Patrick is making us lasagna for dinner while I do laundry. I'm so happy with this life :) I'm glad it lived up to my expectations from those 2 years of living alone in Boston. Also, I love my job! I'm not sick of science anymore. I think I really lucked out in ending up with the company that I did.

I made an appointment at Mantra in Carmel for a bridal hair and makeup run-through (yeah, just another way to get money out of brides-to-be, but I'll be more relaxed if I've tried it out once and made sure they do a good job). It's an Aveda salon. I bet they'll be great; my only concern is that they open at 9am on Saturdays, and our wedding starts at 11am and is ~45 minutes away from Carmel (plus I'll need to get dressed and not be all stressed out and in a hurry right before the wedding). I asked the receptionist if they could open early for a bridal party, and she said yes, but she didn't seem too sure.

Once I do the trial run, I'll have a better idea of how long it'll take (I'm hoping it'll be less than an hour, and that they can work on all three of us--Tree, Erin, and myself--at the same time). It'll all work out one way or another. And I'm looking forward to having fancy hair and makeup and hanging out in Monterey with Patrick that weekend. That'll be totally worth it even if the salon doesn't work out for whatever reason.

Still working on a florist. My top choice (and the only florist in Big Sur, as far as I can tell) has ignored my last two emails, so I guess she's out. That's too bad. I'll be investigating florists in Monterey when I'm there getting all fancied up at the salon. I don't think I'm asking for anything too complicated, but I guess the problem is that we have a small floral budget, so we're not worth the time compared to bigger weddings. I assume that's why our first choice just stopped corresponding with me. Too bad.

Also, we need to get going on planning our honeymoon! It's a fun thing to do, but also a little daunting. We're pretty much agreed that we'll be spending our honeymoon in Italy, so it's just a matter of figuring out where and when. So exciting! Maybe we should take the time to learn a little Italian before then...I don't want to be obnoxious Americans. Does anybody have any favorite places in Italy or the surrounding countries that we should try to include in our plans? I want to eat lots of gelato!

Curtain Hanging Phase 1 is complete, thanks in large part to Patrick. Our kitchen window now has roman blinds that filter the light nicely (from Ikea, of course). I like them!

There are so many things I want to do for our apartment. Like make paintings for the dining area, hang the curtains in the living room, and finish the guest room quilt. But at least the day-to-day stuff (like laundry and cooking) gets done in a timely manner. Teamwork makes it happen!

Wedding dress (and maid of honor dress) ordering happens tomorrow! It'll be good to wrap that up. I'm glad we both get to order from Bella Bridesmaid. They're so nice and helpful and have good customer service. I like working with people like that!

We went camping last weekend in Laguna Seca, as part of the Sea Otter Classic. Patrick had a cold last week, and I came down with it right before we got to the campsite on Friday evening. So we were both sick the whole weekend, although he was on the road to recovery by then. I didn't enjoy the camping very much. Too many bugs, and the weather was too hot and too cold at times. Yeah, I'm a wuss. Maybe I don't like camping in general...I guess I don't have enough experience to decide yet. I'm glad we went camping with our friends though--that made it worthwhile.

I got to use my snazzy camping pillow from REI. It has rocket ships on it, and it's way better than sleeping on a bag of clothes. The sleeping part of the camping wasn't bad, except that I had a tough time sleeping because I couldn't breathe through my stuffed up nose (I hate that!), and I kept waking up poor Patrick with my tossing and turning. But at least we were all cozy in our tent! And we had his and hers headlamps for going to the port-a-potties at night.

The port-a-potties weren't bad at all (well, at the end of the weekend, they weren't so great, what with all the extreme mountain bikers using our campground as a parking lot since it was close to the downhill mountain biking event). There wasn't water at the campground, but luckily Patrick brought along a bunch of bottled water for us to use. And he and Erin brought hand sanitizer, which was absolutely essential, what with no real hand-washing for a whole weekend. It made me feel less filthy. Also, we got some free Basis face wash wipes from the expo, so that made face-washing luxurious. I love Basis :)

At one point, while trying to get to sleep in the tent, I was reminded of Sandra Boynton's Hester in the Wild, where poor Hester (a hippo, I think) goes camping and gets a hole in her tent and her canoe, and she tries to patch them, but annoying woodland animals keep making more holes in her stuff. And then she finally gives up and goes home. At least, that's how I choose to remember the story. I wish it were still in print so I could remind myself whether it really ends so dismally or whether Hester learns a good lesson from her bad camping trip. [Do you still have that book, mother dearest?] Also, contrary to that summary I linked to, I'm pretty sure she doesn't get a hole in her foot. That seems pretty extreme for a kid's book. Maybe in the foot of her sleeping bag or something.

There were a number of good parts in the weekend. We had bacon and oatmeal for breakfast on Saturday, thanks to Andrew and Patrick's awesome camp stove cooking skills (Erin helped too--she almost got burned with hot bacon fat when it melted through the plastic cup Patrick was pouring it into, but she escaped unscathed).

The expo was pretty cool too. We got some free bottle opener keychains from Yakima shaped like crazy dogs (similar in styling to this keychain). Mine makes me smile every time I get in my car :) And there were some churros, but we didn't buy any of those. Patrick got a cool Crank Brothers baseball cap because I stole his Red Sox hat to keep the sun off of my face. I think it was a good purchase. Their logo is very appealing.

Also, there were some entertaining drunk frat boys with huge cardboard thumbs at the campsite across the road from us. They camped out on the road, giving cars the (huge) thumbs up or (huge) thumbs down and shouting "yay" or "boo". They amused themselves that way for hours! And then a truck got stuck in the mud at the entrance to our campsite (again, caused by all the mountain bike fans driving in and out and using it as a parking lot--grrr!). It was stuck all the way up to its front axle. There were all sorts of towing efforts by bystanders. Also, two groups of people had dogs with them, and the dogs starting chasing each other and one tried to hump the other, and the drunk guys gave the dogs the thumbs up, and it was just hilarious. The truck got towed out eventually, and things settled down. At least two more trucks got stuck in the mud the next day, but with less amusing conclusions. I was so glad we were able to leave the campsite on Sunday without getting stuck.

I think those were the high points of the weekend (in addition to all the actual bike stuff, which doesn't thrill me as much as it does everyone else). I'm glad we went, but I think I liked our Napa camping trip better overall (guitar-playing lesbians are hard to top!). Erin posted some pictures from this weekend here, which is good because Patrick and I didn't take any. We were too busy blowing our noses. Boo hoo!

This upcoming Sunday, Tree and I are returning to Bella Bridesmaid to order our dresses! Yes, I've picked a wedding dress, but I'm not going to give more details in a public post, because Patrick doesn't want to know what it looks like before the wedding. I like that :)

My company's team played its first softball game last night (we're a part of the Palo Alto recreational softball league). I'm not on the team because I can't catch or hit, and I know I'd get frustrated at not being able to do anything right. So Patrick is playing on the team instead of me. And I get to cheer everybody on! Patrick did a good job last night. He pitched a few innings, since our regular pitcher is out for a few weeks. We've got some sweet jerseys!

We actually have a lot of good players, male and female. But the other teams seem really well prepared too, so we'll see. It's all just for fun anyway.

Tonight, I made Pacifica Pear Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, but with fig jam instead of raspberry jelly. And I made some black bean and sausage soup to go with them. The soup turned out really well! I can't find a recipe for it online, even though it's from Better Homes and Gardens (so I would expect the recipe to have made its way onto the internet already). Here's the short version:

Combine in a saucepan: two 15 oz cans of black beans drained and rinsed, 2 cups chicken broth, 1.5 cups water, 1 chopped onion, 1 cup chopped celery (2 stalks), 4 cloves garlic minced, 1 tsp ground coriander, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes. Bring to a boil then cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Add 8 oz of fully cooked Polish sausage, sliced thinly, and simmer a few more minutes. Serve with a dollop of sour cream. Easy and tasty!

I took pictures, but they weren't very appetizing. We'll definitely make this soup again.

Our visit to LA this weekend had its ups and downs, but we got to spend time with Erin, so it was worth it. On Friday after work, we drove down to LA, planning on spending the night at Chrissy's place in Redondo Beach. But we ran into traffic on the Pacheco Pass, and then got stuck in a huge traffic jam on the 5 in Santa Clarita (just after the grapevine). For some reason, they decided to close all but one lane at midnight, so everybody coming down from the Bay Area was stuck there. We inched along for about an hour, but it was getting late, so we decided to just find a motel to stay in instead of waiting and going to Chrissy's. We pulled off the 5, but it turned out that every motel in Santa Clarita was full. We decided to turn around and backtrack a little bit, but everywhere we stopped, there were no vacancies. We ended up going back over the grapevine and driving to Bakersfield. Even there, all the motels immediately off the freeway were full, so we stopped at a gas station and just went through the phone book until we found one with a vacancy. It was 3am at that point, and we got lost trying to find it, but we finally got there and checked in. We didn't get much sleep, but it was still a relief to find an available room. In retrospect, we should've just stayed on the 5 and waited out the traffic jam, but we didn't realize all the hotels would be full. Live and learn...

On Friday, we drove back over the grapevine and headed to Beverly Hills, the home of Thread. Beverly Hills was much seedier than I'd expected. But I saw some stores that I hadn't expected to see--Trashy and Soolip. That was exciting! We had a cute little lunch at Le Pain Quotidien. Patrick had a Belgian sugar waffle for dessert, and it was the best thing ever. It wasn't a normal waffle. It was like a soft waffle cone. My almond pound cake paled in comparison.

At 2:30, I had my appointment at Thread. Erin got stuck in traffic, so she couldn't be there, but it was okay, because it was really quick. I felt like the saleslady was eager for me to get done and get out. She was nice, but not really friendly. But I got to try on the dresses I was interested in, so that was good.

When Erin arrived, we walked around Beverly Hills for a little bit. We went to Trashy, and Erin paid $2 for us to go in and look around. She's a member for a full year now. I was kind of put off by having to pay money to shop there, but I guess they do that to keep out non-serious shoppers. We didn't buy anything, but I'm sure Erin will return and take advantage of her membership :) Afterwards, we went to a cute little cafe, and then headed to Claremont and had dinner at Harvard Square Cafe. We didn't stop by Mudd because it was getting dark, but downtown Claremont looks pretty much the same as it did when we lived there. That's comforting. Afterwards, we went to Erin's place and rented The Terminal. It made me cry; it was a nice little movie.

The next morning, we woke up really early, on top of the daylight savings time change, and Erin and Patrick participated in a short triathlon in Loma Linda. Here are some action shots of them during the bike-to-swim transition. They did a great job!

During the triathlon, I sat next to a fluffy white dog that kept pawing at my arm every time I clapped, like "could you please stop making so much noise?". I clapped anyway. After the triathlon, we went out for breakfast, and then we watched some people riding bikes really fast at the Redlands Bicycle Classic, and I got a really big snow cone that gave me brain freeze. Owww!

And then we drove home, and it was less crappy than the drive down, but still kind of crappy. It rained really hard all through the Pacheco Pass, and it was scary having to drive at night in bad weather. But we made it back in one piece. It was hard waking up this morning. Next weekend, we're going to relax! And then the weekend after that is the Sea Otter Classic in Monterey. Patrick, Erin, and Andrew are going to do some grueling biking, and Tree's going to train for her half-marathon. And I'm going to look for florists and hairdressers. I'm such a slob compared to my friends!