Cape Cod anniversary trip

A couple of weekends ago IM and GM came to town a week before my and IM's college reunion. GM had never spent much time in Boston before so IM wanted to show him around. We all went down to the Cape together for a chill weekend. IM shot this very cool pic of three of us--neat, huh?

IM also found us a great little B&B called
Cobblestone Cottage. The room we stayed in was super comfy with a newly updated bathroom en suite. We were the only people there that weekend so it was like having a little hotel all to ourselves. I'd definitely go back there and highly recommend it. Bev's bottomless cookie jar was a big plus :)

We did a lot while we were there, considering we didn't do a lick of activity planning before heading down there. We arrived late Friday afternoon and just wandered down to the nearest beach for a look-see; it wasn't really swimming weather. Splurged on a yummy dinner at Pisces. Instead of appetizers we basically got a couple of entrees to share amongst the four of us. Mmm, mmm good.

Saturday we did a great bike ride on the Rail Trail--a nice, flat, easy ride. The hubby says we rode something like 16 miles round trip. I haven't been on a bike in probably 7 years so that was a big deal for me. We barely missed the rain that started flowing just before we got back to the bike shop. After the ride I somehow coerced everyone into doing a little bit of rock climbing at a local gym (heehee).

On Sunday we fulfilled GM's need to see the Kennedy compound with a little boat trip out of Hyannis. I actually skipped that tour because of my tendency to get seasick and instead went shopping on the main drag. We made sure to get back over the bridge at a decent hour to avoid the traffic and explored Plymouth a bit. Plymouth Rock was unfortunately not open for viewing as they were renovating the structure that's built over it. The trip ended with a delicious meal at Isaac's in Plymouth. Don't let their 1980s, gold-trimmed, ugly carpet decor fool you--the seafood is delicious!

Happy Third Anniversary to Us!

It's been three years since our May 29, 2005 wedding and it has FLOWN by! I already got my (very sweet) card plus a (very sweet) Heath Bar on my pillow from Willy just after midnight--haha, he knows my sweet tooth well! I'll save the candy until after the dinner he has planned for us to celebrate. He won't tell me where we're going but I can't wait!

Yay for anniversaries! Yay for amazing spouses! Yay for us! :)

Dad update

I just realized I never provided an update on W's dad's surgery. Everything went pretty well and the surgeon thought he got about 70% of the tumor out. I know, sounds like there's still a fair amount still left in there, but he seems to have been doing pretty well since the surgery. He was only in the ICU for a day before they considered him ready to go back on the regular floor. After a few days he transferred to a hospital in Long Beach, which is closer to home for him and therefore also easier for his wife to go back and forth. All in all, it's been the best possible outcome so far. Thanks to all the friends and family who offered their support through this relapse. JC, SZ, MK, Aunt M, Aunt C--you guys are great. Thank you!

Happy Birthday, W!

Happy Birthday to You
Happy Birthday to You
Happy Birthday, Dear Hubby
Happy Birthday to You!

Last Saturday we had a little birthday get-together at our house for W, a day after his actual birthday. It was the first time we threw a non-family party at the house so it was kind of a big deal for us. We invited a bunch of volleyball people from our leagues and it was really nice to see them outside of the gym. It's hard making new friends as adults, but we keep trying.

I was a little nervous about playing hostess and hoping that everyone was going to have fun. I wasn't sure how many people were going to show up since it's not like our tight S.F. crowd of friends and it would have sucked if only a handful of people came over. But I feared for naught as we had about 20+ people come to celebrate. We borrowed my sisters' Wii for entertainment--Raving Rabbids was a big hit, heehee. I made/defrosted/bought a bunch of appetizer-type food but was good this time and didn't totally overdo it with the food. The drinks, however, were another story. I bought about three big bottles of hard alcohol and some mixers and no one touched it. They just had wine and beers. Oh well, more for us to have when everyone's in town for our 10th reunion I guess! In the end the last guests left around 1:30 or 2:00am so I guess they were having fun! Whew, glad it went well!

Oh, and these pics are courtesy of our friend and fellow volleyball player (of course) Suzi Camarata who is a professional photographer. Thanks, Suzi!

Oh, and if you're wondering what I got him for his birthday, here it is. We both need new helmets as ours are past their expiration dates. Apparently you're supposed to replace them after a few years regardless of whether they've been involved in an accident. Now I just need to get him a new riding jacket as well since the one he has is blue (part of our wishful thinking that we were going to get a blue Yamaha YZF, which didn't happen--instead we got the equally hot Suzuki GSX-R in red so I can't complain).



But remember how I said we both need new helmets, since we bought them at the same time? Well guess who got herself a little present while she was at it? ;) Here's hoping the spring weather that's been around for a week or two sticks around so we can put some more miles on the bike. W hasn't even ridden it enough yet to get it past the break-in mileage. With gas prices what they are nowadays (I think I paid $3.75/gallon for premium yesterday), we'll have to travel light more often and take the bike instead of one of our cars!


Happy Birthday again, best hubby in the world! Looking forward to many, many more.

All by myseeeeeeelf

I don't really like being home alone without my hubby :( W had to fly out to L.A. this morning to deal with some dad health issues. The brain tumor is back and has invaded more aggressively this time. We got the news about a week ago but since then W has had a really hard time getting an answer from the surgeon's office as to when they would be operating. They finally called yesterday to tell us that the surgery would be tomorrow. Thank goodness W had one mileage ticket left up his sleeve or else that last-minute flight would have cost us $1000+.

So W is gone until at least late Monday night. That's six days. Seems like a long time :( I should probably enjoy the time to myself but so far it's not a lot of fun.

Please send some healing vibes and patience vibes our way if you have some to spare (if you know the history with his dad you'll know why we need the latter!). Good night!

Vail, baby

(View from Eagle's Nest Ridge run at Vail)

Last month we went on our week-long, kind-of-annual snowboarding trip with Ninja Z, Ninja S & hubby, and about a half dozen other friends who joined us for a couple of days here and there. It was a total blast, though I was sore for pretty much the entire trip because I am the weak snowboarding link amongst the group. Bailed pretty hard probably 1/2 a dozen times, had a really sore lower back for a couple of days and a big, fat, black & blue bruise on my butt, but it was worth it :) Good times, good times....

Here's a pic from the night we lost the car in a local parking lot. Picture this: DA, the guy looking up and to his right, screaming at us, "Are you F*!&ing kidding me?! Four of you and none of you knows where you parked the car?!" JL, the guy with the loser sign, is agreeing with him, all the while conveniently forgetting that he was sitting in the front seat of said car while we were parking. Not seen in the pic is the fact that SC was laughing so hard she was literally bent over, legs crossed, trying not to pee her pants. Finally we had to call WC, who answered the phone, "Hi...can't find the car?" The boy is psychic! He knows me waaaaaaay too well :P

DA is also the guy who took some awesome videos of each of us snowboarding. It was so cool! He is probably the best boarder of the bunch of us and he had his camera with the video function and he'd just chase us down the mountain, circle around us, and even film while riding backwards. So now we can all see what we look like when we ride--pretty neat stuff.

We got the whole gamut of weather while we were there. Really sunny, warm days with 50-degree temps, and really cold, windy days with very low double-digit temps. We also got a big snow day that created giant snowballs:

I think next year we're going to try to hit Park City, UT. Ninja Z really just wants to go back to Whistler, but we kinda want to check out this one last major resort before doing that. If Park City isn't good though, it's pretty much Whistler for us from here on out. Vail was pretty good in terms of snow but it felt more like a skier's mountain because there were a lot of long flats to get to different parts of the mountain and into some of the bowls. The good news was that a lot of the flats must have had just the tiniest bit of downhill slope because it wasn't too bad as far as traverses go. Either that or I'm getting better on my board ;)

On the mend

And it's about time, too! That cold I was coming down with ended up being pretty nasty. It was just a virus but whatever was going around this year has been lingering with people for 3-4 weeks, at least according to the nurse practioner I finally dragged myself to see. It took me 3 days off of work and sleeping all day--in the guest bedroom :(-- before I finally started to feel better. I can't remember the last time I was so sick, and I hope it's a looooong time before it happens again.

As for the thumb, I got "upgraded" to a real cast when I went to see the hand specialist two days after the ER. I was too swollen for him to do a good exam (my hand was seriously bloated) so he wanted me to immobilize it for a week or two and then come back to make sure I didn't need surgery. What?! This thing just kept escalating. I initially thought they'd just pop the joint back into place...then I had to go to the ER...then x-rays...then 3 doctors to get it back into place...then temporary cast...then specialist...then real cast...and now maybe surgery?! Ugh.

Finally 12 days of showering with my arm in a bag later, I went back to the specialist who gave me a thumbs up (haha) on my progress. Ligaments were healing well, no surgery needed. Finally some good news. But I still needed a splint--the world's most ghetto splint ever, apparently.

Here's how you make it:

1. Place paper towel over palm and sketch out shape of splint with pen.

2. Heat up plastic material until flexible and cut out according shape of paper towel mold.

3. Wrap plastic around palm and thumb; hold until it hardens.

4. Secure the back of splint with a giant, ugly velcro strap.

So, 2 more weeks of splint time to make sure I healed some more. At least it's removable and now I could shower normally and shampoo my hair normally, wash my left arm, move my wrist, etc. Finally, 4 weeks to the day of my injury (just 3 days ago) went to the specialist one more time and everything looked good so I finally could get rid of the splint and start physical therapy. I've been doing the exercises for the last few days and I've already gained so much flexibility in that short time. Yay, just in time for Vail! No way I'm gonna take 6-12 months to fully heal, silly doctors.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Or Gong Xi Fa Cai in deference to my pseudo Mandarin-speaking husband :) Hope you all have a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year filled with much love, laughter, and good times!

Sick & Broken :(

On Sunday WC and I played in our first Yankee volleyball tournament. Yankee is one of the main, formal vball organizations in the area. They organize tournaments and have official rankings for individual players that range from C- to A+. The guy who put our team together entered me as a C-, which honestly kind of bummed me out because I'd like to think I'm a little better than beginner after more than 15 years of playing. I ended up having a great tourney day and the official rater wanted to write me up to a C+. Yay!

So I went into our regular co-ed 6s league last night pretty jazzed to play after my great outing the day before. I'm currently battling a cold with a nasty cough though so I thought about not going but couldn't resist. I should have listened to my instincts because at the second-to-last game of the night I went to dig a hard-driven ball that managed to contact my thumb in just the right way to both dislocate it and tear the ligaments. And on my dominant (right) hand too! Spent three hours in the ER where it took three different doctors to try before they could finally get the bone back in place. I tried to tough it out with no pain killers but after several minutes of them pulling and pushing my unnaturally angled thumb I couldn't take it anymore and let them shoot me up with some numbing liquid. They're telling me 4-6 weeks of recovery time, but I hope it's sooner because one month from today I'm supposed to be snowboarding in Vail! Send me healing vibes!

P.S. It sucks to type with one hand. To immobilize the thumb until I see the hand specialist tomorrow (who knew there was such a thing, btw?) they wrapped me up in a temporary cast-like thing up to my elbow. Got a sling and everything. Blah, seems like overkill.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas (albeit it a little late), everyone! Things have been kind of hectic, but I love the holidays and all the celebrating around them. On Friday 12/21 my mom turned 60 and my sisters and I threw a big birthday party for her at a local function facility, Spinelli's. We had about 50 guests and I think she enjoyed it. It was just like planning a mini wedding reception, complete with centerpieces, favors, a tiered cake, slideshow, and gifts. My sisters did most of the work, I just "coordinated" :P Thank goodness for crafty and technically-literate siblings!

Four days later on Christmas day we hosted the 24 guests at our house. Amazingly there was still too much food. Of course, I didn't make it all though I did bust out not one but two Crock Pots for the first time ever and made three different dishes with them--chicken with stuffing, pork roast, and salmon. I think they turned out decently well, though I didn't love any of the recipes in the end. Next time I'll stick with my tried and true chicken thighs instead of dry chicken breast--blech.

Each family was asked to bring one dish so that I wouldn't end up cooking all day and, honestly, there's no way I'd be able to pull off cooking for 24 if my life depended on it! Somehow there was still waaaaaay more food than we could ever eat so everyone was forced to take a couple of containers of leftovers home. But WC and I are still eating the leftovers this week!

All in all, the whole family party went pretty well I think. I was very happy that we pulled off hosting our first family Christmas at our place :) And, thankfully, we'll probably never have to host Thanksgiving since we usually use that time to visit WC's mom in Arizona. Heehee....

And Happy New Year to everyone, too! After all the parties around Christmas we totally weren't into New Year's celebrations this year so WC and I met up with my mom and sisters for a little steak dinner and then just went home and played video games for the rest of the night. First we played the Wii at my sisters' place, then we went home to our PS2 and played the SSX game I got him for Christmas. That game is more fun than I remember! I'm totally addicted now and spending way too much time on it. It's getting me jazzed for our trip to Vail in February (it's a snowboarding game, for those of you who don't know).

With Christmas and New Year's both falling on Tuesdays this year everyone's schedules are all wacky. Yay for what feels like a whole bunch of short weeks in a row though!

Oh, and as an aside, when I checked the thermometer in our bathroom this morning it was...wait for it...7 degrees outside. Seven! I don't know what happened, it's been in the 40s most days but today is definitely CCCCCCCOLD! Ah, New England :P