This weekend is Pebbles first camping trip. I am pretty excited to get away. We are going to try a couple of ideas from the ljc. This includes the hot dogs and croissants on a stick and the mini snickers in marshmallows.

Just thinking about it makes me want to bolt out of this office and get on the road!

Winemonkey took me to Monterey Bay Aquarium this past weekend. It was particularly nice. The rain held out until our drive home. I forgot how relaxing the aquarium can be. Any why people pay for fish screensavers.

The jelly fish were AWESOME as were the schools of anchovies and sardines (click the photo of the sign to see the rest of the pictures at my PicasaWeb).

We are almost to Nashille! Winemonkey and I were trying to surprise our friend Susan for her 30th birthday, but she figured out that we were coming. So much for surprises. But even though she figured us out we decided to follow through on our trip. It has been about 3 years since we’ve seen her & her husband and we always have a good time with them. I am not even sure what the plans are but I am sure they involve music and wine.

In other news, I am tired of driving. I just moved and I am already sick of going back and forth. I admit that this time of year is usually pretty crazy with travel.

I just got back from a week of camping with the Padges and Winemonkey. Ever been camping with a three year old? It was fun… reminded me of when I was nanny but with a lot less responsibility. But you are still constantly on. We went to this place called Union Valley Reservoir. The camp was dusty, the weather was perfect, and the water wasn’t so cold you couldn’t stand to be in it. Our first night there, I saw a bear lumbering through our campsite. It was pretty scary because the two children were asleep in the tent. But the bear already stole food from another campsite and our camp was between the food source and his den. It was nice to not think about finding work for a whole week. For some reason I didn’t stress about it at all. Perhaps I should just live in the woods?

After a week without showering, we went over to Porter’s house. It was like a little slice of heaven. Warm shower, soft bed, and the best were toilets that didn’t want to make you gag everytime you went into one. It was a great weekend with their family and I got to see some friends who I don’t see very often. We had a shrimp taco extravaganza. Lisa and lam came over too! It was such a good time. And again, I really don’t remember feeling particularly down at any point during our visit. We played games after dinner and even had time to go to market on Sunday before we headed home.

Today is my first day of work at the winery as their “harvest intern”. I am really looking forward to it, except that I shaved all of the callouses off the bottoms of my heels and it turns out that I had built them up for a reason. So hopefully I will be able to find a pair of shoes that don’t make my feet hurt. Other than that… it’s going to be a great day! We might be getting grapes as early as this week!