San Francisco and Birthdays

Oh, hello there!  I hope everyone is enjoying the east coast summer... (heard through the grapevine that Boston got 3-5 inches of rain this past weekend?)  Yeah, we still haven't even seen a drop here yet.  The general answer when we ask people when it will rain here is "Um, September? November?" Which makes me laugh but... in all seriousness it is just a LITTLE bit weird that the weather is just always the same here. It makes me feel like we're stuck on repeat.  Also, the lack of moisture in the air is surprisingly noticeable- especially when I try to go for a run in the afternoon.  No matter how much water I drink during the day, my throat goes dry and I start feeling dehydrated within at least 10 minutes of running.  It's crazy!

Anyway, enough with the observations.  All in all, things are still running smoothly around here.  Jimmy has OFFICIALLY started law school.  Which means he is OFFICIALLY reading at least 5 hours everyday- not included time spent actually in class.  His bag is slowly starting to fill up with gigantic law books that keep on arriving in random boxes. But it sounds like he still likes it (after less than a week of actual class).   Here: just look at how excited he is to be going to class

I have OFFICIALLY started my job search and I've already got a nibble!  I have an interview next week for an internship at the San Jose ICA.  Keep all of your fingers crossed for me. This looks like a really cool place.  In between job searching and resume/cover letter writing I've been wasting my days studying for the new GRE, looking at schools, starting new art projects, trying out new recipes for dinner (see that pizza down there:)

yeah, those are eggs... inside onion rings!

and planning weekend excursions and JIMMY'S BIRTHDAY.  Because that's what we've been up to this past week.  

Ok so FIRST, this past weekend (saturday to be exact) we took the train in to the city (at last!) and walked until our feet fell off.  We caught a bullet train that morning (express train that follows the same rail as the local train from Santa Clara to San Fran but skips more than half the stops along the way) that got us in to the city in an hour (as opposed to an hour and a half).  The train got us in to the CalTrain station that was south of everywhere we wanted to be...

View Larger Map

So at first we tried to wait for a bus that would take us up to Chinatown (that we were told was at least 20 minutes away by foot).  But when that bus didn't show up for over a half an hour we set off on foot. I think we spent at least half the day in Chinatown due to the fact that it is A) absolutely totally HUGE B) filled with good food and C) super awesome. 

yes, i briefly turned into a panda

We had cantonese dim sum for lunch, which is an experience in itself... especially when you're really hungry and everyone's talking at you all at once.  We eventually made our way out of Chinatown and headed in a general "up hill" direction thinking that we would either hit Nob Hill or Lombard Street or, at the very least, the water.  We ended up walking all the way up Telegraph Hill (surprise!) where we checked out the tower and our first view of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Telegraph Hill lined us up with Lombard Street (but not the curvy road part) so we walked all the way back down only to see that we would have to walk all the way up hill again to actually walk [up more] on the curvy street.  We paused at a cafe to debate whether or not this much more uphill walking was really necessary (I could have already told you it was not) and then after a much needed shot of espresso we set off again, this time for Fisherman's Wharf.  We walked around for a while on Beach Street, in between tourist trap stores all selling the same sweatshirts and perhaps far too many people, and stopped over in a gallery just to gawk at what was for sale (Joan Miro, Picasso, Rembrandt, Dali and more).  We made it all the way to Ghiradelli Square, saw that the store was far too crowded and went and sat by the water to look at Alcatraz and rest up a little.  We had an early dinner at Boudin (the place that um, INVENTED sourdough.  I didn't even know San Fran invented sourdough!) and then tried to jump in line to take a cable car back to the train station.  Unfortunately the line was longer than we had hoped for so we ended up walking a little farther to catch a more reliable bus so that we could make it back to the station in time for the 7:15pm train (or else we would have had to wait until 8:15 for the next one.) Here's what the walk looked like:

View A short walk in a larger map

a little bit more than 5 miles?  it felt like soo much longer.

begin: walking up hill

and up

and up

curvy road! and bridge! in the so far away distance!

walking down Lombard

espresso break

alcatraz in the distance

All in all, a very good excursion even if we only did see less than half the city.  I'm already plotting out our next trip in.  It will include: Haight Street, Alcatraz, the parks along the waterfront and ummm more good coffee.  

Anyway, in other news this week: YESTERDAY WAS JIMMY'S BIRTHDAY! Which I'm sure half of you already knew (the Venning/Miller half to be exact) but for the rest of you- Jimmy is now an old dog. No, just kidding.  Although in dog years he would be a great great grandpa dog by now, right? Of course he had a ridiculous amount of reading and he was in class for the majority of the day, but here's what birthday we did squeeze in:

he's not surprised per se but he can't deny that isn't exactly what he wanted

the present- enjoyed instantly

ignore the fact that jimmy's still a little bit of a hippy who can't wear a shirt and appreciate this candle-action-shot i took

Oh, and yes, off to the side that IS a slice of four-layer carrot cake, how could you tell?  I like to play around with my extra batter and frosting.  And I promise we didn't just eat cake and drink scotch all night.  Although that was an option.  Nonono.  We're actual grown-ups [usually].  So dinner was a four-layer lasagna packed full of 2 different pasta sauces, 3 different cheeses, garlic, and a yellow pepper.  All in all a good day for the birthday boy.  I came to this conclusion using the fact that he said "good birthday zebear" at least 8 times after coming home to his new bottle of Balvenie.  Today it's back to the regular schedule of Jimmy reading a lot and Meg cycling between running, job searching, reading more about the ICA and posting this entry.  

Hope all is going well with everyone.  Hopefully there will be another adventure this weekend!

Since arriving

Alright so now fast forward to the present:  Jimmy and I officially live in Santa Clara now.  As you figured out we didn't have internet for the first two weeks of being here so we had to find other ways to amuse ourselves besides buying fresh produce and cooking delicious elaborate dinners using an actual stove and actual knives (as opposed to a tiny camp stove that doesn't agree with the subtle art of high heat vs. low heat and camping knives).

Our first trip wasn't really a trip.  We just drove to a movie theater to go see the last Harry Potter.  Great story, Meg, I know.  No, but the important part of the story is that the movie theater we went to just happens to be right at the heart of Santa Clara.  As in, this is THE movie theater that just happens to be right next to Yahoo, Net Logic, Intel, McAfee and other tech giants that I don't even know because, let's face it, I've been living in Vermont.  It was kind of cool to be right in the center of it all.

Our next trip was the requisite trip to the Pacific Ocean.  We took a day trip and drove on down to Santa Cruz... which is pretty much everything you'd imagine from a California beach town. Hippies? Check. Flipflops everywhere? Check. Tourists? TripleCheck.  It actually seemed pretty small too but I think that's also partially because Santa Cruz beaches are all in the bay so there aren't a lot of good surf areas.  We're going to have to go farther south to find those.  We did find a really nice road that winds its way right along the water, with the only other thing between the road and the water being a bike path and then some short cliffs.

We walked all around the Santa Cruz boardwalk (which reminded me a lot of the NJ boardwalk just with less fake tans and more people) where we snacked on some Garlic Fries (it's genius, try it someday) and I snapped a picture of this lady before we drove out to a beach and laid in the sun reading for the rest of the day:

Our third day trip was a trip to Napa Valley to see the vineyards, northern California and, obviously, try some wine.  We set out a little too late in the day (left around 10am, takes an hour and a half to get there, had lunch and then finally set off to wineries... most of which close by 5) so we only got to stop at two wineries but all in all it was lots of fun.  We got to really explore the area- starting with Napa and then driving up route 29 to explore the wineries

I guess route 29 goes up for about 27 miles before you're officially no longer in the Napa Valley.  We didn't get up that far but we stopped at V. Sattui Wines (they only sell from their winery, they don't sell at any wine/beverage stores anywhere in the US) where we got to sample 6 wines and Silver Oak (they only make Cabernets) where we tried three very good cabs AND got a free glass.

walking up to V. Sattui

the archway of Silver Oak

tasting room for Silver Oak

Silver Oak

Looks kind of nice, huh?  You should tell my Uncles Steve and Ron that so that they'll come visit me out here and not in Burlington and we can all go sip some West Coast wine.

Basically I guess our conclusions so far are: going back to Napa Valley, definitely... although we are going to try to get to know some of the other wine regions of the state as well.  Next beach we go to will need bigger waves annnd next trip we go on will be to San Francisco!

The Final Leg

Wow, sorry about that.  I had loaded all the pictures for this post but I guess I blanked and closed the page before I uploaded the post. SO! Let's continue to the end of our journey.

The morning after we did the Narrows, we packed everything back up and sadly took our leave of Zion National Park.  But I think we're both planning on going back someday so I'm not too worried about never seeing that park again.  We hit the road and crossed out of Utah, through Arizona one last time and into Nevada.  Mostly just desert driving except for when we basically drove right through Las Vegas.  As I drove, Jimmy called out different names of huge hotel/casinos just so we could say that we saw them.  I have to also admit here that I really don't think I'd ever enjoy living in the southwest American desert.  Somehow a combination of too much sun/not enough water/and barely any people except for in Las Vegas just isn't appealing to me.  But looking at the landscape from inside an air conditioned car is nice:

And then all of a sudden we were in California!  And still in the desert.  Honestly, by this part of the trip, I think we were both a little sick of camping, worrying about the car and bikes, cooking, packing and everything in between.  I know all I really wanted was a shower and to finally sleep in a bed.

Since we didn't really want to do the drive straight to Santa Clara from Zion all in one shot (would have been a solid 12.5 hours of driving) we had one more night of camping ahead of us.  So I picked out a campground about halfway there at the southern point of Sequoia National Park.  The campground was on this river that fed in to Isabella Lake- which was not only a sight for sore eyes that had been looking at desert and road all day but it was actually just a really cool lake in general.  Different coves along the shore had so many trees just popping up (probably because it's the only huge water source for miles) that there were trees just growing in the lake.  We had a hard time trying to snap pictures while driving but I also found someone else's picture just to give you an idea of how cool this was:

The campground was one of the most expensive campgrounds we stayed in but we found out that's because they had SHOWERS.  I know, fantastic, right?  I was psyched.  No lie.  We both settled in for a quiet night of reading and trying to get some sleep so that we could hit the road early the next day.

The drive the next day was only about 5 hours.   And after days of driving through the empty midwest and desert southwest, we started out driving through empty forests and around old ranches wondering where all the people who supposedly lived in California were....

and suddenly found ourselves back in over-populated areas- with malls, restaurants and lots of cars everywhere.  Cool things we also found on the road included: TRUCKS FULL OF TOMATOES!  And as we got closer there were cherry and corn stands along the side of the road, so we obviously stopped about a half an hour out from Santa Clara to buy a bag of cherries and some corn to cook with dinner that night in our new apartment.  I should have taken a picture of the totally packed subaroo outside of the new place, but we were both just so determined to unpack the car as quickly as possible that it kind of happened right away.  We then raced off to the first Trader Joe's we'd seen since Massachusetts to stock up on actual food we could put in a fridge and not have to cook or eat right away.

The next day we set out to master the art of the yard sale and I have to say we did REALLY REALLY well.  If you ever need help shopping for the best deals at yard sales, you should probably employ Jimmy or me to help you.  Because we're really good at finding the best yard sales and getting the best deals.  For example within the first weekend in Santa Clara we got:

A two-piece sofa - $40.00
A desk for Jimmy - $5.00
A lamp for the living room - $4.00
A bright red coffee table - $10.00
A small wine rack - $2.00

And since then we've also added:

A desk chair for Jimmy - $2.00
2 small hanging white shelves for the kitchen - $1.00
A set of hanging white shelves for the living room - $5.00
A tall set of white shelves - $10.00
A toaster oven - $7.00

And add in to that a table and stools, a tv, a microwave and a futon & frame that came with the apartment and I'd say we've done pretty well at settling in!

cookin' dinner

a little bit messy in the "still unpacking" phase

kitchen and table

hallway

grilling eggplants!

more eggplants! (what's this world coming to?)

like I said, I have 9 billion more freckles, just on my arms

Which means we're officially in California now!  It's about 10am here so I'm going to go for a run and then as I'm cooling down I'll come back and post more about our adventures since arriving.