What every little girl dreams of

Our friend Steve received this for his 30th birthday from his lawyer friends. Her name is Butterscotch.

You can't beat home

We made our first trip home together since moving to New York this month. We packed a lot into 10 days and managed to avoid Fresno. Always a good thing in August.

I was reminded why early fall on the Central Coast/San Francisco is the best time to be there. We arrived midweek so I could get a couple days in the Bay before I swam the Golden Gate Bridge (more on this in a second). After an early morning surf with Liz, I got a day pass into the South End Rowing Club and after a nice warm swim actually sat on the beach in the sun. In San Francisco. Unbelievable.

Saturday morning I met Jenn and my family at Aquatic Park for a swim with Leslie and the crew from Swim-Art for our swim "across" the Golden Gate Bridge. About 20 minutes into the boat ride to what I thought was going to be Marin, we get the call that the jump is in 5 minutes. Clearly not anywhere near Marin, I realize that we're not swimming the span, but from the Bridge to Aquatic Park. Not as exciting to talk about, but still a 2 1/2 mile swim.

After the swim, our friends Tom and Anke arrived from New York. We did our best to get them ready for surfing through immersion, starting with attending Point Break Live. If you thought the movie was a fine piece of film making, then this is the theater production for you! Keanu Reeves is such a fantastic actor, that the only way to capture his charisma is to audition audience members to read his lines of the cue cards.

A good time was had by all. And no, the 3-D glasses are not for the play. She just had them in her purse. You know... just in case.

From there we headed to Santa Cruz where the only mission was to teach Tom and Anke to surf and eat lots of Mexican food. Mission accomplished.

Our schedule was as follows:

• 6:30 am: Wake up
• 7:30 am: Surf
• 11 am: Eat
• 1:00 pm: Rest
• 4:00 pm: Surf
• 7:00 pm: Eat
• 11:00 pm: Rest

First anniversary part 2

This is a whole different anniversary. We've been in New York for a full year! We're meeting people, figuring out the town, developing the subway stare and yelling at people out the window. In other words, we're getting a little closer to being local. We spent the evening at the Central Park Boathouse celebrating our friend Melissa's birthday. On our 1st day in the city last year, we rented a rowboat from the boathouse.

To take a page from Violet's blog:

Boathouse 2007	Boathouse 2008

First anniversary

I can't believe it's been a year already. A year since the wedding, a year since we've seen many of you, a year since we've been officially Californians. We decided to celebrate by getting a zipcar and heading into Western Massachusetts. We stayed at the lovely Kenburn Orchards, where we went berry picking in their berry fields after we checked out. But most importantly we went rafting! Class 3's and 4's on the Deerfield river. It's not the California Salmon, but it was a great time.

Rafting the Deefield

One of the great things about this trip is that it was almost a year ago to the day that we were rafting in Thailand on our honeymoon. The difference in water temperature was about 25 degrees, though.

Rabbit Update

Just in case you had any concerns about Fancy Dancer and Lionel Richie not getting along...

Summering in the Hamptons

Jenn, Paul and Brodie made their way out to the east coast, and we were invited to spend the weekend with their families in West Hampton. Funny how beach culture ends up being familiar no matter what coast you're on. We had such a good time, Paul had to put a party hat on.

Still Learning

This raining in summer thing still takes me by surprise. We headed to Central Park to see some free music and wound up looking like this
We went all the way back home to dry off, but when we went out again, we got stuck in another downpour. At least that time we had an umbrella.

Visitors!

I've been scolded by Holly for not posting, so I thought I'd update on everyone what we've been doing since I came back from my two weeks of work travels. In addition to turning 30, we've been receiving visitors.
Sadie and Zak joined us for our birthdays, as did Holly and Jeremy and lots of local friends, when we hosted a lovely little party and had Dom Perignon and vegan caviar. We walked all over town and saw the fantastic Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. We also headed down to the always fascinating Coney Island and rode on the historic Wonder Wheel, and witnessed fascinating sites like this.

Yeah...The sound effects are particularly lovely, don't you think?

Anyway, after Sadie and Zak left Eric's brother and his girlfriend came out for a few days. It was a during-the-week visit so I didn't get a lot of time with them, but Eric took the day off and took them to the Murakami exhibit too. He apparently walked them around for so long that Christy got blisters and had to go home. It was a great, but short visit. Hopefully next time they're out they'll appropriate city calluses built up.

The day Jesse and Christy left, Stasia, a friend from high school came out for the weekend. We had a day in Brooklyn and a day in Manhattan, and during that short time I convinced her that she needed to leave Fresno. It wasn't that hard.

So now we're back to just us and the rabbits. Summer is quickly arriving, and I'll soon be suffering outside of my 55-75 degree temperature range.

Hard Work

Ah, the jet setting life. Trips to Belize, trips to Vancouver. Traipsing around the islands of British Columbia to check out salmon farms. My job is tough. Actually, it can be exhausting. This photo of me enjoying a sailboat was followed by three days inside an over-air conditioned conference room from 8:30 to 5:30 and a 6 hour flight that was only supposed to take 2 hours. All this travel has made me an incredibly cranky flier. I don't tolerate people who leave liquids in their bags, forget to take off their shoes, or walk through the metal detector with a pocket full of change. I flash my gold frequent flier card everywhere I possibly can so I don't have to wait in line and can spend an extra 15 minutes at home. Hotels without wireless are totally unacceptable, and ones where you have to pay for wireless (which weirdly only happens in expensive hotels) receive my wrath in the form of a bad review (ooh, scary!). And an airport with zero vegetarian food options is an airport I avoid at all costs (along with any Chicago airport, Atlanta, Houston and Denver in the winter).

My frequent traveling has other drawbacks, like when I send my friends to the airport and they check in 2 minutes before the flight closes (sorry Sadie and Zak!). But I'm home now for a month, with only a quick local trip and another month at home. This means that I'm spending 5-days a week in the office, which is a rough change, but I'm also getting work done, which is novel!

Next stop: Back to Thailand for more shrimp fun. At least all my travel means Eric gets a lot of work done. Poor guy.

Spring has sprung!

Long Island surf report

This is Teresa with the surf report for Long Beach, Long Island, Saturday, March 15.   2-3 feet with occasional 3-4 foot sets.  Clean with light offshore wind.  Good shape.  Water temp 42 degrees and the sun occasionally peeking out.

Seriously, my hands were freezing.  I wore:

• My 5/3
• A fleece rash guard
• My hood
• Booties 

I lacked:

• Gloves
  

This a serious lacking.  In fact, it's the next thing I need to buy before I head out into the water.  Overall, though, I had a great day.  If I was on my longboard I could have stayed out forever.  Instead, I was on my 6'10" and caught the best wave I've ever caught on that board.  Short little ride, little cut back.  It was great.  It's amazing what I can do when I'm not afraid of dying at Ocean Beach!

California Baby-Fest 2008!

I used a free ticket and went home for the Presidents' Day weekend. After the airline seriously testing my patience, I finally landed in San Francisco. Never mind that I was supposed to land in Fresno, sometimes you need to take what you can get. Kim let me crash at her house for the night and then drove me to Santa Cruz so we could visit our Grandma, who's not doing so hot right now. After the visit, Kim, who is running a marathon (!!) did some training, while I rode my bike to New Leaf to buy 6 packages of soyrizo. Oh my Gawd, I can't get enough of this stuff. Apparently there aren't a lot of vegan Mexican food aficionados in New York, and you can't buy this stuff. Seriously, if you come out to visit, bring me some, I'll be forever grateful.

Anyway, on the way home, I tried to stop by Paradise, but it was closed, so I biked on past the old neighborhood. I ran into Jeanne across the street, who still invites me to their annual Christmas party, Richard, the contractor who fixed up the old bathroom at 38th Ave, and was now working on our neighbor Loretta's house and Debra, across the street, who's as talkative as ever. The old 544 is down, and a giant monstrosity has taken its place. No more fire pit, no more ivy mushroom, no more hammock. The old house is officially dead.



After Kim left, it was Baby-Fest 2008! That night, I spent the evening with the Griffiths. Violet rolled onto me a couple of times, and as always, Katie and Alden cooked me a lovely meal. It was really good to see them, as always, and I realized again how much I missed the old Santa Cruz crew.

The next morning, I got up to surf and got totally worked because I'm out of shape and it was well overhead at the Point. Yikes, I need warm water in New York so I can get back out there. Then I headed up to UCSC to visit the Mangel Lab where, strangely enough, babyfest continued because Marc is a new grandfather! It was so wonderful just to sit up on campus in the sun.

I met up with Kim M. and Jenn later in the afternoon. Then Eric and Greg joined up. Babyfest continued since Jenn's got about 3 weeks until she pops! It was really good to see her again. Such a difference from her shower back in November! But Jenn's the ultimate trooper. 3 weeks to go and she was out having pizza, laughing, and seemed to be doing great for someone who was carrying around a fully baked baby!


Kim picked me up on Saturday to go to Fresno for Chinese New Year. This is the first year I've to give out the red packets. I really need to marry off some of my aunts and uncles, because this is getting ridiculous! Then the kids started showing up and babyfest continued. Shannon showed up with Addison (hardly a baby) and Thomas, Stasia and David brought Marec. Heather, Paul and Sadie were there to keep me sane. It was great. I've never seen 4 year olds dominate the siap game before. Sadie was a good sport too and put together red packets for the kids and Heather and Paul.

On Sunday, the final day of Baby-Fest 2008 Heather and I met up with DeAnna for John, Heidi's husband's, birthday. Heidi had Claire and Ellie there. De brought Ali, Michelle, who's really pregnant brought her son Ethan, Heidi's brother brought his infant daughter, and I think John had about 5 cousins with kids under 1. I was exhausted! Four days of babies and nearly hatched babies, and I was done. I don't understand how people do that full time!

Bar-th-elona

From Barcelona

Gawd, I love my job. The Seafood Choices Alliance was kind enough to hold this year's Seafood Summit in Barcelona. While 5 days inside a hotel conference room don't count as much of a vacation, and make it pretty tough to see the world, the benefit was that 1)Rich was there too because of work and 2)because we didn't pay for my ticket, Eric could fly out.
After 5 days of fish fun, Eric arrived and vacation began! Claudia, the master travel planner, found us a great apartment in the old quarter of Barcelona. By the time she arrived on Friday, we had settled in well.


Down the street from our apartment was a great market with lots of salt cod that I wouldn't let anyone eat. We spent a day wandering, a day on a Guadi tour, which was essentially more wandering, and Claudia found the free day in the Picasso Museum. The superstar vacation planner struck again and found us a great deal on a rental car. We drove south to go cava tasting and the next day headed up to the Dali museum and some famous birch forest, or something.

This is a really hasty post, because I want to make sure I get it up, but I'll fix it up later.

Meet Lionel Richie

Fancy D has a new boyfriend! Well, not really. She actually hates his guts and boxed him in the face once and bit him another time. Bonding is going to be lots of fun. Right now the house is overrun by rabbits and fur is flying.

We were really uncertain whether or not get to Fancy a pal, especially since we've had a few people say how much more outgoing she is now. Our friend, Nicole, is an animal communicator so we had her give Fancy a reading. Being skeptical scientists, we did this both out of flat out curiosity and desperately wanting to know what's going on in Fancy's little brain. After telling us the color of our rug (she's never been to our house) and letting us know that Fancy likes it when we hide carrots from her (which we do), she said that Fancy D would like an older rabbit about her size as a friend (Nicole's words were "she wants a rabbit like her") and wanted to go meet the friend.

So we loaded Fancy in a zip car, drove all over Long Island and introduced her to 4 little guys. Lionel Richie was the least offensive to her (only one bite and one box!), so we signed up to take him home. He had a few complications with his neutering, we just got him today.

As the person at the Long Island Rabbit Rescue said "Bonding is not for sissies"

Happy New Year!