sast presents: conversations

the background: most of you know that, among other things, my friend and co-worker vicki and i share an interest in horses, and she has friends that work at the nearby race tracks.  recently she stopped by for lunch and we were talking about when we could find some time to go watch the races.

vicki: tim asked when we were coming to the track.  he said we could come early and ride.
me: ride what?
vicki: ride the horses. get them warmed up.  it's $15/hour.
me: $15/hour? that's cheap!
vicki: no, they pay YOU $15/hour
me: they pay me???
vicki: yes, for exercise riding.
me: they PAY. ME?? 

needless to say, when my knee is strong enough to get back on a horse, i will be taking full advantage of this!  exercise riding a racehorse? heaven!

**********

the background: every year my company hosts a consumer event in the long beach area and we rely on other employees to volunteer for the event.  i received this email today from one of the would-be volunteers, and it made me laugh heartily!

Good morning Tara,

I still have in my mind last year's event, when you passed by me, going fast on a golf kart. I saw you driving the golf kart with one hand, while the other held your walkie talkie, and you were giving instructions to someone, one foot on the pedal, pushed to the floor, and your splinted leg sticking out of the kart, a bunch of employees in the back with scary smiles, holding themselves tight.  I understood in that moment what true multi-tasking meant!

Please sign me up again this year.

ha ha ha ha! sounds about right!

the sweetest place on earth

the sweetest place on earth is anywhere my family is. but before getting a taste of that particular sweetness, i headed to hershey, pa for an event.

it's been a few years since i've been to hershey, and though i didn't get to do too much exploring, i did fulfill a year long dream...a visit to the chocolate spa.

the dream was thwarted last year with my various knee injuries preventing me from attending this particular conference, and, because i had used a groupon the week prior for a chocolate facial and cocoa scrub, i decided to forego the chocolate treatments and indulge in a mojito sugar scrub.

never having done a scrub before, i wasn't sure what to expect, but ultimately i decided it's got the perks of a massage with the added benefit of some yummy smelling exfoliation to boot.  and boy was it yummy smelling!  so much so, that i ordered the product upon my return home.

oooooooooohhh. mojito!

the masseuse?/aesthetician? was absolutely fantastic and it was a comfortable and thoroughly enjoyable experience. i would highly recommend it to anyone, and i can't wait to use my scrub (which just arrived today!)

after the conference, it was time for the real sweet treat.  my flight (because it was significantly less expensive) was originally scheduled to depart from harrisburg to dulles at 7:40pm, with a quick layover before my flight from dulles to la.  but, since i did not have to remain in pennsylvania, i opted to get up at 3am to try and get on a 6:50am standby flight to dulles, leaving the whole day open for me to spend with my family.

i learned two things: 1) it now apparently costs $75 to fly standby (if you make the flight), and 2) if your layover is more than four hours, it is considered a 'stopover' and they will try and charge you for a one-way ticket.

i had an amazing ticket agent who, upon learning about #2 from her supervisor, found a way to circumvent the system when said supervisor was distracted elsewhere.  truly, she went above and beyond, and i was incredibly grateful.

i arrived in virginia at 8:30am, was picked up by dad, and headed to the homestead to catch a couple hours of sleep before meeting up with kate, chris, and the girls.

for those of you who may not yet know, my sister recently got married (a justice of the peace ceremony) and i gained a niece!  her name is whisper and she is 4.  kendyl is enjoying being a big sister, and i think it's a really good thing for her to have that opportunity.

we met at potbelly's for lunch ( a favorite stop when i am back east) and kendyl did not disappoint....literally running across the restaurant, yelling my name, and jumping into my arms for a giant hug.  best. feeling. ever! i hope she is still doing that when she's 15 and 22 and 45, but i guess maybe that's not realistic. :)

me and my girl

after lunch we headed back to the house and spent the entire day talking and playing and catching up.  i was so grateful that they were all willing and able to set aside their normal saturday tasks to be with me, and so grateful that my work provided me the opportunity.

can't wait to see them all again at christmas!  it will be the first time my WHOLE family will be together since adele was born and kate got married, so i am counting down the days:)

august: birthday month o' fun

the end of august will mark a big milestone for me - my 35th birthday. that's right, the birthday that forces you to admit that you are in your 'mid' thirties, no longer sliding by in your early thirties like 34 agreeably let's you do.

while i wrestle with the number and not having yet turned some of my hopes into reality, i decided that instead of getting gloomy and despondent (like i did when i turned 30), i am going to spend the entire month of august CELEBRATING and pampering and laughing and loving and dreaming and learning.

to kick off the birthday month o' fun, a southern california tradition, the pageant of the masters.

i learned (months ago) that this year's theme was 'only make believe,' and i couldn't help but wonder if they chose it just for me, somehow knowing that my birthday was coming! yea or nay, it was ideally suited for me and my friend vicki and I met up in laguna beach for dinner before the show.

laguna tends to be overly auto-congested with challenging parking, so the evening was off to a good start when i found a space about to open up in an otherwise full lot, and the driver of the departing car offered me his parking ticket, so i could avoid the hefty lot fee. happy birthday to me:)

i had chosen a restaurant, based on my friend yelp's high marks, called the lumberyard, and we were more than pleased with the selection. reasonably priced, dimly lit cozy atmosphere, and blue cheese & bacon mac and cheese to DIE for.

after dinner, we headed over to the art festival to peruse the various works before making our way into the bowl for the event.

the pageant is an annual event, taking place june-august every year, for, i think, the last some 70 or 80 years, and is best described as a series of 'living pictures.' works of art are recreated in larger than life size, with living people standing in as the subjects of the sculpture or painting. looking at the works of art, you'd have no idea you were looking at actual people unless you had binoculars and could watch them blink!

the evening was full of fairies and dragons and myths and legends, and i was certain that this had been the perfect way to begin the birthday month o' fun celebration!

and to continue it, last weekend, i scheduled a facial and massage at a local spa. i had purchased a groupon for the treatments, and though i'm not usually one to spend money on those types of indulgences (my indulgences usually lean towards the gadgety and blingy), it was such a good deal, and the offer so tempting, i decided that the birthday month 'o fun needed some pampering. A LOT of pampering!

i arrived at the spa, pleased to find that while it was small, it had a nice atmosphere and the staff was friendly. i spent the first hour enjoying my chocolate facial and the second, my cocoa massage. and yes, the 'chocolate factor' was what made it solo deliciously tempting!

i was especially glad i had taken care of my weekend errands BEFORE the appointment, since the mellow blissful haze lingered (and was allowed to do so) for the rest of the day.

i'm now hershey, pa bound for work, and there are a couple birthday month o' fun events already locked in for the coming week, at least one of which will involve the chocolate spa at hershey hotel. let the celebration continue!

yosemite

a couple of weeks ago, i had my first weekend at home in ... a really long time.  so i decided to leave again, and absconded myself to yosemite!

truthfully, our camping trip had been planned for months, when my roommate got campsite reservations back in march.  and though i would have been happy with some downtime in my own space, i was equally excited to be somewhere there would be absolutely no cell phone reception. woo hoo!

on thursday night, i headed up to the santa barbara area to meet up with my friend jesse and get our gear and food consolidated and organized.  the two hour drive took three, thanks to la traffic, but as a result, i opted to take an alternate route, up the pacific coast highway to the 101 (also a coastal highway).  it ended up being a great solution, despite it's ineffectiveness in reducing the travel time, as many of the recent stressors and exhausters of the last many weeks melted away while i enjoyed the ocean views along the way.

arriving at jesse's late, with my dog cordy along for the ride (her first camping trip), we quickly commenced the sorting and organizing, before sitting down to chat and get caught up.  in the early hours of the am, we finally called it a night, knowing we wanted to get an early start and had a six hour drive the next day.

morning came too early, but a little later than planned as we both overslept. by the time we finally got ourselves together and got on the road it was nearing 11, and the uneventful (thank heavens) drive landed us in the wawona campgound, site #30 by 5:30.

heather and her friend holly had come up the day before, and seemed to still be out and about, so we evaluated the site and planned tent placement, set up jesse's new camp kitchen, and got a fire started.

heather and holly arrived shortly after, and we learned that heather had twisted her ankle on the way down the glacier point hike.  because i was the only one in the group who had no interest in hiking, i had planned to hang out at the campground during the day, enjoying the sun and the river running behind our site,  chilling out with cordy and a book while the others went out adventuring. but with heather's 'condition', the plans changed quickly, and it looked like saturday would be a tour-by-car day.

i got dinner ready for jesse and i (joking with my roommate about how it was the first time in over two years she had ever seen me cook) while he set up his one man tent...and by one man, i mean, it's a ten man tent, but he set up a cot, and end tables and a chair, and by the time he was done, it was a the waldorf astoria of camping.

i was impressed (and only a little jealous) of his pampered camper tent setup.  but after dinner (blue cheese burgers), and dessert (reese's smores), and some campfire chatting, i settled in comfortably to the 'girls tent' for an early night and enjoyed my air mattress in 'heather's hilton.'

morning came early, as it always seems to when camping, but i'd had a good night's sleep (unusual for camping), and was pleased to find that jesse was getting started on our bacon and eggs.

after breakfast we hung out at the camp waiting for our 5th and final camper.  she had been supposed to arrive the previous night but was a no-show, and with no cell reception, we didn't know where she was or if she was planning on joining us at all. so, we decided we would wait another half hour for her to arrive, and if she hadn't, we would leave her a note at the campsite.  we were still discussing the note when her car pulled up.

she had made it up the night before, and successfully found the campsite, but since we were all ensconced in our tents (just barely as it turns out), instead of coming in and hitting the hay, she headed to a nearby hotel for the night, and had come to the campsite to try and catch us.  but it turned out she hadn't showered or brought her stuff with her, so we twiddled our thumbs for awhile while she went back to the hotel to get herself ready.

our first view of yosemite valley

eventually she made it back and we all piled into heather's car...four girls, a guy, and a dog, and headed towards hetch hetchy reservoir.  since holly wouldn't be able to hike, she wanted to see a part of yosemite she had never seen, and the rest of us were on board.

had we known how bad the traffic in yosemite valley would be, or how far hetch hetchy really was, we might have nixed it, but we didn't, and we made the most of it.

gettin wet at bridalveil falls

since we were snail's pacing it through the valley, we made a couple of stops, first at bridal veil falls, then at the yosemite visitor's center (for my passport stamp), and ended up wandering through the ansel adams gallery, where i was specifically invited to come in by an employee who called me in from off the porch, telling me that i was more than welcome to bring my dog inside.  awe - some.

back in the car, we headed for hetch hetchy, and truthfully, i'm not sure it was worth the drive.  it's a beautiful place, but it doesn't compare to the valley and it is way out of the way on windy roads.  and of course, the fact that i couldn't take cordy on the dam meant my experience was 'less than' what it could have been.

happy puppy

we made the most of it of course, and all of us indulged our inner 10 year olds when we passed the sign below on the way back:

to poop, or naut?

from hetch hetchy, we made our way to glacier point, where heather had hurt her ankle the day before.  unbeknownst to them at the time, you can also drive up to glacier point, and the views were spectacular.

view of half dome from glacier point

the sun was going down, so we decided to head back to camp, where jesse and i enjoyed a chili dinner and we all enjoyed chatting around the campfire before calling it a night.

the next morning i woke up, dare i say it, refreshed!  it was the best camping night's sleep i've ever had.  the temperature was perfect, heather's lent air mattress was comfy, and cordy was a perfect snuggle buddy!

lower yosemite falls

after breakfast, we broke camp and headed back into the valley to see yosemite falls.  it was still crowded, but the weather was so perfect, and the falls were full and beautiful. we enjoyed them for a time before deciding it was time to head home.

with a quick stop to the visitor's center to pick up a stamp, and a passport for jesse (yay, another convert!) we made the six hour drive back to santa barbara safely and uneventfully.

while camping always makes me a little tired, and the laundry was piling up, it was a great way to escape, and we couldn't have asked for a better experience!

as usual, tons of pics, here.