Gettin' Excited!

Well, it's just under 5 days now that Hunter and I will be winging out way down to Los Angeles, to visit Disneyland and start the cruise to Mazatlan. We're both getting very anxious about it, and gathering together all our packing and laundry to prepare well in advance. We leave Friday at around 3PM from the airport (1PM from home) and arrive in LA sometime in the evening. This will be the first time my mate and I have traveled by plane together... what a treat!

Saturday the 24th we will be in Disneyland, a place I haven't been since I was probably just 7 or 8 years old. When I last was there, they were still using coupon books of tickets for the rides (which they abolished in 1982) and they still had the Adventure thru Inner Space ride. I know photography is allowed at the park, so look for a lot of pictures from me, both on Flickr above and later when I get back! Hunter has been to the park over 15 times, so I'm going to let him do the honors of picking out rides :D

Then, Sunday the 25th, we board the ship and head out! I think I posted the itinerary of the journey earlier in the blog so I won't go into looking it up, here. But I'll try to keep a journal or something on the trip to recount later :)

Yesterday, to keep from getting too antsy, we drove out towards Bend, Oregon, and visited Sisters. It's a great little town, a bit touristy but with some nice shops and restaurants. It was a wonderful drive, and we even saw some snow around. Quite a change from the 90+ temperatures we've been having in the valley here.

Wow!

Wow, I just happened to look, and I noticed I am the top of the page at thesixtyone! How'd that happen? lol

New music room setup

Well, my laptop died when I was in Portland with Hunter recently, and I sent it in to HP. They said it was a motherboard failure and would cost about $800 to fix. YIKES! So, instead of getting it fixed, I decided to spend less money just building a new PC for the music room (which is about the only place I used that laptop anyway). The benefit of all this is that I can now read chat while playing! Or is that a drawback? Depends on how distracted I get hehe

Here's a picture of the new setup!

Fun at work

Yes, that's what I said! I've been involved in a project to buy and install a weather station here at the utility, since last year. Well, it finally went up on the roof as of this last Monday, and over the last few days I've been playing with the web reporting feature. Add an old webcam I had kicking around the office and you get a very nice little statistical page!

Here's a sample of what the webcam is showing. That's the corner of the street outside my office window, at Pioneer Parkway West and A Street:

Feelin Skunky :D

Just had to post this picture of the skunk line that I managed to take right before SL crashed ;) I'm the fourth from the right, Siamese colors of course :D

Back from the trip!

Hello folks! Hunter and I are back from our wonderful trip to Portland. Friday night after work we drove up and made it to the hotel without a hitch. We listened to Canadia 2056 almost the whole way up and back on Sunday, and it's proved to be a very interesting space drama with lots of little comedy thrown in, and good characters. After checking in, walked around the Washington Square mall, ending up at Red Lobster for dinner. It was tasty, but I forgot about my issues with salt intake, and when we got back, I couldn't get to sleep until 5AM :( I had a rough night, but I had a lovely mate to help me through it once I got up the courage to wake him for company. We talked about it afterwards, and I need to remember to do that sooner, keeping in mind that we're in life together now, and should share burdens. Not just when he has trouble, but when I do too! It's a new concept for me, but it puts my mind at ease knowing so.

On Saturday, we had the free brekky at the hotel, then made it over to Portland's waterfront, by the Willamette River. Lots of great shops and walkways, on a really nice sunny day. We walked for probably 3 hours, then ended up back at the Pioneer Square mall, to check out the furmeet that was being held that day by the Portland fur group. Didn't really stay too long, but met a few interesting furs, then headed out to enjoy the day a bit more. We drove out highway 30 to the Vista House first, on our way to Multnomah Falls. Vista House was incredible! The last few times I've been there, it's been closed for renovation, so I went for the view. I didn't know that in 2004, they reopened it, and the inside was quite impressive. The wind outside the House was whipping back and forth with a speed that threatened to knock us over, almost ripping Hunter's sunglasses off his shirt! We drove from there out to the falls, passing a few other smaller falls along the way. Quite a scenic drive. Multnomah Falls was also very impressive, and we got to walk up to a bridge that spanned the rushing water for a great view. I have a little YouTube video here! We were pretty exhausted after that, and pretty much just returned to the hotel for some TV and room service.

Sunday, we decided to just take a drive up north a ways. We stopped for brunch at a place just over the border in Washington State, where we ate and found out latest feline addition to the plushie family, a tiny white tiger we named Brock, after the restaurant. After that, we drove almost all the way to Olympia, WA, to the Lucky Eagle Casino, for a little bit of gambling related fun. We weren't as lucky as the eagle, and left after about an hour, headed back to town.

It was a really nice trip, good to get away now and again to see the sights! Talk to ya later!

Yay, weekend plans!

Hidey-ho! Another blog post from me :) Here's what I've been up to!

Last weekend was pretty blah, actually. Hunter was able to get a last minute flight to California to be with his family for Passover (which was really cool for him to get to see his friends, family, and the wonderful Schultzy doggy). I couldn't get the time off, and it wasn't very affordable for two tickets, so I stayed home and remembered how blah my life was before Hunter and I partnered. I did get to spend a little extra time in Second Life, building and landscaping, and that was fun. I also got to spend some wonderful quality time with Frogg, just talking and hanging out, for the most part. We watched some Doctor Who as well, and pretty much relaxed around the house. It was a nice little dip back into what my life was like before, but frankly, after a few days of it, I'm extremely grateful Hunter's back, and I get to be with him. Life just tends to have more color in it when he's around. :)

The weekdays themeslves have been pretty usual, just working, TV and eating. However, this coming weekend, we've got some wonderful plans up in Portland. Frogg and I are taking Friday night and Saturday night off shows this weekend, so I can travel with Hunter and Frogg can get some rest and use the car to travel around. After work today, Hunter and I are driving up to Portland to a hotel so we can relax in our little suite, order some room service, and generally just have a good time together up there visiting some of the local sights and the joy of having someone clean your room and bathroom :D We don't have any real plans, except possibly to see a movie and stop by the Portland furmeet that the group there has once or twice a month. It would be nice to meet some of the local Oregon furs, as I really don't run into much furry related activity here in Eugene. If we end up meeting some interesting furs and have a good time, we may even make trips to Portland for picnics and such! Plus, with the RainFurrest happening in September, perhaps we'll meet some that will also be attending.

The Columbia gorge is up that way too, with lots of waterfalls, so maybe I can entice Hunter to go on a little drive to see the scenery and falls. :D

More to come later, and I hope to have piccies and such as well!

Learning experience

Just writing about how the weekend went. :) On Saturday, we made some cinnamon rolls (Pillsbury of course!) then went out for a little drive, then over to the Camp Putt for some mini-golf. We both had a wonderful time there! They have an 18 hole course, and had just added another 18 hole course. Since we had a coupon, we both got to play all 36 holes for only $11 total! After that we did our shopping and headed home so we could be back in time for a 4PM show that Frogg and I were doing for Yuri's Night.

Well, right before the show, Hunter felt a migraine headache coming on. Nothing too serious, but it felt strong enough that he curled up on the couch watching TV and we did our show. When I came out, he was in pretty bad pain, trying to keep the light out of his eyes and just hoping the pain would stop. Eventually he even ended up in the shower numbing his neck, to stop the constant pain. I felt a little helpless, but from what I understand, he's had these before, and what caused it was the exposure to UV rays in direct sun, which we were in playing the mini-golf. Eep! Before he moved, he had some UV blocking sunglasses, also polarized, and they did the trick. He had a miserable night, until the sun went down and it was finally dark enough for the pain to go away. How terrible! I've never had migraines before, but from what he tells me, this was about as bad as they get. We almost drove to urgent care to get some relief, but it would have been horribly expensive, and he felt it would subside on it's own. It did, like I mentioned, after dark, but it pretty much put him out of commission for almost 16 hours. Poor guy!!

On Sunday, we went to CostCo and got some more sunglasses with the UV blocking and polarized lenses, for future sun-based activities. I had no idea that just being exposed to the sun could cause so much trouble, so it was a learning experience for me, and from now on I'll be reminding him about the glasses before we go out. The rest of Sunday was just fine, with a simple show and dinner.

Other than that, this week proves to be a simple one, except that I'm taking the housekitty Samantha to the vet on Wednesday for a dental cleaning. It's something she's had done a lot before, but I still worry because they have to put her under to do it. So I'll be on pins and needles a bit that day until I leave to pick her up.

Hope you all had a good weekend!

Sunny weekend!

Hi-yo! Thought I'd get you all up to date with the latest goings-on with me... It's quite the sunny day today here, and it's going to be almost 70 degrees! Yow! Quite unusual for this area, and it certainly feels like spring. Tomorrow, 74! In light of the warm sunny weather, I believe Hunter and I will be going out to Camp Putt, a local outdoor mini-golf course. Yeah, I know that's not a great link, but it's the only one the web seems to have. Although "Adventure Golf" sounds intriguing, it's really just a nicely landscaped mini-golf course, with all the typical outdoorsy stuff: but no mini-golf tricks like windmills and blocking walls, etc. I would have liked to think adventure golf would be more of an Indiana Jones experience, with players needing to putt across rickety bridges and use vines to reach certain parts of the course. Don't lose your ball over the edge into the snake pit, because it's gone man, it's gone.

We have another CostCo run this weekend, as we're running out of the meats we use for nightly dinners. It's always a struggle to visit CostCo and not spend an arm and a leg, but we're getting better at it! Normally the bill is around $100 every two weeks, but that satisfied meals for three people 6 nights a week, so that's not horrible.

Other than that, we'll be swinging by my good friend Nancy's house, to drop off some things to give to her daughter. Nancy's going to visit her for a month or so, to get to know her new grandbaby! That should be a really nice visit, I'm hoping.

I think our plans are a bit sparse after that... We may go see that Simon Pegg movie, or we may just relax at home on Sunday. There's two shows on Saturday in Secondlife, one for Yuri's Night, and our regular show at the Heron Island Performance Space. On Sunday, we'll have a show for Akumu at the Purple Paw Print, which we've played at before, to a wonderful crowd!

Hope you all have nice plans too for the upcoming weekend, take care!