Really, we can quit anytime we want to.

Lily is adorable. What is she sitting in you ask? Our anniversary present to ourselves. That's actually 2 wine racks, every slot in which were accounted for when they arrived. See below. So, with our ridiculous wine habit, we had long ago outgrown our IKEA wine rack* that we bought when we first moved. All the wine in the last picture had been being stored in the cabinet over our fridge, stacked on top of each other on their sides. Everytime Dan went to get a bottle down, the entire system basically collapsed. Something had to be done. Enter two new wine racks. They hold 48 bottles combined...we're hoping being able to see how much wine we have will help us slow down on buying more. No promises. *Yes, the IKEA wine rack is also full.

FRUSTRATION. And Portland.

I'm supposed to be online grading journals, but the website is really slow. I feel like I'm waiting for each page to load like I have dial-up internet (remember when you used to sign on with AOL and you had the dial-up and connect sounds memorized? Ah, the olden days) So, perhaps I will fill you in on my trip to Portland. Dana works in admissions for Ohio Wesleyan University, and she is responsible for parts of Ohio, West Virginia, Washington (state) and Oregon. So, once a year, she is out on the West Coast for recruitment, admission interviews, college fairs and the like. Last year, she had time to take a couple of vacation days and visit me in Berkeley, but this year, she had to leave right after she was in Portland to get back to OWU (pronounced O-woo). So, in order to get my Dana fix, I went to Portland to see her instead. I mean, it was a good deal...OWU pays for her hotel and rental car, so all I had to pay for was my flight. I got in on Thursday evening, Dana came to pick me up at the airport, and we headed back to the hotel in...Beaverton. Quite the lovely suburb. Anyway, she let me know that she had been asking around about what there is to do in Portland - she had already covered the Oregon Historical Society last year (seriously) so that was out. Someone recommended we check out the nearby wineries. Apparently, everywhere I go, there must be wine drinking. So Friday, Dana got up and all professionally dressed, while I barely dragged my butt out of bed to get to breakfast at the hotel by 10am. When she got back at noon, I was actually almost ready to go, and we set out for a day of excess (to be explained later). No thanks to Dana's GPS, we eventually found the wine country in Oregon, after getting lost and detoured a few times. The first place we went was gorgeous, and named their wine after the owner's daughters (cute!) But the wine pourer man was pretty much awful. We were the only two people there, and he sat across the bar and stared at us while we talked, but didn't engage us in any conversation. Um, awkward? Luckily, the next two places were much better, and the people were a lot less awkward. A woman at the second place asked Dana for scarf tying lessons, and the third (and last) place, known for it's sparkling wine, also had a winery kitty that was all white and named Snowball. How very fitting for me. No kidding, I ended up buying a wine shipper to take home the SIX bottles I bought. Obsession with wine, I haz one. Where to go after getting slightly inebriated? Outlet shopping! Have you ever had a day where you go shopping and everything fits? This was one of those times. Plus, it was outlets, so everything was cheapy cheap. Dana also did pretty darn well, and when we got back to the hotel, we had to borrow the luggage cart to haul all of our purchases back to the room. It was slightly embarassing, especially as we wheeled the cart through the lobby and Dana pronounced it our "Cart of Gluttony." Classy. Saturday, I accompanied Dana to her college fair, where I was going to hang out for a little while and then head downtown to do some sight seeing. Instead, I got a migraine! Woot! So, I didn't get to do the touristy bit for as long as I would have liked. When I finally did get out of there, I took the train over to downtown Portland, wandered through the country's largest bookstore (for reals! Powell's Books. It takes up an entire city block) and then ended up...doing more shopping. *sigh* Dana eventually met up with me, we shopped, we ate and we went back to the hotel to try to fit all of our purchases in our suitcases, while eating ice cream and watching the Notebook. At least we were supposed to watch the Notebook...we had seen an ad for it on Thursday night, Dana said she had never seen it, at which point we immediately decided to watch it together on Saturday. Good thing we rushed back after dinner, only to discover that it had been replaced with a friggin baseball game. We ended up watching "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" instead. Still cute, but no where near the same crying factor. There was no real Sunday in Portland because Dana's flight was at 5:45 AM. So, we left for the airport at 4 AM. I am not making this up. Also, when I landed in Oakland, I had to wait for Dan at the airport, because he got lost on the way. Super. Things learned: 1. I could never ever ever work in college admissions. 2. Do not fly airlines that are not Southwest. Dana flew United - their first bag fee is $15, second bag fee is $25. If your bag is over 50 pounds, the fee is $125. SERIOUSLY. We found this out the hard way. 3. Wilamette Valley, Oregon is known for Pinot Noir. Fun fact of the day. 4. I miss Dana. Some winery photos: This was winery #1 with super awkward guy. Winery #2 with super friendly people. Winery #3 with pretty cat.

Lists. How I love thee.

Things that were amazing: 1. Having so many of our friends here for ridiculous amounts of good times. It was nice to be able to really be around people we love in a place we love (for those of you who are slow, that place is here in Berkeley) 2. Getting to take said people around San Francisco having quality fun times, even though we were sweating like crazy because........I can't read weather reports correctly. 3. Also getting to take our loved ones around Napa for a day - we had SUCH a good time. Plus, we totally helped Franklin develop an addiction to wine, and sent them home with a case. Ben and Jess went home with a case + 2 bottles. Awesome. 4. Jean and Lee's renewal ceremony. Laura, Jean, Rosa and Josh all looked hotttttttttttttt. 5. Playing Taboo in our favorite local (yet deserted) bar...as it was last call on a Sunday night. 6. No one having flight trouble!!! Can you believe it? 7. Two Dave Matthews Band concerts in three days. I heard 4 of my top 5 favorite songs. If you really want me to list them, I can. 8. Getting to watch the VT/Georgia Tech game with Laura Anne Benson yesterday down in Palo Alto 9. After dinner, which her godfamily had Dan and I over for (they are AWESOME), watching Blades of Glory with Frank, Blue, Laura and her whole god-family. I didn't expect it to be nearly as funny as it actually was. 10. Watching two teenagers breakup. Most amazing thing I have EVER seen. New things to still look forward to: 1. Dancing with the Stars, The Biggest Loser, Dirty Sexy Money and Grey's starting again. Don't judge me. 2. The rest of football season 3. Matt Nathanson concert (on my birthday!) 4. Mom coming to visit for Christmas/Hanukkah Things we should blog about: 1. City walks 2. The good times recently had with everyone here Best cupcakes everrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Ben got frosting on his pants. And then cried about it all day. Japantown. Wine is tasty. And the concerts. That's my boyfriend on the middle screen there.

50th post. Woot.

It really has been a fun month for us out here. Having a car has allowed us to get out and see Northern California beyond Napa Valley. Don't get me wrong, I could hang out in Napa for days and days, but variation is good. Last Saturday, we drove down to Monterey, which is directly north of Carmel and Pebble Beach (famous golf course, no?) and had a lovely time. There were some scenic vistas, and some beaches and a very disappointing lighthouse (Dan apparently has a thing for lighthouses...learn something new every day. I just told him that under no circumstances will we be collecting mini lighthouse figurines) Anyway, we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is apparently the Number 1 aquarium in the country. Booyah Baltimore! I'm not sure who exactly ranks aquariums, but whatever. They had lots of fun things - fish to touch (Dan was totally the only person over 6 years old who was excited about touching starfish and the like), jellyfish, sharks, and OTTERS. So cute. I would like to have one as a pet, if possible. I think an otter and two cats = happiness, no? Of course, after being in the aquarium for over two hours, I was pretty much done being around shrieking (both with happiness and unhappiness) children. So, we took a lovely walk around Monterey's Cannery Row, which is a long set of old cannery buildings, that are from the 1930s-1950s when Monterey was a huge sardine canning town. No, seriously. Happily, in Monterey, some of this space has been converted into lovely wine tasting rooms in which there is, you know, wine and NO children. Ahhh relief. It really is crazy that no matter where you go in California, there is wine. Wineries on mountain roads, where the wine is actually grown. Winery tasting rooms on main streets in small California towns so that people can actually buy some wine in case they never travel on said mountain roads. Wineries on city piers. Wine wine everywhere. We're enjoying it. We went to two places, bought a couple of bottles and very nearly bought a gorgeous photograph. Please see: http://www.betterphoto.com/gallery/gallery.asp?mem=74968. In non "look how awesome my life is" news, tomorrow is Dan's birthday! He's going to be 26 and he's a little sensitive about how that age is closer to 30 than 20. So, definitely remind him as much as possible. We're smack in the middle of going out to a few dinners for his birthday season, much like we did for mine and we've had some amazing meals. A-m-a-z-i-n-g. Good thing he's sick and can't really taste anything. Ha! In other news, I finished the last book I was reading, "The Stone Diaries." Huzzah, I'm up to 4 out of 100! The author's style was great (her name is Carol Shields) and I got all wrapped up in the story. Have you ever read a book and at the end, assumed the characters are real people you could run into at Safeway or something? That's what her characters felt like. Wait - or is that just me being strange? If so, please still be my friend. Anyway, I'm onto my second book for the month (the goal this year is two books a month - one off the list and one non-fiction) which is called (please no freaking out) "Marriage, A History" and is really interesting. It's just a topic interest people!! OH also - I realized that I haven't been to see a movie in the theater in awhile (I went to see "I Am Legend" while I was home with Meghan and B Drake, but before that, I couldn't even tell you). Does anyone have any recommendations? Also, someone please pick a number between 1 and 100 for my next book off the list. (And by someone I mean probably Meghan, since she's the only one who reads this)

Much apprehension.

So we are in the precarious place of "I havent updated in so long, that I don't even know where to start, so I think I'll put it off until tomorrow." Clearly, I have been there for a quite awhile. But, instead of starting this post with an apology of why I haven't posted in so long (like many other posts) I'm jumping right in. No apology. You all have been coddled too long. You need some tough love. Or...something. Anyway, at some point, I might write a long extended memoir of our time with family over the holidays. But we spent extensive time with the approximately 4.78 people who read this blog, so that might have to wait for a later day. There are some fantastic pictures of the sheep farm that I don't think anyone got to see - get excited. I will say that being on the East Coast for a couple of weeks was pretty fantastic, although Dan and I went through some serious cat separation anxiety. Christmas on the sheep farm with family = good. Holiday dinner at Maggianos = good. New Year's Eve with the CC = goooooooooooood times. I'm feeling pretty lucky to have you all in my life. I might start getting some support services from B. Drake though about how to be away from you all so much! As for us right now, things are going well. Dan has recently (last week) started working on a 6-7 week project with the same company that he worked with for the Levi's project in DC. They are working on a premiere type event for YouTube, which sounds pretty exciting, and then also on an event for Warner Brothers (something about the Speedracer movie??). But, it's really great experience, he's trying not to grumble about it too much. The best part about it is that outside of getting paid, part of his compensation is that he gets a rental car for the length of the project! The office he works in is about 30 minutes away. SO, basically "Cool stuff over the weekends" is totally back on! Only now we can do things that weren't as accessible with the mileage limitations of Zipcar. This past Saturday, we drove to Sonoma for, what else, wine tasting. Sonoma is further away from Berkeley, and closer to the coast of California than Napa. It took us about 2 hours to get to the first place we wanted to go (I'm still adjusting to the fact that in California, 2 hours of driving barely puts you in another county, much less a different state.) We ended up going to three different wineries that afternoon and actually joined our first wine club. Yes, we have become THOSE people. But honestly, we ended up buying quite a few bottles of wine there, and thought it would just make sense for them to, you know, just send it to us every couple of months instead of us having to trek up there all the friggin time. We're still working through it - joining a wine club has made us feel snooty and old all at the same time. Sunday we didn't really do anything fun except for welcome my staff back and start training! Spring Training is another really busy crazy week for me because not only am I responsible for getting my staff trained in a multitude of areas, and preparing them for the upcoming semester, and making sure that I'm prepared for all the sessions, planning all of spring training for all the staff on campus was my big committee project for the year. Yes indeed, it's a bit of a stressful time. But, all has been going well so far, hopefully it remains that way. So, I'm sure by this weekend, I will be eager to get out and do something exciting and fun. Some possibilities include Santa Cruz, Carmel, Half Moon Bay and Vegas (not really, but I wish!). Any opinions on these? How is everyone doing with those pesky New Years resolutions? I decided to not have resolutions as such, but more long term goals. Resolutions=setting self up to fail. But I would like to remember to take time to exercise, get out and enjoy the Bay Area, and read more. I found online the supposed list of the 100 greatest novels ever written and then with some more looking, I found the list of the 100 greatest fiction works by female authors. Now. Can I just say that I consider myself to be a decently well read person? I thought I would have a fair number of these books knocked off the list and that reading all 100 would feel doable. Yeah, I've read 3. THREE. So, welcome to my long term goal of reading the other 97 books in the next 5 years. (I wasn't kidding around with the concept of long term). But yeah. If you look at the list (and you can here: http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/booklists/feminista.html) and have any recommendations of where to start, let me know! The first one I'm reading is "The Stone Diaries" by Carol Shields because....I already owned it. :) But for real, if you've read any...I'd love to hear about it (LB - ask your mom! I bet shes read basically all of them with her book club).

Poodle!

So, as many of you know, a month ago (yes, it has now been a month. bad friend, bad friend!) Dana came to visit me. She works in admissions at Ohio Wesleyan, and part of her area to recruit is Washington and Oregon - so once a year, she'll get to take a couple of vacation days and head down the West Coast to visit me...I mean, since she's all the way out here already and all. So, I was pretty darn excited to see her, since the last time I saw her was at her wedding for heavens sake. In JULY. Which isn't that long, July to November, but for two years, I saw her approximately 7 times a day, so this has been a big change.

Anyway, we got up early one fine, ridiculously foggy morning to go pick up our Zipcar to go pick her up from the airport. Let me just insert here that the Zipcar we reserved was somewhat unusual - usually, the cars are in parking garages or lots, and there are usually at least two in each location. Yeah, this one was in someone's garage. A private garage. As in, you walk up to it, have to undo the combination lock and lift up the garage door, get in the car, back out, get back out of the car, close the door, relock the door and then get back in the car and drive away. Strange, to say the least.

So, back to it being really foggy - we had to cross the Bay Bridge to get there (obviously) and it was so foggy that we couldn't even see the bridge towers until we were directly underneath them. I've never seen anything like it. We came to learn the next day that I wasn't the only one who thought so, as a container ship ran into one of the columns supporting the bridge and spilled 50,000+ gallons of oil into the San Francisco Bay. Nice. So we picked Dana up from the airport, we went back to Berkeley, I went to one meeting for an hour and then we got the heck out of town to go up to Napa. Of course. Where else would we take someone who was visiting for 2 days?? (San Francisco? Psssh.) We went to a couple of vineyards we really enjoy, and then we went to quite the snooty new place, which specialized in sparkling wine. Not really a winner in terms of what we drank, but we tried a really great Brie, which we remember more than the wine, and the place itself was gorgeous. We tried to give Dana the overall range from really casual places to snooterific wineries, while also seeing some of the scenery. Hopefully we accomplished our goal. She seemed to have a good time, but hey, it could have been all the wine, so who knows.




Snooty winery - Domaine Carneros

The next day, we got up and took our sweet time getting into the city - seriously, it was midafternoon by the time we got there. Ah well. We headed downtown and ended up hopping on the a cable car (because who loves cable cars? Thats right. Me.) and taking it all the way to Lombard Street, which is a nice long ride (nice for the $5 fare). Lots of the obligatory Lombard Street photos, and then we headed down to Ghiradelli Square to see it, and to get some nice views of the Golden Gate Bridge. We had planned on walking out on the pier to see it, but it was closed due to the oil spill, which we hadn't heard about until then. Awkward. Not so cute to see all the sand and rocks covered with a nice skim of oil. Anyway, we walked from Ghiradelli Square up into Fort Mason and then caught a bus back downtown to see the "Painted Ladies" which is a row of very well restored, painted Victorian homes. You may remember them from the opening credits of Full House. Basically the entire way, Dana proceeded to sing the theme song from the show and loudly proclaim her love for the Tanner family and telling us that she thinks that deep down, she in fact is a Tanner. This, my friends, is why I love her. We got to the park and we took many a photo of Dana (and some embarassing video that I will not post here, but will show you upon request) prancing around in front of the homes.

That night, we got back into Bizzerkeley and had to run up to Clark Kerr (which is a little satellite campus of residence halls) because my RAs were putting on a huge program called "Fit For a Queen." Basically, it's a drag show. (Yes, paid for with university money. I love working here!) This is the fifth year in a row that it has been put on, and we hire professional queens from SF to come in, do a bunch of musical numbers and then do a Q&A session, which is fantastic for the students, most of whom are like "What do you mean that's a man?!?!?" Except this year, we also had one queen who is a woman (a "faux queen") and she was SO good. All of them were amazing actually. We had hundreds of students come and the ladies loved Dan - all in all a really good program.








The next morning, we had to take Dana back to the airport - quite the quick visit, I know. But, it was lovely to see her. AND the cats loved her to pieces. Clearly, a good sign.

Posts coming soon: chocolate factory tour, 2008 resolutions, holidays in DC!!!!!

That's what I do...I make glass tubes.

So, Rosa left out a very important fact from our walk in the city (our city walk, if you will). One of the points on the tour was the site of Philo Farnsworth's lab when he was developing all his patents for the first television. This is the best Sportsnight reference I have ever seen in real life. Seriously, I was REALLY excited. Probably inappropriately so.



Rosa left Thursday evening, which was really sad because we won't see her for the next YEAR while she's off traveling the world. Who does that?!?! Oh right, Rosa. Too bad everyone else will soon quit their job and start traveling, learning languages and working on organic farms in Australia, because you know if Ro does it, it MUST be cool.

After we finished being sad that Ro left, on Saturday Dan and I went back to Napa because...we wanted to and we like wine and stuff. We went to four wineries we'd never been to before, and ate some yummy lunch and came home with some yummy wine. The owner of the first place we went, Turnbull Cellars, has the largest privately owned collection of Ansel Adams work in the world and a lot of it was on display. There were signed prints from the 1920s, it was really nice.


The second place we went, Grgich Hills (pronounced grrr-gich...we had to ask) was founded by Mike Grgich who is kind of a big deal. In 1976, he entered a California wine in a blind taste test in France (you know, where they're all snooty like) and his wine won, and was declared best in the world. But the French were completely outraged that this upstart kid from Napa won, and didn't want word to get out about it. That didn't work out. So, he basically put Napa Valley on the map, and he's in his 80s and is still the winemaker for his own winery. Pretty sweet deal. While we were there, Dan got to stomp grapes. He got into it.




I'm kind of blanking on a fun fact about the third place we went, except that it was called Clos Pegasse, and it has a lot of modern art. And it had some wine too.



And the last place is called Merryvale, and is famous for it's cask room, where they hold private events. I mean, and their wine and stuff. But the room is super dramatic, lined with huge casks and barrels that hold thousands of gallons of wine with candles and dramaticness. See photo. We didn't get to Merryvale until about 6 PM - and it's one of the wineries that is open late (6 PM is late in Napa) and so, clearly, there are a lot of people there at that time trying to squeeze in one last tasting, kind of like Dan and I were doing. Except, we weren't sloshed like the middle aged people next to us chanting "chug chug chug!" or the people on the other side of us who totally skipped out on their bill while our wine server man had temporarily walked away. Who lets these people out in public?? Sigh.


But, the day wrapped up by going out to a new favorite restaurant that serves Burmese - yummmmm. And then coming home to watch the Tech/Clemson game that we had recorded. NICE. I was proud. Even though we didn't really have any offense. And even though Clemson got a safety. I love a good safety, don't get me wrong, but only when my team scores them.

What else to report? The kitties are getting bigger, almost by the day and I'm sad about that, but what can you do. Kids these days. Thursday, Dan and I are going to see a touring production of Sweeney Todd with a bunch of the other RDs, and then this weekend is homecoming for Cal, and since they're ranked SECOND in the COUNTRY, it should be a pretty crazy weekend. Next week, Dan's parents are coming to visit and then the next weekend we're going to Vegas to celebrate my birthday. Huzzah.

Oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN!!!

Huzzah, Wine!

Obviously we spent some time in Napa this weekend, which means wine tasting! I was really excited to see Napa this time of years since the vines are full and it's picking season. We tried a few different places, but we highly recomend Silverado Vineyards. We liked nearly every wine we tasted, especially since they put had a $100 bottle on their tasting menu, and the view over the valley and vineyards was gorgeous! We also visited Mumm Vineyards, which specializes in sparkling wine. Some of them smelled like cheese, but hey, it was nice to try some new things out. Mumm also has a permenant exhibit of Ansel Adams - 75 photos he hand selected himself intended to show his diverse range and skill, and never intended for sale. Apparently, his grandson visits this particular vineyard often. So that was cool. Lots of wine after getting up so early meant us driving home and being in bed by 7 PM. Happy anniversary to us!