Biking down a Mountain

Posted on October 3, 2008 by Mike

Wrapped up

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Mike

Quick Post

Posted on August 25, 2008 by Jules

Today’s Stream of Consciousness: School is going to start in 2 days. Back to classes. Yay. I’m getting a bit stressed out thinking about grant applications, and qualifying exams. Argghhhh… time to start studying this weekend. We just had our first departmental graduate student meeting for the year. Apparently I am now a graduate assembly delegate alternate. If it’s interesting, I may go to all the meetings, regardless of whether or not the other PMB delegate is there. I’ve never been a part of student government. Last year they successfully lobbied for a vision plan to be part of SHIP, which is huge. Previously, we only had dental and health. I’m curious as to what they’ll focus on this year.

Today’s movie: Be Kind Rewind (mike watched, I only half paid attention. But it seems like an entertaining movie. I am just easily distracted today)

Today’s bedtime reading: The God of Small Things (I was vacillating between this book and The God Delusion in the bookstore. Not that they are in any way related in either subject matter or.. anything else, for the matter. Well, other than ‘God’ in the title)

Huckleberry Preserve

Posted on August 10, 2008 by Mike

Jules and I went on a hike up in the hills yesterday. I brought my video camera and shot random things during the trip. Here they are:

Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve from Mike Horn on Vimeo.

Harry Potter

Posted on August 10, 2008 by Jules

So I’m a little late to the bandwagon. I’d more or less kept up with the harry potter series during these past few years. But I only recently (as in two weeks ago) got around to reading the final and seventh book. It had been so long that I actually went back to the volume 1-6 again to refresh my memory. I got all of them in hardback for 7$ apiece courtesy of half price books. Yay. I made pretty quick work of them during my bus commutes to and from school these past two weeks. Which kind of tells you how much time I spend waiting around for buses. Okay, okay, I read them at home too. But I think the majority of my reading was done en route. I enjoyed the ending, and thought it was pretty fitting. And whiIe I can think of a number of books that I value more, they are still entertaining, fun reads. Off the top of my head, three books that I can think of that I have read most often (as in +4 times) is ‘Ender’s Game’, by Orson Scott Card; ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’, by David Sedaris; and ‘Feeding A Yen’, by Calvin Trillin. Two of them are composed of short personal essays (absolutely hilarious, I tell you), and one is in the good old science fiction category. Yay books.

The Great Outdoors

Posted on July 26, 2008 by Mike

Cho siblings at the entrance

Went with the Cho siblings today to Muir Woods and Stinson Beach. The redwoods were as grand as ever, except one which fell recently. It was a big one too. It fell over one of the trails near the entrance so I wonder what they’re going to do with it.

Jules in a redwood

We were pretty touristy and took lots of pictures of the hollowed out redwoods that you can stand in. After the redwoods we traveled north to the Hog Island Oyster Farm where we picked up 50 fresh oysters of various sizes. With seafood in tow we traveled back down to Stinson Beach and spent the rest of the afternoon scarfing down grilled oysters, corn, veggies, potatoes and cheesecake.

We made a mess

After the eats we bore witness to the most people I’ve ever seen on Stinson Beach. But… lame-o me didn’t take a picture of the masses. So this crazy Cho picture will have to suffice.

Crazy Chos

After all of that we drove back to Oakland, freshened up, and then went out to Mangia Bene out in Martinez for some delicious eats. Now I think it’s time for a nap.

Chez Panisse

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Mike

Jules decided to go to Chez Panisse for my birthday yesterday. It was delicious! Here are some pictures:

Yosemite With the Lindow Lab

Posted on June 2, 2008 by Mike

Jules invited me to go with her lab to Yosemite again over the weekend. I have mixed feelings about Yosemite. On one hand it is such a touristy place full of people, cars, pavement and garbage that you don’t feel like you’re really enjoying nature. On the other hand Yosemite Valley is such an amazing, awe-inspiring place that you can overlook the hordes of people.

The more popular trails to destinations like Yosemite Falls and Half Dome are lined with people, but on this trip Professor Lindow took us to Taft Point and Sentinel Dome which had very few people. For those of you who don’t like to hike very far, both trails are only 1.1 miles from the parking lot. The picture with this post is of Taft Point. From the edge there is a wonderful view the valley including Yosemite Falls and El Capitan. Apparently there’s a pretty good view if you look straight down too, but I didn’t get that close enough to the edge to look over. It made me queasy just seeing other people do it. It pretty much drops off to the valley floor.

Hiking around Yosemite made me want to take an extended backpacking trip. I’ve pretty much decided on going back to Desolation Wilderness. I went there for a trip once as a Boy Scout and I think about due for another one. I’m thinking late July or August. I can get Jules ready by then right?