Another great weekend

No pictures, but we just had a phenomenally relaxing weekend up at Rila again. Well, technically just Saturday afternoon/evening, but still.

Left here at 2:30 in the afternoon...met our driver at around 3:30, and were up at the cabin (owned by a dentist friend of the family; more of a mansion than a cabin; it's 4 stories, with the bottom the kitchen/dining area, then 3 floors with 3 rooms each on it) by 5 p.m. Kick-ass dinner (grilled pork, sausages, steaks, salads, cheeses, wine, rakia, beer, bread, caviar, you name it, it was there) and plenty of drinks. I was tossed by 9 p.m., so I went upstairs and fell asleep...

...and didn't wake up until nearly 10 a.m. this morning (Sunday).

For the record, I never sleep past 7 or 8. Evy hates it because even on the weekends I can go to bed at 1 or 2 a.m. and I'm up by 8 at the latest. I never sleep more than 6-7 hours a night. But for some reason or another, probably because of the complete lack of traffic and noise, and the peaceful surroundings of the pine trees, mountains, and 3 feet of snow blanketing the area, I slept nearly 13 hours. I haven't felt this completely rested in years.

Then, we had breakfast. Went up the ski slopes and had coffee at one of the cafes. Then went for a walk with everyone for a few hours, came back to the cabin, had lunch, drove home, and now we are relaxing with some of our favorite shows and wishing we had spent the whole weekend instead of just one night. Sadly, Evy teaches TOEFL classes on Saturdays, so until May we are limited to 1 night ventures on the weekends.

Still...what a great weekend. Perfect Sat/Sun.

Seven Rila Lakes

Now that I finally have some spare time, I’m uploading some pictures of one of our trips from 2009. I still have to get my hands on her mom’s laptop to get our Italy and Turkey trips from 2008, as well as the Paris trip. I’ll also be uploading some of our hiking trips, as well as January’s trip up to Ognyanovo, Melnik, and other ethnic mountain areas in Bulgaria. Enjoy!

The following are from the lower portion of Seven Rila Lakes, from the RIla Mountain Range. We live about 1.5 hour drive from here, and the family goes 3-4 times a year. This trip was just a half-day hiking trip where we went up to the lower portion, had lunch at one of the lakes, and came back down. A few people went all the way up to the top but we were not one of them on this particular trip, as we just went up for the lunch.

We plan on going up for a 3 day camping trip in 2010 in the same location.

Olympics!

Due to the time difference, I ended up staying up till nearly 2 a.m. watching the winter Olympics. They went on until 6 a.m., but I was too tired :) Have to watch the rest online when I have spare time.

YAY for winter Olympics!

Winter Olympics soon!

My favorite Olympics are the winter ones :) Less than 2 weeks away now! I can't wait.

Hoping to have some time on Sunday to get one of our trips uploaded. I was wanting to start with our early 2008 trips, but all of those files are on her mom's laptop, so we have to find time to get over to her house and stick them on a flash drive. We also can't seem to find where we stashed our pictures from Bodrum, Turkey. Yargh!

In the meantime, we have a lot of hiking trips from last year and this year to-date, so I'm going to put some of those up and start working on revamping the blog. In my spare time. Which is limited. Keep in mind this is totally a side project. I've got the main website going with all my freelance contracts, 3-4 hours a day of slushing/editing for the spec-fic 'zine, plus my fiction writing...which I've totally been slacking on. In between that I have my daily fitness routines, every-other-day market runs (we only eat fresh food, so market is every other day), and general relaxation, which takes a good 4-5 hours of my schedule =P

New offerings in 2010

One of the things I'm changing in 2010 is this particular blog. I've made mention of it in the past, but I finally came to a decision over the weekend.

Starting this month (February), this blog will be changing its title and its purpose to that of a travel blog, detailing our (Evy and myself) travels throughout the world. This will incorporate pictures of our trips, as well as an online travel blog.

These will be brief discussions/blog posts about our various trips, used as a way to keep our friends/family updated, as well allow me to have an online collage as I progress further into travel writing and need additional clips/references beyond the ghostwriting that I do for Pure Content and Trav Buddy.

Expect to see some updates in the coming weeks :)

Miracles

How's this for a miracle. Girl survives for over 2 weeks buried in rubble, and they have NO explanation for how she managed it.

My heart goes out to all the people in Haiti.

Opportunities

Evy just received a phone call over the weekend from a university requesting her to teach a TOEFL class. To this day she has (as I understand it) the highest score in the nation from her test in 2005...293/300.

She has an interview tomorrow, and she will be teaching the class for a few months.

Great CV materiel, and another move up the ladder :)