On Christmas Eve Eve we headed across the bridge to see Steve, Jill, and Robbie in the City. It was good to catch up. We talked about possibly going to Tahoe some time this winter for some skiing. Over a nice dinner, I had a few beers (probably a few too many), and took some photos of a little pinata figurine I'd stolen from my friend Sam's desk at work. The pinata had a rough night. Here are the "before" and "after" photos...
I spent most of Christmas Eve working on a new project- an indoor greenhouse. The idea came to me after finding flower-filled cat puke all over the house the previous morning. The flowers were from a bouquet I'd had delivered to the house for the wifey. As much as I liked my original idea, I decided that a cat-free plant cage would be better than a plant-free cat cage. It's quite large, and I didn't actually finish it until tonight. Of course, the cats still puke regardless of the plants being off limits. Doc demonstrated this to me as soon as I was finished installing the last hinged door. It was an incredible triple-pile of barf!Back to Christmas Eve... towards the end of the afternoon a package came from UPS. It was from Justin. We decided to open our gifts before heading to dinner with Caitlin at her studio. We got salsa lessons and yoga classes from the fam. Jess got us a membership to the Monterey Bay Aquarium (which is great for when we have visitors since it gets us and two guests in for free any time we want to go), goats for Heiffer International, and the word game Apples to Apples. I got her a Nelson Mandela Car Air Freshener (it says "DAMN Nelson Mandela, you smell so GOOD!" and claims that his aroma is that of cookies), and a Bolliwood Booty workout DVD. I also got us copies of the Zonk the Tortise books by David Hoobler (Dave is the local artist who we got out Christmas cards from this year...check out http://www.zonktheturtle.com). We also got a sushi set from our awesome neighbors Jason and Tanya, and then came the best part... the UPS box from Justin. It included a CD with some Christmas music by the lead singer from Judas Priest (the 80's metal band)... Listening to him wail on We Three Kings, we laughed and cried watching the montage Jutin had made of the photos from the trip he and Bridget took to visit us back in November. I had to remove the music. It was aptly set to Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares to You."
Digging further into the box I found the best gift of all, a six-pack of Natty Boh! With the Boh Angel smiling down upon me from atop our tree, I was wild with excitement as I extracted the final touch of the gift, a lime (for transforming each luscious can into a delicious "Bohrona"). Christmas was off to a great start...We had dinner with Caitlin (she made us to some tasty fondue). I was tired from a long day of playing with my tools to build the plant shelf. I passed out after a few glasses of wine, and they had to wake me up for dessert (more fondue!).
The next day we were headed to Susan and Gary's up in Healdsburg. We got to enjoy opening gifts with their granddaughter, Daisy, and a fantastic prime rib dinner. Susan is quite the chef. I must have put on ten pounds over the course of the day!
And then came the weekend... Jess had made plans for us to head down the coast to check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium and then spend the night a little further along at an inn overlooking the ocean. I hadn't been to the aquarium since my first visit out here back in 2001 when Susan and Gary took me there, and I really can't believe how much of it I didn't see that time! On that occasion though I was able to snag myself a one-on-one tour with an aquarist, and I managed to see a lot of the behind the scenes stuff I'm really into. In fact, I can't remember the last time I was at an aquarium or zoo when I wasn't on business. This was purely for pleasure, and it was really nice. Of course I still managed to critique some aspects of the place (they don't use scientific names on any of the ID panels, but they do translate everything into Spanish, so I guess that's worth something)... After a scary drive through the rain in the dark on the Coastal Highway, we had a really nice dinner at the inn, and then tucked in for the night next to a warm fireplace.
The next morning, we continued on our way exploring the coast. There were tide pools with starfish and anemones, and golden eagles, and cows, and...
Yep. It was an awesome weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment