Los Angeles

CD was invited to give a seminar at University of California, Fresno and he gladly accepted. We decided to combine his talk with a visit to friends Jeff and Karrie in Los Angeles. Coincidently, Eunice was scheduled to be in Anaheim that week for work and Jay Maz decided to come out for the weekend as well. Amazing that we could all meet there and great many thanks to J+K for hosting us all.



While there, we hiked up to the Griffith Observatory, drove to the Getty center, walked around and frisbeed on Venice beach, perused Amoeba Music and even caught the movie "The Wrestler". Powerful stuff!
One of my favorite things was cooking with Eunice. We made awesome poblanoes stuffed with black beans and corn, seved with a beet/jicama salad and fresh pico de gallo. Yumm!
It was a great weekend!

Old Hat, New Hat

This is CD's old hat (he's still actively wearing it). There have been a few occasions when he thinks he has lost his favorite hat- it has been somewhat stressful, madly searching for it!



So, I decided to do something about it. My replica/own take on the black and blue below:

Shelter Cove daytrip

The weather has been so beautiful and sunny around here, we wanted to spend the day doing something outside. For the last forever, CD has been promising to take me to Shelter Cove which is south of here on the Lost Coast. It is an old fishing village which takes hours to drive to, but with the plane it only took us about 30 minutes. It was fantastically amazing!

Leaving Eureka:



Sheltered:





A very short runway for shorty planes:

Winter Wineland

On the wine road again. My good friend Wendy and I have been talking about meeting in wine country for the last year or so. She and her boyfriend Stu live in the Bay area and we're much further north; so meeting in the middle seemed ideal for both! We finally got our schedules matched up and made it happen. In reality, Wendy did a lot of the research and reservations. Thank you Wendy!

We drove south on the 101 to the Russian River Valley where we enjoyed two great nights at the Sonoma Orchid Inn. The breakfast was incredible and the timing was just right: the weekend we chose was Winter Wineland. Most of the wineries in the Russian River, Dry Creek and Alexander Valleys were open to the public for wine and food tastings. Unfortunately, I felt a bit under the weather (just my tummy) and was not in a great mood for drinking a whole lot. Fortunately for all us, I became the default designated driver. I still enjoyed myself tremendously!

Mimosas at Korbel:

Foppiano:

Bella:

That evening we enjoyed dinner at Mosaic:

Zihuatanejo, Guerrero

For a long time CD had been talking about taking a nice relaxing vacation during the holiday break. So we decided to head down Mexico way! The best part of this vacation was the fact that CD planned the location and made all the reservations. All I had to do was show up with my passport!