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Long time, no chat! I had a really stressful April/May. Heh, I think it was brought on by insufficient sleep due to extensive marathoning of Supernatural. [Self-control? What is this concept all about?]  Sprinkle in work issues i.e. constant depressing yapping about budget cuts and you have one grumpy, not in the mood to type me!

But now it's summer and I'm torturing myself with ideas of vacation that I promptly bail on because I'm not willing to pile debt on ye olde credit card (Sorry, Jessica!) (see previous paragraph re: constant yapping about drastic budget cuts which now include staff layoffs). I believe I'll be piddling away my ever-growing vacation balance (thank you, furloughs) one day at a time this summer. Not exactly thrilling, but certainly affordable.

One of the many great things about being in California is that there are plenty of nearby wonders to keep me entertained. For example, over Memorial Day weekend I squeezed in a short trip to Yosemite National Park. My co-worker has a friend who lives about 45 minutes away from Yosemite so we stayed with her and "commuted" to the park. On the one hand it was kinda a crappy choice since about five billion other Californians had the same idea (thus Yosemite lived up to its "crowded" reputation - you've never seen such traffic jams at a National Park in your life! Well, ones not caused by people gaping at wildlife or some such). On the other hand, it was a fabulous decision since the waterfalls were bursting with late spring snowfall which is now melting. Sweet! The traffic was so bad it kept us off the valley floor, but I can always go back and do that any time (we'll see if it'll be another seven years before I go back ;). However, we were lucky enough to be there the first day the road to Glacier Point was opened. Yeah, you can see photos of that here: http://pics.livejournal.com/undeep_thoughts/pic/000bsz3p/g53

What further summer adventures are coming my way? Well, tune in to see (I'm warning you now, it's going to be pathetic).