The day after my birthday

I woke up to a beautiful sunny morning a little after 7:30, and when I went out into the living room Ben was already up. When he and I are the only ones up early in the morning (which usually is the case these days) I always have to shake my head and wonder, “what has happened to us?” I look back fondly to the time I went to visit him in SF and Joan wasn’t home and we only left our seats on the couch or lazy boy to get food, visit the restroom, or go to sleep (at night – during the day we just napped where we were). Anyway, Ben and I were the first ones up. He was putting the finishing touches on his plan for the bike ride, and I had some Cacklin’ Oat Bran in preparation for Yoga. Dave got up about an hour later, just before Ben and I took off for our activities.

Yoga was good, although I liked this teacher (Claire) less than the owner (Christen). One thing I found particularly annoying is that for most of the class she had her back to me. This bothered me because (1) doesn’t she know I am the center of the universe, and she should be looking at me to see my awesome yoga moves? And (b) I have no clue what I’m doing, and what if I’m doing it wrong?  It was fun and interesting to do yoga, because of course it is one of the 9 movement forms that make up Nia, but in Nia we don’t usually hold the poses as long. So parts of it were quite challenging. At the end we stayed in shavasana for way longer than I’m used to (including some nice aromatherapy oil) which is hard for me because I start planning my day, thinking about even longer term issues, and other assorted non-yoga things. Eventually I did settle into some semblance of calm, and left class pretty blissed out.

When I got back to the house Dave and Joan were having a very deep discussion about the universe from an astronomical perspective, mostly about Quasars. They did not appreciate my joining in by singing the song about the sun that Josh taught us (The Sun by They Might be Giants).  Meanwhile Ben had ridden 42 or 43 miles but was tired of dealing with the icy roads, so he called Joan to come pick him up. While he was in the shower she made him an English muffin in self defense, which he ate in about two seconds and said he was going to marry because he’d never loved anything so much.

Lunch today was at Bread and Ocean in Manzanita, which continues to be one of our favorite lunch places and also continues to be for sale. The Banh Mi sandwich is still excellent. I had a ginger cookie for dessert which was slightly over-caramelized (or “burnt” as non-foodies might say), which actually made it more yummy. Ben had Santa Cruz Organic lemonade, which was totally yucky. Don’t get that. After lunch we walked around town a little – did I mention it was a gorgeous sunny day, although chilly? We didn’t stay in Manzanita long (although we did visit my favorite shop with the broccoli and cauliflower balls) because we wanted to do some geocaching in Cannon Beach.

Ben & Joan found the pointing hand

The geocache we did is the first one Dave and I ever did, and involves walking along Hemlock trying to find the places in the pictures.  When you find them you take one of the numbers from the GPS location, do a little math, and then plug it in to the spaces in another location to find the final destination. It was fun doing it again, even if Joan cheated by walking way ahead and also by finding things when we were still looking for them. There was also some shoving, grabbing, and covering-of-another-person’s-eyes by one person whose names begin with B and end with N, but we’re not saying any names.

Another fun thing about this puzzle cache is that it starts at the whale at the north end of town and then  goes about halfway to midtown, so you can also do some shopping as you go. Also you can stop into Cannon Beach Distillery for a little tasting, which helps keep you warm. I found a great handbag and Joan found some boots. We also found these fantastic raincoats with accordion hoods, but as they were over $200 we kept going. I stopped at La Luna Loca and got some pants for Andrea Bell.

Towards the end it started getting colder and also we wanted to be home for sunset, so we hopped in the car and zoomed home, only to discover that a fog bank was rolling in. So not much of a sunset, and also right after the sun went behind the fogbank it rolled right up and socked us in. It’s a weird effect, to have the outside world suddenly disappear.

Our dinner reservations weren’t until  7:15, so we had some more relaxing time in our little fog cocoon.  Then we headed out to Newman’s, a reliable restaurant favorite. Here’s what: if they have the roasted tomato soup, you should get it. Tim had it at Thanksgiving and I came back and wrote in my blog about how good it was, but apparently didn’t make it clear enough: if they have it, get it. Although the food was all very yummy, it was far and away the best thing there. We had lots of fun and laughing and also Ben asked the hardest question ever: if you had to give up bread or cheese, which would you give up? Dave said he’d be like Kirk and the Kabayashi Maru. Also we talked about what would be the perfect 8 week vacation(the length of Dave’s upcoming sabbatical), and Dave and I agreed on a 3 week cruise, a week each in England, Italy, and France, and 2 week to recover. So we’re all set there. We will not report here just how much discussion about bodily functions there was, but there was more than there should have been. I think Ben and I were not raised properly.

When we got home it was finally time for some Trouble. Faithful readers will know that my record at games is pretty dismal, but I did win the last game of trouble at Rustlewood. Tonight would be no different! Even though Joan got all her pieces out very quickly and seemed virtually untouchable, eventually I got out and even though there was some extremely inappropriate sibling honking, I completely won even though I had to sit there waiting to pop a one almost until my next birthday. I was in the swivelly chair so I did a victory lap.

Confidential to BOS – the chat was indeed a highlight. And you may recall that Dave and Tim did it with a toaster.

Confidential to SFO in CB – I’ve never exercised for more than 2 hours at a time. I’ve certainly never exercised for so long that people could eat breakfast, take naps, or even pack their belongings for a week’s vacation and drive to the coast while a I was exercising. Just saying.