we had lots of company.  We were at just above 10,000 feet, miles from any town or city. The stars were spectacular, and the Perseid Meteor shower was just beginning, so we saw many shooting stars.  It had cooled down to about 75F, with a tiny breeze so the weather was perfect for doing lots of time exposures.  This is one my favorites, the full resolution version is spectacular.  We were very pleased with our first attempt. If you click on any of these pictures, by the way, you can see a bigger version.

We spent the night in a little hotel on June Lake, with a lovely view of the lake.  The next morning we heard it was supposed to be even hotter (they had broken records in nearby Death Valley the day before), so we decided it was time to return to our ocean breeze.  

We drove home back over Tioga Pass and could NOT get over how many more people had arrived since a couple of days before.  It was still a weekday and everyplace was packed.  We rarely go to Yosemite during peak tourist season, partly because it's hot, but mostly because it's amazing and kind of disturbing how many tourists you can pack into that valley.  Yeesh!  But, we managed to find a quiet little lake/pond with ducks and dragonflies to sit and eat our lunch before we drove the rest of the way home.

It was a short trip, only a couple of days, but it did a lot to restore Sam's spirits and it was good to get away without any schedules, people to please, etc.  

About a week into his temp job, he got a call from Cisco Systems.  One of his engineer buddies had submitted Sam's resume there, and they wanted to talk to him.  He's had a couple of phone interviews there so far.  It would be nice, Cisco has nice benefits and they are willing to let him work at home part of the time.  That is especially nice, as their campus is not really in an easy-commute area.  The other possibility is that he does well for this contracting company and they keep him permanently. They don't offer benefits, so it'd be a tight squeeze because we'd have to cough up $1400/mo to keep our insurance, but it's better than nothing.  

So, we'll just keep doing what we're supposed to be doing and I'm sure the Lord will continue to look out for us one way or another, as He's always done.