What we’re doing out here…
My my my, how time files. This has been a very full year for Stephen and I! I took a glance back at my calendar…it seems we haven’t had a “free” weekend since February…I guess we just have too much of a social life and too many hobbies. If you are wondering how we could possibly have fit something into every weekend for 9 months, I may be able to help. We typically find ourselves participating in one of the four categores:
1. Some type of social function. Many of our friends are getting married; which means bachelor parties, bachelorette parties, showers, weddings, and engagement parties. So far, these events have taken up a fair number of weekends; and we have always enjoyed them. For the friends that have already been through the nuptials, we have also been spending time on baby showers and kid’s birthday parties…this year alone we’ve been exposed to more babies than we could possibly ever hope. Aside from marriages and baby things, there have been the obligatory birthday parties (adult), graduations, and holiday celebrations. And then, of course, Stephen and I do try to get out and just visit with friends we don’t see often; especially if it involves good beer!
2. We have also been pursuing some dancing events. We did make it to Viennese Ball this year, as well as a dance workshop with Frankie Manning (one of the original lindy hop dancers…this guy is well into his 90’s and makes even the youngest man look like a slob on the dance floor!).
3. The bulk of our time has been spent out-of-doors, pursuing some of our favorite hobbies…rock climbing, camping, hiking, and kayaking. Actually, I am not a huge fan of the Kayak, but Stephen seems to really enjoy it! So far this year, we’ve kayaked the San Juan Islands of Washington, hiked and climbed Pinnacles National Monument, hiked and climbed Lover’s Leap near Tahoe, hiked and climbed Bishop’s Peak in San Luis Obispo, hiked and climbed Castle Rock and Summit Rock near China Grade, and re-introduced my parents to the joys of “roughing it” again.
4. The last time suck is related to my occupation as well as Steve’s occupation. Both of us spend some amount of time managing relationships with clients. As such, we find ourselves at corporate-sponsored things like Sharks games, dining events, client venues, trade shows and trainings, as well as the obligatory holiday parties and general company cameraderie events. While these are not the bulk of our time, it does account for a few weekends.
So that’s what we’re doing out here. We miss you all and would love to wipe something out and add in “family time” with y’all.
Much love! 
Kathie says:
Hey why didn’t the pictures load???
John says:
Hey, sorry to take so long adding a comment to your rundown of activities which, by the way, wears me out just reading about all the stuff you guys do. But, anyway, thanks for writing! It’s really neat to hear about what you’re doing, even if it might not seem very newsworthy to you.
As for the photos, it looks like you got the thumbnails worked out so they show up in your article, so I’m not sure whether you intended more, like clicking on them to see bigger pictures. Were you trying to do that, or just trying to get the little thumbnails to show? Actually, don’t answer that — I’ll check it out myself.
Ah, okay, I see you did successfully upload both the thumbnails and the regular pics. So, what didn’t happen was to link to the regular size pics. Here’s what you need to do. In the editor, hold down left click and drag cursor so as to select where it has
I already did this for you (thought I should at least test and see if it works) with the present article, so now you know (maybe) what to do next time.
An alternative is just use thumbnails for “teasers” in the blog and link to your Flickr collection, if you had one, where you’ve uploaded the regular sized pics. Or not even bother with any pics on the blog, just give the link to your Flickr album, or your Picasa-web album on Google, or whatever online photo library you’re using. They all allow for at least a gigabyte of uploaded pics, I think. I paid the $49 for a year of “pro” account on Flickr.
Kim says:
I think I’m pretty spoiled by living so close to you two. I guess I usually know what you’re doing around when you’re doing them (a lot of times because I sit on the kitties while you’re out). But I tend to share a lot of my experiences with you two with Mom and Dad. I love living vicariously through the both of you with all of your activities. I hope to be that active one day. You still keep me optimistic though!
John says:
Don’t feel too bad, your mom and I are doing a lot of vicarious living through them, too, which is partly why we like to hear about what they’re doing and see pictures. We didn’t do near the neat stuff they do. Hell, we’ve still never even been to Vegas, except a layover in the airport, and it’s looking like we probably never will. Choices I made at different times just didn’t turn out to make some things possible, but when I think back about those choices I can’t see where a different choice would have made a lot of difference or have turned out better. Regardless, I’m a pretty neat person, and so are you. It’s crappy that we get born and only get one life and you have to see lots of other people doing things you’d love to do but you can’t. There are people who say you can do anything you really want to do, but I think that’s bullshit, unless you don’t care about consequences. We could do some really neat stuff, but later would have to take bankruptcy. I’m thinking about it, but not sure it would really be worth it. I don’t know, let’s see, where was I going with this? Maybe something philosophical like, from the moment of birth, everybody gets handed cards from time to time, and some just get better cards than others. Sometimes you can make up the difference by hard work and will power, but mostly you can’t. There’s just not enough right places and right times to go around. Do the best you can and even without any good cards you can have an average life, unless you’re one of the people that gets really shitty cards and then well, I guess, that’s just the way it is. Yuk. This doesn’t seem to be turning out quite the pep talk I wanted when I started. The thing is, you can always take comfort by looking around and seeing how many people are worse off. Eeew. That’s not so good, either. I think I’ll just go to bed.