Anniversary weekend

It's kind of surprising that a whole year has passed. I mean, a whole lot has happened in that year: our three week cross-country honeymoon, adopting Lucy, a weekend getaway to New Hampshire in October, Thanksgiving in NJ and a fantastic California Christmas vacation, our first New England winter (it wasn't that bad!), a weekend getaway to NYC in March, almost adopting a puppy and then getting a bunny instead, my 5th year reunion and mini family reunion at Lafayette, lots of home improvements... but my memories of the wedding and the pre-wedding craziness are so vivid, it seems hard to believe it was a year ago.

I mean, every once in a while I still find myself delighting in the fact that I don't have to work on place cards anymore! I guess it's time to say: get over it, girl!

It's been a wonderful year, though. We've been so happy. It's really an incredible, wonderful thing to be married. And so we took a whole weekend to celebrate.

The first thing we did on Friday after we got out of work was to drive over to a local Italian bakery to pick up the anniversary cake that James had ordered. He had them write something on the cake, but he wouldn't tell me what it was. When the girl at the bakery asked if he wanted to see the cake before he paid for it, he shot me a sidelong glance and told her no, just box it up. He didn't want me to see it until it was time. Once we got home, we decided not the wait until after dinner for the unveiling, so we opened it up. And it was beautiful.

The inscription reads "Happiness is marrying your best friend" with our wedding date, 6/20/09.

Awww! It brought tears to my eyes when I saw it. And it's decorated in our wedding colors. What a sweetie!

So we had dinner and had hearty slices of our cake, and then I was playing around on the Mac and I saw that Toy Story 3 was playing in our favorite theater. I gave James my "I'm about to ask for something" face, to which he was like "uh oh, now what do you want?" and I told him Toy Story 3 was playing in about an hour, so we decided to go. And it was great! I was kind of nervous, based on some lameness in the previews ("Nice ascot!" Sigh.), that the movie wouldn't be that great, but it was still a solid film. I really enjoyed it - Pixar has yet to let me down.

On Saturday, we drove down to the Malden T stop and took the T into Boston. Our first stop was the Sam Adams brewery tour. It was already crowded at 11 am, and the first tour is at 10! The tour was free, they just ask for a donation to charity. The tour itself was very short, probably only 15 minutes or so. The brewery is small - they make beer for samples, and for putting on tap around Boston, but that's about it. The main brewerys are in other states - Ohio and Vermont, or something. They don't do any bottling in the Boston location. It's also their R&D site, so that's where they make the experimental beers or work on new flavors or whatever. After the tour, we went into the sampling room for the tasting. They gave us each a 7 oz glass that was ours to keep, and we sampled three beers: Boston Lager, Summer Ale, and Boston Brick Red. It was a lot of fun!

After the sampling, we tottered back to the T. We weren't drunk or even tipsy, but we were overdue for lunch and we had just had over one bottle's worth of beer. So, pleasantly buzzed, I'd say.

We took the T up to the Back Bay stop, grabbed hot dogs in Copley Square for lunch, since we were running out of time, then dashed over to the Prudential Center for our duck tour. Except we didn't know exactly where the duck tours departed from, so we ended up taking the most meandering path through the Pru to find it, when we were running out of time to make our 2:30 departure. Eventually we found it (if they depart from in front of the Shaw's next to the Pru, why don't they say that instead of the Prudential Center? Or why don't they give the cross streets at least?) and had our tour. It was fun, nothing earth shattering, a fairly standard "This is Boston" tour, but it was fun. Especially when we started boating around the Charles River, which I had never done before.

After the duck tour, we had tickets to go to the top of the Pru, for the Sky Walk lookout on the 50th floor. I'd only been to the top of two skyscrapers before, the Empire State Building and the Sears tower, and based on those two experiences I expected that we'd be in line for two hours before we got to the top. I was pretty shocked when the signs directing us to the Sky Walk never directed us into a huge line! I kept expecting there to be a huge line. When we got to the elevators, I told James "Oh, this is probably going to take us up to the huge line one floor up" - but it took us straight to the top! Yay! And it was a gorgeous day to go up - we could see for miles. Entire outside edge of the 50th floor is open to the public (the middle of the floor seems to be just bathrooms and elevators), so we could get a spectacular 360-degree view of the city. They offered a free audio tour, too: a little cell phone-like device, and there were signs posted at intervals around the floor with numbers that you punched into the device. It played short clips describing what we were seeing, which was neat. It really helped James understand the city (and me, too! I definitely learned some things). I pointed out the BU campus to him (which the audio tour didn't do), and that helped him get a good map in his head of where it was - he said he thought it was farther south. It's strange how your mind creates maps of spaces that aren't accurate, and then you see it from above and it all clicks into place.

Next, we decided to walk from the Pru to the North End, where we had a dinner reservation. James was skeptical of walking that far, but I knew it wouldn't be bad, that it wasn't as far as it looked from the top of the Pru. It only took half an hour or so. And our walk took us through some of my favorite parts of Boston: Copley Square, the Public Gardens, the Common, Fanuiel Hall and Haymarket.

We had dinner in a teeeeeny little restaurant in the North End, off of the main drag so it's probably not as popular as the ones on Hannover St. It was so small that our table was about 1 centimeter away from being flush against the next table. And on the other side, a brick wall. It was really tight! And kind of awkward at first, being that close to another table of diners. But it was okay. Dinner was good - James wasn't crazy about his dish - sweet potato gnocchi with sweet Italian sausage. The gnocchi didn't taste like sweet potato (or anything, really) and the dish came with broccoli rabe, which we didn't expect. For someone who hates broccoli because he thinks it's too bitter, broccoli rabe is pretty much inedible. My dish was butternut squash ravioli in a browned butter sauce with fried pancetta, and it was awesome. I gobbled it up and wished for more. Our appetizer was bruchetta with heirloom tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and a balsamic reduction, and it was sensational. I could have just eaten plates of that for dinner. It was perfection. Overall, though: I don't think we'll be going back to that restaurant. There are so many Italian restaurants to choose from in the North End, I'd rather go to one that's a little less cramped and maybe has a longer menu. I wasn't too impressed with the selection.

After dinner, we decided not to go to Mike's Pastries, which we usually do when we're in Boston, because we had our cake waiting for us at home. So we went home to have it, and I wanted to watch Toy Story 1 because seeing Toy Story 3 the previous night put me in the mood for it. But I discovered to my horror that I didn't own Toy Story 1!! So my loving husband agreed to run out to Target with me, and we picked it up, and then we snuggled on the couch to watch it and had our yummy cake.

On Sunday we slept in! I usually wake up (unwilliningly, but I can't seem to help it) by 7:30 -8am on the weekends, so it was a real luxury to sleep in until 11. We did some chores, talked to my sister and brother-in-law on skype, talked to our parents on the phone, and ran some errands. It was a pretty normal Sunday, but we did have a special meal to celebrate: our favorite kind of burger (it was a grossly hot day, so turning the oven on was not an option) - cheeseburgers with sauteed onions, grilled pineapple, and BBQ sauce; I made sweet potato fries (wedges of sweet potato tossed in oil and salt/pepper, roasted on a cookie sheet for 20 minutes each side at 450) and we had grilled veggies and fresh corn on the cob. Since I didn't want to turn on the oven, how on earth did I make the fries, you ask? I used the toaster oven on the back step! I squeezed one potato's worth of wedges on to the tiny toaster oven-sized tray and cooked them in that, outdoors, so my kitchen didn't explode from all the heat. Dinner was really, really good. And followed up by that awesome cake, of course. And since it was a Toy Story kind of weekend, we watched Toy Story 2.

It was a great weekend!

Sweet moments from today

James and I were sitting on the couch after dinner when I noticed that the clouds were turning pink and yellow and pretty, so we went out into the yard. We went outside barefoot because it's summer and it's a pleasant evening and we were only going to step out onto our lawn for a minute. Well, stepping out to look at the clouds turned into appreciating our flower garden, which turned into weeding the flower garden because I noticed an ivy vine that was threatening to choke our new lilac bush. And then we noticed that the ivy was everywhere, thin little light green vines that are little babies now but was seeking out all our good plants, growing up in them and trying to smother them. So we ripped out all the ivy while it's still tender and easy.

That turned into thinking about our garden around back, I guess, because somehow we wound up in the back yard weeding the vegetable garden. Then we gathered up some trash that had accumulated in one corner of the backyard, and when James moved a piece of it a chipmunk came screeching out and ran into the downspout of our gutters. So James, being the twelve-year-old boy that he is, put a rock in front of the downspout to trap the chipmunk in there. This turned into a James quest to capture the chipmunk in a trash can so he could look at it. So, then we heard the chipmunk run up inside the gutter, which turned into James spraying the hose up into the gutter which resulted in a wet angry chipmunk, I'm sure, but no chipmunk flushed out in the garbage can. Eventually James conceded the battle and gave up and moved on to other things, so I decided to plant a couple of herbs that my dad gave us. Right next to the downspout of the gutter, so every time I heard a chipmunk-y rattle from inside the gutter, I gave a yelp and imagined a furious, wet little rodent zooming out of the spout and attacking my bare feet. Luckily I got the herbs planted before the chipmunk reappeared.

By then, it was getting on towards dark and the mosquitos were out with a ferocity only seen in New England, so we retreated inside.

Where I realized that my bare feet were filthy!

So I hopped in the shower fully clothed, turned on the bathtub spout and filled the bottom of the tub a bit to wash my feet. In my haste, I blorped a big blorp of peachy body wash into my shower poof and started scrubbing. Well, soon enough there were mountains of suds everywhere, so I called James. And he came hustling in, probably thinking that I'd hurt myself somehow (it is me, after all), and I invited him into my peachy foot bath. So he hopped in fully clothed too. I squeezed out a handful of suds for him, and we stood in the inch of peachy-scented water together, washing our feet while we were still dressed, and the air smelled like peaches and it was just such a sweet, spontaneous, funny, peach-scented moment that I never want to forget.

Also: this morning, we were just started down our street on the way to work when James stopped the car: there was a momma duck and twelve tiny baby ducklings in our neighbor's driveway! We watched them go into the bushes separating our property from our neighbors', then James backed the car up and we watched the ducks emerge from the bushes and start across our lawn. I hopped out of the car to take a couple photos with my iPhone, which weren't that good because I couldn't get close to the cuteness. I remembered my camera in my purse, so James popped the trunk to give me access to my purse, and I hustled over (the ducks were still continuing on their way across our yard) and got a few photos of the cuteness. It was the best way to start a Monday, ever. And the fact that we were running late for work, but my loving hubby stopped to observe the cuteness and let me run around taking photos of baby duckies, makes me so happy. That's true love.

Lafayette Reunion Weekend

Last weekend was my 5 year reunion at Lafayette. It was really strange to go back, not just because of the holy-crap-how-is-it-five-years-already feelings, but because I've been going to reunion weekend at Lafayette my whole life, but this was the first time I was going in my own right. My first reunion at Lafayette was in 1987, for my dad's 20th. I was five, and I remember thinking that I wanted to go to Lafayette when I grew up. We went to almost every one of my dad's reunions - he thinks we missed one, but I'm not sure. In 1997, Dad's 30th reunion, my sister had just finished her freshman year at Lafayette, and my brother was going to be coming in as a freshman that August. In 2002, his 35th, I had just finished my freshman year. Then I graduated in 2005, and I might have worked at reunion that year, but I can't remember. 2006 was Steve's 5th reunion, and the parents and I went up for it. 2007 was Dad's 40th, and I was home from grad school so I went with the parents. That's a whole lifetime of reunions! And always as the daughter or sibling of an alum, so it was really weird to be reunioning in my own right.

Last weekend was also my sister's 10 year reunion (how awesome is it that we get to go to the same reunion together! I love that.) and she flew in from Norway for it, which was super exciting because I hadn't seen her since the day after my wedding (almost a whole year ago!) and she didn't get to go to her 5 year reunion. And since Carrie and I were going, my parents came up too, since it was a good chance to see their daughters. Leif R didn't fly in from Norway though, but James came with me.

James and I took Friday off of work and drove down in the morning. We left our pets to fend for themselves - it was only going to be one full day, we'd be back Sunday afternoon so we didn't need to bother the neighbors about checking in on them. (We don't want to ask them for too many favors!) The drive took about six and a half hours - we made a couple of stops, including a very frustrating stop in Morristown NJ, hunting for a Starbucks.

First thing we did when we got on campus was stop by AQB's office in the arts center - I worked for her as an usher and a box office attendant, and she's the advisor to the Arts Society which I was involved in. I had a present to give her - she has lots of toys on her desk, so when James and I got cool wind-up robot-y toys at his award dinner in Florida, I saved one for AQB.

Then, we met up with my family! We were all staying in South College, which is the dorm known for being loud and crazy and obnoxious during the school year, but is actually a nice building, fairly newly renovated, with air conditioning (!), so that's where they put all the younger classes. Turns out my dad requested to be in a room near Carrie, and I had requested to be near Carrie, so they put us all next to each other, which was really nice. We went to the All College dinner, and our table was for the classes of 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005 - Carrie was the only member of 2000, and one other person from the class of 2005 sat with us, but with my parents and James, it was really my family's table with one random person. The pre-dinner nibbles were really good, but dinner itself was disappointing. After dinner, there was a social out on the quad, but it was pretty dead. I ran into a girl from my sorority and caught up with her, but there wasn't anyone else I knew there. Eventually we headed over to Campus Pizza, the just-off-campus restaurant that was *the* hangout for drunk college kids. It was always loud and obnoxious and I never liked it there, and had only gone a couple times when I was in college. Now it was supposed to be a social gathering place for the younger classes, but it was just as loud and obnoxious as it had been in college, and I didn't want to be there. You couldn't hold a conversation, the music was so stinking loud. I only knew my friend from my sorority, her fiance and some random guy I think I had a gov-law class with once, whose name I completely forgot (or never knew in the first place) but he knew mine right away! Awkward. We only stayed for a little bit before heading back to the dorm to go to sleep.

South College still managed to live up to its party dorm reputation, as we were woken up in the middle of the night by some drunken bellowing out in the hall.

Saturday we had breakfast in the cafeteria known as "upstairs Farinon" to the college kids (and alumni) but Lafayette had some other, official name for it that had us all confused. It was really weird to go in there and discover it was all completely different! At first I didn't notice a difference, but then when I was loading up my plate from the fruit tray (I heart fruit trays, fresh pineapple is my favorite), I looked up and realized I didn't recognize anything. I was lost! It was disorienting, because some parts of the cafeteria were basically the same, but other parts had changed so drastically that they were completely unrecognizable. It was much more trendy and modern in there.

After breakfast, we had the traditional reunion parade, where each class carries a banner and a flag with their class year, and we march all over college hill. And even though my class had a really strong showing at the reunion (in the student center, there was a board showing the names of who had checked in for each class, and the 2005 section was loaded!), only a handful showed up for the parade. I guess everyone else was too hung over to crawl out of bed by 11am. After the parade was lunch, and James and I sat with my sister and parents rather than with my own class. That was the strange thing about this reunion - I wasn't really close to any of the people from my class, plus I wanted to visit with my sister as much as possible since I only get to see her about once a year, so I didn't do much reunioning with my own class.

The afternoon was pretty quiet, and involved a trip to the college bookstore with my sister and a nap with my hubby back in our room. In the late afternoon, Carrie, James and I hung out on the quad, where they had tents and free pretzels and ice creams and wine and fun things like a photo booth. A photo booth with crazy hats you could wear. So Carrie and I, and then James and I, got our photos taken. And the fun thing was, that unlike in a regular photo booth where you only get one set of the photos, at this one they printed out one set for each person.

Then we went back to the dorm to get dressed for the dinner, and I cannot believe we didn't get a head-to-toe photo of me and James all gussied up, especially since we've been trying to lose weight lately and we were looking good. I wore a dress that I bought back in LA (over a year ago) and never wore because it never fit. And now it fits! Yay!! Dinner was odd - it was all salads and cold appetizer-like things, and in my memory the Saturday night dinner was always the fancy one. But the food was actually better than the previous night's dinner, so whatever. The spinach salad with steak that was cooked to perfection and delicious peanut-y Thai dressing was my favorite. They had a drunken fruit salad that I enjoyed quite a bit, and yummy whoopie pies for dessert. And again, we sat with my family rather than my own class - OH WELL. It was better that way, I think!

After dinner there was dancing on the quad, but the band was so stinking loud that James and I only danced for a couple of songs before retreating back to our table with my sister, some of her friends, and my parents. We ditched the party on the quad when we found out the campus coffee house, Gilbert's, was open. Gilberts was my hangout on college - the quiet, chill hangout for the more artsy kids, whereas Campus Pizza was the hangout for the partiers. There was nobody there - and the only food was a couple of sad bowls of chips and pretzels, so Carrie, ALM (Carrie's college BFF), James and I hung out in a booth. At one point we reminisced about the famous Gilbert's nachos, and then a little while later a guy came out from the kitchen with a pizza box of nachos! (Yes the nachos are huge and are served in a pizza box. Mmm.) We totally enjoyed that. A little while later we got tired and went back to the dorm.

On Sunday we had breakfast in upstairs F'non and then went back to our dorm to pack up. We ended up hanging out in Carrie's room for a while before leaving. We kept dawdling, like we didn't want to go our separate ways, but finally we had to. Carrie and the parents went back to Jersey, and James and I had a long drive back to Mass. When we stopped at a rest area in Connecticut, we heard on the radio that there was a tornado warning for our area. It sounded like the storms were right behind us, so we got back in the car and tried to beat them. But of course a few miles down the road we found ourselves in an insane downpour, so we got off at the next exit. Luckily a Target was right across the street, so we went in there to wait out the storm. And we did some shopping, hehe. When we came back outside, the sky was beautiful blue with friendly little white clouds. Crazy. We got back on the road and went through one more crazy downpour but didn't need to stop, and then it just rained gently the rest of the way home. It was a strange way to end the weekend!