teresa

The storm of the century just ripped through our area.  It rained straight through for days.  The same storm made a mess in the Reno area as well.  Personally I wasn’t very excited about it raining going into my birthday weekend.  This year our birthday fell on a Sunday.  After much research I decided I wanted to go to Pescadero for fish tacos, based on an article a friend sent me.  Do you like my new blog style, I don’t even need Elliott to make the links for me anymore, I learned how to myself, since we did so much work on the wedding site.  Anyway… 

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.