November 26th, 2007
Happy Thanksgiving!
We celebrated with our west coast family by having dinner at our place. It was the first Thanksgiving meal P and I made together (awww…) and it came out perfect. The meal included pepper brioche rolls, roasted pumpkins stuffed with a wild rice/grain meat stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, roasted veggies, onion tart, a fennel salad with dill dressing, for dessert, apple pie and pear tart made by P (so good). Lots of leftovers.
Additional free time was spent sleeping and/or relaxing. Movies watched included the classic Planes, Trains and Automobiles (thumbs down), the Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (thumbs up), White Christmas (thumbs up from me, thumbs down from P), Battle Star Galactica Season 1 (thumbs up).
My Dad goes over the hill today, happy 50th Dad!
- N.
November 21st, 2007
Hi,
We had a terrible encounter with geeks last night and it wasn’t pretty.
Long story short - broken lap-top, warranty with geek squad, drop it off with back up disk still in lap-top, back-up disk has very important information on it, need it back asap.
I spent all day yesterday trying to reach someone at Best Buy or to get them to call me back with information and they of course did not call me back. After a very long day, we decided to drive back to San Jose to rescue the disk. We approach the geek counter and are told that they shipped the computer out already and they are not permitted to contact the place they shipped it. In fact, they explained that not only are they not able to contact the place they do not even know where it is. They just put a UPS sticker on the box and off it goes to one day be returned to us, who knows when. They don’t have an address, number or anything he explained. Apparently, the geek squad’s MOA is to tell the public that how their computers get fixed is a mystery (or magic?), even to the squad. I gave the fake geek a half smile and marched immediately over to the manager.
My tip of the day - don’t sign up for the plan, avoid the squad.
- N.
November 19th, 2007
Hi!
I meet the young person I will potentially be “mentoring” tomorrow and am a little nervous. She is 12 years old and her profile said she didn’t want to have anyone too old, someone around 18. So, clearly I’m going to be ancient to her, hopefully the meeting will go well.
Other news, forgot to post that I saw a bob cat on the UCSC campus. It was hunting ground squirrels and not as big as I thought it would be. Still waiting to see a cougar…from a safe distance.
We are still trying to decide what to make for t.day, so many pies so little time. Also, my cholesterol tests came back high so I don’t want to tempt myself too much. When I found out my test was high I felt like a walking kashi commercial. Hoping that a little more exercise and a little less baked goods will help. I can’t knock the feeling that I’m too young for this, even though I know that a lot of young people have high cholesterol because of genetic reasons.
P only has three more weeks of teaching left this quarter (counting down).
Still waiting on “the” house. Looked at appliances this weekend in San Jose and wow, appliances are expensive. We are having a used and very cool retro stove given to us that will have to sit in storage until the transaction takes place. So, our only immediate need will be a fridge and then we will work on other things like washer/dryer, dish washer over time. Our realtor said she doubts we will close before new years at this pace, which I am told is normal for foreclosed properties.
Weekend was good, P had to work Friday night so I got take-out and caught up on ugly betty, oh the drama!
It’s the three month mark since I was last on the east coast, normally around this time I really start to miss friends and family. Wish I could fly out and see you all for Thanksgiving, however, funds are tight when trying to save for our bungalow.
Also, missing my 10 year high school reunion this month. A shout out to the class of 97 city of champions - holla!
- N.
November 13th, 2007
Hi,
Yesterday, after living here over a year, we finally saw the monarchs everyone has been talking about. There is a monarch migration reserve a couple miles from our house at Natural Bridges beach. The monarchs come there in about October and leave in Feb. or Jan., not sure when. However, when we went late last year, there was not a monarch to be found. That was not the case yesterday. The reserve is in a small eucalyptus grove (the grove is small, the trees are huge) and it was full of butterflies. They filled the air and lined the branches together all bunched up. Very beautiful. Here’s a link to what monarchs look like in case you don’t remember. http://www.adobeongreen.com/284Monarchs.jpg
This weekend was a good one. Friday night P and I caught up over veggie burgers at the only Irish pub in town (that I know of). Saturday we went to the west side farmers market, grabbed a coffee and went through the paper to find open houses. It was a cold rainy day and we spent most of it going from house to house. We found two very nice ones, however, in the end we decided we still think the one near the university is the one for us. However, we’re still playing the waiting game. I did some research and found out that when buying a house from an REO in Califonia, it can take much longer than it normally would because the flow of information has to travel through a number of people in the bank. We’ll see what happens but I’m hoping we’ll be able to move while P is on break from teaching. Maybe I should write Santa and let him know that all I want for Christmas is this house (after we get positive inspection reports of course).
Saturday night, we had the privilege of going to a wonderful dinner party. We were kind of sleepy and cold that night, however, once we arrived they had a big fire going, sat us in front of it with some delicious wine and cheese. We met some really great people, the conversations were really interesting.
Sunday we went to SF to meet up with some new friends and P’s brother and his girlfriend at this hole in the wall indian restaurant. We all agreed the food was not that great but it was it was nice to hang out with everyone. After eating, we walked around and ended up spending the afternoon in Union Square having coffee and pastries outside. They were putting up the Christmas tree. After leaving SF, we stopped in Palo Alto to have dinner with P’s sister and her husband (who is an amazing cook). Dinner was great, went home and worked the rest of the night.
Monday was spent working unfortunately for both of us, except for the monarch tour which was mentioned above.
Other news…my bike is broken. I took it to get fixed and the people there were like no way man because the cost of fixing it far exceeds what the bike is worth. I beat on the bike pretty hard in Boston and then the move kind of did it in it seems. So, I’m on the hunt for a new cheap bike.
Hobbes is good although I had to call the vet yesterday due some odd behavior. Often when he jumps lately he is missing his target and hitting walls or barely making it and he hangs onto the ledge with his front paws trying to make it up. Yes, it’s true that he is not the most graceful cat but this was excessive even for him. They said it could be that he’s getting older (he just turned 9) or he may have some kind of ear infection throwing off his balance. We will be watching him the next couple weeks to see if it gets worse.
Work is good, P has four weeks left in his quarter and I think that makes him very happy since he’s working like 50-60 hours a week. Work is good for me. Also, I finished my CASA training, got sworn in by the judge on Friday and will be getting my first case this Thursday. I’m looking forward to it.
As for the holidays, we’re not sure what we’re doing for Thanksgiving, yet. However, we unfortunately will not be making it out to the east coast this season. With the purchase of the house, funds are extremely tight. However, feel free to drop on by. Today was sunny and high 70s and I went to the beach when I took a lunch break.
Hope you are all doing well!
- N.
