Miscellany Monday

I spent the weekend in San Diego with my family.

In honor of Miscellany Monday here are some random things that Biggie said this weekend.

• We got to San Diego and we had about 3 hours until Match and Papa were done with dinner so Sissy and I decided to drive the boys over the Coronado Bridge. As we were driving around Coronado I mentioned something about the Navy Seals.

Biggie: Aunt Airplane, what are Navy Seals?

Me: They are an elite force of fighters.

Biggie: Do they fight bad guys?

Me: Yes, they do.

Biggie: Do they kill bad guys?

Me: Yes, they do.

(After about 45 seconds)

Biggie: Then they are awesome!

• All weekend he asked me if he could listen to "Hey-yo" on my phone. And then I would give him the phone and he would sing Taio Cruz' "Dynamite." The kid can rock!

• He is apparently learning about the predator/prey relationship, so every animal that we talked about he would ask, "What can a(n) _______ do to you." One of our plans for the weekend was to visit SeaWorld and I was telling him about going to see the Shamu show.

Aunt Airplane, I don't think I'll like Shamu. That black and white whale can kill me. The baby Beluga is better.

Strangely enough, there was a baby Beluga at SeaWorld who was born on Biggie's birthday last year. Though I must tell you - the water was not warm.

Come Along on Our Fantastic Voyage...

The following story is true.

Last Friday, Dirty and I left San Francisco around lunchtime, headed to the Russian River Valley. First stop, Korbel Champagne Cellars.

Dirty was driving and I was riding shotgun, navigating, dj-ing, and sending text messages.

Dirty handed me her phone and asked me to text her race car friend.

(Let me give you a little background here: Dirty and her dad are racers. They take part in road races, and have lots of racing friends all over the US. At one of her races, she met a man who has a son. She never met the son - Chaca*. They were friends on Facebook and a couple of weeks back it came out that we were going to be in Northern CA where he lives. So they made some plans to hang out on Friday night and left it at that.)

I begin texting him and he tells us that he will "gather his buds and come up with something to do."

We finish tasting champagne, get some food at the original Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, and are trying to decide between more wine and checking in to the hotel. So we text our new friend and ask where he wants us to meet him. He provides us with an address.

A little confused, I pull out my trusty Droid and rub a little google on the address. We determine it is in a residential area and assume it is his home address.

After checking in to the hotel and freshening up, we set the GPS for our destination and settle in for the hour-long ride. As we get closer, I start to get nervous.

You see, I'm a control freak. I don't really like the unknown.

Almost to our destination we miss the turn because there was no street sign and we have to circle around the block. About that time, I mention to Dirty that I'm uneasy. She says that she feels the same.

We're driving slow down the road, looking for the house number, when all of the sudden we see a guy with dreads riding a unicycle, then we realize that he is in front of the house we are supposed to be going to. And there is a guy, not the one we are coming to meet, sitting on the front porch drinking wine.

We are now laughing so hard we are crying. And sitting in our car on the curb.

We get up our courage to get out of the car and the adventure continues. 

Turns out the man on the porch, RickyBobby* lives in the house. He informs us that Chaca is in the shower and pours us a glass of wine. Then he takes us on a tour of the house and introduces us to his ducks.

Once we get inside, Dirty notices some cookies on the stove. She mentioned them and RickyBobby freaked out, "Don't eat them! Don't eat them! Remember we have hippies living here."

Turns out when Chaca told us he would gather up his buds, he wasn't referring to his friends...

So we're all standing in the kitchen trying to decide where to go for dinner when RickyBobby picks up my wine glass and takes a drink.

What?? We just met each other like ten minutes ago...

Everyone finally agrees on a dinner location and Chaca, Dirty and I get into the Black Tie Taxi Cab to head to downtown Napa. About two blocks down the road, the taxi pulls out in front of another car and we all gasp. Then the driver says, "You all have to help me out. My eyes aren't so good."

Excuse me?

Luckily we made it to the restaurant and were informed that we had 45 minutes to sit down, order, get our food, and eat. Otherwise we have to wait a full hour before we even get a table. We opt for option number one and begin our speed dating event.

At dinner, Dirty and I order a bottle of wine and we eached poured ourselves a glass. I take a drink of mine; and even though he was closer to Dirty, RickyBobby reaches across the table and asks for a taste of my wine again.

I'm so confused.

Though, we did enjoy a great dinner!

After dinner we begin our tour of the drinking establishments in downtown Napa. I am not kidding when I tell you that we visited at least eight different bars throughout the night.

Somewhere down the line we stumbled into an open-mic night at a coffee shop. We left RickyBobby there to watch his nephew perform while we went to an ice cream shop down the street. Where I ate the BEST.ice.cream.EVER! I'm not kidding - just typing that made me salivate.

Chaca went ahead and got RickyBobby some ice cream and we took it back to him at the coffee shop. He ate it while we were all standing there. And at one point he looked over at me and I started to say something and then he fed me a spoonful of his ice cream.

I'm just going to stop here for a moment to ask: What is it about me that makes men want to feed me? Seriously, this is not the first time that has happened.

After the night, things got a little blurry as we made our way through Napa.

Though I do remember two seeing Morimoto and Dirty arguing with some girls about SB1070.

I would say all in all it was a successful night!

Some Pictures

I thought you all might enjoy some pictures from this weekends wedding.

I wanted to put a few more up here, but I don't know how to edit pictures on Dirty's computer.

This was the "guest book" table. There were lots of pictures from their engagement session in the fire truck - SO adorable!

And how cute is that manzanita with the crystals hanging from it??

Our best attempt at the inside of the tent. It really does not do it justice though. The place was AMAZING!

The centerpiece. That orchid is suspended in water - so cool. The only problem was that the vase full of water was too big and I felt like I was looking at the person across the table through a fish bowl, but we managed to laugh hysterically all night so it didn't really slow us down.

Put Some Windex On It...

I'm back!

And if anyone wants to buy me a new computer so that I can keep up these posts, I would not say no.

Seriously, my computer got a virus or some such nonsense so I'm in the process of getting all of my files off of it and finding someone (Fiero) to fix it...

In the meantime, I can not wait to tell this story!

This past weekend, Dirty and I headed to Northern California for BigSurprise and Forrest*'s wedding.

Nothing that BigSurprise does is small so we were expecting a grand affair.

And that is what we got!

I think that I may have mentioned before that BigSurprise is Greek. And everything that you saw on My Big Fat Greek Wedding was the truth. Those Greek really know how to party.

I'll give you the story of Saturday's debauchery first and later this week I'll take you back in time to Friday's complete and utter chaos.

Saturday morning I wake up in the hotel room to the sound of leaves being blown against the window tornado-style. It was pouring rain and the wind was blowing everything to hell.

Did I mention that the wedding would be held outside?

Originally the reception was to be held in a tent, however, the ceremony was not. Plans had changed.

With nothing to do until we had to be on a 2:55pm shuttle to the wedding site, Dirty and I decided to take advantage of the wineries in the area.

As we drove north, the rain and wind got progressively worse. At one point I actually voiced to Dirty that I hoped that someone had provided BigSurprise with some downers. She has a tendency to get riled up.

At the first winery that we found open (who doesn't taste wine at 10 am??), a nice young gentleman helped us out and made sure we got the most of our tasting experience. At one point he tried to explain to us what a lingering finish was.

I'm not going to lie you to, we still don't know what it means, but we did agree that there were not many instances in which "lingering" was positive.

A few more glasses of wine and some lunch and we headed back to the show-tel.

Around the time we were supposed to be catching the first shuttle to the wedding location, we were trying to help Janiac get dressed so we didn't make it until the second shuttle.

Once we were off of the shuttle and into the tent where the ceremony would be held, champagne was flowing. I'm not kidding you.

When she was planning her wedding, BigSurprise told me that there would be alcohol available when people got off of the shuttle because, "I can't tell you how many times I've been sitting through a wedding ceremony and thinking, Damn, I could use a drink."

Not wanting to be party poopers, we enjoyed a glass or two of champagne.

This was bad idea number 1.

First of all, it was a logistical nightmare. Once we sat down in the folding chairs, we didn't have anywhere to set the glasses down if we needed to touch up our lipstick, remove our wraps, take pictures, etc.

Luckily, the ceremony only lasted about 12 minutes so we didn't have to worry about it for too long.

Next up, we headed for the reception tent. The decorations were beautiful, blah, blah, blah...

More importantly, there was an open bar. So we switched from champagne to whiskey...

...at 4:30 pm.

This was bad idea number 2.

In true party fashion, they got through the first dances and dinner quickly and got right to the party.


I will tell you quickly that BigSurprise's new husband is a fire fighter so when they came into the reception tent he was wearing his fire gear and they did the first part of their first dance to George Strait's Fireman it was real cute!


Once the music started everyone hit the dance floor and the shitshow began!


BigSurprise and her new MIL aren't really the best of friends. I won't go into the details here, but suffice it to say that their relationship is the stereotypical MIL/DIL relationship.


This woman is probably around the age of 65. She was wearing an old-ladyish dress and before the real dancing even started she was walking around wearing like three neck ties that I can only assume she took off of young gentlemen attending the wedding.


There happened to be one particular gentleman, who apparently works with Forrest. Before the sun went down he was breaking it down on the dance floor. And next thing we knew, he was taking his shirt off. Luckily, he had on a short-sleeved white undershirt.


Then he took that off. Luckily he had on a wife-beater.


Then he took that off.


And all of the sudden, Forrest's mom was wearing the short-sleeved undershirt over her dress.


About three minutes after that, she was riding around the dance floor on the back of the shirtless guy.


From there it was pretty much downhill.


If you've ever been to a wedding you can imagine how the hooking up game began.


And apparently it was successful for someone because I just got a text from BigSurprise that she found undergarments on the dance floor on Sunday morning.