Last weekend, Matt and I went on a last minute trip up to New Hampshire to see the fall foliage. It was sort of late in the season, but there were still lots of trees with bright leaves on them. It was gorgeous! It was a 2 and a half hour drive up to North Conway, but we didn't mind cause we were in Matt's new car. (I should say that I didn't mind...Matt was the one that had to do all the driving. We both love the car though...I highly recommend the Mazda Six!)

We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast that was really expensive cause it was a last minute booking. On Friday night I called a few places and everything was booked, and then the Whitney Inn said they had one room left so I took it...I should have waited cause when we got up there we saw tons of vacancies at little roadside motels. Our place was OK though, and it is always fun eating breakfast at a B and B.

It was lots of fun to drive around the valley, especially on Bear Notch Road and the Kancamagus Highway. We stopped and did little hikes along the way, and hiked Flume Gorge. It was really pretty hiking through the leaves. The light filters through them and the forest is bathed in a warm golden glow. Also, it is fun to hike when you can hear the leaves crunching underneath your shoes. Another good thing about Fall in New England is the weather...it changes a lot, and I always seem to be wearing the wrong thing for the tempurature, but on a good day the air is cold and crisp and it is perfectly clear and sunny. It was perfect hiking weather.

The food in the area was very good...in the afternoon we stopped at a place that made fresh apple cider donuts. Mmm...they were good but really oily. Matt liked it. There were roadstands everywhere selling pumpkins, squash and apples.

The only drawback was that things were expensive! The apples from the roadside stand cost more than apples at the grocery store near my house. So much for New Hampshire being cheap!

The leaves were nice and I am glad we went, but if I had to choose between a weekend at a B and B in Napa and a weekend at a B and B in New Hampshire, I would pick Napa. California still rules!

A Few Updates

I haven't blogged for a long time....

Matt has got a really good job a couple of weeks ago. Two companies were actually fighting over him! It was amazing! It was a really hard choice for him (a start up versus an established company) but he ended up choosing Broadcom. They make chips that are used in various things, including the mp3 players that he used to make for RCA. It is a good job, but unfortunately it is in Andover so he had to buy a car. This week he bougth the cutest thing, a Mazda Six! It is silver and adorable. The other thing about his jobis that he will be spending 25 % of his time in Japan and Korea since one of his main accounts will be Toshiba. He has his first trip soon...I am just hoping that he is not gone for Halloween or for when his sister and her boyfriend are here to visit in two weeks.

I am in school and I like it but I am very busy. I got a job on a research project...basically I go around to poor elderly Chinese people in their home and take their weight and measurements and record everything they ate for the past 24 hours. This is going to be hard because I have to do all of this in Mandarin. We will see if it works out in the end...I haven't had my first home visit yet but I will let you know next week how it goes.

Other than that, Matt and I are off to North Conway, New Hampshire this weekend to see the Fall Foliage! I am very excited!

Atlanta

This is a funny picture of Matt and Ana...they look like little kids!



Last weekend Matt and I flew down to Atlanta to visit his sister Ana and her boyfriend Dave. Matt's older brother Sam was also visiting, so it was like a family reunion! We had a good time and we like Atlanta alot, especially the weather. It is a lot warmer there than it is here! It actually reminded me of California alot because it seemed permanently sunny and you have to drive everywhere and there is traffic.


The first night we went out to a good southern dinner and then went to hear some blues music. It was amazing...the musicians were really talented and they were just jamming, there didn't seem to be any preset plan of what they were going to do. People from the audience would get up and sing or play the washboard. It was a lot of fun. Poor Dave had to drive everyone around...it reminds me what it is like to be in a car city again!


The next day we went to brunch and lazed around all day and the day after that Ana took us to a state park. It was a beautiful hike, and Matt and Ana went swimming in the river. I admit, I thought it was too cold and didn't go in! I know, I am wimp...I guess I take after my Mom, she never used to swim when I was little. Of course, now she swims all the time, no problem. Maybe when I am older I will be able to withstand the cold better! I definitely not very similar to the Massey family...they seem to jump in the water anytime, anywhere.

Taking Back Sunday

Meagan, Kevin and Christine...WOW, I HAVE A HUGE MOUTH!


This weekend there was a free concert at Downtown Crossing, and the band was called Taking Back Sunday. I am starting to feel really old, I have never heard of that band! They must be popular though cause there were tons of teenagers running around, singing a long and acting "tough". There was a huge crowd and it was a lot of fun even though we couldn't see anything. People were sitting in the trees, and Matt scared a little boy by grabbing his shoe and running off with it...he gave it back though, cause the boy looked extremely concerned!


We went with Matt's old high school friend from Eureka and his girlfriend. We went to a place called Sissy K's for dinner before the concert and it was good despite the fact that they covered my mussels with Parmesan cheese. I had thought it was a white wine sauce...oh well.

School!

I am in school again! This is a picture of me going to my Orientation. Yes, I have funny blue shoes on. My orientation was the day our stuff arrived to Boston, so I only had the clothes I wore in China and with my family this summer. SO, this was the best I could come up with...

Weirdly, I am totally intimidated by going back to school, even though I know it is silly and I have nothing to be worried about...I feel better now that I have been to my classes. I think it is going to be more work than I expected, but that is ok cause I am really excited to be in school and I love my classes. I am happy cause the fact that I love my classes so much means that I am doing the right thing by going back to school. All of my classes are interesting: epidemiology, occupational and environmental health, public health policy and nutrition. My favorite class so far is the public health policy course. I thought environmental health would be less interesting but I actually loved it...Nutrition is going to be interesting but a lot of it is going to be a review. My science background will definitely come in handy...maybe my year of organic chemistry will not go to waste.

I won't bore anyone with the details of my classes...the only problem is that I wish I could just be in school and not have to work. But, now that I am back in the US, there are no excuses for not working! I am going to wait until after our apartment is settled to start looking for work.

Still Unpacking...

My previous post about all of Dad's books was very melodramatic...but still, it IS a lot of work, and I do feel slightly overwhelmed since I am also starting school again. Things are getting better and Matt and I are strting to feel very at home in our apartment. It is going to look great! About the book issue...I am having someone come to appraise his books, and maybe buy some of them. At least then I will know if they are worth any thing or not...If he buys them that is great, I will sell the ones about subjects I am less interested in. If he doesn't, then I will give some to charity and keep the ones I like.

Matt painted the office. (It used to be the second bedroom but when our stuff arrived we realized that we had only put Dad's bed in storage, not our own! Sorry, any potential visitors out there!) We chose the color Straw...Hopefully it will help keep me cheerful in the long winter months. Matt did a great job painting and the room looks beautiful with the white trim and the wood furniture.

Ipswich

A couple of weekends ago Matt and I went to Crane Beach and Ipswich. It was sort of cold, but it was a lot of fun. We went into a little town near there that had lots of antique shops.





I discovered that I am not a person that likes to go "antique-ing". It was really fun though and cute though, despite my lack of interet in antiques. A great thing is that there were lots of places with clams and lobster. YUM! We didn't get to eat any though because we had to catch a train going back to Boston and we didn't have time for dinner.


Matt doesn't like his picture taken!

Things we have been doing in Boston

We went to the Museum of Science to see Body Worlds. It was so amazing! I highly recommend it to anyone...basically a doctor in Germany uses donated bodies create "muscle skeletons", if tht makes sense. He also had various cross sections of the body on display. It is sad to know what my arteries probably look like, with all of my cholesterol pumping through them building up plaque...The picture of the brain is not from the exhibit, that is my brain, complete with gaping hole.


We went on a tour of Harvard, or "Hahvahd" as our tour guides liked to say. The tour was led by two Harvard seniors trying to run an unofficial tour of Harvard and Harvard is not happy. It was pretty good but very long. We learned something interesting: 92% of Cambridge residents voted for Kerry in the last presidential election. Wow.


We went to Mike's Pastry in the North End. This cannolli was WAY TOO SWEET! It almost burned my taste buds off. I guess Italians like it like that?


We went to the Farmer's Market in Union Square. It was SO MUCH FUN! I love farmer's markets...this one had a band and lots of art for sale and, of course, produce. I like Union Square, it feels fun and funky...less upscale than Cambridge. This picture is of the gorgeous Paula apples for sale. I had never seen them before, and they looked beautiful, so I bought them. Unfortunately, to me they didn't taste as good as they looked! Very tart and the texture wasn't as crisp as I like. I prefer Granny Smith if I want a tart apple.


We went on a boat to the USS Constitution. The boat ride was fun, and going on the ship was free. I hate to say it, but Hong Kong definitely beats Boston in terms of the beauty of the harbor.

Too Many Books

This post is just an update...I had all sorts of things I wanted to blog about the things we have been doing...We have been having a great time in Boston and we love it! For the past couple of weeks we have been relaxing, seeing a few sights in Boston, and getting things set up here. We had our stuff shipped here from Hong Kong and had Dad's stuff shipped here from storage in LA. I knew it was going to be a lot of work to go through all of Dad's stuff, not to mention the emotional upheaval it would cause, so we got here two weeks before my school starts in hopes of having plenty of time to unload everything and get organized. However, the moving company was late, and it arrived a few days ago. Of course, it was the only day that Matt or I had any plans. I had my school orientation and Matt had a job interview. Matt rescheduled his job interview, and it was probably for the best the I wasn't around for the unloading. Moving men are always so surly and gruff, and I think the sight of them gives me post traumatic stress disorder of when they came to clear out Dad's house two years ago. They couldn't fit the piano OR the couch through the doorway to our house. This is a MAJOR bummer. The good news is that the rest of Dad's furniture fits perfectly and things had been going relatively smoothly...till today.

Today I have set the task for myself of going through all of Dad's books. There are 25 boxes of them. The boxes took up the entire living room. Believe it or not, two years ago, I got rid of half of Dad's book collection, so this is the better half of the original collection. There is no way that all of these books will fit in my house and they definitely don't fit in the bookshelves. So...I have been sorting through them and getting rid of ones that I want less than the others. This is a really draining job, much more than you would think. Part of me feels like I am being a traitor or a horrible daughter for getting rid of things that I know my Dad loved. He loved books! The other part of me feels really bitter and mad that I am a prisoner of Dad's stuff. A book collection is a really personal thing. It is a lot of information about things that the person who accumulated the books is interested in. I am not necessarily interested in the things Dad was interested in, and for things we are both interested in, I don't really need a lot of books about the subject. For instance, there were two full boxes of books about hiking trails in the Sierras. I love hiking in the Sierras but all that information is online or available at a Ranger Station. And, he had about a kajillion coffee table books. They are beautiful but heavy and probably wouldn't get much use. There is really no room for that in my small apartment.

I am not a prisoner of my own belongings...Matt and I travel pretty light and are too young to have accumulated so much stuff. Plus, I get rid of things of my own so that I can fit into the space I have. But I feel really guilty getting rid of stuff that is Dad's, especially cause he told me he wanted me to keep all his stuff after he died exactly the way it is. That is really unfair to me. I am sure he was joking, but still...I sold his condo, so I already messed that one up. Anyway, today for some reason I am getting all stressed out again like I was after Dad died and I was going through his stuff the first time. I hate it! Plus, this is really mean to say, but I am sick of thinking about him and doing stuff that he would have wanted it. I want to get on with my own life. I think I still have my own life...maybe I should never have left Hong Kong, you can easily avoid reality and unpleasant subjects there. Grandma made a photo album about Dad and when I was at her house this summer I didn't even want to look at it. It is so mean, but I am just so sick of memorializing him and thinking about his life.

Matt has been great though...he doesn't care about belongings, his own or anyone elses. He wanted to unpack Dad's antique Buddha from Myanmar. I was like, "NO! I am afraid it is broken, don't open it, ignorance is bliss!" Matt was like, "If it is broken, so what? We don't need a buddha anyway. It's heavy." So he opened it up and my heart was going a mile a minute cause I was afraid it would be broken and I would feel responsible. It was fine, and afterwards I was angry. It is not fair, it isn't even my Buddha, and I was almost having a heart attack about it, as if Dad would zoom down from wherever he is and be mad at me.

Whatever...these are just weird issues I have. I need to get over it and let go of his belongings because he is dead and holding on to them doesn't help.

Hello, Boston!

Matt and I have finally arrived in Boston. We came with 4 huge bags of luggage, two of which weighed 50 pounds and the other ones nearly as much! (What can I say? I travel light but after a month in China and two months staying with various family members, we accumulated a lot!) We didn't take a taxi from the airport despite the fact that it was raining and we couldn't carry all our bags at once. Instead, we took the bus and the T. Boston's public transportation system is great (by US standards...Hong Kong's public transport really can't be beat), so it actually wasn't that hard to get home with all our stuff. Also, I think we just wanted to prove to ourselves that we can get by without a car, no matter what situation comes along.


When we got back to our apartment, we walked 2 miles to Target to buy an air mattress. Of course, Target worked it's usual magic and we ended up buying a huge cartload of stuff. We bought a 75 piece "kitchen in a box" for 30 bucks. That should hold us until our stuff arrives in September...It is really fun cooking again after travelling for so long and having such a tiny kitchen in Hong Kong. Our kitchen seems HUGE after Hong Kong!


Our house is empty, so we are "camping out" and I am obsessing over the holes in the wall and the grease stains in the kitchen. Oh well...Matt says I need to get used to living in an old house. I need to figure out hos to get grease splatters off the wall! We have no TV or anything, but we bought Yahtzee and a puzzle at Target. THe second bedroom is the Puzzle Room. We are using a big cardboard box for a dining room table and a smaller one for a computer table. It is lots of fun actually!

Last Days in Beautiful California!

All good things have to come to an end...so we left beautiful, beloved California. And since I seem to be using cliches today, I may as well go ahead and say that when one door closes another one opens...and now we are here in beautiful Cambridge, Massachussetts! And yes, Cambridge IS beautiful, we have been loving it so far.

On another note, it seems like alot of my friends and family are empowering themselves and starting independent, creative businesses and/or hobbies. Excellent! For instance, Matt's old friend from Eureka has a gorgeous web site with his art on it. Matt's mom started a pet burial at sea business, and my Aunt Lisa left academia and started a photography studio. Also, my good friend Kelly from Hong Kong is starting a Daily Candy-style web site for Hong Kong. I know it will be successful, and I will post the link when it launches in mid-October. Then I can read about everything going on in Hong Kong and fantasize about my old life there! (Hmmm...this could be a bad thing...Ha ha!) Oh, and I almost forgot to mention...my grandma Janet has taken on a new profession as a web designer/administrator. This is extremely inspiring because she has had a full career, and now, as a soon to be great grandma, she has taught herself a new profession. WOW! She created a website for the very successful business of my Uncle Jimmy, and now two of his colleagues want her to do a website for them.

Wow! Maybe Matt will be next...he wants to start a company but "The Big Idea" has yet to hit him. And then there is my fantasy yoga studio...

Matt's 10 Year Reunion

Matt and I were in Eureka for Matt's 10 year high school reunion. It was SO much fun! Reunions are great, especially when they aren't your own. I didn't know anyone so I popped around taking pictures of everyone there. It was funny, Matt would say hi to someone and I would immediate take a picture, like the paparazzi. Actually I shouldn't say that I didn't know anyone there...I knew all of Matt's friends...I think there were about 10 of us altogether, and I have known all of his friends for a few years now. Everyone met at Matt's house before the reunion, and Matt made all the guys take a shot of his snake wine that he brought all the way back from China. It was gross, or so it seemed judging by the looks on their faces! (I had tried lots of Chinese liquor in China and drunk snake blood in Vietnam, so my curiosity about that sort of thing has been sated...besides, sname wine is for virility.)

I also got to see my old college roommate Emily, it was great! It was my first time to see her as a married woman.

One highlight of the night was when Matt and Matthew Winkle ran through the room in their underwear. Then they ran and jumped in the pool. THis prompted a whole bunch of people (mostly guys and a few really drunk girls) to go into the pool in their underwear.

Matt and his friends from Eureka are definitely tight...it is nice to see them, they seem to have a really strong bond. After the reunion there was a solid half hour of wrestling/hugging/saying how much fun they had. I think it helped they they had all been backpacking together for the three days before the reunion.

Aren't they cute? This was the final hug of the night.

I went to Grandma's house and was lucky to see the whole Hardy family! The Pulsiphers had a boat and we went wakeboarding. It was so much fun! I actually was able to stand up and was really impressed with myself. That sounds horrible, but it is true...I had tried to wakeboard in Hong Kong and decided that it was futile to attempt it. Maybe it was Gary's detailed instruction, or maybe I was just more relaxed because I was with my family...anyway, I am very excited about it!

We also went down to see the Valkos' new house. It is almost done, and it was looking gorgeous. It looks like a luxurious mountain home...it will be so nice for them when they can move in. It is phenomenal to me that they built the house from top to bottom as a family and they can live in it.

The past week has gone by so fast! Eureka is possible the most relaxing place on Earth. We have been hiking, picking blackberries, playing Settlers of Catan, and spending huge amounts of time asleep. It is great! In back of Matt's house there are tons of blackberry bushes, and in the span of two hours, Matt and picked a huge bucket full of blackberries. We had enough to make 16 jars of jam, two pies, 10 mini pies, and a cobbler! And, we still had berries left over to eat plain! It is amazing!


Yesterday, Matt's parents had a barbecue in honor of Matt and his childhood friend Courtney, because both of them are moving across the country this month. (Matt is going to Boston and Courtney is going to Buffalo.) It was lots of fun, with tons of food and a game of croquet.

This week, I am going over to Grandma's to hang out with the Hardy family in Lake Almanor and Matt is going on his "man hike" with all of his old Eureka friends. (It is for guys only, hence the name "man hike".) The guys are going to drop me off in Redding and my cousin Mike is going to pick me up...I feel really bad though cause the guys have no idea when they are going, so I am not going to be able to give Mike that much notice about when I will arrive. Mike is such a nice cousin to drive all the way to pick me up!

Arcata Farmer's Market

On Saturday, Matt and I went with his Mom and her friend Janina to the Arcata Plaza Farmer's Market. It was so much fun! I love farmer's markets, even though they cost more than going to a grocery store. The interesting thing about this one was that it was almost all vegetables and not that many fruits. The veggies looked beautiful though, and there were some things I had never seen before. For instance, lemon cucumbers.

There was also a guy selling lots of dried beans. There was a kind of bean called a "yin yang bean". They really looked like little yin yang symbols!

The highlight for me was the fresh figs. They are SO delicious, it is my new favorite fruit. We also bought honey with the honeycomb still in it, which I had never had before. I like to eat it with my oatmeal in the morning.

Another cool thing was the Pan Dulce Steel Drum Orchestra!

Pine House Reunion

For Matt's last year of college, he lived in a big house on Pine St in Davis with lots of roommates. They were really close, especially the original 6 residents of the house. Four of them happened to be in Humboldt County for our first weekend, so we (especially Matt) had a good time catching up with everyone. They looked at all their old pictures from college and we played alot of this game called "Cornhole". Apparently, Matt's old roommate Mitch learned this game in Ohio and he showed us all how to play. It was pretty fun, sort of similar to horseshoes. It was alot of fun...

His roommate Lauren moved up to Arcata and just recently bought a gorgeous house with a big yard and lots of berry bushes. The bushes were growing the most delicious, ripe and juicy blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. I was in heaven! I hope someday I have a house with berry bushes.

Matt's roommate Natasha moved to Granada, Spain and married a British man and had a very cute baby boy. Matt had a lot of fun putting him in the basket.

Marti Hard at Work

On our first Day in Eureka, Matt and I drove over to visit one of his old college roommates. On our way to her house, we stopped in to see Matt's mom. Marti works at a thrift shop that benefits the Companion Animal Foundation. In the back they had lots of animals, including a giant cat that weights like 30 pounds!

The Greyhound Bus

Back in Eureka!

Yesterday, Matt and I took the Greyhound bus up to Eureka. Wow. Every preconceived idea I had about the Greyhound bus is true. First of all, it took 9 hours to do a 4 hour drive. Second of all, everyone on the bus was a freak, including the bus driver. We made the mistake of sitting near the back of the bus. We had no choice though, the only two seats together were in the back. This is also where the most freakiest people were.

There were two guys that literally just got out of San Quentin. They were still wearing their prison issued clothes.

There was a young looking blonde girl with a very cute two year old son. She was wearing a tie died tank top that she got through a "nifty lifty discount." I think that means stealing. Her son was so cute, but she was letting the poor guy run around the bus station with no shoes on and sit on the bust station floor and put things in his mouth. It was gross. A weird ghetto looking guy even told her that people puke on the floor sometimes. Of course, I understand that it is hard to have a kid and she looked young and was probably tired and stuff. It is still sad though...She was totally racist. It turns out that she knew one of the guys that just got out of prison from some parties in Arcata (just north of Eureka). He said he knew some guys for her and she was like, "as long as they are white". She kept making comments about Indians and black people and kept confronting these two black kids sitting near us. Also, she would yell at everyone to keep their language clean, but her language was not very clean at all!

There was a guy from Garberville who also knew the San Quentin prison guy. They knew each other from the Humboldt County prison. He was a really nice guy, actually, and he gave up his seat for a girl "cause that is what a real man does". He grows pot and sells it in Washington and Oregon and on the Arcata square. His front teeth were chipped so they looked like a triangle. At least he had teeth though...on this bus there were lots of people missing teeth! He spoke with a very interesting accent, I think it is a country accent. He was talking about how the Chicago Greyhound bus station is ghetto and he was afraid there...I made a mental note never to get near the Chicago Bus station.

There were lots of hippies on board. They were nice. I guess one of them just got back from a Rainbow Gathering in Colorado. They didn't jive so well with the racist girl...one of them stepped in and said he couldn't sit next to someone talking so bad about Indians. The girl got really quiet, then the San Quentin guy got mad cause the hippie hurt her feelings. Hmm. There were lots of weird verbal fights on this bus ride.

There was also this odd older woman. She was quite huge and seemed semi homeless. She was talking about churches where you could get food and clothes. It was really sad cause I heard her telling the man behind me that her Dad got remarried and her step mom didn't like her so she was kicked out when she was 14. She seemed nice enough, except that at one point she yelled a warning to everyone on the bus that "there might be narcs around" so they shouldn't talk too openly about drugs. I was like, "Oh no, I hope she doesn't think Matt and I are the narcs! We are the only normal people on here..." I was slightly afraid, cause the population on the bus was slightly unstable...they liked to get mad about things and gang up on people. There was lots of weird confronting and fighting going on.

There were black boys who looked like they were about 13 years old. One of them had all gold teeth on the bottom. One of them tagged on the back of the seat in front of him. I am not sure what they were going to do in Arcata. These boys sounded and looked like they had never been out of Oakland before. They were really rambunctious and kept yelling and cussing and the racist mom kept yelling at them. They said they were coming to see their girlfriends and buy pot. They were so young though, I think they were trying to sound tough...Matt says he thinks they said they were visiting their Grandma.

Other than that, there were some elder Humboldt county residents and a rich San Rafael girl holding a Louis Vuitton bag, playing "hippie" and talking about her pot dealing boyfriend.

The bus driver had a hard time dealing with everybody...Greyhound had sold too many tickets so their weren't enough seats. People had to sit on the floor in the aisle. He kept getting mad cause we were off schedule, but he took forever to load people on and off the bus. At one point, he tried to make everyone stopping in Ukiah get onto another bus, but he realized it was too hard to get all of their luggage off, but he spent a half an hour trying! Later, he told a woman with two babies to keep her kid quiet or she was off the bus. She yelled, "It's called eight hours on a bus, asshole!" He called the CHP and they came to meet us in Willets. They made the family change buses. The people on our bus were so mad, that when we stopped at McDonalds for dinner, everyone confronted him and were mean. He was walking around talking to himself about how the bus had to stay orderly and how he was "keeping a positive attitude to do the right thing". I feel bad for him because it wasn't his fault Greyhound sold too many tickets. He shouldn't have threatened to send the baby off the bus, but still, no matter what he did the bus was going to hate him. They seemed to hate all authority figures. Most of the conversation on the bus was about drugs, but if they weren't talking about drugs, they were talking about cops and how stupid they are.

Anyway, now we are finally in Eureka. I already feel extremely relaxed and very happy to be here. Now my only problem is figuring out how to get over to Grandma's house in Lake Almanor...maybe the Greyhound? :)

Old Friends

Since Matt and I got back from Boston, we have been visiting old friends and trying to relax after our tumultuous trip to Boston. Looking for an apartment is hard work! We went back to Davis, and I was so surprised, it has barely changed at all! It was fun to be back in our old college town. I love it there, it was a great place to go to school. The only problem was the insane heat wave...it was literally 110 degrees. When it is that hot, you get tired really fast. (Or at least I do, Matt doesn't seem to have a problem.) We stayed with my old college roommate Ann and her boyfriend Jason in Sacramento. It was great to see them, I hadn't seen her since college! I always had a really negative view of Sacramento in my mind, but on this trip I really liked it. It has a lot of good qualities...it is less expensive than other parts of California, it is centrally located (close to the mountains and SF), it has a small and convenient airport with cheap flights, it has a really cute midtown area with old houses, and there seem to be lots of young people around. The thing I like most about it is that is feels fresh...I mean that it feels like the kind of city that hasn't reached it's peak yet, there is still room for new things to be done and lots of new businesses that could be started. I could be wrong, of course...There are some problems with it too: there are a ton of crazy/homeless types and lots of ghetto people, and the crime rate is high. Also, there is a lack of "cool" restaurants a bars and stores and stuff. But I think that is an advantage. If you wanted to start something, you could, and everytime I go to Sac there is more and more "cool" stuff.

Enough rambling about Sacramento...on to the cute baby in the pictures above! We went to visit my old roommate Stacy, who just had a baby. She is my first friend to have a baby, and I am so excited! Her daughter, Georgia, is extremely cute and also very well behaved. She is only two months and already sleeps through the night in her own room. Stacy and her husband Bill's house was totally cute and right in the middle of a vineyard. I should have gotten a picture, but I didn't... it was TOO HOT and the minute I got outside I just wanted to run to the car and the air conditioning.