Pearl Harbor

This trip to Oahu, we made the pilgrimage to Pearl Harbor. It's been on my Life List, and last trip to the island, it got skipped due to time.

I think it's important that every American see this once.

Lakeview / Plush / BFE

OK, in our hunt for precious jewels (sunstones, as I mentioned before), we drove miles and miles through Oregon desert (really striking country, by the way - Deena's not previously been a fan of desert, per se, but she sort of changed her tune along the way this trip).

The Spectrum Mine was many, many miles off the beaten path along some roguh dirt road. We beat the hell out of my car (next time: we'll rent). Deena dug in the "free" area and found some little stuff; we went back a second day and we paid for her to dig in the pit, to sift through a high-yield pile, and to work a conveyor. Meanwhile, i walked around with the dog and a cigar and picked up stuff off the ground. I definitely found the biggest stones without trying; Deena, however, loaded up on quantity and the best color (which = highest value, carat for carat) came from the conveyor.

I can tell you this, though - we came home with better than a kilo of stones, and hundreds of carats of valuable ones. We could definitely pay for our trip a few times over if we chose to sell what we found.

I don't have any pics of the mining - it was dusty as hell - but here are a few snaps we took along the way. Hmm.. I should get some pics of the pile of stones and some of the best specimens. Time to break out the light tent and get Deena going with the macro.

Crater Lake

Like most native Oregonians, we'd never been to Crater Lake.

We recently took a trip to South-Central Oregon on a treasure hunting trip of Deena's (sunstones in Plush). We did something unusual for us - we had no agenda, schedule, or reservations. Pretty freaky for captain OCD here. So, after a bunch of hours of driving, we opted to stay in K-Falls our first night, then do Crater Lake the next day and come back to our hotel and figure it out form there.

The park was near empty, likely because a) it was a weekday, and 2) the next day was "free park day." Fine by me - it's worth the $10 admission fee not to deal with thousands of people.

Needless to say, the lake was breathtaking.

Chipmunks gave Tsuga a lot of trouble, which amuses us no end.

^don't let this Picasa logo fool you; Picasa works horribly with Blogger and messes up your uploads. I wasted a lot of time with it and won't do that again.

Carmel w/ Agwood-san, tiny Narumi and Mama Doi

Just look at this magnificent sonofabitch. I love this guy.


We were able to spend a nice, long weekend with the Agwoods down in Mountain View. These photos are form a day outing we took to Carmel since it's dog-friendly and the beach and water are so nice.
In attendance were myself, Deena, Agwood, Mrs. Narumi Agwood, and Mama Doi. Oh, and the dogs - Spike and Tsuga. This was a nice, no-agenda day.





"What? I've got a purse dog. Deal with it."

4th of July, damnit!

Scott's favorite day, bar none.

We pulled out the stops this year and opened up invitations to everyone we know in the greater metropolitan area. We only had about 100 show up.

My daughter Rayn's band played, and they rocked oh so mightily.

My guys showed up, mostly. Neighbors came out in droves. Some of Deena's peeps joined. And we had some crashers. It was awesome.

One guy puked. No one fought.