Emily and Mitchell in the USA

After the last few weeks, we took this weekend a little slower. We spoke to people in the mornings, including a chat with Ben who is going to officiate our wedding in April! Saturday night we went to an improv show which was fun, and on Sunday we went out for some lunch and a movie date.  Monday was a holiday, we had that day off too. We picked up Natalie and a new international post-doc, Klaudia, for the Trail Canyon Falls hike in the Los Angeles National Forest. It was only a few miles, but it went through hills - which were still green from all the winter rains - and through little patches of trees. We also had to cross the stream several times which was fun, either hopping across rocks or balancing on fallen tree trunks.  The end point of the hike led us down a very steep path, and someone had tied ropes to some of the trees so that we could hold onto them and let ourselves down (and pull ourselves back up on the way back).  After this is was down to the waterfall! It...

 This weekend, we spent a chilly couple of days camping in Joshua Tree. Last time we'd visited, we'd stayed in a trailer just outside the park, but this time we wanted to try camping!  We left after work on Friday, and arrived after dark to set up camp. Our site was right in between the funny shaped Joshua Trees, and the park is a dark skies reserve, so we had a great view of the stars too. We made dinner and wrapped up for bed. It got down to about 5 degrees and during the night the wind really picked up. It came in big gusts, and pulled the tent around, even dislodging a couple of the pegs.  In the morning, we made breakfast and then set out for a hike which started from our campsite. It was a 6 mile loop which passed through fields of the desert trees and shrubs and climbed to a lookout point where you could see out to the edges of the desert over rolling hills.  It was very windy at the top, but we could see so far and on our way up and down saw some huge trees a...

This year, my birthday was on a Saturday, so we had a full weekend to celebrate! We had a trivia night at a new brewery on Wednesday. It was a small place with only a few teams, but we met some new people and won! Friday we went for a potluck at Makbule's with all the international postdocs. We didn't stay all night because it gets cold in the evenings, but that's always fun. Saturday was my birthday, so after cooking some pastries for breakfast, we went to Starbucks for my free birthday drink, and to pick some cupcakes to take on our picnic.  Mitchell drove us up to Oak Glen Preserve and we walked around the trail to the picnic area. We'd brought sandwiches and the picnic blanket and had a lovely day in the sun. The evening we ordered sushi and watched a movie.  Sunday was free museum day in lots of LA museums, so we got tickets for the La Brea Tar Pits. We arrived super early and got in as the last few parking spaces were being taken. The museum was filled with all of...