Chocolate

Ok, I feel like I need to write before things go crazy and I forget about last weekend. Friday night we drank margaritas with Shannon, Carlson, Matt and Anne at Chili's. The crazy waiter I think mixed the margaritas double strong, so after two each we were discussing the possibility of enacting Josh's infamous plan. This plan was that he's going to get the 6 of us drunk and drive us to Las Vegas and get us married. Just so you know, Matt and Anne have been dating for 7 years, Carlson and Shannon have been dating for just under 6 years. Chris and I of course are the babies, at just under 3 years.

Saturday morning I got up, picked up Aimee and we went to the Millbrae BART station to begin the bookclub choc-adventure. This was purportedly a bachelorette party - for Lis I guess since she's getting married first. We went to Joseph Schmidt chocolates first - they had these amazing truffles. Next to the Ferry building where we went to Recchiuti chocolates (kind of fancy chocolate things - for $50/lb!). We also had lunch at the Japanese deli there (yum!) and marveled at the array of foods (like a million mushrooms). Oh, did I mention that the weather was perfect? Warm and not foggy, which it never is in San Francisco in the summer. Oh, and there was a farmer's market/craft fair going on down by the ferry building? We couldn't have planned it all better. Next we took the BART across the bay to Scharffen Berger factory where we had a tour and I bought way too much chocolate. We then walked over to University for dinner (passing Good Vibrations on the way - what could be more appropriate for a bachelorette party?) and eventually having this amazing dinner at an indian place. I was exhausted when I got home. And my pee smelled like chocolate. Tee hee... gross, but funny. Ushma and Aimee both took photos (of chocolate, not pee) and hopefully I'll get to post those soon.

Sunday I dropped Brandy off at the airport and then picked Chris up and we went sailing off of Santa Cruz with 8 of the 9 Greek sailors. We both took dramamine, and you know, I'm not sure if maybe I wouldn't have been better off just puking. (I was so tired for more than 24 hours.) There's such ocean swell off Santa Cruz that tons of people were either feeling sick or actually yakking off the back of the boat. We're all crossing our fingers like crazy and hoping there's no swell in the Med Sea. I never get sick in the bay - I've felt nasty every time I sailed in the ocean. So I have to hope for the best.

Today I hung out with Aunt Teresa & Uncle Bob in San Francisco. We did tea tasting in China Town and saw them make fortune cookies. We passed XOX truffles on the way and I was unable to resist buying a bunch of them - they're delicious and very hand made. We took a little golf cart tour along the water front (Crissy field, Palace of Fine Arts, Coit Tower) and had a delicious dinner at Millenium, a vegan place downtown. I have no idea what I ate, but it was amazing. Also it was fun hanging out with T&B. They're so full of funny stories.

Ok, I'm exhausted. To bed.

Greece, the org meeting

I'm getting so excited about going to Greece! We had an organizational meeting last night with 8 of 9 travellers, and I think we're going to have so much fun. We're all getting t-shirts with a trip logo on them. Tee hee! We tenatively decided last night that we're going to start out in Paros (that's where we get the boat), head north to Delos and Mykonos, come back south to Naxos and the Little Cyclades (relatively unvisited - very small and with little ferry service) and then depending on time and winds, over to Ios or Santorini, around Antiparos and back to our port in Paros. Shannon has been an amazing organizer and has taken care of renting the boat and getting charts and port descriptions. I'm wondering what I can do for her to repay her. I've kind of appointed myself provisioner, so Chris and I are going to go to Paros a day early to check out the food situation. So fun! I can't wait!

The Stick

When Nana was babysitting my sister and I and we were being bad, she would threaten us with The Stick. As in, "You'd better behave or I'm going to have to get The Stick." She threatened this so many times without ever showing us The Stick that we assumed there was no such thing. Then one time we were fighting with each other really badly, Nana threatened us with The Stick, and we ignored her. Then she appears in the doorway with The Stick! Steph and I ran for her room and locked ourselves in - suddenly not fighting anymore, and clearly allied against Nana and The Stick, so I guess it had the desired affect. Chatting with the cousins this week, Steph and I found out that they were better behaved than we were, because they still believed The Stick was a myth. My dad and uncle however knew exactly what The Stick was. I'd guess they saw it many times. Heh.

Humor in the midst of everything

The family was sitting in the limo after the church funeral service waiting for everyone to get back to their cars to begin the procession. The younger cousins were goofing off and Lauren was complaining that Kelly farted during the service. Johnny interjected in a total deadpan (and in his marine dress uniform), "If you fart in church you have to sit in your own pew." It's one of the funniest things I've heard in awhile.

I don't know if it's disrespectful or what, but the funeral and visitation and so on were actually more fun and better organized than some weddings I've been to. On Thursday we spent about 4 hours in the afternoon at "visitation", which just means hanging out at the funeral home in a big room with the coffin chatting with people who come to visit and kind of say goodbye to Nana. It was only sad because she wasn't there and she would have loved that kind of social event more than any of us. We had dinner afterwards with Jack and Grandpa and the cousins.

On Friday then we had a funeral service at the church my grandparents were founding members of more than 50 years ago. Then we processed to the cemetary and had another little service there and watched the coffin lowered into the ground in a plot that my grandparents bought in 1972 - my dad hadn't even met my mom yet. After that we went to lunch at this really good Italian place with a bunch of family. All morning we were driven around in this 14 person limo - it was totally huge, but hot unfortunately, so not that comfortable. Anyway, it was really nice to get to see and spend so much time with so many relatives.

Now I'm back in California - we went to a party today at Misty and her husband's new house. The place has a waterslide that looks like it belongs in a water park - short, but not the type of water slide you usually imagine in someone's back yard. Also, at long last Chris submitted his journal paper today so we celebrated with fondue dinner.

Misty of Chincoteague

When my sister and I were younger and went to Ocean City, Maryland for vacation in the summer, Nana would sometimes try to convince the family to go see the Pony Penning at Chincoteague Island. From what I remember this is where they take the wild horses who live on Assateague, swim them across the water, and then sell off a bunch of them. The most famous of these was Misty of Chincoteague who had a children's book written about her. Anyway, we went this one time and they had a little museum about Misty where they had her stuffed of all things. And oh my, the taxidermist did not do a good job. This photo only kind of shows it, but she appears to be stuffed by someone who had more experience with cows. My sister and I have laughed and laughed about this.

Martha Lind

Last night my Nana passed away in the Riderwood nursing home from the aftermath of a heart attack. She was 87. At my graduation in 2000 I noticed that Nana's hand was kind of weird and messed up - she had this problem where the tendons to her fingers were shortening making it impossible to open her hands completely flat. I told her, "Oh Nana! That's terrible!" Her response, while laughing, was, "It's not so bad. I can still hold a golf club."

Chris and I are flying to DC tomorrow for the funeral. I'm glad Chris is coming with me. I'm glad too that I'll get to see my family.

Art and Wine Festival

What a wonderful day I had! In the morning I biked down to the train station and took the train to Sunnyvale where I went to one of the hugest art and wine festivals I've ever seen. I was kind of looking for skirts and Hawaiian shirts and sparkly jewelry - I was partially successful. I got a really wonderful fluffy white skirt that I hope to wear a lot in Greece. It occurred to me today what a wonderful pairing art and wine is - the wine lets down your guard and then you end up spending large sums of money on art.

Next I took the train up to Brandy's and we hung out while Amelia napped. When she woke up we loaded the car (a jetta) with - amazingly enough - both of us, Amelia in her big car seat, a stroller, and my bicycle. We drove to the Stanford mall and walked around looking for various presents Bran needs for her family.

Then I hopped on my bike and went to a park in Menlo Park where Shannon and Carlson were having a birthday celebration for Sarah and Eric. Actually, I think that was just an excuse for having a BBQ on a beautiful beautiful day. Did I mention it was hot today? Like, hot enough that I didn't need a jacket all day until the sun set. And I actually sweated. While standing around, not while exercising.

The food at the BBQ was amazing, as is usually the case when Shannon and Carlson are in charge of such things. We had grilled vegis and a pesto-pasta salad and a caprese salad and chocolate raspberry cake and meaty things as well.

Tomorrow I'm going to go to the farmer's market and host bookclub and maybe go swimming. And where is mister perfect this weekend you may ask? Sweating it out in Las Vegas at a bachelor party. Pbbbt. I've made no secret of the fact that I'm not happy about yet another bachelor party. Mostly I don't care, except Chris has been so busy for so many weekends that I consider his time precious and I hate for him to be spending it at a bachelor party. Why else do I care? Pure simple jealousy. There's been this ridiculous bachelor party escalation among his friends from college. It started out with things like pub crawls, and then moved on to 2 trips to Las Vegas, mountain biking in Moab, and worst of all, skiing. All strictly no girls allowed. So unfair. What's he going to do for his own bachelor party? It has gotten to the point where he will have to have two bachelor parties. One a ski trip to New Zealand and the other surfing in Jamaica. I think I would explode. He swears to me that this has to be the last friend he knows getting married. Of course we played that game last year - saying we didn't know anyone else who could possibly get married and yet somehow we're attending 8 weddings this year.

This past week was the end of the Young Astronauts program for the year. We go to a couple of local elementary schools and teach kids about space and science. Then at the end of the year we build and launch rockets - so I got to spend quality time outside launching little Gnomes. The kids are so cute about it.

I think that's all my news except I just read that Bush wants an amendment to the constitution preventing same sex marriage and I can't believe anyone will go for it. I'm just appalled. I read BBC headlines and I keep expecting to see something like 'US takes back human rights.' It's getting so bad. Sigh. It's too late for these musings. Good night.