Pining for the Fjords

It's been quite some time since the last house notes, and since we're just hanging at home right now, with me tapering down for the upcoming O.C. Marathon (trying not to catch a head cold or eat anything that will make me poo funny), there's not a huge amount of things to blog about.  Time for a back yard update!  As you may recall from the blog late last year, Chris got to operate semi-heavy machinery, and we went completely against late President Reagan's instructions and built a wall. As I mentioned in that blog linked above, we made a trip to a local nursery (which was both highly recommended from folks we've met around here AND from which we'd recently received a coupon - bonus!) and picked up several dwarf cherry laurel trees to plant along the back wall as well as several pots of bamboo for the eastern fence line.  As we spaced them out upon delivery, we realized we'd need a few more, so it was back to the nursery for reinforcements. Over the cou

Last weekend, I ran the half marathon distance of the Bunny Dash, a race put on by the good folks at A Better World Running.  I’ve run with them once before (for the Summer Bliss half marathon last August – read that race recap here ) and had a great time, so when I was looking for another half marathon to squeeze in before the O.C. Marathon in early May, I headed directly back to their website.  They seem to make it a point to do races every day of every weekend around the greater LA area, always on open use running/biking paths; this puts runners in safe areas, and it allows them to only charge $40 or so for a race, as they don’t have to pay for street closures, safety officers, and the like.  I picked the Bunny Dash in particular, not just for the timing (which was perfect), but also because it was in Van Nuys, an area of LA to the north of us, just a bit inward from the coast along Santa Monica.  Although we’re greatly expanding our range every change we get, we still haven’t full

Need to catch up?  Here's  Part 1 ,  Part 2 , Part 3 , and Part 4 . When last I blogged, Toni and I spent a second day hiking on the AT and cider tasting before heading back home to Alexandria. Monday, March 13th When I woke up on Monday morning, I immediately checked my phone.  Toni had set an alarm for earlier that day to get online and see if any tickets were available for entrance to the African-American Smithsonian, and she was going to text me to let me know her results (that way, if needed, I could get up, but otherwise, I could roll back over and keep sleeping).  While we didn't get tickets (someday!), I was pretty much awake and decided to start checking out how the expected blizzard would impact my ability to make it back home the next day. In checking my email, I had a note from Southwest stating that my flight scheduled for Tuesday, 3/14, from Reagan was flat out cancelled.  Okay, I thought, time to get up and on the real computer and start figuring out what