Adventures

Hurried shopping, Christmas partying, airport hopping, crying baby avoiding, hello hugging, Christmas lights horse-drawn wagon riding and freezing, "Look how much you've grown!" exclaiming, Christmas-carol playing, Christmas feasting, family laughing, card gaming, football watching, fireside sitting, family internet browsing, couch napping, holiday reading, "White Christmas" movie watching, gift swapping, more feasting,goodbye hugging, airport hopping, crying baby avoiding, airplane window Hollywood sign looking, fifth airplane landing, and "hello home!" saying. Such is December!  How do we have time to think about anything else?!  Hopefully, we were able to to find the time to remember the little Babe born in the stable, God incarnate, to die so we may live. Hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours! Got to visit my friends Carli and Scott in Seattle!  So good to see them!  Oh, this is Pike's Market, where...

I kept hearing about "Half Dome" when people would talk about Yosemite. I was always intrigued and thought I would see what the big deal was.  As I researched hiking Half Dome in Yosemite, I found many blogs, a few articles, and lists about the dangers of this climb.  Coworkers would talk about the stories of hikers witnessing people slide off the edge to their deaths and their own adventuresome tales of making to the top and back down again safely, getting lost and having to find their way back to camp in the dark with flashlights.  Not to mention, there are two large waterfalls and a rushing (raging in the spring) river to consider, which has claimed hundreds of lives of healthy people, just out for a day hike.  The warnings to proceed with caution and care are very present. The hike is a 14-16 mile round trip, normally, depending on which trails you take.  Jeff and I hiked up the Mist Trail and down the John Muir Trail, so, including our 1 mile each...

Rachel told me I should update my blog . . . I have to be honest . . . I have no idea of what to blog about this time.  I noticed I had started a new blog entry on August 8th, opened it, hoping I would have something to work with, and was disappointed by the fact that it was blank:  Blogger's Block? It's been almost two months since the last entry.  Tarah's been long gone and I'm sure much has happened during that time . . . New friends, new places, more trips, more bike rides, more work . . . But the questions remain in my head, "What do people want to know?  What do they want to read about? Why do they read and what do they care about? What's narcissism? What's sincerity and openness with us and our lives? What do I have to say or share that's worthy of their time?"  I suppose honesty and sincerity are valued.  I suppose not dressing things up or "packaging" them perfectly to make them more glorious than they actually are is valued. ...

Goodbye, Tarah . . .  Tarah, the last of my traveling friends, rolled out of the Bay Area Sunday morning with her mom to help drive the post-night-shift-sleep-deprivation-induced-intoxication-ridden-night-nurse on the first days of driving back to Minne-SOH-ta.  It is the end of a mini-era.  Sure, there will always be more people to meet and to become friends with, but these were the original Fab Five Travelers and friends I met when I first came to California.  They are special.  Tarah heads to NYC to start her new assignment there at the end of the month.  She's been great fun to have around and I will miss her unique sense of humor, sarcasm and wit.  I will probably miss her Minne-SOH-tan accent more than anything!  Okay, maybe I won't miss it the most of all, but I will miss it and laugh to myself when I think about it.  Soh long, Tah-rah!  Enjoy the East Coast, again! : ) California is finally warming up and finally feeling ...

When I started travel nursing, I knew a completely new chapter was beginning in my life and another was ending.  I anticipated meeting new people and seeing new things, but didn't really know what to expect other than that.  I didn't know I would love where I was taken as much as I do. I didn't know there would be so much to do here and to enjoy. I didn't know I would be driving across the country a second time to "move" to California, of all places, "semi" permanently, to work at Stanford.  Today, as we were driving back into the bay after spending a day laying on the beach, watching and listening to the breakers crash onto the beach and after hiking the rolling golden hills, then driving back through the mountains through the redwoods and seeing the Diablo range's golden mountainsides glowing in the setting sunlight across the valley with San Jose and the rest of the South Bay suburbs sprawling the valley, I was awestruck by the beauty and sere...

Bebo Norman has a great song with a line that says, "This could be all about just letting go.  Or this could be all about just holding on." Heather pulled out of California today.  As Tarah and I waved her on, her little prius with "moo" on the license plate, packed to the top, full of the essentials for living and a few souvenirs from the along the way, and riding a little low, Tarah said, "And the five became three, and the three became two . . . " The five of us who started at the hospital at the same time became three as our Bostonians left about 6 weeks ago, and now, it's just Tarah and I, hangin' at the inn for a couple of more weeks before I move to another neighborhood.  We both sighed and shuffled back up the front steps of the inn, heads hanging a little low, to head back to bed. Last week, Heather and I took our favorite drive down the 1 on the coast, one last time before she heads to Montana for her next assignment.  We went into t...

There’s nothing like the smell of a cleaned up Texas man.  Those of  you, who have grown up in West Texas or small-town Texas or have roots there, know what I’m talking about.  These are the men who go out and work the pasture or land, whether be it farming, ranching, working out in the oil fields or in the oil or gas refineries, out on the feedlots, or any other trade.  These men go work hard all day and come home in their dirty shirts, oily, smelling like the tractor or truck and dirt, hair disheveled (if they have their hair under their sweaty hat--maybe they already have that hat-induced receding hairline), kick off their boots and take a deep breath and go, “Whew!”  There’s nothing like receiving a hug from a dirty Texas man.  Then, for public or special occasions, they “get cleaned up.”  They go wash off the dirt and grit from a long day of work, put on their best starched and pressed button up shirt, tuck it into their starched wranglers wi...