Fine and Full - What’s up with Jay and Anastasia

This is probably part 1 of a longer video about our aforementioned adventure day (yesterday). Please note that some of the facts and observations in this video are later proven to be mere optimism.

We’ve been driving a lot the past few days, and the car has a CD player, but no input jack. We’ve got iPods, but no CDs.

Last night, we remembered to burn a CD with some mp3s, starting from a very small collection that’s on Anastasia’s laptop. This worked out great today, as we had music for our whole drive.

We listened to 4-5 albums, and I thought a couple were particularly nice with today’s scenes (including: oceans / fjords, rivers, river deltas, lakes, ponds, snow covered hills and mountains, farms with and without snow, sheep, cows, horses, birds, dogs, one cat, and a couple dozen people)–all interesting. These were:

“Salvador Kali,” by Sir Richard Bishop

and

“Lost Channels,” by the Great Lake Swimmers

I probably should also include the new Rodrigo y Gabriella album we enjoyed today, too. And, then there were another couple good ones, too. But those two above really stood out to me.

We ended up with a big adventure today, with much of the day driving slowly down a totally remote, unpaved road, in a snow storm. Pictures and video coming soon.

We started from our hotel in Reykjahlid (Hotel Reykjahlid, which is really lovely) on Lake Myvatn (also really lovely), and headed out to get to Husavik via the route 85 864 (edited: route 85 was the nice road we got to later, after 864) where we would see the Dettifoss waterfalls. En route, we also tried to see the lava fields by the Krafla Geothermal Plant—we couldn’t see any bubbling sulfur through the snow, though we saw lots of lava rocks (comparable to the Big Island of Hawaii).

And, anyway, lots of snow and unpaved roads, and then a beautiful drive along the coast of the Arctic Ocean to get to Husavik—and we had some fine pizza (at Salka) and a nice visit to the local baths, and now we’re warm and safe in a room at the Fosshotel Husavik.

More photos and video in a day or so—the next evening we’re sitting around with web access.

It’s getting late here (almost midnight, and only 5pm in Seattle), so I’m just going to post some links to photos I uploaded:

Travel Day

North Iceland (where we are now)

More commentary later; in short we’re having a really good time!

Fine and Full will be back (here) soon – Tune in / same fine time / same full channel.

Hap
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We had a great time in Palm Springs and at our first time at the Coachella Festival! We saw lots of good bands and had fun with our friends.

Here are some photos from the festival:

On our recent trip to Palm Springs, we visited Tahquitz Canyon, just at the end of Palm Springs. Tahquitz Canyonis owned by the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians and there’s a couple mile hike you can take through the rocks and desert landscape. We (Jay, Lee, & Sachi) hiked to the 60 foot waterfall – and it was a coolish day for April in the desert, but still hot! More photos from the Coachella festival coming soon….

Here are some photos from the hike:

Blackcomb Mountain, BC

For the first time ever, Jay and I went on a winter “snow” vacation instead of a winter “sun” vacation. We just got home from a long weekend at Whistler. While not entirely injury free (we are both trying to learn to snowboard, and both had some falls on Saturday), we did have a lot of fun. This set of photos are from the day we went up the mountains on the lifts for some tourist activity. They just built a “peak to peak” gondola for the Olympics that goes between Blackcomb and Whistler mountains — it was quite a view.

We were joined on the trip with Jen, John, Colin, and our friend Jesse (who was John’s snowboard friend, since the rest of us are still beginners).

A little late, but over the holidays, my friend Curtis sent me this video of the gingerbread house he made this year. And, by gingerbread house, I of course mean: intricate recreation of a famous architectural wonder in gingerbread. This year’s is the beautiful Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, which Anastasia and I had the great fortune to visit when we were there in 2000:

You may recall that, last year, Curtis’ gingerbread house was a similarly stunning recreation of l’Opéra national de Paris – in gingerbread!

OK, extra bonus feature this year: after visiting his family in Salt Lake City, Curtis also made this video called “Holiday Horrors!” It’s super awesomely holiday horror hilarious! A perfect way to say goodbye to the 2008 holidays.

Here are some photos from our family get-together on Xmas eve — the one that almost didn’t happen because of the snow; but thanks to our awesome friends Lee & Sachi and their 4×4, us “kids” all braved the weather and made it to Kenmore-by-the-Lake for holiday festivities. The photos here account for all of us in some way, but both Colin and Mary turned away from the camera, so only their backs are included. I’ll have to be more diligent next time. Enjoy!

Like the one we posted last year, this only stays online a few weeks. Enjoy!

We’re back from a great family visit in LA. At the annual Thanksgiving brunch, we were catching up with my cousin Alli Pescosolido (aka, Alli 411, the LA food blogger), and she mentioned that her kitchen was featured on the kitchn, which is part of the Apartment Therapy website.

So, we’ve checked out the feature and it’s very nice—it’s actually an interview with Alli and a photo tour of her kitchen, including some close-ups of her 1924 stove and some cool pix of her house:

Kitchen Tour: Alli’s Vintage Hacienda

There are also a couple Thanksgiving recipes, which are also posted on Alli 411, where you can leave comments.

Check it all out!

So over the weekend we finally cleaned up the construction debris from the downstairs and I took a few photos of our new kitchen. This one here is a before & after from the same angle. We’ll be posting more photos soon, but wanted to get this up for everyone out there who’s curious since we’ve been talking about it so much