Time Lapse Photography Is Awesome!

A while back I posted a video of ash falling on our front yard from the Zaca Fire. Well, it's still burning and still dropping ash on Santa Barbara.

Here is a link to a video from the police department on 8/14 at 1:00 pm that shows the mushroom cloud grow over a period of one hour.

Ash Friday

While at work today I looked out my window and thought, "Funny, it looks like its snowing." The Zaca Fire just north of Santa Barbara is causing ash to rain down all over the city. Check out the video from our front yard!

Okay....so I really have sucked at my initiative to post regular blogs...sorry Andy. I'm still committed to trying to be better at it, so we'll see how it goes.

Happy Valentines day by the way! I didn't do a very good job of planning for Valentines this year. And to break the stereotype, I usually do pretty well at planning a fun and unique outing with Chrystal. But, this year I just was not on top of it.

My Valentine (aka "My Wife") came up with a great plan and we had an awesome time together. We both had a normal work day, outside of closing up shop at about 3:30 pm. As we are always trying to figure out if we are going to stay in Santa Barbara or leave to move somewhere else, we try and do fun "tourist" things when we can so that if we ever do leave it won't be the with the regret that we did not do SB. With that said, we did a very touristy thing today by taking the Santa Barbara Trolley Tour. It was crazy because we were running late, typical, and had to call the company and ask if the trolley would wait for us. Les from the trolley company was nice enough to have the trolley wait (which we quickly learned meant come back for us).

When Larry the trolley driver picked us up we realized that we were the only ones taking the 4:00 pm tour, and basically got a private tour of Santa Barbara. Larry was awesome, and gave us a great tour of Santa Barbara sharing all sorts of fun tidbits of knowledge about local places and local celebrities. We started at Stearns Wharf and stopped at many sites in Santa Barbara and Montecito. The trip was about 40 minutes, and I learned all sorts of new SB trivia. Larry also learned a few bits of trivia from Chrystal and I...which either makes us helpful or annoying...I'll leave it to Larry to make the call. It is amazing that you can live in a place for 12 years and not know some of the basic local history! For locals or tourists I would recommend Santa Barbara Trolley Tour as a fun outing.

After finishing the trolley tour, we met Cara and Brody for dinner at Rusty's Pizza for a heart shaped pizza. Seriously, we had a pizza in the shape of a heart. Chrystal and I then displayed our skill on two player miss Miss Pacman, which is a ton of fun for only 50 cents. Gotta love that inflation hasn't yet made it's way to vintage video games.

Since my awesome sister-in-law Cara took care of Brody for the night, my Valentine and I went to Coffee Cat and worked on a business plan for her new business idea. We had a great time and got through two pages of brain dump on the plan, goals and vision, key market segments, and growth potential. I get a kick out of doing that for projects that I'm passionate about, and this idea is one of them. I let you read her blog to find out what it is, assuming she blogs about it at some point. Anyway, we ended that night at Coffee Cat and just came home to be together. Though not an extravagant Valentines Day, it was a fun memorable one (and low cost which is important for us right now).

Thanks hon for the great night, and for taking the time to think of a fun family filled Valentines Day.

Hope the rest of you are as lucky as me.

Why I love Santa Barbara

I had a great time in SB this Memorial Day weekend, and was reminded again why I love living in Santa Barbara. So it's true that Santa Barbara has the most overpriced housing in all the US...but it comes down to it I think it's worth it. Below are a few of the reasons that I think Santa Barbara is an awesome place to live.

1. There are more restaurants per person in Santa Barbara than any other city in the gool 'ole US of A, and I love to good food (I have no idea if this is really true, but I hear it all time).

2. There are ocean views on one side and moutain views on the other, and I love to live in a place with great views.


3. When it is cold it's 60 degrees,and when it is hot it's 80 degrees, and you really can't beat weather like that. Santa Barbara has the perfect climate!

4. Culture. Santa Barbara has great culture and community: art museums, history museums, artists, technolgy, 4 colleges, every type of restaurant, I could go on and on.

5. REALITY. I just love this church, from the pastor to the location to the people. It's just flat out a great church!

6. The BIG DOG Parade...you haven't lived till you have seen people and their pets dressed in matching outfits parading down the street as if it was normal.

7. iModonnari. We went here today, and it's is always an awesome time. Here are a few of my favorite shots from this year. These are chalk drawings on pavement, which really should amaze you.


8. THE DOGHOUSE on Milpas Street. This place has awesome hotdogs and a great story! If you haven't been, you need to check it out.

I could really go one, but I need to stop now.