Ode To a Weekend

I must say, sometimes in life when you feel like the bleakest of colds and the loneliest of nights get you down, there comes a ray (or should I say rays) of sunshine and light that drag you right out of it. It says "Hey, it's not so bad." After reflecting these past couple days, I must say: it's pretty great to be loved.

I could give a recap detailing the adventures that we've had, but I've come to realize that often times words can't really explain some of the moments shared. To sum it up shortly, it was really, really fun, and made me feel a little more at home in a state that often times feels remote.

Here are some of the shots that aren't on Facebook. I've been practicing editing photos as well to achieve looks that captured what my emotions I felt through this weekend. For me this felt like good ol' times, and I wanted the editing to hint to that, but not to the point where it's artsy fartsy. Enjoy!

Right before heading out from the airport, cheesed one more time with this fool!

Christmas light show at the zoo!

I have a feeling one doesn't belong... It's probably the house.

City lights

An animal. There's also a giraffe on the sign!

Sharing a Shibling moment?

Uh oh...

xD

Thanks for visiting me Matt and Alicia, this has seriously made me so happy. I can't believe you two came out! And I guess everyone was in on the surprise of Alicia coming except for me. Come by again soon if you fancy, I probably won't be going anywhere any time soon! Summers are a lot more fun; trust.

But man this makes the week and a half that I have to wait to go back home feel that much longer!! :)

CAN IT GET ANY COLDER?!

These past few days have been hands down the coldest days and nights that I have ever experienced in my life. Never will I ever again complain about weather dropping below 50. How I wish we had a even 50 degree high at the moment. I will however never stop complaining about -15 ever in my life.
With the weather being like this and being a Californian, there are many things that I didn't realize practically the rest of the country has to deal with. Every. Single. Year:
-The inability to drive your vehicle if you have a RWD car. This is coming straight from the other coworker of mine who brought his G35 from sunny California out to apparently a blizzard wonderland. Thankfully I got a Mazda which is FWD, which is acceptable, but really the prized jewel and the thing that everyone seems to have out here is AWD or 4WD (which are indeed two different things!)
-The fact that you have to "winterize" your car. This means that you flush out all the fluids in you car and make sure to replace it with something that won't freeze and completely render your car useless.
-Planning trip times in the morning according to weather instead of traffic. The strategy is a little different: you wake up early to scrape the ice and snow off your car instead of to beat traffic, which means that the new SigAlert is peeking outside the window every morning and based on that determining how much time you can allot yourself to a hot shower.
-Yes, thermometers in your car can show negative temperature, which I found to be true in my very own.
-Your car will go ham in telling you to check your tire pressure. It gets so cold, your car thinks your tires are under-inflated. At first when my car beeped and told me to do something, I freaked out! Now, I have officially given up any care I have to it.
-At really cold temperatures, good practice is to leave the heat running and the faucets dripping with the cabinets to the pipes open. This would ensure that the pipes won't freeze which is apparently a big deal out here.
-Your ability (well, maybe desire) to do anything outside decreases extremely drastically.
-Most cars are equipped with some sort of skid control nowadays, which helps your car start moving without it looking like you're trying to do a big burnout in the snow.
-Christmas feels like it should be coming tomorrow every single day.
Overall, it's a grand experience, with things that I've seen and felt that I'll probably never forget. Hopefully once it's not below 0 I'll muster the will to go outside and take some pictures because honestly, it's beautiful. Doesn't mean that I am not excited out of my mind to be back home in a few weeks!! 

This was right before it got REALLY cold, just at some other red rock park off the side of a highway.