A few weekends ago was our sister-in-law's birthday party--it was a carnival style party with a real dunk tank, kettle corn, and a hands-free donut-eating contest! I brought her three bouquets of yellow flowers in popcorn bags (the idea being that the flowers look like popcorn...). The party was super fun, even though Dave had to work so I went alone.
Later that night Dave and I went to our friends', John and Christina's, housewarming party. The food was excellent (homemade pizza, raqulette, salad, John's wine--he's a winemaker) and the people were fun. We spent the evening chatting, catching up, and blowing fire with John's brandy and a torch made of paper grocery bag. You know, all the usual things you do at parties. They live in a second-floor apartment and I'm sure the tenants across the courtyard enjoyed the pyrotechnic show. (This is not me, by the way--this is Christina's friend, Tara.)
The, last week Dave's nephew, Bear, came down to stay with us during his spring break. I should explain his name: Bear is one of his nicknames, his real name is Larry (or Lawrence, if you want to get technical) but we mostly call him Nephew. Since all his uncles and their spouses call him Nephew so often his own parents sometimes goof up and accidentally call him Nephew. Anyway, he and Dave had a grand ol' time last week playing lots of video games and biking to campus to meet me for lunch between classes. Bear likes to cook and he made some fried cheese things for us one night. Yum. He also likes to eat so I had an excuse to cook some yummy stuff for him. Since the poor thing lives up in Gualala where variety and food don't ever appear in the same sentence, we made sure to treat him to some of our favorite ethnic foods. On Wednesday we trekked out to Sacramento with Mike and Bernie for Indian food. What a friggin disappointment! Bernie had chosen the restaurant based on all the positive reviews she read online. But this place was not only shady, it was GROSS. Dave and I realized that of the 100s of times we've eaten Indian, we've never had bad Indian food. Sure, we've eat bland, boring, not-spicy-enough Indian food--but never bad, gross-tasting Indian. This stuff was pretty revolting: the chicken tikka masala sauce tasted exactly like Chef Boyardee ravioli sauce...from a CAN! Ew. Anyway, we profusly apologized to Bear for introducing him to nasty Indian. We promised to take him to a delicious Indian place...just as soon as we find a place like that in the Sacramento area. (Otherwise we'll have to take him to the bay area since there are dozens of superb places there.)
The ice cream man came into our court so I ran out to meet him. We really enjoyed our Bomb Pops:
On Friday we took Bear to Lake Berryessa so we could play in the water with the dogs. The place was empty since it was a weekday...and the water was coooooooold. We slathered on the sunscreen and ran straight into the lake. Then we ran straight back out and laid in the sun. The dogs, however, fetched the ball from the water for a solid hour. On our hike in and out we walked past a fallen log where a rattlesnake was hiding. On the way in, the dogs chased it, then backed up FAST once they heard the rattle. After that we put them on make-shift leashes (the arm of my sweatshirt and Dave's belt). On the way out it rattled at us again, despite the dogs being leashed. It was a little creepy--we kept thinking about how we should have been a little smarter and worn plants and hiking boots (rather than shorts and sandals).
Saturday was Picnic Day at school. This is a huge, campus-wide open house/party day. TONS of people come to see all the demonstrations that each of the departments puts on for the public. There's food everywhere, bands playing, kids and dogs running all over the place. It is really fun. (It is also notoriously a drunken event for all the undergrads and quite a few of the graduate students. Last year Dave and I avoided Picnic Day like the plague; we left town because we just didn't wan to get caught up in all that. Two years previously we'd come to Davis for a wedding on Picnic Day and also took some time to look around for housing since we were going to move here a few weeks later. When we went downtown that afternoon for lunch, all the restaurants were packed with drunk college girls and there was even puke on the sidewalks. What a great impression of our new city.)
This year we steered clear of the drunks and toured the animal science barns instead. With the dogs, of course. Potatoes had never seen a horse or a cow before and he was totally enthralled. Using all his concentration, he gave them the "border collie" stare, trying to scare them into noticing him. It was really funny. Bear, Dave, two dogs, and I walked all over campus that day. By the time Michael fetched us from In-N-Out that afternoon we were pooped. The boys were having allergy attacks and my feet hurt (maybe I shouldn't have worn flipflops on a day like that). That evening we took Bear to a sushi place. He'd never had sushi before, and he really liked it.
Improvements on the house are coming along, if not slowly. Dave's been off this week and he will also have next week off. So far he's laid the new flooring in the master bedroom and is ready to do the hallway soon. After that it'll just be the living room and then we'll be..........done with the flooring project! While he was installing the flooring yesterday I babysat for Teo again. He slept most of the time, but we did play for about an hour. He's not a fan of tummy time, but he's getting pretty good at rolling to his side to reach for toys when he's on his back. Today was less fun for me because I had my long day of statistics--starting at 9am it's 1.5 hour of lecture in the morning, followed by 2 hours of "mandatory" office hours, and then stats lab in the afternoon. Everyone attends office hours to get help with the homework assignments. And during the 2 hour break between that and lab we're all at our desks working on the assignment. Ick. By 3pm my brain is completely fried from all that math.We're off to Gualala this weekend to deliver 10 boxes of honey bees to Dave's dad. Then we'll go to my late aunt Grace's memorial luncheon in Santa Rosa on Sunday. Busy, busy...but at least it isn't statistics!
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