No more video chat

During the past year or so while Casey and I were living apart, we would spend at least 30 minutes a day talking to each other on iChat. Right before I finally moved out Casey took a few pictures for us to remember the experience, since, hopefully, it won't happen again.  I just figured I would pass the good times on to all of you. A little slice-of-life, if you will. Videochatting actually really helps a lot to make a long distance relationship a little easier.

Pescadero, Part II

After eating a seafood lunch and browsing one of the two stores in Pescadero, we decided to stop by a local dairy that produces goat cheese.  I love goats. I think they are very cute and their cheese is delicious.  Here is a picture of me in front of the goats (and two llamas, I guess).  They all seemed to really want to stand on a pile of dirt on the left hand side of the yard. It was getting pretty crowded over there.

We took a different route home and stopped at the beach. 

 The tide was out and we had a good time looking at all the plants and animals in the tide pools. Here is Casey looking quite dapper at the beach.

Good times!

trip to Pescadero

After I got back into town, Casey took a day off of work and we took a trip down to Pescadero. It is a very small town on the other side of the Santa Crus mountains from where we live.  On the way through the mountains, we stopped for a short hike at Memorial Park.  It was a lovely day and the park was practically deserted, except for park rangers. Here's me next to a large tree. Very California.  We are slowly accumulating a fairly large collection of pictures of us near large trees.

Here is a totally gross picture of a banana slug.  There were a lot of them on the trails, and since it is fall, they look just like some of the yellow leaves that are falling.

Here is me thinking about slugs and barfing in my mouth. 

I really don't like slugs.  I guess I never have. I can remember going into the garden at night and coming back in with a slug on me and freaking out. They used to all crawl on top of each other to die in a huge pile when we set out cups of beer.  But my true hatred came when I went to college in Oregon and there was a bad slug problem the first fall.  They were all at least 6 inches long and I stepped on one on the way to the dining hall.  It totally popped and I got slug juice on my shoe and it took weeks for it all to come off. These slugs were totally pavement colored, and shiny with slime. Ugh. I guess it really scarred me.  

Casey and I were wondering, are slugs good eatin', like snails?

Also at the park was a much touted "swimming hole".  Here is Casey next to it.  Looks pretty weak to me. 

I'm back

I returned to California last week and Casey was at the San Jose airport to meet me and my 80 lbs of luggage.  He brought me to a romantic little spot in Santa Clara called 99 Chicken. It is a Korean restaurant that specializes in, well, chicken. The restaurant was patronized mostly by Koreans and the waiter (Casey says he is the owner, but I'm not sure how he knows) spoke English quite quickly and confidently, although I couldn't really understand him.  We told him that we wanted some beer and he told us that we wanted this: 

1.5 L of OB (Oriental Brewery)! Here is Casey enjoying his first delicious glass. We also ordered the assortment platter of fried chicken, which included regular fried chicken, fried chicken with sauce (kind of a sweet and sour), spicy sauce fried chicken, and fried chicken with honey on it. This really was some of the best fried chicken I've ever had. All the varieties were delicious (well, "sauce" was kind of boring). Here's another picture Casey took of me with a huge plate of fried chicken in front of me to add to the collection:

From these pictures you can also see the interesting choice of wall decorations.  They seem to be movie posters from Korea and pictures of people eating fried chicken. 

We had a very good time and the food was delicious!