Let it Snow! Let it snow, let it snow...

Oh the weather outside is frightful... okay, not really. It is Southern California, where the weather is ALWAYS 75 and sunny!

I took Paul up to Big Bear this last weekend for a Birthday getaway, but who am I kidding- I really wanted to go too! When I suggested going someplace for his birthday, I brought up the idea of going on a scuba trip to Mexico, or a snow trip to Washington, but Paul said he would be interested in going to Big Bear... just like old times. We had not yet braved the trip to snow in SoCal, so I had never even been to Big Bear. While trying to make arrangements online with no real guidelines, I found that Big Bear is just a bunch of cabins you can rent from individuals. Some of which are tacky and expensive. I was just beginning to think Big Bear was not my kind of place (where was the Hilton?) when I found a fun Jacuzzi cabin. There are actually plenty of great places I wanted to try- a B&B (booked for the MLK weekend) other cabins (too big to rent for two people), and so on.

I ordered snow chains for my car (why I did not think to do this for Paul's car, I do not know- he is the one with the heated seats!) I made cabin arrangements, printed out directions, packed food, dug out all the winter gear (or as much as I could find) and we were off! We got up there on Thursday night, just in time to check in and grab dinner. I picked out a place called Sweet Basil, which was a great Italian restaurant. They were out of the Wild Mushroom Ratatouille, which I was excited about trying, but at least they had some Ahi tuna! Yumm-o. We picked up some wood for the fire and tried out the jacuzzi and called it a night, well, after watching some BSG of course!

We meant to wake up early on Friday, but the alarm went off and neither of us tore out of bed. So we finally got to the slopes around 9:30, but the park had been open for an hour already. Paul and I had been debating what to do- I definitely wanted lessons no matter what we did, skiing or snowboarding. Paul had tried snowboarding before but wasn't enthused about continuing that. I had only tried snowboarding and had gone a few times. It was going to be hard, according to Paul, to hang out together if we were doing different activities, so I decided to try skiing. Only, since I had never been on skis, it wasn't like we would be spending time in a Ski 101 class together. I took the morning 2 hour class, which taught me how to get into skis, out of them, how to fall, and how to move and brake. Out of five people, I had the least difficulty and didn't fall once. Paul was off warming up and taking pictures of me being goofy. We took a break for lunch and met at the Ski House. In the afternoon, Paul and I both took the advanced class, but were divided into sections according to skill level. I managed to make it to a level 2 (out of 4). The afternoon class was a little more challenging and I was the worst one in that class. We learned how to link turns and get away from snow plowing by carving and slipping on the slope. I had trouble trusting leaning on my right turn (left leg) and kept falling when I got any real speed up. All in all though, we were good enough to take the lift to the top of the mountain and run a green hill (designated as low intermediate). I only fell a total of a dozen times that day, so not bad! I think my first few days on the snowboard, I was on the snow half the day.

We retired for the evening after running the beginner slopes a few times together. Paul, despite having his first ever ski lesson that day, is really great on skis and was able to help me figure out some of the finer points of turning and shifting my weight to do so. And that was only my first day on skis!

We ate at a place I had picked out called Captain's Anchorage (steak and seafood), which I thought we would need after skiing all day. It was fun- I got two appetizers, steamed artichoke and some clams. It was all great. We finished the day off with some more BSG, hoping to catch the premier of season 4.5 (the first of the last 10 episodes), but since we were determined to hit the slopes at opening on Saturday, we were fast asleep by 10 pm.

The start of the memorial day weekend at Snow Summit:
When we rented our skis on Thursday, the check in ladies told us to be there at the crack of dawn on Saturday to fight the smallest of the day's lines. We were in the parking lot unloading at 7:30 am (did I finally find something that gets Paul outta bed at the crack of dawn?) Paul had wisely bought the lift tickets the night before, so all we had to do was walk onto the slopes and get on a lift. There were already lines out the wazoo at 7:30 and the park didn't even open until 8am.

I suggested we head straight up to the Summit Run, which starts at the top of Chair 1. We did the Summit Run, a green slope that is a mile long and ends at the base of the mountain at Chair 2. We took that chair up tot he top and headed to the right to get to the fun family zone. This is an area meant for beginners and families that includes flat areas on one side and small moguls on the other side. There are even a few runs that are just green runs. We spent most of our day on that part of the mountain and mainly avoided crowds and lines. There were even less crowded areas, but we tried them and I got scared because the hill looked too steep. (I made Paul walk uphill in skis to get to a green area.)

We ate lunch at the top of the summit. They had two different eateries up there and a great view out back!

Paul spent the day following me and helping me out, and by the end of the day, I think I was doing fairly well. I wasn't falling as much, and I was doing better on carving my turns instead of snowplowing them. I even got up some good speed. Look ma, I am even wearing my helmet!

As if one Birthday isn't enough!

Well, the Moroccan place was neat. The earthquake was perfect! But Paul ordered up one more surprise... a night in Disneyland at the California Hotel. SWEET!

We left after work on January 9th (why? Because the parks are only open to about 6 PM on the weekdays, yea... no thanks!). We got down and checked into the hotel, and since I was hungry, Paul scouted out some restaurants and half mentioned the steak house because it is after all, my birthday surprise, not his. But it sounded like a great idea. So we changed into nice clothes, then bundled up to walk through Downtown Disney to the Disneyland Hotel and the Steakhouse 55. It was blowing wind like crazy! And it wasn't the warmest feeling wind either.

The Disneyland Hotel is this funny 70's style hotel that looks dated from the outside, but has fun, fantastic decorations and style on the inside. We got seated right away with our call ahead seating (go Paul!) and we ordered family style food and some steak. Wow, I was so full! Here is a picture of our expensive bread (LOL):



We hurried back to the room to change, and dashed off to Disneyland. Now it was my birthday and everything so I HAD to decide what we were going to ride (but I got vetoed on Its a Small World). We went by Space Mountain but it had a 60 minute wait; it turned out to be good that we skipped that because when we passed by later, it was broken. We beelined for Finding Nemo, stood in line for a while, and then got smooshed onto a submarine with a bunch of wiggly kids. But the ride was worth it (mental note- next time the parents come, they have to see that ride too). Since SM was down, we ran all the way across the park to Indiana Jones and stood in the LONG line. It was an hour before close and I wasn't sure we would make it on, but we made it and were the last CAR! Funny though, the Harrison Ford at the end was broken, so he was talking, but not moving. It was better than the time that I went on it after work and got stuck in the dark tunnel.

So that was some good birthday luck!

The next morning we got up and went to California adventure. We didn't have quite as much luck there... we got in line for Toy Story Mania (all the rides my folks missed on their trip! Obviously 8 hours is NOT enough time to see two parks). But while we were in line, the ride broke. We had even gotten our glasses! So we walked over to Screaming, but our fast passes weren't good for another 10 minutes, so we got in line. We waited through the line once and then went back and rode it again with our fast passes!

We also stopped by Monsters Inc (mainly because Paul had gotten me some scrap booking stickers with those characters on it, so I needed to ride the ride so I could use them, duh!) It was a really well done little ride.

For a grand finale, we rode Tower of Terror. I might have left hand prints on Paul's leg. That ride scares the BUGGERS out of me!

We called it a day after picking up some carrots and ranch dressing in a Mickey ear shape.

Thanks a million Paul!

Have an Earth-shakin' Birthday!

Yep, you better believe it... the Earth shook on my birthday!

Paul took me out to a Moroccan restaurant we had been wanting to try near Studio City, called Marekesh. We decided to dress in pants because Paul read some reviews that said it was difficult to navigate on the poofs with a short skirt. It turned out to be manageable; the tables were low along with the seats, but they were booth like seats, so it wasn't a problem.

We had just ordered drinks when Paul grabbed me and said, hang on... then I knew what was coming... an earthquake! We rocked back and forth like a lifeboat adrift in a sea. It was over in a few swells, and I peered around the restaurant to see that NO ONE had noticed! I obviously needed to be drinking what they were!

I am actually amazed we felt the quake since it was out in San Bernadino:
see the USGS site for more info. It was a 4.5 magnitude and 9 miles deep.

Paul and I ("the flock of nerds") were immediately on our iPhones looking up the USGS site to see what happened.

My birthday was a lot of fun, earthquake and all. Too bad my parents missed being in an Earthquake by a mere few days!

The Great Dignity Loss of Christmas '08

Chihuly: The nature of Glass

On Friday morning, we all went to the Arizona Desert Botanical Gardens to see an incredible exhibit of Chihuly glass.

At the entrance to the gardens:


Paul told me it took 5 fork lifts to get all the glass into its exhibits.




Believe it or not, there are some amazing desert plants to look at to; not just glass artwork:












And here are my favorites:

TANKS and the 'Giving feast

On Thursday, we had lots of plans! We were to meet everyone at the aquarium at the ungodly early hour of... 10 am. We still did not all make it. But Chris and I knew it would be a little hectic organizing 40 people for a tour, so we decided that I would just call Chris and Jeff when everyone got there, so they could do work and not wait around while people were still arriving. I think that worked out great. And of course, there were three puppies with us and some horses across the street to keep us all occupied!

Chris and Jeff led us all on a huge tour of the three buildings that will make up the new World Wildlife Aquarium. They talked about all the fish in the exhibits (about 40-50% are in place) and all the planned additions along with some amazingly interesting information about all of it. Paul and I had visited in July and the aquarium had come a long way since then!

Here are some photos:

Waiting for all the clans to arrive:






Lining up to go into the Aquarium


Next on the day's agenda was to turn everyone lose in the zoo! Chris and Jeff had plenty of work to complete before they got to come home for Thanksgiving dinner. Although I would have loved to stay and say hi to the tigers and the giraffes, I went with my folks and Paul back to the house to get ready. (You can see my pictures from my zoo visit this summer here.)

Chris had ordered lots of Boston Market food (we tried to guesstimate how much the sides would feed and order based on her Thanksgiving last year, but we accidentally ordered enough food for 50-75 nineteen year old army boys, rather than the 40 regular bloks we had, oh well! Lots of leftovers- which I am currently eating as I type this).



some more photos can be found at the Evite invitation page.

The BBQ before the feast

We spent this last weekend in Arizona for a family TANKsgiving! My sister and brother-in-law are working on opening the first public aquarium in Arizona, a part of the World Wildlife Zoo. They had anticipated the opening to be around Thanksgiving and invited the whole family, and I mean the whole damn family to Arizona to celebrate. After a number of delays and setbacks, the Aquarium is now going to be open to the public on December 20th and the grand opening will be December 29th. Needless to say, everyone was excited about coming down for the pre-opening anyway!

We managed to get 40 people to commit to the extravaganza. And somehow we managed to fit those people inside my sister's 1100 sq foot house for 3 days as it rained in Surprise, AZ! We had a great time and we ate way too much food!

Paul and I drove through the night on Tuesday to arrive at the hotel at 4 am on Wednesday morning. I turned around and woke up at 9 am to help get organized for the expected crowd for that night's BBQ. My folks spent the previous week and a week in October getting all the supplies and renting tables and ordering food. I showed up and put table clothes on the tables, Paul moved all the heavy furniture around for me and saved me from the "fires" in the catering trays! We had burgers and chicken with picnic food sides for our BBQ. People brought bread, wine, beers, and all kinds of sweet goodies to share:

The setup:







Paul having fun:



and more fun...



Once everyone got there, the food consumption began! Yumm-o!

Atlanta Aquarium

I was in Atlanta this last weekend for a NSHMBA (National Society of Hispanics MBA)career conference. Unfortunately, I caught a cold on the flight across the country, or at least I started to feel it the day after I landed. The flight was a story in itself- I got stuck on the Dallas airport tarmac for about 5 hours since all planes were grounded into Atlanta.

I will add more about the trip later, but for now, here are some great pictures of the Aquarium after hours. P&G threw a fantastic company party at the aquarium where I snapped a few of these guys on my cell phone:

There were 3 whale sharks in this tank. None of them were as huge as the ones Robbie and Dave have on video, but these fish can get up to 40 feet!





This is a large ray called the black blotched tail ray.




They had hammerheads and saw sharks:

Healthy eating

I started this post on 4/18, but only now managed to get back to completeing it, but I hope to add to this list as I find other good places to eat out.

It seems pretty hard to find places to eat out that are reasonably heathy. Mainly because no one tells you what is in their foods!

I have been (and now I can finnally say "we have been") trying to eat a little healthier, in order to be healthier. Lose weight may be a side affect of this, but it is not the goal. The goal is to watch the fats and calories that I am eating, lower the cholesterol and fats, eliminate extra sugars (can anyone say red gatorade?), and watch excess salt intake.

So how does one do this? Well, they can eat turkey, oatmeal, plain veggies, and plain popcorn for weeks on end. (this surprisingly has one good side affect- the weight loss, but in all reality, who wants the same meal 6 times a day? That is really how you lose weight- stop liking the food you eat!)

There are a few restaurants that post good nutritional informaiton on their websites:
Quiznos, which has a number of nutritional information including allergens and calories.
PeiWei
Buca di Beppo Italian Restaurant has selected information listed on Healthy Dining Finder.

There are also only a few restaurants you are willing to work with you on amount of salt and fat they use in their cooking (mainly because chain fast food always comes semi prepared.) Here are a few places that are willing:
Dr. Grubb's in Claremont

Since these few restaurants nutritional guides weren't enough, I turned to using some other tools. There are plenty of calorie counting tools out there, for example CalorieKing has a great nutritional database, and some other websites. For the most part, you ahve to pay these website to access more indepth trackign tools. However, I came across SparkPeople as a free alternative. I can track weight, daily food and nutrition, and fitness. It also alows me to enter in recipies to find out how many calories are in each meal i want to make.

http://www.healthydiningfinder.com

I also found some good information about how to eat (more times a day, smaller amounts, and what to snack on):

Snacking Ideas

What were you doing at 4:15 am?

I know what I was doing... I spent my morning kneeling on asphalt, broken glass, and blood. But I was glad I could be there, even if I couldn’t be a lot of help.

Paul and I were headed to the airport in Texas at 6:00 in the morning for our 7:30 flight to Ontario via IAH. At 6:15 Texas time, but much earlier in California 4:15, we stopped for gas on 183 near the 71 exit, on the way to the airport. As Paul was pumping gas and I was half asleep, sitting in the car we heard a thump and a crunch. Paul wrapped hard on the car window and motioned for me to get out of the car. I looked up to see a car with its bumper missing pulling off to the side of the road. I got out and asked what happened. Paul hadn't seen the accident and at first it appeared to be a fender bender, but two trucks were pulling to the side of the road and I saw something dark lying in the ditch across the 6 lane highway. It was dark and I was unsure of what I was seeing, but I told Paul we should probably help. We are trained first responders and you never know if someone needs assistance and if anyone else who has stopped is able to help.

I ran across the freeway while Paul ran inside the station to call 9-1-1 (he used a land line because it is easier for emergency personnel to tell exactly where you are located and everyone else was surely on their cell phones calling already). Once I got there, I could see immediately that it was good Paul had been paying attention. It was a motorcycle vehicle accident and there was a victim badly injured lying in the middle of the freeway. There were 4 or 5 people standing around trying to figure out what to do, but probably untrained in first aid and possibly new to dealing with an emergency. They had obviously called emergency (as the one lady told me) and the one lady was trying to call someone for the victim. I introduced myself (my name is, can I help kind of thing) while running over to talk to the victim. He was conscious and alert, so I grabbed his hand and asked him his name. He was bloody from hitting the pavement with his face, but had a helmet on and said that his head actually felt okay. He said he didn’t want to move because he was in pain, and I told him not to of course! However, I thought he had said he couldn’t move, so I asked if he could wiggle his toes. He said yes, he could feel his toes. There really wasn’t much more I could do for him except keep him talking and monitor for shock.

A car with emergency lights on pulled up behind the wreckage (there was shattered glass, car carnage, bike pieces, and people everywhere, let alone the commuters trying to squeeze by in rush hour traffic). Originally I thought it was an off duty cop, but the lady surveyed the accident and did not approach me or the victim for a long while. Finally she came over and told me to not move him, and I affirmed that I had instructed him to not move.

It took a while for the ambulance to get there, but in the meantime I talked to the victim. He was worried that he didn’t want to look at his legs and that would just get him upset. I am sure he broke something, but his legs were just a little twisted and did not look bad (as in nothing protruding or lying at a horrible awkward angle). I checked his hands, but there were no broken bones there. Just scrapes and blood. His head, outside of his nose, which could have been just bloody or broken, only had some wounds, no additional fractures that were obvious. He will probably be missing teeth since his head did collide with the pavement, but his helmet saved him from having more serious injuries. He asked me to leave my number with someone, since he would like to send me a thank you and a bunch of roses. It was really sweet of him to say, especially given how he was feeling- I would not have been in the right frame of mind to be grateful while I was lying injured on the freeway. It was enough to hear him say how grateful he was, that really touched me. (Just as a side note, as a professional first responder, I couldn’t accept a gift anyway.) He also kept up a good spirit, saying what a way to miss work!

The ambulance arrived first, but shortly after that the fire truck got there. I told the victim that I could see the ambulance, but they were on the other side of 183. The pulled up, set up cones, and slowly made their way to us, prompting the victim to ask where they walking to the accident? It took them a few seconds to survey the scene before I felt like they wanted to take over control. I left them with the information I had gathered from the victim, they brought out the backboard, checked his pupil dilation and checked for chest injuries. I asked if they needed my information, and was told if I hadn’t witnessed the accident I was free to go but thanks for the assistance. As I walked across the median, I realized I was covered in blood splatter. I asked the paramedic at the ambulance for some wipes and once we crossed the highway to the gas station and I began to clean up, it was then that the adrenaline kicked in and I started to shake all over. I didn’t feel right again for about two hours (it probably helped throw off my blood sugar) and I still see images of the accident. All and all, not one of the saddest emergencies I have assisted in, but the one with the most impact (water tends to minimize broken bones and bloody body parts). The victim will have some recovery, but he will walk again, and his helmet probably saved his life.

It is often hard to know what to do in an emergency. Paul and I teach many classes for first responders – CPR, First aid, O2 administration, water safety, but it is hard to feel prepared after taking just a few hours of class. We have both had more experience dealing with emergencies than some people, but it never gets easier seeing someone else get hurt, nor does the adrenaline stop coming when you are called to act, and it is sometimes hard to know when to act. My simple advice is to do no harm (you can always just be a voice of calm for a victim if you know how to do nothing else) and to always stop to make sure the situation is really under control, because more often than not, it isn’t.