Queer by Choice

MARRIAGE

2008-05-15T19:14:26Z

I CAN LEGALLY MARRY MY GIRLFRIEND!!!!!

(Or, well, I will be able to when she gets her domestic partnership dissolved.)

Pine Hill Photographs

2008-05-14T02:10:31Z

Susan spent this past weekend at my apartment, instead of me going to her duplex like we do most weekends. This was because my apartment was closer both to Pine Hill Preserve, where we went for a wildflower walk on Saturday, and to my parents' house, where we went for Mother's Day.

Pine Hill Preserve is located on a small area of the Sierra Nevada foothills where gabbro rocks that formed deep below the ocean floor have been pushed up to the surface by the collision of plates that formed the Sierra Nevadas. Gabbro rocks contain high levels of iron, magnesium, and other heavy metals, so the soil in this area (created mostly from broken down, decomposed gabbro rocks) is also unusually high in these metals. Most plants are poisoned by the high levels of these heavy metals, so some unusual plant species have evolved to grow only in these soils and nowhere else. The California Bureau of Land Management established the Pine Hill Preserve to protect eight exceptionally rare species of plants, including three species that grow exclusively in the Pine Hill area and four species listed as endangered (plus one listed as threatened) under the Federal Endangered Species Act.

I wanted to see Pine Hill because of the rare native plants, and I thought a trip there would intersect reasonably well with Susan's interest in geology, too. So I signed us up for a guided tour, with a group of about 20 people. Here is the whole group near the start of the hike, with Susan standing nearest to the camera.

One of the first native plants we saw was balsam root (Balsamorhiza deltoides), which had leaves so much larger than most native plants here do, and grew in such a neatly delineated circle around the base of some blue oaks, that it looked for all the world like a garden plant that someone had inexplicably planted in the middle of the wilderness. Its yellow daisy-like flowers could easily fit into a garden too.

Here's some more of the same plant that we saw later on the trail, this time growing under a young yellow pine. There's also a Western redbud tree to the right.

Not much farther on was a giant chain fern (Woodwardia fimbriata). It was little and turning yellow for the summer (a lot of our native plants go deciduous in summer), but I was surprised to see one at all in such a dry, sunny spot. These can grow to be six feet tall in redwood forests or on stream banks, but this one was only about eight inches tall.

Here is a California buckeye tree (Aesculus californica). A week or two ago, the flower spikes would have been gorgeous, but at this point the white flowers have fallen off and all you can see are the brownish flower-like spikes where the flowers used to me. By the end of June, the leaves will be turning brown and falling off too, because this tree goes deciduous in both summer and winter. It has green leaves only for a short period in the spring.

This is a large-leaved lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus), which will have at least one gorgeous purple flower spike a few weeks from now, but for now it's only a spike of green buds (on the left). The plant to its left is poison oak.

We saw many fairy lanterns (Calochortus albus) all along the way. This one is growing with more large-leaved lupine and some sanicle.

The arching plant in the middle here is bedstraw (Galium bolanderi) . . .

. . . and the tiny, pale yellow, sphere-shaped flowers here are a different kind of bedstraw, the first of the rare plants we saw. This is El Dorado bedstraw (Galium californicum ssp. sierrae), which grows exclusively on gabbro soils in western El Dorado county and is listed as endangered under the Federal Endangered Species Act. (There's also another fairy lantern growing in front of the rock, and a purple iris behind the rock. The large shrub leaves to the left are toyon.)

Through an opening between two black oaks (Quercus kelloggii), I caught a view of the Sierra Nevadas. As you can see, we were not really in them at all, but merely in the foothills below them. The shrubs beneath the black oak on the right are toyon again (Heteromeles arbutifolia).

On the other side of the path was a manzanita, growing under more black oaks.

Here is a huge yellow pine (Pinus ponderosa var. benthamiana), with its trunk pecked completely full of holes by woodpeckers.

Next we saw woolly sunflowers (Eriophyllum lanatum var. grandiflorum). They are growing with foxtails, needlegrasses, vetch, some dead toyon and manzanita branches, and a purple twining brodiaea in the background.

Here is Susan again, looking at a spectacular specimen of California wild lilac (Ceanothus lemmonii). These were all over the place above a certain point on the hill, but completely nonexistent below that point. All of them were covered with blue flowers (except for one that was covered with white flowers instead). There's also some toyon to the left, and a young yellow pine behind Susan's head.

Have some more Ceanothus lemmonii. I can't get enough of it.

See? More Ceanothus lemmonii. Here it's growing with manzanitas and Western redbuds (lower left) and toyon (lower right), under yellow pines and black oaks.

The protruding branch is from a coffeeberry shrub (Rhamnus californica). I'm not actually sure what the yellow flowers are.

A little farther on, we found some small purple larkspurs among dead black oak leaves.

Here's another rare plant: El Dorado mule ears (Wyethia reticulata). It grows only in the gabbro soils of western El Dorado County. If we had come at the right time of year, it would have had three-inch yellow sunflowers on it.

We also saw the common mule ears (Wyethia bolanderi), which did have a few half-open yellow flowers on it.

Our next rare plant was Pine Hill flannelbush (Fremontodendron californicum ssp. decumbens), which grows exclusively in the immediate vicinity of Pine Hill and is listed as endangered under the Federal Endangered Species Act. It was blooming with gorgeous bright orange flowers, and most instances of it were growing flat on the ground. This one is growing flat beneath toyon.

Here's a closeup.

This area had some meadow-like openings where people who own houses on Pine Hill had chopped down some of the trees. There's a gray pine (Pinus sabiniana) in the center, with mostly yellow pines in the background, manzanitas in the foreground, and some Western redbud trees on the right.

The rare plants were all over the place by this point on the hill. The next one we saw was Pine Hill wild lilac (Ceanothus roderickii), which grows only on gabbro soils in western El Dorado County and is listed as endangered under the Federal Endangered Species Act. This is a prostrate Ceanothus, with white flowers that had mostly finished their blooming season already.

Here's more of the same plant. You can see some of its remaining white flowers here. It's growing under a holly-leaf redberry (Rhamnus ilicifolia) and a Western redbud tree, with a yellow pine visible a little way back.

This is a slightly less prostrate Pine Hill flannelbush, growing under a manzanita. There's also Ceanothus lemmonii on both sides of it, toyon to the left, coffeeberry to the right, and a young yellow pine in front.

Here are the bright red seedpods of a Western redbud tree (Cercis occidentalis).

Here's another shot from nearby. The trees are black oaks and yellow pines. The shrubs are toyon on the left, manzanitas all over the place, and a small coffeeberry next to the yellow woolly sunflowers.

This is someone's front yard. The sedge-like plants on the ground, with the long, stringy leaves flopping out from their centers, are common soap root (Chlorogalum pomeridanium). The larger plants around it are toyon, yellow pines, and black oaks.

Later, at the top of the hill, we would find its rarer cousin, Red Hills soap root (Chlorogalum grandiflorum). It is listed as rare under California state law. It's not the most obvious plant in the picture below (I'm pretty sure those are creeping sage, although they have no flower spikes at the moment), but rather the few small, shriveled-looking long leaves near the lower left corner.

This is common yarrow (Achillea millefolium).

Here's another view of the mountains through the trees. The plants are pretty much the same: yellow pines, black oaks, toyon, and some Ceanothus lemmonii.

More Ceanothus lemmonii! The blue flowers are a little bit easier to see here than in the picture immediately above. The yellow flowers mixed in with it are mule ears. Also visible are toyon, coffeeberry, manzanitas, yellow pines, and black oaks.

This is a wild aster, with Ceanothus lemmonii.

This pink-flowering plant is checker mallow (Sidalcea malviflora).

Ceanothus lemmonii again! Told you I couldn't get enough of it. Both the shrubs and the tree on the left here are Western redbud. The shrub on the right is toyon, and the trees are black oak and gray pine.

By this point, we were nearly at the top of the hill. We found some virgin's bower (Clematis lasiantha) with fluffy seed heads, twining through toyon and poison oak.

This Ceanothus lemmonii came in two colors - a white form in addition to the more common blue form.

Some pitcher sage (Lepechinia calycina) was growing between them. Most of the leaves you can see in the picture below are from the pitcher sage.

Here's Ceanothus lemmonii with Indian paintbrush and a young yellow pine.

The bright red-orange flowers are Indian paintbrush.

Ceanothus lemmonii again, with toyon on the left, coffeeberry on the right, Indian paintbrush in the middle, and black oak, Western redbud, and gray pine above.

Here's some chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum) in the middle, with Ceanothus lemmonii on each side and poison oak and coffeeberry above.

We were high enough up now to have great views of the land below us.

Including a view of Folsom Lake, visible on the skyline to the left.

Here's all of Folsom Lake.

Near the top of the hill, we found creeping sage (Salvia sonomensis). It wasn't in bloom yet, but it had plenty of green bracts on its flower spikes, just waiting for the flowers.

Here's some more creeping sage. It's the low plant with the spikes of round green bracts. It's growing in front of chamise, Ceanothus lemmonii, manzanitas, and coffeeberry.

The yellow flowers here are sticky monkeyflower (Mimulus aurantiacus). There's some poison oak and Ceanothus lemmonii growing directly at its base, and more of both in the background, along with coffeeberry, Indian paintbrush, and chamise.

Here's a closeup of the monkeyflower, with poison oak on the left and Indian paintbrush on the right.

This is a small yerba santa (Eriodictyon californicum) with manzanita behind it to the left.

Up here we found some more of the endangered Pine Hill Ceanothus (Ceanothus roderickii), which grows prostrate and has white flowers. The flowers on this one have been replaced by a million tiny orange fruits. The Western redbuds and manzanita growing up through the middle of it (along with numerous grasses) will eventually shade it out and kill it.

And this here is another magnificent endangered Pine Hill flannelbush, next to a cell phone tower.

We reached the very top of Pine Hill, which afforded us more beautiful views of Folsom Lake. The soil here is red because of the high iron content in the gabbro rocks it's derived from.

There were California golden poppies (Escholzia californica) on top of the hill.

And cell phone towers galore. And a little dog on the path, who followed us all up and down the hill.

And another endangered Pine Hill flannelbush.

And gorgeous views.

Of Folsom Lake, again. Pretty much all the shrubs in this picture are chamise.

There was a rock outcropping with an interesting variety of ferns. This one is probably goldenback fern (Pityrogramma triangularis), hiding under a protruding rock. The leaves on the left are poison oak.

The little one here is bird's foot fern (Pellaea mucronata).

I don't actually know what this one is. The botanist leading the hike couldn't identify it.

Here's some more of the view.

Then we walked back down the hill. I took one last picture of Susan on the way down, before we ate lunch at the bottom of the hill and drove back to my apartment.

Pictures of Susan, Truck, and Fish

2008-04-13T21:57:37Z

This is my sexy barefoot girlfriend standing on the running boards of her new redneck truck, with her hair braided by me.

And these are her evil killer fish with their babies. The big one in the center is the mother of the babies, and the bigger one on the right who is facing the camera is their father. The fake plants are floating sideways in the water because the fish like to dig all the pebbles out of the plant bases so that the plants are no longer weighed down.

Edited to add: Later the same day, the father fish murdered the mother fish.

This is the evil father with the babies. He did at least most of the mutilating and killing of the other fish.

Happy Birthday, Dear Queerness!

2008-04-08T14:57:13Z

My queerness turns sweet sixteen today! And unlike me, it managed to get kissed before turning sixteen (or eighteen, for that matter). Only about seven months before turning sixteen, but still. My queerness has a hot girlfriend now! And hey, how many women who've been queer for sixteen years are still in a relationship with the first woman they ever kissed, like I am? My guess is that most of the few such women turned queer later in life, when they had more ability to choose girlfriends wisely, rather than at fifteen like I did. But my way works too. Not that the advice "Wait almost sixteen years to kiss a woman, and then you'll be more likely to be able to keep her!" is ever likely to appeal to teenagers. Even my own teenage self would never have been weird enough to actually plan on waiting almost sixteen years.

Susan's Truck, Rhekarid's Book, and My Pasta-Roni

2008-04-08T02:58:58Z

Today Susan did buy that same truck that I mentioned having gone with her to test-drive. She offered $500 more than before, $1,000 less than the seller had asked for, and the seller accepted. Susan has a truck again! Or she will tomorrow, when the paperwork is all signed. Unless something goes horribly wrong, which it shouldn't. I'm going to have a girlfriend with a truck that has ugly modifications that raise it up in the air! My girlfriend is such a redneck. She thinks she only pretends to be a redneck, but she doesn't realize how much it's become a real part of her, even though it's an acquired part rather than one she was raised with. I fear that her dream car is this one.

Last weekend I finished reading the fantasy novel Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams, which I bought from rhekarid for 50 cents when he was having a garage sale and couldn't find any other customers. The book was about a young tomcat who goes on a long and terribly dangerous quest to rescue a feline damsel whom he imagines to be in distress - his girlfriend of sorts, who has inexplicably disappeared. The book ends when eventually he finds her living safely and happily with a family of humans; unfortunately, she's been neutered and therefore isn't attracted to him anymore. This definitely ranks among the weirdest books I've ever read.

Is it bad if being fed three nights per week by my amateur gourmet chef girlfriend hasn't at all diminished my love of Pasta-Roni? Susan does cook very impressive meals, and I do very much enjoy them; I just also still very much enjoy the Pasta-Roni I make during the other three nights per week when I'm eating alone. Like tonight. (The seventh night per week, I cook frozen pizza for Susan. She doesn't appreciate the greatness of Pasta-Roni, and it's not practical to wait for her to arrive at my place and cook dinner herself, because she arrives so late. Frozen pizza is within my abilities.)

Truck Shopping

2008-04-05T20:32:22Z

Okay, okay, so I didn't really break up with Susan. April Fool! She was actually the one who suggested that I should claim to have broken up with her for April Fool's Day, and she also suggested the reason for the fictional breakup. It's true that she spends many hours in front of the TV, switching from one women's basketball game to another the whole day long, and periodically standing up to demonstrate basketball plays to me, and it's true that she buys season tickets to the Sacramento Monarchs every year. But it's not true that she looked for any basketball news while we were camping. I don't think she actually mentioned basketball at all until we were back home.

Yesterday I went with her to test-drive a truck. She loved the truck, but the seller (a private seller) wanted to charge quite a bit more than the Kelley Blue Book price. Susan made several offers, but the seller made no counter-offers, and when I pointed out to the seller that the asking price was significantly above Blue Book price, the seller just shrugged and said, "Well, but if I can get people to pay that much . . ." So I advised Susan not to buy it, and she didn't, and we went home. But she's unhappy about not getting the truck. Oh, and the seller had modified the truck by raising it about 9 inches higher above the wheels than it would normally have been. I thought this made the truck both uglier and unsafe, due to the higher center of gravity. Susan said she actually liked the modification. I have a girlfriend with bad taste in vehicle modification aesthetics!

Now I feel obliged to help her find a better truck right away, so that my advising her not to buy the one we looked at won't cause her to go truckless very long or to end up with a worse truck.

Very Bad Day

2008-04-02T04:43:58Z

I broke up with Susan today. Our relationship just hadn't been working anymore since the NCAA women's basketball playoffs started. She wouldn't stop talking about basketball! Ever! Whenever I went over to her place, she spent the whole time in front of the TV, switching from one women's basketball game to another the whole day long, periodically standing up to demonstrate basketball plays to me (as if I'd care!) and telling me how she used them as a high school basketball coach in the past or planned to use them in the future. And it made me realize that since she buys season tickets to the Sacramento Monarchs WNBA games every year, there's really no way of interacting with her at all between mid-winter and the end of summer that doesn't involve constant discussion of basketball. Even when we went camping together so she didn't have access to the games on TV anymore, she kept trying to find them on my car radio, and making us late to class because she had to stop at the nearest store to buy a newspaper and check the women's basketball scores. I just couldn't handle having that much basketball in my life for half of every year. If only we hadn't happened to meet right at the end of last year's WNBA season, I would have recognized our incompatibility much sooner, and we both probably could have been spared a lot of pain.

Another thing that helped me decide I needed to break up with her was her irresponsible behavior in keeping those dangerous fish around. This morning before work, I stuck my hand into the the fish tank to try to remove the dead body of the latest fish they murdered, and the largest of the convict fish (the father of all the tiny mean babies) bit me so deeply on my ring finger that the bone of the whole first joint was exposed. I called in sick to work and went to the hospital, but my doctor said the top two sections of my finger weren't salvageable. She amputated it at the first joint.

So that's how I lost Susan and most of my ring finger on the same day. In other news, I've decided to make use of one good thing I did get from my relationship with Susan - namely, the cooking skills she taught me - by quitting my job as an editor and becoming a professional chef. Oh, and I think I should go back to Kingdom Hall again sometime soon, too.

Shocking Revelations: Barack Obama Talks to Black People Who Say Racism Exists!

2008-04-01T07:04:27Z

I'm getting extremely sick of hearing people express shock and horror and outrage every time they come across any quote suggesting that anyone Barack Obama even associates with has ever openly acknowledged that racism exists. Like how Snopes.com feels a need to clarify his wife's statement in her senior thesis at Princeton:

Much scrutiny and discussion has been focused on a single phrase within the thesis, the statement that "blacks must join in solidarity to combat a white oppressor." This phrase has been repeatedly quoted out of context and presented as if it reflected Michelle Obama's own philosophy, but in its full context it is clearly her speculation about what she thought some of the respondents she surveyed for her thesis (i.e., students who had attended Princeton in earlier years) might have been feeling.

What the hell would be wrong with saying that, even if it were her own philosophy? Can it honestly be news to anyone whatsoever that black people are being (gasp!) oppressed by white people, or that they will have a better chance at ceasing to be oppressed if they (double gasp!) work together "in solidarity"? Isn't this just stating a rather blatantly obvious, objectively verifiable fact?

Why am I increasingly getting the impression that much of the United States, including much of the Democratic Party, is perfectly willing to vote for a black presidential candidate only on the condition that the candidate in question must frantically deny that black people are in any way oppressed by white people at all, and must also avoid ever associating with any other black people at all unless those black people also frantically deny that black people are in any way oppressed by white people at all?

And he can't really associate too closely with any white people at all, either; I'm sure that if he were married to a white woman, a sufficiently significant number of people would see that as a sign of him being "uppity" that he wouldn't be the Democratic Party frontrunner right now at all. He should probably just lock himself in an airtight biosphere all alone from now on, because if he associates with any other human being at all, the other human being will probably be classifiable as belonging to some race or other, and no matter which race(s) it is, the presence of anyone of any race(s) anywhere near him will always manage to remind people that the candidate himself is (despite actually being biracial) classifiable as belonging to a race too, and that the race he is classified as belonging to is not (triple gasp!) the white one. How very shocking and horrifying and outrageous.

Point Reyes Photographs

2008-04-01T04:34:55Z

Here are my photographs from the second day of our geology class camping trip, when we moved on from Bodega Bay to Point Reyes. This first one is of my beautiful girlfriend, posing on the San Andreas Fault next to the rebuilt section of a fence that had its two ends separated by 16 feet during the San Francisco earthquake in 1906.

And here I am, posing next to the same fence.

Our next stop was Drake's Beach, named for Sir Francis Drake.

Susan and I walked across it together, while the rest of the class was still busy eating lunch. We left footprints.

Drake's Beach had huge wave-cut platforms that were covered with green algae. At high tide they would be underwater, but we went during low tide.

Susan climbed on the wave-cut platforms.

So did I.

I took pictures of the algae on the wave-cut platforms.

Then I sat on a ledge above the wave-cut platforms.

There were a lot of these ledges.

I also photographed the base of the cliffs.

And I photographed Susan at the base of the cliffs.

She climbed a little way up one to pose for me.

Then we left Drake's Beach and went to the very tip of Point Reyes, where the lighthouse is. There was an amazing view.

Fog obscured the horizon in some areas, blending the ocean and the sky into an undifferentiated blue.

I waited in line to turn in the class notes for both of us, which the professor graded and handed back a few minutes later. We each got an A. After class was completed, I wanted to walk down the 382 steps to the lighthouse, but Susan didn't want to go with me, since her injured foot was hurting her. So she waited at the top while I walked down.

Then I had to walk all the way back up to the top again.

And then we went back to our campsite. We stayed one extra day after everyone else in our class had gone home, and then we went home too.

Bodega Bay Photographs

2008-03-31T04:35:11Z

Susan and I are back from our geology class camping trip at Bodega Dunes Campground, on Bodega Bay. I'll divide my photographs into two posts, this one for the first day of class (traveling around Bodega Bay) and the next one for the second day of class (traveling south to Point Reyes).

After having been warned that we would probably have to share our campsite with dozens of other students, we were delighted to find that we actually ended up having campsite 42 (the answer to life, the universe, and everything!) all to ourselves. Our campsite featured its own shortcut path directly to the restroom (which included showers!). This meant that other people tended to want to walk through our campsite. But that was okay, because most of them politely asked permission, and we were happy to have such convenient access to the path ourselves. Here's Susan returning down the path to our campsite.

And here's Susan in the tent, putting on her hiking boots in the morning.

Here are some more views of our campsite, with my car and Susan's camping equipment.

First thing in the morning before the first day of class, we and three other students and the professor all went geocaching together in the sand dunes behind the campsite. I was exhausted by trying to keep up with everyone else - even Susan, who was hobbling because she had tripped on my bedroom carpet a few days earlier and thought she might have broken her toe. But at least I got a nice landscape photograph from it.

This is our classmate Juan, holding up his GPS device and a stuffed monkey with the school logo on it, which the professor had brought along for us to add to the cache we found.

Here we all are with the cache we found. Derek is holding the cache because he was the one who found it. The professor took this picture with my camera and commented that we all had a big green mohawk over our heads.

Then we went to class with our other classmates. The first stop was Goat Rock Beach, so named because supposedly people used to herd goats on top of Goat Rock, which is a sea stack (a big rock formerly attached to shore, now separated due to erosion) slightly offshore.

I photographed Susan on the cliff above Goat Rock Beach.

And a classmate named Lang.

Susan photographed me on the same cliff, along with Derek and some woman we don't remember the name of. You can tell by my hair how windy it was.

The Russian River flows into the ocean here, which is why Goat Rock Beach is bordered on both sides by water.

We drove down from the cliff to the tombolo - a bit of land that has built up between a sea stack and the shore, due to water depositing gravel in an area protected from erosion by the sea stack. This is the tombolo.

And here is Susan on the tombolo.

Then we drove from the tombolo to the beach itself, which was just as freezing as everywhere else.

For lunch we drove to Shell Beach, which was also freezing. We sat in my car while we ate the lunch we'd brought with us, to stay out of the wind. When we finished eating, Susan went out on the beach to begin our assignment, but I stayed in the car for another 15 minutes because it was so much more comfortable in the car. When I finally ventured out into the wind, I wasn't sure at first where Susan had gone. I took this picture while I was looking around for her on top of the cliff.

Then I found the stairs down to the beach. I photographed this lupine on the way down. It was growing right next to the stairs.

But by the time I reached the beach, I could see Susan in the distance.

I ran to meet her and asked what she'd been doing.

She showed me a cave she had found during a previous visit to Shell Beach, and then she posed next to her favorite rock she had found on the current visit to Shell Beach. The rock was serpentine.

Then I took pictures of the ocean.

And Susan took pictures of me.

After class was over, we went geocaching with the professor and a few other students again. The GPS devices led us into a field of poison oak, and we had a terrible time finding the cache, until Susan moved aside some rocks - and there it was! There was also a scenic view from the cache location, so I photographed it.

And there were lots of wild irises all over the field, too. I liked them much better than I liked the poison oak.

Camping!

2008-03-26T16:50:14Z

Susan and I are leaving today and returning Saturday from a camping trip on the coast with the geology class we signed up for together. It should be fun. I'll take lots of pictures. We're taking my car, because she's not ready to buy a new pickup truck yet, and we're returning her rental car today.

The mean convict fish in her fish tank have now killed the smaller (previously mutilated) male and the smaller female of their own species. The only life forms left in the tank are the larger male, the larger female, a plecostomus, and a snail. I wonder whether, when we get back, the remaining convict fish will have killed each other off, had babies together, or both.

Dear Common Cold

2008-03-20T03:27:59Z

Dear common cold,

We need to talk. Susan and I already paid our yearly dues to you in January. We don't owe you anything more so soon. And you're way overdoing this anyway. My nose isn't just dripping like a leaky faucet; it's gushing like a turned on faucet. I require it to function as a nose, not as a faucet. Granted, it never had much sense of smell in the first place, but it did do a satisfactory job of inhaling and exhaling until you came along and took it over. And if I may be so vain as to say so, I rather preferred the way it looked on my face when it wasn't bright red and irritated.

I've been sleeping 12 hours per night both of the last two nights, and I plan to do the same tonight, despite your interruptions. I've also been drinking lots of orange juice and eating chicken noodle soup. I even ate all the cooked carrots in the soup! I didn't eat the celery, but you know I'd have to be literally on my death bed to go so far as to eat green vegetables. I ate orange vegetables in mass quantities for you! These things are supposed to have an effect on you. So hurry up and go away already!

I'm supposed to attend an evening geology class with Susan after work tomorrow, and I've barely been able to drag myself through my normal workday for the past couple of days, even with the extreme good fortune of having coincidentally had a quite significantly lighter workload for the past two days than is normal for me. I need to be functional tomorrow. I need you to go away and leave me alone. PLEASE.

No love,
Gayle

LiveJournal Users vs. SUP

2008-03-16T21:54:37Z

SUP is currently publishing a false list of the Most Popular Interests on LiveJournal. Someone called "Stewardess" at InsaneJournal.com has determined that SUP censored at least twelve interests that should rightfully be included on the list of most popular interests: sex, boys, girls, fanfiction, yaoi, hardcore, porn, bondage, faeries, pain, depression, and bisexuality. belenen suggests that you click on the LiveJournal feedback link and send them feedback something like this:

I just discovered that SUP has removed the interests "Sex, Boys, Girls, Fanfiction, Yaoi, Hardcore, Porn, Bondage, Faeries, Pain, Depression, Bisexuality" from LJ's daily popular interests report, and I am outraged by this censorship. I want LJ to reflect its users, not the prejudices of its owners. I have seen a large number of my friends moving to another journaling site, with more threatening to do the same, and I think that LJ needs to pay attention to this before it loses a large chunk of its paying customers.

I am a _______ (plus, paid, permanent, basic, early adopter) account holder, and if I left, you would be losing the revenue I bring in by ________ (viewing ads, paying yearly, inviting new people to join LJ).

belenen adds: "If no one speaks up about this, they assume that no one cares, and the next time a censorship issue comes up, they are far more likely to act in favor of it because they don't see any negative consequences. If, instead, they face outrage at this, they are less likely to censor in the future."

In addition, beckyzoole recommends (in protest not only against the censorship but also against the recent removal of the "Basic" account option for new journals created from now on) that everyone should avoid using LiveJournal in any way on Friday, March 21, from midnight GMT to midnight GMT. I don't know whether SUP will really pay any attention to a boycott with so little likely financial impact on them, but it can't hurt to try.

Also, if you are a member of Digg.com or would be willing to sign up, you can also help "digg" the news article "LiveJournal vs. Fandom: Again" to the top of the news headlines.

Yuba Goldfields: Photographs

2008-03-11T06:16:31Z

The weekend before last, Susan and I went to the Yuba Goldfields so she could collect sand and gravel to make miniature glaciers with in her freezer for her students. The Yuba Goldfields are essentially the downstream equivalent of Malakoff Diggins, the last place I posted photographs of. During the gold rush, miners blasted apart the mountains at Malakoff Diggins with water cannons to look for gold, and all the debris from Malakoff Diggins washed down into the valley via the Yuba River. There was so much debris that it raised the entire riverbed drastically - so much that even all the way down in downtown Sacramento, which is several hours' driving distance from Malakoff Diggins, the I Street bridge over the Sacramento River had to be raised 20 feet because the riverbed was so full of debris from gold mining.

The Yuba River flows into the Sacramento River, which flows into the San Francisco Bay. A lot of the debris ended up in the San Francisco Bay, and a lot was left behind all along the way. The debris that washed ashore where the Yuba River first enters the Sacramento Valley formed what is now known as the Yuba Goldfields: 10,000 acres piles with loose gravel blasted out of the mountains upstream. The piles of gravel were re-mined for gold throughout much of the 20th century, and are now being marketed as aggregate to use in making cement.

Considering the massive environmental damage wreaked here, I was amazed at how many native plants I found thriving here. The very moment I stepped out of Susan's truck (R.I.P., Susan's truck), I was immediately greeted by the scene below. That's a native pine on the left, and native buckbrush directly to the right of it. I'm not sure what the other plants visible here are, but except for the grasses, they're all probably native. The whole area was also covered with lupine, which unfortunately wasn't in bloom yet, but it'll be gorgeous in another week or two (maybe it already is by now!) when the lupine bushes are all covered with purple flowers. For now, the buckbrush was already in bloom (there'll be better pictures of it later), and I also saw red maids, blue dicks, and purple vetch (all of which are native wildflowers).

I wish I knew what the reddish, leafless bushes all along the river were.

Susan went directly to the shoreline, just west of the bridge, and remained there the whole time, while I wandered in all directions, looking for things to photograph.

I found vetch! And I was wearing my new red coat that Susan helped me shop for in February.

I found red maids! This was the first time I'd ever identified red maids in person. I didn't know what they were until Susan took me back to her duplex and I ran a Google image search on red maids because I thought these might be them. And they were. Red maids are a native annual that grows mostly in disturbed areas, which the Yuba Goldfields certainly qualify as being.

This is what the shoreline looked like when I faced west. I didn't go any farther west than this because there were people fly fishing along the shore just out of sight here.

Instead I walked east of the bridge, where the bridge cast its shade. Also east of Susan. That's Susan's white bucket on the shore there, at the far left.

And here is Susan scooping sand and gravel into her white bucket, while I wander off to the left, behind the bushes.

I found a path under the bridge, and followed it.

The bridge cast a shadow far up onto the shore.

Walking in the shadow of the bridge to avoid sunburn, I found more buckbrush in bloom - the bushes here with white flowers on them. Buckbrush also grows wild in my parents' yard, up in the foothills.

I also found some amazing red rocks.

Then I wandered back down to the river itself.

See the little round inlet in the bottom center of the photo above? The photo below is a closeup of that inlet.

The rocks underwater in that inlet were all covered with green algae.

I waded across the shallower parts of the inlet.

. . . And out to the very end of that projecting line of rocks.

From this peninsula, I photographed a valley oak on the shore, and the shadow of the bridge.

Then I resumed walking east along the shore.

In the distance, you can see one of the huge, pyramid-shaped piles of gravel that are common throughout the Yuba Goldfields.

There's a strange assortment of rocks in this area, with all the rocks being very red in some rock piles, and all the rocks being very grey in other rock piles right nearby. I think the red ones started out here originally, and the grey ones mostly came from upstream.

I found my way back to the path.

This was a magnificent valley oak just above the river.

And here is the river below it.

There was a gravel path, which I followed.

It led past more buckbrush (the low bushes in the foreground) and what I think were native plum trees (the flowering tree in the background).

Here's a small plum tree growing right out of the slope next to the river.

There were turkey vultures overhead. Susan told me later that she had counted eight of them.

Eventually we were both ready to go home. Here is Susan hauling her bucket of sand and gravel uphill.

It was very heavy when filled with sand and gravel, so I went down to help her with it. That was the end of the photographs, and the end of our visit.

Computer Crashes and Car Crashes, Both of Which Could Have Been Far Worse

2008-03-07T01:36:45Z

This week has contained rather more than its share of crises. Each of them could easily have been far worse than it was, but each of them was still stressful even with the more limited degree of badness that actually happened.

Last weekend was lovely, but I haven't had a moment to write about it because of the crises ever since. Susan needed to collect sand and pebbles to have her students build volcanoes, so I went to the store for her and bought the baking soda and vinegar that will be used to create the lava, and then we both went to the Yuba River so she could collect the sand and pebbles. I wandered around the Yuba Goldfields identifying native plants and taking photographs (which I'll post later, whenever I have time). We stayed away from each other almost the whole time we were there, because I was trying to avoid a sunburn (which I succeeded at), while she was trying to get a tan (which she failed at). I would have liked to have her within conversational range more of the time, but the only shade available was nowhere near the good supply of sand and pebbles she needed, so we just went our separate ways. Susan spent a lot of the time there thinking about how this was the same place where, when she took her dogs there a year ago, her dog Taco was bitten by a rattlesnake and swelled to twice is normal size and was declared clinically dead, but was revived a moment later and miraculously survived with the help of a blood transfusion from her other dog, who then got hit by a car a week later and killed. I just spent the time there thinking about how nice it was to be there and to have a wonderful girlfriend who took me there.

But on Monday the first crisis happened, when my computer displayed the dreaded Blue Screen of Death and then, upon reboot, displayed a message informing me that its hard drive had failed to pass the S.M.A.R.T. test and that I should back up my data immediately because the hard drive was likely to die at any moment. It was nice of the computer to give me advance warning, at least. I'd never heard of the S.M.A.R.T. test before, but apparently my computer had been silently performing this test on itself during bootup for all the time I've owned it, and just never announced this to me until the hard drive failed the test. I now highly recommend that all of you should have something like this installed on your computers, because it enabled me to perform a final backup of my data that was more recent and more thorough than I would otherwise have had.

At first, though, it didn't look like the warning was going to do me much good. My CD-ROM drive refused to function anymore, so I couldn't use it to back up my data. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't had a wonderful girlfriend who, even despite being busy taking a night class that evening, readily invited me to come over Tuesday night and spend the whole evening using her flash drive to copy files from my dying computer to her desktop computer. Then for good measure, she served me a delicious dinner and loaned me her desktop computer to take home for the rest of the month. I'll need it that long, because the new computer I bought isn't going to be delivered until near the end of March.

I did order a new computer though. Thank you, everyone who advised me about what to buy. I ended up adding a DVD writer (thanks, hansel25, for that advice) and a longer-lasting battery (thanks, safiiru, for advising me to read the reviews that convinced me I needed a better battery) and skipping the messenger case (thanks, wonderful girlfriend susanlizr, for offering to give me your unused one). I think I'll be very happy with it once it arrives. I just have to wait quite a while for it. But that's hardly any inconvenience at all, now that I have Susan's old computer to use in the interim.

The latest crisis happened last night: Susan was in a car accident. A driver going at least 65 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone crashed into her truck, pushing it way down the street and flipping it completely upside down, flattening the roof so that some windows were squashed to half their former height. She heard a witness outside remark, "They're certainly not going to be able to walk out of that one," referring to her and the teenager she had been driving home at the time. But she and the teenager are both actually pretty much okay, surprisingly. They both have a bunch of tiny cuts all over their hands and knees from squeezing out the windows to get out of the truck, and Susan has some bruises, a bump on her knee, a sore neck, and a sore spot on the top of her head where her head bumped into the ceiling light switch and turned the light on inside the truck. Her much beloved truck is ruined, and the much beloved pants she was wearing are ruined, but she herself is not very badly damaged. And the insurance will pay for a new truck. Hopefully the other driver's insurance, since it certainly seems to have been the other driver's fault; but on the off-chance that the authorities are idiots and fail to figure that out, she'd still only have to pay a $500 deductible and then her own insurance would cover the rest of the truck's value.

She called me on the phone last night to tell me about the accident, and I decided to drive over to see her. She kept telling me I didn't have to, because it's almost a 60-mile drive from my place to hers and I'd already driven there the night before to back up my computer with her flash drive. But I know something about how stressful car accidents are; I practically never dislike being alone, but if I'd just been in a car accident, even I would prefer not to be alone. So I drove to see her and stayed the night again. It turned out that she had only $3 cash and about four cigarettes when I arrived, and no transportation to obtain more, so I loaned her $20 cash and bought her a pack of cigarettes. I got carded while buying the cigarettes, which I thought was weird since I really don't look under 18. Susan said I must have just looked so uncomfortable with the idea of buying cigarettes that the guy behind the counter concluded that I must surely be doing something illegal despite appearing to be of legal age.

Anyway, now I'm back home with my loaned computer, and Susan is at her home with her rented car. My data is intact, and my girlfriend is intact, too. So all has turned out reasonably well, despite the crashes. I'd just like things to stop crashing in the first place now, please.

Emergency Computer Replacement

2008-03-04T02:48:45Z

My computer has taken to shutting itself down at random moments and displaying warning messages telling me that its hard drive is on the brink of death. So it looks like I need to buy a new computer. I think I'm going to buy a laptop instead of a desktop. Specifically, I'm thinking of buying a Dell Inspiron laptop with these specifications:

120GB Hard Drive (5400RPM)
RAM: 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo T5450 (1.66GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB
cache)
Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch display (1280x800)
CD writer / DVD player (Combo Drive)
Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Mini Card
56Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)
Belkin 15.4" Messenger Case
Included 3 GB DataSafe Online Backup for 1Yr
Windows XP(TM) Home Edition (which I will upgrade to Windows XP Professional Edition with my existing disk, because I need XP Professional to telecommute)

Is there anything else you think I would be likely to need or want that isn't listed? And does $780 seem like a good price for it?

Malakoff Diggins: Photographs

2008-02-23T22:45:42Z

Malakoff Diggins is a state historic park where gold miners used huge water cannons to carve away massive sections of the cliffs in hopes of extracting deeply buried gold. The bare dirt you can see on the sides of the cliffs in my photographs is where the land was carved away. The plants still haven't grown back, because all the topsoil that plants grow best in was removed.

I wasn't expecting snow here, and Susan wasn't particularly expecting it either, but we were very pleasantly surprised to find snow as we started driving toward it. (We Californians rarely see any snow unless we go driving somewhere to find it. Unless you count seeing it from a vast distance, on the mountaintops far off along the horizon.)

Susan and her dogs wandered ahead of me, down a snowy trail lined with manzanitas on both sides.

Susan threw snowballs for Boston.

The trail led to a muddy pond.

I was happy about the pond until I discovered that the trail went right through an area that was basically just a shallow portion of the pond, under about a foot or two of water. There were some rickety boards thrown into the water at this point, nailed together intermittently in the manner of railroad ties, but falling apart badly in various places and sinking underwater when we stepped on them in other places. In some places the boards were entirely absent, so all we could do was try to step on the tufts of grass that were growing up through the shallower water. Susan tried running through it, in the futile hope that the water wouldn't have time to get her as wet that way. I probably wouldn't have tried to cross it at all if she hadn't gone first, but I picked my way through it slowly and got soaked up to my knees, which was still slightly less soaked than she had gotten.

On the other side were more cliffs that had been carved up by gold miners with water cannons.

And some dry land to walk on, for a change.

And then more snow. Boston had never seen snow before. She loved it immediately.

I loved it too.

The dogs found a place where the intermittent ponds had frozen solid.

They promptly fell through the ice.

Both of them. In the very same place.

They got very muddy indeed.

That didn't stop them from being thrilled with the whole thing, though.

Boston says, "Come out here and play with us on the ice! (Or at least throw me a snowball.)"

Susan and I did not join them on the ice.

Here's a zoomed-in version of the same picture above.

We did have a great time in the snow, though.

Even Taco had a great time in the snow - despite the fact that he has very thin fur and therefore gets cold easily. Susan has dog booties for him to wear in the snow to keep his feet warm, but she didn't bring them because we didn't know there would be snow here.

Here I am in front of one of the old water cannons that destroyed the hillsides.

And here I am at not more than two years old, in front of the same water cannon, being held my my mother. My mother emailed me this picture when I told her that Susan and I had gone to Malakoff Diggins last Sunday.

But I'm better looking now.

And Malakoff Diggins is more fun with snow on the ground.

And with a girlfriend to smile at.

See how pretty everything was with snow on it?

We went back to Susan's truck to eat dinner before we went home. Susan cooked hot dogs with her camping stove, and we stood looking at this view together. Susan suggested that I should photograph the moon over the cliff, so I did.

Yuba River Recreation Area: Photographs

2008-02-23T21:36:34Z

When Susan and I went to Malakoff Diggins last Sunday, we first stopped along the way at Yuba River Recreation Area. I've decided to put the Yuba River Recreation Area photographs in a separate post from the Malakoff Diggins photographs, so this post is just for the former. There was snow at Malakoff Diggins, but not here, because this was at a lower elevation.

We drove across this bridge and Susan parked her truck on the edge of the road directly at the left end of the bridge. From there we climbed down to the river with her dogs and wandered around on the very impressive rocks you can see along the left shoreline.

This is what the river looked like in the other direction.

Susan sifted through pebbles between the larger rocks, looking for particularly unusual pebbles to put in a matchbox and give to me at the end of the trip. Boston swam in the river and waited eagerly for Susan to throw rocks for Boston to dive in after.

Meanwhile, Taco was following me over the next mound of high rocks.

I was wearing pants for the occasion. And hiking boots. Susan said I still didn't manage to look butch.

I asked Taco for a second opinion, but he just looked at me confusedly.

So I sat on top of a particularly high rock and appointed myself queen of the mountain.

Boston appointed herself religious visionary of the mountain. Doesn't she look like she was meant to be a spiritual leader?

My perch on top of the rock was a good place to photograph Susan and her dogs from.

Whenever Susan came back up from the water, Boston trailed after her adoringly and eagerly waited for her to throw more rocks into the river for Boston to chase. (Taco is too old to do much rock chasing, and I'm too unathletic to do much rock throwing, so it had to be Susan and Boston.)

Susan wandered farther up the rocks and resumed sifting through pebbles to put in the matchbox for me. Boston stood next to her and waited impatiently for her to throw some more rocks into the river.

But we temporarily disappointed Boston by taking her and Taco back to the car instead, so we could drive farther up the road to the unexpectedly snowy state historic park known as Malakoff Diggins. I took one last picture before we left, while standing on the bridge and looking straight down at the river.

Dear Scientologists: Subtlety Is Not One of Your Talents

2008-02-22T04:57:18Z

I just checked my snail mail and found a recruitment questionnaire from the Church of Scientology. It's very funny to see the things they want to know about their recruits. I especially like how they keep rephrasing the questions that really matter to them over and over, interspersing them with more innocuous ones to try to disguise their primary interests. These are some of their actual questions, quoted verbatim:

7. Would you prefer to be in a position where you did not have the responsibilities of making decisions?
23. Do you resent the efforts of others to tell you what to do?
29. Would you rather give orders than take them?
31. Could you agree to "strict discipline"?
32. Would the idea of making a complete new start cause you much concern?
55. When hearing a lecturer, do you sometimes experience the idea that the speaker is referring entirely to you?
68. Do you enjoy activities of your own choosing?
69. Does emotional music have quite an effect on you?
80. Do you accept criticism easily and without resentment?
84. Do you prefer to abide by the wishes of others rather than seek to have your own way?
90. Do you have few interests and activities that are your own choice?
99. Do you prefer to take a passive role in any club or organization to which you belong?
103. Would you give up easily on a given course if it were causing you a considerable amount of inconvenience?
107. Do you turn down responsibility because you doubt your fitness to cope?
120. When met with direct opposition would you still seek to have your own way rather than give in?
125. Are you suspicious of people who ask to borrow money from you?
126. Are your decisions swayed by personal interests?
128. Do you frequently take action even though you know your own good judgment would indicate otherwise?
142. Do you get very ill at ease in disordered surroundings?
179. Do others push you around?
181. Do you often ponder over your own inferiority?
184. Do you frequently not do something you want to do because of other people's desires?
200. Do you consider you have many warm friends?

As it happens, I do resent the efforts of others to tell me what to do, and I would not prefer to be in a position where I did not have the responsibilities of making my own decisions - much less a position of "strict discipline." I do happen to enjoy choosing my own activities, thanks very much, and I certainly do not wish to put up with any cult leaders causing me "a considerable amount of inconvenience." Somehow I get the feeling that Scientology and I would not get along.

Why I Feel Optimistic About This Year's Presidential Election

2008-02-06T15:50:11Z

I can't remember any other presidential election in my lifetime that made me feel as optimistic as this one does, so far, about American politics. I couldn't vote for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton myself, since I'm a registered Peace & Freedom Party member rather than a registered Democrat - and I'm not particularly sad about not being allowed to vote for either of them, since they both do still disappoint me in significant ways. But they disappoint me far less than Democratic presidential candidates have always disappointed me in the past. I would prefer Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton (as would apparently the vast majority of you on my LiveJournal friends list: I've counted three Hillary Clinton voters among you and one Ron Paul voter, but uncountable dozens of Barack Obama voters), but even if Hillary Clinton wins, I'll still be happier with her than I've ever been with any other Democratic presidential nominee in my lifetime. I think I may even vote for either one of them in the November election; if so, it will be the first time in my life that I've ever voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in the November election.

A big part of my optimism is due to the obvious fact of them being the first ever black and female presidential candidates on a major party ticket. The media has made a big deal over this, but I feel it's so significant that it's worthy of an even bigger deal than anyone has fully realized yet. Presidents have more powers than the ones officially granted to them; they have a huge amount of symbolic culture-shifting power as figureheads, too. Especially if Clinton wins, the whole sexist language of presidency would have to be rewritten in ways that I don't think the country has really begun to grapple with seriously yet. If either one of them wins, I think their mere existences in the bodies they were born into will make the country a significantly more pleasant place, even if I do end up hating a large number of their actual political stances.

But the other reason I feel so much more optimistic about this election than about any other presidential elections I've ever been eligible to vote in is something much less noticed by the media: Quite simply, whenever I hear anyone this year urging me to vote for either of the Democratic presidential candidates, the urging is consistently phrased as, "You should vote for X because X did something good." This stands in very sharp contrast to what I heard during the past several elections (most noticeably with John Kerry, but also quite a bit with Al Gore and even to a significant extent with Bill Clinton, at least during his second term, which was the first one I was eligible to vote about), when instead I kept hearing, "You should vote for X because even though I know X is horribly disappointingly conservative and totally uninspiring, the alternative is the absolutely terrifying prospect of Y being elected instead!" The fact that this year I hear Democratic voters actually enthused about the prospect of voting for the Democratic candidates, rather than just terrified into resigning themselves to having to vote against the Republican candidates, makes me feel for the first time in ages that the Democrats are actually going to win the November elections this time around. And yes, I know the Barack Obama voters tend to be significantly more enthusiastic than the Hillary Clinton voters. But even most of the Hillary Clinton voters seem to be phrasing their support of her in terms of things they actually like about her. I really think they're both far more decent candidates than the Democrats have ever previously given me the opportunity to vote for.

My opportunity won't come until November, though, since I'm not a registered Democrat. In the meantime, I voted yesterday for Cynthia McKinney, on the Peace & Freedom Party ticket.

Sutter Buttes Photographs

2008-02-01T07:36:27Z

Way back in November, Susan and I went on an organized geology hike in the Sutter Buttes, "the smallest mountain range in the world." The hike was supposedly six miles round trip, although it didn't feel that long to either of us. I took photographs, and now I'm finally going to get around to posting them. Here is Susan near the start of the hike.

At one point we walked through an area with a fairly dense, shady manzanita growth and gorgeous moss-covered rocks everywhere. Unfortunately I didn't manage to take many pictures there, both because the lighting was very difficult to photograph in and because it was very difficult to stop to take photographs without getting in the way of other members of our hiking group or having them get in the way of my photographs. I did get this picture from that area.

And this one, of a manzanita backlit by the sun.

Most of the rest of the Buttes had a far more arid look to them, despite the continued presence of a fair amount of moss.

The picture below was taken from near where we stopped to have lunch, and shows the distance we had already come from the bottom.

I took the next one right from where we were sitting while we ate lunch. We sat on the ground on the edge of a hill.

After lunch, we were given the option to stay where we were or continue farther up. Almost everyone, including us, chose to continue.

The jagged protrusions around the peaks are caused by erosion revealing the tubes of lava that solidified underground when the volcanoes that formed the Sutter Buttes were still active. (See, I listened to what the guide said! It was a geology tour, after all.)

As we climbed toward a peak, we found rocks that formed natural terraces. This area used to be a lakebed, but unfortunately I didn't listen well enough to remember how the terraces formed. Susan will probably tell me, when she reads this.

We found a huge rock outcrop, and climbed it. Those are the tour guide's legs on top of the rock.

Here is about half of our hiking group on top of that same rock. The tour guide is on the far left, and Susan is the second person from the right.

And here I am, on top of that same rock. It was windy up there, which explains why my hair is flying away from my head. This rock is definitely not a good place to stand if you are afraid of heights.

Elephant Seals

2008-01-26T08:12:56Z

My photographs from Cayucos itself are in the previous post, but in this one I'll share my photographs from the place we drove to on our last afternoon, slightly up the coast from Cayucos. We drove there to see elephant seals, and we sure did see a lot of them. We also took most of our photographs of each other here, rather than in Cayucos itself. Here are Susan and me, as photographed by Susan's sister Wendy. The reason I'm standing that way is that I'm trying to avoid being pulled off the edge of a cliff by Susan's dog Taco. Both her dogs took one look at the elephant seals and were determined to hurl themselves off the cliff to go play with the elephant seals. It took a lot of effort to restrain them.

Here are Wendy and Susan, with Wendy's dog Zooey and Susan's dogs Taco and Boston. And an elephant seal in the background.

Here's Susan posing with Boston. We were trying to get an elephant seal in the background here, but it didn't work.

This effort worked better.

We wanted to show how determined the dogs were to leap off the cliff onto the elephant seals. This effort was the most successful at showing that.

It was really only Susan's dogs who wanted to hurl themselves off the cliff. Zooey seemed much less interested. Here are Susan and Wendy walking Boston and Zooey.

Wendy and me with the elephant seals.

Susan and Boston with the elephant seals. I really like this picture of Susan. I like the way she's looking at me in it.

Boston alone, looking at elephant seals.

Me with Taco, photographed by Susan.

Okay, from here on out it's just elephant seals, not us. Here are the nursing baby elephant seals.

Look closely in the next six photographs and you'll see more of the nursing babies.

There were some slightly older juvenile seals, too.

And of course plenty of adults.

None of them moved very much; most of them just lay there and occasionally waved a fin a bit. One of them stuck its tail in the air a few times, and one crawled out into the water. But mostly they gave the impression of leading extremely relaxing but extremely unexciting lives.

Cayucos Photographs

2008-01-26T07:25:57Z

I really should get around to posting photographs from back in November, when Susan and I went hiking in the Sutter Buttes. But instead I have pictures from our more recent vacation this month in Cayucos, near San Luis Obispo. Our hotel room had a balcony that directly overlooked the ocean. This was the view from our balcony.

Here's another view of the hotel, its courtyard, and the ocean. Our room was the third from the left, on the second floor.

And here I am in our hotel room with Susan's dogs, Taco and Boston! It was a pet-friendly hotel.

It was also a pet-friendly beach. Here is my beautiful girlfriend Susan on the beach with Boston in front of our hotel. It was high tide when I took this photo, and there was very little beach left dry, so we backed up as far as we could, all the way to these rocks, to try to keep our feet dry (especially Susan's sprained ankle). A fraction of a second after I clicked the shutter, a wave flooded over all of us, all the way up to the rocks.

The beach was gorgeous.

Susan's sister Wendy met us as soon as we arrived and walked on the beach with us, along with her dog Zooey. I took this picture of them while the sun was setting. Wendy is on the left with Zooey, and Susan is on the right with Boston and Taco.

The sunset was also gorgeous.

When the tide was lower and there was some beach to walk on, much of the beach was covered with kelp. The dogs enjoyed the kelp very much.

Taco enjoyed it so much, he waded knee-deep in it.

Boston posed for the camera amid the kelp.

And she waded in the ocean.

There were lots of sea gulls around, so I stood on the balcony and photographed these on the hotel lawn.

Later I walked on the beach and photographed this one on the wall surrounding our hotel courtyard. I was shocked at how close it let me get to it.

We heard there were tide pools near our hotel, within sight and easy walking distance of it. This is the view of the tide pool area from the beach in front of our hotel. To get to the tide pools, we just had to walk out to that blue-grey building in the middle there. The tide pools were directly below that.

Here is a sea anemone. There are some closed sea anemone in this photograph along with the open one; the closed ones are speckled in pale ivory shell bits from the animals they've digested and are located at the top right, bottom right, and slightly left of the open one.

This is a different sea anemone, with a starfish and some barnacles clinging to the rock above it.

Boston went swimming in one of the deeper tide pools, while Taco played with a stick in the background.

When we walked back to the hotel from the tide pools, we passed this little drainage area with two egrets.

We let the dogs wander around in the drainage area. If after seeing the scene above, you turned to your right, you would see the scene below: 13-year-old Taco and 14-year-old Zooey, playing in the drainage area in front of the restaurants next to our hotel.

Here are Boston and Zooey in the same area.

And all three of them.

And just Zooey.

One of the egrets took flight. I photographed it as it passed me.

After we went to the tide pools, we drove north up the coast a little way to see some elephant seals. I'm going to put the photographs from the elephant seals' location in a separate post, because there are so many of them. So in this post I'll just skip past the elephant seals to the sunset on our final night in Cayucos. I took these photographs from our hotel room balcony, while some man was walking his dog along the shoreline below.

Here's one where you can see the hotel courtyard and the picnic table where Wendy, Susan, and I played a card game that Wendy gave to Susan.

On the morning we left, Wendy wanted to photograph Taco because Taco is dying of cancer and will probably never see Wendy again. This is Wendy's photograph of my beautiful girlfriend Susan with Taco.

Sutter Buttes Hike

2007-11-12T14:46:41Z

I spent all day Saturday worrying that I would never be able to keep up with everyone else on the Sutter Buttes hike that I signed up to go on with Susan, because the organizers didn't tell us until after we'd already signed up that the hike was going to be about six miles long, which is a lot more than I'm used to walking even on flat ground, let alone up and down mountains. They did tell us before we signed up that the hike we were going on was considered appropriate for anyone who's over 12 years old and exercises regularly, which I certainly don't do, but I decided I had to try to manage it anyway because all the easier hikes sounded so much less interesting.

Anyway, the hike actually turned out to be shockingly easy! My legs aren't even sore at all today. I was exclaiming to Susan during the hike that it didn't seem like it could possibly be anywhere near as long as six miles, and she was agreeing that it didn't seem that long to her either, but the hike leader kept repeating that it was. I was also exclaiming to Susan how glad I was that the hike leader didn't walk anywhere near as fast as the geology professor who led our hikes in Yosemite. Except then our two carpool passengers on the way back from the Buttes to the high school that we had originally gathered at started complaining that he walked way too fast because he was too tall. One of our passengers had been on other organized hikes in the Sutter Buttes before, and she said the other hike leaders had walked much more slowly. She was older than us, but she was in the habit of taking 50-mile bike rides through the Buttes regularly, so I thought she would be a lot more in shape than me. But I guess she wasn't.

We even went on an optional extra climb up some peaks at the end that raised the difficulty rating of the hike from "3 - Challenging" to "4- Difficult." I told Susan that the hike convinced me that I must be young still, because "3 - Challenging" was supposed to be too hard for people who don't exercise regularly, yet I didn't have any problem with it or even with "4 - Difficult" even though I don't exercise regularly.

I also spent all day Saturday worrying that it would rain on us during the hike, because it was pouring rain all day Saturday, and all night until Sunday morning. It even rained on us a little as we were driving to the hike. But once we actually arrives, it cleared right up and we had blue sky all day long. Then I realized I'd forgotten to bring any extra camera batteries, so I worried about that, but my single pair of camera batteries already in my camera turned out to be enough. I don't usually worry much without having my worries turn out to be justified! Eventually I'll post pictures from the hike.

I took today off work to spend it with Susan, who has it off work automatically because it's Veteran's Day. She's still in bed. Other than the hike, our weekend has consisted mostly of fantastic amounts of reading together on the couch. I read two of Susan's books, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (which was absolutely amazing!) and Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller (which was not so amazing; it was mediocre punctuated by occasional riveting moments and a lot of general horror at how unbearably racist the author's family was). Now I'm reading a book of my own that I brought with me, Love and Vertigo by Tsu-Ming Teo. I'm not very far into it yet, and it hasn't really hooked me yet. Susan is reading Dark Light: Electricity and Anxiety from the Telegraph to the X-Ray by Linda Simon. I love having a girlfriend this geeky.

Also she somehow managed to write me another email love letter on her laptop right while I was sitting next to her on the couch, without my ever guessing it was me she was writing to. I also love having a girlfriend who understands that writing can sometimes be more fun than talking.