Post-Jill

Adam bought us a bottle of wine to share!
Btw, I'm not smoking, that's a bread stick from the wine tasting :p

More Pictures

Jill visited from Winnipeg and here's what happened. If the quality of the weekend is correlated with how little of that you spend at home, I had a pretty awesome weekend. You can blame Jill for me not blogging sooner.

Saturday (Continued)

• Jill at SFO
  • Jill's flight was late, but fortunately I had Air Canada's number on my cell and called when I got back into the Bay Area, so then I didn't waste an hour and like $1 / 12 min. at the airport.


• XINH - A Vietnamese Restaurant for some non-Vietnamese, but good food
  • Managed to assemble a decently sized welcoming dinner for Jill in Mountain View - me, Jill, Adam, Mike, Brian, Natalia, and Amy. Mike really liked the calamari. It was like semi-fusion, modern food. Not really Viet. It was good. We also had hot sake


• Saint Steven's Irish Pub... with a dance floor and a stripper pole
  • Janna and Sean joined us for a drink after


• "I have a small penis" -- Sean


• Ditched Michele #3
  • Going to a lounge in SF after surfing and Jill flying in from Winnipeg with early morning plans the next day was not something we were up for.


• O Canada...
  • With 4 Canadians (me, Jill, Adam, and Janna), we proudly sang O Canada in a phony Irish pub.

Sunday

• Monterey Bay
  • Drove down to Monterey Bay with Jill, Adam, and Mike to check out the aquarium, except that there were an obscene number of people there and there wasn't a single parking spot in the city, so we left. July 4th long weekend wasn't the best time to go.


• Rockin' out to the all 80's weekend!
  • John Tesh provided great driving music :p


• Ditched Michele #4
  • Obviously he was in no state to join us.


• Woo! Carmel...
  • We checked out Carmel, the city that Clint Eastwood apparently was the mayor of some time ago. Nice little city. The grass was really soft at his ranch (not sure if it was his old ranch or even if it was his).


• That is a big cookie
  • We ate lunch at the Forge in Carmel. The ceiling of the area we were seated was all wine crates. The food was good and Mike had us order calamari again. We got a cookie for dessert. It was AWESOME. It said that it fed 2-4 people. Iron pan, cookie/brownie bottom with ice cream, whipping cream, and powdered surgar on top. Yum!


• Aquarium take 2
  • Returning to Monterey, I parked in downtown, far from the aquarium and took the free shuttle to the aquarium. The line-up had the whole metal fence thing like an amusement park. The line was quite long, but we only had to wait like 15 min. or something to get inside.


• Wheeling and dealing
  • Jill found a coupon for $5 off the regular admission. I noticed the student price for $2 off. Jill is not a student and Mike didn't have a student ID. I eventually got us the $7 off, so each ticket was like $15 :)


• Sea creatures freak me out
  • Giant tuna bigger than me. Scary looking jelly fish. Sharks. Penguins. Sea otters.


• Stop looking at the accident!
  • The only reason we had trafic going back was b/c people were stopping to look at the accident on the other side of the road. Stupid people. Drive already.


• Ditched Michele #5
  • He ditched us for a "bbq", we ditched him for our own thing.


• Superman (1978), pizza, and booze
  • Guy's night in my place. Mike kept singing the Superman song, and I conveniently had the first Superman at my place. Picked up Brian on the way home.

Monday

• 25 wines. There was singing. 'Nuff said.
  • Can you say Napa Valley? I got Adam on my rental as an additional driver and he and Janna drove. We picked up Mark on the way in Oakland. Jon didn't show up.


• Ditched Michele #6
  • He didn't call.


• Follow that car!
  • Ok, seriously, when you're lost and don't know where to go, just follow the other cars. Works every time. Trust me on this one, the car in front of us is going exactly where we are going. What do you mean you don't think that the 80 year old couple is going to the club?


• Detour!
  • Pretty big accident on the road on the way there. Adam attempted to not have the car fully stop throughout the whole thing and did quite remarkably. We eventually took a detour, only getting semi-lost. Fortunately, we were able to follow select cars to get us there.


• Domaine Carneros
  • 6 wines at the first winery. I was a little concerned about them not washing the grapes. The fact that they stopped pesticide use 5 years ago and ferment the wines for 6-8 years was also very comforting. Mmmm... dust, pesticides, and bugs. This was the only place we went to with sparkling wine (it's not called champagne unless it's from Champagne). I did not like their red wines - tasted too much like oak.


• Buena Vista
  • 8 more wines! They had bread sticks. I had like 3 packages :). Adam and Jill bought a bottle each. Adam is looking forward to having the wine on a hot date (with me).


• Magic tricks!
  • Mike the magician began doing magic tricks for us (in the other car) with his lovely assistant, Brian while driving between wineries.


• Robert Mondavi
  • 10, count 'em, 10 wines! I think the lady liked Adam. She saw that we had 5 people sharing (Mark, Janna, and Sean were holding out), so she was pouring us more than the usual 2 ounces. Plus, she gave us 3 extra samples (reserves that were accidently opened). Jill bought another bottle and Adam got 2.


• New terminology
  • I learnt many new terms: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Zinfandel, Sauvignon Blanc, sherry


• #25
  • Never had so much wine in my life and suitable that in one day, I had one for each of the years of my existence. #25 was had at the restaurant in Napa, where we actually bought a bottle of Chardonnay.


• "Umm.. I don't think she's old enough to buy you a drink" -- Adam
  • This is Adam's telling of the story. Do not believe his lies. We are waiting for the fireworks in the Napa Country Club. I am lying on the grass looking up in the sky, rather buzzed after 25 wines:

  *I get hit by a volleyball*
  
  Me: Whoever hit me with that volleyball owes me a drink
  Adam: Umm... I don't think she's old enough to buy you a drink
  
  *I suddenly become very interested and pop up to see who she is*
  
  --later--
  
  Adam: This guy wants to know how old you guys are
  Them: 15, 16
  Me: Age of consent in Canada is 14

  • One of the girls was pretty cute and she obviously plays for her school team or club - nice form, good ball control.


• Mark is built of lies


• Singing!
  • O Canada! Oh, say can you see... Kumbaya my lord... If you're going, to San-Fran-cisco...
  
  
  • People just aren't very festive and didn't join in on our singing. It was just me and Adam all the way.

Tuesday (Independence Day)

• Caltrain!
  • Mark crashed at my place and we met Adam on the Caltrain to San Francisco.


• SF Zoo
  • Lions and tigers eating large, white rabbits. Yum. Penguins eating fish bigger than their heads. River otters hunting down goldfish with insane efficiency


• Jon, you need a cell phone (Part 4)
  • Jon lost his phone after like only 2 weeks. The guy who found his phone was asking for a $40 ransom. The guy called Mark to tell him to tell Jon that he was at a picnic, so that's why he couldn't answer him. Then he called me (just going down the list of missed calls), and the conversation went something like this: "Hi Jon's phone captor. You mother f*ckin' b*stard, Jon is a f*ckin' monster and is going to tear you to shreds when he gets his hands on you!" Note: these are not my exact words.


• Ditched Michele #7
  • He didn't wake up in time to join our SF festivities


• Golden Gate Bridge
  • Finally saw the Golden Gate Bridge! Mark was happy to walk across and back for his 4th time in 2 months.


• The Pier
  • Went to a restaurant somewhere on the pier and after 50 phone calls, found Michele and Jenny at Pier 39 in Fisherman's Wharf.


• Synchronized fireworks
  • The fireworks show was pretty cool. They were lighting them from two places in SF, but the show was identical and synchronized, though we could only see like one and a half of it. Hearts, happy faces, cubes, and a cool one where it was just exploding all over the place repeatedly


• I am seriously disgusted with the lack of singing after the fireworks!


• Just don't roll the bus over
  • Crazy amounts of people leaving. Not sure how we got onto a bus that was going right to the Caltrain, but we did and lucky uus b/c it was a long walk and there were insane numbers of people on the street. Managed to catch the 11:00 express train back, which saved us 15 min.


• Mark, thanks for being our tour guide! Lunch is on me!

Wednesday

• I guess I eventually had to go back to work


• Jill came to Google for both lunch and dinner.... shh... don't tell anyone


• The ball pit has been sorted
  • After dinner, Mark, Jill, and I played a game of pool and then chilled in the ball pit. Mark jokes that I should put all the red balls in one corner, green in another, and blues in another. I start doing it. Mark and Jill give me funny stares and then Mark is like "Shit, that looks like fun!" We proceed to do this for like 15 min. and we get a quite good sorting of the balls :). Too bad we didn't have a camera on us. I'm going to try and take a picture tomorrow morning.