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Ben and I drove up to Mammoth yseterday and skied at June Mountain today. Ben lost his sunglasses again, so we stopped at Target first to buy a replacement pair. He decided that he needed the darkest pair they had for under $20; this is the unfortunate result:

We encounted some exciting storms along 395. First, we had dark skies and pouring rain; then, sunshine and rainbows. Then dark and rain again!

Ben planned to board, not ski, but he forgot his snowboard boots. Since he wasn’t really planning to ski, he didn’t think to scrape the extra wax off his skis before we got to the slopes! Craig left HIS boots in Pasadena and had to rent a pair. Silly boys!

Chaco got to enjoy the slopes (er, well, snow burms), too!

It’s sunny today, but here’s a picture of what it looked like while it was raining:

Also, Chaco had an intense fixation on this apple that Ben ate in bed the other day. He stared at it for a good 10 minutes (when he wasn’t posing for a picture) hoping that we would offer him a piece:

Current forecast for Pasadena:

Remainder Of This Afternoon…Showers…Heavy at Times and scattered thunderstorms. Large hail…Small tornados…Wind gusts to 60 mph…And frequent lightning possible with thunderstorms.

There’s not too much to report here! We spent the rest of our long weekend (1) back at the mall (there IS some Jersey left in me!), (2) doing homework, and (3) eating.

Ben’s tutorees treated us to an authentic Chinese dinner featuring sea creatures I usually have to go scuba diving to see. We had shark’s fin soup, jellyfish, an actual fish, shrimp, scallops, lobster, and sea cucumber (which is actually an animal, not a vegetable, and which is poisonous to the touch — this, I did not try). It was fun, even though I’m not a jellyfish convert :) Then we stopped by Jen Yu’s for a roaring good time. (Anna, we missed you! Get well soon!)

The weather has settled into a routine. The rain stops around 11am, and the skies are overcast and drizzly until about 9pm, when the rain starts again. Around midnight, the torrential downpours and thunder resume and continue through till morning. Crazy weather for California! It’s kind of fun! We pretend that being “part of an El Nino Year” is like “surviving the blizzard of ‘78″ or “the Montgomery tornado”. (A tornado touched down in my New Jersey hometown when I was in fifth grade.) Except it’s not; it’s just rain. The only thing really monumental about these storms are the traffic jams they generate.

On Wednesday, I drove down to the LAX area to talk to several environmental science classes at Environmental Charter High School. It was really different than the high school I went to. The ECHS “campus” is split into two parts (a church education building and new building a block away), and the kids walk between the buildings; in my high school, you got suspended if you went outside. (I’m not joking.) The school has about 300 students and several security guards to watch over them. The first few classes were challenging to work with; I couldn’t get the projector or DVD player to work, the kids couldn’t see me from where they were sitting, and the kids seemed more interested in other things. After I got the kinks worked out, though, it was really fun. One girl said to me, “I think now I want to be a scientist!” and spent 20 minutes playing on the computer with me. That was cool.

I have a lot more respect for my teachers now!

Unfortunately, the traffic was so bad that the nominally 25-minute drive to the airport took over 1:15 each way! I spent a large part of my day staring at this:

It started to rain yesterday and it’s supposed to continue through Monday. This is pretty unusual for LA; we usually get some rain every winter, but we’ve had a LOT of rain! Today, I planned to take Ben on a special (secret) outing, but not one that can be enjoyed in the rain, so we cancelled that. We also planned to leave tomorrow night to go to Death Valley to photograph the wildflowers (which are blooming profusely because of the moisture), but believe it or not, it’s also supposed to rain there too! I looked into going to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park down by San Diego instead, but guess what — rain! Rain! Rain! We’re going to stay home.

Tonight we went shopping. Going to the mall is a weekend social ritual in New Jersey (largely because there is little else to do), so spending an evening in stores reminds me of home — expect in California, you can enjoy dinner at In N Out as part of your mall-night :) Mmmm, double-doubles. I picked up my new bargain-bin waterproof, lined mountaineering mitts at REI and then Ben and I headed over to Sears to check out a supposedly great sale on Land’s End stuff. It wasn’t so great, so we look at refrigerators instead. Did you know that you can buy a $6,600 fridge?!?!

I took the liberty of trying on a prom dress, since we had time to kill anyway. It was fun to try on.

I included the second picture because it looks like my head is a supernova.

Here is a picture of my Valentine and me on our hike on Sunday:

This weekend, I started to feel that, all of a sudden, I’ve gotten behind in my schoolwork. I’ve got a lot to accomplish this week, and I’m not quite sure how to get it done on time. I also have some fun stuff on my plate, so maybe it’s my own fault. Unfortunately, my brain has picked this week to go on vacation. I am unproductive. I think it’s probably because I’m really tired; that’s not because of schoolwork, that’s mostly because I don’t go to bed on time.

Tomorrow I am going to a high school in Los Angeles to talk to four environmental science classes about booming sand dunes. I really hope they enjoy it! I’m bringing a movie to watch and sand to play with, so I expect that it’ll go over pretty well :)

Directions: Exit the 210 at Arroyo in the town of La Canada. Turn right at the light, then follow the road towards the mountains for about a mile. Park in the lot on the left just before the bend in the road. Walk across the intersection of Arroyo and the JPL driveway and follow the paved trail.

Chaco finally got to have some fun today. We went for a stroll behind JPL — up the trail leading to El Prieto, but left at the fork instead of right. The trail follows a stream (which, right now, is quite a river) for several miles, and we took Chaco up there to go swimming.