February 14-17, 2014 (Part 2)

February 14-17, 2014 (Part 2)

Sunday February 16th, 2014 sounded like a great day to sleep in. Unfortunately, I work a job doing mobile notaries and have my hours listed on Yelp almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Hence the business name: "After Hours Mobile Notary." A very early ringing of my phone woke me up and I agreed to meet a young man who needed a last minute notary.  I hadn't even left the house yet when I received another call! This one from a man who needed immediate assistance. Fortunately, the two lived very close to one another, and I met with each man in the order they called.  The first one worked for the Sheriff’s office and was making a transfer to the Concord PD. I told him how much I love our local police officers and shared some stories of my CPD experiences with him. I welcomed him to our City’s great team! The second man had a trailer for sale and a DMV document needed to be notarized before the new owner could pick it up. Both were very quick and simple. 

As I was driving home, I noticed a sign for Concord Community Park.  I pulled in and walked around. The park is huge! Next door to the park is a Nature Center and Arboretum. I made a mental note to check this out another time.  Finally arriving back home I let myself in and imagined crawling back into bed with Casey, when a third call for a notary came in.  It seems I was destined to get an early start on my day! But I was thankful for the work. An extra $60 in my pocket at the end of the day was great news!

 

We decided to skip a free yoga class I had hoped to attend at Sports Basement in Walnut Creek. They are offering a free yoga class every Sunday for the rest of the year. They actually host a LOT of great free classes and events. Instead of stretching and holding, we drove to the North Bay to see the new home my in-laws just moved into.

 After living in their beautiful home on B Street in Petaluma 30 years, they moved exactly one-half mile away to the better-known D Street, and a little bit closer to Historic Downtown Petaluma.  Their new Spanish style home was built in the 20s and sits in between long lines of other gorgeous homes. Lots of incredible, giant Victorians stand out impressively and I’ve always loved driving up this road to get to their former home.  While the last house was modern and customized in numerous ways, the new neighborhood has a classic beauty about all the homes and yards. I love everything about it.

Sunday evening we had a double-date planned with Casey's parents.  We were taking them to their first Yelp Elite Event (YEE): The "Sweetheart Social at Sweetwater Music Hall" in Mill Valley. It was a great place to introduce them to a ton of the friends we've made through Yelp, while dining on amazing food and sipping drinks and wine.  The Easy Leaves played live music throughout the evening and we danced and had a great time.  I'm so lucky to have such amazing people in my life and family.

 

***fast forward a few hours***

 

"Happy Monday!" That's how I like to greet everyone in the elevator on Monday mornings. I've had a couple people completely ignore me, and once a guy actually turned around and faced the wall away from me. What can I say? I like Mondays! Especially when Monday is a holiday and I can sleep in with no phone calls. Thank you, Mr. Presidents!

Casey and I spent the holiday together in loungewear watching the Olympics from our couch. I fed our backyard birds and watched them come sing to the cats, then realized what a beautiful day it was! Tank top weather in February is pretty amazing. I thought back to the Nature Center and suggested we take a walk with the trees.  Casey agreed to join my Arboretum adventure! The gardens weren't as big as I expected them to be but were wonderfully manicured and had even labeled all the plant and tree varieties. A small creek ran around the Center. There is a nice walking path and a beautiful gazebo in the middle of a large lawn. There's also a perfect climbing tree and Casey climbed as far as he could, which was impressively high into the tree. 

We saw a sign for an open house on our way home and toured the 3-story giant sitting on top of the hill above us. It was honestly my dream house! So even though we're not in the market for a three-quarter-of-a-million dollar home right now, it was fun just walking around and imagining life with that kind of view. Giant trees and giant houses: What a GREAT long weekend! 
 

 

February 14 - 17, 2014 (Part 1)

After 16 months of living apart and experiencing the highs and lows of a long-distance relationship, my husband moved home on February 14, 2013. It's a year later and Valentine’s Day just came and went again, so I guess it’s fair to say that we are no longer considered official newlyweds, (though I personally think our behavior suggests otherwise), as we’ve now lived together for over one year and one day.  I’ve never really been a big Valentine’s Day celebrator. Perhaps the classroom exchange of cards wasn’t for me, or it was more fun to go to Havasu with my dad for Winter Blast. Either way, until 2013 I didn’t think much of the middle of February. This year I appreciated every minute of Valentine’s Day and was thankful it started off on the Friday of a  long weekend. Both of our offices were closed Monday for President’s Day, and our weekend calendar was full of fun plans.

 

I didn’t send out a lot of cards this year, only 3 actually. I did manage to hand-deliver some bouquets and flower plants, which probably made me happier than it did the surprised recipients. I enjoyed thinking of people who would be unsuspecting of the gesture, and even included a friend whom I’ve never met. I didn’t want to freak her out and show up at her office without warning, but since she’s literally in the building across the street, I left her flowers with their lovely front desk receptionist. So we’ve actually still never met in person. But I don’t think a face-to-face handshake is what makes a friendship official.

 

Since my husband’s office and mine are an hour apart, lunch was out of the question. I instead lunched with my friend Emily, who showed up in tears and about 15 minutes late. I had already planned a long lunch on my work calendar so I wasn’t stressed about getting back on time, and I was able to listen to and catch up with a good friend over some overdue garlic fries.  She told me about her bad day at work and then we had some time for the usual gossip and such. Service was a nightmare but I wrote a very long and sincere letter to the owner detailing our experience when I got home that night, and it looks like another lunch with my friend will be calendared soon, on the house!

Finally the work day was done and it was home to see hubby. He had given me my Valentine’s presents two days early. A jar of spicy pickles and a beautiful hair clip, which I lost in less than 24 hours. He received nothing from me. But we spent the evening together preparing lobster and veggies for the BBQ. It was a lot of fun and a delicious reward to our long days at work.  We crawled into bed much earlier than usual because our Saturday was going to be starting very early and we needed all of our energy! And because, well, you know… it was Valentine's Day. xoxo

 

 

I treated Saturday much like any regular Monday through Friday and tried to ignore my alarm for as long as possible. We were getting out of bed even earlier than usual to go volunteer with the Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation. Having worked with this group before, I knew what a labor-intensive 3 hours we were about to participate in.

We worked hard with the group trekking up and down Shell Ridge Open Space in Walnut Creek.  We helped maintain the lives of little oak trees for our three hours, and were set free at noon. 

Breakfast at TJ's Café in Martinez immediately followed. We had worked up quite an appetite and had an errand to run, so it was a convenient stop. I enjoyed a veggie patty with my eggs and left the place feeling pretty healthy. Another couple that we are friends with lives just up the street, so we delivered a day-late gift of vegan chocolates from Café Leonidas in Walnut Creek. We were still too wet and dirty to spend any time at their home, so we left after a few air hugs and rushed home to the showers.

 

Big plans had been made for our Saturday night! We unfortunately had to cancel seeing our friend's band (Durt Cheap) play at E.J. Phair's in Concord. But for good reason! My husband's cousin, Christopher Bengochea was the lead tenor for Madama Butterfly, on their opening night at the California Theatre in San Jose.  After fancying up, we drove south for an hour and arrived at the beautiful opera house!

 

 

 

 

I had no idea the storyline of the play until it was over. It was so beautifully sung with flawless execution of the soundtrack in the background. The interior setting was gorgeous and the theatre was a lot of fun to be in.  We had amazing seats and a digital screen above us translated the songs. It was the best opera I've been to yet, and so much more special knowing the star of the show! After the tear-jerking, brilliant performance, we joined our cousin and some of his friends for a drink and appetizers at Original Joe's Restaurant, around the corner from the opera house.  It was midnight by this time and we had a long drive, after our long day, so we didn't have a lot of energy left. After a few olives and one Bud Light, we were ready to hit the road. Hugs and kisses to our cousin with many thanks for our tickets to his show, and an hour later, Saturday was behind us as we fell quickly asleep in bed.

 

Long weekend, half over...