go america #1 woo!
in celebration of our nation's "birthday" themarshal and i joined damneddonkey and heypacksees over at celtcub and norcalpco's place for some gambling, drinking, and illegal bbq'ing. liam's been gnawing at the bit to get to play real texas hold'em, since, up until now, he's been playing online. it was soon discovered who the card sharks of the table were. heypacksees and damneddonkey ended up with the most winnings. paco ended with modest winnnings, while i lost $12 and both marshall and liam ended losing it all. i had a good time, at least. we were originally going to play to the last 2 people standing, but with only $0.50 max bets, it was going to take us a while. since i had the least amount of money on the table, i decided to just stop. we all enjoyed an illegal bbq of hot dogs, italian sausage and peppers, curried pork kabobs, and portabello mushroom burgers, along with a refreshing cucumber and apple slaw and my grilled caesar salad. everything was delicious and we were all stuffed. unfortunately, we didn't start dinner until late and by the time we were finished, it was a little late to try and find a place to watch fireworks, so we stayed in and played a bunch of boom blox on the wii (very fun party game!). :D
+_+_+
this morning we caught up with liam, paco and paul for breakfast at the normal time. afterwards, instead of doing our "normal" errand-running, paco had an idea. due to the poor rainy season we had this year, the lexington reservoir is almost bone-dry (despite what the picture shows on that website!). what's neat is that you can park along old santa cruz highway and hike down to the lake bed and walk around. after finding a creative way down to the shore, we set out exploring. we found tons of trash, but interesting trash. lots of cigarette packs (of a brand called "555", of which none of us were familiar), beer bottles and cans, garbage bags, and tires. there are still some areas of the lake bed which SEEM stable and dry, but were actually bog-like. we found a few tracks in the mud where it seemed a dog or deer had found themselves trapped in the sticky bog and had to drag themselves out. kind of scary...then of course one of our own found one! we're just looking around and then we hear this "help!" and find paco with one leg thigh-deep in the mud. luckily, we were able to pull him out, but his feet were covered in this slimy filmy mud. originally, we had hoped the reservoir was dried up enough to cross a bridge, which is normally fully submerged when it's full. the bridge dates back to the early 1900s and is still quite functional. unfortunately, it wasn't dry enough and the majority of the bridge was still underwater. oh well, at least it was a cool diversion. i know i'd never been down there before and it was neat, albeit kind of sad, to see all this old trash in the ground. we managed to find a few pop-top and circle-top cans of beer! i've uploaded our pictures in the gallery.
+_+_+
earlier today, marshall exclaimed - i love our cats. i do, too...
waiting for caturday
(new pics are uploaded - just click on the picture; beware most of them are sleeping pics, otherwise they don't sit still long enough to snap!)
+_+_+
this morning we caught up with liam, paco and paul for breakfast at the normal time. afterwards, instead of doing our "normal" errand-running, paco had an idea. due to the poor rainy season we had this year, the lexington reservoir is almost bone-dry (despite what the picture shows on that website!). what's neat is that you can park along old santa cruz highway and hike down to the lake bed and walk around. after finding a creative way down to the shore, we set out exploring. we found tons of trash, but interesting trash. lots of cigarette packs (of a brand called "555", of which none of us were familiar), beer bottles and cans, garbage bags, and tires. there are still some areas of the lake bed which SEEM stable and dry, but were actually bog-like. we found a few tracks in the mud where it seemed a dog or deer had found themselves trapped in the sticky bog and had to drag themselves out. kind of scary...then of course one of our own found one! we're just looking around and then we hear this "help!" and find paco with one leg thigh-deep in the mud. luckily, we were able to pull him out, but his feet were covered in this slimy filmy mud. originally, we had hoped the reservoir was dried up enough to cross a bridge, which is normally fully submerged when it's full. the bridge dates back to the early 1900s and is still quite functional. unfortunately, it wasn't dry enough and the majority of the bridge was still underwater. oh well, at least it was a cool diversion. i know i'd never been down there before and it was neat, albeit kind of sad, to see all this old trash in the ground. we managed to find a few pop-top and circle-top cans of beer! i've uploaded our pictures in the gallery.
+_+_+
earlier today, marshall exclaimed - i love our cats. i do, too...
waiting for caturday
(new pics are uploaded - just click on the picture; beware most of them are sleeping pics, otherwise they don't sit still long enough to snap!)