Happy Halloween! I'm pretty excited about halloween this year because it's supposed to be a great party here in Petaluma. We're going to go see what's going on tonight during trick or treating time a bit, and also hope to be here a bit to have some trick or treaters of our own.

In other news, last weekend we went to Santa Cruz and Monterey to visit our friends. There were a lot of them! Many of them were Canadian, too, funny enough. First we visited with Scott, who lived in Bamfield while we did, but now he's in grad school in Monterey. We stayed the night on Sunday at his house, and made our way to Santa Cruz in the morning. We found somewhere to have breakfast (I really like going out for breakfast), and that was nice, just the two of us. After that we hung around and walked the dog and got him some canned food, since he had stopped eating and was making himself ill because we were travelling, and we wandered along the bluff at the ocean. Then our friends called, and we met them downtown and they had some lunch (we were still full from breakfast). Roly, Christine, and Gabriel were there, as well as Melissa, her new husband Pete, and their family. We meandered around downtown, then headed over to the lab for Melissa's Ph.D. defense. That went well, of course, and there was a dinner party afterward. At the lab we also got to visit with Melinda, Mark, and Kristen with her new baby. We had a fun night. That night we found a campground nearby to stay at, and that was good. The funny thing was that we arrived there after dark, then we had to get up early to head over to Melissa's house, and it wasn't light out when we did that, so we stayed the whole time there and never saw the campground!

We went early so that we could be Roly and Gabriel's ride to the airport in San Jose. We all had to squish into the car to do that, but it didn't take long to get to the airport. After we saw them off, we headed north again, went through the city, and decided to spend a little time driving out on the Marin Headlands, because I had never been out there before. The Marin Headlands is the area north of the Golden Gate Bridge and then out to the west. There isn't a whole lot out there, because it's a park now, but there is a lot of leftover WWII stuff. Mostly those are bunkers and places for big guns dug into hillsides to guard the entrance to the bay. Up there we also ran into a group of bird watchers, who were counting raptors. We hung out with them for a little while and watched what was going on and asked some questions. We also tried to go out to the lighthouse out there, Point Bonita, but it was closed and we could only walk part way out. We decided to go back to the highway and head toward home when we started to get hungry for lunch, because we didn't have any food in the car. It was fun to take some photos while we drove around, including the raven above, and I posted more pictures in my gallery.

So that was our short vacation this week. I worked for the rest of the week, and also got my hair trimmed yesterday, which was good. In other news, our new couches are good! I don't think I wrote about that adventure yet. We found these two matching couches on the free list on craigslist at almost 10 pm one night, and went out to see them. They were on a sidewalk a few streets down. They looked like they were in good condition and we selected the small one. Upon bringing it home, we decided that we should also get the matching large couch as well, and went to out get that one too! So we were out in the middle of the night collecting furniture. This was right after the rain last week, though, and the couches were wet. The next day we cleaned them out and opened them up so they could dry. We found SO much crap inside those couches! The people who had them before didn't clean them out at all. It was pretty disgusting, actually (and the stuff we found explained the broken wood structures underneath on the big couch, as well). There was lots of trash, expectedly, but also other things like around 15 AA batteries, kids socks and a t-shirt, small toys, pens, playing cards, and my favorites, a doorknob and a brand new visa card!

Of course, the first thing I did at that point was to google the name on the visa card. I found a page that said that that guy, at the address where we picked up the couches, was arrested this summer for marijuana possession, possession of a switchblade knife, and parole violation. Nice. Anyhow, the couches are clean and dry now, they fit very well in our living room, and they match the coloring of the house too! We moved the green couch into the dining room, where it also fits fairly well, and we can still use the pull-out bed through the holidays at least.

I think that's all the news I have for you today.