Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving this past weekend! Jessie and I spent the holiday with my grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins in Las Vegas this year. We had a great time, as it was nice to see family that we don't get to visit too often. The food was great....Grandma won a free turkey dinner (with all the fixins) from a casino drawing, and my Aunt Polly's husband Randal whipped up a ham along with a whole mess of other delicious food. We missed all of you back in Ohio, sorry we couldn't be there too!


For the remainder of the weekend, we mostly hung out with my Grandma and Grandpa. They took us to play bingo a few times, but unfortunately no one was having any luck so we all went home empty handed. Friday night, Jessie and I went out to the Venetian to see the Blue Man Group. If you're ever in Vegas, I would HIGHLY reccomend going to one of their shows....it was amazing! The Venetian itself was pretty impressive as well. It is done up inside to look like Venice, complete with all the shops, canals, and street performers.

The drive home was a bit of a drag....we hit the typical Sunday exodus from Vegas as all of the Californians return home from the weekend. That, coupled with an accident or two, made for nearly a 10 hour journey home. =( Maybe next time we'll just fly.....

New car! (sort of)....

So....today we bought a vehicle. It's a 1995 Isuzu Rodeo, 3.2L V6, and 4wd. It may come as a bit of a surprise (even to us!), seeing as how we weren't even planning on buying a vehicle anytime soon. But, one of the advantages to living on a military base is that people are moving all the time, often overseas, so there is always an abundance of second-hand goods for cheap because people are just trying to get rid of stuff. And that's how we came across this. A fellow a few blocks down the road is moving to some small island off the coast of Portugal, and was auctioning off a bunch of stuff so he didn't have to hassle with putting it back in storage. For now, we'll probably park it and keep driving the Saturn.....but once we have to turn the Vue in this spring, hopefully the Isuzu will be a much cheaper alternative than buying the Saturn after it's lease.

Other than that, there really isn't much new news to report. Jessie is doing well, and I am starting to get accustomed to working at C&D. It looks like we will be spending Thanksgiving with some of my family in Las Vegas this year, and we are still looking for flights back to Ohio for around Chirstmas. We'll keep you all posted once we figure it out!

Got Fog?

This has been what it has looked like at Vandenberg for the past week. Fog from sun up to sun down.....oh what fun. You actually get wet from just standing outside. I actually snapped this picture on the highway, during my morning commute to work today. Hopefully it will clear up before too long, because I'm not sure how much longer I can take of this stuff! Remind me to never complain again when it is overcast in Ohio...... =)

Weekly Update

Sorry the blogging has been a little sparse lately, but we've been busy! Here's what's been happening lately:

So it's official. I started working last week, and overall its been a good experience. I still haven't quite figured out what my niche at C+D is going to be, but I do know this much: I will be working in their VLJ (very light jet) program, and I will be learning a lot about composites. I'm pretty happy with it so far, seeing as how it's aerospace and I will be learning about something that interests me. I haven't actually started working as an "engineer" yet, and have been spending most of my time in the lay-up room learning how to fabricate composite thingys. So if you know me well at all, you will know that I've been enjoying it since I am actually making things. And if you have a spare $3.2 million in the bank and want to pick up your own personal Embraer Phenom 100 personal jet, you can rest assured that I could have been the one to make some of the parts. =)

This weekend was particularly productive. We got a lot done around the house, including finally hanging some stuff on the walls. So our house is slowly starting to look like some young-adults live here....rather than a couple of ramen-eating, futon-dwelling, spartan college students. We also went to a HUGE pumpkin patch, and picked out some prime candidates for carving. So now we're officially prepared for all the trick-or-treaters.

If you've seen the news at all lately, you'll know that quite a bit of southern California has been declared a state of emergency because it's burning to the ground. We're okay, and the closest fire is still and hour or two south of us, so we haven't felt the effects of it quite yet. You can still smell it, however, and visibility is down quite a bit during the day. Looking to the south there is a haze that is hanging it the valleys which kind of looks like heavy fog...but it's not. An interesting note though, I checked the weather report yesterday and it said this:



Yep, that's right....smoke. Not sunny, or partly cloudy, or even rain....but smoke. Now there's something that you'll never see in Ohio!

Adventures of Potato Man!

Travelocity has the Roaming Nome......we have Potato Man. Throughout our little cross-country jaunt, we took Potato Man with us and photographed him at various landmarks. The whole thing started as a little joke for Jessie's mom, and has since snowballed from there. So.....you can bet that our little tuberous friend will be accompanying us for all of our future excursions.

I uploaded all of Potato Man's pictures to a new album in our Shutterfly gallery, so you can check him out there. I know that they're not "new" pictures, per se, but there's still fun to look at. =)

Camping in the Sequoia National Forest

Jessie and I just got back from a wonderful weekend of camping in the Sequoia National Forest. The northern end of the forest contains the large, several thousand year old trees that you can drive through. While that definitely remains a must-see destination on our trip list, we actually stayed about 2 hours south of the famous trees, in the Kern River Canyon.

There a lots of pictures if you care to take a look, all of which have been uploaded to our Shutterfly account here.

It was a first time canyon camping experience for the both of us, and there are some obvious truths about canyons that don't really sink in until you're there: (1) the bottom of the canyon gets a lot less sun than the top, (2) therefore the bottom of the canyon is much colder than the top, and (3) because of the air temperature differences canyons are very windy. So with that being said, while the sun rises at it's normal time, it didn't actually get warm until around 11am! Also, it would start to get really cold again around 5pm....so really that only gave us a few hours of the day where we weren't huddled in our tent trying to stay warm. Despite our truncated days, we still made the best of it and had a lot of fun.

Saturday was our first full day, so we decided (being the adventurers we are) to hike/climb/crawl up the side of the mountain to the top of the canyon. We spent a good two hours clawing our way up the side, to then enjoy our lunch (almost) at the top of the mountain. The picture at the top is actually the view from our lunch-site, looking waaaaaay down onto our campsite. Sunday was much less eventful, as we decided to take it easy, read a book, and just enjoy the scenery of the Kern river.

All in all it was a great trip, albeit a bit chilly, and we would definitely go back later.

Jason Gets a New Job!

Well, after being in California for a little over two months I can finally say that I am about to be employed. Horray! After a lengthy interviewing process, I have recently accepted an offer for an engineering position from C+D Zodiac, located roughly 20 minutes north of us in Santa Maria. C+D is comprised of many facilities, located all over North America, and is one of the leading producers of aircraft interiors......from the behemoth new Boeing and Airbus jumbo jets, down to small corporate aircraft. The seem like a great company to work for, as they are growing quite rapidly, and I am really looking forward to doing something new. So, in the days ahead I have lots of paperwork to complete, drug tests, and all the other fun stuff that accompanies being a new hire. I will let you all know how it is going once I know more!