IANology

Today Kelly and I made our ways out to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium as part of a class field trip for her.

The drive up was amazing. We left pretty early to make sure we had tons of time and we took Highway 1 the whole way up. We got to see the sun rise over the hills by San Simeon Beach, we passed by Hearst Castle (no zebras this time unfortunately), and then made our way up the coast. This road turned out to be very windy, it actually reminded me of the drive up to the Grandma and Grandpa K’s house. The only difference being that we were hugging the edge of a massive (several hundred foot) cliff that dropped off into the Pacific. It was just beautiful vista after beautiful vista. At one point it started to drizzle and a really cool double rainbow appeared and went from the hillside on our right into the ocean on our left.

If anyone is wanting to make a trip from the San Fransisco region south towards San Luis, I highly suggest taking this route if your transportation permits. It was just beautiful, and I could see it being a very fun road to zip around on in a sporty car or motorcycle.

The stupid thing was that I forgot to charge my camera the night before so I just took a few snapshots with my phone. They are nothing special, but will at least suffice.

I am pretty sure I went there once when I was a little kid but don’t remember anything about it. However, when I went today, it was amazing. We got to see so many different animals, different habitats, and different setups that they had in place. We were fortunate enough to get to see one of the feeding times but it was too difficult to get any pictures of. Overall, the trip was pretty awesome.

Unfortunately, Kelly and I could not stay for long because we had homework and studying to get to.

Follow the link for pictures.

Over the weekend Kelly and I just relaxed and hung out. It was a really nice relaxing weekend. We didn’t do much; however, the one thing we did do was take Jade to the beach on Sunday.

We went to Avila Beach, the dog friendly part, and brought a frisbee, our jackets, and unfortunately I forgot my camera. I did snap some licensees with my camera on my phone I wasn’t expecting anything extra special from this trip but I was mistaken. This trip was the first time, after some discussion, that Jade was allowed off leash at the beach.

She has been off leash many times at the fenced dog parks and around Kelly’s house and never has had many problems with it. But never has she been off leash at an unfenced beach. She always plays well with other dogs and she will come back most of the time that you call her, so Kelly and I decided that we would give this a try.

The instant that we took the leader collar off of Jade there was a dynamic change in her emotion. She knew that she was free. And she took advantage of it. She ran laps around us, ran into the water, and jumped around on all fours like she was a little kangaroo. It was one of the more adorable things that I have seen in a while.

We threw the frisbee for her for hours. She loved chasing it down the beach and brought it back every single time. She never ran away further than I could throw the frisbee, and would come back right when I called her name. She barley even bat an eye at the other it’s running around her. Even when people walked by she would go over sniff the other dogs and then go back to chasing the frisbee, which is obviously more entertaining than other dogs.

She only did one thing wrong, which was rather funny, seeing as people didn’t mind her doing it. Her being a pure bred Australian Shepherd means that she is exceptionally fast while running, and if anyone threw a tennis ball around her she went for it. She still stayed close by because the balls were thrown just around us but instead of bringing the ball back to the owner she would bring it to us. We merely got the ball from her, something that requires no effort (she is great at dropping or releasing things), and handed it back to the owners.

This dog never ceases to amaze Kelly and I. She is constantly surprising us with either her innate ability to pick up new tricks, her weird knack at seemingly being able to understand general English requests.

It was a very fun trip and the three of us had a blast running around, jumping in the waves, and playing fetch. It was a great way to finish out the weekend.

Had breakfast at Uptown coffee this morning with Kelly. I had the strawberry rhubarb muffin with a vanilla latte and it was delicious. After that we walked around downtown for a little while.

Kelly had to go back to school after that so I have been playing on my iPad procrastinating from doing any work

So I have been barbecuing a LOT at Kelly’s lately and am getting pretty good at it. Especially, making marinades for steak. Just to brag a little bit I make some of the best, from scratch marinades, for someone who has really only been grilling for about a year now.

I have been really happy learning how to grill and becoming better and better at it. I know it isn’t like I’m curing cancer or anything, but I feel like there is an art behind grilling. From the marinades, to the heat of the coals (I cook on charcoal), to timing steaks and chicken just right. And I have recently purchased the Webster grilling App on my iPad which has tons of tasty ideas and recipes in it that I can’t wait to try.

Well I’m off to go check on my chicken.

I’ll keep up posted,

Adios

So I heard that the Giants won the world series during my supplementary class for math and one of the girls in my class is such a die hard fan of the Giants that she almost fainted when she got the text message from one of her friends. It was rather amusing but at the same time annoying because I feel that it was mostly for show; however, I could be wrong.

So I just got the chance to learn how to drive three different forklifts. I got to drive a Cat, a Yale, and a Nobel. It was a lot of fun and extremely intreresting. I have never driven anything like it before. I really quite enjoyed driving each one of them.

I am sorry Andrew I do not have pictures so I am unable to prove that it happened but I feel like my word alone is good enough for the internet in this occasion.

I’ll keep you posted,

Adios