Santiago and Witch Fires

It’s been a smokey few days here with the fire so close to home. Fortunately for us, it only got as close as the other side of the big hill behind us. And the wind is blowing it south, so, AWAY from us. Which is good. So so far, we’re doing fine…whew! Just inhaling some smoke. Today at USC, I was walking back up the parking structure…to the 7th floor. That was fun. Not so fun for the lungs though.

Dickson and I finally decided to go check out the view of the fires. It looked like a volcano.

This is around the Santiago Canyon/Silverado Canyon area. Also near the Oakley Headquarters. Dickson’s rode his bike in the burning area before…should make for an interesting scenic ride after the smoke and fires have come and gone…whenever that is.  Look closely at the photo and you can see Orion.

Here’s a view of the lovely smoke surrouding Orange County. This is from my house. It looks like a pretty sunset sky, but that cloud is really smoke.

The Witch Fire in San Diego has Dickson staying up here with me. Tons of people were evacuated in San Diego…it’s like a repeat of 2003. Scary to think about. He drove up on Monday afternoon and took a pic of the freeway…

Ew. Smoke. And a crowded freeway.

We looked up the statistics for the Cedar Fire back in 2003. Started on October 25, 2003. Contained November 3, 2003. Finally controlled on December 5, 2003. Yikes. Hopefully this time it won’t take as long.

I need some filtered air.

Taiwan – Day 13 and 14

It’s almost the end of the trip! Here’s the last of the pics, although it’s mostly food hee hee hee.

We spent most of Day 13 (our last full day) wandering around just relaxing…I guess that’s all we’ve been doing for awhile. I guess that’s just what you do with family. I should do that more often, instead of…working and schooling hahaha…

Near my aunt’s house, there’s a shop that has a Japanese pig that sits outside. It was super hot that day though, so the pig was resting, not standing. We went to see it and we pet it a little (although it was kinda scary at first since you could see its teeth! So long!

Then, we wandered over to a bakery, because Mom wanted to buy pineapple cake thingies, but I was more interested in the yummy Chinese breads:

Mmm…delicious! So much variety…some weird stuff, too…but it was cool. The shop smelled gooooood…mmmm!!!!

That night we ate more delicious food…mmm…I’m hungry just thinking about it…sooo yummy, I’m gonna put them all on this post so you can drool over them too heehee…

Yummmmyyyyy….

So the next day was our “go to the airport” day. Well we didn’t actually leave till 5 PM since our flight was like in the middle of the night. We just packed and spent some last moments with the family. Some of them came over with cha sa bao and we ate a bunch before we left! Mmm!! There were SO MANY we actually brought some with us to the airport to munch on later…

Look at all our luggage!

The airport seemed SUPER empty. And we were there way too early because there was no traffic haha…oh well.

After we checked in we went to find the gate…

And then, after that we went window shopping. I bought a cute pin cushion (at the airport, go figure haha) and a fruity drink. Kel bought some Clinique stuff and we spent a good hour testing out different perfumes…

But that’s it! Fun trip but it’s great to be back home….no humidity, for the most part…

All Grown Up

Penny and I hit our 3000 mile mark not too long ago, and so I had Dickson teach me how to change her oil. Armed with 4 quarts of oil, a new oil filter, a wrench or two, two jackstands, and a hydraulic jack, I was ready to go!

We even sweeped the garage, too! I’m wearing one of Dad’s old buttonups from his “dress nicer to work” days. More like the “before bike jerseys became his favorite layering shirt” days. Anyway. So in this pic, Penny’s all lifted and Dickson laid a tarp underneath so the garage wouldn’t get stained from Penny’s pee pee oil.

Fast forward a couple hours and some elbow grease later….

I’m covered in oil but Penny’s all happy! I look a bit too happy considering I’m covered in used motor oil. Oh well! Hurrah! I’m all grown up now!

The weather’s getting cooler…

So it’s been chilly lately…overcast and cloudy. In fact it finally REALLY rained for the first time in a long time this past weekend.

Recently finished up two scarves…one for me, one for Kel. In our wonderfully clashing school colors. I made them from this free pattern online, but I find skinny scarves to be somewhat useless, so I doubled the pattern (kind of) and here are the results:

I think Paisley agrees about the weather…she’s always more than happy to stay in the blankets the last couple days. Usually she’ll crawl out if you put a blanket on top of her.

Ooooh, and here’s a rare treat for you! A photo of Josh:

The other day we also bought Tubby a new friend. This is Towers.

Dickson found him at Barnes and Nobles while we were studying and so he brought Towers over to me and he kept us company while we studied. Well, by the time we had to leave we obviously had bonded w/ the baby giraffe and his nubby antlers, so we had to bring him home. I should probably stop going to BN before I collect the entire Ty Pluffies collection…

See right now I should really be studying for my midterms. But I’m lazy. Don’t worry though! I’ll get it done! So in honor of “midterms” here’s my formidable bookshelf:

Yeah me!

New Shoes

Been awhile since I posted….school’s been busy, I’ve been slacking and then rushing to do big homework assignments at the last minute.  My goal these next couple weeks is to NOT do that since I have midterms coming up…BLAH.

Anyway, I’ve been hanging out in SD the last couple weekends with Dickson.  We picked me up a couple new pairs of shoes while we were there

The Converses are Converse All Star Deluxe Lace.  Originally saw them at the new DSW in Tustin, but Dickson convinced me to sleep on the idea of buying them…they were $50 at DSW.  Which is great because I discovered they were only $40 at Kohls.  Yeah that’d be my first time going to Kohls.  Ever.

Purple pair are a pair of Pumas…yipeee!  Purple shoes!  I finally have purple shoes!  Picked them up at the Carlsbad Outlet for $27.  They’re SUPER comfy.  Did I mention they’re purple?

Here’s the back of the shoes…along w/ my super old teddybear that Dickson bought me after we were dating for a month……

In other shopping money spending news, I picked up one of these cute cordoroy jackets from Gap the other day.  In dark green.  Beautiful sheen.  I love cordoroy.  I hope it seriously comes back into style big time this winter so I can pick me up some pants!!!