after a whirlwind of project review meetings, a few days of vacation, and a few days without internet, i'm actually able to get a moment to blog. yippee! i know you're as thrilled as i. i'll be out the next two days, too-- site visit in woodland at some rice fields (it's a bird flyway project) on thursday, and then car service and down to LA on friday.

so what's been going on? i've been running myself ragged, it seems, but at least i'm staying busy. the past few weeks have been taken up primarily with preparing and presenting projects for the fall grants cycle. i've already had two projects turned down, unfortunately, and one more may be getting the boot due to our lack of funding. sad. our big review meetings were last week, and we all did pretty decent presentations (even the new kids). we changed the format of the meetings some, so that we were comparing projects by theme and subtheme (for some method of comparison by project type) rather than by region. that made it fairly evident where the stronger projects were, instead of favoring specific projects within a region.

thursday and friday of last week i was able to take off and head up to lake tahoe... i actually got up there wednesday night after sitting in tons of sacto traffic. weee! i made pretty good time in my lil saturn, though. my parents were up there for the week on vacation, and i crashed it for a few days. yay! :) wednesday night we did a bit of gambling on free money... i ended up being even that night but i don't think the 'rents fared so well. thursday we went hiking.. we started out on the pacific crest trail (because i'm a dork and really wanted to hike on the PCT) but ended up doing some off-trailing so we could go rock-climbing. ma didn't like that much ;) but it was quite fun. some lovely vistas of the lake from up there, too. that evening we went to a shakespeare show on the lake-- outside at night, with everyone sitting on lawn chairs on the beach. the show was a midsummer night's dream, which is one of my favorite shakespeare plays. it was done excellently, and i really enjoyed both the show and the setting.

friday we took the new (expensive!!) heavenly gondola up to the observation deck, where you can see the whole lake in all its splendor. very cool. i tried to take some pictures, but that thing is so dang huge that it's not really even possible. oh well. we went up to the top of the gondola to do a bit of hiking too, but in the summertime the ski runs are pretty ugly dirt roads. i much preferred the hiking of the day before, on trails that are meant primarily for hiking. then we drove over to minden, nevada, to meet up with my great-uncle béla and my cousin kyle. béla has been coming to minden for years to soar (engine-less planes), and now kyle, his grandson, is doing the same. kyle is the most adorable 16-year-old... he's got bright red hair and ears that are slightly too big for him, and he's so sweet and polite but with a bit of mischief in his character... and he has the cutest slight southern accent. he's only been to california once, but he fell in love with it so he'll be back. it's been a while since i'd seen him, but he really has grown into a nice young man. (and boy, do i feel old saying that.) we got back from lunch with the fam and hit the beach for a few hours before dinner, and then went to the casinos again that night. my mom won back some of the money she'd lost, so she did okay, and i lost about three dollars, but my dad ended up doing pretty decently on the wheel of fortune slots. unfortunately, it didn't quite cover the losses from earlier in the week (before i arrived). ahh well. it's fun to win!

saturday we went to breakfast before heading back out to the bay area... i stopped along the way to buy some new hiking boots. hopefully these ones will be less painful on my feet than my other ones. these new ones are hitec, though, so i think i'll be able to do better with them. saturday night i went to see the italian job with l&m, and then sunday l&m and i hit the sf zoo. they have new lion cubs at the sf zoo! they're really cute. there's a contest to name them, but they have to be african names. too bad. marla wanted to name them kona and mocha, and i wanted to name them hansel and gretel. ahh well. the sf zoo is pretty small, but they have some decent exhibits. next time i'll remember to bring something to identify myself as an sf resident, or at least my muni pass, so i can get a discount!

and that's the way the cookie crumbles. off to soccer practice!