Wandering in the Woods

To help Alex's wife, Johanna (aka britgeekgrrl) defray costs of his care and memorial services, check out the below community and see if there's anything you'd like to purchase. More details are on the community description.

Happy Birthday to mike_sama!

To dragonluk= Thank you for the rose.

Happy Birthday to fiannagalliard

Happy birthday in:
(Swedish)- Grattis på födelsedagen!
(Irish Gaelic)- La' breithe mhaith agat!
(Japanese)- Otanjou-bi Omedetou Gozaimasu!

James and I had a wonderful dinner at Pearl's Cafe with Dragon and Ragnarok_now last night. Thanks for inviting us to come along! =) Sample night wasn't run quite how I would have expected. I thought they would have had a small buffet table set up or been walking through more often with trays of samples. Ah well, it was fun. I'm still not entirely sure what I think of the prawn in maple.

Saturday- Spoke with Kyla and arranged for her, Dragon, and Maria to meet at my house and then we would head over to meet Avienda from there. Dragon and Ragnarok_now were on time, Kyla and Maria showed up between twenty and thirty minutes later; I figured that would be the case. ;)
When Ky had initially emailed me to let me know she was going to be in the area she had told me there was something that she wanted to talk to me about, but she didn't want to do it in an email. Apparently she didn't want to wait and asked me on the phone when we started making our plans for meeting up- Justin (her boyfriend) asked her to marry him, they're planning it for next summer, and she wants me to be a bridesmaid. I'm excited! I've never been one before. ^_^ Sounds like Dragon is being called on to arrange yet another bachelorette party. I have offered her my aid in organizing it. I'm sure she could manage it on her own, but I am more than happy to share the responsibility so why should she?
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Maria had dinner plans so we got her back to her car and everyone else stayed and visited at my house for a while till it was time for us to go to Kyla's place for the wonderful dinner that Kyla's Mom was prepping for us. Her parents have always been so kind and welcoming. They have always opened their house to all of Kyla's friends...and fed us. =) Wonderful bar-b-qued chicken, broccoli salad, fruit.
Kyla had to catch an eight-thirty plane out of Oakland so we got out of there around six-thirty, Dragon was kind enough to give me a lift home and then spent part of the evening hanging out with me and James.

Brisa's baby, Avienda
This is my friend, Brisa's daughter, Avienda. Avienda was born on August 3rd.

Finally got through "The Phantom of the Opera" with Dragon on Monday night. That only took three evenings scattered over a number of weeks to show her all of that film. =P Course, she knew the story already since James and I had taken her to see the stage production in S.F. Sigh...Phantom. There are some things I wasn't entirely satisfied with concerning this film, but all in all I would have to say they adapted it for the big screen beautifully.
Spent Monday doing really absolutely nothing productive at all. =P Must try to make up for that today. James surprised me by coming over after he got out of class. He did his reading homework here and then we went out in search of dinner. We ended up going to a Japanese place right near his school. They were okay, nothing too impressive and James wasn't wowed by their salmon skin roll which is his ruler for measuring the appeal of a Japanese restaurant.
The moon was beautiful, there were clouds swirling around it...they had that rainbow effect from oil on the surface of water look about them. James dropped me off and I ended up getting in touch with Dragon and going almost immediately back out to get pie at Baker Square. Yay for French Silk! After that we headed back to my house where we finally finished up with Phantom.

I had a wonderful time at the Fremont Festival of the Arts on Saturday. Headed over with James to pick up his friend, Liz at around a quarter till ten or so. We were over at the Festival a little after it opened up at ten and aside from it being beastly hot and getting a sunburn on my neck/shoulder area again I had a wonderful time. We must have stopped at virtually every booth. Must have since it wasn't as big as some years and we were there from ten something till just shy of four. I found some very cute little comical animal sculptures to give as gifts and I found a Susan Seddon Boulet switch-plate. I'm not going to use it currently since I already have a lovely Van Gogh Starry Night one up in my room, but I'll need another switch-plate sometime, right? Can't live in my bedroom in my parents' house forever, can I? Someone reassure me that I will someday have a place to call my own and the bills to prove it! =P Anyhoo....really did enjoy getting to see Liz, she moved back to Michigan about four years ago and is out here since her Mother's appendix ruptured last week and needed a No Fun Nazi (Liz's term) to keep her from doing anything she shouldn't. Her Mother's boyfriend wanted his turn taking care of her so that freed Liz up to wander about the Festival with us. We visited every hat vendor there and tried all sorts of fun, absurd and lovely hats. Saw all sorts of lovely art and things that I would have loved to have splurged money on if I had a lot more disposable income.
After sunning ourselves all day with Liz we (James and I) headed back to my house and scooped up my Father (after I fell asleep lying on the floor next to my cat, Jean for about half an hour) and went over to tend kitty cats and swim! Spent about an hour and a half swimming about. Ah. Actually got James into the pool since the hot tub was full of people. I'm so glad we were able to take my Dad swimming. =) After swimming, showering, and visiting with kitties we got in touch with my Mom and agreed to go to the Mexican restaurant that James and I went to last Monday. Met up with Mom at home and after getting a call from Heather we headed over for a late dinner at Casa Robles. It was good, I have come to the conclusion that while not my favorite cuisine that I can find something on the menu and should be willing to go out to Mexican with James every now and again. If for no other reason than to have a little variety in our eating out choices.