Owls in 4S Ranch!

Dave and I just went for a short walk around our neighborhood. We heard coyotes yapping and howling in the distance and commented on how we hadn't seen one in a while. A few minutes later, we heard an unusual sound and followed it to the condos across the street from us. I looked up at the rooftops and saw an unusual protrustion. It looked too small to be a satellite. We stood under it for a while, I was convinced that it was an owl since owls are pretty common in San Diego. But we weren't sure since it had stopped hooting, wasn't moving, and the lighting was very poor.... But then it flew!

We followed it to some of our neighbors' homes and found there were 2 of them, perched on different chimneys hooting at each other. We watched them "talk" and fly from one spot to another, until we decided we had to go home and get ready for bed.

I love the wildlife here!

Oldies are Goodies - Hi-Tec Adventure Race 1999

Once upon a time, long long ago (back in 1999)... my brother organized 2 teams to compete in the Hi-Tec adventure race in Connecticut. This is a race comprised of teams of 3 with everyone competing together throughout the race. There are 4 main components: orienteering, 5-7 miles of trail-running, 10-15 mile mountain-biking, and 1-2 mile(s) kayaking in inflatable kayaks, with tons of team-oriented tests scattered throughout the race (such as climbing 12 foot walls, getting through "spiderwebs" without touching rope, doing puzzles blindfolded, and crawling through the mud).

My brother had an idea to design t-shirts. Everyone was responsible for getting caricatures done and to send them to me.

Front of the shirt:

back:

Kabuki Klowns was my bro's team. It had my brother Ben, his good lawyer friend Kristin and her husband Carlos. They were the "biking" team.

2 Studs and the Dave was my team with me, Dave, and my bro's marathon running friend Jenn. We were the "running" team. Jenn was supposed to ensure that we kept at a 9 minute mile during the running portion.

We also had a huge support/cheer group of my parents and some of my brother's really good college friends: Jeral, Sharon, and Audranne.

They were running around, following us on the course and snapping pictures at every moment. It was so cool! Below are some oldies that Jeral found for me in his old files. He originally had this fanatastic website dedicated to the race. It was really awesome with everyone's bios and pictures, and whatnot. Unfortunately, the site went down several years ago. Stupid me always forgot to download the photos, so I recently harassed Jeral to look for them again. Here are a few that he's found:

Kabuki Klowns minus Ben. Where did my brother go?

2 Studs and the Dave orienteering.
One of the "tests" was a suprise at the start of the biking portion. Yup, each team was only allowed to use 2 bikes during the biking portion! For my team, our strategy was to have 2 people bike ahead, one person run. Then we would stagger it, every so often one person would drop their bike and start running. The runner would catch up to the bike and start running. Unfortunately, for Kabuki Klowns, Kristin and Carlos were much taller than my brother and if he were to ride one of their bikes, uh, I think the results would be disastrous to his future. On top of that, my brother's seat was fixed! Poor Kristin and Carlos. I think they ended up running a whole lot more than they originally anticipated.

Carlos running
Jenn running
Mud Stud biking (you'll understand the nickname later)
Dave biking
Ben biking or is he posing?? Ha ha...
One of the team tests were to climb a HUGE wall. I guess it was 12 feet? The tricky part was that you could only use ropes once one teammate makes it up the wall. 2 Studs and the Dave got really lucky. When we got to the wall, there were several other teams there, and they were really helpful. These guys saw us and just offered to help. I started climbing up Jenn and Dave, and the next thing I knew, I was flying up the wall!

The guys then pulled Jenn up.
Oops, the pictures are out of order. Here's me getting yanked up!
And then while Dave's getting pulled up, Jenn and I were checking out the surroundings. Jenn saw Jeral, whereas I was exclaiming at the next "test" that we were going to encounter.
Me shocked at seeing Jeral.
We were such hams. :)

After we crawled down the ropes, it was time for the ....

MUD CRAWL!

Dave jumped right in, while the girls got used to being dirty. Aw, there goes the nice white pinnies!

Everyone commented on how Jenn's white spot was a lot bigger than everyone else's.

Check out the mud dripping from us!

Marine hurdles!

Running to the finish line!
2 Studs and the Dave finished!
We had a respectable finish, I believe. I can't really remember. I do think that we finished about 20 minutes before the Kabuki Klowns. But then again, they got totally screwed with the whole biking thing. They had planned to catch up to us then. They then got screwed with the high wall, because when they got there, there weren't any other teams around to help them out. I think at one point, my brother climbed up Carlos and then jumped for the top of the wall. But he didn't get a good grasp and ended falling to the ground! My dad saw it and kept saying, it was a good thing my mom was looking another way at that very moment. Or else she would have freaked.

But it was a great accomplishment that we all finished and had a fantastic time!

Dave's nickname for the race was MacGuyver. Apparently, my bike fell apart during the race, and Dave managed to use an innertube to tie the bike together enough so that it survived the rest of the biking portion.

If I get more digital pictures of the race, I'll post them up sometime.

Hmmm... I might have some pictures of Hi-Tec 2000 which Dave, my brother, and I formed a team and competed again. When/If I scan in those photos, I'll get them up sometime too.

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin carving!

I don't think I've carved a pumpkin since.... 6th grade?

Can you guess what this is?

Looks much better lighted up!

Puss'n'Boots from Shrek

Halloween at Stratagene

Apparently, every year the company welcomes the Halloween spirit with costume contests, baking contests, and pumpkin carving contests. The Tech Service Department gets really into it, whereas the rest of the company doesn't have as much fun. Gee, I definitely found the right group for me!

Technical Services represent!

back row: Kevin, Caroline, Mike, Owen. front row: me, Marta, Solange. Not shown: Al and Virginia Kevin as a watermelon (the seeds were my idea)
Banana-mana Owen + Coco
Mike, a TAB enthusiast (apparently a reference to an episode of the Sarah Silverman show?)
Caroline as a witch. Don't cross her or else!

She's our manager, and this is the scariest picture they've ever gotten out of her ever! Me as a scarecrow. Those hay bales came in handy. :)
Marta as a Zookeeper with her monkey, Annica.
Our crazy internationals in town for Stratagene University:

Punk rock fairy Claudia from Belgium, Japanese Princess Fumiko, and Witch Bharti from the UK Yet another witch, Cinda... she takes care of all of us...
Costume contest and Bake off
Pumpkin carving contest. Apparently, it's usually a battle between TS and R&D for this contest, but neither group had the time this Halloween. Next year!

This was my first Halloween in ages (over 10 years?) passing out candy to kids. Awww, they were too cute! Driving home, I stopped by Costco to get my candy (yeah, yeah, I'm a slacker and saved it for last minute). As I was driving into my neighborhood, I saw my 8-year-old neighbor and his friend trick or treating. It was only 5pm! My neighbor recognized my car. I saw him point to it, and then he started RUNNING (with arms flapping and flailing) to my house. It was hilarious....

The rest of the evening were a parade of tiny little kids (most came up to my knee or thigh) who would knock on my door because they're too small to reach the doorbell. So cute....

Homecoming

The San Diego wildfires began on Sunday, October 21st. Our region was under mandatory evacuation as of Monday morning. We packed up both cars, parked mine at my office parking garage, and maneuvered around in Dave's. We spent the first day at a motel in Pacific Beach, exhausted from a day of adrenaline and very little sleep (it was difficult to sleep through the howling winds on Sunday). The smoke from the fires were so strong, you could smell it all over San Diego county.

Since there wasn't much for us to do, we both opted to go to work for the rest of the week. On Tuesday, Dave spent half the day seeing patients. My office was closed, but it was a good place to use the internet and catch up with friends and family. We spent that evening at our friend Joe's place.

On Wednesday and Thursday, we lodged at our good friend Neill's apartment. He was away in Argentina, and his apartment management were very... um... unhelpful in giving us access to his apartment. They insisted that Neill find a photocopier and fax machine in some remote part of Argentina to help us out. He managed to do it and we were supremely grateful. It was comforting to stay someplace a bit more familiar.

Although our evac orders were not lifted yet, we decided to drive to our neighborhood on Wednesday evening to check if the road blocks were gone and if we could access our home.

Sweet sweet intact home
Many trees had no chance against the strong winds on Monday and Tuesday
Remnants of the hay bale fires
Surviving hay bales with the scorched hillsides in the backdrop

Unfortunately, the winds stripped many of our plants.

Our poor naked wisteria

Poor naked raspberry/blackberry bush

Poor naked grape vinesOne of many poor metal poles
We quickly watered all our plants as they were parched from the dry Santa Ana winds. We didn't stay at the home as the evac orders weren't officially lifted (but we did notice several of our neighbors moved back). Besides, the air quality was foul. I was having coughing fits all week long.

Thursday evening, Dave and I both went home to do some cleaning. We decided to stay at Neill's one more night, since it was just too ash-y inside the house for us.

On Friday, I left work early to do a good chunk of cleaning as we were moving back home!

Some views on the drive back:

Smoke cloud hanging over inland North County
Scorched hills neighboring 4S Ranch, note the burnt ground next to the road. This spot is less than a mile from our home. Saturday morning, we explored around to survey the damage.
Another view of the hills. We drove up there and saw that the fires came REALLY close to the structures. We're so grateful that everything was spared. Remants of the hay bales again. The remaining ones had been removed.

Yet another view of the hills. We were really lucky. The fire swarmed the hillsides surrounding our community, but didn't come down to the homes. Supposedly, they got as close as 20 yards to some condos near us....
Rancho Bernardo was one of the regions that got hit HARD from the fires. This was the area that made the national news. Yep, the same place that Schwarzenegger and Bush visited.When the news channels listed addresses affected, I had recognized several of the street names and realized that this part of RB was only 2-3 miles northeast of our home. We turned on one street, Duenda, to a quick drive. Saw over 10 destroyed homes on ONE street. It was heart-wrenching.

The right side of the green car was melted.
Damaged apt complex. When my friend moved to SD about a year ago, this was one of the apartment complexes that they looked at.
Charred trees along the streets
Right next to these trees is where I used to play Ultimate pick-up

National Guard presence
right next to I-15
Evidence of fires along the freeway... you can see this on both sides!