ellie

It's high time I start introducing y'all to more of the cast of characters that comprise my life.

I interact with a whooole lot of folks as part of my volunteer work. I belong to an organization called LITA (Love is the Answer). They match you up with a buddy in the hospital who does not get visitors, and then you see that person weekly for some one-on-one time. My first buddy was when I was in my early 20's. I visited her for a couple of years, and then she passed away. After that, I took one very long break from the commitment, but more recently I have been matched up with James (whom I have written about before, and will write about again very soon).

But really, the visits have not been all that one-on-one. I have been coming and going from the hospital to see James for close to three years now, and I have gotten to know many other residents. I always stop and chat with three or four of them for a few minutes on the way out. My time with them has such a profound effect on my thinking and feeling, I can no longer leave them off the blog and still be able to try and explain what's going on in my head or heart. They are an integral part!

Today I'll introduce you to one, and over the next several weeks I will sprinkle in a few more here and there, including the other convalescent gig I do, which is a knitting group. That one is a hoot.

Ok, so here we go.
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Sadly, I am going to be starting this process with someone that is no longer with us.

November 2008

This is (was) Elinor. Pardon me if I get the tenses wrong throughout this description, but I just found out about her passing this week, and it still has not quite settled in yet.

This woman was a kick in the pants. Definitely one tough cookie. Kind of a no-bullshit, "I grew up in the midwest and almost froze to death during the depression" sort of gal. I dont know how many kids she had, but she definitely had a couple of sons in their mid to late 60's that would come to visit her at lunchtimes, right around the same time of day that I would be visiting James. We'd all sit around and talk and tell stories. I always loved listening to their accents. There was also a granddaughter that would come from time to time, not much older than myself, and she was a knitter.

I think that Ellie was in her late 90's. She was very hard of hearing, blind in one eye and pretty close to that in the other. When I first met her she'd put her hand out near my legs and feel around to make sure that I was "that one legged chick". We eventually got familiar enough that she recognized my voice more quickly, I think. Mentally, she was sharp as a tack. She would always ask me about MyFavoriteKid, and if I had told her I was going to do something interesting during the next week, she'd always follow up to ask me how it went. She was a straight shooter. I would not call her a complainer, but let me tell you, she called it like she saw it....especially when it came to the hospital staff and how they handled her.

Now, right around the time this photo was taken (last November), Ellie was complaining about how cold it was in there, and dang-nav-it, what she needed was a hat. She wanted to me to knit it, and she wanted a beanie, but not too tight, and she wanted it to be blue, light blue, so it complimented her eyes (and I think most of her wardrobe).

Guys.

*sigh*

I never. knit. the hat.

The day she had asked me for it, I came home right away and found some yarn that was the right color, and then I realized it was wool, and that she would definitely need something that could be tossed into the hospital laundry. It took me weeks (it may even have been months) to get my arse into a shop that carried that sort of thing...and even then, even after I had the yarn, I still did not knit the hat.

A HAT, people.
(for those of you non-knitters out there, my skill level should have me banging out a hat in a day or two...this is not rocket science)

this is the yarn I had purchased, intending to do some fair-isle sort of thing

Then came our early spring her in Northern California, where we had temps in the upper 90's in what was it, March?? ....and well...it was no longer cold, which was another perfect excuse, and I just never knit it.

About a week ago, I got to thinking that fall was coming around again, and I had the yarn, and still no hat, and I had this guilt hanging over me, and dang-nav-it...I should knit the hat. And that is when it occurred to me that I hadn't seen Ellie in a few weeks.

Now, this is not entirely unusual. Sometimes a resident will have a spell where they take their lunches in their rooms, in bed...like after a fall, or a bout of...well...whatever....any number of things. So I went down to her room to say hi, and guess what?!

She's gone. She passed away about a month ago. Passed pretty quietly, with no trip to the "hospital-hospital". She just left.

And with no hat.

It really hit me hard, in a small part because this "not following through" theme has been cropping up all over the place lately, but mostly because....well....I'm just flat out going to miss her.

timing is everything

today's pickin's

MyFavoriteKid and I started "practicing" getting up at the asscrack of dawn today, since school starts on Wednesday. As I result, I have gotten a whole lotta stuff done today, but my "timing is off". It's now late (well, not very late if this were last week, but now that it's this week and I need to be up a couple of hours earlier?? It's LATE.)

So I'm going to bed.

Enjoy the tomatoes.
We did ;-)

give her an inch, she'll take a mile

I can't even count how many time I heard my parents say that about me when I was a kid.

Some things never change, I guess. I take a couple of days off away from the blog (at that point it was mostly due to travel and internet access), but then I get home and I can't get back on the horse.

Not for lack of content, to be sure.

The truth of it is that a whole bunch of stuff has happened worth writing about, but it is all charged with heavy emotion. Now, I have no issue getting all "emo" on the blog here (sing it with me!: we've done it before, and we'll do it again) but it does require some extra effort for me to translate matters of the heart into the words of my mind (I like to call the distance between those two points "the longest 18 inches").

So what happens then is the same old pattern. I feel like I need to "catch my blog up" on recent events, but my deeeeeep emooootional f-f-f-feeeeeelings need to be translated into words, and so I do that, and in my head I have the general gist of a blogpost....and then pretty much just as I sit down to type....the next big "emo catastophe" strikes, and I'm stuck in processing-mode again, not to mention behind.

What is making this even worse is that the events that have been happening in the last couple of weeks, are pointing to the fact that I have f-f-f-failed to follow through on things, and so the associated f-f-f-feeeeeelings smack of total inadequacy.

Follow?

Yah, if not, here's another cute photo of one Riley on Vacation:



Not as cute as yesterday's of course, because this one was taken when he was being left in the RV alone for a few....forget the fact that he has food and treats and a dog bed and toys....oh no, he wants OUT.

Anyhow.
The general gist is that on the logistical side, things are proving to be quite busy these last couple of weeks of summer (losing my wallet in the middle of this has not helped)...and on the emo side, I've had a close friend just out of the hospital, I've lost two of my convalescent home folks to the big home in the sky, it's the 10 year anniversary of losing my mentor, I'm getting older, people around me are getting older, and I've sort of become a crabby old hermit lady that doesn't like people so much.

Wait. Here's another cute pic.



See?
That is so much easier.

snaps on saturday

not taken today, but while we were on vacation in the van a couple of weekends ago....

Riley on Vacation

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A real post tomorrow. This is just my attempt at getting back in the groove ;-)

the land of very little wi-fi

I missed posting yesterday because having an internet connection was entirely out of the question. No cell phone signal, either...although I did manage to send and receive a text message, but that was only if I was standing on the magic spot with my head turned at a specific angle and the wind was blowing right ;-)

We are (sort of) out in the sticks.

I have photos to share, but I don't trust this internet connection to fast enough to get them here for you (we're at a coffee shop). The general gist of our trip so far is that we took all day to cover maybe 2 hours of driving, making all sorts of odd stops along the way, following whatever pulled us. We found a little mom-n-pop RV park that was way out of the way (hence no signal), down in a canyon. That had wild turkeys. And quail. And jack rabbits. And some sort of crazy albino looking deer. Oh, and the cows. Let us not forget the cows. The ones that creeped me out with all their scary loud moo-ing the middle of the night!

Anyhow, we are right now in a little town called Willits, CA....and today we're going to continue north and drive through the redwoods. And look for Big Foot.
hahahaha

bzzzzt!

I am busy like a bee today getting the house in order and the van in order to take a little road trip.

Here's a pic of Riley and Gaara "helping" knit while I was in bed this morning, before I became bee-like.



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By the way, I have spent a little bit of time on Facebook and I am such a dork that I'm not really getting the flow over there. Working on it, though. I'm gonna ask TheMostImportantGuy to give me a little tour or something. Sorry for the delay if you are waiting for me over there, though.

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my comments to your comments are always back in that day's comments ;-)

knitted chairs

I'm kinda in love with this so much that it makes me want to cover everything that bugs me in knitting....



More info about the project, plus the pattern, found here.
And if you are on Ravelry, you definitely need to click here to see what other folks have done with it because some of them are very cool.

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My knitting is going a little slow.

I am working on a sweater that is simple enough that it would normally be a very quick knit, if I weren't taking it on and off the needles all the time to check fit (I fret about these things, and this is why I rarely knit sweaters).

I have a sock in progress that is feeling lonely and rejected.

And I have a new shawl in progress that is not ;-)

it was good

Forwarded to me by KarenTheDancingLurker, it just made me so happy :-)



Other things that made me happy today:
* getting to sleep in a little bit
* no mommy-duty
* someone else making breakfast (dining out)
* love-y time with TheMostImportantGuy
* going to the mattress store to purchase a different (and more correct, let us hope) foundation to insert into my platform bed and support my mattress (first road test tonight)
* watching the final day of Le Tour de France. I might not have spun every day as part of Le Tour de Fleece, but I watched every. single. stage. of the tour. I had so much fun and found myself on the edge of my seat, literally, on several occasions. Not to mention total my total enjoyment of getting to fly over the French countryside in HD. Woot!
* cast on for a new shawl

snaps on saturday

little robot guy
(he lives in the den/guest room)

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In other news....

Nine. Days. Oooo yah, baby!

Love MyFavoriteKid, but he's off with his dad for Nine. Whole. Days.

Excuse me, while I go finish my glass o' champagne ;-)

from beginning to end

Took me awhile, but I finally did it.
My second project using my own handspun.








Ravelry Links: handspun / project

Fiber: from A Verb For Keeping Warm (fiber club, April--The Candle's Nimble Flame, 100% Corriedale; spun as a single, then plied with a white BFL single)

Method: Over the fold

Spindle: Golding Midnight Sky spindle for singles; Golding lazy kate and Tsunami spindle for plying.

Resulting Yarn: 7.2 oz total wt, approx 350 yds, 13 wpi plied (sport)

Pattern: One Row Handspun Scarf, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Needles: US 9's (the green vintage straights)

Resulting Project: 5" wide, 67" long (unblocked and w/o fringe)

What I learned:
Lots.
~~~ Mostly about twist. I could have put less into the singles I think, and the resulting yarn would have been a bit more lofty. I definitely could have put less twist into the plying, and in the future I will probably try to use a spindle with a heavier whorl for that (I think. This is only my beginner's brain doing some guesswork. It will be a fun experiment, though.)

~~~ I thought the resulting yarn was going to be too inconsistent (thick/thin) for a simple pattern. That it would show up as looking sloppy. In actuality, I think that it makes the simple pattern way more interesting. In fact, I think my scarf has more character than some of the scarves I have seen in this same pattern that were done with commercial yarn (yay for handspun!).

~~~ I learned that I'm not quite there yet in pulling off a yarn that is suitable for making sock. But that I am very very close.

~~~ I learned that I was able to pull off getting my fiber to do what I wanted it to do in terms of color. I was aiming for long repeats of color and for the colors of the scarf to be "mirrored" from one end to the scarf to the other. I came pleasingly close, but not so close that I lost it's organic/handmade quality. I like :-)

~~~ I also learned (okay, I already knew this, so I guess I was reminded) that long scarves with simple patterns are ridiculously tedious knitting. But good for while you're watching television ;-)

~~~ I learned that I might just like wearing pastels after all.

update-o-rama

For your reading pleasure, tonight I give you follow-ups to previous posts.
In chapters no less ;-)
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Mommy Demerits (aka Let's Leave The Diagnosing To The Professionals)

So, MyFavoriteKid's recent outbreak of poison oak? Wrong!! It aint poison oak at all! It's a HEAT RASH. Not a bad thing, really. Much easier to contend with than poison oak. Except for the fact that the treatment for poison oak is exactly the way you do NOT treat a heat rash.

Let's see. I've been applying topical ointments, MyFK has been taking long warm to hot showers, and I've even gone so far as recommending long sleeves just to keep him from scratching. Heat Rash treatment? Cool water, cool clothing, and no smothering of the pores with ointments.
Lovely.
Well, at least we are on track.
I think MyFK and his buddies had actually spent more time in the hot tub than any of us were aware of that night at the potluck party. Oops.
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Riley Actually DOES Need The Dog Whisperer

So after I posted the dog factoids, a couple of folks commented on Riley needing the Dog Whisperer. Dudes, if you only knew.

I don't think I wrote about this event when it actually took place, but I think it was in April or May.

TheMostImportantGuy and I took Riley to the local dog park one weekend afternoon. While we were there, we were attacked by another dog. It was a female pit bull who I'd seen there before and not had trouble with. TheMIG and I were standing in the middle of the park (having just entered but a few minutes earlier), but the pit came over to say hello and was really getting up under my crutches. Not a good sign.

I'm not sure exactly what happened next, but TheMIG was lightly bitten (no puncture) on the hand (hmmm...a theme?), and myself and Riley were jumped on, pretty hard. The owner came and pulled his dog off, and being that it is an enormous park, we all separated to opposite sides of the park. We watched the pit in the distance playing and whatnot, but then the pit finally spotted us and she came right on over and attacked again. I got some pretty deep bruises scratches on my arm. Meanwhile, the poor dog. Well, Riley just went nutzo trying to protect us. Very protective/agressive, but fearful, with the teeth bared and Cujo sort of growling. We left the park, as this guy clearly was not going to leave himself. As we were exiting, some other regulars checked in with us and told us the pit had attacked someone else earlier, too....and from the parking lot, as we were getting into our car, his dog was at it again attacking someone else!

For the record: I have not a thing against pit bulls. I have been the owner of pit mixes, and I love them. I'm not even against this pitbull. I'd met her before and she seemed like a sweetie, and she might even be a sweetie the next time I see her. Personally, I think she was just having a really bad day. That, and I think the owner is friggin' putz for not getting his dog out of there after her first episode that day.

Anyhow. Dog Whisperer. So my dog Riley? He's not been the same since. Every time I take him to the dog park, he spends all his energy making sure he gets between me and any other dog that wants to come by and just say hello. He doesn't play much with other dogs anymore, and although he will go off sniffing around, he is always looking back to see if there are any dogs near me (and if they are, he dashes back to my side). In other words, he no longer has much fun at the park. It is sad.

So between the dog getting mopey over the SPCA commercials on television, and this dogpark crap, y'all actually had me thumbing through two of the Dog Whisperer Guy's books the other day while I was at the bookstore. I have some ideas I will try to apply ;-)
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Off The Back (A Tour de Fleece/Le Tour Update)

I've been meaning to cop to this for days, but I blew off the Tour de Fleece just after the first week. What a rookie.

We went on our little trip to Monterey. I brought along spinning tools and fiber, but it never made it out of the bag. Fell "off the back," so to speak. Then I got home and tried to get back into the swing of things but "crashed" with an injury to my right arm. It's feeling fine now, but I couldn't even knit for a couple of days there, it hurst so badly.

One really neat aside to this Tour de Fleece business, though. This is the first year for me that I have actually watched every single stage of the actual tour! Even when we were on our mini-vacation, I recorded the day we missed and caught right back up when I got home. I am loving it. I usually only catch a stage or two, but this year I have been committed to it, I have watched every day, and I am having a blast.

So much so, that when the Tour of California comes around next year? I might just follow it around a little bit in my van. Park on the side of the road, have a picnic, and wait for them to whiz by. Whee!
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Alrighty, that caught me up.

As usual, my comments back to your comments are IN the comments. ;-)

some days just require warm & fuzzy

I'm frustrated and cranky, and decided the best thing I could do was make something cute, crafty, and FAST.


This is GnomeGuyThe2nd (the first one here, went to James to cheer up his room at the convalescent hospital).

I'm feeling a Felt-Fest coming on here. Needle felting, wet felting, shrink the knitted item felting....all of it.

this interruption in blogging brought to you by....

....boys who run and play through the roughage.

Have y'all noticed yet that I'm trying to post every day again? Who knows how long this will last, because we all know that I tend to be all or nothing about these things. I mean, I ran straight through with Blog365 last year, and this year it's been quite scant. Heck, I didn't even post at all in June.

Daily posting. *sigh* It can be tough. Especially when I'm whooped.

The past two night I've hostessed sleepovers for MyFavoriteKid and his buddies (that means I was up way too late), and then tonight I had a "business meeting" with my co-dance-teachers. I forgot to post before leaving the house, and the meeting went later, so now here I am, at almost midnight....and this is how you end up with weirdness like this.
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Last night at a potluck dinner TheMostImportantGuy noticed this thing sitting in the livingroom somewhere.


Is it a throw pillow??
Or is it a teddy bear??


TheMIG said it looked like Han Solo ;-)



See?
I'm tired LOL.
I'll try again tomorrow. Maybe a bit earlier in the day ;-)

best i can do after a few glasses o' wine and a plate o'carnitas

Went to an impromptu dinner party tonight (and only 'cuz I got an invite via FaceBook, no less---hahahah).

Folks, if you've asked me to track you down there, please give me a day or two. I haven't quite figured out how to use the damn thing yet (I'm a dork). I get emails about walls and comments and things, and I don't even know what the heck y'all are talking about. I promise. I'll put some time in with it this week and get it all figured out.

Anyhow. Dinner party.

Okay. So this invite came from MyFavoriteKid's former elementary school principal. We've stayed friends over the years, and tonight she invited us over because MyFK's best buddies are down for a visit from up north (the kids are now all back here at my house...because I volunteered -- see how it happens?!).

I wanted to share with y'all a conversation I overheard at the party during the wine/cocktail hour before dinner. This was between ThePrincipal and TheYoungestVisitingKid (he's 9).

TheYoungestVisitingKid: So nowwwwww can we play on your Wii???

ThePrincipal: No. Go outside or something.

TYVK: We already did that.

TP: Well, find something else to do. Play a game together. The adults are listening to music right now.

TYVK: I know! We can play with the sound off!

TP: No. The system wont let you listen to the stereo and have the Wii on at the same time. (might be bullshit LOL)

TYVK: But don't you have an Ipod or something?

TP: We are listenting to music, and you are not playing the Wii. How about you guys play chess.

TYVK: YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HEY!!!! (calling to the other two kids) You guys wanna play chess?!?!?!?!!!!!

TheTwoOtherKids: YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

snaps on saturday

Thought I'd share with you the image on my current NextToThePhoneNotepad:



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My comments to your comments are back in that days comments.

...just in case you were waiting for a reply ;-)

ok, so *now* it is official

I finally broke down today and got myself onto Facebook. There's no point wasting an entire post explaining to you why I have dreaded this more than I am excited by it.

However. After I signed up and clicked on a few friendly faces, I was rewarded with an unexpected perk!

Ladieeeees and Gentlemaaaaaan!!!
It is now official (because Facebook has approved it as being so, and because everything on the internet is true)!!
Facebook told me:

"You are now in a relationship with TheMostImportantGuy."


I cannot begin to tell you how hilarious I find this whole "status" thing. See, after I clicked on TheMIG's happy little photo, TheMIG clicked on something to indicate that we are in a relationship, and then Facebook asked me if it was true, and then I clicked that it was, and then Facebook wrote me back to tell me that IT IS NOW SO. And so now I know we are for reeeeeal!!!!!

Lordy. LOLOL

interesting factoids about the dogdogdog's viewing habits

This is Riley, and he's a rescue dog.

He's lived with us for just over a year now. He was real sick when he got here. He had fleas and ticks and mange and kennel cough. He was underweight and just a wreck. He and a bunch of other dogs at his shelter were about to be put down, but he was saved :-)

Riley watches television.

Riley goes bananas when he sees dogs on the television. Lately this has also extended to the sound of dogs barking on television (even though the dog is not on screen), and there have also been a few incidences of him going apeshit over cartoons of dogs.

Riley barks, runs to the television, does some amazing vertical high jumping, and then runs into the next room (the room behind the wall where the tv is mounted) to see if they are on the other side of the screen. If he's been working on a bone or dog treat, he will sometimes go and relocate it.

Riley also does the barking/jumping for horses. And to much of our dismay, he's also now doing this with just about anything that appears on the screen and has four legs and fur. We can't watch many Nature shows anymore, and to be honest, that bugs me.

Riley does NOT bark when I play the dvd I have of a tropical fishtank. In fact, he sits very quietly, and stares at it. He'll perk up his ears and tilt his head back and forth as the fish swim past. While we were at the Monterey Aquarium this weekend, I bought dvd's of both the Sea Horse and the Jellyfish Exhibits. I'm going to try them out on him this weekend. If he barks at Jellyfish, I might just cry.

But here's the most interesting fact about my dog's tv viewing habits. Even though he goes totally bazerk-o when there is any sort of HINT of dog on television....he will NOT bark at the commercials run by the SPCA. You know, the ones where the show all the pets that are abused, abandoned, locked up....the "we need your contributions" commercials??

When THOSE play? Not a PEEP out of my dog.
In fact, he'll even go sit in the corner and mope until it is over.

home again, home again....

So we're home.
And the DogDogDog is also home (having been sprung from the kennel).
And the cats (who stayed at home, with my mom visiting) are still home and totally pissed.
Oh, yeah. And TheGecko is home, too....he stayed at TheMostImportantGuy's.

We're all present and accounted for.

And I'm feelin' kind tired!

We had a reallllllly bad last night at the fancy hotel, thanks very much to our upstairs neighbors. It was SO bad that I had to lodge a complaint around 10:30pm, not that it resolved anything. There were elephants running around up there until well past midnight, and they were at it again first thing this morning, too. The elephants were making bird calls out the windows at the crack of dawn, too. I am pretty sure it was kids up there. If it was adults, they should be ashamed of themselves. Heck, it was adults with kids they should be ashamed of themselves. I mean, I know we all have different styles of parenting, but.....I've trained and road-tested MyFK in Motel 6's and kid friendly hotels for years now leading up to a pricey boutique-y hotel, and I did that out of respect of my FELLOW GUESTS.

Anyhow. Complaints lodged. The manager was unavailable when I checked out this morning, but is supposed to follow up with me tomorrow. The hotel was amaaaaazing, and the staff was wonnnnnderful, but the people upstairs trumped. it. all. And that is a crying shame. I'd stay there again, but only on the top floor ;-)

During the morning phas of the elephants migrating, I was actually able to ingore it and let it roll off my back. Over another complimentary, on the silver tray, breakfast....delivered while I'm still in my cushy hotel bathrobe, thank you very much. Kinda takes the sting away.
Either that, or I was just brain dead from not getting enough sleep.

I'm off to bed here soon.
See y'all tomorrow.

monterey, part 2

Just as many photos as yesterday, I suppose.
I'm a couple of days behind on replying to comments, too...sorry...but I will take care of that as I soon as I post this.

Where did I leave off. Oh. We were heading out to dinner last night.

Wellp, MyFavoriteKid realllllly wanted to go The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., and since I knew that MrPickyPantsEater would be into the food there, I had no problem complying. Besides, I knew that they'd have a killer pomegranite margarita on tap for Mommy.

Now you know this place is gimmicky, and I know this place is gimmicky, but lemme tell you....MyFK thought this was one of the greatest places on earth, and I just got a hoot out of watching him enjoy it.

He has just seen the movie for the first time this past year, I think, and so every single item in the place was a novelty for him. The list of every dish you can make out of shrimp is painted on the wall, the cocktail menu is on a ping-pong paddle, there are framed "family photos" of Lt.Dan on the wall, plus display cases with various costumes from the movie, etc. The waitress came by and asked him trivia questions, and he knew all the answers. It was pretty comical.

(And that's all I got to say about that.)

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Okay, so this morning it was complimentary breakfast in the room.
Sweet. (I never want to leave this place, I tell ya').

Then off to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

It would seem that perhaps we spent an unusual amount of time there. An employee that we had seen early in the morning caught us later in the afternoon and said, "Wow, I can't believe you guys are still here! Having fun?"
And I couldn't believe how we could NOT still be there.
There was SO much to see, and if you really do stop and look, and take the time to read stuff, and see feedings, and talk to the people that work there so you actually learn something, well.....honestly, I dont know how you couldn't be there for as long as we were. We didnt even give the final section a thorough pass because we were so wiped out!

What we were most excited to see was the new Sea Horse Exhibit.

There's the type of seahorse we were expecting. The more "typical", yah?

But get a load of THIS guy:

And you should see him when he's hiding in the seaweed!
(okay, well I guess in that case, you would NOT be seeing him)

We caught several feedings, our favorite being the Outer Bay Exhibit and the "fast feeders" (dorado, tuna, barracuda, etc). But we also really like watching the Sea Otters chow down.

Hey, and I learned something new. Did you know that River Otters mark their territory with "spraint"?! As in, like, "it's kinda like sprayin'? but it AINT?!"


They actually had a sample whiff for you to take, if you can believe it---hahaha.
(not pleasant)

My favorite exhibit, just as it was the last time I came here, what...8 years or so ago?
The jellyfish exhibit.


One thing that is really great about the Monterey Bay Aquariium is that half the place is rigged up on webcams, so you can check it out yourself, too---right there from wherever you are ;-)

Okay, so after the Aquarium it was a rest at the hotel, some more wine and cheese, some more walking around the 'hood, and another dinner out. We head home tomorrow, but for tonight, we're enjoying the place.



Way fun :-)