Epic Road Trip, Days 7-9, etc.

You didn't miss much! Heidi got an interview in D.C., so we drove over right quick. About 25 hours of driving in three days, in fact. But we enjoyed it. Heidi is interviewing for a tutoring job as we speak, and I'm in the same coffee shop watching her impress the interviewer. A job interview in a coffee shop! How cool is that? My job is still somewhat up in the air, but I'm pretty sure I've got it. The job would be incredibly awesome.

So we're probably moving to D.C.!

Or more like the Ashburn area. It's not too far from D.C.

We don't have a home yet, so we're casually looking for a place to rent. After Heidi's interview, we're touring a little townhouse. Of course, we can't rent until we're sure we've got jobs, but we're right on the verge of being sure.

"You look terrible, Sean." "Quiet, self!" "You're talking to yourself, Sean."

Sorry we haven't taken pictures in a while. The driving was uneventful (fortunately) and now that we're in D.C. we've been PTSD-triggeringly busy. Driving to interviews in D.C. is stressful. Our nerves are about shot what with the intense driving, interviewing, and homelessness (we've found a week-long place to stay for cheap, so we're okay).

Fun? Yes. Terrifying? Yes.

Epic Road Trip, Continued

Day 4: Yellowstone!

After a long drive from Glacier to Yellowstone, we found a campsite at Indian Creek and settled in. The next morning we got up early and toured Yellowstone, including Old Faithful, the Paint Pots, the Mud Volcano, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, Yellowstone Falls, and countless steam vents, pools, and geysers.

We ate lunch with Gus the buffalo, who sat and watched us from the nearby woods. Four times during the trip we were close enough to touch buffalo just by driving along the road. We also saw coyote, dear, elk, and maybe a bear. Without binoculars we weren't quite sure.

During our two nights in Yellowstone, the temperature dipped below freezing and frost covered our tent, firewood, and car. The first night and morning we couldn't get a fire started with the wet and cold wood, but the second night we made it work and had grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and corn on the cob. The next morning a sweet couple from Scotland or Ireland (maybe one from each?) had some left over boiling water so we were able to have a hot breakfast!

Day 5: To Grandma's House

We left Yellowstone and drove across Wyoming, including the charming town of Emblem, population: 10. By that evening, we were in my Grandma's house in Hot Springs, SD, enjoying hot homemade food, hot showers, and a real bed.

Day 6: East as far as we can get

This morning we had to leave Grandma and Uncle Carl, sadly, and continue our trek. I got an unexpected phone call inviting me to interview for a teaching job in an inner-city DC charter school. I'd applied months ago, but wasn't hired, until a teacher quit after school had already started. I'm interviewing Tuesday, and if I get the position, starting on Wednesday. Sean also got pleasant news when his top choice for a job contacted him and informed him that they are "very much interested" in him! We're so excited to have things start to work out and are making our way to DC as fast as we can. Nothing's final until it's final, of course, so if we don't get the jobs, we'll just pick up our epic road trip from there and head north to see Boston, New England, and Niagara Falls.

Epic Road Trip, Day 3

After several days in the mountains with no cell service, we finally found a friendly Starbucks in Great Falls to update our blog.  So far we are loving the trip, although it has been rainier, windier, and colder than we ordered.

Day 1: Flathead Lake
We stayed at a gorgeous little campground right on the lakeshore.  The weather was perfect!

Day 2: Glacier National Park
The next day we drove up and through Glacier on the Going-to-the-Sun Road.  The scenery was stunning but the road slightly scary.  There was construction all along it with construction workers wearing full climbing harnesses!  At the top of Logan Pass, it was sleeting, so we headed down quickly and pitched camp at Rising Sun Campground, which was cold and wet but protected from the wind by some trees.  It rained all night and into the morning, but we learned that our tent is so amazing that even when the tarp underneath collects a puddle of water, we stay dry!

Day 3: Moving toward Yellowstone

Since it was still raining, we decided not to hang around any longer and packed up in a hurry.  On our way out we stopped for some hot showers to cheer us up.  Since then, we've been driving through alternating storms and sunny weather toward Yellowstone National Park.  We'll be there a couple days, probably without service, but we'll update after that! Feel free to look at our Picasa web album. The link is on the right under "Picasa Photostream."

Epic Road Trip!

We don't even know where we're going! Actually we have a vague idea for the first week that puts us in Boston. We'll hit Glacier, Yellowstone, Mammoth Hot Springs, and the Badlands. But we'll try to blog throughout the adventure, assuming we can find internet. There's a cool widget on the right over there that should tell you where we are. Also, we hope to be uploading photos throughout, and you'll be able to see all of them by clicking on Picasa photostream. It's on the right column, too. I try to put a photo in every post, but I can't think of anything relevant. So here's a brick being thrown into a dryer:

We're back!

It's been over a year since we've updated this blog. You didn't miss TOO much. We spent another Summer in Rosario where I did my research.

Fresh Cut Improv was a major project of ours over this last school year, and we're proud of how it's been going. We spent Christmas in Baja and Spring Break in Las Vegas.

I wrote and successfully defended my thesis, "Temporal patterns in preening of Glaucous-winged Gulls." I graduated with a Masters in Biology while Heidi graduated with a Masters of Arts in Teaching. And lastly, I learned that when you click on the Comments button below you are bombarded with Obscene Amounts of Orangeness.

So where are we now? Heidi has some tutoring jobs lined up in Washington, DC, and I've applied for several jobs over there too. I'm REALLY hoping to get one of them. We had to move out of our house since we graduated, so we've been hanging out with family the last couple weeks. But if we're going to DC (and it looks likely), our families will want to know what we're doing, which is why this blog is going to be updated more frequently. I promise.

Seattle Trip

Last Sunday Sean and I drove to Seattle.  We had two objectives: to have fun and to find some veggiemeat.  We’ve been kind of struggling without Stripples, Big Franks, and FriChik, specifically.  How do people find such food if they don’t live in Walla Walla or Loma Linda?

So for our first objective, we went to the Seattle Center to go to a museum with exhibits on music, sci-fi films, and Jim Henson’s Muppets.  On the way there we saw a big festival complete with amusement-park rides, cotton candy, balloons, and music.  It looked like fun so we wandered over innocently.  As we were walking, I vaguely heard something about “pride,” but kept walking.  All of a sudden we saw a group of about 6 guys wearing nothing but spray paint and tennis shoes and dancing in a fountain.  That moment of shock awoke us to the unusual outfits, behavior, rainbow theme, and lots of public indecency all around us.  We turned to go back the way we’d come, and saw a rather frantic woman trying to lead a group of elementary kids on a tour to the museum – apparently she failed to check the calendar to see what was planned for the day! 

After that we went into the museum, walked downtown, did some shopping, watched the fish-throwers, all the normal things you do in Seattle.  After a long but fun day our feet were sore from the miles we walked.  We decided to head home and grab some FriChik on the way.  We were certain that Fred Meyer would definitely have it, so typed that into our GPS.  The first building we went to looked like a bank, so we decided that wasn’t promising.  The next one was further out of the way, but bigger and normal-looking.  Turns out they don’t carry any food or grocery items.  I’d never heard of a Fred Meyer without food.  Disappointed, we drove on.  I called ahead to the third Fred Meyer and confirmed that they did indeed carry veggiemeat before we stopped.  When we finally found it, there was some Morningstar stuff, but the rest looked very strange.  It was then that I realized how gross veggiemeat looks, especially veggie bacon strips.  We took what we recognized and one new thing to try, and left for home.  And so ended another eventful and exciting day in our lives.

Our House

For anyone that was wondering, I thought I’d put up some pictures of what our house looks like. It’s college-owned, so it’s less than a block from school, which is awesome. We get to walk everywhere! This is the attic/game room/den/my sewing & music room. This is our semi-creepy basement, which I avoid except to do laundry.

More rooms, you can guess what they are. Now to the outside: Door to the outside world, complete with rain boots just in case! The yard and my row of lilac bushes, blooming right now :). Just to give you an idea of how close we live, our house is on the left and the college is the white building on the right. This is the perfect house for us, we just love it.