I hate getting old

Grrr...a day after our double's tournament and my whole body is sore, even after remembering to stretch at the end of the day (which I never usually do). Plus my knees have been bugging me a bit. And I'm tired even though I got 8 hours of sleep. Blah, Mondays....

Housewarming Party! 11 Months Late :P

We finally hosted our official housewarming party for my family last weekend. Most of my extended clan of 17 have been over to the house at some point or other, but many of them haven't seen it since we actually got furniture. It also happened to be hubby's mom's birthday and she was in town visiting us so it was fun turning it into a birthday party for her as well. I don't think she's used to having so much family around, and I think she enjoyed it.

Thank goodness my mom brought 75% of the food for the party because I seriously don't know how I would have pulled the event off otherwise. I mean, I cook OK but for 18 people? Yikes. And when my family gets together, it's an all day eating- and hangout-fest. So the party started at noon and everyone went home probably around 10pm or so. Lots of fun; good practice for when we host Christmas this year. Good thing my sisters brought their Wii over too to keep everyone entertained--Grand Theft Auto on our PS2 is probably not the best choice for the 6 and 4 year old cousins :P

As for WC's mom's visit, that was really nice too. She spent about a week and a half with us, and it all went really well. The guest room was a little loud for her at first since we're on a semi-busy street and she lives in a retirement community, but after the first night she adjusted pretty quickly. It probably also helps that she did things like working on our yard for four hours to tire herself out. Who knew our tiny yard could require that much work? We really didn't mean to put her to so much hard labor on her vacation, but she claims to enjoy it and I'm not going to say no to free yard help (esp. given my black thumb...OK maybe not so much "black" as "lazy :P).

Yay for successful parties and mother-in-law visits!

More Visits & Visitors

We had a great weekend hanging out with my old college friend NS who came to visit from Colorado on his way over to a week-long photography workshop in Maine. He stayed with us on Friday and Saturday and we ate our way through the weekend. First up was dinner at a Szechuan restaurant near where NS and his friend CM were dropped off by the airport shuttle. Luckily everyone at dinner was into spicy food and CM's sister, who is also a local, enjoyed it so much she planned on bringing her family back later this week. I love knowing good restaurants and being able to introduce others to them! We're still learning our way through the Boston restaurant scene; unfortunately we still feel like we know the S.F. eateries better.

On Saturday morning we went to dim sum in Chinatown, at NS's special request. I can't imagine living in a place without good dim sum (or sushi, or Korean, or Vietnamese.... ;)). Because we went early we had our pick of dishes as the carts cruised by our table and amazingly all our favorite stuff showed up right away. NS said it was like Harry Potter where the food just magically appears on the table all at once. Mmm...I'm making myself hungry for more dim sum as I type this!

After dim sum we braved the intense heat (99 degrees according to my car thermostat!) and walked over to Boston Common where there was supposed to be a photo exhibit. The "exhibit" turned out to be a dozen or so photographers acting as human easels with big photo posterboards hanging around their necks. OK....

We found a Starbucks to cool off in for about a half hour, then hit Harvard Square as NS hasn't been back to the old alma mater in about five years. Science Center is as ugly as ever, I still couldn't remember where the Pooh door is in the Yard, Sanders Theater still has lovely stained glass windows, and people are still rubbing that nasty left foot of the John Harvard statue for good luck. If only they knew....

After NS and CM left for Maine on Sunday morning, we made some food and headed over to MH and NH's place for dinner. They recently had an adorable baby boy and we thought it'd be nice to bring them some home-cooked food. Little did we realize that NH's parents were still living with them to help with the baby so they were getting plenty of home cooking. Oh well; we all had a great time catching up and the baby received his visitors very graciously, full of smiles and babbles for all of us.

Finally, WC's mom is coming from Arizona to stay with us for a couple of weeks starting on Wednesday. I hope we can get the house clean enough in time!

HP Update #2 (still no spoilers)

Yaaay! I finished it last night, even with volleyball (on a side note, playing doubles outdoor in 90-degree weather is not fun, especially when you're supposed to be a team of four and everyone on your opponents' teams do show up like they're supposed to). Soooo good...I can't believe how action-packed the whole book was. Now I'll have to keep an eye out for a good deal on the whole series so I can start all over from the beginning :)

I'm so relieved not to have to worry about spoilers anymore! I was so afraid someone would slip and tell me something before I'd read the whole thing.

HP Update (no spoilers)

Got to page 585 last night before finally forcing myself to stop reading and go to bed. WC, meanwhile, worked all night on some project for work. Poor WC.

So about 175 pages to go...I am so finishing...wait!...we have our volleyball league tonight! Grrr...must...finish...reading...Harry Potter!

On the Harry Potter Bandwagon (no spoilers)

Woohoo! Got my hands on Harry Potter 7 last night. I was surprised it was available so quickly at my local library. I had pre-requested it several weeks ago and assumed I was around #1000-something on the request list and would never actually get it (that's how the Palo Alto library seemed to work for popular titles). But lo and behold, only a week and a half after its release, I got an e-mail from the library that the book was mine for pickup. Impressive. Apparently they got lots of copies and people have just been devouring the book and returning it quickly.

I got through about 280 pages over 4 hours or so of reading last night. Action-packed! Do I really have to work today??? I considered calling in sick so I could spend the day reading instead, but I'd already told my assistant yesterday that I was picking up the book so I thought she might get suspicious :P

I definitely plan on buying the whole series now that it's complete and re-reading from beginning to end. I've forgotten some things since reading #6 (shocker), but that's OK. More good reading to look forward to.

Blinds!!!

Hooraaaaaaay!!! Ten months after moving in we finally have real window coverings on all the windows in the house. A few weeks ago we ordered the last set of blinds we needed from Home Depot and oinstalled them over the last couple of nights. The paper blinds are finally gone!

Now to find curtains. It's never-ending....

1 wedding down, 2 to go

WC and I just got back from our first of three weddings in California this year. Actually, make that four California weddings as my college blockmate just invited us to his S.F. wedding in October as well. If we went, that would be a wedding at the beginning of Oct., beginning of Sept. and beginning of Nov., all in the bay area. If funds were unlimited I wouldn't mind adding another event to the schedule as an excuse to hang out with friends again, but alas the real world is not so kind.

The wedding on 7/14 was great. Lots of fun with great friends. John Jow, WC's and my favorite DJ from our clubbing days, was spinning the music for the event which just made it more fun. Ran around a bit doing my wedding coordinator thing for my friends, but I continue to enjoy doing that stuff and will eventually have to get my "business" started back up in Boston and pick up where I left off with it in California.

We stayed for a week after the wedding, mostly so I could attend SC's bridal shower the following Saturday but it was a great excuse for sticking around and enjoying other activities with the rest of the crowd. SC and I had another successful venture out to the Gilroy Outlets, went rock climbing twice, played some outdoor volleyball at Stanford like in the good ol' days, had lots of good eats (Korea House, Vietnam Village, etc.), and even squeezed in a night of clubbing. Great times.

SC's shower went off well, I think. Lots of people were distracted by the Harry Potter release though. MH didn't sleep all night because she was reading it right up to the point where she had to leave for the shower. RL forgot her picture for the scrapbook; but amazingly JY and CCC remembered their pics--what a role reversal! It was fun hanging out with all the gals and I just wish I could come back for the bachelorette as well.

Last night we ordered pizza and vegged before hitting the sack early in an attempt to recover from our jet lag. Spirit Airlines does not the most comfortable planes for sleeping, but for $340/ticket, what can you do?

Visitors #4 from Cali

Not that we're keeping track or anything, but we've had our fourth visit from California-based friends since we moved here 9 months ago. W. and G. came out for an ultimate frisbee tournament this past weekend and stayed with us on Friday and Saturday night. It was so great to see them and have them stay at the house. We love having guests!

It was the first ultimate game that either W. (my W., not G's W. :)) or I had ever watched and it was a lot of fun. The "spirit of the game" as they call it is very apparent. Lots of sideline cheering, all self-reffed games, and the fact that the team had traveled out all the way from California were all pretty telling that there's a real love for the sport. This was a meeting of some of the elite teams across the country, so we saw some good games. We even got to see W. make an amazing play, taking away an opportunity from the guy he was defending and intercepting the throw that was meant for the opponent. After a diving catch, W. landed in the end zone and scored the second to last point for the win! Yay, W.!

We also managed to find some good airfare for two of our trips out to California for weddings later this year. I've been looking for months and prices have just been through the roof, but we managed to get some pretty good deals in the last few days for the July and September weddings. Still looking for tix for the November wedding, but we'll get there. I don't want to think anymore about how much we're spending just on flights this year :P Can't wait to see everyone in a few weeks though!

We have GOT to stop buying toys

So, yeah, we budgeted for it and all but we're a weeeee bit over the estimate and, seriously, we just have to stop now. No Christmas presents, birthday presents, or extra trips this year cuz they're all rolled up into this baby: the 2006 Suzuki GSX-R 600.

This replaces the Honda CBR F4i that W. sold before we left California. The GSX-R is a better fitting bike for him (he can put his feet flat on the ground with this model whereas he was on tip-toes on the F4i) and it's a pretty sweet ride. We plan on making more trips into Boston now that we don't have to worry so much about parking.

Our first destination on our first ride? I surprised W. with the Jamba Juice I learned about on the Boston University campus! You should have seen his face--I wish I had a picture of his enormously huge grin when I pointed out the Jamba sign :)