good ol' hillbilly time!

Our stake celebrated pioneer day this weekend. ( a few days late, but what can you do? It's not Utah)

There was pinewood derby races, tri-tip, stick-pull games, hands-up-stands-up, a glorious bob-barr-08-mustache by yours truly, 700 pounds of baked beans, 97 pairs of shorts ruined by lava hot spills of said beans, good friends, 42 different cobbler varieties, unexpected kisses, and best of all?

The swimmin hole. That's right, in keeping with pioneer spirit we decided to have a good ol' hillbilly time by checking out the swimming hole. We hadn't planned on going, so we only had our shorts to wear instead of trunks. But that's never stopped us before! Peer pressure is a beautiful thing.
The water was perfect! It was a dang hoot!

We were having such a good time that even Janae jumped in a long white skirt! She floated like a dead person from what lies beneath a time or two!


We did YMCA and pretended to be swamp monsters

There were truffle-shuffles and mohawks and even the occasional swamp-stache (which I dare say makes me look rather distinguished, like a civil war re-enactment guy who I will name Claude Beaumont)


Now if you saw the previous post on the bed jump olympics you're probly asking "Were there specialty jumps?" Well you betcha. Here are Seth's.... "Triumphant General", "Emperor Augustus",(moment to explain: he's getting his PhD in Classics) "Jazz Hands" and a mysterious fourth jump that I don't remember so I'll rename it "Spider Monkey Attacks Tourist."



Mighty Magnüsson threw out "Hercules take 3", "Pizazz", "Diving for Rebar", "Mexican Hat Dance" and "The Irish Jig"

Here I am with "El Jefe", "Wild West Heel-clicker", "The Peoples Elbow"


and my personal favorite: Swan Le'Magnifique (from 3 angles apparently!)



Come visit us before we leave in December and we'll show you how much fun the swimmin hole is! (hint hint alicia & ryan, heavy-D, Justin & Lauren, everyone else!)

the unthinkable has happened...

here's the list of the worst possible things that could happen to a graduate student:
#1- your advisor falsifies data or otherwise gets caught committing academic dishonesty of some sort thus killing his career and simultaneously tainting the career of anyone who works with him,

#2- Your advisor actually dies.

#3- Your advisor drops you (cuts your funding).

#4- Your advisor decides that after an incredibly successful 25 year career at UCSB he is going to accept a faculty position, along with his wife, at Harvard University on Jan 1st. This leads to two choices:
a) start over here at UCSB with a new faculty member.
b)Estimate Driving Time: 46.0 hours 26 minutes Estimated Distance: 3033.03 miles

guess which one of these four calamities happened to me this weekend?
keep us in your prayers as we make this nightmarish decision!
or ???

Scout Camp! Holcomb Valley!

Here are the pictures. 1 week of being with the gremlins. Somehow I survived. and even grew a mustache.
Sorry, I'm not gonna give too many explanations either.

Our troop friend Eric. He looks like a hippy, but he was great. Here's Dorny and his childhood buddy they haven't seen eachother in like 18 years.

Ben and Monty showing us what directors really do. I can't believe the trouble making punk I shared a teepee with 7 years ago is now running the camp. wow.

Morning skits sucked, but they're getting better. horses smell.

The hikes (or mountain bike ride over the might John Bull Trail in our case) overlooked the lucerne valley (mojave desert) but the camp itself had lots of trees and vegetation.

The ace director Chris was a machine. He was really an amazing guy.

There were many many endos on the bikes this week. Even one by yours truly.

Best as I can tell they either fed us zombie meat... or acid burn victim flesh. filthy.

Scouts seemed to like it.

They even put me in a morning skit or two. Here's christian's finished wilderness survival shelter. it was sweet.

We even thatched the roof! The sky was amazing

amazing sky cont'd

Cool lizard with very blue tail we found on our compass course hike. Big Bear lake.

there's gold in them hills. cellphone reception up on top of the peaks.

building the shelter... and climbing

more climbing... and flag ceremony.

looks like these pictures got out of order.

more climbing. they had a pretty wimpy tower so we were glad to find some real rock.

We did an awesome overnighter on the horses! We rode to a campsite and then penned in the horses, unsaddled them, fed them and slept under the stars. There were coyotes in our camp that scared the crap out of us in the middle of the night. They nasty buggars scream and shreak like the devil himself.

We had to learn how to take care of the horses... and ride them for a long time.

Saddling up my horse. Every time I went to tighten the latigo he'd bight me. And you'd think he'd be a little more grateful that i was picking crap out of his feet for him, but no, that was met with more bites as well.

helmets look stupid. the water there was awesome.

the scouts doing their best tough guy look at first and then their thursday tired face.

First arriving... it rained a day or two.

So... did I play a prank on my buddy seeing as how it's his first summer at camp? You betcha. The mountain bikes all had tough guy names like "the General", or "Highlander" or "Barbwire"
So late at night on the last night I went ahead and gave them some new names and blamed it on Igor Hermes!
Here they are...