.the gpb kids.

Foundation and Empire

Mike — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:58:08 +0000

Not too long ago I started reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Earth. Previously I read The Robots of Dawn and while I enjoyed the atmosphere it produced, I didn’t particularly like the book. This Foundation Series on the other hand, is something else entirely. I’m almost done with the second in the series (Foundation and Earth) and then I’ll move on to the third and final book of the original three. Jules dug up this one at Half Price Books. The cover is awesome.

The Perils of Backpacking

Mike — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:30:21 +0000

Recently Jules and I traveled to the far reaches of King Range to go on another backpacking trip. This one was planned by a friend. The route followed roughly 21 miles over three days. The Buck Creek Trail is supposedly “infamous as having one of the steepest grades of any Northern California trail” with a 3,300 ft elevation change over 4 miles. We hiked up it and out on the last day. But what I really wanted to talk about are ticks!

Bloooooooood.....

Look at that guy, doesn’t he give you the willies? I’ve gotten a few ticks on me from time to time. I catch them them on my clothing and flick them off and that’s that. On this trip, however, the buggers finally got me.

Day two of the trip. We make our first creek crossing. I get to the far side, and take off my socks to ring the water out of them. First tick caught crawling on my arm! Flicked… done.

Day three. We’re climbing up the infamous trail and beating back the encroaching foliage. I find another tick on my arm. Flicked again!

Day three… still. We’re out of the woods and heading to a small pizza joint. My hip chafes a little. I think it might be from the hip belt and rub it. There’s something there! It’s a tick! Arrrrrrrgh!

Where's its head? It's inside!

One of the other guys we went with brought a tick key which we put to good use to pull him out. Minimal damage. Tick survived intact. Jules put him in a bag. Continued to pizza which was bad, but that’s another story.

Day three… again! We get home and prepare for a relaxing shower. What’s that under the band of my boxers? Another one?!? Blargh! This one I carefully pull out with tweezers. He didn’t survive but all of his body parts were there. We put him in a bag too.

We did some reading online and Jules called one of the nurses at the health center. Less than 1% chance of getting lyme disease but we’re on the lookout for the early warning signs. Constant vigilance!

PS. Neither of those pictures are of the actual tick that got me, they’re just borrowed for effect. But here’s a video I took of another guy in our party pulling out a tick.

Bakesale Betty’s

Jules — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 23:01:20 +0000

After 4 years of thinking about it, I finally had a chance to visit Bakesale Betty’s (in Rockridge- apparently they have opened a location in Downtown Oakland as well!) during open hours to try their infamous fried chicken sandwich. The lines were long, but they moved fairly quickly. In addition to the sandwich, I purchased a strawberry shortcake, pecan shortbread, a chocolate chip cookie and a ginger cookie. This was the entirety of what they had on hand, other than take-home unbaked chicken pot pie. Though they have many more bakery items listed online, only a few of them make the daily production cut. The fried chicken sandwich was good, but entirely too hyped up. The sandwich would have been tastier if the chicken had been freshly fried. As it was, it was only lukewarm… tasty enough, and a generous portion size, but not delicious enough that I crave it. The desserts, however, were pretty stellar and trek-worthy. In particular, the ginger cookie was absolutely delicious- the right amount of spice and chewiness, with crystallized ginger chunks interspersed through the cookie. Good enough that I got back in line halfway through my ginger cookie to buy 3 more for later because I didn’t want to save the other half of the cookie for mike ;P.

Carson Pass

Mike — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 03:55:54 +0000

This weekend was the annual Lindow Lab snowshoe trip. I’ve been fortunate enough to go three times now. This year’s trip was to Carson Pass near Lake Tahoe. Previously we’ve gone to Dewey Point in Yosemite and Echo Lake which was also near Lake Tahoe.

The weather was perfect, and the hike was picturesque. It made me sad that I didn’t bring my better cameras. Instead, I brought my Flip Mino and Jules brought her little Canon SD630 and here’s what we came away with.

Video from the Flip:

Pictures from the Canon:

Cheese

Jules — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:38:50 +0000

I stopped by the farmer’s market to pick up some bread and cheese for a hike about a month ago. I grabbed my standby rustic olive loaf from Phoenix Pastificio, and then swung by the Cowgirl Creamery (CC) cheese stand. CC is well known for their creamy, soft cheeses, but I was intrigued to find that they had started to experiment with hard cheeses as well. I am a hard cheese girl at heart. In particular, aged gouda. You may call me the Aged Gouda Girl. I picked up a wedge (from Batch #27). Well, I will tell you the end result here: that cheese has a certain kind of funkiness and textural grittiness that I do not like. It was like eating somewhat milky sand. And I have smelled funky cheeses. Usually that funkiness makes me think of good things to come. This was not that kind of funky. I know they are still working out the kinks, so I hope their subsequent batches improve. I guess my first clue should have been when the lady at the CC stand tried a sliver from batch #27:

CC girl: “Oh, I haven’t tried this batch yet. Oh wow, there are so many holes this time.” *munch munch* “Hmm… it tastes different from the last batch.”

Me: “Uh, good or bad?”

CC girl: “Oh, not good or bad, just … different”

I guess that should have been a big clue. No salesperson would tell you that their product is off. It’s just “different” and “unique”. Oh, those imperfections in that vase? That’s how you know it’s HANDMADE. That’s what makes it so UNIQUE. (I admit I sometimes buy into this philosophy).

In any case, I think I shall stick to their softies until they get a few more hard cheese batches under their belt.

Backpacking at Henry Coe State Park, Round II

Jules — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:55:10 +0000

Mike and I were planning to go to the DMV to take care of car stuff on Saturday, as well as visit Mike’s parents. However, the visit got moved to Sunday late afternoon, and on Friday night, we learned that the DMV suspended Saturday service. So what did we do? We planned a spur-of-the-moment backpacking trip! Is that an oxymoron?

This time around, there was a lot of water, and many flowers in bloom. We had a great view from our camp site at Willow Ridge, on the border of the Western Zone of the park (~7.5 miles from Coe Headquarters). We made it out of the park 30 minutes before the storm rolled in, and in time for Easter Sunday hanging out/dinner with Mike’s family (did I mention that we are all atheists? I don’t know what’s going on). We are backpacking ninjas.

Mike moving a log bench for a scenic lunch

Turkeys!

Navigating The Narrows

A hitchhiker

Drying off after Mike helped me dunk my right foot in The Narrows ~_^

Almost Home

Birthday Present

Jules — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:45:55 +0000

So I’ve been occasionally bugging a lab mate about his progress on making a particular construct to generate a mutant in our bacteria. Because if he doesn’t make it, then I have to. And I’d rather not if I can avoid it ~_^

Today I walked over to my lab bench, and saw a present for me:

What could it be? I unwrap it and lo and behold:

He made them! Awesomest bday present ever! d(^_^)

Comic Nerd

Mike — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:51:40 +0000

I haven’t read too many comics in my day. I never really got into them while I was growing up. I read a few Daredevil and Darkhawk books, and some of my brother’s Spawn collection, but that was pretty much it. However, over the past year or so, a couple of series have caught my attention.

At the recommendation of a few people, I started reading The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman. The setting is your typical zombie apocalypse. The main character, Rick Grimes, awakens from a coma to a world that’s already overrun. Thankfully this series doesn’t use those popular new-age zombies that can run and jump and climb and such. These are the classic groaning, bumbling zombies, that overwhelm with numbers. The series focuses on how Rick and co. cope with their new world. I’ve read through the first ten trade paper back volumes so far and I’m itching for the next one.

Y: The Last Man is apocalypse series I just started reading. In this one, Yorick Brown is literally the last man on earth. He and his monkey are the last male animals. I’m reading this one at the recommendation of a few people too. I’m only two books in, but so far it’s pretty good, even though I find Yorick pretty annoying. This series has already wrapped up so I could potentially just buy the rest of the books, but I think I’ll try borrowing them from someone first, and buy if I like it.

Trends

Jules — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:17:22 +0000

So I’ve been thinking about the topic of trends. An email ad just landed in my inbox from Blue Nile, an online jewelry e-tailer. And their ad featured a silver key necklace. Over the past year, I’ve been seeing these key necklaces popping up in all manner of places: first Tiffany unveiled them as a new collection, then individuals on DIY sites such as Etsy started making them to order at lower cost , and finally large retailers such as Blue Nile, Nordstroms and Macy’s now carry them at various price points. The trickle down effect is obvious. And people who buy one of the key necklaces that are infiltrating the market because they think they are pretty, may have no idea where the trend originally started. They probably would not be wearing the necklace they are wearing today without X Big Brand to propagate the trend at some point so that the style was readily available. I’m not denying that people made keys into necklaces prior to this point, but it certainly would not be as prevalent without brand help. Just something to think about. How long does it take for something to become mainstream? I wonder how many people choose to wear something less often because it has become a trend?

I immediately thought of a scene from the movie The Devil Wears Prada, where Meryl Streep plays Miranda Priestly, a powerful fashion magazine editor, and Anne Hathaway plays Andy, a non-fashion oriented journalist trying to move up in the world:

Miranda Priestly: [Miranda and some assistants are deciding between two similar belts for an outfit. Andy sniggers because she thinks they look exactly the same] Something funny?
Andy Sachs: No, no, nothing. Y’know, it’s just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. Y’know, I’m still learning about all this stuff.
Miranda Priestly: This… ‘stuff’? Oh… ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.

Courtesy of Tiffany & Co. Keys splashpage.

Zoom Zoom

Mike — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:49:07 +0000