nessahead.com » travel

Bugged Out

nessahead — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:01:02 +0000

I got home from my trip around 10pm and walked up to my dark porch. As I set down my luggage and took out my keys I felt a spider web on my arm. Calmly brushed it away (look how grown-up I am now!), looked down and saw a golden, wriggling mass of legs and body by my foot. Went into full-on freak-out mode: jazz hands up, bounding down the porch, and all the gibbering screams of terror poured out of my wildly shaking head. My neighbor thought I was being murdered! There was so much adrenaline in my system I couldn’t calm down for 20 minutes. And I knew that garden spider had been weaving webs last week.

I’ll be leaving the porch light on and my spider-broom on the steps from now until Fall.

Redwood Run

nessahead — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:30:39 +0000

The Redwood Run is an annual biker party held outside Piercy, CA (200 miles North of San Francisco). One weekend, thousands of bikes and lots of beer. Keith has been going for 20 years and invited me to come with him. Camping for the weekend with only the things you can carry on a motorcycle? No problem. Thanks to Jay’s Jedi-packing-mastership (which I learned a couple years back for my trip to Europe) and the warm summer weather I was able to fit everything into a 4x8x12-inch packing cube. The trip (3 hours in a car to San Jose, 4 hours by bike to the run) took its toll on my backside but was nothing a break or two didn’t fix.

The Redwood Run is held on a beautiful private campground. There was a stage, food and drink booths, a row of vendors and lots of campsites. Events throughout the day included the Loudest Pipes contest, egg and water balloon tosses and a wet T-shirt contest. The Hell’s Angels even did a wheelie and burnout show. At night they had concerts – excellent blues and rock.

Under their tough exterior I found bikers to be teddy bears Am looking forward to next year!

Motivation

nessahead — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:35:33 +0000

It’s so nice to be back home. I was gone for 9 days—Haven’t been gone that long since Vietnam in February. It was great to spend extended time in Pasadena with friends and family, though. And I think I found an apartment! The universe sent it my way in an interesting fashion. It sounds like everything I want in a new place and I certainly hope it works out.

So, what to do with my time off until the move? Purge, purge, purge. I plan to go through everything in my apartment and ask, “Is this worth moving to Pasadena?” Am excited to free myself of some of this junk that’s built up in the past few years. Purging is so liberating! Today Jen came over for breakfast and helped me get rid of worn out and unused items from my wardrobe. I’d attached a story to every single item and needed someone else’s dispassionate perspective to help me let go. Thank you, Jen!

I also want to (finally) put up an online portfolio. While I’ve been doing business through word of mouth I’m getting no new clients and really need to have something to show people. The roadblock has always been wading through my work and picking out the pieces that really shine. But no more excuses! I have a PDF portfolio that I’ll base the online version on and I’ll add in more details on what the obstacles were in each project. That should work out just fine.

Mega-Buck Chuck

nessahead — Thu, 27 May 2010 01:05:57 +0000

Graduation went well on Friday. Terry-dad came up from Pasadena for the ceremony and Jen, Tom and Eleora were in attendance, too. We went to Hofbrau on Morro Bay’s Embarcadero for dinner. Their roast beef sandwiches and horseradish are the best!

On Saturday I came down to Pasadena to catch Kevin before he went back to Seattle. Had good sushi with him and fun listening to his stories from traveling in Japan. Then lots of hospital time interspersed with visits to Corey, April, the Dads.

Cathy came home last night and she’s damn happy to be here. I’m going to stay another day and head home on Friday—Pixel needs to get his bone graft looked at by the vet. Then off to San Jose for Memorial Day weekend, woohoo! I’m looking forward to the fun but may be looking forward to sleeping in my own bed next week even more