My Life, As Told Between (Baby Cakes') Naps

Oops. Long story short, I (very uncharacteristically!) got extremely upset and vocal with my cable provider today for something. I (very surprisingly) got them to rectify the problem …only to realize afterwards that it was mostly our fault.

Now I feel guilty. T doesn’t seem as concerned.

I love Facebook. I love letting my friends and family, whom I don’t get to see nearly as often as I’d like, know what’s going on in my daily life and finding out what’s going on in theirs. It’s those daily details that keep people close. It’s the reason I started this blog in the first place.

I also love getting a voyeuristic peek at what’s going on in the lives of people I’ve lost touch with in the past 10 years. However, I’m starting to feel that my friends and I live in a bubble. No one in my social circle has kids, yet it seems that everyone I’ve reconnected with, mostly old high school friends, has a baby. Which makes sense since we’re entering our 30’s, but still feels weird. Sigh. I guess our 30’s are really our adult years, whereas our 20’s were clearly just a practice run.

I know most of my readers (Hello??? Anyone out there?) probably don’t celebrate the lunar new year, but I figure everyone appreciates a do-over, so for those of you who have already failed to meet your new year’s resolutions (like me), consider today a do-over. =)

To celebrate the lunar new year and usher in the Year of the Ox, T and I spent the weekend in San Jose with my family. T may be the best husband ever. He was very good natured about the fact that my parents keep the house at artic temperatures (it’s often much colder in the house than outside). He stoically dealt with my little sister’s cat, to which he is severly allergic. He was great at engaging my parents in conversation, despite only understanding 1/2 of what my dad says, and very sweet with my grandmother, who doesn’t understand anything he says.

Despite the bone chilling cold, we had a nice visit. My parents love to feed us and we love to eat, so during the day and a half we were home, we had dim sum, crab, fried shrimp, filet mignon, and a traditional Vietnamese beef dish. For dessert we had friend bananas and cream puffs. We were definitely waddling onto the plane.

Unfortunately both of my sisters had to work over the weekend, so we didn’t get to see much of them. They’re also in the process of moving out of the house. Little Sis B is finalizing the paperwork on her first townhome and is waiting for construction to finish. Littlest Sis L is moving in with her, as are both of the boyfriends. In the interim, they’re all moving into an apartment (for complicated reasons having to do with the boyfriends’ leases expiring). I feel a little sad that we’re the only ones not part of this little clan, but T doesn’t seem to mind.

I had a lovely long weekend in San Diego with a couple of my Quad friends and their significant others this past weekend. T and I headed down Saturday morning, stopping off in San Clemente to drop Alfie off at T’s aunt and uncle’s house. Despite the nice backyard and houseful of new people to enjoy, we’re afraid poor Alfie was not particularly happy about the weekend visit. T’s aunt and uncle have a super friendly, entirely too curious, and remarkably persistent lab, Beans, who followed Alfie around very closely for the entire hour we were there. We joked that Alfie would probably have a Beans-sized wart on his butt the entire weekend. =) (Although we’re told the wart only last for about 5 hours.)

After reassuring ourselves that Alfie would survive the weekend, despite being pestered by Beans, we headed to the Wild Animal Park. It was the perfect day to spend outdoors, sunny and clear with a mild breeze. I’d never been to the Wild Animal Park before, and zoos kind of make me sad, but the Park was spacious and we had a great time.

After a full day at the Park, we headed to downtown San Diego to meet up with our friends for a delicious dinner at Croce’s, where we ate out on the patio, listened to live jazz, got caught up, and people watched. It was the perfect night with friends.

The next morning, we all met up for brunch on Coronado, and exchanged belated Christmas gifts. Afterwards, T and I heading to Balboa Park, where we enjoyed some more live music and visited the National History Museum (which was disappointingly small). We met up again for dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack and then tried to find the exciting night life in San Diego. Apparently there is very little of it on a Sunday night. Or at least none that we could find. We did get a fun night tour of the city though!

I may have gained 5 pounds on this trip alone. I fear not fitting into any of my pants after my trip home next weekend, where I’m sure my parents will be preparing delicious meals and stuffing T and I with all of our favorite foods! The last time we were home, the electricity went out for hours just around dinner time. Undeterred, my parents cooked an amazing crab-centric meal on the outdoor grill using the propane tank and some ingenuity!

Not much to report. I’ve been trying to ramp up my exercise (only marginally succesful in that endeavor) and to cook more often (again, marginal success). Went on a 9 mile run this weekend which involved a few hills. When I’m in decent shape, I can tackle the run and do a couple of extra miles easily. This weekend, it was a bit of a struggle to just finish the 9 miles. At least it’s a step in the rest direction!

As for the cooking, I’ve tried a couple of different dishes recently. I made a chicken marsala dish that was unspectacular to say the least, probably due to my failing to find marsala and having to settle for beaujolais. I also made braised beef and mushrooms last night that, according to T anyways, was good. I thought it was too beefy. T points out that I have a habit of making dishes or ordering meals featuring items I know I don’t like – like beef – which just happen to sound good at the time. Unfortunately, the dish serves 12 so T’s going to be eating a lot of braised beef this next week!