The 'rents

My parents were here for five nights, and I must say I really enjoyed their visit. We hit the usual Santa Barbara attractions -- wine tasting, whale watching, people watching (on the always entertaining State Street), a sunset hike up to Inspiration Point, a couple of good dinners out -- but I think the best part was simply having them around... to sit on our porch and eat oranges off the tree, to take a morning jog with my dad, to see my mom's face as she tells me about their new granddaughter. My dad kept joking about how they were going to move out here or come and visit every month, as if he expected a negative reaction out of me, but I would actually like that. I do miss them quite a bit, and since family and friends are our only real tie to Minnesota, if they all came out here we wouldn't feel compelled to move back :-)

Photos from the visit have been added to this gallery, if you want to take a look.

Okay, I'll admit it does feel good to have the place to ourselves again. That was quite the series of visitors. Now we can let the place get slightly more messy, I can have my office back full-time (since it doubles as the guest bedroom), and we can plan some new activities for our weekends. We do have some fun events coming up with new friends, so we're excited about that.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about the video shoot I helped with earlier this week. Back before Christmas I met this guy with some Hollywood filmmaking experience, and he recently invited me to assist with a small-scale documentary he's working on around here. On Tuesday we met at the Museum of Natural History where we followed some kids on a nature walk. I carried the equipment along the trail for him at first, but after a while he let me take the camera and capture the kids collecting frogs and insects near a little creek. Lucky for me, he uses the same camera I own (the Canon XH-A1), so that helped with my confidence. It was a fun shoot in a gorgeous setting that inspired me to do two things (1) get outdoors more and (2) shoot more video!