okay, okay, okay...

so what, you may be asking, is my excuse this time? well, to be honest, we haven't been doing very much. the weather's been cruddy, vanessa has work and volunteer obligations 60 hours a week, and I (confession time) have been watching too much Project Runway and Make Me A Supermodel. hey, at least it makes it worth the cost of having cable!

earlier, I alluded to a weekend birthday surprise trip, which we did and I've been unsuccessful in trying to get vanessa to write a guest post about her surprise. the poor thing's just been too busy, and tired when she has a minute to do anything. maybe she'll come through and write something on her own, but I'll spill the beans because it was so fun!

we went to monterey and went skydiving! then we went to the monterey aquarium, which is a really amazing place to visit. it shows what's found in the monterey bay and surrounding marine sanctuary.. stuff you'd never guess is right there, like sharks and jellyfish! we wanted to also go whale watching, but it was rather chilly and we didn't have enough time. so.. i won't ruin the story, but here are a few good pictures from the trip:

big jellies, the size of your head.

lots of jellies that look like coral.

giant kelp, shark, and a swirling school of tiny fish (anyone remember that from the Blue Planet or Planet Earth?!)

white anemones, tiny orange anemones, and a rock fish in the back. rock fish live up to 80 years and don't reproduce until their 20's -- they've been overfished and the population is endangered.
electric jellies! these guys are really tiny, about the size of my pinky.

the past week here has been really beautiful.. sunny and warmer, so I've enjoyed riding my fast bike without rain fenders on my commute and felt a little more in shape. it's ridiculous, but I'm actually losing a lot of strength and stamina because everything is so close here. you'd think that all the hills would make me stronger, but honestly we tend to take the flattest routes because most of the hills are just too freaking big to tackle. my median gear ratio has dropped a few inches and I'm tired after a 3-mile ride -- crazy after my 25-mile commutes on a fixie! my excuse is that the weather's been too gross to do any long-distance pleasure riding for the past month, and I'm thinking that once the weather gets its act together we'll be doing much more riding. I have lots of opportunities to ride before work, too, since 3 days of the week I don't even go in to the office until noon or 2pm. shame!

well, I think I'll be on to other things today.. I hope you're all doing well and toughing out the bleak winter days. I heard the sun's been absent around Chicago lately.. I definitely couldn't have withstood it again!