Yosemite National Park

The other week we skipped town and went on vacation.  This was no small secret.  I managed to keep it quiet for 7 months.  Because as we all know my blog caters to the more criminal element.  I knew you'd all be dying to break into my house knowing I was gone.  In the end this could have actually helped...

I came up with clever plans to save money.  We shared the car ride with a friend and her daughter who also wanted to explore out West.  We only thought about finding an orphanage a few times to drop off the yammering chatterbox in the back seat who wanted to know, "are we there yet?"

We stayed in a budget hotel.  I had joined their hotel club discount program and reserved the room 7 months in advance.  We shared the hotel with a friendly bunch from some logging company.  By friendly, I mean they would all open their room doors any time any noise or other door happened to open.  We figured they were thinking some bombshell model was just strolling the halls hoping to find some guy from a logging company she could shack up with on first sight.  We played tricks on them by opening our door just to see how many of them would open their door.  Then we would shut our door and laugh hysterically, because we're grownups. 

Rowan really enjoyed getting to see "big snow."  We took her to ski one day.  She was very frustrated, but determined.  She whined and complained and didn't listen to the ski teacher.  Somehow she made progress and by the end of the day she was zooming at 1 mph with a smile as big as Texas.  I, on the other hand, had mastered the bunny slope and made the stupid mistake to go down the "more difficult" trail.  I made it down...eventually.   My friend learned how to snowboard but couldn't turn.  They are henceforth to be known as the Bullet for their straight-shot-speed-of-light technique down the slope. 

This was the only bear we saw, thankfully.  

We spent a lot of time hiking.  Pictures truly can't capture the rare beauty.  A picture can't grasp all the sounds and smells that surround you in that moment.

Pictures can tell a story.  Like the one about a 5 year old who was whining and had to be carried part of the way.  She was our bear repellant, but she really did so well.  One day she hiked 5 miles.  And she slept like a rock!  

One day out hiking around, this cute little kitty came out of the woods, silently.  We never heard a thing.  One minute it wasn't there and the next it was right in front of us.  Rowan had to be held back as she insisted she wanted to pet the "nice kitty."  I was nervously trying to take a picture and figuring out what I would do in case it attacked us.  In the end, it never even looked at us.  It was hunting after something else.  It slowly stalked and disappeared back into the woods, never making a sound.

We came home and have since learned that the park was hit by a horrendous snow storm and the whole place was shut down. 

We also came home to a flooded kitchen and master bathroom.  So if you guys had broken in maybe you could've turned off the water coming out of the pipe under the kitchen sink.  My time is now spent dealing with this inconvenience.  In the next few weeks months, we'll be having a quarter of the house gutted from floor to ceiling and replaced.

But my mind and my heart are still here...

Code Class Is Killing Me

Remember when the weather was all yucky and we were in the middle of that thing called winter?  Well, I was really bored and reading my email.  Between the intriguing mail about finding local forklift operators and meeting my true love Nigerian prince, I had an email for a code class.  It was from a known source.

I vaguely remember reading it, thinking it couldn't be that hard if it was free.  It would probably reinforce my use of the strike through symbols that people love to see so much.  Especially repeatedly.  I think there may be a strike through anonymous group for those who can't help themselves from using it.  All. The. Time.  Stop it.

Last week I received my "Welcome to this unbelievably beginner class.  It's so easy that we're teaching it in kindergarten."  I clicked the sign in link and put my little registration info and password in.   How hard could this be?

The window (or is it a screen?) opened up with the course curriculum.  Holy. Cow.  I have homework.  And Tests?! 

This week I'm to read through 2 lessons, do my homework (with or without the extra credit), and take a short quiz if I'm "feelin lucky."  I am not.  Why, do you ask?

6 hours after starting the Introduction page.  You read that right.  Six hours after working on the introduction page I was hopelessly stuck.  I wrote the instructorbot.  No reply.  The husband was no help.  "Oh you'll figure it out."  It's like a bad dream where everyone speaks calculus and you keep saying, "I haven't even taken addition yet."  But when you say it it just sounds like, "sllf''s sojfoa ffd! lol fjkepp, right?" 

The problem was I had two files that I needed to use but I couldn't get them open.  I looked for a program to open them but they all wanted $29.95 to do that for me.  I had just about given up when I was reading a review for the updated browser I'm using.  In the comments someone said they didn't know why they had posted that baby screen shot, it wasn't necessary.

Hold up.  I don't have that baby screen shot on my puter.  Where is it?  So I reread and found it was in the Tools section.  Just like a...hmmm...I was going to say just like a man to leave the tools in the toolbox, but around here the man leaves his tools all over the house. 

I open the toolbox and then drag and drop those two files and like magic they open up.  I was so humbly thankful.  This means that part of my class will not be spent taking a sledge hammer to the computer.  I also had visions of throwing it out the window.

My lessons and homework this week have to do with learning HTML and CSS, which is not nearly as fun as CSI.  I'm currently working on my homework which consists of

3 paragraphs

and must include

the HTML and CSS stuff the lessons covered.

 
Basically, this blog works as a great editor to see if the tags I write are in the right place and the web page will look right.  You'll be seeing some experimentation and little bleebloop tech stuff.  You know, like strike throughs, bullet points, paragraphs, and highlighted sections in big fonts with emphasis.

Thanks for putting up with it.  I hope it will eventually improve the look of my page.  Unless of course you happen to see my Nigerian prince on a forklift.  Please send him my way and I'll just pay someone to fix my page with the inheritance money.

The Obligatory Spring Post

I know you are probably wondering how No Poo is going.  Well, let me tell you...I caved!  I caved like a big...thing that caves.  Let me take you back.  Last Friday I did the baking soda wash and I got my ratio wrong and used too much (I think) baking soda.  The hair was icky.  I had to be somewhere Saturday and no way was I going without good hair.  So I washed with shampoo...It felt so wrong and so right at the same time.  Herbal Essences was telling me what a failure I was.  I was telling it to shut up and lather or I'd be switching to its' arch rival Garnier. 

An interesting development is noting that I haven't had to wash my hair since.  That's weird.  4 days.  Smells good.  Looks good.  Oh, I will wash it.  I will try not using shampoo again.  We'll catch up on this later.

Someone has decided that their true name is now She-Ra, Princess of Power...mmm hmm.

That's a gun holster in case you're wondering.

We're also eagerly anticipating spring. We're working hard (me, not so much) at tilling the soil and getting the gardens ready. Here's what we found the other day...

Total throw up.  These are grubs.  What you can't tell in the pics is that they are 3 inches long and fatter than your finger. 

Obviously I asked Jace if he wanted to become a locavore.  Rowan just screamed like a little girl.  What a sissy.  I was standing many yards away using the zoom lens.  

Spring is here.  And it's a big, fat worm.