Shining for frogs

I attended a 3 day workshop the life history and ecology of the endangered California Red-legged frog. As part of the training we went on a night time survey to shine for frogs. You basically take a light and shine it in the eyes of the frog. For some reason whenever a frog has a direct beam of lights in its eyes it cannot move.

1st Seattle visitor to my new home

Today Barry visited me here in the valley. We had lunch and went to the Santa Monica pier.

Santa Monica Beach and downtown Santa Monica in background (notice the cliff beyond the beach)

Procrastination

Santa Barbara

I've spend the majority of the last week on the road/airplane visiting company facilities, government officials, and our consulting teams in SoCal and central California. I'm guessing that I've traveled 2k miles. Last week I traveled to Bakersfield, Sacramento, and Santa Barbara, and next week I'll spend two days in San Francisco attending training. By far the most beautiful place I've been so far is Santa Barbara- the beaches aren't crowded and the street are tree lined and clean. Because I've been traveling so much I really haven't spent much time focusing on finding permanent housing, before next Wednesday I'm hoping to move out of temporary housing.

a tree lined street in Santa Barbara

cattle ranch just outside of Santa Barbara

Santa Monica beach with Santa Monica mountains in the background; because my development trainer's wife just had twins I'm going to spend the next week visiting museums and taking self guided hikes. Tomorrow I'm planning to hike the Saddle Point trail in the Santa Monica Mountains to study plants... if you have any suggestions send them my way.

The Stolen's

Sunday night I traveled to the global headquarters of my company in San Diego for a new employee orientation. While in the oceanside city I visited two old friends, Adam and Nikki. Adam fired up the bbq and we had dinner as we exchanged stories of our journeys over the years. Although they no longer live on their boat they keep themselves busy living a life of continual adventure. I look forward to spending more time with the two of them in the future. By the way they are expected a little boy in the next two months; it took me almost 10 mins before I even noticed that Nikki was pregnant.