Hangers On

Why do people hang on to you as a friend? That is an interesting phenomenon that I have witnessed. If anything about my Pick Me post holds true, then people pick you as a friend because they can get something out of you. But what happens when that something is no longer true?

I have a friend who's son used to party a lot at his house. He had a lot of people who hung around because he partied. Once he cleaned up his ways and stopped partying, all of his "so-called friends" stopped coming around. It makes you wonder if they were his friends to begin with.

People change and so do your circle of friends. I have a tendency to want to remain friends with people as long as possible. I realize that so often we move on in our lives and there may be some people who refuse to let go of the past.

I was speaking with a coworker on our commute home who indicated to me that an old friend was coming to visit over the weekend. I was curious as to why they appeared to dread the whole situation to which they said that their friend only talked about the past and wasn't sure how to handle their friendship now that things have changed. This made me wonder if I too am perceived as one of those people that don't "move-on".

Now that I am older, I realize that I have known a lot of people and that many just faded away without me knowing it. I do not take offense at this because it takes two people to have a relationship and if one moves away or no longer is in contact with the other, the relationship dwindles and fades away. Whenever I find someone again I have to be cautious so that I do not dwell on the past. I try to catch up on whatever has transpired since we last met and try and focus on the present. Sometimes I find that our relationship is no longer as strong as it once was and I accept it as that and try and treat them as someone I knew and not someone I am trying to rekindle with.

Pick Me

You pick your friends
and you pick your nose

But you can't pick your friend's nose.

I am usually reminded of those days in grade school where you stand against a wall and people pick out teams for gym class. It's always uncomfortable to be one of the last to be picked. The same idea can be applied to being picked as a friend.

We are social creatures. Because of this we tend to socialize with others in a group. The reasons why we socialize may be infinite… however, who we pick to socialize with on a regular basis can be pretty finite and straightforward.

I like to think that people pick others for some quality that they have. For example, a shy person may pick a bold and social person to be with to gain confidence— likewise a helpful person may pick someone to whom they can help mold into a better person. You may also pick someone based on their physical characteristics (you only like blonds)— or socioeconomic status (I don't like rich snobs)… even though you may not want to admit it to yourself. People even pick for political (I don't date liberals)— or religious reasons as well (I will not marry outside my church).

I have found that some people only pick those people who will benefit themselves. If you have no purpose to them— they just are not interested in you. Also, if you no longer benefit them— they no longer have a need for you and drop you and no longer consider you their friend. One would think that people who use this cruel type of behavior would not have any friends want to pick them. However, it is quite the opposite— people for whatever reason are compelled to want to be these people's friend.

Perhaps those people who are more than willing to be anybody's friend are perceived as indecisive or weak, and therefore are not desired to be picked. So if you are a person who is restrictive and selective people will go out of their way to try and impress you so that you can pick them as their friend.

F2: Food Matters Series

Welcome again to Friday's Feast. This week we have a guest post by Heather who is promoting our cooking series through our community garden project. If you don't know what Friday's Feast is all about, please read the Friday's Feast page for a more detailed explanation. If you want to join in on the feast— be sure to leave a comment and include the URL to your post so I and others can know of your contribution.

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Cooking with the freshest, highest quality ingredients not only makes the tastiest possible meals, but also meals that are best for your health and the environment. Our community garden at Ravenswood Fellowship United Methodist Church is committed to growing delicious vegetables all summer long for just those reasons. As a part of our garden project, we are interested in learning new ways to use great ingredients that are plentiful in our gardens but not as common in our standard cooking repertoires. How many uses do you have for bushels of green beans, eggplant and kale?

With all this in mind, we are starting a cooking class and discussion group based on culinary superstar Mark Bittman's new book, FOOD MATTERS: A Guide to Conscious Eating. Faced with personal health crises and the mounting evidence that our current big-business model for farming isn't sustainable for the planet's health, Bittman decided to rethink the way he eats and his old recipes, which had sold millions of books. His new style of eating changed his life and the way he looks at supermarket shelves.

With Bittman's delicious new recipes as a guide, over the course of the summer we will enjoy three meals together, learn the techniques used to prepare them, and talk about the global impact of eating fresh, delicious, local produce. Here are the dates and times with the planned menus:

Tuesday, June 30 7 p.m. for dinner
Savory Vegetable and Grain Torta
Summer Salad
Fruit Tarts

Saturday, July 25 Noon for lunch
Curried Lentil Soup with Potatoes
Almost No-Work Whole Grain Bread
Blueberry Peach Crisp

Sunday, August 23 9 a.m. for breakfast
More-Vegetable-Than-Egg Frittata
Breakfast Porridge
Fruit Smoothies

All classes will be in Ravenswood Fellowship United Methodist Church's kitchen at 4511 N. Hermitage, Chicago, IL. To join us for dinner, simply RSVP to our church office at 773.561.2610 or by emailing kgovas@aol.com and we will set a place for you at the table!

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Next weeks topic is Drinks. You get awfully thirsty during the summer and like to quench that thirst with something special. So, if you have anything that relates to this topic, be sure to leave a comment and include the URL so I can include you in next weeks feast.

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My My My Paranoia

My apologies for making you think of the song My Sharona…

You know the paranoia that everybody is watching you… well I have just the opposite— nobody notices me, or even wants to look my way. Granted I know that people do look my way— otherwise you wouldn't be reading this now. I just need to give you the pure form of my paranoia so that you can better understand some of my other unexplained behaviors.

I have seen a lot of people who are so afraid that people are watching. I think that many feel that others will scrutinize them and/or embarrass them to the point that they are afraid of standing out. I have seen some people go out of their way to make themselves hidden to the world. My guess is that they fear that the paparazzi or news media will find them and make a spectacle out of them.

I do not consider myself a loud or boisterous person, but I do know that I tend to perceive things differently. I tend to think that I am lost in a crowd and that I do not stand out in any way. So often I find myself trying to get people to notice and wind up being disappointed. I have made great strides in proving my observations to myself. So much so that I tend to believe them— even if they are not true. This is where my paranoia begins.

Major Mild Stones

I don't know where I started to believe that milestones were actually pronounced mild-stones— but I always thought it was pretty ironic calling something a "Major Mild Stone". I used to kid around and call things "Major Stones" or "Minor Stones". Even after I knew and was corrected on this mistake in pronunciation and meaning— the whole concept of a Mild Stone stuck with me.

Milestones are intended to be a metaphorical reference to the Roman mile markers which were made of stone and marked off where you were on a road. Having a Major milestone meant that it was a major point on your road of life… things like graduations, and marriages seem to be these markers in your life's journey. The challenges of life also carry a lot of weight. Having these challenges be represented as stones may give you a better understanding of the concept of major and minor stones.

Those things that are minor stones are those things that are small inconveniences— or something that can be considered not very challenging. You are always carrying minor stones around— this is what gives life it's flavor. Without minor stones— life would be pretty dull.

Something that is very challenging and stressful is a major stone. We've had our fair share of major stones being thrown at us recently— with our daughter-in-law having our third grandson at 23 weeks… while at the same time, her father being in the hospital for pneumonia— then being put in the hospital herself with acute respiratory distress syndrome. Fortunately these major stones are no longer such a heavy burden and things are less heavy and are more manageable.

Using the phrase "Major Mild Stone" may seem like an odd phrase… but if you combine the concept of milestones and the weight of life's challenges— it becomes pretty profound. If you have a minor milestone as well as that event being a minor stone… you have a Minor Mild Stone. This is one of those everyday ordinary events that make a minor impact upon your life. If you have a major milestone and a major stone… you have a Major Major stone. This is one of those important events that make a large impact upon your life. Thus… if you have an event that makes a major impact upon your life, yet is one of those everyday ordinary events— it is considered a Major Mild Stone.

I like to think of another stone when it comes to this type of major impact— a touch-stone. There are many such touch-stone moments in our lives that may seem ordinary to most, but wind up having a major impact upon us in profound ways.

F2: Sweet and Sour BBQ Sauce

Welcome again to Friday's Feast. Today's topic is Barbecue. I'll be sharing a basic barbecue sauce recipe of mine as my participation to the feast. If you don't know what Friday's Feast is all about, please read the Friday's Feast page for a more detailed explanation. If you want to join in on the feast— be sure to leave a comment and include the URL to your post so I and others can know of your contribution.

Participants in this weeks Feast are as follows:

• SweetPeaSurry

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With inspirations from m²I

Whenever I make Rumaki I am always loving the sauce and thinking that it would make a great barbecue sauce— so I made it. I like the taste of this because it has a great sweet and sour taste. This makes a small amount of sauce for one person— so feel free to double or triple the recipe depending on how wet you use your sauce when cueing.

Sweet and Sour BBQ Sauce:

1/3 C Brown Sugar

1 C Ketchup

1 t Mustard Powder

1 small can (8 oz.) Pineapple Juice.

1/4 t Corn Starch (optional).

1. Place the brown sugar into an iron skillet over medium heat and let it melt.
2. Stir in the ketchup.
3. Add the mustard powder.
4. Pour the pineapple juice a little at a time, stirring as you go.
5. If the sauce seems too thin, you can add corn starch to thicken it up.
6. Lather on your favorite grill-in foods such as ribs, or even burgers.

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Next weeks topic will be Growing Green. Everybody has been wanting to "Go Green" lately, and having a garden is a great way to do so. I will be having a guest post by someone who is involved in our community garden who will also be speaking at a session run by the community garden project. So, if you have any pictures of your garden, or have any great recipes that you make from those things grown yourself, be sure to leave a comment and include the URL so I can include you in next weeks feast.

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Daddy Blogs Tribute

Mama Nut over at 4 Nuts in a Nutshell wrote me and wanted to feature my blog as one of the Daddy Blogs for the month of June in honor of Father's day. She asked for three of my favorite posts to feature to which I gave her free reign to pick some based upon my recent Blogiversary post. If you are new to my blog, you can go over to her site and read what she has picked. This should give you a readers perspective on what is a good representation of what I post.

Enjoy,

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Trolling for South Pole Traffic

If life seems confusing at times— how would it be otherwise…
when we live on a planet that is bipolar

PM09'

I am a statistics hound. What I mean by this is that I like to look at Web statistics— things like how many people visited your site and from where do they come from. I found a nice paid service called Clicky http://getclicky.com/. For around $25.00 US per year you can find out who visits your site and their country of origin. Below is a screen shot of the country of origin of those that have visited my site during a given month:

If you look closely at the screen shot above you notice that there is something missing— Antarctica. One would think that if you can have a surgical team beamed to you over the Internet to help one of your fellow researchers— you can at least surf the Internet too. Yes I know that Antarctica is bound by an international treaty so that nobody owns it— but there are people there and they must surf the Internet. And if they can surf the Internet, they should at least have some sort of way so people know that you are from there. That started me thinking… why is it that they left out our southern most continent?

Many people are familiar with Santa Claus. You know… the guy who lives at the North Pole at some hidden castle and makes toys for children and delivers them all in one night. Well… there must be some Anti-Santa as well who lives at the South Pole. This is the guy who one night in the middle of summer steals back as many toys as he can. These are those toys that you must admit to your children were somehow "lost"— when in actuality you know that they were taken by the Anti-Santa but are too afraid to admit to your children about. Why then would this guy want his whereabouts to be known.

What you don't know won't hurt you— so if the entire continent of Antarctica were not shown, then people would not get curious and go looking for all those lost toys. All the more reason to exclude it from any Web statistics program out there.

Now I know that you exist. I have seen on many occasions IP addresses that map to nowhere, so I guess that you are visiting from our southernmost continent. Go talk to your fellow researchers and tell them to visit my site. I would love to have Clicky be brought to it's knees due to increased traffic— or at least be forced to add Antarctica due to popular demand. Get out of the tyranny of the Anti-Santa and let yourself be known to the rest of the world.

F2: The results are in…

Welcome again to Friday's Feast. Today I'll be sharing the new recipe for Friday's Feast. If you don't know what Friday's Feast is all about, please read the Friday's Feast page for a more detailed explanation. If you want to join in on the feast— be sure to leave a comment and include the URL to your post so I and others can know of your contribution.

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Based on your votes, it appears that most of you want me to keep Friday's Feast. I have opted not to use Mr. Linky mostly due to the suspicion that it won't work properly unless I pay up (yes… I'm cheap like that). Besides, this allows me the opportunity to link directly to the appropriate post that you linked with instead of directing you to your home page. I will be changing those former pages that used Mr. Linky and adding the direct links to the posts within the contents of the page.

I have decided to change the recipe for how Friday's Feast will be run. I figure that most people either do not have a Feast related post in mind, or they prefer to post other things on a Friday. Here is how Friday's Feast will be made moving forward:

Every Friday I will post a topic for the following weeks post. If you want to participate in that next week's Feast, just leave a comment and be sure to include a direct link to your post. I will then gather up the links and put them in that next post. The best part of this is that you can leave a comment at any time (even after the next week's post has been posted)— as well as linking to any post that you have written (even if it was from long ago, or in the future).

So often I find that whenever there is a writing prompt I either have a related post that I posted long ago— or I never complete the post on time and still want people to read what I posted. Other times I find that there is a prompt that I am inspired to do, but they are already onto the next prompt and it seems silly to go back like that. So without further adeu, I present next weeks topic:

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Next weeks topic will be Barbecue. With summer just around the corner… thoughts turn to grillin' and chillin'. If you have any posts about this summer activity… either recipies, events, how you nearly burned the garage down, etc., etc.— be sure to comment and include your link to it.

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The Perfect Rain

Today you could say that I'm in two places at once. Not only am I here, but I am also over at In The Real World Venus vs. Mars. So be sure to read there— then come back here… or read here— then go over there (it's over to you).

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When I was in college I felt what I considered to be the perfect rain. This is a rain that is not too cold, not too warm— the drops are large enough to know that it's raining, but you are totally unaware that it is raining. I vowed to myself, that if I ever felt a perfect rain again that I would have to propose. Of course, I told just about everybody that I knew that I would be doing this. Perhaps in the back of my mind I was hoping that any girl I was going out with would just throw me in the shower and ask me to marry her… but that never happened.

I guess I really wanted some clear sign telling me that I should marry "this one"— but what actually happened was close enough to count as a perfect rain for me.

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So if you weren't teased enough to go over, please do so by going here to hear the rest of the story.

Yosemite: Wildlife

I recently went on vacation to Yosemite. Rather than giving a running commentary on everything that happened (even for a single day)… I have decided to break my posts about my vacation up into different themes. Below are the themes I have covered already:

1. Yosemite: Natural Disasters
2. Yosemite: Technologically Challenged

This next theme relates to some the wildlife that we encountered on our vacation.

During our trip I was hoping that I would be seeing unique wildlife and would have a lot of great stories about all of it and have tons of photos to boot. Unfortunately, when most of those stories happened I did not have my camera around to capture the moment. Even though I didn't capture that picture perfect moment— that doesn't mean that it didn't happen.

On Monday before we left LA to go to Yosemite, my wife, sister-in-law and myself went for a walk around the neighborhood. My wife saw what she thought was a giant bug, but was told that it was a hummingbird. Believe it or not, many other times throughout our week we swear that hummingbird returned.

On our first night after a long journey from LA to Yosemite, we decided to kick back and enjoy the hot-tub and melt away all the stiffness from traveling. During this time, my wife saw a hummingbird and we said it followed her from LA. It was at this time, I looked down and saw a red salamander under a chair behind my sister-in-law. This salamander seemed to not mind us being there and then decided to waltz down poolside and out of site. The picture above is of another lizard I encountered in LA, but it is about the same size as the one I saw that first night.

This is a picture of a squirrel (Funny how all of the photos that I could get of animals were of the kind that we already had in Chicago). The interesting thing about this particular squirrel is that it sounded so much like a bird that everybody was hanging around and snapping pictures of it. I just think it got smart and knew that if it kept it up that people would start to feed it (which some did).

Don't know why… but my brother-in-law and I swear this blue jay was following us all around the park all day.

This is a picture of me and my bird shadow— who seemed to want to stay more in my shadow than be in the sun.

Here is a picture of my wife and her attempt at getting close to the trees. Unfortunately, a bunch of ants decided to do the same thing to her and we wound up shaking them out of her coat up to an hour after this photo was taken.

Throughout the park there are signs that say "Speeding kills bears". I know that my brother-in-law tends to drive for the LA highway— so we were quite used to his accelerating nature. When returning from the restaurant inside the park on Wednesday evening I thought I saw a deer on the side of the road. It wasn't until it started to bolt across the road in front of us that we realized it was a bear.

I didn't see any black panthers in Yosemite… but in LA I can say that we saw the elusive LA panther known to the locals as Rolly. You can tell by this shot the salt and pepper hair which is distinctive of this species. This particular creature was the only cat that I knew that came when you called (something our dog doesn't even do). What we did find comforting was that the cat came into the bed and cuddled with us— something our dog does as well.

This is a picture of my sister-in-law who just a moment earlier dropped her phone and car-keys in the surf… as can be seen by the "tell tail" sign of her water-logged pants. At this point, she is trying to show me how to find pea-sized crabs in the sand by looking for the V shape in the sand and digging with a small stick (I guess it was worth losing your phone over).

Wait Wait… Free Show!

If any of you are familiar with NPR radio, the show Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! will be taping their show at Millenium Park in Chicago on Thursday, June 11th starting at 6:30PM. I am including information on where the Pritzker Pavilion is so you can attend:

Jay Pritzker Pavilion
201 E Randolph St
Chicago, IL 60601
(312) 742-1168

View My Saved Places in a larger map

Hope to see you there.

F2: Get out the Vote

Welcome again to Friday's Feast. Today I'll be sharing my current results of my poll and asking for more votes. If you don't know what Friday's Feast is all about, please read the Friday's Feast page for a more detailed explanation. If you want to join in on the feast— be sure to leave a comment and include the URL to your post so I and others can know of your contribution.

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So far most of the votes have been to leave things the way they are and to let it mature like a good wine. Because of this, I have placed Mr. Linky back in today's post so that you can participate (Note: I have retracted Mr. Linky since I cannot get into it to leave a link). If you have not voted, please do so. From what I can tell I have at least 75 unique subscribers to my blog and I would not want your voice to not be heard. Also, spread the word around so that others who are not regular subscribers have a chance to voice their opinions.

I am always looking for more ideas to post with. I usually like to mix things up and not always post a recipe each week. If there is any particular food related topic that you want me to look into— let me know. If you have any questions about cooking, what foods I like, what cooking celebrities I like, etc., etc.— please ask away.

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Picking an Anniversary

In my post Double Date, I mentioned that the person I had a date with was exactly one year older than I. It was after this point I came up with the idea to having your wedding anniversary equidistant between each others birthday. I do not know why I decided this— but I felt that it would be fair to have ones anniversary the same distance between each others birthday.

What you do is you count forward and backward between your birthday and the other person's until you land on a date. Because there is an odd number of days in a year there should only be one day that you land on— the other two will be side by side.

Whenever I found out someones birthday that I liked, I usually calculated this date just for fun. Interestingly I found that one person's birthday calculated out so that the two days that were side by side were February 28th and March 1st. The cool thing about this is that if we ever got married, we would get married on February 29th on a leap year. I know what you're asking: "When do you celebrate it on the other three years?"… December 22nd.

If I did my calculations correctly, today should be that person's birthday… so happy birthday Jill. In reality… when I actually did pick the day I got married, it wasn't to that person, and it was more based upon what Saturday my wife and I could book the church— not some bizarre day that was calculated on a whim.

Yosemite: Technologically Challenged

I recently went on vacation to Yosemite. Rather than giving a running commentary on everything that happened (even for a single day)… I have decided to break my posts about my vacation up into different themes. Below are the themes I have covered already:

1. Yosemite: Natural Disasters

This next theme relates to technology and how we dealt with it during our vacation.

Cell phone on the plane…

On Sunday when we got to O'Hare we checked the departure board only to find that our flight was delayed. Not only that, but there wasn't any gate listing for it. Because of this we were unsure as to how long it would actually be delayed. When we finally found out our gate and knew when we would be boarding— my wife sent a text to her sister telling her how long we would be delayed so that she wouldn't have to wait so long at the airport.

By the time we got on the plane and the stewards were telling the passengers to turn off their cell phones, my wife went to turn off hers and noticed that she had a message waiting. I saw her struggling and noticed that she was trying to delete old messages in order to make room to download the latest message. I knew that the stewards may have given us a look and I just told her to wait until we landed since we couldn't call until that time anyway. Fortunately the message just was a confirmation of what we just sent. More like an "OK… see you there" and not anything that required any followup.

Texting into the foothills…

On our drive into Yosemite we were just reaching the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains when my wife got a message on her phone that a text was missed. However, she was unable to download the message at that time. Fearing the worst, she kept checking her phone to see how many bars she had so she could get the message. We finally got a signal at Inspiration Point— so we stopped and got out of the car so she could retrieve the message. The message was from her daughter saying "How are you". She was able to text back to her daughter and then got a reply saying "Earthquake?". It appears that there was an earthquake in LA and she wanted to know that we were alright.There was a thunderstorm in the area and it started to rain, so we chose to get back in the car. After getting back in the car, she was able to text one more message before losing signal again. She did no know if her daughter got the message that we were fine which troubled her a bit.

Losing TV reception

Due to the thunderstorm I guess that we lost reception to the cable TV that was in our rooms. This didn't bother us because we did not really want to watch TV— but it did worry my Brother-In-Law who was looking forward to watching the Lake rs play on Tuesday. He kept telling us that he will be asking for his money back on the rooms if he didn't get his TV restored by game time. Luckily it did come back and he could watch his game Tuesday night.

Reconnecting with civilization…

Thursday on the road out of the foothills I kept hearing this ka-chunk ka-chunk sound. I kept checking my camera to see if it was something weird and looked around to see where it was coming from. I isolated the sound as my Brother-In-Law's blackberry and it was downloading all of the phone messages that were waiting from the past three days. Fortunately there wasn't anything serious and we were able to return to LA without any further incoming phone calls. My wife also got the other replies to texts that she sent on Monday that she didn't get because we were in the valley the whole time.

Adding more minutes to your phone…

My wife realized that there were a lot of phone calls that may need to be made to home and wanted to make sure that she had enough minutes on her pay as you go phone. So on Friday before we went to to the beach to watch the sunset, we stopped by a local pharmacy store and picked up a phone card. During lunch she tried to activate the card— which you do from the phone by entering in an activation code. The problem with this was that the page to enter the code asked for a fifteen digit number from our receipt and our receipt had a twenty digit number. We tried several different combinations all of which failed. Frustrated we went back to the store to ask them how to enter the number. We then found out that the sales person did not give us the activation receipt which is why we did not have the number. The manager of the store had to dig through the garbage and luckily found the activation receipt and gave it to us.

Dropping your phone and keys in the surf…

We decided to go to the beach to watch the sun set. During this time, my Sister-In-Law was showing me how to find the pea-sized crabs that are in the sand. As she was pointing out the tell-tail signs of how to spot them, the tide came in which forced her to back-pedal to try not to get wet. Not realizing that she was also trying to walk backwards uphill, she fell right on her butt and dropped her cell phone and car keys. Luckily I was able to pick them up before they got carried away, but her phone was fried and did not work. She assured me that she was wanting to get a new phone anyway and this was as good of an excuse as any to get a new one.

Dead batteries and the camera…

At the same time we picked up the phone card, I also picked up more batteries. I am not criticizing my wife, but I do know that the way that she uses the camera tends to use up the batteries quicker than the way I use it. She tends to turn on the camera and have it in picture mode— even if she is not taking a picture. Usually she can have the camera in hand in this mode for several minutes at a time which tends to drain battery life because the camera takes more power to display the preview screen in picture mode than it would in preview mode. All the same… I thought I would buy a lot of batteries so that we could have enough on hand. I chose to buy the generic brand that the pharmacy store sold and bought a 12 pack for around five dollars.

By the time we got to the beach and took a few photos I noticed that the camera was saying low battery. I changed the batteries and continued to take pictures. No sooner than taking one picture did I get another low battery message. Thinking that I put the batteries in wrong, I proceeded to take them out and put them in again— same message. I then took those out and put the next two in— same message. I then was walking back to the car to get some more when I realized that I still had the rest of the 12 pack in my pocket. I put in the next two— same message. It was at this point that I thought that perhaps the camera was broken and would not accept a charge from batteries. I wound up turning on the camera and quickly putting it in picture mode, snapping a picture and would immediately get a "Please change the batteries" message. Luckily I was able to get some new brand name batteries that worked the next day and was able to continue to take pictures.

Yosemite: Natural Disasters

I recently went on vacation to Yosemite. Rather than giving a running commentary on everything that happened (even for a single day)… I have decided to break my posts about my vacation up into different themes. My next theme relates to some natural disasters that occurred on our vacation.

Funny how there was an earthquake and I didn't even know it. From what I hear there was an earthquake in LA when we were there. My wife said that it felt like a bus went over a curb— whereas I didn't remember feeling a thing. One would hope that you could say to yourself: "Hey… I felt an earthquake when I was there"— but I have no recollection of it at all.

By the time we got to Yosemite the next day there was a thunderstorm rolling into the mountains. This all looked great when we arrived at Inspiration Point, but we were unable to capture that tell tale shot of lightning striking the mountains that we saw.

I do not want to say that this is a natural disaster, but I guess that it was a disaster that the Laker's lost the game that Tuesday. It is more of a disaster for my Brother-In-Law who is a big fan of the LA Laker's.

Other than that, we had excellent weather the whole time.