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As disgusting as it is, I’m getting a big kick out of the Wendy’s finger-in-the-chili saga. I mean, it’s gross but not enough to make me quit going to Wendys. I don’t go there often, but occasionally I get a craving for a frosty or a spicy chicken sandwich.

Anyway….

I just read on fark that Wendys is giving away free small frosties in the Bay area all weekend. Score! Nothing like a free finger-free frosty to get the weekend started.

I also plan to eat supper there tonight *gasp*. I do believe that the woman who found the finger in her chili planted it there. I also know that the employees make the chili from leftover hamburger patties that have sat on the grill for too long. Therefore, there is no big “corporate chili plant” where someone fell into the chopper or some other unfortunate instance occurred. Plus, I don’t even EAT the chili.

I’ve obviously thought about this too much already, but consider this: coming from Texas, I ate a lot of Mexican food growing up. I still eat it. I think it tastes great. What’s it made out of? I really don’t want to know. In fact, I do know and I choose to ignore it to an extent. I don’t eat nearly as many processed foods as I once did, but there comes a point where you decide to either eat all organic veggies or meat from happy and humanely raised animals, or you just suck it up and eat the fast food burger, erm, or chili.

I just checked my snail mail and I’ve received a jury summons. What’s more interesting is that it’s for Travis County, but it’s addressed to my CA residence. I’m starting to get pissed off but then I open the envelope.

I’ve never been called for jury duty (crosses fingers) but I imagine that it’s a big pain in the butt when it happens.

So, I open the envelope, read all of the qualification requirements and determine that I’m disqualified since I no longer live in Travis County. Now I think “Great, I probably have to call someone between 9 and 5 CT time tomorrow and explain my situation.” Wrong! I get to use I-Jury. This is a handy little website set up for Travis county in which you enter your juror number and date, your personal information, and it decides if you are allowed to serve on a jury.

After filling out the form, it tells me that I’m disqualified. Oh darn. I don’t get to report this time. Oh, and it said “Thank you for using I-Jury.” Cool. I just got out of jury duty while sitting at home in my jammy jams. God bless America (and Texas).

Daniel’s visit was so much fun. However, I was worried that he’d wear me out wanting to see everything. Instead, I think I wore him out. I don’t know how many miles we put on the car, but we went everywhere. Oh yeah, and we had some really good walking/hiking/biking workouts so I’ve definitely filled my exercise quota for this week. It didn’t hurt that the weather was sunny and beautiful.

Daniel also got to meet the cats. They weren’t hostile but it took them a while to warm up to him. They had no problem climbing all over his stuff though as well as jumping on him during the night. After spending the first night on the futon with the “babies”, Daniel quickly relocated to the air mattress in the office where he could sleep in peace.

I’ve posted the pictures in the gallery if you want to take a look. Here’s a quick rundown of what we did.

Beach at Santa Cruz
Wine tasting in Los Gatos
Bike riding in Golden Gate park
Exploring Cal Berkeley campus
Eating at legendary In ‘n Out burger
Shopping on Haight Street
Whale watching at Point Reyes National Seashore
Shucking oysters at an oyster farm
Hiking up to Coit tower and then to crooked Lombard Street
Italian food in North Beach
Racing for the commuter train in order to make it to the airport on time

My brother arrives in San Jose tomorrow morning at 9. Granted, he will be getting off the plane six hours after arriving at the airport in Dallas. I don’t envy his having to get up so early, but I’m sure he’ll find a way to doze on the plane. Plus, I’m treating him to breakfast at either Hobees or Pancake House when he arrives. I’m doing that for HIM, not me of course.

Needless to say, I’m really excited. He and mom got to visit me over Thanksgiving, but it was quite chilly and we only got to do a few things while they were visiting. This time, I want to do a lot of hiking and bike riding while the weather is nice.

Before he gets here, I need to clean our apartment. It isn’t filthy, but I need to get organized and do some laundry for sure.

He’ll also get to meet our babies, or bundles of useless indifference as we lovingly refer to them. Of course, I’m talking about our kitties. Oh, Daniel will have much fun pushing them off his head at 4am when they want to be little headcrabs and play attack cat with each other in the bed. Did I mention that we close our bedroom door at night?

Danny and I took a road trip last weekend. I’ve been wanting to go north to the redwoods and to the coast. Although it’s a long drive, I mapped out a route that would hit the highlights without requiring us to drive through the night.

We got up early on Saturday morning (8am), grabbed our stuff, said goodbye to the cats, gassed up ($2.65 a gallon) and hit the road. We drove north through SF, and then cut over west from Petaluma. We got to Bodega Bay and drove up to a cliff where you could supposedly see migrating whales. We didn’t see any whales but I wasn’t too surprised since it is almost the end of whale season.

Next, we drove up to Gualala and got some lunch. My plan was not to spend too much money on food, so we stopped at the local market. There was a sign next door that said “Mexican Food Bakery Pizza.” Hmmm..that doesn’t sound good. I mean, one thing is okay, but more than that and you have to expect that the quality is crappy. This was not the case. The pizza was fresh and the fish tacos were really good. I also grabbed some sort of cannoli from the bakery which was amazing. Yes, my vacations are all about food.

Next, we cruised on up to Ft. Bragg. We checked into our hotel around 4 and grabbed a fast nap before dinner. That evening, we drove down to Mendocino (5 miles south) and wandered around. The draw of Mendocino is that it’s a cute coastal town with the feel of a New England fishing village. It was definitely cute, but since it is the off-season, most places were closed and the streets were quiet. We did, however, find a great little pub where we got some chowder, pasta, homemade bread, and locally brewed beer.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at the store to get some provisions for the next day. As a result of my drinking, I had a weird craving for Junior Mints. We also picked up a box of cheese nips and some gummi worms.

The next morning, we got up again, grabbed breakfast, and hit the road. Our plan was to drive about an hour and half north to the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt State Park. We drove up the coast for about 30 minutes before stopping at a beach. Most of the coastal highway runs along the top of a cliff, but this part dipped down to the shore. Seeing that this was a rare opportunity to wander around the beach without having to hike too far, I pulled off the road and parked in a little makeshift parking lot.

There were only about eight other people on the beach at that time. It was ten in the morning and it looked like they were other travelers stopping to walk their dogs and stretch their legs. It wasn’t as windy at this beach and there were some really cool rock formations sticking out of the sand. We climbed one and took turns getting photos. We also wandered around and explored some of the unusual plant and animal life that had washed up on the shore. The morning was clear and warm and it was the perfect time to be outside.

We hopped back in the car and cruised up the coast. Before we left on Friday, I got The Fellowship of the Rings on CD to listen to in the car. I’ve read it before but it’s been a really long time. Danny has only seen the movies. It was fun going deep in the redwoods while listening about how the hobbits were trapped in the haunted forest. It’s dorky, but you know me.

We pulled off the highway and began the “alternate route” that took us down the Avenue of the Giants. The Avenue runs along the Eel river and was the original path for carriages in the 1800s. It is now a one-lane paved road with small towns and a fair share of tourist attractions. The first place we stopped was the Chimney tree. It’s a tree that is hollow but the shell still grows. You can walk inside. It’s like a small cave. It was cool but not amazing. It was right next door to Hobbiton, USA. Basically, this is a nature trail with scenes made up of cement figures from the lord of the rings trilogy. It is cheesy, but cool. We only got to see the front of it because the trail doesn’t open until later this month. It was a bummer but I don’t think we missed too much.

Next, we stopped at the drive-thru tree. I’m sure you’ve seen it. It’s the redwood with a big hole cut in the base that you can drive through. Oh, and it is not free. We shelled out $3 to drive through. I’m glad we did it though. We got some fun pictures regardless. They also had some elaborate play houses built out of redwood tree trunks. We took a few minutes to climb around in those. I’m glad we didn’t get stuck.

Finally, we were nearing the end of the Avenue when I saw a cool place to pull over. A huge tree had fallen some time ago and the trunk was lying on it’s side by the road. We got out and hiked over to it. On its side, the tree trunk was much taller than either one of us. We walked down a nearby path and just stood and stared up at the enormous trees. I’ve seen a lot of trees since I’ve lived here but these were truly awe inspiring. The forest was cool and extremely quiet. It would have been nice to hike around a bit more, but it would have been too easy to get lost. The paths crossed each other and the woods were so dense that we couldn’t see the road or our car after walking for a minute. As Danny put it, it would be cool to just go out there with a gps device and do some exploring. Maybe next time.

The Avenue ended when it intersected the highway. Danny and I got on it and headed south. Our plan was to get lunch somewhere along the way. We needed something more to supplement our lunch of cheese nips, junior mints and gummies. I don’t usually eat that much crap, but that’s what road trips are for, right?

After realizing that the pickins would be slim, we made it to Ukiah before pulling off to quest for food. Ukiah was really pretty. I can imagine that it would be really boring to grow up there, but living in a green valley surrounded by beautiful mountains (and wineries) can’t be all bad.

We crossed the Golden Gate bridge around 7 and got home by 8. We were both tired but I was in a very good mood. The thought of getting up and going to work the next day didin’t even bother me too much. I sat on the couch watching TV with my cats on my lap and started to doze off. This was the perfect end to a fun fun weekend.

Last week, I went to a trade show for work. The National Cable show was held in SF last week. Since a lot of people I work with were going, the company decided to supply badges to whoever wanted to attend. My boss arranged for my coworkers and me to go on Tuesday morning, the last day of the show.

I wasn’t expecting much aside from getting a few free t-shirts. I was surprised. Half of the booths were for the distributors but the other half were from the actual cable networks. Each booth had a series of promotions taking place throughout the show. As I was wandering around, I spotted some of my coworkers downing bowls of soup. I was like “well, that’s kind of a weird thing to pass out at a booth.” It turns out that it was a promotion for tbs. They had the guy who played the soup nazi on Seinfeld taking pictures with people. I immediately got in line. It was funny: the guy smiled and was really friendly. Then, when they took your picture with him, he made his famous scowl. I got a polariod of he and I with the caption “No soup for you!” Priceless.

After that, I wandered around the show scoping for free stuff. The thing I had the most fun with though was the weather channel’s severe weather report. They put you in front of a green screen with a parka and a microphone. Then they have you read the weather report from the teleprompter while the storm rages behind you. It was great. I got blown around in a snowstorm. I have to admit that I need to work on my acting.

Here is the
video. Enjoy!

My weekend was good. Now it’s over. Now, I have to face the beginning of a long week. Actually, this week shouldn’t be too bad. I turned in a project on Friday so now all I have to do is a little project cleanup.

This week also shouldn’t be too bad because:

A: I plan to take a road trip with Danny next weekend to Mendocino. I haven’t been there before, but apparently it’s a gorgeous coastal community about 1-2 hours north of SF.

B: My brother is coming to visit us the following weekend. I found him a really cheap flight early in the morning, so I plan to take a couple of days off work and show him around.

As for dealing with Monday, I found this to entertain me for at least five minutes.

My Dead Celebrity Soulmates? James Baldwin, P.T. Barnum, and Edgar Allen Poe. Rrrooowwrr!

I was going to say fancy feet, but that’s too cliche. Yesterday, I got a spa pedicure. For those of you who have never had one or have no idea what this is (guys), it is where you sit in a big leather recliner while your feet soak in a mini-jacuzzi. Afterward, someone squats by your feet and cleans them, clips your nails, massages them, exfoliates them, and then paints your toenails the color of your choice.

I usually paint my own nails, but my feet needed a thorough scrubbing and clipping before I bust out my summer footwear. Plus, it’s so soothing to just sit there and have your foot preened and pampered while the other one rests in a bubbling tub.

In other news, I’ve actually been really busy at work this week. We go through lulls where we’re just kind of doing maintenance stuff, but this week was intense. I just turned in my project today and am now waiting for feedback.

Danny has been playing the heck out of his new computer. I’m still knitting, but I’ve also been working out, cooking, and reading a lot lately. I know, I’m Ms. excitement.

The weather is getting a little warmer, so start looking for plane tickets to come visit us. We’ll even let you sleep with the cats!