Asilomar state beach smells like fart: a day of indulgences

Today, in honor of my book loving nerdiness. we took a drive to Cannery row!!!

it is in Monterey about an hour and half from us. We also decided once we got there that it was the day of indulgences.

We started out with lunch and a drink. nothing like an afternoon bloody mary.

then we walked around town and eventually rented kayaks... i would put some photos up, but we had to use a waterproof disposable camera since we didn't buy the waterproof case for our real camera yet.

anyway, we kayaked along the bay for about an hour and a half and it was AMAZING!!!

we saw pelicans and elephant seals resting on the rocks near us ( you can't get any closer than 50 feet though because the area that we were in is a marine sanctuary and they are all protected) although one of the seals was following us and popping up right behind us or under tony's kayak...

we had all sorts of water gear on, so the only sunburns we got were on our faces and i was wearing sunglasses, so i have a little raccoon action going on!

once we docked our boats, we walked down the row and went to a wine tasting.

and promptly bought a bottle of pinot grigio.

after that we went to the rocky mountain chocolate factory ( where we officially named the day, the day of indulgences) because we each had a carmel apple ( mine was covered in pecans and tony's was carmel with graham cracker on it, called cheesecake)

we also bought some snacks for later on.

then we walked down the row and explores some building that are now shops, but at one time were the canning building of steinbeck's novel... it was so cool. i have a thing for old buildings.

Once we had our fill of that, we walked (off the snacks, i hope)and then drove along the coast line in hopes to see a stray whale on its way to alaska, instead we saw more seals and pelican and a few egrets.

oh and i forgot, we stopped to get some tea and tony a cookie- seriously this was an all day affair, we are not really that gross with all the food. we were there from like 1:30-9 pm/.. but i don't care if you judge, it was a special day!

we got home a bit ago and were going to have a glass of wine in the hot tub, but there was some kind of party going on there. there were like 15 people hanging around so we just came home and decided that we shouldn't have wine anyway, since we were feeling a little like poo from our sunburns...

and now i am going to indulge in some sleep-a lot of it, because i have to work tomorrow and the next day. But i plan on working off the indulgences at yoga this week!

oh yeah, and the last beach that we walked along asilomar beach really did smell like a fart.. i think it was all the sea life, they sorta just hang out on the rocks near the coast and it stinks!

the thursday street fair..

Thursday was the mountain view street fair...

tony and i missed that last one and had to hear all about how great the journey cover band was and was missed it because we working.

so we were excited when there was one at night, on our day off.

So a bunch of us met at brandy and ant's house for my signature sangria, and anthony's baked ziti ( i even got my own veggie one) so good- in fact it was so great that we all came back to their place at the end of the night to have more!

So some of our other good friends met us for dinner and drinks pre-party ( kelly, briana, and our new friend joe :) )

after we had our fill of fodder we headed to the street....with our bartles and james fuzzy navels ( i know, i laughed too, but they are pretty damn good and portable, not to mention $2 for 4 :) and to our dismay, it was crap!!!

no music, no drinks, no snacks ( not that we needed any but the option would have been nice)

so we went into an irish bar instead and danced our butts off!

afterward, like i said we went back for more ziti!!!

and then, had to work the next 3 days! BOOO

News flash!!!!

Tony and i are going to be staying here until 12/15 so if you haven't visited yet, get your buns here!
also i think we are going to go to hawaii for our anniversary.. i can hardly believe that it has almost been a year!!! we'll keep the news flashes coming as we learn more :)

the lost boys was filmed here...

Our second adventure this past week was the santa cruz boardwalk...it is celebrating it 100th anniversary, and part of the celebration is hosting free concerts like for example- mary wilson of supremes fame, tiffany of 1980's fame..unforts that is only on the weekend and we couldn't make them, but on monday and tuesday, pretty much everything is 75 cents ( i guess the same price that it was in 1907) so hot dogs, pepsi beverages, cotton candy, and the rides were all a cool 75 cents.

Not to mention, the lost boys was filmed there :)

Brandy, Anthony, Tony and I all made out way down there-with the full disclaimer that i do not like the feeling of falling, so i would not be going on any roller coasters.

and don't think for one hot second that i didnt' hear about it often in snide jabs while passing the kiddie rides and mentions of grandma sitting on the side taking photos. but i am totally cool with that :)

We had a blast!!! here are my 5 favorite parts of the night...in no particular order

1. Brandy picks a spinnng ride, the tornado i believe-which left all of us sick... good thing we didn't get into the snacks until after that one.

2. this sign in the bathroom

3. BUMPERCARS!!!

4 . a ridiculous amount of carnival snack foods-funnel cake ( it was the first time that tony and i ever had it,i thought it was the same as an elephant, boy was i wrong), hot dogs ( myself excluded) soft serve dipped in chocolate, and soft pretzels

5. on the way to the car a screaming child whose mother stopped near the 4 of us long enough to say " 27/7 joy"

needless to say after all those snacks, we got home and went our separate ways to fall gently into a nasty carb coma!

here comes multiple posts...

Tony and i have been so busy taking full advantage of the perfectly calm summer weather here that i have not had time to post because i have been doing so much!
Let's see, when we last left off, Tony and Angi were planning on a sailboat cruise... ( insert soap-opera faces here)

So the night before the sunset cruise tony and i went to whole foods and put together the most delicious snack tray- three cheeses, crostini, dark chocolate, strawberries and raspberries, not to mention 3 different kinds of olives from my favorite olive bar at whole foods!
We arrived at the dock with snacks in hand and Brandy and Anthony brought a bottle of wine. Once we were settled on the boat, they poured some wine that was included in the price, along with some bread and cheese, but as soon as that was done, we busted ours out. i gotta say, folks were pissed...and one rude lady that said " did you bring enough for everyone" evoked a prompt reply from Brandy of " we read the rules before we got on the boat."
'The Rules' included ...outside food and beverages are allowed...
we did however share with the captain and the guy passing out the bread and cheese...
luckliy we didn't rush the line to get on the boat first, because we were at the back of the sailboat near the capitan and the view was amazing!
i would add some photos, but we are dopes and our camera's batteries ran out as soon as i took the first picture.. as soon as i get them from Ant i will either put some up, or just email the link to the folks that give a crap :)
So once the cruise was over, we drove back through the mountains, picked up my new favorite board game -cranium's pop5 and went to brandy and anthony's house.
i will not lie, we did lose 3 games to them, but don't think for one minute that we won't get our championship title back- we are up for a rematch sooner than later.
part of the reason that we lost, may have something to do with the fact that they got all the easy clues AND i obtained a closed head injury when brandy and i butted heads trying to clean up a mess!
It was a super fun night though... so much fun that when my mom and dad visit the 4 original cruisers are going to take my parents there!
and i think when tara comes there is a sushi cruise she may interested in... we shall see..

North Beach

This evening Brandy, Anthony, Tony and I took an excurtion in the Scion ( anthony and brandy's car) to the North beach, which is the area of san fran where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting Italian food, bakeries, and i am sure some mobsters :)
We went to a resturant called Trattoria Contadina- no jokes about my baby knickname please. Every single dish on the menu mad our mouths water. We had some wine, dinner and dessert. All of which were by dar the best Italian that i have ever had.it put antonio's to shame.
Afterward we drove to the wharf to watch the sunset. We arrived just in time to see an orange glow cast over the bridge. It was beautiful though.
We just got home and i booked a trip for this saturday to Moneterray bay for a sunset sailboat cruise. i can not wait.. and if tony doesn't get seasick, we may take a tiny cruise for our honeymoon.
I also bought our tickets to come home in august!! YAY!!! i can't wait for nicole's wedding and the bachelorette party!!!

our sneaky weekend off

The past weekend was our weekend to work, but the woman who coordinates the schedule seemed to have given us a free week off. Since we don't get paid if we don't work, we told her about it and she really only needed Tony and i to work the beginning of the week, so needless to say, folks were jealous, and we had friday and saturday off. This was particularly fantastic considering that we took our friend Paul out to dinner on Thursday and needed a day to recuperate...well i didn't so much, but it was nice not to rush around to work the next day.

We took him out to Medjoul, a tapas bar with a really great pear gimlet...

after dinner ( and a few delicious gimlets) we headed over to Martuni's, a sorta piano/martini bar. Where once again the libations were flowing like the ocean waves. Although i must confess, i was the DD so i had just enough to enjoy a pineapple martini.

Once the kids ( brandy, anthony, kelly, paul, and tony) were good and sauced, they wanted to go to a dance club downtown. luckily it was well past closing time ( i'm pretty sure i am not that exasperating when i have some drinks on board..ok maybe i am worse) so i was ready to get home.

long story shortish, it was nice to have the next day off to lounge.

Saturday, tony and i drove down to pacifica to the last originals car show. It was a stunning display of over 250 classic cars and a few bands that we really like. After admiring the chariots and the music we decided to drive over the golden gate bridge to Muir beach...

our plan was to have a picnic that tony packed on the beach, but it was so windy that my contacts kept getting full of sand. Instead we drove to the top of the mountain that overlooks the beach and had our picnic there.

After we sat mesmerized by the waves long enough, we headed back into the city and ended up at the San fran botanical gardens.

We walked through the gardens and dreamed of making strawberry rhubarb pie with this Chilean rhubarb

we only had time to walk a few sections of the gardens because they close the gates around 6ish, we walked over the the Japanese tea garden. i really wanted to go in, but it was about to close and we didn't have cash and they didn't take debit cards...

so we are planning on going another day. In the morning they have a traditional tea ceremony that you can partake in... so hopefully we get up and be in the car before 7:30 to get there on time.

After that , we retreated back home for dinner and some relaxing preparing to work on sunday.

ladybug, ladybug fly away home...

While we were gone, we asked out west coast BFFs Brandy and Anthony to water our plants for us...they live in the same complex. I think they hate us though, because when we got home our plants were covered in aphids!!!

Well, i don't really think that they planted them there, but it is fun to harass them about it.

So tony and i went out and bought some natural bug repellant. it worked to an extent but they were still there.

Unfortunatly we didn't have much time off to do anything else about it, and we had some visitors arrive the day after we got home.

Out good friends from Virginia work opposite weekends as us and could only come to see us the day after we got in.

Luckily we had time to pick them up from the airport and catch up. Double luck is that fact that our place is close to the train into san fran, so i didn't feel bad going to work most of the days that they were here.

We did however have one good day to hang. We met them at fisherman's warf where we had dinner and then tony and i were so excited to take them to the pier to see the sea lions. To our dismay, as we arrived we could hear all the sea lions barking and carrying on, however when we got within view, there was one lone dead one, a little tiny one that all four of us spent at least on hour convincing ourselves that it was just sleeping...

that was a buzz kill.. after our little mourning ceremony, we headed back to home to catch up some more, knowing that they would be gone soon.

Once we got a day off, and noticed that the bug killer wasn't working, Tony said we should get some ladybugs, since they love to eat aphids.

So we followed the directions on the canister, kept them in the fridge until we were ready to put them on the plants. This keeps them dormant and then they will stay on your plants until the aphids are gone.

So once they were sleepy enough, i dropped them all over our plants and then it seemed like they doubled...there were millions of them all over our tiny balcony!!!

they did go right to work and start eating the aphids, but they also spent a lot of time trying to get into our apartment, so tony and i spent a good part of the night picking them up and replacing them outside..

here are just a few photos to show off our collection...

the next day they were still there eating away ( did i mention that we had millions of aphids and just as many ladybugs???)

That day, tony had a class so i spent most of the day alone, cleaning, working out and laying by the pool.

then when he got home at night we drove to santa cruz to watch the sunset..

unforts...at night, it is a little dodgey...so we walked around town and then as we were heading to the beach and noticed how sketch it was getting, we got on the car and drove the coast in the moonlight.. it was beautiful... there were people all over the beach having fires, but tony and i had no firewood and we don't want to have a fire with just the two of us...so for crying out loud come and visit!!!

Get your umbrellas....

Once again, i got caught up in the everything that is daily life and have not written in almost a month. Needless to say i have some catching up to do and wanted to get it done before July...so i have like a minute!

So Tony and i went back to michigan once again to a very busy long weekend. This time our main purpose was to come home for Nicole's shower...

It was so long ago, to be honest i am not even sure what i did that weekend...all i am sure of is that nicole's shower went off without a hitch...Everything was lovely and she got a lot of amzing gifts, and cried ( if she didn't, we would have thought we didn't do a good enough job!!!)

She looked radient in a yellow dress that without planning, her sister wore the same color and looked just as amazing!!! Tony and i stayed at Tara's some of the weekend and i love that she lets us invade... Her place is so cozy and comfy and i love being there when she gets out of work so we can catch up. It gets so hard when we are only home for a few weekends out of the year and we have to fit everyone in... NOT that i don't love to see everyone, but it does get taxing. So it is nice to be able to hide from the chaos in such a cozy home..thanks baby.

Prior to the shower Tony and i got to visit with his parents, mark and tiff and we were so excited to see how big and smart nate is getting..i mean, i expect that he will grow, just not that fast!!!

we also got to spend some time with jay and cathy, although just for dinner and few drinks, because they had an early next day, as did we.

Dinner with my friends was squeezed in the weekend and as a lovely surprise, lana came! it is always so nice to see my friends that i don't get to see often.

After shower stuff, my mom and dad had a barbeque at their house and like always it was a full house of folks that i was excited to see. I went out and bought some lawn toys and brooke, jeff, and i broke each and every one of them, i think. It was fun. things like that, make me want to hurry up and come home, so i can have my own yard and my own lawn toys that i will take care of :)

I forgot, i got to hang with scott when we got home, thanks again for picking us up at the airport. we went to dinner and then right to bed because tony and i did not get any sleep on the plane for a few reasons

1. we had just gotten out of work and as we were sitting at the airport noticed that we were sitting behind Big BadVoodoo Daddy...'though we were too exhausted and too tired looking to say hi or ask for autographs... but mostly we didn't get sleep because 2. these awful children were whining and crying FOR NO REASON and their mother, in a very timid voice was saying " um, stop it, ok, that is enough'

whatever happened to "WHEN WE GET HOME I AM GOING TO BEAT YOUR ASS" and not even that a kid needs an ass beating, but the threat alone would have made me jump out of the plane window as a child. i hate the ways that most parents have decided to treat their kids these days...THEY ARE NOT YOUR BEST FRIENDS!!! THEY ARE YOUR KIDS DAMMIT!!! i promise that when tony and i have kids, our will not be the ones in the grocery stores throwing things or the one at the bank screaming his or her head off..

ahem, sorry about the tangent, but as soon as i remembered that we had been awake for 35 hours and couldn't get even 20 minutes of sleep, i got angry again..

oh well., so all in all it was a productive and wonderful weekend and i can't wait to get home again for nicole's wedding!!!