Emily and Mitchell in the USA

I started this week by going biking with the girls from Mitchell's lab (Mitchell did not want to come). This time we went to Lake Perris. After work, I went to Susan's where we loaded up the cars. Only she and I have bike racks, so we loaded three into her car and two onto mine. It was the first time using the rack for me, so I drove and Lynna kept an eye on them the whole way to make sure we hadn't lost any.  We arrived in one piece and started off. The trail was mostly flat, with just one huge hill, but I did make it up, very slowly, but I did it. Me and Mitchell had walked the nine miles around the lake a few weeks earlier, which was very long and very hot. This time, it only took us an hour to get around, and we had a lovely sunset to watch for the last few miles. It was mostly empty at this time, with just a few families on the shore. By the time we were loading up the cars again and leaving the park it was dark, so we finished the route just in time. On Friday I worke...

We've been busy this week! On Monday we went to go and see Thor with some friends. This time I got to pick where we went for dinner, so I chose IHOP, the International House Of Pancakes. I got hashbrowns and eggs with chocolate pancakes, because I am an adult.  The movie was good, and I even had a chance to get popcorn this time, which I haven't the last two visits which made me sad.  Mitchell went to improv on Wednesday which he hasn't done since his season of shows ended a few weeks ago, and on Thursday I went to my Yoga class. The international scholars department at UCR is finally having in person events again, so on Friday, Mitchell went to a coffee meet up and met some other international post-docs. They invited us to a party for Bastille Day on Sunday, so we had to go and look up what Bastille Day was.  In the evening, we had dinner out at a different plaza where we got some chipotle and then a smoothie from Jamba Juice. We'd driven a little way down the freeway,...

It's been an interesting week for us. On Tuesday, I went to get some groceries on my way home from work, and as I was walking them up to our front door, I saw that someone had left a pile of bags outside. They were filled with food from a store we don't usually go to, and one bag was full of cat food, so we knew it wasn't for us. There was no name or receipt attached, so we couldn't find out where it was meant to have been delivered to. I put a sign up in the lift (which everyone uses to get to the garage), and left the bags outside in case someone came looking for them. They were still there the next day when I came home from work, so we claimed it. The cat food went to one of our friends, along with the two cases of cherry pepsi, but we accepted the (four) loaves of bread, the toilet roll and the packet of biscuits.  On Saturday we called our friend from Mitchell's old lab in Nottingham, and she starts her new postdoc position in Texas very soon! We're very ex...

We went camping again this weekend, and our big hike of the day was so big! It was our highest and hardest hike yet, climbing 4000 feet over the course of the day to almost 11,000 feet above sea level!  We got home from work on Friday evening and immediately packed up the car and left for our campsite in Idyllwild. It didn't take too long to get there and we arrived just as the sun was setting and turning everything a lovely shade of orange. We set up the tent and started dinner. It's now wildfire season, so we're done with campfires for the year, but we're still allowed our little propane stove to cook on.  In the morning, we were up early for our mountain trek. At 7:30, we drove to the campsite down the road to pick up a wilderness permit, and then back to our campground as the trailhead was further up by us. We started just before 8am at about 7000ft, and it was nice and cool and shady as the sun hadn't reached through the trees yet.  Mitchell filling in the Wild...