Just an east coast girl getting into the west coast swing of things
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).
Share on FacebookWe 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.
Share on FacebookI 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!
Share on FacebookHi Face of the Earth… let me reintroduce you to Michie. Michie…. welcome back to the face of the earth.
And I don’t even have a good excuse. I am not working full-time anywhere. I am not hanging out with friends. I am not even changing out of my pj’s every day.
Should I be admitting that… hmmm… well there it is.
But what brought me to my sad, dejected, little space of a blog today was to tell you about the Gilroy Garlic Festival. I am sure that all of you garlic-lovers are scooting to the edge of your seat. I mean, you might have heard tale that this extravaganza includes garlic treats from garlic french fries and garlic popcorn to garlic ice cream. You might be persuaded to go just for garlic bread and garlic sausages. And with all of that tempting, you might think there is even more unexpected garlic goodness that they couldn’t fit into their ad campaign. But alas, you would be the sucker. Because that is all the garlic items they had.
We spent two and a half hours driving to this festival that cost $12 to get into. We walked through dirt parking lots (yes, that is plural) getting smothered in dirt plumes to get to the entrance. We spent exactly ONE HOUR walking around in the most uncomfortable heat ever. In that hour we ate a garlic sausage and an order of garlic fries. We consumed one GIANT Pepsi and one small frozen lemonade. We walked around the entire festival. We spend 15 minutes waiting for a shuttle to take us back to the car and we headed west for the beach.
The festival of mine and Winemonkey’s dreams. Something we had been dreaming about since we had known about it. And we spent an hour there. But I guess it did give us one whole night of indigestion… wow wee…
But Gilroy is close to where I was first introduced to California back in 1996. And I somehow managed to find the beach that my friend and I went to almost every day. Winemonkey and I spent several hours there… Good old Sunset Beach. I have rode home with my pants hanging out the window many times that summer. But not this time. I let Winemonkey wade knee deep into the water.
Sandy feet…. nature’s pedicure!
Well this has been a WHAM! BAM! Vacation summer. We are packing our bags for our Seattle trip. And today my sister asked me what we were going to do in Seattle for 5 days.
Turns out, with the exception of dinner every night and one wedding, we hadn’t planned ANYTHING. So we are frantically searching the internet to find out what exactly there is to do in Seattle. Any last minute suggestions would be greatly appreciated. It appears we have ~3 days where we have to be somewhere for dinner and that is our only plan.
Also – apparently I applied sunscreen to my entire face… except for my upper lip, which is on scorching FIRE.
Share on FacebookAnd I have watched land slides, 50 mph winds, flooding, and… this is the icing on the cake… the power going out at 12:05 last night. And you know what? It was an awesome weekend. For as crazy as the weather was, it was beautiful. Every night we were lulled to sleep by the pounding rain. We were concerned that we were going to be stuck there, but fortunately there was one route open (out of at least 10…. we passed quite a few closed roads). We would have liked to stay but we were a little worried that we wouldn’t make it home tomorrow if the weather kept getting worse.
The cabin is one of those places that you hate to leave. But you know you can’t stay there forever. Plus they have no internet connection and you would miss me. =)
Tell more about all of the good food and silliness later this week. Hope you all brought in the New Year the way you wanted to.
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The February edition of Martha Stewart's Living. It's pink and I like that. And it actually makes me kind of excited to celebrate Valentine's Day.
