Wednesday, March 31: My afternoon flight on Southwest was relatively uneventful. There were 20-month-old triplets on our flight with their two stressed-out looking parents but there was no crying or any acting out. Amazing! Les picked up up from the Oakland airport (so nice) and we had the obligatory super-condensed catching up session in the car before arriving at their house. Once there, I got an enthusiastic greeting from Sous and Bryan (one was wigglier than the other) and we had a glass of wine and engaged in a great deal more catching up. Dinner was some amazing homemade cheeseburgers (I ate well on this trip!), and then I made up my little nest on the couch and crashed.
Thursday, April 1: Awoke to a really bizarre sound that I couldn't place. Maybe Bryan doing some sort of crazy exercise, I thought? It was Sous eating her breakfast out of some rubber and plastic contraption that has to be manipulated just right to get a single pellet of food out. It involves a lot of dropping on the floor. She's a smart dog. After a fortifying breakfast taco, Leslie and I took Sous on a hike at Redwood.
Leslie indulged me and accompanied me to the crepe place for lunch. Embracing the state of vacationer, I got a sweet crepe, with cherries, ricotta and mascarpone with apple sauce and sour cream (it maybe have come with ice cream...just maybe). When we came home, we had a surprise! Sous had found my plane snacks within a plastic bag within my backpack, and we found wrappers to the following: 2 Fiber One granola bars, chocolate-covered raisins, lemon Girl Scout cookies, a Twix bar, and a bag of almonds. The Gummi Lifesavers were not acknowledged as food and therefore rejected. So remember kids - put food away and off the ground when you have smart doggies around!
After a relaxing afternoon (a nap might have been involved), Leslie and I rode BART/Muni into San Francisco to attend the NightLife event at the California Academy of Sciences. On Thursdays from 6-10pm, they open the museum to 21+ year-olds, have a DJ, and sell alcohol. It was great! No kids! No strollers! Actually good music! We took a quick spin through the rainforest, visited the living roof (picture at left), reclined in the planetarium (one of the big dome kinds that makes you feel like you're moving), then explored the aquarium. Some personal favorites: the little frogs that looked like moss, sea horses that looked like kelp, and big-ass jellyfish. After a while, we met up with three of Leslie's friends, Debbie, Bianca, and Laurel, and we all ate at the cafeteria (I had mac & cheese, yum!). And Bianca and Debbie gave us a ride home (in their Prius, which might have been my first time in one), which was super-nice and much appreciated. I enjoyed the adventure of riding public transportation, but an hour+ ride back in the dark of night did not sound like fun.Winner of the best April Fools Day joke: Kristina (aka cousin Michael's girlfriend) with her post on Facebook about moving to Germany. I totally bought it and had to text Lisa to check the veracity.
Friday, April 2: Happy start to the morning with a trip to the dog park with Sous. She's such a fun dog to be around. It's nice to be with a dog that likes other dogs, too. Not just gets along with them, but likes them. After some mid-day quiet time, Leslie and I went to see "How to Train Your Dragon," which I really liked. It wasn't quite Pixar, but it was close. And Toothless the dragon was awesome! I thought the quality of the animation was also really good. After that, we stopped by H&M and got me a silly $13 dress to wear for Easter (picture down below).
Leslie and I met Bryan for dinner at Yoshi's Jazz Club and Japanese Restaurant. I was adventurous and had a shrimp tempura dish (‘Kakiage’ Fritter: black tiger shrimp, onion, carrots, enoki mushrooms, kaiware radish lightly battered and deep-fried). After dinner we took in the show - the Brad Mehldau Trio. They were good! My favorite piece was an uptempo Portuguese number, and my second favorite was an improvisation on The Sound of Music's "Something Good." We sat with the two biggest fans in the room, a couple who had even seen the trio perform in other countries. They were very nice and we had fun talking with them. They struck up a conversation after Bryan and I were playing the "stereotype personalities of musical instrument players in high school band." It was my clarinet player description that did it ("slightly anal but dedicated" was as far as I got... (I tried to get out of the hole I dug by saying I married one). Turns out the woman was a clarinet performance major before switching to musicology. Oops.
Saturday, April 3: Dog park in the morning with Leslie and Bryan and Sous. Sous pulled a good trick by going under a bridge and emerging on the outside of the dog park fence. Luckily the fence wasn't too high and I just popped over and put her back on the right side. We ate brunch at a favorite restaurant of all three of us: Citron. Three words: lemon ricotta pancakes. Then I did some shopping around the neighborhood while Les and Bryan went back to the house. The afternoon they spent getting ready for their Easter BBQ while Sous and I stayed out of the way. Oh, and Bryan showed me Final Fantasy XIII, which I now really want (no surprise, I've been dedicated since FFX). We stopped by Debbie and Bianca's place for Bianca's going-away party for an hour or so before heading back to the house for more prep and relaxing.
Sunday, April 4: I made buttermilk pies for the party. Trader Joe's pie crust does not get my endorsement. If you do use it, thaw it for twice as long as they say and roll it out a bit before using. I should've known better than to use an unknown product.
Easter "Southern/Kentucky Derby"-themed fineryYou can't tell, but my headband has a flower on it. I went all out.
Leslie and Bryan's Easter BBQ party started at 2. There were people I knew (Doug, George, Clare, etc) and people new to me. Luckily Leslie and Bryan have amazingly nice, friendly friends so all was well :) Leslie and Bryan had made some great food (homemade cheese sticks, BBQ pork to name a couple) but the winner of the best food had to be the peep sushi brought by guests. I mean, look at this:
The party was really the culmination of the trip. I headed back to Dallas the next morning, very uneventfully. I had a great time!
Leslie and Bryan's Easter BBQ party started at 2. There were people I knew (Doug, George, Clare, etc) and people new to me. Luckily Leslie and Bryan have amazingly nice, friendly friends so all was well :) Leslie and Bryan had made some great food (homemade cheese sticks, BBQ pork to name a couple) but the winner of the best food had to be the peep sushi brought by guests. I mean, look at this:
The party was really the culmination of the trip. I headed back to Dallas the next morning, very uneventfully. I had a great time!
