Karl and Angela Rees

Around Wednesday it finally got cool here in San Jose. It's bizarre, really. One night it's 105 and so hot we have to sleep in the living room because our bedroom has no AC, and then the next day's high is 78. We're glad we got to participate in a California heat wave. OK, maybe not so much.

Tuesday we went to a firm Laser Quest activity. It was way fun. We did it twice, and definitely got better the second time. Karl even got second place the second time around. Then everyone went out for pizza.  read more »

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

This week was pretty much the same old stuff, except Becky and Wayne came to town. They came into town Thursday night. Saturday we went apartment hunting with them then we headed down to Santa Cruz. (We saw a nice apartment close to Karl’s work that we should have looked at for this summer. Karl could have gotten to work in 5-10 minutes). We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant in Historic downtown. After we ate we headed to a small, hidden beach north of Santa Cruz. We had to climb down some rocks to get there. This was a very nice beach.  read more »

"Let us remember with gratitude and reverent respect those who have gone before us, who paid so dear a price in laying the foundation for that which we enjoy this day."

President Gordon B. Hinckley

It is amazingly difficult to find a do-it-yourself or even automatic car wash in San Jose. There are tons of full service, hand washed car wash places that charge you $13 just to wash your car, but nothing else. Trust us, we drove all around town trying to find a cheap place. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday we looked in gas stations and up and down every major street we could think of. Eventually, we just gave up. Of course, later on that evening we found an automatic car wash in a gas station about a mile south of us.  read more »

"I see that child who . . . bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him . . . bringing a boy of my name . . . and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice. "

- Dickens, Tale of Two Cities

Pictures from our campout in Lehin Park in the Santa Cruz mountains, and then our subsequent drive along the coast up to Half Moon Bay.

This was a very fun week for us. We played in San Fran on the fourth of July, played ultimate Frisbee on Wednesday, ate cake and opened presents on Thursday, and went to Yosemite for Karl’s birthday this weekend. Monday we just went to work.  read more »

"Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better."
-Albert Camus

Karl took Friday afternoon off and we drove out to the far side of Yosemite for camping. It took us almost 6 hours to get where we were going, partly because of traffic problems and partly because the road to get there took us through Sonora Pass, which is very very high up and fun to drive through, but also makes for very very slow driving. We camped in a place called Honeymoon Flat just a little West of Bridgeport near Twin Lakes. We reserved the site online, and it turned out to be fairly nice (besides the mosquitos at sunset).

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