the rest of the cali adventure

alright, so the time we spent in california was awesome, but i was glad to get home and sleep in my own bed with my hubby. i also had to get back to SCHOOL because monday was the first day! since i have lots of school-related stuff to blog about, i'm very quickly abbreviating the rest of the visit.

wednesday - alcatraz = AWESOME
thursday - wine country = AMAZING!!!
friday - rehearsal and rehearsal dinner
saturday - wedding! BEAUTIFUL :-)
sunday - planes, planes, more planes (totally laaaaame)

all these days were documented extensively in photographs, and those pictures are available on my flickr.

sorry for the brevity, but we gotta moooooove on!

ps. if you haven't realized, there are several blogs below about "our cali adventure".

our cali adventure days 4-5

yesterday was andrew's birthday, and i think we enjoyed ourselves. he should probably be doing a "birthday post", but since he's met his monthly blogging quota of... 1... he probably won't. hehe love you honey.

so anyway, we didn't do too much with the day. we woke up late and went to downtown redwood city for brunch at la boulongerie, which though expensive, was very tasty indeed. from there, we stopped at the drugstore and barnes and noble. now, those of you who know me know that b&n is a baaaaaad place for me to go because i can't leave there without buying tons of books and spending oodles of money! but i needed books to review for my senior english class(that begins monday!!!), so i bought every classic i'm asking them to read, plus a few others for good measure. i mean, you can't hold it against me, it's for work!

after our little outing, i tried to work on school planning stuff while andrew kept me company. eventually though, it led to me not getting anything done and deciding a nap was a better idea. andrew took arun's car to visit mark at meebo, and that was pretty much the afternoon.

that evening, we met up with arun at the city pub for beer shots, drinks, great conversation, and dinner. we had a blast chatting (and drinking) the night away.

after walking home late and slightly inebriated, we didn't wake up too early this morning. we took it easy, and i actually did some planning. around noon, we hopped on the caltrain and headed into the city with plans of kayaking the bay and walking across the golden gate bridge. neither of which we did. things just didn't work out for us today in the city. despite our best intentions and lovely weather, we couldn't seem to get it together. instead, we had a mediocre lunch on the pier, walked to the middle of town to union square, aka shopping district, went in a few pretentious department stores, bought a day-pack from the north face store, and began our trek to the city bus that takes you to the golden gate bridge!

unfortunately, instead of finding that bus, we found the seedy part of town. it was terrifying. there were sketchy people everywhere yelling things, walking up to you scarily, basically freaking me out. there were sex shops, places that stunk of human urine, and homeless colonies. we still couldn't find this elusive "GG Line" and unhappily jumped on the first muni that would take us back to familiar territory. once we were safely back in non-sketch-ville, we walked our tails off to find the station that we knew had this GG Line... only to find out it was a greyhound bus. hence the reason we couldn't find it stopping at the city bus stops. somewhat defeated, we thought about giving up on the day and returning home, but the good old ferry house was there to save he day once again.

we picked up goodies for our picnic lunch we're planning for thursday's trip to wine country, and had drinks and an appetizer at a snobby (but tasty!) restaurant called the slanted door. from there, we walked part of the way back to the caltrain station and found the palomino for the rest of dinner. our view was great, the food was great, and the waiter was even pleasant! (something new for san francisco) after dinner, we took the muni back to the caltrain station just in time to miss the train home. we wandered around the nearby drugstore for about 45 mins before standing in line for another 20 before we were allowed on the train. it's a good thing we were some of the first people on though, because the train was so packed that some people had to stand the whole way.

now, we're back at arun's, about to get comfy on the air mattress so that we can get up tomorrow in time to take the train back to the city for our tour of alcatraz!

our cali adventure day 3 - San Francisco!

we got up early(ish) sunday morning to take caltrain to the city so that we could have a farmer's market breakfast at the ferry house, but we got to the train station about 2 minutes after the train had departed, and since the weekend schedule only has it coming through once an hour, we decided to have breakfast at the starbucks around the corner. holy cow! i'm not a huge california fan so far, but their starbucks totally kick our starbucks' butt! they had not only drinks and the normal pastries, but they also had sandwiches and breakfast sandwiches, croissants, and english muffins! we filled up and headed out to catch our train into the city.

we sat next to a nice hawaiian/phillipino lady who'd spent much of her life in various parts of northern california, and she gave us good directions about what to see and how to get there. we got off the train and began our day. we wandered into pier 38 and spoke with a guy from city kayak to see what kayaking the bay was all about. we decided to wait until a sunnier day, and kept on our journey. the next place we found was the ferry house. we explored the specialty stores, ogled the kitchen antiques, and vowed to come back for some of the awesome-looking food people were dining on from the boutique-y restaurants. after that, we walked down california street, through a street fair, and to the cable car stop. we bought two all-day passes (that get you on the cable cars, the busses, and the muni - basically all public transportation in sf minus the bart) and made our way to chinatown. andrew wasn't too thrilled to be looking around, as he's not really in to asian things, but he humored me, which was kind. we meandered through the streets and stopped in at the floating boat sushi restaurant.

the idea is that you sit at a bar where floating boats with trays of sushi go around and around. each plate style is a different price, and you just take what you want from the boats as they come by. i'm not sure how sanitary this really is, but it was fun, and the food was pretty good. according to arun, these restuarants are pretty popular in this area. after lunch, we were freezing and stopped in several stores toying with the idea of purchasing silk chinese coats to protect us from "the other windy city", but we never ended up buying any. probably a good thing too, because we found lots more to spend our money on.

we too the powell-hyde cable car up and down hyde street, all the way to the end at fisherman's wharf. we stopped in the maritime museum (mostly just to use the restroom), and continued down to the end of the pier to take pictures of alcatraz. we really wanted to tour alcatraz, but we'd been told that all the tours sold out a week in advance, so the best we could do was take pictures. this bummed us out considerably, and i tried to make the best of the day while andrew moped a bit (though understandably so, since it was the only thing we both really wanted to do!). we weren't very smart in planning ahead, because at this point we had pretty much taken the cable cars all downhill, and we spent the rest of the day hiking uphill. we walked up to lombard street, and then down its windy sidewalk, marveling at the street and the houses along it. then, we decided we'd hike all the way up to coit tower to take a view from the top. we hiked up the stairs to the top of the hill where it sits and enjoyed the view from there, but we didn't get to go up to the top because they'd closed the stairs within the tower and were only letting people take the elevator, which cost $4.50 per person. again, we had better things to spend our money on. from the top, andrew desperately called the touring company in hopes of getting put on a waiting list or something for alcatraz, and lo and behold, there is another tour that takes you not only to alcatraz and around the island, but it also goes to angel island. upon finding this out, we hurried our way down the hill and across the town to pier 33.

the "streets" we took down included greenwich st and napier ln, neither of which were actually streets, but simply narrow, wooden walkways and stairs that led past people's mountainside homes. how these people get their furniture into their houses is beyond me, and you better believe that after going to the grocery store, they must have buns of steel or something. i wonder if there isnt' some secret road they drive in and park their cars on, but there was no evidence of that. we continued to pier 33, where we bought our tickets for our alcatraz/angel island tour. the earliest they had was on wednesday, and we went ahead and got those tickets. freezing and exhausted, we thought we'd take a bus back to the ferry house to get one of those scrumptious-looking meals for dinner. unfortunately, after 3 buses came and went without a single one stopping, we decided to hoof-it down about twenty blocks in the foggy drizzle to the ferry house. we got there to realize that everything except two seafood restaurants had closed for the day. unhappy, but cold and hungry, we ate at the one that served more than just oysters, and got on the muni for a ride back to caltrain.

the line for caltrain was packed, since most of the people who'd attended the giants' game were heading home, but we got seats together and hankered down for our 45 min. ride home. thank goodness arun picked us up in his shiny, red audi, or i might have died right there on the train tracks. i was so exhausted that i fell asleep twice in the time andrew and arun made brownies. i ate like 3 of them and fell back into a coma on the couch. it was a good day :-)

this week's itinerary:
monday - andrew's birthday and dinner with arun
tuesday - back to sf for kayaking, looking through "kitschy" neighborhoods, and a walk over the golden gate bridge
wednesday - touring alcatraz/angel island and dinner in the city
thursday - stealing arun's car and driving out to the wine country for a day (and night!) of pampering
friday - heading back to redwood city to return arun's car and then to palo alto for the wedding rehearsal
saturday - wedding
sunday - plane ride home and hopefully get some sleep
monday - SCHOOL STARTS - AHHHHH!

our cali adventure days 1-2

though i won't post these until i can get home and upload photos, i'm eager to keep a travel journal before i forget all the fun things we've done on our trip. plus, i'm supposed to be working on my school stuff right now and am uninspired, so what's a better way to use this time? why, blog of course!

we rushed around like crazy people moving our stuff out of the mordecai house so that new renters can move in on friday afternoon. we haven't heard anything from the landlords yet about whether the family (interestingly enough, from california) has moved in or not, but i guess that's nothing we can stress about until we hear. i worked feverishly at school to try and prepare my room for its opening, and at the very last second, andrew and i rushed over to his mother's house, shoved our clothes into suitcases, raced to the airport, and hopped on a plane to... atlanta! i know, it's not ca, but since we were flying delta, we had to stop at their hub in atlanta before making the 4 1/2 hour trip across the country. our first flight was short (about 90 mins), comfortable, left on time, and we had a two-person row that we enjoyed together. then, we scrambled through the atlanta airport to catch our connection to sunny... err cloudy... california. this flight, however, was not so short, not so comfortable - andrew was stuck in the middle of a row - not so on time (we sat on the plane for 45 mins before take-off), and somewhat less enjoyable than the previous. they did not serve any food on the flight, much to my stomach's dismay, but we did purchase a few alcoholic beverages [made with airplane bottles!] and a bag of trail mix from their "all day" list. man, airlines have gotten cheap!

we got into sfo at 11pm ca time, which is 2am nc time, collected our luggage, were picked up by the bride and groom to be, and whisked away to their apartment in sunnyvale (i think... there are a lot of little suburbs around here). we had a late night of pizza, chatting, and improvisational-air-mattress-inflation, and called it a night. the next morning, we lallygagged around while emily went for a morning jog with her friends. we enjoyed waking up to a bowl of cereal (with yogurt instead of milk) out on the back patio. it was great to soak in the rays on the lounge chair with toro as company. i am in extreme animal withdrawal. after breakfast and showers, we spent the afternoon in mountainview at melanie's birthday cookout. we met some of her and martin's friends, and enjoyed burgers and other cookout fare while getting a bit of a tan in the sun. it was a great way to ease in to california time.

that evening, mark and emily dropped us off at arun's house (arun was camping/climbing in yosemite for the weekend). we made ourselves at home, eating the one thing in his kitchen that hadn't gone bad :-) hehe love you arun! the next morning, we woke up and headed to the caltrain station so we could spend the day in san francisco!

just to let you know

i haven't been a slack blogger, i promise!

i'm just waiting to get all the california pictures off my camera before posting a barrage of blogs i'm writing (and have already written) about our trip to the west coast!

when they start appearing, you'd better put your reading glasses on, cause i've typed my little fingers to the bone documenting all the fun stuff we're doing out here :-)

ps. congratulations and prayers for a safe delivery for jennifer and will farmer - jennifer went into labor this morning with her baby girl, fiona!

houseguests!

well, we've been living in a world of insanity as of late. there's the house-buying, house renovating, moving into the house, SNAFU'S out the WAZOO with our previous (but still sort of current) landlords from the mordecai house, and on top of that, andrew's new job, my teacher workdays starting, and oh yeah - going to california! but to add some spice to life, we had the wonderful pleasure of also having houseguests last night!

while i am quite overwhelmed by everything else i listed above, it was completely awesome to have donna and jeremy over for the night. i hadn't seen them in a year or so, and even then it was just for a day, so when donna called to tell me they'd be coming through town, i couldn't have been more thrilled to have them stay with us for a night! we had TONS of catching up to do, and i'm glad the boys were kind enough to let us chat away for hours. we had dinner together, and we even played with the dogs and took a walk around the neighborhood, but the coolest part is that donna is pregnant! i had a blast watching the alien-being squirm around in donna's belly, and i'm pretty sure everyone else had a blast watching me squeal every time it moved. it was craziness.

this is the crew (minus me of course) eating dinner, and no, the pregnant woman is not drinking wine - it's grape juice :-)

i just have to say, it's so nice to have good friends, whether they're far or near, whether we see one another all the time or only occasionally; good friends are hard to come by, but they are surely one of God's greatest blessings.

summertime blues

what's worse than the summertime blues? the end of summer! just when everyone else is kicking into full-gear with vacations and time off, i'm about to head back to work. today was my "last" day of freedom before the school year starts... sort of.

see, we're going to california for mark and emily's wedding the week after next, and that's supposed to be the week of teacher workdays for me. however, since we planned this trip in advance of the calendar, my principal is letting me make up the days by going a week early to put in my time. which means that tonight is my last day of summer before i go back to school :-( i want to cry!

this summer has been fabulous in so many ways - we bought a house, i had a blast working at oberlin, we had a great crew that moved us in to the new place, we're renovating non-stop, and we're even going to go to california! - but that doesn't leave a lot of time for the rest and relaxation we teachers crave as the year winds down in may and june. instead of sitting around and getting a tan, or working on my physique for "bathing suit season",
i've been running around like a crazy person. don't get me wrong, i wouldn't trade a minute of it, but i certainly don't feel rested and refreshed going into this new year. all i have to say is pray for me! because it's gonna take some miracles to get through this first quarter of teaching 12th grade!

home owner humor

Taken from a conversation emily and I were having the other night. "Everyone who buys a new house should get a tetanus shot included at closing."

where to begin?

i feel like i've been absent from blog-world for so long! i guess i'll give a brief recap of the past week, though it's been quite a blur.

friday we worked on packing... sort of
we began getting stuff together and then had to go to some 4th of july festivities over at dr. joe's and with monica and dave. we had a great time kayaking and swimming around at dr. joe's, and we enjoyed dinner and hanging out at the fairgrounds until the lightning and rain took over the fireworks.

saturday, we got up bright and early and packed up the moving truck with the help of some WONDERFUL friends (monica, dave, chicken, byron, dr. allison, her husband, and my mom) load us up and move us on out to benson.
everyone worked so hard, and they just made it such a pleasant experience. i'm eternally grateful for their friendship and that they came through and helped us move in to our new home.
more pictures can be viewed here.

monday, andrew and i rested some and began unpacking - there is still SO MUCH to do! while i go to work each day, andrew takes care of stuff around the house. we did a lot of shopping for things like dog food, water bowls, containers, you know the basic stuff you need that you don't think about. we had dinner out since we hadn't been grocery shopping yet, and i made a love-connection with our waiter, wiley. it was pretty hilarious, and andrew and i had a good laugh over it.

tuesday i went back to work, and i've been working at oberlin while andrew works at home ever since. andrew's doing a great job of getting appliances hooked up, finishing flooring, and eventually painting. i can't wait until our house feels done and can be all decorated and pretty! once it's put together, we'll definitely have a housewarming party.

interesting and unrelated sidenote: i saw a random review of our blog (from some anonymous source on a random website) that said our blog is "kinda boring" and "teacher stories" which could be true... but i also got an email from a person who wanted to be added to the blog readership because they'd read previously (but doesn't know us), so it must not be too boring! [ps. welcome!] i guess i'm open to suggestions to keep it interesting, though for the most part it's just a journal/account of the stuff we do on a daily basis.

MOVING DAY!!!

BE THERE OR BE A RHOMBUS! :-D

moving blues

i hate moving. i hate thinking about leaving the place i've worked to make home over the past months. i hate learning new traffic patterns and how long it takes to get places. i hate packing all my stuff up just to spend a long day or few days loading it up, praying it doesn't get broken, unloading it, and then having to go through everything. i hate that all my stuff appears in a dog hair free new home and yet is still covered in dog hair. i hate uprooting the dogs and dog-proofing the new house and yard. and most of all, i hate feeling displaced for the next few months while i can't find stuff and don't know where to put it. at least this time, we won't be moving again for a LONG time... i hope.

sorry to be such a debbie-downer. i just thought i'd let it all hang out tonight.

YAY for moving crew afterparties!