What is that smell?

I've been confessing a lot lately. It feels pretty okay, so here it goes. Again. 

I spent $28 on a candle. That is votive-size. Diptyque. You win.

My mom reads this blog. I'm waiting for the call discussing my financial education background and how much better I was raised. 

But the candle smells awesome. 

Every time I light it, I try to imagine just burning a five dollar bill and how much more delightful this candle smells than burning, greasy cash handled by lots of potentially creepy people. My candle wasn't handled by creepy money-grubbing people. It was probably made by three hooded monks and two nuns in the northern-most part of a secluded monastery in Southeast Asia. Just like my favorite Bitters (but that is for another post). 

So, you are probably asking, "Jess, even if it smells PERFECT, WHY DID YOU BUY A $28 CANDLE?!?!?!?!"

The real reason is because I am a fool for indirect advertising. AKA: I read fashion blogs.

But MOoooommmmm! All the other bloggers are buying $28 candles! Why can't I? I just want to fit in!

That's right. Everyone else is doing it, and I thought that all of those really pretty fashion bloggers, with their perfect hair and really cute clothes, and shiny shoes, well, they probably smell really good. And their well-decorated houses smell really good. And I want my hunting-paraphernalia-ed house, with dog pee in the carpet and beer bottles from last nights' man-gathering to also smell pretty and GOOD. 

So I spent $28 on a candle. 

Hey, the shipping was free.

XOXO

Oh, well hello there!

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been a few winks since my last confession blog post.

When your mother texts you to 'update your blog', you know that, perhaps, your blog is failing. Fail. Okay.

So MOM. Here you go. I give you a photo of my always-gorgeous town (June Lake), and, my salute to capitalism. I'm working 60+ hours a week in job transition, and me and my dog are both in danger of some serious weight gain if I spend any more time in front of a computer.

Fortunately, the leaves are changing around here, so my newest hobby to keep my mind sharp is "leafer-dogding" with my car. The trick: come around a mountain-road-sharp-corner and try NOT to hit the tourist with 2 1/2 tripod legs in the street attempting to take THE perfect photo of yellow aspens.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to nearly-hit any leafers while simultaneously taking a photo of their stupid actions (people aren't stupid, they just do stupid things, right?).

Here's what they were trying to capture. (p.s. I took this photo while NOT STANDING IN the FRIKIN' ROAD!!!!!!)

Smooches.

Conundrum, part two

I bought a no-iron white shirt.

The instructions say not to iron it, but to take it promptly from the dryer.

My no-iron shirt has a wrinkle. 

I have an itch I cannot scratch. I need white-shirt cortisone cream, ASAP. 

The girl you wish you were on Spotify

We've all have that friend: the one that somehow due to her semi-abusive or blessed upbringing has the ability to find brand new music that nobody else can possibly dredge up from the depths of our poor, unartistic souls. Or maybe she just had parents that smoked a bunch of weed with Jimi Hendrix.

Enter Spotify. Hey, thanks social media-based-program-that-exemplifies-my-inability-to-garner-frikin-awesome-playlists-and-instead-listen-to-Alanis-Morsett-on-repeat.

Let's face it. Spotify has taken over my life, and not in an entirely bad way. I live on a baby music island. An island where only popular country music strives and spreads. All else dies from lack of intelligent hosts. Stealing playlists from friends in Chicago and L.A. equals lifeblood. Sweet sweet nectar of the gods.

It's gotten to that point. I feel particularly guilty for just stealing, not providing my own well-groomed playlists from my best friends from the next up-and-coming band, but lets face it, I steal. Like, steel steal. Hard. At one point I tried to spend half a day at work finding new bands that were 'hip', but want to know what happened? Every song was a brother of "Banana Pancakes." Laugh. Sure. But you know how this goes. Don't pretend you've never fallen into the "oh, I really felt connected to my upper Gluteus Maximus during my Vinyasa yoga class, and I'm pretty sure Alexi Murdoch's "Orange Sky" really brought out my emotions, and I just felt so... whole. You know?"

So we download it. And then play the song over and over. And over.

We are sick of the song, so we use a search engine to find similar songs. What we really find? Frikin' "Banana Pancakes." I'm sorry, but Jack, it's just not the same. When I'm really getting into my hip flexers, you just DON'T DO THE JOB. I'm on a glutard diet, and I can't really think about banana pancakes while stretching. What I should be thinking about is why the hell I'm stretching instead of running 18 miles. After all, it's almost winter. Screw banana pancakes. If I'm breaking the pledge, I'm putting chocolate chips in my pancakes.

With that, I have nothing more to say about Spotify except that you shouldn't join it unless you have a group of 3+ friends that are tragically involved in the music industry. Otherwise, let Pandora be your sad sad consolation prize.

Peace, love, rock and roll.

 P.S. Atmosphere has something to say about pancakes too. Enjoy. (and yes, I stole this song from a friend)

 

Tioga Pass closed September 21, and we had SNOW!

My apologies for interrupting your regularly scheduled program, but THIS just happened:

That's right. The first snow of the winter. On the last day of summer. Woke up to this view.

Those are some excited-to-fish fishermen. Fishin' in the dark steam.

MAX PHOTO BOMB!

Steamin. Cold. Summer.

Big Sur and Aretha Franklin. Just because.

California is crowded. A lot of people like a warm climate, an ocean next to mountains, that kind of shit. I get it. I am really more of a plain mountain person, but I willingly gave the vastest (word? not sure) body of water a shot this week. It wasn't half bad. 

And then we got to Big Sur. Where there were Big Trees. And you couldn't see or hear the ocean. So I felt more at home, and the cabin certainly helped make everything cozier. 

We stayed at the Big Sur Campgrounds and Cabins, which provided a welcome reprieve from... well... people, really. I don't think I particularly like people on my vacation. And sometimes ever. That's for another post, however (yey for the shelter of a computer screen and public forum that is the "blog", eh?). 

Clif and I unpacked slightly, leaving some things in our car for the hell of it, because they don't have bears on the coast (shot those bitches, took care of 'em all!), and leaving things in our car in novel, Watson. 

We walked along the creek, looking at rocks, and itty bitty pinecones from giant redwoods. Nature, winning YET again. Gosh. 

The night culminated in some seriously unserious chatting on the cute front porch while drinking 'native' wine and eating cheese from France or something. And olives from the Safeway olive bar. 

Delish. I went to sleep a happy woman. 

Hi. Let's talk about the fact that the Redwood next to our cabin is THE SIZE of our cabin. That is all.

Married one year, and I still think he is adorable. Mainly because of his hotness (hint: he reads this blog sometimes). 

The creek/river by our campground was low, it being September and all. But peaceful nonetheless.
AND I had two glasses of wine by the time we got here.
DOUBLE AND I really like nature.
TRIPLE AND nature likes me back (shhhh, it's a secret).

Couldn't you just eat this little guy right up? Not my husband, silly. The cone. The small small cone that makes
A HUGE FRIKIN' TREE.
Aretha Franklin said it best.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
(bitches)*


*implies implied content



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We turned left (South) on Highway 1, and found things.

So... we left Davenport in no grand hurry, and slowly made our way south. 

The most memorable (for me, at least) was our Moss Landing stop. Moss Landing, you ask? Yes, it is amazing. Clif literally screeched to a stop when I yelled out at him about Phalaropes and a fluttering of other shorebirds on the side of the highway. Turns out, I was right to scream. 

Right, I mean RIGHT, next to the dirt road was the most adorable Sea Otter, working his way through the shell of a muscle (or oyster, or something), so loud we could hear it from our car. I braved the traffic (there was none) and heroically ran across the road to get the first shot you see below. Because ... I'm a tourist. And, because I thought this was the only Sea Otter I was going to see on this trip. Of course, WRONG AGAIN JESS.

We come around the next corner, and *KAPLOOEY!*, there are more Sea Otters and some lions of the sea persuasion to boot. They were stinkin' cute, and I almost died, but Clif kept me hydrated, and caught my binoculars when I lost track of them grabbing for my camera with a high-powered lens. Whoa. It was so intense.

Clif saw the opportunity to walk toward humans as opposed to more cute fuzzy and feathery things, and we tried to spend 5 minutes watching surfers. That didn't last long, because surfers are like rock climbers, but on water, with less muscles. So I reached again for my faithful 2012 Eagle Optics 8x24 Rangers, and scoped out the shoreline past the surfers, and whoa and behold!!!! WHALES! Yep. I spotted whales. Jess-1, nature-1 million. Okay, nature always wins. But still, I felt like for a moment I was on top of it. Like, really, on top of seeing things. As a good naturalist should be.

Then, Clif dragged me away, for good reason of course. We ended up slurping down oysters and drinking white wine down the street at a working fish market. And heaven creeped up on us, and stayed a whole 30 minutes.

Then, we were off again.

We tried lunch at a false fisherman's warf, where a cruise ship had just dumped (think pooped) a million people on 8 restaurants and about 3 candy shops per cruise ship patron. SO MANY CANDY SHOPS. That is why America is fat. Cruise ships and candy shops. 

Anyway, we decided that cities were not for us, and booked it to Big Sur, where we pulled up as the sun was setting to the Big Sur Campgrounds and Cabins. OMG. WHAT ENSUED IS FOR TOMORROW. We basically just drank wine and ate cheese, but still, there are more photos for tomorrow. For now, enjoy water photos.

Or else.

The little guy. All by himself. I contemplated taking him home to make a hat out of him (AH! PETA I WAS KIDDING!)

Seals have really thin skin on their flippers and have to warm themselves in the sun all day.
News flash: My feet get cold, but nobody lets me lounge by the seashore.

Surfer, surfer, wave, no more surfer.

OH! There are  more of them!

Long-billed Curlew, that sent me into a tizzy. I mean, look at the little cutie!!

You can't see the cruise ship in the background. Because it sank with all the fatties and their candy (kidding!).

Coastline. Life is so hard.

Clif. And our cabin, and my new car. What? We stayed here. All night. Cutest thing ever?
Yes, is the answer.