365: Broken

Grrr. I found my lovely window hamsa busted and broken in the window sill today. I lost one of my hamsa earrings that I also got in Morocco during Christmas. Now I'm hamsa-less. Who will protect me now?!?!

365: Beef flavored or barf flavored?

Duke's new pain medicine, Rimadyl, comes in a "beef flavored" chewable tablet. However if it tastes like it smells I'm gonna guess it's closer to "barf flavor." YUCK! If dogs could talk...

365: The Sneak

Oh sure. She looks all innocent and cute NOW, but when I woke up on the couch a little while ago I woke up to two little beady eyes staring down at me. Yes, DOWN. Which implies she was above me. Considering she's less than 2 feet tall all stretched out that can only mean she had somehow wiggled and tiptoed her rumpus onto the couch without waking me up, and managed to perch right next to my head where she was finally able to wake me up with the power of her laser beam staring at my eyelids! I live with a bunch of weirdos!

365: Mini Mudslide

And I don't mean the yummy drink.

It rained like WHOA last night. It actually woke me up at one point. No thunder, no lightening, no hail...just loud ass rain. I laid there for a while hoping that the steep canyon behind our house wouldn't decide to move it, move it.

Today I counted 15 "waterfalls" on my 2 mile trip up to the highway. Some were in dry run off areas and some were just randomly popping out of the canyon walls. When I came home this evening most of them were still running...lighter flow but still running.

On the canyon wall on the way up our driveway there was a mini-mudslide. It's about 20 feet across by 20 feet high. Let's hope this is the worst slide we get around here! We have several more days ahead of rain!

365: Like a Unicorn. Or a Dodo Bird

Anyone who knows me well knows I'm a.d.d.i.c.t.e.d. to drink mix packets. What you may not know is that my great love affair was with one particular drink flavor: Cranberry Apple. Like a unicorn, it was rare and hard to find. Only made and carried by Walmart and often out of stock.

Last year it transformed from a unicorn to a dodo bird. As in, Walmart stopped making it. I couldn't believe it. I stalked Walmart after Walmart not believing this horror could be true. Alas, it was.

It's been almost a year since I last sipped it's quenching nectar. But tonight, while rummaging through a crusty old African bag I stumbled upon the last unicorn/dodo bird. Probably the last packet on the planet. My heartbeat quickened and I couldn't believe my eyes. My beloved drink mix! I'm sipping on it gently as we speak. Cherishing every last drop as it hits my pizza burned palate. I'm already sad that it will be over soon.

There are two upsides to this tale of woe: this drink mix was the only reason we continued to set foot in Walmarts. Now that's we've confirmed it's extinction we no longer have to support the beast.

The second good news is that if I drank too many in a couple of days it would turn my poop bright red and I'd think I was dying of internal bleeding. No more moments of fright since it disappeared!

365: Hazards of Working in Sex (Research & Education)

As I was walking through the grocery store today I had to do a double take at this can of olive oil. On first glance I thought it was a lady in bondage. Seriously. When I glanced back I saw it was supposed to be an innocent Italian girl being slightly coquettish. Our Human Sexuality lesson today was about BDSM so that's naturally why my mind went there. See how much you're missing out on people?!?!

365: Awesome Activism!

Ange and I are going to have nearly identical pictures for our 365/POTD today, but that's ok because they'll have some different words and they will both be spreading the same message.

Tonight Stonewall Alliance Center of Chico hosted Joe Wilson, documentarian extraordinaire, and a free screening of his film Out in the Silence. It's a movie about being gay in a small rural town in PA. I can't recommend it enough! It's a fantastic film with a very powerful message. The best part is that it's available for you to see for free on Hulu.com. Awesome sauce. Go see it. NOW.

And finally I do have to give a shout out to my lover bear. She is the one who organized this whole thing with Joe. If it weren't for her hard work the movie wouldn't have happened. But because she's a hard little worker bee she made it happen and 60+ people got to see the movie an help spread activism! Great job boogie bear! I'm so proud of you!

365: LaRocca Winery

(click to enlarge the rad panorama)

We spent a couple of hours at LaRocca Winery today. Ange discovered it while surfing the 'net while I was in Denver & made a tasting appointment for today. It's only a couple of miles from our house and was the first organic winery in the state of California! For $10 we got an extensive & informative tour, 8 wine tastings (3 white, 5 red), and an all around great time. Our tour guide was the owner of the winery! It's a small, family run operation. It was a gorgeous winery and of course we loved all the green and organic parts even more! It's my new favorite wine & winery! If you come and visit us, this will definitely be on the list of things to do!

365: Snack Bag

We have a little tradition around Camp Awesome: when you get to the bottom of a bag of chips and the ratio of food reward to crumby hands becomes too great, you are obligated to create a "snack bag." You take the kitchen shears and cut it down to a nice low length to reduce the potential for crumb halfway up your arm and voila! New bag practically! Yum! Pass me the chips please!

365: High Fashion

I decided on a whim Tuesday night that I was going to go all out for my fashion choices for this conference. Since I sick during MasQueerade I didn't get to wear my super sexy dress. I decided to pair it with a suit jacket to bring down from cocktail to high fashion business. I could have went safe with plain black tights but where's the fun in that? Fishnets and heels thank you very much. I got some funky cheap jewelry at Forever 21 to finish off the look. Based on the number of compliments I got today me thinks I should take more fashion risks on the regular. Rawr.

365: My Peeps!

I'm in Denver at the Forum on Education Abroad to do a panel presentation with two of my favorite peeps in the whole world: Kati Csoman & Emil Nagengast. It's a shame that Ange had to stay back, but based on our hours of work tonight she probably would have been bored to death. We did, however, make time for dinner, drinks and socializing. Of course we did. Cause that's what we do! Up and at 'em early in the morning to wow the Forum. We got this.

365: Last Day!

Today was the last full day of my dad and stepmom's visit with us. We are sad to see them go but know they're ready to go home! We'll see them again in a few months.

On our last day we were busy, busy, busy! We saw lots of sights, had some good food, and enjoyed spending time together. One of my favorite parts of the day was getting Thrifty Ice Cream with them! When I was little my dad worked at Thrifty and when we went to see him at work he'd always give a scoop of ice cream! This was the first time we've ate Thrifty Ice Cream together in over 20 years! Good memories with my pop :)

365: Tradition

Some years ago my mom got a surprising amount of money back on her tax return. On a whim she sent me and my sisters each a hundred dollar bill. The next year she did the same thing. And thus began a tradition!

The best part is that I ALWAYS forget about it. Sure $100 is G R E A T, but it's not SO huge that I sit around wondering about it from January to April. So when it comes it's always a super fun surprise that I don't expect even though once I remember I'm like "oh yeahhhh." Even when I got the envelope I was thinking "What's my mom sending me?" It's not until the crisp lovely bill sails into my lap that I remember. It's awesome.

Thanks mom! ♥

365: Morning View

Out for a crisp morning walk with the dogs. Snow on the ridge, steam rising up from the warm ground. Gorgeous morning! I'm just feeling so happy today.

365: The Sun Came Out to Play

Thankfully the sun decided to make an appearance today. It's been raining every. single. day. of my dad & stepmom's trip to CA. A little deflating for them. But today the weather cooperated all day and we got to take a walk, go to the farmers market and have lunch outside! Hopefully the same weather happens tomorrow!

365: The Father Ship Has Arrived

My dad and stepmom arrived at Camp Awesome today! We chose to have a relaxing day and evening at the camp since they've been on the go, go, go since they've arrived in California. We even got them to play a game of A to Z! All in all a good first day visit even if it has been raining the entire time they've been here!

365: Wanna Know How I Know Ange is Perfect for Me?

Tonight we were moving something out of this storage cabinet and we crashed into this dog bowl and half of it spilled on the floor. We both looked down, looked up at each other, shrugged and said simultaneously "Meh, someone will eat it."

And then cracked up at our mutual "efficiency."

Good job Daisy. You didn't let us down.

365: Perils of a Chico Winter

I don't think it's rained yet when there hasn't been a billion mile an hour wind blowing. I spend just as much time fighting to keep my umbrella turn right side in as I spend using my umbrella to block actual rain. I'm getting used to rain blown hair and the feeling of sogginess. At least it's better than snow!!!

365: Yoda Dog

Carmie was being weird (as per usual) and I caught her in the middle of a trance. It looks like she's summoning the force.

365: Busted Ass Elevator

The middle elevator in Butte Hall is weird. If you press more than 3 buttons they all turn off. I have screeched at more than one person about to make the fatal error of hitting the 4th button. I figured this out in 6 months here...how is it that many others have not? Just one of those weird things you get used to I suppose!

365: Blurry Vision

I think I got something in my eye whilst hiking yesterday (see? Nature does attack me!) and I subsequently scratched my eye with the foreign object. My eye felt wretched last night so I threw out my contacts and when I woke up this morning it was still feeling wretched so I decided to wear my glasses all day.

I hate wearing my glasses.

Besides the fact I don't like looking out little widows, they are very inconvenient in other ways. Especially when getting ready. Blowing drying and flat ironing your hair with glasses on is nearly impossible and doing it blindly isn't much fun either. I tried to recreate the essence with this picture. This is what it looks like when I try and get ready with non-vision corrected eyeballs. Good thing we only went to Target and Costco today, and we went early. Less chances of seeing people I know!

365: Dorky Dog Eyes

Until we moved into Camp Awesome, I never realized how differently dogs see from humans. Specifically, how wacky their depth perception is and how hard it is for them to figure things out sometimes. One of those times is when I try and call for Duke when he's on the upper driveway. When I come out the door and he's standing anywhere except the end of the deck he gets so confused as to how to get to me. I have to physically walk to the end of the deck so he can see how to walk a basically 90 degree angle to come in. We do this at least once a day. You'd think he'd figure it out. Especially since if left alone he eventually comes and stands at the backdoor. Nerds.

365: Exhausted

Daisy looks how we feel. In the midst of all the sick doggie craziness, Daisy has been her usual wacky self. Today she did NOT want to come in when it was time for us to leave. So we decided to let her be a wild and free dog. This meant she would outside for about 6 hours by herself. She spends hours and hours outside when we're home so we figured it wasn't much difference. We left a bowl of water out (and she always has our mineral spring overflow pan) and hoped for the best. Well at least Ange did. I was worried to death all day. Nervous dog mom you could say. We got home and she came running up the canyon to greet us! I was relieved. I thought she might come in for a long nap like she usually does on the weekend, but nope! Stayed outside until the sun went down. In addition to the time she spent when we got up today, she spent almost 12 solid hours outside today. She loved every minute of it. And now she's passed out COLD. Works out for all of us!

365: Teaching FAIL

In addition to all of our dogs falling apart, I had a crappy teaching day as well. If you don't know what KONY 2012 is...then you must be living under a rock. So between last night and this morning I had a brilliant idea to use the video & surrounding controversy as the centerstone for our discussion on social marketing in my Community Health class. My students were SO excited. Some had seen it, some had not; all were excited to take a contemporary topic and explore it through the realm of our class. Would have been brilliant except for the computer in my (not so) smart technology classroom decided it didn't want to play the freaking video. We tried every solution we could to make it work (different sites, seeing if there was another open classroom, trying to hook up student computers to the projector, etc.) but in the end, nothing worked. Hate when my brilliance goes to waste. We got out of class 30 minutes early with the instruction to watch it on their own, read the articles I printed out for them and we'd discuss Tuesday. Totally not the same. But alas, what can you do? Stupid day.

365: Turning the Frown Upside Down!

I've been trying to do my best lately in NOT being Debby Downer and to acknowledge, but not dwell, on shitty moments. It's working out well. Whether it's instant karmic retribution or just the fact that I'm not wallowing in misery so it opens me up to joy I don't know, but I like it.

I went to a FANTASTIC "Love Every Body Week" lecture by Marilyn Wann and as I bounced out of the building I happened upon this moment. Two college students siting in a canoe promoting their adventure club whilst deafening African drumming and happy African dancing was going on in the background. So lesson of the day: move past the crap so you can dance to the music!

365: I'm like Magellan

I'm pounding the pavement like WHOA to drum up more students for my Africa trip. Today I had to seek out a new building I've never been in before for a quickie presentation. As I was leaving I realized I was in the building that housed the fine arts (the class I spoke to was not an art class so I didn't realize it in my rush to find the room). There was a lovely exhibit/show (mom-help me out, what's the right word? I'm tired and can't think!) that I blew right by on my way in. I peeked in for a minute and snapped this picture. Amazing what you can find when you step out of your zone for a minute or two!

365: Happy Little Daffodils

Throughout the canyon there are random bunches and patches of daffodils. They're like little bursts of happiness all the way up our long bumpy drive. No idea how or why they're there, but I like them. They make me smile!

365: Happy Boy

We weren't the only ones who enjoyed the sunny day! Duke got a nice brush down and as you can see he was happier than a clam about it!

365: Fun Food Facts

I've been feeling extremely fatigued lately and I've just been chalking it up to first year faculty stress. But this week I noticed I was getting more headaches than usual and that when I was leaned over for more than a moment I was feeling dizzy. Anemia runs in my family and is more likely to happen to vegetarians so I decided that I needed to make a more concerted effort to pump up my iron levels. Plant based iron is harder for the body to absorb than animal-based iron, but if you pair it with vitamin C it does a much more efficient job. So my love and I have been working this week to be more intentional with our food choices. This morning she cheffed me up some spinach, red pepper and garlic eggs and cut up the pineapple we got yesterday. The spinach has lots of iron and both the pineapple and red bell peppers pack lots of vitamin c. In fact, red bell peppers have more vitamin c than an orange! Bet you didn't know that did ya? Paired with a multivitamin and some zinc I'm hope my vitamin packed meals are helping boost my blood and maybe even ramp up the old immune system so it can kick this poison oak's ass!

365: Tight Sweatpants

I made Ange take off her skanky hairy sweatpants before she laid on the bed while I took my shower today. When I got out I noticed she had on some very tight sweatpants. Upon further inspection I noticed a weird bulge coming from the back of said pants. Apparently she was cold and didn't feel like dirtying another pair so she got creative. Weir-do.

365: BAMF Milestone

See that purty little binder there in the center of the picture? It's my first year dossier for my review. My review is more of a formality but I still took it very seriously. So glad to have it all done and organized. Onward to year 2 bitches.