livin' in L.A.

The nursery is done!

2010-10-04T10:41:00.000-07:00

up in smoke and gasping for air

2009-09-01T12:15:00.001-07:00

So CA is on fire again. Everybody shocked? Luckily the fires are not in Santa Clarita but they are down near Glendale and Pasadena. Maurio got an extended weekend due to horrible breathing conditions. Here's some pics of our air quality.

We celebrated Ashley's birthday!(or should I say Ashaley's birthday)

Ha ha those poor dogs.. so loving and patient, they will do anything.

And we worked our booties off on the lawn (which still has holes and needs constant love and work)

Lawn before

Lawn after

Nic does L.A. (like Debbie did Dallas) : Part2

2009-08-05T18:48:00.000-07:00

The day after Universal City we decided to hit up a few interesting places. The first was china town.

we found a wishing fountain and everyone landed a coin in a bowl labeled with the object the wished for except Maurio. Ashley got health, Nic got Vacation, and Maurio missed money.

We ate at a very traditional Dim-Sum restaurant. No English letters anywhere in the Establishment and only a little spoken English. It had very good food but neither Nic, Ashley nor I had any idea what we were eating.

The next stop was Koreatown. It had very good looking food but we were all too full after the Dim-Sum bar to eat any. We looked at the shops and were all thoroughly convinced that if you passed out and woke up in Koreatown without ever visiting you would not realize you were in America.

Nics vacation was almost over and we had one more thing to do. Spend more time at the beach! Alas, it was already evening by then.....but we didn't care.

Afterwards we went to Ye Olde English Pub and had some more badass eats. We had a blast with Nic and there are many, many more pictures of the places we visited, some places not mentioned here,but these told the story well enough.

Nic does L.A. (like Debbie did Dallas) : Part1

2009-08-04T20:32:00.000-07:00

We had a great time when Nic came down to visit last week. We celebrated his first night with some of our favorite California wine (Tutu)!! Don’t ask me why but we don’t have a picture of all three of us :(

Some of us were a little too young (and lacking in social skills) to drink.....

On the second day we went up to Solvang and Santa Barbara. Our first stop was some BBQ and Beach walkin' down Santa Claus lane.

Next we hit up Solvang, went wine tasting, and toured the shops!

We are officially banning Solvang for a year, by the way, we have seen those Dutch Bastards way too much this year....though we love the Bakery and the wine. We also had some all you can eat sushi. We will never EVER ban Hibiki....not in a million years. Yay spicy Tuna Chips!

On our way home we saw us some dolphins (not pictured here) but we will always have the memories...until we forget.

The next Day we hit up Burbank (with El Torritos for lunch) and some other not so interesting places. We went looking for the Santa Monica Pavilion but found a 3 story Borders instead. We saw a book called "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". The best in literature, coming soon to a local store near you!

We also went to Venice Beach in Santa Monica where all the freaks and hippies hang out. We had a blast people watching.

After a tiring day of watching people and running around Venice Beach it was finally time to eat some Bugs. We had been waiting for this one for awhile.

First we had the sea worms (pictured below)....

Then came some Frog Legs.....

Then the large women...I mean then the crickets...

And then some scorpions on shrimp toast to wash it all down....

All of it was very good. It made our 'ginies tingle.

On our way to Universal City we found another restaurant from the “Bizarre foods” in L.A. episode. Oki's! We had some Oki Dogs to top off all those bugs we ate (no wonder I peed out my ass that weekend).

Try not to picture Goatse

Aside from it being on Bizarre foods this was some good hangover food.

Then after long hours of my GPS sending us to every ghetto between Hollywood and Universal City we arrived.

Getting ready for something new at Work

2009-07-28T20:02:00.000-07:00

Here is a video of the new mars science lab. I will be working on the landing radar for the "sky crane" in the video. The sky crane is the large rocket section that lowers the mars rover to the surface. It starts working about 0:38 seconds into the video. I, along with many other scientists and engineers, will be assembling and testing the radar that determines how far above the surface of Mars the rover is. This will help the crane choose a good location to let the rover down while not crashing into the surface. This is a big move for me because, until I start the Mars rover, all of my career (4 years) has been spent in research and development. I haven't done much with flight programs until now.

Happy Forth of July!

2009-07-06T11:31:00.001-07:00

This weekend we repainted our kitchen cabinets.

when we moved in the kitchen was white and the paint was peeling horribly, so Ashley peeled all the white paint off and left the kitchen a discusting salmon color. Heres the pic of the kitchen white

We did not take any pics of the salmon colored kitchen but you can see in the pic where the paint peeled off by the window.

Here is a pic after we painted

Well now that is done... until we demo and put in a better kitchen.

Next will be the lawn.

At least we know somebody is excited about it!

New pics of the pups

2009-05-28T17:42:00.000-07:00

Sleeping

Half Asleep

Reading

Playing
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Yeah! Ears Up!!

Being a Corgi

JPL on a weekend

2009-05-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

So, here we are in May and JPL had its open house this weekend so Ashley could come with me and see what JPL is all about. The lines were long but we did get to see the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and robots that hover in unison at fixed distances from each other for an interferometry project(It is way cooler than I made it sound).
here are some photos.

Here is the clean room where the Mars Lander is being assembled.

In the photo above the pieces behind the yellow and black fence is the body of the MSL Rover. The wheels are located behind the red ropes in the middle left of the picture. In the bottom right is the rocket section that will carry, and land, the rover. That is where the radar will be housed. The RADAR determines the altitude and terrain to let the computer know when it is safe to place the rover on the martian ground. The RADAR stuff is what I do for a living (I have had very little to do with MSL so far though)

The picture below is a close up of the apparatus that will land the rover.The red boxes are thrusters that will help the whole thing hover above the surface of Mars and find a good place to place a very expensive golf cart.

This next picture is a close up of the rover body. As you can see there is not much there. All the rovers guts are currently being tested. Each piece is rigorously tested in many different thermal, radiation, and kinetic (vibration) environments to ensure this little guy works when he gets to mars.

This is a close up of the wheels. Not too impressive because there is nothing near it to relay the size of them.

Here is a mock up of the finished rover set to depart October 2012 or so. You can see from this picture it is pretty large. You will notice that it does not have any solar cells. That's because its science equipment and sheer size necessitated the long lasting efficient power of plutonium.

MSL has a laser on it that burns up rocks and uses a spectrometer to figure out the make up of the surrounding rocks. That's only a few items among its laundry list of scientific equipment.

The hovering robot pictures did not come out very well. The building is pitch black with little lights to represent stars and even with a flash everything looks dark.

So now, what everyone had been waiting for, corgi pictures!!

I'm seeing double. Two corgi's?

2009-04-19T20:23:00.000-07:00

Nope your not seeing double. This weekend we recruited a scout for the Corgi Army. He is a boy and his name is Appa. He got his name because of an arrow shaped tuff of white hair behind his head.

Ein was very excited about the new addition. She was very gentle and forgiving even though Appa tried to nurse all day. (ewwww don't worry we didn't take pictures)

Appa got very tired on his first day and pretty much gave up on everything in the end. He is sleeping very well right now.

Ein was pretty happy at the end of the day as you can see in her creepy corgi smile.

Our Home

2009-04-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

We moved in to our house. We have been working like crazy to make it our home.Here are some pics of all we have done. Much more is to come but it will take us a while.

Carpets before

Carpet after

Living room before

Living room after

Kitchen Cabinet Before

Cabinets after

Entry light Before

Entry light After

These are the projects that have before and afters we'll post again once more is completed.

Trip to Slovang and Santa Barbara

2009-02-16T16:59:00.000-08:00

We got away from the stresses of purchasing the house and took a day trip. We went to Slovang and Santa Barbara for Valentines day. Slovang is a Dutch village here in California. It reminds us of Estes Park in many ways...excepts its surrounded by vineyards and its dutch.

The drive to Santa Barbara was beautiful!There are fruit trees and Farmers markets on the way down

then the highway stretched right along the ocean.

We will have to return to Santa Barbara soon to do Wine tasting at the Vineyards, Unfortunately this time we left Slovang too late and the vineyards were closing.

Update on the house: We had the inspection done Wednesday and found out that the copper plumbing that the home was noted to have was an error, and the home actually has galvanized pipes. We sent a request for repair back to the seller and they agreed to fix and change out the plumbing for copper. The work was just done this weekend so we are very happy to report the home will have new plumbing!!

In addition to all this my (Maurio's) vacation time is up :( Time to go back to work tomorrow but its been a good couple of days off with some good beer, my wonderful wife, and pain in the ass animals.

ThEeND

We are buying a house

2009-02-05T11:11:00.000-08:00

We have been wanting to buy a home since moving out to California, and its Happening!
We have had the offer accepted on this cute home in Canyon Country, now we just have a million other steps to do before we can move in. Here are some pics.

2008-12-19T22:40:00.000-08:00

Here is the news article that covers what we did in redding.

Thanksgiving Weekend Recap

2008-11-30T19:25:00.000-08:00

where Should we start! The fun never ends at the Casa Grando, especially when JPL decided to take all the travel expense taxes out of Maurios salary in three paychecks spanning the Christmas holiday!!! Hooray. We couldn't be happier about this! Because of this financial crunch Maurio tried to breed the Cornish game hens in order to secure a sustainable food source. This failed, horribly when he realized that they were already dead, and had probably been so for quite a while. Still it was a very big meal that Ashley and I made even without the Cornish game hen offspring. Of course we didn't forget to feed our furry, and only, friends thier thanksgiving feast.... Even the Cornish game hens got a last meal..... Unfortunately this last meal was shoved up their bums, you know, for flavor... Then we found a nice trail and went for a walk with Ein. We also put up our Christmas tree. And for the hell of it we will end this post with a video of M.C. Pee Pants herself dancing the night away.

Watching Southern California Burn

2008-11-23T22:16:00.000-08:00

In case anyone was wondering how close we were to the fires this picture was taken out front of our appartment.

And here are some others we took while cruzing around Santa Clarita

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

2008-10-31T15:21:00.000-07:00

THE EIN PUMPKIN

Since the last posting Ashley went to Redding, Ca to meet up with Maurio and to do some site seeing. We went to Redding's cave. Unfortunately we did not have a camera so we took photos from our cell phones.

Redding is very Beautiful.

Maurio was working on the Sundial bridge which is Reddings most known attraction, it is odd to see an extremely modern bridge in a small mountain town.

This posting was in the Turtle bay museum, explaining the work that Nasa was doing on the bridges.

In case anyone is wondering why I am on travel

2008-10-16T23:06:00.000-07:00

I am in the background of this video...whoo hoo

MBG

Maurio misses Ashley

2008-10-15T23:08:00.000-07:00

Its been a very tiring time out here in the field. Working 11 hour days in the hot hot sun and on top of it all I miss Ashley soo much.

I love you Ashley, Ein and F-rats. Maybe someday I'll find a job where we can be together more.

Maurio

2008-10-11T22:30:00.000-07:00

We finally have Internet so we can add a new post! Since the last posting we got an apartment!! No more living out of a hotel.

The apartment is smaller than the one in CO but twice as expensive. But now we have all of our belongings and a stove, which is extremely helpful when it comes to eating food.

The day after we moved in to the apartment we traveled back to CO for a short stay and drove the 16hr drive straight back to CA, the whole trip only took 2 days. The scenery on the drive is beautiful so the drive was nice.

Maurio's now been working here for a month and half and is already on his first business trip, Redding CA for 2 weeks.
Ashley and Ein are now regulars at the Santa Clarita dog park, hanging out with the Chihuahuas.
Last weekend we went to Halloween Horror night at Universal Studios.

The rides were awesome and the shows were good. The sets were really incredible.

Our beloved pet

2008-09-15T10:05:00.001-07:00

He will be missed by his loving parents: fathers, Maurio & Nic and mother Ashley and all of his friends. Our sweet little angel will be greatly missed. He had a great personality and everyone who met him loved him.

The weekend and Eins near death experience

2008-09-08T19:07:00.000-07:00

So some people may ask what we did with our weekend? OK, no one is asking but we'll tell you anyway.
On Saturday we went to Griffith park with Ein. We tried to hike up to the Hollywood sign but it was 100 degrees, we had no water,no camera, and a stubby corgi in tow. So we decided to revisit this one later.
On Sunday we made the worst mistake ever. We bought spore.

We played all day Sunday and Ashley played all day Monday. It's a new game by the Creator of the Sims. You start your character out as a cell and develop the character into a creature, tribe, civilization, and then alien!! Many worthy hours have already been put into this game.

Ashley ventured out with Ein today for Eins normal walk/potty break. Two woman with a stroller and dog that was bigger than the two Asian ladies combined was leashed to one of the older ladies legs. Ashley and Ein were walking on the sidewalk heading back up to the hotel when the dog came bolting towards them. The woman who had the dog leash tied to her leg went face down on to the cement sidewalk as the dog got loose and took off after Ein. Ashley was able to strangle the big dog with its choke chain and keep it from eating Ein while the small woman gathered themselves. Luckily Ashley and Ein came away without a scratch though the experience was very nerve racking.

Its Friday!

2008-09-05T22:17:00.000-07:00

Its finally Friday!

Maurio had his first late night but it wasn't too bad, plus his new job pays overtime! To celebrate Ashley and Maurio ate the best and most expensive Mexican food ever! Now its time for board games and drinkin'!

Yes...we do know we're lame.

That concludes another suspenseful chapter in the lives of Maurio and Ashley.

We have arrived...one week ago

2008-09-03T20:10:00.000-07:00

We'll we came out dreaming of owning a home but due to some "confusion" between our real estate agent and everyone else (wells-fargo, home sellers,us) we will end up renting our first 6 months while we continue to look for a house.

We did get to go to the beach.

It looks a little grey but this was a very overcast day to be on the beach.

We also found Ein (pictured below) a dog park to play in. Its probably the nicest dog park we have ever seen.

This is the dog park.

Its been pretty uneventful lately. We have spent a lot of our time looking at houses, then apartments. We have been hanging out in downtown Burbank a lot. This is because our hotel is in downtown Burbank. Good shopping and good sushi....very good sushi.

Ashley and Ein have been getting cabin fever while Maurio goes to work. She cornered the poor dog and dressed her up like a pig.

At work Maurio just started reading up on power amplifiers. It seems he will be building one shortly. Its a challenge, he hasn't worked on components like that for some time. He is definitely having a good time so far.