Poor Mama

Mama got caught out in a rain storm last weekend. This resulted in a very bad hair day!! : )

The Other Ladies...

Here are our lovely ladies, all nice and grown up! The gray one in the front is Isa; from left to right in the back we have Coco, Speckle, Mama and Sis. Sis is our top egg layer, she is also the most friendly of all of them. She is always first at your feet and will let you pick her up most of the time.

I thought it would be fun to see some of their before and afters. So here they are as chicks and now, full grown:

She did it!!!!

Little Sis laid her first egg! We fried it up for breakfast and split it between the two of us. It was pretty tasty, the yolk was bright orange. Mike claimed it had a bit of an after taste...I was so proud of Sis I couldn't taste a thing except eggy goodness!! ...Saturday morning we had egg #2!

Thanksgiving

This year Funda, a graduate student in Mike's lab, joined us at my parents' house for Thanksgiving. This was her first Thanksgiving eating like a true American (she's from Turkey - how appropriate!!). Funda helped my mom and I prepare many dishes, she made her very first pie crust and apple pie! She was very excited, we took a lot of pictures for her to send home to her family. She was also quite interested in the process of frying the turkey.

We spent the weekend with my parents, playing with their dog and enjoying being out of the city and relaxing! We brought the Wii up and had a lot of fun seeing mom and dad try their best on the balance board and racing on Mario Cart! Unfortunately we didn't get a video of my aunt trying to head soccer balls and avoid cleats and panda heads - she slightly resembled Mama the chicken in one of her frantic phases!! : ) Good times!

More Hawaii fun!

I took my first 3-days off from work (this was quite stressful getting lesson plans ready for the substitute). It felt amazing once I got to Hawaii and I was laying on the beach on a Thursday : )

My mom and I found a quiet hotel in Makaha on Oahu, it was away from Waikiki and all the huge hotels and touristy stuff. Here are some photos of our 5 days:



We spent part of an afternoon at Hanauma Bay for some snorkeling, but a storm made the water cloudy with sand and the currents brought in some box jelly fish and some other terrible creature that was stinging people. So we decided to drive up the east side to the North Shore to witness the famous pipeline and meet up with Erin and Dominic for dinner. Here we are playing in the waves at sunset beach:



And eating some delicious shrimp from Giovanni's shrimp truck with fresh pineapple with Ling hing (dried plum powder) and finally some shave ice (essentially a snow cone, but much better):

Erin and Dominic's Wedding

Erin and I are good friends from college. She and Dominic have been together for a long time and they finally got married! One of the best parts was the location...Hawaii! Unfortunately, however, Michael was tuckered out from traveling, he had a conference to attend and wasn't able to go to the wedding with me. BUT, my mom graciously took his place (after some arm twisting!). I was the Matron of Honor...and honestly it was a little weird...my mom and I were two of three non-Filipino guests. So you can just imagine all of their wedding party photos - yep, I am towering above everyone!

Eating Live Octopus!

I've wanted to do this since I heard about it during my last trip to Korea. The hostess brought in a bowl with three small, live octopi and one at a time wrapped them tightly around chopsticks and fed one to each of us. The strangest feeling is when the octopus is sucking at the sides of your mouth with its tentacles - yes, you can feel it!! After it is dead, it's still quite challenging because it's really difficult to tear it into smaller pieces so you can actually swallow.

After the live octopus, it was time for the main course: A very spicy vegetable soup with octopus. If you don't like watching things die, don't watch the following movie:

Hiking in Seoraksan National Park

I made it out of the city on Sunday for a couple days of hiking at a national park here in Korea. It's on the Eastern coast and near the border with North Korea, near the coastal city of Sokcho. Sunday was crazy packed with people (imagine if Yosemite was less than 3 hours from SF and was 1/100th the size), but I had a half day, so I did the "must do" hike to some rocks called Ulsanbawi. Crowded, but very beautiful anyway.

Looking over the map, I decided to tackle a 22 km hike that hits the 3 highest peaks in park (1708 meters is the highest) and ended on the other side of the park. When I discussed this with the hotel owners' father (great guy who lived in LA's Korea Town for a long time), he said "start early."

So, Monday morning I walked out of the hotel at 6am and started towards the park in darkness. By 8 am I had made it over 6 km and enjoyed the sunrise at a Buddhist cave that had been carved in the side of a mountain (and bought a bandanna because (a) I really needed something that would work as belt for my pants and (b) it had a map on it and I left my map at the hotel).

I thought I was making great time and would reach Mt. Daecheongbong much earlier than expected...I was wrong. The trail got really steep - both up and down - and seemed like a mix of hiking and rock climbing. I averaged 2 km/hr (not including breaks) the rest of the day. Koreans don't do switchbacks!

All in all, though I had a good time. Lots of other hikers on the trail once I got to an area where there are a few "lodgings" and people were backpacking and later when I was near the park entrances near to the peak.

I posted a bunch of pictures on Picassa - I hope you enjoy them!

Seoraksan Hiking Oct 2009

Goodbye Mr. Pegs

After searching for a home for 3 weeks and our neighbors reaching wits end with his relentless crowing, we finally had to say goodbye. My mom came down on Saturday for a fun day hanging out and then she took him away. Today she brought him back to the feedstore we purchased him from and they guaranteed that they would be able to re-sell him. To Mike's chagrin, no chicken dinner. Hopefully Mr. Pegs finds some green pastures to play (and crow) in!!

Mr. Pegs

Uh Oh! This sistah is a mistah! Be sure your volume is on for the video.

Chicken Ladder

Here's a video of the chickens coming down from the hen house in the morning!

School, school, school...work, work, work...cluck, cluck, cluck

My month and a half off from this old blog is primarily due to the start of school. So I am going to apologize for all my tardy posts of recent and those to come!

I am teaching 80% this year, only 4 classes, but with larger class sizes due to budget cuts I only have about 10 fewer kids! I guess this is better than having 25 more kids though!

I am enjoying another season of coaching volleyball (we just took 2nd at a tournament today!). The girls are a lot of fun, but I'll definitely be glad for November to roll around and the season to be done. I'll be getting home by 2pm!!

Mike started his 2nd year as a Post-doc at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. For the month of September he has been working down at the Sandia National Lab in Livermore - so we've been commuting together!! At the end of October he'll be making another trip to Korea to give some talks and renew all of his paperwork for his funding.

Other Mikey news...he is running again! He finally got his hip rehabilitated and he is as active as ever, even searching out triathalons to sign up for.

Finally, the chickens! They are getting big and fat - and will be laying eggs soon...hopefully!! Caleb and Andy, we are trying to get a good video of them using their ladder - the only problem is that they only use it at night to go up to their brooding house, so all our videos are coming out too dark. We'll let you know if we get it though!

Golfing...my first "real" 9-holes

Recently some of our friends thought it would be fun to all go golfing. Needless to say I am barely the mini-golf type, so the thought seemed somewhat not fun. Mike decided that if I had the opportunity to hit the ball really hard, that I would probably like it - so he took me to the driving range... Now I assume that my natural talent in so many other sports Mike has converted me to, perhaps jaded his perception of the reality of me and golf. I am no good. I couldn't hardly hit any of the balls forward, let alone up and with any distance to get that thrill of smacking it really hard! I think more often than not I completely missed the ball!

Anyway, a few days later we were at a 9-hole Executive course, which was supposed to make me feel better because they were all super short (70-120 yds, I think). I used a Pitching Wedge and my putter the whole day - and once I had the glory of par - but it was primarily luck that I hit the ball on my drive!

Sadly no pictures or, better yet, video clips of the whole ordeal. I'm sure you would have loved to see me whiff all my drives!!

Alcatraz!

In late-August my sister came down for a day of hanging out. So I decided it would be fun to go to Alcatraz! Despite having grown up 3 hours from San Francisco (and my having lived in Berkeley for the last 5.5 years), neither of us had ever been. The day started out kind of chilly, but the sun peaked out for awhile and we had a great time taking a few of the tours on the island. Here is a slide show of our fun day!

Alcatraz Island

Marble Mountains Hike

After attending a wedding in Shasta we met my dad for a week of hiking and fishing in the Marble Mountains, just north of the Trinity Alps and southeast of Mt. Shasta. It was a pretty hot hike, but absolutely gorgeous! The year before a wild fire had scorched parts of the area so some of the trail hadn't been replaced very well - sometimes it felt like we were headed straight up the side of a hill and then head right off the other side again.

Our first night we slept with some free-range cattle at an old cow camp. The cows were pretty noisy - we were glad to pick up and move! On the second night we missed a turn along the ridge line and ended up quickly losing about 1500 feet of elevation. After re-orienting ourselves two other hikers happened upon us, having made the same mistake (like I said, the trails weren't very well re-established after the fire). So we enjoyed each others company while we hiked cross-country to hook back up the trail. That night we stayed at a small lake with our new friends Ed and Tim, and played cards - and they shared some of their tri-tip roast with us (for two guys they brought 6 steaks...lucky us!!).

The following day we set up a base camp and hiked to a fire lookout hut at the top of English Peak, followed by more cards and chocolate pudding with oreos! On our fourth day Ed and Tim were headed home but decided to leave a blow up raft and some fishing tackle with us to try our luck in a lake that treated them so well the day before. Well....turns out the raft was more weight than help with the fishing. I caught one from shore with a fly and Mike got one while out in the boat with a lure. Not a very successful fishing day...but we sure made a feast out of them! I found some wild onions in a nearby field and we threw the fish into some foil with the onions and some bacon and cooked them up in a fire. So delicious!

The next day was slated to be our last, but during lunch we decided to toss the fly around in a stream and we were landing fish left and right! We decided to camp 2 miles from our car and spend the evening and the following morning fishing. That night we had an amazing feast of fish. We heated up some flat rocks in the fire and cooked them right there with some corn meal and oil. Below are some pictures!!

Marble Mountain Backpacking Selected Photos

What a good lookin' coop!

Well, here it is! Beautifully purple and hot pink - for the ladies, of course! The chickens took a little while to get oriented with the new abode and its amenities, but they've got the hang of it now. After about a week 3 of them learned how to go up to the brooding house on their own; a few days later 2 others figured it out...and the last chicken...well, she needed a little help. I gave her some private lessons on the ladder and now all 6 of them have mastered the ladder.

Fury is enjoying her lower perch. Mama is nibbling on some tasty carrot greens from the Farmers Market.

Look at Mama's fro!! Coco is the beautiful white one with feathery feet and Sis is in the front. Isa is hiding - she doesn't like her picture being taken :)

A coop for our 6 ladies!

Day 1 -
Mike and I were joined by 8 of our friends to help us build the chicken coop - and thank goodness they all wanted to help!!

Brian - master engineer
Marion - master chicken expert
Doug and Michael - master craftsmen
Becky - artistic expert
Ollie, Derek and Derek's friend - apprentice builders
Zhi and Lei - expert poultry wire staplers

Saturday included framing all the walls, stapling the poultry wire, adding the outer siding for the brooding box with egg gathering hatch and making the door. This took a total of about 12 hours!

Day 2 -
Brian was so excited about the 12 hours on Saturday that he voluntarily came back on Sunday!! Awesome! I don't think Mike and I could have finished on our own. Sunday included making and attaching the gables, framing the brooding box and placing the floor and the roof of the brooding box (the roof is the piece with CHKN cut into it for venting), making the nesting box and perches, putting on the roof of the coop, adding the trim on the brooding box, moving the coop to its final resting place and finally, bringing in the chickens...total of 10 hours (22 hours total)!

Here's a short video of how we moved it...kinda funny...I had the easy job, so I decided to try to look my best!! : )

Wedding #3: Kevin and Linsey

Our second gorgeous Tahoe wedding! - this time on the north side of the lake. We met Kevin, the groom, as well as the others present in this photo during our first year in the Bay Area. We played ultimate together for 2 seasons. After the team broke up we all remained close friends, Kevin met Linsey and we enjoyed many evenings of BBQs, playing cards and playing disc golf. Of course, our weekend in Tahoe therefore would not have been complete without a game or two of Doppelkopf and disc golf!

Mt. Lassen

One more stop before Tahoe! We needed to get out and stretch our legs - so we detoured through Mt. Lassen Park and decided to head to the top! The views were gorgeous...


The hike to the top was 2.5 miles and about 2,500 feet of elevation. It took us about 2.5 hours to go up and less than 30 minutes to go down! After the hike we rinsed our face and legs in a glacial lake - it was quite chilly! Mike tested the water with his toes - I didn't hesitate!!

If you click on the slideshow you can view it in a new window and the pictures will be larger.

River rafting the Upper Klamath

After our visit with Mike's family we were headed south. En route to Tahoe for wedding #3 we joined my parents and my aunt and uncle on a river rafting trip along the Upper Klamath. We didn't get a water camera, so no pictures - but lots of commentary! We had a great guide who aligned us with every wave, spun us down the rapids and even high-sided us (intentionally) on a rock in a big rapid. We learned very quickly that dad was along for the ride. I am not sure his paddle hit the water (other than for splashing purposes) more than 10 times on a 4 hour trip! Since he was our raft's token clown he also got to "ride the bull" down one of the rapids - this amounted to him seated at the very front of the raft, feet hanging over into the water, one hand holding onto a raft handle in between his legs and the other hand waving in the air. We hit a large wave perfectly and he was thrown backwards into the raft all smiles and laughter! It was great!!

That evening we had a nice dinner in downtown Ashland and left my parents to enjoy some plays at the Shakespearian Festival.

At the Beach!

Carol and Gene rented a beach house in Gearhart, on the Oregon coast, for all of us to spend some time together. The house was right on a golf course and a short walk to the beach.

On our first day we headed up to a State Park and explored an outpost of Lewis and Clarke's and went on a little nature walk. During our walk we found a slug - Mike dared me to kiss it to gross out Caleb and Andy...we were successful. And after some coaxing we got both of them to "pet" it!

Later that day we went on a walk at the beach with Carol, Gene, Clark and Lorne. Lorne and I had a great time sneaking up on seagulls and scaring them into flight.

Day 2 brought everyone to the beach, including Baby Zachary. We built castles and played wiffle ball with Caleb and Andy.

I waded in the water with Clark, Lorne and Carol. Lorne was the most brave of us all and was the only one to get entirely wet! I guess I am too much of a "California girl" - it was definitely not warm enough to go in past my knees!!

Disc Golf

One afternoon we decided to teach Clark and Lorne how to play disc golf. Gene came along and directed us to a local 9-hole course. Clark and Lorne became pretty good putters by the end of the course and Gene had some great drives!

Speed Boat on the Wilamette

Mike and I had a fantastic time with Clark, Lorne, Christine, Carol and Gene on a speed boat ride on the Wilamette River. In between 360s and massive waves soaking us, we saw many Portland sites from the river. It was a fun ride and interesting to see so much of the waterfront.

We went all the way up the river to Oregon City where we could see the old papermills, a waterfall and old locks used to move ships and other water vessels up the river.

I'm not quite sure these pictures capture how soaked we were, particularly Michael. Mike was seated on the side, which was favored by the driver, for taking the most water on his 360 spins. I think there was only a small strip of dryness under his left arm!

Tummy time

After a long morning and hot afternoon it was tummy time... I thought it was pretty adorable to have all four of them down at the same time!

Fourth of July in Beaverton!

Mike and I headed up to Beaverton in time for the annual 4th of July Parade and a family trip to the beach with Carol's sister, Christine and brother's, Clark and Lorne - they were visiting from Canada. Although we didn't ride unicycles this year we did walk the parade, offering our hand for riders to mount their cycles and for photography support. Paul G. rode a tall unicycle (not the tallest, which I think was 9 feet), Paul W sported his fancy hat, Peggy rode while pushing Baby Zachary in his first parade and Gene rode while juggling pins. As soon as Peggy sends along some photos I'll post them so you can see everyone.

That afternoon we had a teaser fireworks session with pop-its and sparklers. Caleb learned quickly to throw the pop-its at your feet and command you to "Dance!!" Caleb, Andy, Clark and Lorne had a great time!

That evening we had a much bigger fireworks display in Paul and Anna's cul de sac with their neighbors. Paul put on a good show and the boys were wide-eyed with the showering of colors, whistles and pops!!