Yikes, it's been too long since I've logged anything.
My mom was here last week...well, make that 2 weeks ago. She came for a short visit, but we had a great time. On Friday we took Bart up to SF and wandered around there for the day. The highlight of the day was walking around the Haight-Ashbury district. I bought some belly dance music at Amoeba's, and my mom bought a Beatles cd. And of course we stopped in nearly every shop on the street (there are some really funky places up there.) We took Caltrain back to Palo Alto and walked to Gary's office so he could show off his new tentacle system. We had dinner at East Bay Thai, our favorite Thai restaurant in Fremont.
That weekend we (Gary, me, and my mom) went up to Napa to visit Gary's dad and Emily. It was a beautiful weekend up there, and Gary's dad did an awesome job planning stuff to do. We went to 2 wineries in the Caneros region, then had dinner in downtown Napa. After dinner we went to an outdoor performance of Romeo and Juliet, set in 1930s Mexico. It was an amateur production, but pretty good. Unfortunately it was pretty cold by the end of the evening, and none of us was really prepared for it.
On Sunday the 5 of us drove up to St. Helena for breakfast at Gillwoods. We did a little shopping before and after breakfast. Emily and my mom discovered a consignment shop and spent the rest of the morning hunting around there. Luckily they don't wear the same size! My mom found me a neat beach dress, and I found a cool chartreuse and pink skirt and blouse set. I haven't worn either yet...it's been too chilly. On the way back to Napa we also stopped at Dean & Deluca's where Gary found a set of wooden salad bowls he bought for holding go pieces.
I had planned on taking my mom up to Berkeley on Monday, but luck was against us. Trixie had an accident on the living room floor, so instead we spent the day going to the vet. The vet diagnosed her with round worms, gave us some medicine, and told us to come back in a few weeks. By the end of the day we were pooped, so I drove us to Palo Alto for dinner and a trip to Stanford Mall. It's changed a lot since I was last there, so we went into a lot of stores I had never seen before. I found a couple of denim skirts at one place, and they actually fit nicely and don't bunch up the way denim skirts often do.
The next day I had to go in to work (I am very low on vacation time!) so I dropped my mom off at the Bart station and she took off for Berkeley and SF. She made a good day of it. In the afternoon she went to the Asian Art museum, which recently re-opened in downtown SF, and the main branch of the SF public library. I haven't been to either place, but she gave them both rave reviews. She took us out to dinner that night at the same Thai restaurant (apparently it's hard to find good Thai food in Jacksonville!)
Mom left early Wednesday morning for Connecticut, and life went back to normal here in Fremont! We decided next time she comes out to visit we'll try to see some more of California's 'natural' side.
Gary's been working 12 hour days, so I've had a lot of free time in the evenings when I get home from work. Sometimes I am productive, doing lots of laundry or cleaning. I have a long list of stuff I want to accomplish this summer. More often I find myself watching reruns of the Simpsons or trying to get our DSL to work. I gave up on the DSL last week, so it's dial-up this summer instead. I've been spending a lot of time watching Frito and Trixie play with each other. It's rather addictive, watching small furry mammals chewing on each other's tails and ears. Gary was musing the other night that it must be great to be a kitten, and have no more plans for your day other than sleep, eat, sleep, poop, sleep, play, sleep, sleep, and play. I have some pictures of them I need to upload soon.
My other addiction, which comes and goes, is the random proverb generator I wrote last month. I still haven't figured out a good way to make a party game of it, but it's fun to generate new proverbs over and over again. There are close to 40,000 possible combinations, which means that even if you hit the reload button every 5 seconds, you still wouldn't have seen them all after a day.
Time to go watch the cats again.
We got our cats last night. The foster mom, her 2 kids, and her sister came by with the cats to do the final paperwork and make sure we weren't living in a pit. The orange cat (formerly Cecil, temporarily Frito) made himself at home almost immediately. He found the giant cat tree, climbed to the top, and surveyed his surroundings. The brown stripey cat (formerly Sissy, temporarily Princess, Stinky, or Whiney) is not doing as well. She cries a lot. She isn't comfortable going up and down the stairs by herself. And she's sick, possibly with a parasite (she's got diahrea and stinky gas.) Actually, Frito is a little sick, too, but not as bad. He's a much larger cat, though, so if they do have parasites, I would guess that he could get through it much more easily.
Otherwise they are very cute cats. And they get along with each other really well, which is great.