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I didn’t have much time in between my trip to New Jersey and a visit from our friends Rich and Zena — just a day! They flew out here to visit before they move to Switzerland. Rich is studying aquatic chemistry or something, and his advisor moved to Switzerland, leaving Rich as the only water chemistry guy at Caltech. (He actually studies the sediment left behind by the water, but I’m not sure what that’s called … water sediment chemistry? post-water sediment chemistry?) So, in August, he and his new wife Zena are making the Big Move.

The best thing about having Rich and Zena here is they like to run. A lot. Zena just completed a half marathon (13 miles! OMG, I would be so dead after, like, three miles!) and Rich will run anywhere, anytime. AND … they like to run with the dogs. The first morning they were here, they took them running down the summer road, which I thought was absolutely crazy. Rich said, “Yeah, my arms are a little sore.” A little? They took Saturday off to nurse their muscles, and plunged back in on Sunday morning with another run. Crazy, but definitely appreciated by our canine family members!

We didn’t do anything super-tiring while they were here … sorry, Rich and Zena! We did, however, drive around Rocky Mountain National Park on Saturday. The coolest thing at one of the pull-outs on Trail Ridge Road was a marmot, seemingly oblivious to the tourists, who was licking a rock fence. I don’t know what tasted so good, but the marmot was cool!

We probably won’t see them again for a while, unless we happen to go to Switzerland, where the time change would kill me. However, it was good to see them one last time before they disappear to the other side of the planet! Thank you for coming, Rich and Zena! :)

Oh, goodness, where did I leave off? At Jake and Kate’s engagement? Sorry about that. Let me tell you about the rest of my NJ trip …

Well, Thursday afternoon Mom, Dad, and I visited Grandma and Grandpa in their retirement village. It was good to see them! They were doing remarkably well. Grandpa has had a little excitement — he fell out of bed one day while he was on Ambien (which, as I can attest, gives you *strange* dreams — I took it my first night in the hospital and NEVER again!) and broke his hip. He had surgery, but it didn’t work, so he wanted his hip replaced. His cardiologist thought differently, however. He had an angioplasty before the hip surgery. Anyway, now he’s got a new hip, but while he was in the hospital, his diabetes flared up. Long story short, now he’s got sores on his feet (a symptom of diabetes) so he can’t walk, so he can’t *really* do his physical therapy. Which prompted him to ask me, about twenty minutes into my visit, “Would you take a picture of my feet?” It’s good to be back with Grandma and Grandpa. They’re just so … Grandma and Grandpa! :)

Friday and Saturday were spent in northern New Jersey visiting my cousin Jen and her 14-month-old baby, Josh. Oh my goodness, he is SO cute.

I learned a little bit about what 14-month-olds do: mostly, it’s play. He’s got about a bazillion toys spread out all over the living room, some of which we are NEVER going to get. The Elmo that wakes up and asks you, unprompted, “What’s your favorite food for lunch, Josh?” is one of them. The gears on the refridgerator which sing “A-B-A-B-A-B-C-D-…” are another. Jen says it’s hard to avoid, because you get many of them as gifts, but we’ll see about that … (see below).

He doesn’t talk much, but that’s apparently normal for someone his age. He doesn’t understand much of what you say, either, like, “No hitting, Joshua!” But that’s OK. He’s ADORABLE and one of the most happy-go-lucky kids I’ve ever met. :)

On Friday, Jen and her husband Bryan drove me out to the Appalachian Trail, where they’re search and rescuers. It was really pretty.

I didn’t have the energy to visit with everyone else, namely my cousin Kelly and my aunt and uncle, because I got a cold. :( Colds have a way of wiping me OUT nowadays. This one was no exception. My parents and I watched “Spiderman 3″ instead; it was a nice break, and a fun movie, too.

Sunday, we drove down to Montgomery and attended church at Montgomery United Methodist, where Ben and I got married. It was fun! I saw Pastor Tony, who seemed to be doing really well, and enjoyed the music of a harpist. I wouldn’t want to have to drag that around! I guess you get out of marching band, though. :)

After lunch, I went to my friend Nicole’s. It was great to catch up! Nicole’s in an MDPhD program and having about as much fun in the PhD portion as I had in my brief graduate career. Poor Nicole. Anyway, it was great to hear how her life’s going! Unfortunately, I was getting pretty tired, and Mom and Dad were out house-hunting and couldn’t pick me up right away. Do you sense a theme here? I was exhausted, still nursing my cold, and I wanted to go HOME.

The next day, Monday, I went to visit my friend Emily, who graduated from Caltech in my class. She got married the same time as I did and moved to Princeton, where her husband’s a graduate student; however, she didn’t waste two years in graduate school. She’s got two kids! John is 2 1/4 years old, and Anna is 6 1/2 months. These kids are going to grow up to be geniuses, I think :) Seriously. There’s no TV in their apartment, so the kids watch any shows. They read books! They load the dishwasher! All before age three! However, John still doesn’t talk. Emily said that this is fairly common in kids born to two people who are mathematicians or musicians, and that she’s not too concerned about it, but they have a speech therapist come anyway. And … these kids didn’t have any obnoxious toys hanging around the house. I asked Emily about that, and she said, “We asked everybody not to give us anything with batteries.” Voila! “Oh,” was all I could say. “That makes sense.” Maybe it IS possible to have a kid-friendly house without any robotic singing …

And that’s the end of my trip! We drove up to Newark that night and stayed right next to the airport. Newark is incredibly busy. And loud. Neither of which I like. At all. I’m glad I went, though; the thought of moving in with my parents vanished when I drove to the airport. To have to do that every time I fly somewhere, which is pretty often, seems painful. So is the thought of moving to Mongomery, which is growing like a week.) :( Such is the life of a 25-year-old stroke survivor! I’m very happy nestled out here in the woods.

More on my trip when I learn to work Aperture to edit my pictures. We celebrate the boys’ birthdays in between their real birthdays, which are two days apart. Here’s this year’s celebration …

In other news, I interviewed at Sylvan Learning Center, and I got the job! It’s part time, which is a VERY good thing. I’ll be tutoring high school math and science. I’m looking forward to it!

Greetings from Princeton, New Jersey! On Thursday, after I slept in until eleven, my parents took me to the shore. We had quite an adventure! To tell you the rest, here’s Jake …

Hello. My mom still hasn’t bought me a gorilla keyboard, so this may be short. I am engaged to Kate! Mom took me to the Ski Ball store at the beach. It’s a giant room filled with many noise-making machines including several ski ball machines. I played and won a LOT of tokens. (Mom helped. She had a high score of 270,000!) I took my winnings and bought Kate a ring. It’s a laser ring, and it fits around her wrist instead of her finger because she doesn’t really have fingers. I asked her to marry me, and she responded with a definite nod of her head, “Yes!” We haven’t decided when the wedding will be.

Here’s another picture of us after I finally realized that I put the ring on the wrong hand. She is SO pretty! :)

Kathy again:

A couple other snapshots from Thursday include my dad standing under a sign, looking kind of worried:

And a new delicacy at the beach. I can’t even picture what they look like! Gross!

A quick note to say that I’m off again. On Wednesday morning, Ben and I are leaving for opposite sides of the country; him to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Mateo, and me to north and central New Jersey. Our dogs are staying at home. Wish me a wonderful week full of energy (I’m going to need it)!

It’s amazing what a difference a week makes. A week ago, it was snowing — and sticking! Now, it’s quite warm — about 65 F — and … our trees have budded! It happened practically overnight. Friday there was nothing. Yesterday, I noticed a few tiny leaves, and today? Today, our trees are GREEN. That’s fantastic! I was worried that they were going to stay dead forever! But they’re not. We’ve got lush, beautiful, green leaves! :)

Please pardon the lack of a border on this picture — I haven’t installed Photoshop on my newly-revived (thank you, Ben!) computer yet. This is the best iPhoto can do.

On Friday, Ben took me to Broomfield to see “Lucky You”. I warned him about the IMDB ratings, but he insisted. It was so bad that I left halfway through to go buy myself some Sour Patch Kids (the gummy worms with the sour coating). Too bad they only had an imitation brand — and $4, at that!

“Lucky You” was the worst movie I’ve seen in a long time, except the documentary about the New York City homeless people I got on Netflix that featured lots of homeless people (well, duh) in black and white explaining how they moved into subway tunnels. As a romantic comedy, it flunks, and as a poker movie, Ben tells me, it sucks too. Don’t waste your money on this one. :(

Finally, this is going to sound weird, but I’m trying meditation after reading in “The Happiness Hypothesis” that it’s one pretty much guaranteed way to become happier. (The other two, if you’re wondering, are cognitive therapy — learning to recognize your bad thoughts and make them go away — and Prozac/antidepressants. I’m now two out of three. :) I subscribed to a meditation podcast on iTunes, and the April script is about “Your Sacred Space”.

The narrator tells you to imagine going to a place that makes you feel relaxed and at peace. For me, that is on the trail of a hike Ben and I did in 2000 in Colorado. You’re supposed to imagine going down a staircase or into a cave, but I kept coming back to this hike we did. (Actually, to be perfectly honest, I couldn’t decide between that hike and others that I’ve done in Colorado. The one I’m talking about, though, had a stretch where we definitely went DOWN, which is why I picked it.) Then, you’re supposed to imagine that you get a gift. It’s in a box, which could be fancy, ornate box or a hollowed out tree stump. I picked a camera. Just a point and shoot. You’re then supposed to feel your gift — does it have texture? — and smell it — huh? Then you’re supposed to choose a gift to leave in your sacred space. I thought and thought, but the only thing I could come up with was a reduction in carbon emissions. :)

What would you choose? Your sacred space, a gift IN your sacred space, and a gift FOR your sacred space. Reply in comments or your blog! I’m curious!

There’s more! :)

Ben and I explored an area known as “Davis Creek,” where the ocean meets a stream. When we went, we were accompanied by an obnoxious horsefly; I returned later with bug spray.

There’s a batik factory about three and a half miles from the lodge, and Ben and I took a tour and tried our hand at it. It was fun! I wouldn’t want to do it for my whole life, though … I can’t imagine stamping fabric all day, every day.

This is, believe it or not, a sting ray! I don’t know what he was doing here (there wasn’t anything to eat, at least not that I saw), but whatever floats his boat …

Oh! The water! Do you see the waves out at the break? It was pretty windy when I took this picture, and I didn’t want to venture out with the divers because of this wave. It was only after I’d actually *been* out there that I realized it wasn’t a three-foot standing wave! It’s about six inches of white water with dark blue water behind it — not on TOP of it. I felt rather silly.

And a mud abstract:

The dock, in two views:

The honeymooners Steve and Leigh, who hail from Georgia. They got the stomach flu upon arrival, but were up and at ‘em two days later. :)

And then, the plane ride out. I think the lodge is in this picture somewhere, but I’m not sure where.

And, my trusty friend Jake enjoying the movie on the plane ride home.

That’s it, folks! From now on, you’ll have to read about my boring, post-stroke life! I hope you enjoyed it! :)