10 extra weeks

For those of you who do not know, two weeks ago we both accepted offers to extend our contracts at our respective facilities.  Both facilities were hoping that we would extend for another 13 weeks, but to make sure we can attend beach week in July we could only extend for an additional 10 weeks.  As it stands now we will be here until July 8th.  We both really enjoy where we work and more importantly love where we live.  There is so much to do and see here, we're not sure we can fit it all in even with the extra 10 weeks.  

Tim had to work yesterday so we had to cram in our weekend outing into 1 day.  We made our way into Hollywood on Oscar Sunday to attend Rock of Ages at the historic Pangtages Theater.  For those of you who watched The Academy Awards tonight, you may have seen that this theater hosted the awards from 1950 to 1960 which included the first televised Academy Awards.  We arrived in Hollywood several hours early to walk around the Hollywood Farmers Market and along Hollywood Boulevard towards the red carpet.  We made it close enough to see all of the barricades and the enormous oscar statues along the red carpet (sorry we didn't get any pictures, we only had our phones which couldn't zoom in well enough) before we turned around to make it to the show on time.  If anyone has a chance to go see Rock of Ages we highly recommend it, we both absolutely loved it.

It has been a cold weekend here in Southern California, all elevations above 2000 ft saw snow accumulation on Friday. The mountains around us and throughout L.A. County are beautifully snowcapped.  Believe it or not Tim had a snowy drive to and from work yesterday.  Our scenic commute along CA Freeway 14 ascends over 4000 ft before we make it into the high desert of The Antelope Valley.

Since our adventures were limited to just one day, all of the pictures of the weekend are within this posting.  See you next week!

San Diego

  We took advantage of a 3 day weekend by heading south to San Diego.  On our way down we made a quick stop at the San Juan Capistrano Mission (well, we took pictures from the outside).  Next we stopped at the La Jolla Cove to see the wild seals.  Not only did we time our La Jolla visit just before a storm came in (it actually does rain along the coast sometimes) but we were able to see a baby seal pup who was born 10 minutes prior to our arrival.  They are not as furry or cute as you would think. For those of you with a soft stomach skip over the next few sentences. The Seagull in the picture was anxiously awaiting to make a meal out of the afterbirth.  Within a matter of a minutes there were dozens of birds on the beach devouring the afterbirth (we will email you that photo if interested).  From La Jolla we made our way to our hotel in San Diego.  After checking in we spent our first evening dining and walking around the Gaslamp Quarter district.

Sunday morning we made our way straight to the world famous San Diego Zoo.  It was completely worth all 6+ hours it took to make our way through the zoo. We will let the pictures tell the story of our visit to the zoo.  From the zoo we took a walk along the Bay through Seaport Village to The World's Greatest Generation walking tour next to the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier.  We had a fantastic ending to our day by eating dinner with Kayla and Evan (Jodi's college friends) at their home on Coronado Island.  

On our way out of San Diego we made stops at Old Town San Diego and Torrey Pines State Reserve.  We were hoping to do some hiking along the Torrey Pines beach, but dogs are not allowed on the reserve (this is the first outdoor area we have been to in Southern California where was Bogey discriminated against).  Jodi and Bogey sat in the car while I (Tim) took some pictures and walked around the clubhouse of the famous Torrey Pines Golf Course. From Torrey Pines we headed north along to coast to Carlsbad where we grabbed lunch before making the rest of the journey back home.  

Visit our Picasa page to see the photo album of the weekend's adventures.  

Hollywood and Beyond

This past weekend, I (Tim) finally had a normal weekend (both Saturday and Sunday off) which allowed us to get back to our adventures. It was because of my work schedule that we did not blog last weekend, I guess one could say we didn't have anything to write home about.

We spent the day yesterday visiting various sights in and around L.A. We started the day with taking in the views along famous Mulholland Drive. From Mulholland drive we went straight to Hollywood Boulevard where we made the compulsory stops to The Grauman's Chinese Theater and The Hollywood Walk of Fame. We have heard these sights were not in a good part of town, but we were pleasantly surprised to see the riffraff have been replaced by the Hollywood and Highland Center (shopping mall) and The Kodak Theater. From what we saw, it has been transformed into a much nicer area with a lot of shopping, dining and nightlife establishments.

Next we went to the La Brea Tar Pits. For those of you who do not know about this gem in the middle of the city, click the embedded link for the FAQ's. From the Tar Pits we made our way around the corner to another L.A. landmark, The Original Farmers Market and the adjoining outdoor shopping mall, The Grove. Once we made our rounds at the Farmers Market and The Grove we got back in the car and headed for Beverly Hills.

No day would be complete without driving down Rodeo Drive, but don't worry our Prius blended in well among the Lamborghini's, Ferrari's, and Maserati's. We decided to wait another day until our nicest hammy-downs were donned before we walked these streets. From Rodeo Drive we made a quick drive through the campus of UCLA before we headed back home.

On Sunday Bogey joined us to hike and climb among the rock formations at The Vasquez Rocks Park. The greatest part about the park is that you're allowed to hike around as well as climb up and down all of the rock formations. No ropes, no nets, and apparently no rules. Once in the park it's easy to see why it has such an extensive filming history.

Please visit our Picasa site for the latest photos.

We both have a 3 day weekend next weekend. Stay tuned to see what kind of trouble we may stir up with 3 days of Southern California at our fingertips.

Warm and Sunny

We are now settled in our new location. We absolutely love our apartment and Valencia. It's amazing how mountainous this area is. The scenery and landscape is just as beautiful here as it was in Northern California. Some of our surroundings can be seen from the pictures of the hike that Bogey and I (Tim) took through Pico Canyon last Sunday afternoon.

I successfully made it through my first week of work. I like the clinic and am very happy to be back in outpatient. Since the clinic is hospital-based, I unfortunately have to work 2 weekend-days per month (one of which was today, and 2 more in the next 3 weeks). For these weekends, our adventures will just have to be squeezed into 1 day. Jodi is anxious to begin her adventure in Pediatric Rehab tomorrow. While Bogey has enjoyed having her home with him all week, Jodi is ready to finally get back to work.

We officially did our first bit of real sightseeing yesterday. We made the 20 minute drive to Universal Studios Hollywood (did we mention we're loving our location?). The highlight of the day came when we went to the "Special Effects" show. Before the show began the hosts asked for a couple to volunteer to part of the show, to which Jodi quickly said "absolutely not" to my inquiring eyes. As we sat there quietly, one the hosts came into the audience, walked up to us and said "let's go". While I was excited, Jodi was less than pleased as we made our way onstage. After the hosts introduced us, we were ushered backstage. I had to dress up as an astronaut and Jodi had to act as Ground Control. Unfortunately I was not able to keep the astronaut costume, but we both agreed it was a very neat experience.

In addition to the weather we are definitely very happy with our new location. We hope some of you come visit while we're living in this great area. As always check out the rest of the photos on our picasa page.

New Beginnings

After almost 2 weeks of unemployment in the Bay Area, we finally have new assignments lined up. We both landed positions in outpatient clinics in Palmdale California. We are very excited about both the location and being back in outpatient settings. Tim will be in a hospital-based outpatient clinic, and Jodi will be at a pre-school based outpatient Pediatric clinic.

Earlier in the week we went to The Tech Museum in San Jose to see the Body Worlds Vital exhibit, the exhibit was fantastic but we both agreed that the only difference from the original Body Worlds exhibit was the name. If you're interested in seeing a quick clip about this exhibit copy and paste this URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5pQ1NuPpNg

Since we were in San Jose we decided to explore the rest of Silicon Valley with stops at Apple and Google headquarters as well as Stanford University.

Since we enjoyed Hiking along the Pacific Coast Trail in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area so much and we had the time, we decided to go back to another part of the trail. We decided that the trail was the pedestrian version of the Pacific Coast Highway except much more enjoyable.

We had a good feeling about the interviews for the positions in Palmdale, so we made the decision to put Berkeley and our less than stellar start (work wise) behind us. On Thursday morning we packed up the apartment, loaded up the car and headed south on I-5.

We spent the day on Friday exploring both Valencia/Santa Clarita as well as the Palmdale area in search of our new living arrangements. We quickly found that the 40 mile commute from Valencia to work would be 100% worth it; not to mention mountainous scenery along the drive is an amazing site for us East Coast folks. Palmdale is not horrible, it's just that Valencia is much nicer and felt much more comfortable. Also Valencia is much closer to all things L.A. for our weekend sightseeing adventures; not to mention there is a Six Flags nearby and the Southern California climate is much more conducive for Tim's golfing habit.

While we are sad our time in the Bay Area was cut short, we are ecstatic about our new location and all there is to see and do in Southern California.

As always please visit the picasa site for the latest pictures of our tour de California (unfortunately we do not yet have any pictures of our new location, but check back soon).

Well.......

We have had a lot happen this week (more than we would have liked). For reasons STILL unknown to us the facility terminated our contracts after work on Monday evening. Since then we have been in unemployed-limbo. We have two companies looking for new assignments for us within California. All we can do is sit and wait for either of these two companies to find us new assignments so we can begin working again as soon as possible. The only thing that is for sure is that we will have to move from our current location to wherever the new assignment is located (since the only two traveler jobs in the Bay area were terminated Monday evening).

We are fairly certain there is not a better place to be unemployed and have nothing but time than in the San Francisco Bay Area, so we have taken full advantage of our unplanned time off by doing and seeing as much as possible. The pictures tell the story, but we have tandem biked over the Golden Gate Bridge, hiked trails in the hills of Berkeley, Oakland and along the coast; watched the sunset from Twin Peaks, Driven down Lombard St., drank hot chocolate at Ghirardelli, went to a Cal Basketball game and a Cal Gymnastics meet, and got caught up on our Netflix cue.

We will keep you all posted on when/where our new assignment will be. We hope we don't have to wait any longer than 1 more week, if so, then we will have to figure something else out. But in the meantime we are going to continue to see and do as much as possible with our time we have left here in The Bay Area.

As always we have posted the other pictures that didn't make the cut for the blog on Picasa. Copy and paste this URL to check 'em out: http://picasaweb.google.com/TimMillerDPT/2ndWeekEndInCali?feat=directlink

1st Weekend

We made it through our 1st week of work this week. Let's just say it was very interesting and we're glad we only have to work at this particular facility for 13 weeks. But let's be honest, we're not here for the work.

On Saturday we decided to explore the Berkeley fire-trails. These trails lie in the hills behind the campus of Cal and are within walking distance of our apartment. We knew that the hike would be uphill, but we were not prepared for how steep the trails were. Bogey thought it was great, Jodi however was less than impressed. It was a typical overcast and foggy day, so unfortunately instead of sweeping views of the Bay at the top of the trail, we were limited to views of the Berkeley area only. To Jodi's chagrin we will have to ascend the trail again on a clear day.

The weather was crystal clear on Sunday so we ventured out to Muir Woods National Monument and The Golden Gate National Recreation Area just north of San Francisco (unfortunately there were no signs of Ewoks or the Ewok Village in Muir Woods). Either way, we will let the pictures describe these two National Treasures. After hiking and soaking in the views we grabbed lunch at a little cafe on the water in Sausalito.

To view all of the pictures please visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/TimMillerDPT/1stWeekendInCali#

(to open just copy and paste the URL in your browser)

Check back next weekend for updated adventures.