I Left My Heart in San Francisco...

Yes, I'm back from California. Back from the wild wild west, a state that's untouchable like Elliot Ness (mad thanks to Tupac for the lyrics). I've only been back home for about an hour... I had a red-eye from San Francisco to Chicago to Durham, and airplane sleep isn't very satisfying. I'm exhausted, my eyes are burning, and every single thing in my suitcase smells like wood smoke and feet. But it was an AMAZING trip. I saw dolphins and seals and otters and sea lions, played in crazy tidepools, took about 600 pictures (which I now have to sort through and photoshop to get rid of a spot that shows up in every single picture... I have to figure out how to clean the mirrors in my camera), and was dubbed with the nickname "The Octopus Queen". For now, that's all the little teasers I'm going to give you... I'll update sometime within the next week or 2 with an overview of the trip, and in the meantime I have a few things that I wrote along the way that I may or may not post. But for now, I'm going to go shower, do some laundry, grab a nap, and try and convince myself to go get groceries, because I have literally no food in the house. Just wanted to say hello and let everyone know I'm still alive and kicking... hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!