Author: Doris

On Tuesday – we both worked a lot of the day (at least in the morning) and puttered around the house in the afternoon. On Wed, Jeremy went for a bike ride and what did I do? A lot of nothing. Napped.

I knit another hat.

Wed night, we walked to Culver City for exploring – less than a mile away. It’s a spot that is hip now even though the name makes it sound very boring. So, even though there are sidewalks, LA is not made for walking – and even less so with a wheelchair. A lot of sidewalks don’t have curb cuts and they are uneven from tree root growth. And there are homeless encampments underneath freeway overpasses – so besides that, it was totally OK! Haha. Yeah, it was a bit tough. Once we made it to Culver City, the sidewalk population exploded and there was very little sidewalk space for anyone – though usually folks easily parted ways to make way for Edda. (It was kind of a free-drink night where all the restaurants made drinks and gave out like 20 mL for free and you had a card and you could collect them all! I failed to get a card even though I tried, the lines were too long). We planned to eat at the Shake Shack (I know, not very original) and get ice cream afterwards.

We found the highest end grocery store – Erewhon and went inside to explore since Jeremy lives for and loves grocery stores. I thought we’d by a reusable bag for a mement0 – how much could it possibly be? Well it could be $50! We passed on it.

Their soup section – all handmade and in glass jars:

Not a single radish out of place. Jeremy said – there is a person whose job it is to constantly rearrange everything so it looks fabulous all the time. It’s a perfect job for someone who is a little OCD.

Then we made it to Salt and Straw for ice cream. Dave highly recommended it – and the ice cream was very good – but it is a little weird. They have seasonal flavors like fried chicken and potato salad. They consider a “normal” flavor to be honey lavender which is too bougie to be a regular flavor. Jeremy loves ice cream with peanut butter – they didn’t have any flavor with PB except a vegan one which he wasn’t about t0 try. I always look for strawberry – but also not a flavor they carry. I ate the seasonal sour cherry pie (delicious!).

On Thursday, we braved the LA traffic to spend the day with Vince who is at UC Irvine for his summer program.

Jeremy wore his UC Davis Aggie shirt and got some funny comments all day about it. We saw anteaters and posed with them.

Vince all dressed up in front of the conference hall in his nice suit jacket.

It was like an adult science fair (all the undergrads who had a summer program presented posters). Here’s Vince telling us about his project. It is so weirdly close to the work my lab did like 30 years ago – it’s both familiar and strange to me at the same time. So much more computer stuff and now you can tweak proteins anyway you want them. Before, we struggled so much with all this stuff.

After his poster session, he still had talks and lunch to attend. We were let loose on campus. We ate lunch at the very nice shopping center across the street and wandered around the buildings waiting for Vince. The student center seemed like a very new building but it had weird handicapped access with ramps tucked in here and there and elevators not where you expected them to be and this crazy wheelchair stair lift which we could operate ourselves.

Then we spend a mostly aimless, but pleasant afternoon together and this is what we did:

1. Went to the bookstore. Thought about buying a shirt. Didn’t buy anything.
2. Went to Vince’s dorm. Napped in one of Vince’s 4 beds and ate mango slices.
3. Decided to go on an adventure to the Santa Ana zoo to find a capybara which many websites told me that they were found there. Called the zoo and found out they haven’t had a capybara for over a decade. THE INTERNET LIES! sigh.
4. Went to a local marina/wildlife place. Bought a cap in the visitor center for Vince to shield his head from the sun and applied their free sunscreen (how nice!). Walked around outside in the laser-like sun for 15 minutes before settling onto benches where we chatted about nothing really. Made everyone play Pokemon Go.
5. Went to a japanese grocery store and bought odd asian food.
6. Went to the adjacent japanese food court and ate ramen and udon. Yummy!
7. Dropped Vince back at his dorm with big hugs and headed back to LA.

Elka did not go on this Irvine Adventure and we didn’t want to leave her with Julia – we hired a dog sitter for the day which was great. I’ll show you the pics soon.

We are enjoying lazy days here in Los Angeles. Every day, the weather is beautiful – we leave the doors and windows open to the outside and we there is neither heating or cooling. At night we have a fan, but I feel so grateful to have such lovely weather. When we travel, Edda’s showers don’t happen every day because we don’t have our regular set up. It means her hair gets slick with natural oils and plaiting of her hair gets easier.

We have exploded into the space that Julia has given to us (which is mainly her garage apartment set back behind the main house). Our workstations basically have migrated from Maryland to the west coast intact. We both had full morning meetings. Mine started at 7 am. Jeremy’s started at 6 am. The initial idea was that Jeremy not work and I would work. But I think I’ll end up working less than Jeremy – he has deadlines this week and is working more that he’d like.

I took Elka for a long, hilly walk at midday. We stopped at this park to rest in the shade. The houses are expensively beautiful and Elka enjoyed exploring the area.

Jeremy and Edda met us at a local park (Edda walked to the park!). Then we walked back to Julia’s house and I lay down for a nap. About 30 minutes into the nap, I got a call from a stranger saying that they found Elka walking the neighborhood by herself (!) and they picked her up and wanted to return her to us. Jeremy had accidentally opened the gate (he was carrying the remote in his pocket and must have hit it without realizing it) and Elka decided to go for a walk and find a new family. With kids and a nice Mercedes with leather seats. Hahaha. A different life for you Elka – no doubt fabulous for sure, but you are ours, little one.

Jeremy drove to Tuscon from Katherine’s house and spent the night and in the morning, crated Elka and rode up Mt. Lemmon and then came back to the hotel and got Elka and headed to LA, our meetup destination.

I spent Friday and Saturday packing (just backpacks) and kind of wrapping things up. I probably should have left on Saturday as I spent the day just feeling like I was waiting around. But I finished my knitted hat and cleaned up the fridge and finished the last bit of laundry.

I did like knitting this hat, but I thought I could do better with the color change on the stripes. So on Saturday, I went out to a yarn shop to buy some yarn to knit a very similar hat, but trying to do better on the color changes.

Sunday morning, Mike and Sofie got up early to drop me and Edda off at Dulles.

I do need some help with Edda while traveling alone with her. I haven’t flown with her by myself in a very long time. I was very lucky to sit next to a nice guy who used to fly F-18s (! – holy crap – I sat next to a person who flew F-18s in Iraq. I asked what he thought of both Top Gun movies and we had a fun time talking about it. The first Top Gun came out when he was 11 and he said that was a big reason he wanted to go to the Air Force and fly.) and immediately upon sitting down, he said if I needed any help, to ask and I did ask for him to help carry Edda’s backpack while I walked her down the aisle to deplane. Edda did great on the flight itself. Sleeping part of the time, eating cheetos and cookies part of the time, and refusing to eat her chicken salad sandwich she bought herself. I know people knock airline travel these days, but everyone was very helpful on this flight, it was on time, when I checked in, the desk person moved our seats closer to the front of the plane, the wheelchair check worked well, it could not have gone better.

And here we are in Julia’s backyard. Enjoying the paradise weather that is found in LA.

They made it to the Renouf ranch last night. Everything is working well – power is back on, the driving was fine. They saw friends in ABQ and in Silver City. Katherine will be there for a few weeks until we meet up closer to the end of the trip.

Elka, I think, is the only one of our dogs to have been at Renouf ranch. Pip has been there before, I know, but I don’t think Ruby or Max ever saw the property. Jeremy and Elka left about noon and headed to Tucson.

Jeremy et al made it Albuquerque and he biked up the Sandia Crest.

A hike of sorts? They are having evening plans with friends and so I don’t get to talk to them at night and the time change is getting bigger, so I have no idea what really happened yesterday and/or today. But I track them on the map, they are making their way to Renouf Ranch today where they’ll spend the night and they’ll part ways.

Meanwhile, here back at home, I’m doing the last few days of camp for Edda and working, working. Giving gifts to drivers and caregivers. Cleaning out the fridge. Giving a tour of the house to the housesitter. I’m excited to start being on this trip! Edda too 🙂

Megan broke her foot last week and is stuck at home non-driving, so I invited her to spend the working day in Jeremy’s old spot while he’s traveling. She immediately connected into his extra large monitor. We spent a companionable day working on our own zoom calls and having meals together.

As we were eating dinner, I asked if she wanted ice cream (again) and the answer was (happily) yes (again). So we went to the local hangout and hung out again. (Edda looks worried, but she was not. She enjoyed her ice cream again, eagerly). Then we dropped Megan off at home.

Jeremy and company made it from Oklahoma through Texas and now they are in Albuquerque. They had lunch in Amarillo, which sounds very hot, but was only 82 degrees at 2 pm. They are enjoying the Oppenheimer audiobook and watching the scenery change as they drive through the country. They also inadvertently let the gas tank read empty on a lonely stretch of highway (you know how your car predicts how many miles are left in your gas tank? Well it read zero for about 3-5 miles. It doesn’t go negative. That is nice.). But they did find gas before running completely out. Note: this would have never had happened if I was in the car because I’m a complete freak about this.

Here’s Elka checking out a dung beetle with its ball of dung. I’m imagining Elka is jealous and would like to take it, but isn’t going to because it’s clearly the bug’s poop possession and not Elka’s.

Jeremy et al made it to Tulsa yesterday, having to had (?) have (?) pull over for a storm for about 30 minutes or so. They saw a hip friend from Jeremy’s work who lives there and who gave them a very nice, fun tour of the city. Jeremy is pretty impressed by Tulsa, apparently there are good times to have there. They look good, right?

Meanwhile, the storm came over to us and they warned us that this was the highest warning of storm – so I hunkered down, charged everything and waited for a tree to fall on my house. Then Mike suggested that we have crabs for dinner – so he came over bearing crabs with Old Bay we did that during the storm. JoJo, after a lifetime of not caring about storms, all of a sudden really was upset and wanted to be held. We tried to humor her, but then it’s really hard to hold a furry dog while trying to eat crab. The storm passed and we did fine.

The leg from Asheville to Memphis met with a little bit of a hiccup. Katherine accidentally left her phone in a Starbucks restroom and they didn’t notice for 115 miles, so there was extra driving to fetch the phone. Luckily, Katherine had let Jeremy track her whereabouts so finding the phone wasn’t a problem once they realized it was gone.

I track Jeremy on my own phone and noticed that they were hours behind schedule. They were supposed to meet Jeremy’s cousin for lunch in Nashville, but it was already 1 pm and they were still hours away from Nashville and I was wondering if they had had car trouble or gotten up late or if someone wasn’t feeling well. Anyways, they were moving on the highway, so I just let it be until they texted me what was going on when they were at a rest stop late in the afternoon. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Jeremy last night as they got in late to their Memphis hotel, but I can see now that they are up and about and ready to drive to Tulsa.

As for me, Sunday was quieter. Isabella was here to mind Edda so I was able to grocery shop by myself. It is tricky with the food here – I want to leave the fridge pretty empty when I leave, but I still need to buy food. And I’m not used to buying food for the house. Jeremy also makes very nice lunches for Edda, so I have to try and duplicate that during the week here as well. I also went over to Tom’s house to try and help him get and send text messages with Siri which we were able to do not too terribly, it’s just a lot of practice now. He does have trouble with low vision and of course, one sided paralysis. And I can see it’s tiring to be in a body like that, so to learn completely new systems can be very difficult. Tom is completely cognitively aware, I think it’ll be interesting to see how well he takes to learning how to use the technology.

I hosted Sunday night dinner for the Martins and ordered Chinese food and bought those ice cream drumsticks. Yummy. It was very entertaining discussion, everyone has had or is going to have travel plans or opera plans or class plans. Everyone is motoring along. I also had a giant tub of cheese balls sitting on the table that Dara had bought for me and I’ve been embarrassingly making steady progress through the tub for days – I’m the only one eating it, but last night, lots of people helped me eat many cheese balls. We didn’t empty it, there are still balls in it for me to enjoy. Ohhh, I need to pack some for Edda’s lunch. Have a nice day!

So the route of the cross country trip was sort of determined by bike routes that Jeremy wanted to do. He’s a hill climber, so the stop in Ashville was for Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi. The peak of his fitness was a couple of years ago during the pandemic when he was training a lot (sometime up to 15-20 hours a week), but this past bit of time, he’s been unable to train as much (which is good, in some non aerobic capacity building ways), so he’s not in tip top shape which, I think, is a little disappointing to him because he has the mindset of a competitive athlete. Anyways, he made my bar which is faster than twice as slow as the fastest climber, but this is below his own bar which usually is less than 50% as slow as the fastest climber. Anyways, it was a beautiful day (which was not assured a week ago according to the forecast – and is never assured because the hotels are booked and there is the day to do the climb and if it’s raining or snowing or smoggy or brutally hot, it is what is it and you have to decide if you will ride up the hill that day). I made Jeremy promise me that he wouldn’t do climbs in the brutal heat or endanger his health in any way. He also bought a satellite beacon to send me text messages if he’s in trouble outside of cell range.

Elka, back at the air b and b with Katherine, enjoyed a long walk and sunning on the sunny porch.

Jeremy is trying to keep Elka off the furniture, this is the compromise they struck.

They hung out at an Asheville dog park where Elka made friends and the humans made friends too. It’s a very friendly town apparently.

Back at home, Edda participated in the J-games on the yellow team! Team yellow rules, but came in 2nd out of 4.

I spent Saturday with Megan – we went to lunch at Founding Farmers, spent the afternoon working in parallel (she had her laptop) with Edda and after work wrapped up, we watched some youtube (fascinating channel about yellow jacket nest removal – easily an hour doing that) and then we had dinner and headed out to Carmen’s for ice cream.

A gorgeous night hanging out at the local hangout.

So we are starting our 25th wedding adventure extravaganza. Earlier this year, Jeremy (who has accumulated so much vacation that he is starting to lose it) lamented that we never go on vacation. I had much less vacation because I often used vacation to work a shift at the hospital (crazy, I know…), so I had encouraged him to go on a long vacation without me, but he didn’t want to do that (1. because he didn’t know what to do and 2. even though I say it is OK, in the end, I’m always slightly grumpy to be left at home doing all the home things) and so we made an effort to see what could be done about this and we came up with a 7 week travel plan with Edda (skipping the first month of school) and Elka and me working from the road part time. Even though I do work remotely from my physical office (what I often refer to as the mother ship), I’ve never picked up my laptop to go anywhere else to work because when I work, I use 2 enormous screens and a printer to do my job effectively (I work with a lot of documents). It’s hard to imagine doing my job well on a laptop screen. But we figured it out. And the office, in the past, has made it harder to move your location around, but that has been more streamlined because of the pandemic. So we figured it all out, bought new tires for our van, and our 7,000 mile adventure began yesterday.

The first leg of the trip is driving to Los Angeles and does not involve me or Edda. Edda has one last week of camp, I have less vacation, so I need to work. Jeremy is taking Elka and his mom with him for this part of the trip. We had a few hiccups before the launch date of Friday am which included a sudden case of gout (Katherine) and an abdominal abscess (Pip) which both involved trips to urgent care and medication, steroids and antibiotics respectively, but both are fine now (thank goodness!), and we made our ETA of Friday am.

The van is packed. And the trip begins.

First stop is Ashville – we tried to make it there spring of 2021? I can’t remember anymore. Or was is spring of 2022? We got covid and cancelled at the last minute. But Jeremy is there now. Pizza for dinner.

Elka settling into the air b and b for the night. She has her party pants on because over the last few weeks at home, she’s regressed a bit and started peeing on one of our living room rug which is, arguably, our most used rug in the house. Why?!? Why?!! Why do you pee where we live? The only other pee-er (Maxi) would pee if we forgot to take her out after 8 hours and she would tuck her pee in a far away room. Elka is 100% perfect except for the pee. Sigh. We all have our issues. So Party Pants are on for the duration of this trip because it certainly is a party.