the pajaro dunes

every president's day weekend, pete's extended family gets together for some family fun time. for the last few years, they have gathered at the pajaro dunes, just 20 miles south of our house. i often miss these gatherings due to ill-timed scientific conferences and pete is often in the field, but we both managed to spend some time at the dunes this year. the weather was lovely and the shore birds did not disappoint!

 black-necked stilts

 snowy plover

 curlew

egret

godwit

bathroom remodel - take 2

yep, that's right...take 2 on the bathroom remodel. i will try to not let my blood pressure get too high as i recount the events that led us to this point...


when we got back from southeast asia, i noticed some water on the floor of the garage directly below the bathtub (i.e., bathtub we just had installed six weeks prior by contractors). pete had removed a section of drywall from the garage ceiling when we bought the house because the old bathtub was leaking. we had yet to reinstall that section and i am so glad we were slackers on that one! when we verified that the water was coming from the bathtub, i called our contractor to let them know that they needed to come back. a week later, they finally came over and decided that the leak was coming from a loose fixture. they tightened it, saw no more water leaking, and went home. fast forward two days and we are getting our first sizable rain storm of the winter (~3 inches). pete happened to be home and noticed water on the floor of the garage under the bathtub but about 16 inches away from the previous leak. so he climbed up on the ladder and soon discovered that when the contractors installed the new subfloor, they pinched the sewer vent pipe between the subfloor and a stud and cracked the pipe. we had never noticed this problem before because we hadn't had any rain. leak #2 for those keeping track at home. so now pete has totally boarded the frustration train with me and we are rolling full steam ahead. pete decided to pull the insulation out from under the tub plumbing because he wasn't convinced after leak #2 showed up that they had solved the original problem. sure enough, the insulation was soaking wet and leak #3 was revealed. honestly, i couldn't make this stuff up if i tried. i called the contractor at 8:30 monday morning to start his week off on the right foot. it took them nearly two weeks to come up this time and ultimately resulted in a smaller, but equally disruptive bathroom remodel...with the bedroom and office thrown in for good measure. AGH!

 the culprit for leak #3 was an incorrectly installed tile flange. our
contractor blames the manufacturers, but i blame the clowns who
work for him. they installed it on top of painters tape... so they had to
remove a row of tile to reseal the flange and hardy board. oh, and they failed to warn us that we were going to be without a shower for FIVE days. 

 to find the problem, they cut a lovely hole in our bedroom wall and 

didn't bother to cover it with plastic when they left that day...even 

though our bedroom was now open to the garage below and it was 30 

degrees at night. can you tell how much i LOVE these guys?!

 the "repaired" bedroom wall

 the "repaired" office wall - which the contractor cut through and then
decided he didn't need to do that. thanks a lot, buddy.

the only competent person throughout this whole ordeal was the drywaller who came in to actually fix the mess. he is a lovely person and did a great job. 

but why is the wall still white, you might ask? because the contractor decided that he didn't want to have someone come out to paint because he was leaving on a three week trip to key west and it would just be "too much trouble" for him to schedule someone to come up. and besides, he had the drywall guy texture more than just the patch, so that should be compensation enough and i should do the painting myself. GGRRRR! really, at this point, i am glad to have those people out of our house, but how unprofessional can you be?! needless to say, those people will NOT be helping with any future remodel projects nor will they get an inkling of a good review or any recommendations from us. 

oh, and they never fixed the broken vent pipe....

catching up part 3: cambodia

the second portion of our trip was spent in cambodia. we took a bus from HCMC, vietnam, to phnom penh and then continued via boat up the tonle sap river to siem reap. we had one goal for all of cambodia - the angkor wat temples. disappointed we were not for we had our fill of temples and transport via tuk tuk. there are more photos from this part of our trip - over 2,000 in all - which is why it has taken me three months to get to this post. this post will contain only a sampling of the things we saw...if you are interested in seeing more, click on the link to the right to visit my picasa album. here goes the whirlwind tour...

traveling up the tonle sap river

traveling across tonle sap lake

 ta keo - one of the many unfinished temples

 preah khan - many of the temples have a lot of damage - partly due to vandalism, but also from the changing of royalty and the accompanying change in religious belief of either hindu or buddhism

 east mebon

 ta prohm - an experiment in letting the jungle take over

ta prohm #2

 banteay srei - some of the most spectacular carving

 the baphuon - staircase to heaven??

 stone carving on pillars of most temples - they signified that you 

were in the "hall of dancers"

 some of the faces of the bayon - one of our favorite temples

 one of the gates into angkor thom, the main city of the temple complex

 vishnu statue in angkor wat

spectacular bas relief at angkor wat

 angkor wat at sunrise

banteay kdei - ta prohm and the bayon all in one

in addition to all the temples, we took a tour of a silk farm while we were in siem reap, which turned out to be one of our favorite activities. angkor artisans is a group that trains youth from rural villages in different trades and pays them a living wage. they have a silk farm where they complete the whole process from mulberry leaves to garment. it was amazing to get to see the whole process of how silk is made...our heads were spinning by the time we left. he skill and time spent making silk products here was truly incredible. 

 scarf on a loom - the silk threats are dyed so that they have each of the individual colors of the scarf in a single strand; the weaver then places each strand to make the diamond pattern you see. crazy.

 students threading the loom one silk strand at a time

cambodia continued to be a adventure in wonderful food, incredible sites, and our first elephant ride. more about that in laos...which is up next!

going to the birds

a few weeks ago, pete, cassie, and i loaded our gear in the car and headed to the central valley of california for a short camping and birding adventure. we arrived at gray lodge wildlife refuge an hour or so before sunset so we could see the evening "fly-off." if you have never spent much time in a place used by migratory birds, fly-off (and fly-in) are spectacular times of the day when THOUSANDS of birds make their way between their feeding areas and their roosting areas. while the central valley may not be the most exciting of places for human travel, the birds love it here. there are numerous refuges scattered across the landscape between chico and sacramento that are full of ducks and geese. i read about gray lodge a number of years ago in a magazine and it has been on my list of "places to visit" ever since. i'm making an effort to drag pete and cassie to these places this year and start crossing things off the ever-growing list. since it is prime migration season, it is also hunting season at the refuge. hunters sit in blinds at the edge of the reserve and shoot as the birds fly in and out of the refuge. the birds were pretty wary of hunters - they would even veer away from me as soon as i pointed my camera towards the sky. having grown up as one of those hunters on the edge of the reserve, i was not phased by the shots in the background as we hiked around the different ponds and channels. pete, on the other hand, was completely fascinated by this new world i had plopped him in. we saw at least ten different kinds of waterfowl (some new ones), quite a few wading birds, and a number of songbirds. definitely a worthwhile birding trip!

sunset at gray lodge

 pintails

 snow geese leaving the refuge for the night

 we spotted a whole family of otters (5 of them) in a pond the 

next morning - they were very curious and each one took a 

turn swimming towards the shore to get a better look at us

 pete the birder

coots...so many coots