Fun on the Patio

This jasmine is actually on the front of the house. It really smells good right now, I'll have to leave the windows open so we can get a whiff inside. The picture's a little fuzzy.

This plant claimed to be an annual but I've been torturing it for years! Scott thinks I should put it out of its misery but I'll keep anything that makes flowers.

Same with the plant in the center below. The flowers get shaggier-looking each year. These sweet peas have yet to deliver.

Here's the big blooming blob of sweet peas. I like how they look messy. They don't really climb or attach to the lattice stuff. Those tendril things are fakers!

Polka Dot Quilt

I meant to spend just the morning of today (the first day of my Spring Break) finishing up the last few dots and getting the border on my quilt top, but I ran into some obstacles [#1, Why did I sew that piece on backwards? #2, Where is my seam ripper? etc...] so it took all day.


Now I'm putting it away until after break since I can add the dots that go in the white stripe one or two at a time on school nights. I've got other things on my vacation agenda! strawberry jam, cleaning out my closet, shopping, playing with the plants on the patio, lots of grading...

We estimated that I have done about 12,000 applique stitches so far on this top. I think there are 22 more dots in the border and we assumed 100 stitches per dot - YOU do the math.

ps: about the sweet peas in the previous post - notice that all the other pots on the table that don't contain spiked plants or other squirrel defense (chicken wire) are empty and sad. And the chives I planted in the sweet pea pot last year seem to have decided to wait until now to grow. More evidence of the gray thumb.

pps: I wish the squirrels would eat the snails instead of both of them eating my plants.

Gray Thumb

There's no way I can claim to have a green thumb, in fact I'm probably closer to the black thumb. But look! I grew some sweet peas from seed and they actually have flowers now. We've been lucky with rain - maybe that's what did it.

I've got a much bigger bunch of them in another container but I'm waiting for them to flower to show them off :)

L.A. Marathon

Two really tired guys!

Scott and our friend Nate and Nate's dad Jerry ran the L.A. Marathon March 21st. Even though they're "slowing down" these days, I think they're all quite impressive. I was pretty proud to see their names printed amongst the top men in the L.A. Times the next day. Scott and Nate were the 26th and 27th men overall. Not PRs, but respectable for such busy guys. Jerry finished in the top half in his first marathon ever! Way to go!

The last 400m!!

The traffic was INSANE, especially on race morning. People were getting out of their cars and running down the freeway to get to the start at Dodger's Stadium because there were so many people getting dropped off. Luckily Scott and I had scoped out the situation the day before and snuck in no problem through the back way. The race start was delayed because of the traffic jam!

We met up with some U of I friends and had lunch and dinner after the race - that was a treat! And the highlight of the driving portion was coming down from Fort Tejon Pass on I-5 on our way home. As we descended into the Central Valley the view through the windshield was nothing but purple wildflowers. It was like driving into a sea of purple - it was so cool. Too bad the camera was in the trunk. There were lots of purple, white, yellow, and orange patches all the way along. I would say that spring is the best time to take I-5 between L.A. and San Francisco if you MUST do that drive. UGH.

Shrinkage

Woo hoo! Done with all 20 squares!

Unfortunately my quilt will end up smaller than planned, but I don't want to make any more plates so I'm moving on. I smartened up and started cutting my background squares larger than necessary too late. I cut my first few squares to 12.5" before appliqueing and of course now they're too small. To make all the squares the same when I was squaring them up I've had to cut them to 12", so 11.5" finished. I'll have to remember that for next time. After adding my first 3 in-between polka dots I think it still looks good.

9 more dots to go and then some half- and quarter-dots along the edges, then the border.... then the quilting... dun dun dunnnnn....

No school today - better take advantage and get some less-fun grading done.

Ano Nuevo

You can reserve a spot on a guided walk at Ano Nuevo State Reserve, north of Santa Cruz, during Elephant Seal breeding season to get up close and personal with the action. Without a guide you're not allowed in. The only opening we could find was early this Saturday so we went! It's near the end of the season, so there wasn't too much "action" happening, which was just fine with me :)


The abandoned lighthouse keeper's house in the background is on an island that has broken away from the coast only in the past few hundred years. Now it's infested with seals and sea lions.


This "weaner" was checking us out between yawns and belches. These babies are left behind by the adults to grow big enough to head out to sea on their own.

Some others were testing out their swimming skills in a pond in the dunes, and we even saw one little guy push another little guy into a ditch where they both floundered for a while before climbing out. That was really funny.

Here's a harem with a big male (check out his snout!) in the middle and some females feeding their babies. The lucky lady on the left has a GPS device glued to the top of her head and a number died into her fur (they say it's Clairol). You can see both if you zoom in on the photo.

We also caught a quick glimpse of two big males facing off. Scary! We had seen a similar scene further south, closer to San Simeon another year at some random beach beside Route 1. Ano Nuevo is much better protected from people and has facilities and information.

The walk was fun and interesting - I'd definitely recommend it if you can get a reservation. Our docent knew quite a lot and clearly cared a lot about these cool creatures.

Olympics Wrap-Up

What an amazing setting for the Olympics. Vancouver is a beautiful city! We're back in California now. Seems like we got out at a good time as more and more people seemed to be pouring in each day. The number of people spewing forth from the airport when we were heading out was unbelievable! We were so lucky to get a reservation at the Hotel McClennan. Thanks Carol and Bruce!

Here we are at Whistler Olympic Park, the venue for ski jumping, nordic skiing, and biathlon.

French, German, and Norwegian superfans. I'm not sure what's up with the feathers on this guy.

Here's the stadium with (L to R) the shooting range, the start area, and the finish line. We saw women's 15k individual and men's 20k individual biathlon. The competitors start 30 seconds apart, and get a 1-minute penalty for any missed shots. There are 2 prone and 2 standing shootings, 5 shots each. The targets for prone are very small, and the targets for standing are a little bigger. In other biathlon events there is a penalty loop for missed shots. The skiing is freestyle, which means they are skating.


Check out the selection of skis. We were surprised by how much warming up the athletes were doing considering they were about to ski themselves silly. Guess they need to test out the waxes and the course conditions. It was maybe 5 degrees C so the snow was a little mushy. If you've ever tried skate skiing then you know how crazy it seems that these guys (and girls) compete in multiple biathlons with only a day or two of rest in between, and that they are able to hit these tiny targets with heart rates around 180 bpm.

A Canadian skier heading back out after one of the prone shootings.

An uphill on the way out. The spectating is limited to a very small part of the course.

J.P. Leguellec in the men's race. He did great! Finishing 13th with only 2 penalties.
Skiing with a gun: awesome.

An Italian shooter in the iconic biathlon pose.

Svendsen the Norwegian just meters from the finish. He took the gold with only 1 penalty, 10 seconds ahead of silver.

Amazingly there was a TIE for silver, so no bronze was awarded. Time is kept only to the nearest tenth of a second and there's no photo finish since the racers start at 30-second intervals. They have timing chips on their ankles like in a road race. Here's the legendary Norwegian Ole Einar Bjoerndalen. He was skiing fast to have caught the Belarussian Novikov. Novikov had no penalties and Bjoerndalen had 2! That means he skied 2 minutes faster over 20k. Wow!

We walked (and ran) a lot around Stanley Park, which seemed to have remained a well-kept secret until the day we were leaving. We checked in on this lady a few times. All the statues in the park were prepared for cold weather with their red mittens.