2nd annual post-tax season mammoth trip (photos)

Here are extra shots from our trip that didn't fit in the narrative:

quick photo update

mother's day

Here are some random pictures from my parents' house that were taken on Mother's Day. I suppose it would have been more appropriate for me to have taken a family picture, but I didn't really think about it. I'm still getting the hang of lighting and exposure adjustments, so I was just fooling around with these.




After having lunch with my parents and my mom's mom, we went to visit Andrea's mom's side of the family at the rest home where her grandmother lives. One of the activities for the residents was to sit and watch this character:

I played around with the color to show that, yes, he really is wearing that. I'm sure this guy's just happy to get a gig. I don't expect there to be much of a market for Robin Hood impersonators who give history of dance lectures and lessons.

least of these - live @ bethany baptist church

gigantic woolly mammoth-sized update

Jeff: Sorry, I had to rip off Clyde's silly pun of a title. Well, I might as well give a shot at a review of our trip to Mammoth before I forget what happened. As an added bonus, this will be our first joint blog-post, but hopefully not the last.

For those who don't know, the weekend after tax season ended, Andrea, Trevor, and I took a trip to Mammoth Lakes, CA. Our guests joined us for three out of four days. The trip up on Thursday was fairly uneventful. We had lunch at The Pizza Factory in Lone Pine. "We Toss 'Em, They're Awesome," they say. It wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't awesome. A few hours later, we arrived in Mammoth. A lot has changed since the last time I was there, and even that was significantly different than years before. We ate dinner at Grumpy's, a sports bar/family restaurant. In all the years of going to Mammoth, I'd never eaten there. In all future years, I don't think we'll eat there again. The food wasn't bad... just not as good as I was hoping. On top of that, Trevor was not having a good night.

Andrea: Not having a good night = cutting new teeth and a pretty painful-looking diaper rash that we discovered when we got back to the condo. We popped him in the bathtub (after a little accident on the bathroom carpet...good thing we had access to the Resolve carpet cleaner... it definitely came in handy throughout the whole weekend...). Thursday night we reclined on the not-quite-as-comfortable-as-the-ground sofa bed and watched COPS until we decided sleep is better than TV.

Jeff: One of the movies in the condo's library was "Left Behind II: Tribulation Force". Those kinds of movies are kind of like car crashes... you have to watch because it's so bad. Actually, I should preface that... I'm usually not one to rubberneck at such scenes. I actually tend to get upset at everyone else for driving so slowly and not watching the road. Which reminds me... on the way up Highway 395, we drove past an accident scene. I was waved through, and, as we passed the damaged autos, someone (a rescue worker, perhaps?) started freaking out, waving his hands in a downward motion and yelling something. Call me crazy, but I figured it would be more polite to drive on through rather than gawk at the carnage. I guess 20 mph was pushing it a bit (apparently). All that to say, I made a point to watch "Left Behind II" on Friday morning while we were waiting for Clyde & Co. to arrive. (Props to Buck Williams for outsmarting the anti-christ. You rock.) And how could I not watch it? It was right there... calling out to me. Now you know why I flip through every Filthy Christian Stores catalog we get. To gawk at the carnage.

Andrea: We also let Trevor have his first experience in the snow while we waited for Clyde, Lisa, and Claire. He wasn't too excited about it... he didn't like to walk in it. And after a while, he didn't even want to stand in it.

Jeff: Trevor did look pretty cute all decked out for the snow.




Jeff: I think the TV was on almost the entire time, even when no one was watching. Since we don't have cable at home, I suppose it was okay. We watched a lot of COPS, and also a lot of shows on Discovery Health.

Andrea: One of the more interesting ones was called "Trauma in the ER" or something like that. It was filmed in the San Francisco county hospital, so there were all sorts of interesting people coming in... a crack addict with a flesh-eating infection in her leg from infected needles (She was with a friend and had passed out. The friend decided to take a nap, then woke up 8 hours later and thought maybe he should take her to the hospital. She was pretty critical because they needed to get an IV in her but couldn't find a vein because they were all used up.); a transient who was hit by a vehicle while crossing the street; a guy with a stab wound in the neck; a guy who was high, standing in the middle of a busy street directing traffic... naked; anyways, some interesting stuff. You definitely see the consequences of bad choices working in a place like that.

Jeff: On Friday night, we played a couple games of Carcassonne. My ninja army (the black pieces) demolished the competition, as you can see in this picture:


Jeff: No, not that one... this one... It looks like I'm in third place, but I've actually lapped everyone! Ha ha! Andrea calls the black pieces the "undocumented workers." I guess she's afraid to call them "illegals" just like... ah, never mind, you know who I'm talking about.

I lost the next game.

Andrea: And I believe I won the next game. My educated farmers outwitted the illegals.

Jeff: Whatever. Later, we played a bit of speed Scrabble. I think this is the only round I won, but what a round! "TAB" and "ROLL" are pretty elementary, but I should have gotten quadruple points for "THORAX!" After that round, there was pretty much no reason to continue. I mean, come on... how you gonna top "THORAX"? Bring it on. Heh heh.

Andrea: That was after I totally creamed Jeff in a game of regular Scrabble. Funny he forgot to mention that.

Jeff: Yeah, funny. Anyway, Friday night we went out for ice cream. I've previously mentioned Swenson's Ice Cream Parlor, which is long gone. Mammoth Lakes Ice Creamery (or something like that) sounded promising... Dreyer's ice cream, drinks, etc... but it was closed. The nerve! We settled on Moose Tracks ice cream from Vons, which isn't really settling, but we spent a good twenty minutes (or more) in line. But that was okay. Clyde and I discussed Darby's music (among other things). At that time, I had still not heard his second album, so Clyde filled me in.

Andrea: Trevor and I stayed in the car while the rest of the clan went in to get the ice cream. Trevor looked particularly chubby in his jacket strapped into the car seat, so I snapped a few pictures.

Andrea: I kept him entertained by turning the interior dome lights on and off (complete with sound effects). There was some guy roaming around the parking lot trying to get people to buy lift tickets or some equivalent off of him. I witnessed a transaction in front of the car next to me. I think he was scamming them.

Jeff: On Saturday, we hit up the outlets in town. We bought Trevor some gloves and two pairs of rain boots.

Andrea: The gloves were originally $7.95, on sale for 50% off. They came to $4.26 including tax. The rain boots were the buy of the weekend though - originally $30, marked down to $5 each!!! I got two pairs in different sizes. I have no idea when he'll grow into them. I just hope he doesn't outgrow both of the before we hit the next rainy season.

Jeff: We walked into a store that had animal heads on the wall, including two large bison heads (I used to call that Bear Country Jamboree style, but after Disneyland (CA) decided to close that attraction, and Disney then had the gall to turn it into a really stupid movie, I now call it Claim Jumper style). When Trevor saw them, he started making his cow sound "Mmmmm!" I wish I had it on video. I think a bison head would go nicely over our TV, but I don't have a spare $10,000 burning a hole in my pocket.

After the outlets, we stopped at Schat's Bakkery for some goodies... a cinnamon roll for me, a pecan danish thing for Andrea, a cookie for Trevor, and (drumroll) stroopwaffels! Ever since reading about them on the Republic of Texas Records message boards, I've been curious, but I didn't think I'd ever actually find any. They didn't disappoint. No doubt not the most authentic version, but probably a step above the Trader Joe's version.


Andrea: I was excited about the bakery... perhaps one of my favorite places to go. Everything looked good. Unfortunately, the pecan thing I got wasn't really that good. I didn't even finish it.

Probably the most exciting thing about the weekend (for me at least) was that it snowed! I think I've been in falling snow before, but it was a really long time ago, and I don't remember it falling quite as much as it did in Mammoth. (The only time I remember being in falling snow was at... um... Indian Maiden camp? And I don't think we even went outside.) It was already gorgeous when we got there, but the fresh snow made it even more so. All the pictures that Jeff took were views from the condo.

Jeff: We had fresh snow Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I know this isn't much for people who are not native to Southern California, and it's by no means the most snow I've seen up here, but I didn't want Jeep to feel left out of all this picture-taking business. I ended up throwing some of the snow at Jeep's windows when Trevor was inside. He thought this was hilarious and laughed hysterically.

Jeff: I ended up taking a lot of pictures of the scenery. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. I really like our new camera, and I really like having such great subject material.









Andrea: Trevor still didn't want to have anything to do with the snow, but he sure did enjoy getting pushed around on the sled by Dad. Unfortunately, Dad got tired, so I suggested that they sled down the little hill created by the snowplows. Trevor enjoyed that as well.

Here's Trevor watching the snow fall:


Scarf-Boy


Trevor getting his groove on.


Jeff: Saturday night, Clyde, Lisa, and Andrea tackled a Sudoku while I watched some of Jurassic Park 3 on TV. (Andrea: By the way, my previous feeling about Sudoku still holds.) I didn't skip out because I dislike it that much, especially since I've never even tried one, but I wasn't in a mood to think. I was in a mood to relax. Hence JPIII. I saw this one twice in the theaters, not because it was that good, but because I didn't pay either time. (Since this weekend, Clyde has not ceased to tease me about JPIII.) After Sudoku, Clyde & Lisa treated us to some cannoli they bought at the bakery... except it wasn't straight cannoli... it had a mocha-type flavor and the pastry wasn't crunchy. It was still tasty, though. We finished off the night with Star Wars Ep. III. (Don't worry Y, we'll still do Batman Begins at your place.) There's no real point for me to give my thoughts on Ep. III. It would be kind of like me giving my review of the light bulb or the combustion engine. That's a really bad way of saying it's old news.

On Sunday morning, we departed for home. We ate lunch at Upper Crust Pizza Factory in Bishop, CA. This was quite a bit closer to "awesome," and ironic in that there's also a Pizza Factory in Bishop.


Jeff: On the way home, the sky looked like a giant painting. Andrea snapped some great shots. Here's one:


Andrea: We drove through a storm on the way home. There was a big downpour in a field that looked pretty cool. That's what this shot is, in case you couldn't tell.


Andrea: Trevor decided his bear needed a sip of water. That was the first time I ever saw him do that, and thankfully he did it again so I could get a picture of it.


Andrea: Trevor slept for about two hours on the way home, and fussed for the rest of it. I think he was sad to leave Mammoth too. Or maybe he was just sick of riding in the car.

Jeff: We bought a tub of Jelly Belly jelly beans for our time in Mammoth, and returned with only 25-30% eaten.

Jeff: Speaking of snack food, about a month ago, my mom gave me a snack one of her hapa students gave her. It's sweet corn covered in something sweet. I thought it tasted similar to white chocolate, and wasn't even sure it was real corn until Andrea said it tasted exactly like canned sweet corn. That ruined it for me, but I had to snap a pic before throwing them away. Crazy half-Japanese kids (although I suspect this product may actually be Korean...anyone in the know?).

Jeff: Speaking of Japanese things, I bought some new shoes. Normally I wouldn't post about that, but they're the most comfortable shoes I've ever had, and I happen to like them a lot. But outsourcing seems the way to go, because my "Japanese" Tigers were made in China. Oh well.

Jeff: Early this week, I had some extra time during lunch so I drew a quick sketch of my desk at work. I've got some pretty serious problems with perspective, but it is what it is.