We found a really cool chapel (non denominational) in Sea Ranch on our drive up.  It was one of our best random finds yet.  These are my favorite parts of a trip particularly a road trip, spotting something from the road and checking it out rather than seeking out something you read about in a magazine or something, random finds are just almost always more rewarding.





Mendocino has lots of artists and art so we went to a gallery actually originally in search of a restroom although it turned out to be fun and they had lots of these tall back chairs.  We were going to take a picture of everyone we found although then our battery died and that idea lost steam.

I don’t know what got into us although on the trip we also took more pictures using the macro function than I think we realized.  We went to a botanical garden which is where most of that happened, if anyone ever wants a picture of a flower we have you covered.

Other than that we went to a lighthouse, had a great dinner, and we took the long way home – we love road trips.

On a side note, this weekend I am still recovering from our Monica Margarita evening Friday night.  Monica shared a margarita recipe with me forever ago that I had always wanted to try and we did Friday night.  Its equal parts limeade, corona and tequila or at least that’s how we made it.  I think there’s a chance its supposed to be one limeade, one limeade tin worth of tequila and then an entire corona, oh and ice.  Although we had to have half it for our little party so we did just one half tin of each, pretty yummy.

Oh and I got a new bathing suit this weekend which always inspires a diet, good thing we have 9 miles to log today!  Our last run was not very successful although I expect we will get all the way through nicely today.

Then on the way home we decided why not extend the fun.  We went to Buffalo Wild Wings which was busier than an atm on pay day.  We were lucky to find a seat at the bar.  We ordered two cold ones and eventually I asked the guys next to us what the blue Electric Bingo Dauber type machines were that they had.  They said it was a trivia game and that we should play.  I quickly explained that I was terrible at trivia, I actually fundamentally hate Trivial Pursuit and would chose only to play the kiddie version if forced.  Eventually though we decided to play, I was inspired by Dave and Tank who continually placed in the top 5 on the reader board displayed above the bar.

I was unaware of this new bar trend, the company which provided the one we played was buzztime.  I sucked as expected and Elliott kicked butt, which figures.  Although it was fun.  We will difinetely go back and I think it would be fun to go with a group, so we will see if we can rally a few people to go with us, otherwise we will just make new friends if only temporarily like Dave, Tank, and King who sat on the other side of Elliott and killed it, she was the winner the game before we left.

Elliott and I went to dinner tonight.  Although rather than a $40 minimum ticket we picked up <$10 sandwiches from Safeway (which turned out to be pretty good) and drove out to Livermore to Del Valle Lake.  We hiked the less than 1 mile to the top with a great view of the lake and Livermore Valley and we ate dinner on the bench.  Its a little funny to think of it as a money saving idea, although that was partly it, we are certainly working to cut our expenses although it turned out to be much more enjoyable than any dinner we have had a restaurant in a long time.  The views, the quiet, the lone mountain biker, all added to the ambiance far surpassing any east bay hot spot.  So I am thinking that is my new request for a date night.  Didn’t hurt that it was 80 degrees today either so the weather was beautiful as well.

Other random thoughts, kids on bikes scare me.  Elliott and I are training for a marathon so we have been running rather regularly.  Often we will pass by other runners and walkers, and many times families.  The kids we pass on bikes look like at any moment they might lose control and barrel into you.  You can tell their blood pressure rises as you approach and they move over toward the edge of the walkway to avoid you nearly wrecking in the process.  These newly found bike riders scare me and after I safely pass certainly make me laugh.

Over the weekend we helped out both Friday and Saturday nights at the Rotary conference.  Elliott’s club helped wtih their Area’s hospitality suite and they needed help serving the food.  So both nights we assisted with preparing little pieces of baguette with a squirt of horseradish, skirt of mustard, and a slice of corned beef.  We made hundreds if not almost one thousand between both nights!  It was fun.  It was very interesting to see the handful of people that wanted something special.  There were times when we felt like we couldn’t cut and squirt fast enough and someone would come up and ask for one without the mustard, or no carbs…  oh man when food is free I think you got to take it as it comes.  Obviously I would have been less annoyed if I had spent more time in the other room serving (and drinking) Irish libations, atlhough instead of a hangover I got heartburn from eating too much corned beef.  Bob, the president of Elliott’s club, the chef, is also hilarious.  He reminds me a bit of my father although with more spunk.  At one point when one woman who wanted extra corned beef was trying to scoop it up to eat it with a chip and she couldn’t quite get it, Bob reached over and pushed it onto her chip for her with his finger.  He is the type of guy who does stuff that makes you laugh although you know you really shouldn’t laugh because most of it is borderline inappropriate.  Fortunately I found most of his stuff funny the two nights so that at least added to the experience.

This week we are going to Reno for the shareholders meeting Thursday and the BOD meeting Friday.  Should be fun, although we have no time to see friends so I am a little bummed.  Then its back to the Bay area Friday night, I volunteered to help with a construction project for Rebuilding Together Saturday.  Elliott I think may be staying in Reno for WordCamp!  That’s right a Word Press conference, the software he programs our blogs and now our new BJG website in.  I think it is really funny he is going to go to WordCamp. And then I believe he is taking the train home… oh wait update, Elliott has decided not to go to WordCamp… bummer I know he was excited about it.  Good for me though, that means I have my driving partner to come back with me.  Which ultimately means I will fall asleep and Elliott will get me home safe, just the way its supposed to happen.

Our first and definitely not our last trip to Yosemite.

Christmas in Reno, kids make it all so much fun.

First hike at Mt Diablo, amazing views.

A New Year with new friends!

A tour of the California Academy of Sciences – dorky fun goodness.

After leaving work, a little later than I should have I came home for a first.  Our first herb garden!  Elliott had to go out of town for an off site meeting so that left me to complete our seed planting.  Many of the seeds required soaking which was reminiscent of the wedding flowers, every cup out of the cupboards, filled with water and spread out on kitchen counters.  We didn’t get organized early enough in the weekend because of our special date to see the nerdcore movie so we didn’t start our soak until Sunday.

Tonight I had to prepare the pellets of soil by soaking them in water and then plant the seeds as instructed from 1/16″ to 1/4″ to 1/2″ deep.  I certainly hope that this measurement is not critical because I found this placement of the tiny seeds to be sketchy at best.  I started out spreading out the 3 seeds throughout the 2″ diameter pellet until after 2 or 3 I decided they could all go in the same hole in the middle.  I felt like a sushi chef, hunched over, with a spoon corralling the seeds from the glass and pouring them into the hole in the dirt, completing each implantation slowly and deliberately.  I kept a chart to know which herb was planted in which pellet, we have 2 of each including herbs like sage, basil, chives, mustard, and many more totaling 12.  We purchased the kit from www.herbkits.com.

After the herbs where planted and the lid installed  I walked to the grocery store in my “flip flops, flip flops” to purchase the remaining items I would need to make a broccoli salad.  Now all of this may sound normal to some of you but for those of you who really know me lets take a second to appreciate that I am starting a garden and cooking!  These are truly phenomenal steps for me.  I have had few hobbies at best the last few years and none of them have included cooking or gardening.

The cooking has been inspired by our recent efforts to go to the farmers market each week.  We started this as a step towards increasing our sustainability – buy local food.  It turned out it has also inspired us to eat more fruits and vegetables and to try new things.  So each Saturday we go to the farmers market, select our inspiration for the week (which has included a variety of mushrooms, eggplant, purple potatoes, green beans…) as well as our staples dates nan or focaccia for our weekly pizza dinner and so on and we are off.

So this week we bought broccoli which inspired us to make a knock off of the Costco broccoli salad.  The recipe I used is a blend between 2 I found on the internet:

• http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001949broccoli_salad.php
• http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/broccoli-salad-recipe/index.html

The second one suggested blanching the broccoli which before today I would have thought had something to do with this Golden Girl . But now I know that it means to drop food in boiling water for a short amount of time which I decided was a good suggestion.  I also followed the instructions to cool the broccoli in a bowl of ice water, the crackling of the ice made this step fun.  I modified the recipe slightly, this is a confident cooking move that Elliott taught me.  In lieu of red or purple unions I used the white onion I already had in the fridge and caramelized it using brown sugar (another trick Elliott taught me).  This is partly because Elliott doesn’t like red onions and partly because I already had white onion and didn’t want to waste it, besides it allowed for creativity.  Also I decided to exclude the bacon so the caramelized onion would add some extra flavor.  I liked the dressing of the second recipe better using honey instead of sugar.  I did use white instead of apple cider vinegar because we currently have an overstock of 2 bottles of white vinegar, a good reason why to check your cabinet while making your grocery list.  I included peas and will use raisins, although those are at the office so I will have to add them to my lunch tomorrow before enjoying.  The end product looks like: 

All of this was completed with the sound of the waterfall from our courtyard for better or worse and the slight breeze through the apartment that every once in a while catches the vertical blinds and sends them dancing into each other for a few moments, “click clack, click clack”.

Tonight I will turn in by myself and will look at the soft glow of our sun in a jar.  A pretty cool gift that my Vistage group gave us as a wedding present along with some other goodies.  The sun jar is a solar panel with rechargeable batteries and a little light.  It charges during the day and lights up at night, pretty cool.

To more nights full of planting and cooking, who knew how fun it could be!  Of course the only thing that would have made it better besides raisins and a green thumb is Elliott.

Then I had read about a yogurt place in the Diablo magazine that I wanted to try and I also saw something about a Belguim beer spot so I added both to our places to go list.  Elliott agreed to check out the yogurt place with me which is in Berkeley.  As we were headed to Berkeley we realized we could also go to theatre where we could catch a flick that we haven’t seen yet.  You see we go the movies so often these days that we have seen nearly all of the movies at the neighborhood theatre.   However there is an off beat theatre in Berkeley, Shattuck Cinema that was playing Son of Rambow which looked pretty good.  We drove by the yogurt place on the way, couldn’t find parking and because Elliott insists on getting good seats and seeing every preview we didn’t get yogurt because we were pressed for time.

The movie theatre was totally cute.  Elliott really liked the ceiling in the lobby, .  I really liked the popcorn, they had 4 flavors of powder to sprinkle on top including white cheddar and ranch!  The theatre had no more than 50 seats, very intimate.  The movie itself was really well done, much more enjoyable than some of the bigger name movies we have seen recently – I swear we so many movies I think we should be movie critics.

After the movie we walked across the street to try a different yogurt shop than originally intended, Yogurt Harmony.  It was delicous - a must do again.  Very fresh, light, organic – seemingly healthy.

After that on our way home I suggested that perhaps….  we could go to Oakland and check out the Belgium Beer bar I had read about, Elliott agreed to it.  We drove around looking for parking for a bit and eventually tentatively entered the bowling alley of a space.  We walked to the end of the bar but not into the extended table seating area when a couple said they were leaving and gave us their seats, it was meant to be.  The Trappistserves all Belgium beer, not that Belgium beer means that much to me I softly whispered to Elliott do you think they serve Fat Tire, and he explained that the New Belgium brand is not actually Belgium beer (although inspired by), oh…

For the first round we ask for suggestions.  I ended up with a Houblon Chouffe, which I picked for the name.  A passerby commented thats the same way he picks his horses, not a bad method.  Elliott ordered the Manneken Pis.  Both were great.  The best part is The Trappist takes pride in their work selecting the proper glass for each type of beer, chilling the glasses, it was nice to see these bartenders work.

Our second round, who knew, this was Elliott’s idea, I thought we only had one round in us, for me was a St Bernard Abt 12 which could only be described as Christmas in a bottle, very spicy!  Elliott settled on the blueberry wheat, with just enough taste of blueberry, hmmm yummy.  We snatched pictures as we usually do of our beers and of us.

After awhile of sitting there I realized there was a guy sitting next to Elliott who was by himself.  I asked Elliott if he had realized he was sitting there and asked why he hadn’t said hello.  I asked the stranger about his beer choice which was a Frambroise a raspberry beer as my pick up line.  We chatted with him for what might have been an hour.  He was from Belgium and was new to the area too (I know we have been here for a year, but it all still seems new).  It was nice to talk with him. 

We did eventually head home.  When we got home we enjoyed more beers and an escape from all sorrows and stresses of the world.  We played a dice game different from our normal gin rummy game.  It was perhaps one of our best dates ever. 

So we left work a little early, took the BART in.  Stopped at a bar we had found last time and had a watermelon wheat.  The 21st Amendment opens up an area on the side of their building and serves food and beer.  We had had our first watermelon wheat when we went to a game with Marlon, this time it was sans watermelon slice so it wasn’t as good, but still a nice light beer, kind of like drinking lemonade.  About 1/2 a beer in our troubles melted away, my eye twitch subsided, we both relaxed a little.  We reminisced of how me met some of our current friends.  These are my favorite times with Elliott.  We have been together a long time now, over 6 years, so after awhile it seems as if you have heard everyone of their stories.  We laugh about certain stories being our story number 3.  But every once in awhile one of gets to a time or a place with our memories that we haven’t gone before with the other and its like we get to know each other even more, its always a special treat!

After we finished our beers we walked the rest of the way to the park.  Brian was the second season ticket holder to tell us we had to get a Cha Cha bowl.  I didn’t listen the first time someone suggested it because when we got there no one was in line so we decided to try something else.  Anyway this time I decided to listen.  So we walked first to go get our Cha Cha bowl which we decided to share.  I saw people taking their bowls to a counter of dispensers, like the ketchup ones at Costco with the spicket and the big red button, so I asked the guy at the counter, should we put something in this.  He smiled and said the BBQ sauce is great in it…wait… I just realized my title is wrong.  Because at this point I ordered a Corona, because that was about all they had, which was my second beer and there is another beer in my future of this story, oh well I am leaving the title as I like it as it is and I think my 3rd beer might have been borderline dark anyway so technically the title is still correct.

So we politely shared the ChaCha bowl which has white rice, jerk chicken, some sort of veggie dollop and BBQ sauce… I think that was it.  We sat on the edge of a sectioned off area that is normally open but there was a private party.  We lamented our curiosity of who this company was because as many companies are hunkering down because of the economy they were hosting a buffet dinner at the Giants game which can’t be cheap.

After our dinner we walked around the other side of the park to see the view of the water before making our way to our seat.  So this is the part that became interesting.  We go through the doors of the lower level and show the gentleman our tickets, he says “go all the way down to the end”.  Well I am a couple beers in so I am not paying attention to what this means, meanwhile Elliott is asking what did he say?  So we go to the end and show our tickets to another person who points to even further down the aisles, and another person checks our tickets and walks us to seats that are literally one row away from the field.  We are in a dug out essentially eye level with the field.  Crazy!  Quickly I decide these aren’t Brian’s personal tickets these must be his company’s tickets.  Which isn’t fair to Brian, but I can’t even imagine the cost of these tickets or that they are even readily available to the general public.

I jokingly say they probably deliver you drinks and food in these seats.  At that point a lady comes by and takes the order of the kids in front of us.  Elliott quickly snatches some pictures so that in case they were to find us out and move us to the real seats we could  prove that these seats exist and we were indeed in them.  Eventually we settled into our reality for the evening.  We did eventually order a burger, cracker jacks, and 2 beers, mine was an Anchor Steam (a deep amber beer… but still no headache today!).

The game was great except for the end, they lost in the 13th inning – yes it was a long game.  The Giants made a triple play, which was amazing to see in person.  It turns out you don’t see one of those everyday, the last triple play the Giants made at home was in 1980!  We left after the Padres scored 4 runs in the 13th inning.  The problem with taking the BART is if you miss the last train around midnight you are stuck so we wanted to make it back so we could come home.  The bummer is they had fireworks after the game last night, and the big booms are my favorite, but we missed them…

So pretty much I will never be able to watch a baseball game in the same way again.  I will always remember those seats.  I think there is a chance we will get those tickets again, Brian thru out some other dates when we talked.  Now I owe him dearly, I felt like I bent over backwards for them already as client, but now I am indebted.

So Friday it poured rain.  We had an interview with a wedding photographer in Lafayette, so we didn’t have a choice but to weather the storm.  We headed off into the fog, fortunately traffic was pretty slow, which was good because visibility was pretty low.  We had the windshield wipers going faster than I had ever seen them go before, I never knew there was a purpose for that turbo speed.  At one point a car drove past, splashed in a puddle, and the windshield was solid water for two swipes of the wipers, that was pretty intense.  We made it safely to our destination and ran to the office since we don’t own umbrellas.  Had a great meeting with our now booked wedding photographer.  That was a relief, for awhile we were boycotting a prof photographer based on their outrageous rates, figuring we take pretty good pictures, but we found a guy who is reasonable who takes great pics.

Saturday we braved the storm again and went to Walnut Creek where we were to meet Elliott’s cousin for my 1st birthday dinner.  We went early to get out of the house.  Decided to go to Barnes & Noble and read.  I had some assignments, 2 chapters from Firms of Endearment, our current BJG book club pick, and also an assignment to read The Secret for my Vistage group.  We sipped coffee, read, and people watched.  At one point 2 girls sat next to us, high school or junior high age.  They had just purchased a sampler of perfume from Victoria Secret, they examined their purchase while asking each other “which one is your favorite?”

“I really like the design of this bottle.” 

“This one is something I would wear to a tea party.”

A what…  I think I accidently laughed out loud behind my book.

After awhile we ran out of things to read and money in the meter so we drove around looking for a restaurant for dinner.  Eventually stopped at Jamba Juice for a snack and then decided to shop.  We went to Macy’s and purchased our first umbrellas.  Elliott had to buy the 2′ long sleek black one that crosses for a cane, all of the cool older men carry this kind of umbrella.  I chose a small one that I could carry easily, it even has a belt clip so I could attach it to my pants, how convenient.

Finally we decided to check out Concord, since we couldn’t get a reservation or decide on a dinner location in Walnut Creek.  In Concord we found an Old Spaghetti Factory in the center of downtown.  We waited in the bar for Elliott’s cousin, but he eventually cancelled because he wasn’t feeling well.  Me on the other hand one beer in, I was feeling pretty good.  So we had dinner earlier than planned.  After dinner we walked around the other shops and found a yogurt store.  It was the greatest thing ever, self serve.  You take as much as you want of whatever you want and pay by the ounce, I think it is a brilliant concept!  Then we decided to see a movie afterwards.  We saw Alien vs Predator, I think there were 3 other people in the theatre, not a big hit apparently.  Elliott exclaimed at the end that it was the worse movie ever, I couldn’t disagree.  Problem is, since we moved, and have no friends (not true we have 2 here, Matt and Ashley) we see a lot of movies.  So its hard to compete with Will Smith and similar box office stars.  After the movie we came out to find it was raining again and of course we both conveniently left our umbrellas in the car, so we ran back to the car. 

Sunday we went to Pescadero, enjoyed fish taco from the famous gas station!  Walked around, bought a really cool picture from recycled boat hulls.  Drove to a historic landmark light house all without a drop of rain on my birthday!  We drove back to Pleasanton, had dinner with Ashley and Matt at our house.  Ashley brought me a cake with candles and everything, and I enjoyed truly great birthday.

I will say that no one told me that it rained here when we were considering moving here.  I suppose I should have understood from the green hills that there was a little more moisture available then in Reno, but I was sure I saw sprinkler heads when we were touring this area.  I hear however that it rains until February and then it will be back to sunny and pleasant again.  Now that we are prepared with our umbrellas as long as we remember to bring them with us there will be no rain checks for us.