Visit with Grandma in Texas

Fun, but cold!

Keep throwing those darts til you win that prize.

It slices!  It dices!

First attempt at homemade laundry soap--it turned out great.

And the march goes on.

Hey, look!  We found a palm tree in Wisconsin.  (There were quite a few of them at today's rally, actually.)  We parked at Memorial Union, got tickets to see a particle physicist speak at Distinguished Lecture series for Monday, walked up to the Capitol, marched around the Capitol with the other supporters, had free pizza from Ian's, got lots of candy from a store on state street, and came home.  What an afternoon!  Tonight, Karl and Elise are going to see a free showing of Tangled at the Union, and Elise gets to bring a friend, too.

A little free time

On Monday, I had some unscheduled time in the morning. Not enough time to go somewhere far away (South Lake Tahoe or Yosemite would have been perfect). But I'm not on vacation, after all...

It turns out there's a lot of great bicycling opportunities in the Sacramento area. There's a bike trail which runs along the American River from downtown Sacramento out up to Folsom (about 25 miles away). It's on park land virtually the whole way, and there's a bike rental shop about 15 minutes from my hotel. So that was an excellent opportunity. Got a little bit sunburnt on my two-hour ride, but I might have to do that again if I get another couple of hours on the ground during the daytime.

Traveling

So I had to go to California again for work. While I dislike airplanes, the scenery was beautiful all the way from Denver to Sacramento: