Tahoe

This past weekend Rachel and I traveled to Lake Tahoe to celebrate her grandfather's 90th birthday AND his 65th wedding anniversary to Rachel's grandmother. We got into town a day earlier than everyone and had fun zipping around the country side in my fun red rental car:

When we got to the time share that we were staying at I promptly passed out, as for every day of the past week I had gotten maybe 4 hours of sleep. We then headed into downtown South Lake Tahoe and enjoyed a delicious meal and watched the Avengers for the second time (note: still freakin' awesome!).

Since I was only in town until Sunday afternoon we needed to pack as much fun into our days as possible. In this case it meant lots of hiking up picturesque trails where the views were constantly breath taking and the weather was absolutely gorgeous. One note, however, is that apparently Nevada/California don't really mark their trails appropriately or maintain them well, as we were often backtracking to find the place that the ACTUAL trail wanted us to go on, including once in our car where a single lane path along a cliff's edge was apparently supposed to be a two way path to the parking lot. Awkward.

We also went on a cruise on Saturday night where I got to spend time with Shirley and Jack. They're a fun couple to hang around, although Jack can definitely be a card shark when he wants to be. They also probably engaged in the cutest moment ever when they got an entire song to themselves towards the end of the cruise.

We ended our trip with another hike on Sunday morning, and then I drove back to the airport through the local national park, which offered sweeping vista after sweeping vista. Beautiful country, if a bit steep and winding. Would be great for biking, however...

Anyway, here are some of the pictures that I took while hiking. Enjoy!

The bottom couple are from our cruise- it was a paddle boat!

Assemble!

Hey everybody! Work/life/everything has kept me from posting for a while, but I figured that you all would appreciate these pics from this weekend. My one sentence review for the Avengers? I want to see it again and again and again. Just such an incredibly fun, witty, action packed movie where every character has a human side, even the villains. Go see it. NOW.

And, speaking of, here's the pics of me as the Thunder God and Rachel as the Asgardian Prince of Lies. What this says about our relationship is an exercise left up to the reader.

Behold, the jankiness!

Thor out!

A Steamy Valentine's Weekend

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the blog! This past weekend Rachel and I got all gussied up, and I figured it would be a perfect time to get back into this whole blogging thing.

Every so often the Madison Children's Museum hosts what they call an "Adult Swim" night, where adults can wander around the museum without any kiddies and with the aid of alcoholic drinks. This time they had a theme night focusing on the Victorian sci-fi concept known as Steampunk. Rachel and I are, well, not so closeted Steampunk afficionados and jumped at the chance to show off our historically inaccurate selves.

Unfortunately Rachel has not historically had access to quality Steampunk gear, so I've been showing her up at any event that we've attended with my naturally occurring Victorian wardrobe. Well, Rachel was determined to change that this time...

Say hello to Captain Amelia of her royal Majesty's Air Brigade!

Cpt. Amelia doesn't take prisoners, only hearts.

I had to at least try to keep up, but I knew that it just wasn't going to be possible.

There were plenty of strange machines to play around with...

I found this one hilarious: a literal punch buggy! 

They have a large enclosed jungle gym/climbing tree, but I suspect it was more designed for children and not for adults wearing top hats...

Even Daleks like to get steamy on occasion! 

These people won the costume contest (Rachel got to compete!). They were set up as phrenologists, and the guy had some ridiculously cool work done on his leg made from scrap metal.

And there was a guy wandering around on a velocipede. Yay steampunk!

Thanks for reading, and see you next time!