Desert Trip

We went to Glamis this weekend- the first time this year. We had both been looking forward to it, and it didn't disappoint!

Surf Photography

I've been surfing in between wind and rainstorms. Some of the sessions have been pretty fun, but only Scripps has been able to consistently clean up overnight. This past Saturday morning was the best, with several good steep lefts and rights. One big left I really did not think i was going to make. On steep drops, I'l often grab the rail and tuck in, but on this wave, i was so late that by the time I reached for the rail, the board was on its way down and I managed a grip that felt like I was holding on behind my rear foot.

I was amazed that I made it, so much so that I raised both arms in celebration and relief while everyone else was hooting at me. Then I cracked an off-the-lip right into the face of a guy who, it turned out, was a photographer. He said he'd gotten a photo of the wave and he handed me a laminated business card. It was quite incongrouous, getting a card in the middle of the ocean, but looking back I think it was the coolest thing I'd seen in a while. Kinda made me think about American ingenuity in the common man, and how rare that seems to be anymore.

Jeez, I sound old..."In my day..."

HA.

www.bluewatersurfpics.photoreflect.com .

Hopefully they'll be up soon, and I hope it turns out.

So I Had a Birthday Yesterday

and thus ended my full and complete 36th year.



I took the day off and went snowboarding with my friend Dave. I drove, and by the time we met at his parents house he was over an hour late. This is to be expected, though usually this kind of thing drives me crazy. However, I decided to try something different and view it philosophically instead of getting bent out of shape. I was sitting in my truck about to open a book when Dave's father came out of their house and invited me in. I had not seen him or his wife in several years. They gave me a warm welcome and took me on a tour of their backyard fruit orchard.

They live in Clairemont also and have a terraced yard going down into a canyon. They have apple, peach, pluot and lime trees that are all doing fabulously, but the highlight was the passion fruit vines growing along their back fence.

Kim and I have been searching for the ideal plant to cover our back fence, and we didn't want to just stick some ivy or kudzu in the ground. I happen to love passionfruit, and Ihad no idea that it would grow in this climate, or even that it grew on a vine (I had imagined trees). Dave's dad told me that he had gotten his vines from a nursery in Point Loma, and that the vines were a special hybrid developed specifically for the San Diego area. That sold me, and that's another project to be completed with the house addition.

Maybe I can do that after i demolish the hardpan in the back yard, and after the foundation is poured, while we're waiting for the concrete to fully cure...

From Low to High

After digging a few holes here and there, Sam spent a part of today walking around on top of the house, having had enough of slithering around on his belly, trying to tempt the woman like the biblical serpent. She's at school, anyway, so all the tempting would be for naught.

He found out several things. First, that the poor drainage problem was worse than he thought. One hole, dug 18 inches deep and just four feet from the side of the house, filled with 7 inches of water in less than a half-hour. He could expand the hole wider and deeper and have a genu-wine mud bog for the cost of a few blisters.

Second discovery, and this one a bit more uplifting, was that he could see the ocean in the distance when standing at a height of 11 feet above ground. At 13 feet above ground, at the next roof peak, the view got even better. From the plans at hand, Sam was able to determine that the master bedroom floor will be at a height of 13 feet. Now all Kim needs to do is figure out a way to get the neighbors to trim down their big ol' tree across the street.

Kim's aerie (Sam prefers that to "cupola", credit Joe for coming up with "aerie") will be a split level, between 20 and 22 feet so Sam expects that Kim will rarely deign to alight upon the lower floor. He'll have to go up and visit her instead, seeing as how the roof of the aerie will be at 31 feet above ground level and he might have a view of the entire coast from up there.

Our house

So.... Sam and I are planning on doing an addition to our already beautiful house. Some new foundation work will be necessary, and some plumbing updating will be in order. This weekend Sam decided to crawl under the house to see where everything was...

He disappeared into the hole...


Loyal Sioux considered following him, but decided against it.
When Sam came back out, he was very muddy!


still cute though, isn't he? There's something sexy and rugged about a muddy guy...

Plus, we got all the measurements we needed, and Sam figured out the perfect way to drain our yard so that in the future our house will be dry underneath!

Just to get a picture up here...

We've gone on many adventures so far, and many await us. Here we are, all ready to head to Baja Mexico last April. That was quite a trip! That was the one where we got into a bit of a tiff and then Sam drove the truck... well, I'll not get into that story just now. But after that trip, I started calling Sam McGyver!

The Beginning

"And we're off!" my father would say... "like a herd of turtles!" my mother would respond, once the Sweeney family was (finally!) settled in the car and headed towards our next great adventure. Something about that phrase always tickled my funny bone, and Sam and I now use it when we pile into the truck to go have an adventure, even if the adventure is just grocery shopping!

This blog is a place for us to keep track of our adventures, and a place for you, dear readers, to find out what we're up to. I suppose this blog itself is an adventure, of sorts.

And we're off! Like a herd of turtles!