Dead Horse Point Trip - Day 2 + .5

After dragging my sorry ass out of my sleeping bag and a tasty breakfast, we continued the scenic drive to Dead Horse Point. We arrived around noon, set up camp in our way-too-small campsite and and cracked open the beers right away.

Later that night we met up with the rangers for an escorted hike through the backside of the point. We learned about all the desert life, most of which you don't see. We were, however, graced with a golden eagle doing a fly-by!





The next morning was the point!



Since Arches National Park was just a few miles outside of Dead Horse Point, we popped down there for a few hours to take a look around.

Does anybody else think that rock in the middle looks like a penis? OK good.

Double Arch

Landscape Arch. From this photo you should deduce that it's better to shoot it during the day than during the evening.

Sadly we did not make it to the famous Delicate Arch - next time! However, we DID make it to an epic burger joint in Moab (whose name I have forgotten), where I had one of the best chili burgers I've had in my life. NOM NOM NOM NOM

There is one more piece to this day I want to post about, but I still need to pull those photos off the camera and see if any turned out.

The other Dead Horse Point photos can be found here, and the Arches photos can be found here.

Dead Horse Point Trip - Day 1

My last blog entry was depressing. Let's hear something happy!

So a few months ago at Pride, I won an auction for an escorted hike to Dead Horse Point. Dead Horse Point is a neat patch of rock in the middle of Utah, near Arches that I would tell you more about, but I'm lazy so just click the damn link if you don't know about it already.

I invited several of my friends who work for eBay (who sponsored the auction), and we all trekked down for a weekend of camping!

The first night was spent in Huntington State Park, about an hour's drive from Dead Horse. The campground was nearly completely empty - only one other person there that I noticed. There was a small lake adjacent to it that proved to be lovely for some photo taking too!

This is also the perfect time to announce that, at long last, I have purchased the 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens that I have wanted for so long. This thing is AMAZING. I want to make sweet love to it. I would marry it if I could. But instead of sticking various body parts in it or trying to get a marriage license for it, I think I will settle for an upcoming blog entry about it.



I really like this photo. You have three different light sources - a street lamp off to the left, the full moon, and me shining a flashlight on the tree to the left. I wish I had a better artificial light source, as I would have liked to use a shorter exposure as not to blow-out the moon so much. Still, moonlight provides some interesting pictures.

We went crawdad catching by the lake and were quite successful! However most of them were rather small. This was one of the bigger ones we found.

Behold, the power of an ultra-wide angle lens! Look at all that sky you can squeeze into the photo! Yes, 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5, I do love you!

The rest of the first day can be found here.

Alone in Kyoto Salt Lake City

When I moved from Suburbia, Utah to downtown, I was looking forward to having quite the busy social life.

It was already fairly busy while I lived in suburbia. I was always heading downtown for concerts, dinner with friends, or random parties. In fact, part of my move was because everything I did was downtown and the 40 minute drive to get out here was miserable.

So, now that I'm downtown, I'm finding myself kind of saddened and a bit surprised that I really don't do anything any more. I'm typing this at 8:30pm on a Saturday night, and all I hear are crickets and the sound of Goomba snoring and farting.

Granted, I did have one invite that I kind of invited myself to, but when you're kind of surly and you have to drive 80 miles to get there and have to work the next day anyway, you find your motivation a bit lacking.

Why has my social life gone to hell all the sudden?

It seems I've encountered a perfect storm. I've lost a few friends who have moved out of state. I've lost a few friends to having kids. I've lost a few friends to relationships. I've lost a few friends to break-ups. I've probably scared a few away with drunken flirting too. It also doesn't help that I have a hairy 140 lb child to take care of.

Tonight seems to be particularly bad. I tried at least writing some music to be somewhat productive, but I couldn't even get a single measure down that I liked.

Is 32 too old to go out and have fun? I'm starting to feel more and more like a homebody, and I don't like it.

But, of course, instead of going out and trying to make some friends tonight, I'm sitting at home posting on the internet on how I feel like a loser.

Bah!

The San Francisco treat

I spent a week and a half in the Bay Area last month attempting to get my CCNA, which is a huge nerd certification which you can tell girls about in attempts to not get laid.

As it turns out the class was a bit of a bust, and I didn't even feel remotely prepared to take the test, so I didn't. I'll study some more and give it a shot in a few weeks. Maybe.

Of course I couldn't let a good trip out there go to waste, so I hung out with some friends for the extra weekend.

Meet Kris. Kris likes to hump things.

Meet Kristina and Natasha. I don't know if they like to hump things, but they probably didn't after I mentioned the letters "CCNA".

Kris an I later drove down the Pacific Coast Highway a bit to see what was going on.

I thought this guy had an awesome view for fishing.



The rest of the photos can be found here.

WARNING: Grossness ahead.

So I'm going to try to update this slightly more often than once every two months. At least once a month now.

When I moved into this place, I noticed the front porch light fixture had a rather large accumulation of bugs. I decided to ignore it until I absolutely needed to pull the fixture down.

As luck would have it, the last bulb in it burned out last week and I had no choice but to pull down the glass fixture which was LOADED with moths and beetles and who knows what else. It was well over an inch high in a few places in the glass.



Even the retaining ring was completely full!

Happy Birthday Goomba

Goomba turned two years old last month. Large dogs usually don't live as long as small dogs, so this is probably around age 20-25 in human years.

Owning a Newfoundland subjects you to questions you don't hear with a lot of other breeds. So I present the...

Top Ten Questions You Hear When Owning a Newfoundland

1) Is that a horse?
No, it's a dog.

2) Is that a bear?
No, it's a dog.

3) Do you have a saddle for him?
No, I do not.

4) Do you ride him around?
No, I do not. He doesn't like things on his back, although other people have reported a bit of success with their dogs.

5) Is that a (Great Pyrenees/St. Bernard/Other breeds I can't recall)?
No, it's a Newfoundland.

6) How much does he weigh?
Goomba weighs around 140 lbs, which is about average for the breed. I have personally met one that weighed in at 220 lbs!

7) Does he take you for walks?
Only when he sees a cat.

8) How much does he eat?
He eats about six cups of Orijen Adult per day. Goomba is allergic to grains, so I had to buy him a rather pricey grain-free food to keep him healthy.

9) Does he shed lots?
He sheds unreal amounts of hair, but only for a couple of months of the year (usually around May and September).

10) Does he sleep with you?
Goomba will sometimes crawl onto the bed with me for a few minutes, often laying directly on top of me. He eventually gets too hot and moves to the hallway, the kitchen, or even the bathtub!