for the love of hangers...

That's right.  I have an odd obsession for plastic hangers.  Not the cheap ones that will sometimes come free when you buy clothing, but the nice solid ones that have a potential for all matching and making a closet look super coordinated.  However, these hangers usually cost money.  Therefore, for the time being, I had resigned myself to have a closet full of mismatched wire hangers with a few nice plastic ones thrown in.  However, this all changed the other day...

One unique characteristic of Berkeley is that there's always free stuff on the side walks*, most of the time it's junk, but sometimes, you can find something that you want/need, and you just have to pick it up and take it home.  Earlier this week we were running and came across a pile of stuff-- which included two grocery bags full of plastic hangers! (AND, the icing on the cake was that most of them were black.)  I quickly decided they would be worth carrying home, and picked out the ones I wanted while Quinn patiently jogged in place.  Quinn carried the bag of said hangers, and we were off again.  But then it happened, the bag with all the oodles of hangers broke and the hangers spilled all over the side walk.  So now, without a bag, between the two of us we had four fist-fulls of hangers.  It turns out running with hangers gives your arms quite a work out too.  We must have looked odd before running with a paper bag, but now I'm sure we looked even funnier. 

a sink full of hangers

After bringing them home and cleaning and disinfecting them, I replaced all of our old wire hangers.  ahhh.  It's so satisfying to have matching hangers-- our "closet" looks much more organized now.  Oh what I will do for hangers, and what Quinn will do for me. :)


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*as an interesting side note, becuase of this practice of putting free items on the street, people will sometimes be too quick to take items that weren't intended for the taking.  Once, there was a dinning room table on the street, and then it disappeared.  Then we saw a sign that said "please return the table that was here", and then a few days later a large dinning room table re-appeared.  At least the people who took it were considerate!

weekend adventures

After a typical Saturday morning cleaning and working on projects at church we decided to practice for our big backpacking trip this summer (stay tuned for more details!).  We have a tendency to complain that there's nowhere close by to go hiking, since there are no mountains within a few hours, and East Bay is a pretty urban area.  However, there are some nice regional parks in the area, and Quinn found a 9 mile loop that we could hike in Wildcat Canyon Regional Park, a mere 20 minutes from our home.

Many places we might feel quite silly carrying our big backpacks all loaded down around in a small-ish regional park, but hey, it's the bay area.  We did get a few odd looks, but most people didn't even notice.  Anyways, we filled up as many water bottles as we own, dragged out our camping gear, and then loaded  up our two packs.  They weighed something like 40 lbs a piece, but we didn't actually weigh them.  If something had happened and we had to stay out there longer than expected, we would have been fairly well prepared!

For most of the hike we were on a ridge, so had gorgeous 360 views of the area.  Above you can see San Pablo Reservoir, and if you turned around you would be looking out towards San Francisco and the ocean. It was also great because there weren't many people in this part of the park, and parking wasn't an issue at all.  Only downside was that the trail was paved for some of the time.  But, we saw lots of animals-- lizards, snakes, turkeys, and cows.  I was SO tired by the end after carrying all the weight ... I guess more motivation to get better at running hills, and to practice perseverance. :)

Did you have any weekend adventures? 

Friends!

One benefit of living in the Bay Area is that we get visitors now and then!  A few weeks ago, a friend who's currently at Dartmouth College was in the area on a business trip and he was able to spend a few extra days with us.  We capitalized on the opportunity and took him hiking along the coast at Tomales Bay.  It wasn't a super clear day, but the fog/clouds did lift as we reached the point (yay!).  There were also some wildflowers out, which I thought were absolutely gorgeous.  If you have a day to spend outdoors, this was a longer, but reasonable and rewarding hike with out a lot of demanding elevation changes.

And now we have the pleasure of having another friend from Los Alamos (who's most recently been in Japan) in the area for the next few months.  Alan will be over for dinner tonight, and then who knows what other things we'll find to do with him over the rest of the time.

What do you like to do with visitors?

This is a picture of our new home! Personally, I think it's rather cute seeing as it's pale yellow and has an itsy front porch where I hope to put pots of flowers and herbs. We've lived here almost a week, and everything is starting to find it's own place (just in time for our gifts and my stuff to get here on Monday!).

Today is an example of why I like the new location so much... after spending the morning at home working on various things, I walked 20 minutes to meet Quinn for lunch. After lunch and playing a game of Robo Rally with some other grad students I headed out to run errands-- on foot. Two hours later my errands were complete, I had seen some interesting things, and I got some fresh air.

One of my stops included Goodwill. I wasn't really looking for a vase, but this one was just so fun and interesting looking. And then, since I had a vase, I had to stop at the little corner florist and buy a flower to go in it. :)