A couple of years ago, Mr X went to San Francisco for a business trip. Upon his return he presented me with three lovely and fragrant bars of soap he had purchased in Chinatown. Until then I had been exclusively a body wash kind of girl. I was tempted to forgo using the soaps because they were too lovely to use. But that would have led to the development of a collection of bars of soap and that just seems wasteful and silly. Plus Mr X wouldn't have been pleased if I never used his gift. So I began using them and I discovered I loved them.Later, Mr X and I were lucky enough to be able to spend Thanksgiving 2007 in Paris, France. At one point during that trip we happened upon a boutique that sold handmade french milled soaps. I purchased a couple for myself and as gifts for others as well. In the picture below you can see my only remaining soap from that trip - the orange one.
For Christmas this past winter "Santa Claus" put a couple more bars of soap in my stocking. One of them is the large white one pictured above. The other one is in my shower. I've been using it for almost 5 months now and I'm sure there's at least 2 or 3 more months use left of it. I prefer the bars of soap because:1) They last much longer than body wash.2) They are more 'natural' than body wash.3) They create far less waste than the body wash - simple paper or plastic wrapping (or sometimes no wrapping at all) as opposed to a large plastic container...and since I go through the soaps less frequently than the body wash, it prevents even more plastic waste from being tossed in the rubbish.4) I find the fancy soaps far more interesting than body wash.***Note: I am now a bar soap snob and thus would never settle for a simple bar of Irish Spring or Ivory. I like my soaps hand made and special.I realize I just did a whole post on SOAP but it was on my mind so I thought I'd share. Oh and plus I can post whatever I want to here because it's my blog. But I do apologize if this post bored you to tears.
Today I finished my last day of work at my current job. I start my new job on the 26th. I'm looking forward to having about ten days off between jobs. Mr X and I are headed up to the mountains again this weekend, this time we're staying in a cabin. The day after we return, some friends from ABQ will be coming to stay with us for a bit. The day after they leave my brother and his friend will be staying with us for a few days. Then we have one day to ourselves before I start my new job. My time off is going to be busy. I'm sure the time off will fly by at incredible speed, sadly enough.That being said, I was calculating how much time off I've had from my work each year these past several years. Last year, 2008, I took 7 weeks off. In 2007 I took about 14 weeks off. In 2006 I took 3 weeks off. This year I'm estimating 3 weeks. 2007/2008 were great years, it seems. *sigh* I miss them.
Our camping trip last weekend went well. Mr X and I were both battling a bit of a cold when we left last Friday and I don't think camping helped us out any as we don't seem to have made any progress in our recovery. BUT - we had a great time despite being under the weather. We went to the William Heise Couty Park in the Santa Rosa Mountains, near Julian, CA. Here is our campsite:
The picture below I took with my new camera, trying out the night portrait setting. It seemed to work well.
Tomorrow we’re heading out for some camping fun. With real tents and stuff too! It seems to me that an awfully high percentage of people “RV” these days, rather than old school tent-camping. Don’t get me wrong, RV’s somehow fascinate me and I harbor a secret (not anymore I guess) fantasy of one day RV-ing across America in a lovely new medium-sized rig. (Medium-sized so I can actually maneuver the thing.) Mr X and I often find ourselves sizing up the endless parade of RV’s and campers in the beach campsites near our house. We discuss the pros and cons of the various models we pass on our frequent walks. BUT I still think good old fashioned camping is always an adventure. (So long as no small children are present….I’ve heard that’s pure torture.) We’re planning on doing some hikes in the area and some mountain biking as well and we may even bring along our telescope just for fun. We hit up the library this past weekend to get some new reading material so we would have plenty of fresh stories to relax with in the evenings at our campsite.
The only thing that concerns me is scaring Mr X near-to-death at night: I experience some sort of night terrors ONLY when camping, it seems. My parents have told me I even did it on camping trips as a child. I have no idea why this happens. The good news is that I don’t actually wake up frightened or scared – I usually don’t even remember what I was dreaming about. In fact, if Mr X wasn’t with me I’m fairly certain I would sleep through my own screams. But of course it’s a frightening way for Mr X to be roused from his slumber, as you can imagine, and so his freaked out response always wakes ME up. Normally I find this whole situation extremely humorous once I realize what has just taken place and fits of laughter ensue from both of us (once Mr X has calmed down, of course). The problem is that this time we’re actually going to a campground so there will be fellow campers scattered about within earshot and I don’t particularly want my blood-curdling screams to wake them up. How embarrassing that would be….especially if they came over to see if we were all right or to complain about the noise.
Yesterday marks the first time I’ve felt an earthquake since I’ve been back in Southern CA. Even when I was here before I didn’t actually feel them that often. Maybe once a year. There were undoubtedly more earthquakes than that happening, but a lot of times they’re so small you don’t notice them unless you’re in the right situation. Like yesterday - I was sitting on the couch, the television was off, nothing was going on. So of course I noticed when the windows started rattling like mad for maybe 15 seconds. But if I’d been driving in my car or even outside walking around I’m sure the event would have passed by completely undetected by me.
I remember the first time I ever felt one in CA, about 9 years ago. It must have been a more powerful quake because it woke me from a dead sleep and my first thought was that I HATED my neighbors because who has a party in their apartment at 3 AM during the middle of the work week? As the building was shaking and creaking I assumed they were up there dancing or doing jumping jacks or something. It took me a second after everything had gone still and silent to realize that my neighbors were obviously behaving themselves like normal working adults. At that point I figured out what had just happened and then I was too excited to fall back asleep for a while.
I submitted notice to my current employer yesterday. You would think that I wouldn't really get nervous anymore, considering how many times I've had to do that in the past 5 years, but I did. I did it twice in '05, once in '06, once in '07 (ultimately staying with that company in the end), once in '08 and now once in '09. It's my goal to not have to do it again for several years. With that sort of spotty job history, my resume could really use some stability. Anyway, I'm excited for my new job but I will miss the ease, freedom and simplicity of my current job so I'm a bit sad. No more 4 day work week, no more working from home one day a week and I'll be back to working evenings and weekends as necessary again. I start at the end of the month.On to other news...I finally was brave enough to try that duck egg. I kept putting it off because my attempt of the turkey egg wasn't well received by my taste buds or stomach. The first bite went well enough and I was surprised to discover that it didn't taste all that much different than my beloved chicken egg...just a bit creamier and rich. So I had another bite and another. By the third bite the 'after-taste' caught up with me and I dashed to the garbage to spit out what was left in my mouth. Then I frantically crammed fruit into my mouth to mask that duck egg taste. It took a lot of fruit. I'm just going to stick with regular chicken eggs from now on and maybe I'll take a break from them for a bit as well. And yes, I've come to the painful realization that I could never be the Bizarre Foods host. (Although it might be more funny to watch if I was the host because I would undoubtedly be gagging and vomiting all the time with absolutely no regard for common decency or politeness.)
Julian is famous for its pies so Mr X and I decided to stop in and have a slice. There are several places one can get pie in this town so we just randomly picked one. 
We chose "Mom's." Mr X gave the place a 9 (out of 10) on presentation and a 3 on taste. He claimed the filling of his pie was too mushy and it lacked flavor. His pie was apple-cherry. Mine was a sugar-free apple with sugar-free ice cream. I thought it was decent. 
The area around where we camped apparently is overrun by wild turkeys. They were all over the place and they even came into our camp area at night. We would hear them gobbling throughout the night. It was very strange.
Our first night there Mr X grilled us up some steaks and I cooked "
