I updated my Maps page to include some trails I’ve mapped on a site called Gmaps Pedometer. This site lets to map a route, calculating distance and calories. It even takes elevation into account! This is pretty handy for tracking my calories burned which I started doing on SparkPeople a few weeks ago. I also track my nutrition and calories consumed. At the moment my goal is to lose 10 pounds by the end of the year. My SparkPeople page is BlueValhalla.

I’ve really been falling behind on my blogs. I guess I forgot what it’s like to actually have work to do every day. It’s been an adjustment, but it’s been pretty fun and exciting too.

One thing I did want to highlight from the past couple weeks was a concert that Mary and I went to.I happened to be looking through an upcoming events page on the web, and ran across a listing for the Soweto Gospel Choir playing at Stanford University. This two time Grammy Award winning group is from Soweto, South Africa. They are a terrific singing group performing spiritual and spirited songs in Zulu, Sotho and English.

The concert was really nice. It was at the Stanford Memorial Church: a beautiful, non-sectarian church built in the early 1900s. Although the sound system could have been a little better, it was an great setting for this group. The choir performed with no accompaniment other than two drums. They displayed a wide range of styles including an incredible version of Amazing Grace. Their costumes are full of vibrant colors and they even mix in a few short dance routines. If you have the opportunity, I would highly recommend going to see them.

In other news, Mary and I are heading off to London next week. I’m heading there to finally get some training on the products I have been representing for the past 1.5 months. Mary has managed to convince her boss to let her work remotely for the week and a half I need to be there. Hopefully well have a chance to see some sights on the weekend and get a good feel for life in London. It should be fun.

Last night Mary and I went to see Carrie Fisher’s one woman show, Wishful Drinking, and the San Jose Rep. I think this is the first show I’ve been to at the SJRep. It’s nice but small theater. We were close to the stage, in the 4th row on the right end, but I don’t think there are any bad seats in this theater. The show is quite funny. It’s basically Carrie telling the audience all about her crazy life, and I mean that literally. In addition to various stints in rehab for various substance abuse, she also received an exclusive invitation to spend some time in a mental hospital, where she was diagnosed as bipolar. In fact, she showed a picture from a psychology textbook showing a picture of her as Princess Leia as a bipolar case study. Carrie also introduces us to her wild “family tree” as a course she titled Hollywood 101. There were of course many references to Star Wars, and she even recited the hologram speech from A New Hope. She seems rather unhappy that she just can’t get the little monologue out of her head. Anyway, the show is a lot of fun.

Speaking of drinking, we took Nick on a tour of Napa Valley on Sunday. Since Mary and I don’t really know Napa all that well, we just picked some wineries off the web. We started out at Trefethen Family Vinyards, which has pretty nice grounds. It’s not all that big, but it’s got a bit of the Napa, over-commercialized feel. Maybe it was just the person pouring. She was nice, but she’s been drinking too much of the company cool aid, or wine as the case may be. Next we stopped at Hagafen Cellars. We all agreed this was our best stop of the day: friendly service and good wine. We stopped for lunch at a deli in St. Helena, then went to St. Supery Vinyards. We mainly stopped here for the self-guided tour, but even at free, I’m not sure it was really worth it. The person in the tasting room seemed thoroughly bored with her job. Next stop was the St. Helena Olive Oil Co. Mary and I like to stop here to taste various olive oils, vinegars and other tasty treats. We finished off the day at PlumpJack Winery. This was one of our more dissapointing stops. The tasting room was small but crowded and the service was weak. The wines were the most expensive we tasted but not as good as most of the others. In all it was a fun day. There are a few more pictures in my Napa Valley gallery.

Last week Mary got me a new camera body, the Canon EOS 40D, to replace my old Canon EOS 10D. The 10D is still working, but the shutter is starting to stick. The 40D has higher resolution (10.1 mega pixels), faster frame rate (6.5 frames per second) and a larger LCD (3 inch) among other things. It comes with a longer life battery but is compatible with the batteries I already have for the 10D. It also uses the same CompactFlash cards as before and of course is compatible with my EOS lenses.

I haven’t done a lot of shooting with the new camera, but I’m pretty happy so far. I’ve taken it out to my normal haunts like Don Edwards and the “Magic Fence” (where I took the shot of the burrowing owl on the left) and I even brought it along to Mission Peak this past weekend. The resolution improvement is quite obvious and I feel like the focus is a bit faster, though it’s still a challenge to capture sharp images. One of these days I’m going to have to break down and start using a tripod.

I’m still trying to figure out what the next phase of my career is going to look like. I had more or less given up on the green technology field since I just can’t seem to find much that matches my skill set. However, after Al Gore’s speech last week about moving to 100% carbon free energy in 10 years, I’ve become somewhat reinvigorated. I blogged about it on GreenValhalla titled Al Gore’s Challenge to America. I’ve even started getting involved with the We Campaign by writing to elected officials and the local newspaper. I’ve even submitted a form to become a volunteer and applied for a job at the parent organization, The Alliance for Climate Protection. Don’t be surprised if you get an email from me asking you to get involved!

It looks like the “Falcon Season” in downtown San Jose is coming to an end. By this I mean the young falcons are flying well and starting to explore further from City Hall. Soon they will fly off never to return. Mary and I spent a lot of the weekend downtown trying to get in some last views of Mercury, Meyye (pictured on left) and Cielo before they move away. We saw some exciting games of tag between the siblings, and some pretty impressive flying overall. If we get really lucky maybe we’ll get to see a mid-air food transfer or even one of the young falcons on a successful hunt. That would be a great end to the season. In addition to the photos in my gallery, I’ve posted a few videos on YouTube.

In addition to the falcons, we did our usual hike up Mission Peak on Saturday. I think my knee is getting a bit better. It hardly hurt at all coming down and hasn’t been very sore the past couple days. On Sunday we took Mary’s dad out for Father’s Day with her mom and brother. We went to Outback and I had a really good NY Strip. I haven’t been eating much red meat lately, so it seemed especially tasty. Nick went to Boston for the weekend and we picked him up from the airport this evening. We all went out to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner. As usual, I ate too much.