Amanda enters the Winchester Mystery House

Amanda enters the Winchester Mystery House
Originally uploaded by surferdwa.

Mandi, Tiffany, and I all trekked down to San Jose for some exploring today. Our first stop was the Winchester Mystery House. The short story is the lady who inherited the Winchester rifle company fortune was told by a psychic that she was haunted by the souls of the people killed by the rifles. To appease the souls, she was required to build onto this house 24/7 for over 30 years.

The end result is stairs that lead to the ceiling, cupboard doors that lead into rooms, tiny doors, big doors, rooms with windows into other rooms and rooms with windows into walls. Seriously crazy. We had a lot of fun.

Tiffany's School

Tiffany's School
Originally uploaded by surferdwa.

We flew out to Fresno, CA so Tiffany could wrap up one semester and start her summer session. We had a great time hanging out at the dinner social with the students and professors. Tiffany has a great group of people teaching her and they were all very interested in talking technology with me.

I spent the days hanging out in the hotel room and exploring Fresno with Tiffany when she had breaks between classes. We found an exceptional restaurant with tasty fresh California style food. Onward to Palo Alto to hang out with Mandi!

T's B-day

Hippos in ABQ
Originally uploaded by surferdwa.

Sunday was Tiffany's birthday, so we took a trip down to Albuquerque. We spent most of the day at the Zoo. It was a very exciting time with a 1 month old hippo baby (seen here) a 2 week old giraffe baby, and a lot of homo sapien babies. Our favorites for the day were the big cats. They were being very active, the tiger playing in the water and the lion strutting his stuff.

After the Zoo we saw a movie about archeology in Greece at the natural history museum. It was a beautiful movie, with wonderful music... and it was sooooo very hard to keep our eyes open with all that peaceful scenery.

We then retired to a fine Italian dinner where I let it slip that it was Tiffany's birthday. The waiter came by and belted out "Happy Birthday" in Italian and then Tiffany received some huge cake/brownie/chocolate covered goodness.

After that we barely made it home and pretty much went straight to bed.

Snow May 5th?!?!

Snow May 5th?!?!
Originally uploaded by surferdwa.

After a couple of near 80°F weeks Tiffany and I felt it was safe to buy some flowers and get the patio in shape. Surprise! No sooner had we transplanted and water, the snow came. It's Tiffany's Birthday tomorrow, and she was loudly protesting the fact that there was white stuff falling from the sky on her birthday weekend.

So we moved all the plants into the dining room, made a fire and pulled out our "independent studies" books. We're calling our non-school, non-work related books independent studies because we're nerds. Tiffany is studying español in preparation for her Mexico immersion trip. I'm currently reading about fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms for data mining.

Skiing in May

Calm before the storm
Originally uploaded by surferdwa.

Well, I've made my goal of skiing in May (the 4th). Nikki and I trekked up under the Sierra chair lift. The snow was loosing stability underneath, so Nikki and I were post holing about 1/3 of the time. The post holing took its tole and I bonked hard when I got to the top. Made skiing on the way down interesting. The snow was great though, and we had a fun trip down.

It snowed in town the next day, so I can only imagine what it was doing up on the mountain. I may be able to lay tracks in June!

Pinquarters

Pinquerters
Originally uploaded by surferdwa.

Tiffany and I went to the laundromat this morning to knock all of the laundry out. Usually it takes about 3 days to do laundry in our little stacked washer and dryer. By the end of the 3 days, you're already needing to do another load, and so the cycle continues.

I'm trying to bring the camera with us in case something cool comes up. I don't know if anyone else thinks so, but I thought the pink background was awesome for the stack of change that is ready to be turned into clean clothes.

The Nambe Chutes

The Nambe Chutes
Originally uploaded by surferdwa.

Nikki and I hiked to the top of the Nambe Chutes on Sunday afternoon. We took the long way up, skirting the edge of the ski area. It took just over two hours to get to the top, but we were rewarded with an amazing view and some spectacular skiing.

The Sangre de Cristos got a couple more inches of snow Saturday, so there was some wonderful spring skiing to be had. We took Burro Alley back down which was track free (until Nikki went plowing down it). I think it was Nikki's first Black Diamond run and she handled it very well. She almost had a total yard sale when her front paws sunk in and her butt kept right on going, but she managed to pull it out.

I think there will be plenty of snow for Skiing the first weekend in May!