It’s a nice (ish) day, so Bree and Jan take our cats Moxie and Mojo for a walk around the block. We put them in two cat carriers, then wear those over our shoulders. Before we’ve reached the first corner, Moxie begins to meow, followed a few moments later by his brother Mojo. They meow for the rest of the short walk.
After the walk, we reward them with food. We leave the cat carriers out, and both cats go back into the carriers to take afternoon naps.
On the way back from dinner, Bree brings up a mnemonic for remembering the order of the cardinal directions North, East, South, West: “Never Eat Soggy Wheat”. We try to think of other mnemonics that could work. Our favorite answer: “Nobody Expects Surprise Weasels”.
For Angela’s birthday, Jan makes her a birthday card with a happy birthday Surprise Weasel on the front. Angela was not expecting that — which only serves to show that Nobody Expects Surprise Weasels.
Angela’s last day as a pastor at First Taiwanese Presbyterian Church. The church elders decided late last year that their small church needed to focus on finding a new full-time pastor who can preach in Taiwanese, and decided to end Angela’s English ministry. Angela only learned of the decision in early January, and it came as a surprise, so the transition has been unpleasantly sudden. She’s enjoyed working at the church for the past 3½ years, and will take some time to recharge before beginning the search for a new call.
Angela, Liya, and Sabriya fly to L.A. to spend time with Johnny, Jenny, Anthony, and Brian. Angela and Liya will also tour some colleges in the L.A. area.
Last year, the journal “Nature” published a paper showing that cats can recognize their own names. That may be true for Mojo and Moxie — but what’s funnier is that the definitely know the word “kibble”. If you say “kibble”, they’ll perk up and/or come running.
Jan meets up with Angela and the girls at San Jose Airport, then we all drive to Stanford University so Liya can tour the school. After the tour, we meet up with Liam, a current sophomore we know, who shows us his dorm and the product design building where he spends a lot of his time.
We spend a day skiing at Squaw Valley near Lake Tahoe. It’s beautiful weather — a little too beautiful, in fact. The area hasn’t received any new snow since the beginning of the year, so while it still has snow, it’s either as hard as a rock at the start of the day, or soft and mushy by the early afternoon. It’s essentially spring skiing in mid-February.
We spend the second day of our ski trip at Alpine Meadows. It’s another beautiful day of spring conditions. For what it’s worth, Liya is now acknowledged as the fastest member of our foursome on skis.
Interestingly, the Pacific Crest Trail runs across the top of the run in the background of this photo. Jan walked across that part of the PCT exactly 6 months ago today on a hike with Chris from Donner Pass to Fallen Leaf Lake.
On the way back from Lake Tahoe to Sacramento to fly home, we have some time to kill, so we make a stop at Empire Mine State Park. The park’s the site of what was once an enormous gold mining operation. Here we’re looking down the main shaft, which took miners down hundreds of feet on rail cars running at a steep 45° angle. The Empire Mine was “one of the oldest, largest, deepest, longest and richest gold mines in California”, and the extensive network of tunnels ran for 367 miles underground.
Before leaving Empire Mine State Park, we stop in the park’s blacksmith shop. A park worker named Hal tells us about the shop, and gives us a quick demonstration of working with a steel bar. He heats the steel for a few minutes in a forge. When the steel gets hot enough to burn off the carbon in it, the burning carbon gives off an impressive shower of sparks.
But what’s ultimately far more interesting is hearing Hal’s stories about playing in the abandoned mine when he was a local boy. In the period after the mine closed but before the state park opened, he and his friends would sneak onto the grounds and clamber down the main shaft until they reached the level of the water table. (Below that point, the mine was flooded.) They’d play around, and on at least one occasion spent the night down there. Nowadays the main shaft is locked up and closed to everybody.
Once a week, Jan’s been commuting to work by electric scooter. It’s not faster than going by car — the commute time in the late afternoon is the same whether by car or scooter, but the car is much faster during light morning traffic. Mostly it’s just fun to do something different one day a week, and the ride is quite pretty. He rides through the Arboretum, over the 520 bridge bike path, then through quite Medina and Bellevue until he gets to downtown Bellevue.