carve it up cyber style!

happy halloween party people!

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why not take a moment to celebrate by carving your own pumpkin HERE!? all the fun, without the mess!

(thanks for sending me the link, melinda!)

Rim To River

i've always wanted to go to the grand canyon, but something always came up and a trip never got planned. and somehow i ended up being the only one in my family that had never been. so... a few months back, i just decided to go. i got online and booked a room and figured that i'd work the details out later.

i started doing a little research and decided i wanted to go big and hike from the south rim to the colorado river and back. it is just about 16 miles in trail distance, but the thing that gets you is the elevation change... about 4500 feet each way. you start at 6860 feet (ASL), hike all the way down to 2380 feet and then back up to 6860 feet again.

there are all kinds of warnings against hiking this roundtrip in one day, but i think that is just to sift out the weenies from the hardasses like myself. HA! RIGHT! just kidding! but, check out what the national parks service has posted on their website:


DRAMA! but i tried to be smart about it. i did a lot of research, took a few training hikes and i even dragged a fire fighter with me, just in case i needed medical assistance. no seriously, i did. meet my friend brad:

he is a kern county fire fighter and was nice enough to be my emergency medical support team. luckily i made it through the entire trip without breaking myself, but i'm glad he was along for the ride. he was a great partner in crime!

anyway, my best friend, jenn, has been referring to this as my "come to Jesus hike" and although it was a joke, i have to say, it turned out to be a pretty fitting name, as i've rarely felt closer to God.

we managed to make it down to the river in about 3 hours and back to the top in just under 5. and although it might have been slightly over-ambitious considering i bailed on my training schedule a month and a half ago, i'm glad we made the effort to go all the way.

this experience was a giant blessing, that i know. life is flying by so fast lately, it's getting way too easy to let opportunities like this pass by, with the thought that you'll get to them eventually. i've enjoyed so many amazing adventures in my life, loads in the last year, i can't help but be excited about what is still to come.

stay tuned!

get onBOARD!

the uspa national skydiving championships have been bumping along over the past 2 weeks. i rarely post jump stuff here, but this was too entertaining to pass up...

the sport of skysurfing has been struggling to stay alive over the past few years. it's an amazing sport, it's just that it exists in a fairly small niche.

anyway, they came close to not having enough participants to hold an event this year. but in the end, they pushed forward and held the event. you can read more about this on dropzone.com HERE. here is an excerpt from the discussion:

Check this out. Scott Borrowed a goofy foot skyboard and pieced together a cutaway line from pull-up cords strung together. If that wasn't questionable enough, he jumped in shorts, leaving the heavy drag pull-up cords flapping in the breeze.

On competition round 5, while in the middle of a sit spin and his teammate JC Colclasure shooting from above, the flapping pull-up cords worked the rear bing release free. Scott chopped the board and lost it. Everyone was ok.

On round 6, I loaned Scott my regular foot forward board.

But on round 7, he used the most exceptional skyboard ever: JC's PD teammate and reigning world champion canopy pilot Jonathon Tagle.

That right. Scott flew Jonathon like a skyboard, with JC shooting. When the footage ran on the big screens in the hanger, the entire place busted up. The judges loved it.

video HERE. it's worth watching!

(well, okay, i think so anyway. but my enthusiasm as a skydiver might be biasing me. hopefully you'll find it entertaining too. believe it or not, what they pulled off is actually pretty darn challenging.)

the massacre

it was a sad night for pumpkins last night, as there was a mass slaughter in tustin ranch. we had the girls over for a little pumpkin carving party and it was a blast! i hadn't carved a pumpkin in years, and it was evident in my final product. but i'm proud nonetheless. thanks for playing, chicas!

my two year olds

hi. this is a lame post. but i don't care. it's my right as a pet-mommy. it was 2 years ago today that my dad trudged out to the bushes in the alley near our office, in the pouring rain, at 8 PM, to go check and see if the mama cat had returned to the newborn kittens we found abandoned earlier in the day. she had taken 2 of the 4 away much earlier, but she never came back for the other 2. so farmer ed couldn't help himself, and he picked the little freezing runts up and took them home.

little did we know, that would start the wheels in motion for farmer ed to become a one-man rescue team. since then, he has rescued (and placed in loving homes) more than 20 cats, if i'm counting right. it's probably more. anyway, i know i've posted these pictures before, but it always shocks me when i look back at how tiny they were.

anyway, just wanted to send out a few happy birthday vibes to my super special kitty cats, cami and cooper!

and i also wanted to remind you that the michalek fur farm is always looking for happy families looking to adopt a feline family member. even if dad doesn't have a kitty in need of adoption at the house, he works with an organization called "cats in need" on a regular basis, and they always have furballs ready to spread some kitty love. so just drop me note!

National Boss Day

Some history here. Free e-cards here.

six degrees of smack that

so, i've managed not to get sucked into that new show six degrees. even though i hear great things about it, i already have too much tv to watch. and we're only a month into the season and i'm already behind on some of my standard shows.

anyway, i find myself wondering about degrees of separation in my every day life occurrences. and i had a random one come up that dominated my entire weekend...

1. one of my best friend's is joanne.

2. her husband, and now someone i consider a very good friend, is russell. (of good times blog fame.)

3. one of russell's best friends is chang... who was also my wedding-party-mate at joanne and russell's wedding, and someone i consider a friend via other friends.

4. chang is engaged to gina... who is someone i have never met, but through stories (and blog posts, see #5) , i have come to know on a small scale and definitely respect. she sounds like a pretty cool chick!

5. chang and gina share a blog, which i pop over to every now and then, cuz they post some pretty fun and random stuff.

6. they recently added the weekly list to their blog, and on gina's list last week was a link to the music video for smack that, which i unfortunately clicked on and watched last friday...

consequently, my weekend was punctuated with moments of me vocally busting out with "smack that! all on the floor... smack that! give me some more..." in public arenas.

not cool. thanks a lot, gina.

strangely enough, "smack that" was actually gina's #2 on the her weekly list. her #1? "six degrees." go figure.

paraskavedekatriaphobia

triskaidekaphobia is actually a fear of the number 13, not friday the 13th. paraskavedekatriaphobia is the proper term for the fear of friday the 13th. i hear people screw that up all the time. like...daily. =P~

anyway, i remember a few years back when the dropzone would run a reduced rate jump ticket every friday the 13th, with the slogan "tempt your fate!" i started hoping for friday the 13th to roll around more often. and that made me wonder how often it really does happen. so i looked it up and found this website, which says:

It turns out that every year has at least one Friday the 13th. The largest possible number of Friday the 13ths in one year is three. Surprisingly, it turns out that a 13th is slightly more likely to fall on a Friday than any other day. This happens because the leap year rules make some patterns of weekdays happen more often than others.

interesting.

and there is your useless bit of information for the day. tah daaaaah!

This Is Your Captain Speaking...

Just wanted to toss out a big congrats to my brother for passing his checkride a few nights ago, making him one of SkyWest's newest captains of their fleet of CRJs! Yay! (Now he wears 4 bars instead of 3.)

This was no small effort on his part. (I saw the stack of books they issued him at the start of training. Blegh!) So we're all very proud of this major accomplishment!

Next time you find yourself boarding a SkyWest aircraft, take a peek in the direction of the cockpit. You might know the guy in charge!

Can I Get A House With That Boat?

i'm not sure if i have mentioned it before, but my beautiful cousin, jackie, has been fighting breast cancer. she blew through chemo like a rockstar and is on the recovery track. so in an effort to share time together and celebrate jackie's victory, the family decided to give houseboating a shot.

we took off for laughlin on friday and spent the night poking around the casino. bright and early saturday morning, we took charge of our beast of a boat from forever houseboats and hit the waters outside of cottonwood cove, on lake mojave.

there was no shortage of sunshine, crystal clear waters, gorgeous mountain views, or campfire time. we had a blast and we're already talking about a return visit!

Aussie Invasion - Part 2

as i type this, my aussie friend, anna, is on a plane back to sydney. she has been on a 7-week epic adventure around the world. and after bouncing from india, to germany (and around europe), up to ireland, and over to russia, she decided to make southern california her grand finale.

anna did her best to cram as much of the sydney experience into my short visit with her down under, before i started my contiki tour, so i was excited to return the "host" favor. i had her here for a week, so we went mega-tourist style!

i picked her up on tuesday afternoon, and after a quick run by the apartment to drop her luggage, we headed straight down to newport to begin her proper introduction to the OC. she is a huge fan of the television show, so we ran by the newport beach visitor's bureau to check out the cast's handprints...of course, we then had to detour to newport dunes, because they had moved them. the handprints were a bit of a let down, but we headed to laguna after that and the sunset there more than made up for it.

uninterested in wasting time on sleep, anna was up bright and early wednesday morning and i took her up to the citadel so she could shop for a few hours while i was at work. apparently she had seen it on a tv show about the american outlet shopping craze. i'm glad she did, because i ended up getting some awesome deals there as well. we finished the day off with dinner at felix's and got to bed early in preparation for our visit to the san diego wild animal park.

thursday we hit the road early, just in case we ran into traffic. we had booked a photo caravan safari tour for 10 am, and we didn't want to be late. we got to hand-feed rhinos!!! it was an awesome day!

friday, it was up to valencia for a visit to magic mountain, and we finished off the day at souplantation, because i simply couldn't let her leave america without experiencing as many buffet opportunities as possible. apparently we took no photos this day. having too much fun, i guess.

which leads me to our next stop... VEGAS! the land of buffets! we flew in saturday morning and met up with another friend from the greece tour, tanya. the buffet at our hotel was our first stop. big shock there. that night we started at club tangerine in our hotel (TI), and then ventured over to pure (in caesars) where we had a random celeb spotting when mariah carey left the club at the same time we did.

the next night we saw the new cirque du soleil show, LOVE. it was awesome and certainly lived up to the outstanding cirque reputation! a few twists with this one: a 360 degree stage, there were no bad seats! also, no intermission. the show ran straight through. less circus style acts, more dancing and theatrical elements. AND... a giant bar/concession stand. (check out the huge cocktails we enjoyed during the show.)

we finished up our visit in vegas on monday and got home just in time to hit the sack... which was good, because we had to be up at 5 am the next day.

tuesday, we headed to burbank to catch a taping of the ellen show. we had a big break in between the morning ticket distribution and the afternoon line up, that we had time to catch the warner bros studio tour. it turned out to be a huge bonus for us, because a lot of the tour visited filming location for gilmore girls, and we are both big fans! back in line at the ellen show, we met scott, from the last season of the amazing race. he was hilarious! and although we walked away from the taping sans-free-stuff, it was definitely worth all the effort to be a part of the audience.

her plane wasn't due to leave until late last night, so we made the most of her last day here and did it disney style. my fab friend connie was nice enough to sign us in so we got to hit up disneyland and DCA for free! thanks connie! the park was decked for halloween and it looked great!

what a week! i'm definitely caught up on the whole tourist side of so cal! and although i am already missing my anna deeply, i'm a bit relieved to get back to a "normal" routine. grandma lara needs a nap! zzzZZZZZZZZZ

(ps - you'll notice an obscene amount of links on this post. i mostly did that so anna would have an easy way to revisit the places we hit during her time here. no, i didn't just feel like getting crazy with the link button.)

Think Pink!

Hey People! Just wanted to remind you all that...

A few years back, many of you supported me in participating in the Avon Walk. It was there that I first heard a very scary statistic, that still rings in my head today: There is a new diagnosis of breast cancer every 3 minutes.

Over 12 years ago, my mom became a living example of that statistic. Since then, the fight against breast cancer has been near and dear to my heart. (And I want to thank you all for supporting me in my fundraising/educational ventures.)

The underlying theme at every event I've been to, aside from HOPE, has been education. Until we find a solid cure, educating yourself is your best bet for prevention, early diagnosis and survival. With that in mind, here are a few sites where you can get some good info AND support the cause:

BreastCancer.Org - This website was started by an oncologist as one-stop-shop for patients and families to educate themselves about this disease.

The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation - Founders of the Race For The Cure, the largest series of 5K runs/fitness walks in the world, the Komen Foundation has been has been a global leader in the fight against breast cancer through its support of innovative research and community-based outreach programs for over 20 years.

City Of Hope - These people saved my mother's life when she was first diagnosed. It is one of the nation's leading research and treatment centers for cancer. We were very lucky that she was able to be treated there. Nearly 20% of all funding comes from charitable donations.

Anywhoodles... there ya go. Now GO GET EDUCATED!

Oh yeah... One more thing...

MY MOM ROCKS!