Northern California

I really hit the jackpot last weekend when the stars aligned and I was able to make it out to Northern California for a quick stint. A friend from college, all the way back to the dorms, was getting married, and enough of us were able to make the trek for it to be a fun, summertime mini reunion. How I found such a cheap roundtrip summer flight from New York to San Francisco is beyond me, that's how the stars aligning came into play.

Ronnie drove me to the wedding! To give you a reference point, I spent every single year of college driving him around (read: to McDonalds or Borders in Goleta, or downtown Santa Barbara anywhere) so this was a big moment in our friendship! It was roasting hot that Saturday, August 11, in and out of the shade



The wedding was at a small winery, and it was cute, quaint, and classic. It featured a showing of many of us from the freshman dorms that year, and we had so many memories to re-live! It was great to come together for such a fun occasion too. (Where is Iris in this picture?!)



Neva was my actual freshman year roommate. She and I had such great times, and I don't think that we ever once fought or argued or got upset with each other. We used to always leave the string of Christmas lights on in our room for the other if they weren't in by the time we were going to bed. Oh, and we always threw great dance parties in our room, you can see us reliving some of these in the picture below. One of my favorite memories with Katie (the bride) was the dance party she came to in mine and Neva's room to Madonna's Like A Prayer during quiet hours. Our RA came and told us to shut it down, but we didn't until the song was over.



The breezy summertime wedding with the open bar went into the night but was still over too soon! Ronnie and I compensated by visiting San Jose's Santana Row with Tashi afterwards, so it was a gradual letting go.

This weekend was a double header though, because on top of the wedding, I got to spend the weekend with FAMILY! If I'm going to escape the city, there's no better way to do it than in scenic northern California in a real home with wonderful family that I can't seem to see often enough...! Walt & Lisa generously took me in and I was delighted that the kids even remembered me. Except Hamilton, who thought I was a babysitter and Annabelle had to inform him that I was a cousin. (This is how I remembered Annabelle and Holden!)



All Friday night Genevieve and I got to hang out with the whole works: she gave me a tour and showed me her room and dresses and we got to watch some Olympics and talk. Holden showed me his school project he was working on as he put it together, and Meredith gave us all the low-down on the One Direction boys when they were on during the Olympics Closing Ceremonies. Annabelle was my mini-hostess: she was kind enough to let me stay in her room for the weekend and even though she had a soccer tournament, she found the time to hang out with me and show me some of her crazy contraptions, like a gadget that can imprint onto gum, and even personalized one for me.

Hamilton really put me to work. Shortly after learning that I was family, he threw his Spiderman sleeping bag over his head and crawled toward me. I said he looked like a Hamilton Burrito with Cheese and he said he knew how to time travel. Well, I had to see this. The rules were very specific: first, we had to arrange all the pillows inside the time traveling machine just right. Then, he had to hop in his sleeping bag and I placed him in the box on top of the pillows. After I folded all of the cardboard flaps over him, I had to push the orange buttons on the side. This is all it took before we were in the land of dinosaurs!



Somehow, though, we slowly entered the Jedi realm. And by that I mean Hamilton was a bounty hunter, and I was Darth Vader. Complete with mask and light saber, mind you. At first it took some creativity on my part, but then it became much easier, because it was Darth Vader's birthday, and Hamilton was having a great time just imagining all the gifts to bring to me (storm troopers that could swim, sand troopers that had pots of hot lava and alligators to put the jedi into, six-sided light sabers... never ending!) and my job was to accept these gifts.



We also played Sorry on a team against Genevieve. Boy does he not like losing! But it's great because he also celebrates the wins; whenever we drew a useful card, he would be too excited sometimes to move the pieces and would spend every second until our next turn parading around and declaring that this was so great and that we would win. We didn't win, but we had Mystery Date and the Olympics to take our minds off our loss! Annabelle and I enjoyed watching the Closing Ceremonies and commenting on all the performances and sites, and was even allowed to stay up until 10pm with me!



It was so nice to be comfortably around family and out of the city for a summertime weekend that leaving was such a downer, so I had a lot of Starbucks and chocolate and gum on my flights home. I'd say I'm back to the grind, but Cousin Bobby comes into town today!