So busy...

It’s been much, much too long since I have updated this – my apologies! I have had computer issues with uploading pictures, and then the holidays arrived so I was running around like crazy.

So…since I last posted (in early November! so long ago…)…

I went home to New Mexico for Thanksgiving to spend some time with my family. The vacation wasn’t as relaxing as I had hoped – my grandmother passed away and a good childhood friend of mine was killed in a car accident that week – but it was good to be home all the same. Thanksgivings in New Mexico are the best. Here is a picture of me and Roxanne (the ugly baby goat from a previous post) from that weekend. She is still a runt but she has turned out to be the cutest of all the babies. She is like a little cotton ball.

After Thanksgiving, I came back to California to finish the semester. I was only taking a few classes so it was easy to wrap everything up. After finals, I flew back to New Mexico for a nice, long winter break. Thankfully, I made it back into town before we got our first of many big snow storms. These pictures are from the Tuesday before Christmas. Everyone I know in New Mexico was still working that week, so they had to slave away at computers while the snow fell and then spend hours driving home on icy roads. Because I was already on break, I got to play in the snow all day. :)

Blizzard in the park near my boyfriend's house


Some pics of all the snow...






Me and my snowman


A close-up of me and my snow man (and I'm wearing the hat I made)

Besides playing in the snow, I spent the week before Christmas relaxing and casually shopping. I got to spend a lot of time with my family and enjoy the holiday. Overall it was a very nice Christmas.

After Christmas, I piled into a car with my boyfriend Brian and some of his friends and headed up north to Angel Fire, New Mexico for a New Years on the slopes. Brian’s friend’s parents have a condo up there, so we drive up every year after Christmas and pile a bunch of people into the condo for a week or so. I spent the first day on the slopes trying to learn how to snowboard, but it turned into a disaster – Brian tried to teach me but we just ended up fighting the whole time. I don’t have much experience on snow, so learning to snowboard was intimidating. The next day, I decided to trade in my snowboard for some skis. I picked up skiing much easier than snowboarding and ended up doing that for the rest of the trip.

While we were up there, we were hit with the “biggest storm in the history of New Mexico”. This is the storm that closed down Denver over New Years. Luckily we hadn’t planned on leaving Angel Fire until after New Years, so the snow wasn’t hampering our plans at all, but we were still snowed in. We had to walk down to the grocery store to get provisions because we couldn’t get our cars out and all the food places in town were closing. The resort ended up with a record breaking 54 inches of snow in 48 hours. I was fortunate enough to make it up to the slopes for part of the blizzard – on the runs you could only see about 40 feet ahead of you because the snow was blowing so thick. It was amazing.

Here are some pictures...

A stop at Eske's in Taos, NM (home of the Taos Green Chile Beer) for some Holiday Cheer Beer on the way to Angel Fire - picture right to left: Steve (Brian's friend), me, and Charlie (Steve's friend from Florida).

The hike to the store for food - there are people who were walking back when we were walking to the store. You can see that people were bringing sleds to drag food back to their condos.


It was very chilly when we were walking to the grocery store - 23 degrees!


Here are some pictures of the amount of snow we got.


You can see why we had to walk to the grocery store...


This is a Ford F150 pickup truck that was buried in snow outside our condo.


A picture of me and Brian


From left to right: Kep, me, Steve, Gunn, Kristin, and Charlie














A picture of the 9 guys Kristin and I had to share a 3 bedroom/2 bathroom condo with (we were the only girls)...from right to left: Charlie, Martin, Kep, Steve, Clint, Adam, Jeff, Brian, Gunn.














Angel Fire invites people up to the base of the mountain (only a few blocks away from our condo) for fireworks every New Years Eve. It was a gorgeous crisp clear winter night - you can see the almost-full moon in the sky behind the fireworks.


Our New Year's dinner - made with the few food items we were able to bring back from our trek to the store in the blizzard.


A final shot of Angel Fire ski resort taken while driving out of town on New Years day.

After a low-key New Years night, we packed up our things and braved the icy roads back to Albuquerque. Brian took the week after New Years off from work, so we basically lazed around the house the rest of my break. It was nice having some R&R, cause this semester is going to be brutal… :)

After break, I flew back to CA. I worked for a couple of days, then I drove down to Santa Barbara, CA with my friend Scot (a student down south at Stanford) for a quick trip to visit my high school friend Charity over the long MLK weekend. On the way down, we drove Highway 1 and saw some beautiful sights and some elephant seals. Once in Santa Barbara, we had a whirlwind trip that included club hopping, a walk on the beach, a bike ride along the coast, wine tasting in the Santa Ynez valley (where Sideways was filmed), a hike in the mountains above the town, and dinner and a movie. It was lovely to visit Santa Barbara and see all there is to offer around there.

The view from Highway 1 on the way down to Santa Barbara.


Elephant seals along Highway 1 near Cambria.


A picture of me climbing around the mountains above Santa Barbara - in the ocean behind me on the left you can see an oil platform (it's that little speck that looks like it might be a boat). Also behind me in the haze is one of the Santa Barbara channel islands.

I got back from Santa Barbara on Monday, and started my classes on Tuesday. It looks like I will be taking a daring 14 units my last semester. My classes include: a required public health breadth course, an infectious disease lab, a class on alzheimer’s/dementia, a class on topics in disease surveillance, and a class on the epidemiology of neoplastic diseases. In addition, I will be working another semester in the Salmonella lab on campus, as well as working to complete my masters by preparing for my oral examinations (in April) and writing my final comprehensive paper (on foodborne bioterrorism/agroterrorism). On top of all that, I hope to see more of San Francisco and surrounding areas before I graduate in May. Overall…it’s safe to say it’s going to be quite a busy semester! :)