Disneyland!!!

Trying to get somewhat caught up on this blog...

For Mother's Day, Kellyn and I took my parents to Disneyland (counted as Father's Day as well). My parents had not been to Disney for many, many years, so we thought it would be fun. Plus, we all have flight benefits at this point so it was easy and quick to get over there.

 Captain EO was back. I vaguely remember it from the 80s.

 The new Buzz Lightyear Ride.

 Tressa Hudgens was in Fantasmic that night - here she is Alice.

 Space Mountain was the best ride! 

 Disney was fun, but I prefer the big coasters :)

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Last Sunday, we did a solar eclipse hike up Squaw Peak. We got started about 5:30pm, so were at the top by about 6. Fortunately, Dave made a viewing box so we could see the outline of the sun.

Taking pictures...

 This was a shot that I just clicked with my camera. I turned the ISO up to 1600 and put the F-stop as high as I could. I didn't want to take too many pictures with my camera, because I read that the sun could also hurt a camera (just like your eyes).

 Dave, Me, Tim

 iPhone picture

 On our way down, we ran into this guy who had a telescope and he was projecting the image onto a white piece of cardboard. This is what it looked like.

Tim kept singing the Bonnie Tyler song, hence the name of the title of this post :)

Peaches!

This morning my mom and I drove out to Queen Creek to go to the Peach Festival at Schnepf Farm. We arrived a little before 8am and it was already really busy at the farm. The peaches were nice and ripe. I probably ate at least 5, if not closer to 8, peaches this morning while we were picking. I also ended up with 8.5 pounds of peaches - looking forward to eating them and making some peach cobbler!

 I also picked a couple of these yellow zucchini squash - so big...and fresh!

 My produce from the morning. The carrots and beets were pre-picked - I bought those at the market.

After the farm we stopped by the Queen Creek Olive Mill and I bought some roasted garlic olive oil and some lemon olive oil. We then stopped at The Pork Shop which was up the street to pick up something for my dad. The family of one of my co-workers owns that place so he said to make sure to stop. His last name is Combs, and I didn't realize that everything out near this pork shop was all named Combs...Combs Road, Combs Middle School and even Combs Unified School District.

Great morning, and I love supporting the local farms. I can't wait to buy a house and have my own garden!

New Wheels

After moving back to Arizona from NYC, one of the things on my list to buy was a car. I kept my Jetta for about a year after moving to NYC, but sold that in February 2010. I really wanted a hard top convertible, and when I was here for the Chang's half in January I sat in a BMW 328i convertible and I loved it. I decided to look for a Certified Pre-Owned, and wanted a 2009 with about 30,000 miles. I was also very specific on colors - white, silver or gray exterior, with black interior. I also wanted a non-sport package - the sport package had the larger wheels and made the car look like it was sitting low to the ground. Given my specifications, I was having a lot of trouble finding a car in AZ. I decided to expand my search to other states (good thing for flight benefits!) and found a car that I liked in Southern California. I talked to the internet salesperson for about a week, and decided to fly out there a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday. 

When dad and I arrived at the dealership, I found what I thought was the car right away but this was in the window. I was immediately frustrated, because I had talked to the dealership the night before stating that I was flying out the next morning and I wanted to confirm that the car was still available. This was 5:30pm on Saturday night, and yes, it was still available. 

Once we found a salesperson, they did a lot of running back and forth, allowed me to take the car for a test drive and we started negotiating. I never heard anything more about this sold sign, but decided to not bring it up.

 It's mine!

 We stopped at Farrell's in Rancho Cucomonga for a late lunch, before driving the car back to AZ (no, we didn't drive all the way home with the top down).

Thanks to my dad for going over with me and helping me with some of the negotiations.

Warrior Dash 2012

Today I did my first mud run and it was a blast! We did the Warrior Dash held in Florence, AZ. It consisted of 3.28 miles, with a total of 13 obstacles throughout the course. The obstacles included running through a tire jungle, running on top of old cars, scaling walls, climbing through cargo nets, jumping over fire and crawling through a mud pit.

My group of friends who did this with me - Bobby, Jaime, Me, Steve and Dave.

Jaime and I nice and clean before the run.

Finished - my time was 36:41.70 and that put me at 101 (out of 1,314) in my age group and 1,059 (out of 6,632) overall. I could have gone faster...at one of the obstacles I had to wait in line at least 5 minutes, but everyone had to wait for that one so that makes the place order fair anyway.

Dave and I...Dave beat me by about 5 minutes.

Jaime, Bobby and I - not so clean anymore.

After we took this picture we went to the hose down area and tried to clean up before driving home. I ran my clothes through the wash twice tonight (including a 45 minute soak) and my socks are still brown. The rest of my clothes are back to normal though. My hair was also covered in mud...so gross but so fun at the same time!

We can't wait for the next one!

Pat's Run 2012

New York City and Central Park turned me into a runner. I am not extremely fast or a professional by any means, but it is a good workout and it is fun to do running events. A couple of months ago I convinced Kellyn to do Pat's Run with me.

We were in Corral 7 out of 28. The first wave (i.e. Corral 1) went off at 7:05am, and then each wave was 30 seconds after that. It was probably in the 70s when we did the run, but it got hot when we turned east on Curry directly into the sun.

The finish line was on the 42nd yard line of Sun Devil Stadium (since Pat Tillman was #42). I had heard that in previous years people got backed up when they entered the stadium, but it seems that they have perfected the run so that you can continue running across the finish line. I finished in 35:49 (4.2 miles) which is a personal best! Kellyn even said she is ready for another race :)

Next Chapter

Today was my last day of working for Pfizer in New York City. I will be taking the next 3 days to pack up my apartment and wrap up life in NYC before my one-way flight from JFK-PHX on Saturday. On Monday, March 5th, I start my new job at...

I am looking forward to starting this next chapter of my career and getting back into life in Arizona again.