my weekend was fabulous! we had a great time with our friends in napa. i feel like my boundaries were respected and that we had a nice, relaxing weekend. the bed we slept on in our friends house was too hard for hubbies back, which made him pretty stiff all weekend, but he managed to have a good time still, which was awesome.
friday night, we were a little afraid because we didn’t leave until about 6pm, and almost as soon as we headed into the hills, it started snowing…lightly at first and then by the time we made the pass, it was coming down really hard and sticking. that is always a little nerve wracking for me because a car is several thousand pounds, and sometimes i wonder what keeps them on the road in icy conditions! lucky for us, we managed to make it through before things really started to stick or need plowing and also before they could erect any road controls. we really road the gauntlet on that one!
we got to their house by 9:30, and i think everyone was pretty tired. i didn’t realize they had a hottub, oh, but they did, so without too much more fanfare, pretty quickly nekkid hot tubbing commenced. it was just laid back and normal. what a concept! we were gifted the use of their daughter’s brand new big girl bed, in her room, and her parents were nice enough to let her sleep with them for the weekend. the evening passed sleepily…
we slept in a bit on saturday, and awoke to breakfast being made. our hostess was indeed gracious and we got biscuits and gravy for breakfast! yum! it was awesome. then some clean up time occurred, and we headed out to a couple of wineries. some errands needed to take place first, those were readily dispatched, and off we headed to the sterling winery. we had relayed to our hostess that we didn’t want any hugely expensive tastings and weren’t into snooty, pretentious wine stuff…we wanted smaller, free or low-cost, family or down-to-earth type wineries. it was pretty awesome, you have to ride a tram to get to the winery. the decor is reminiscent of a monastery white stucco buildings, very beautiful. there is a self-paced walking tour of the winery and it was fun to read about the process. we got to see an automatic grape crusher, got to see them dump a ton of grapes into it, and then see the giant oak barrels, smaller oak barrels, and surrounding area where the grapes were grown. also got to taste a few.
after that one, we went to another winery that was TOTALLY awesome! It’s called castello di amarosa and is a full size castle. the tasting there was inexpensive and you have to walk through part of the castle to get to the tasting room. i would love, love, love to go back and do the whole castle tour, but it wasn’t the type of thing i was prepared to pay $30 for on the spot. we did buy some of their wine, though, and it was yummy. they told us how cold the castle gets in the winter time, but that just didn’t seem to dim my enthusiasm for being in a castle. i think anyone who’s ever been to a renn faire has to have at least a passing fascination with castles. it was way cool. i also bought a painting of the castle that was painted with their wine! i am sure this is a gimmick of the wineries, but i had never seen this sort of thing before, i thought it was way cool, so i bought one =)
then, we had heard from another friend i had invited, who had a little boy about the same age as the little girl belonging to our hosts. he had called while we were at sterling, and we were to meet him back down in napa at the cajun festival that was going on during the weekend. the cajun festival was fun enough, it was sort of the end of the day and absolutely everything was very expensive, but i suppose i should have expected that from napa =) we left the cajun festival and went to a gourmet hamburger joint for dinner. it was yummy.
then we returned to their house and had more nekkid hot tubbing. that was fun, we laughed and had a good time, everyone was happy.
sunday, it was our plan to get up reasonably early because we were going to head to the burning man decompression in san francisco. i was looking forward to this as many friends were supposed to be there. i was anxious because i don’t feel like i got to see hardly anything at burning man this year, so i was looking forward to some of the art showing up, and in fact, my favorite piece did actually go, it’s an optical illusion monkey thing that’s very neat. we got started later than we wanted to, and had a prelude to how the day was going to go. the other friend had driven up his smallish rv to their house, and in the morning, he dumped his kid in the kitchen and went back to sleep. then he made us about an hour later than we wanted to be leaving for the city.
once we got to san francisco, we headed in to china town to experience dim sum. some of the stuff i thought was yummy, some was odd, and some i don’t think i would eat again, although it was all interesting. the guys were decidedly less adventuresome, so they were sort of disappointed with the food offerings. i felt bad for our friend who’s idea it was, i think she felt sort of bad, but i reassured her that SOME of us are adventurous. we still had a good time though. driving in san francisco is a trip and something that sort of defies normal anything when you aren’t used to it. between the up and down streets and all the people and road construction, it’s pretty crazy =)
i would say it still wasn’t my ideal time, but pretty damn close =) i would have stayed for the whole thing, but d’s back started to hurt again. there were more fire spinners to see, that we didn’t get to. my group did really good, i did fire safety for them, so that felt good, got to see them all. got a free drink i never got to use for helping out with security for that smallish portion of the show, and got to see much stuff. i think i am the luckiest person alive with the quality of the people i have in my life. it was great to see everyone again, walk around and have a good time. and most important NOT WORK! i could have, oh yes, i could have, but i promised myself and others i was NOT going to do that and i stuck to it.
by the time we headed home, i think everyone was tired, some were cranky, and hopefully all were satisfied at having had a great time. i know i did! we got back to napa for more nekkid hot tubbing, snacking, joking around and just having good times with good people. monday was relaxing in the extreme, and we didn’t leave until after 7pm, which made getting home pretty late, after ten. the ride home was uneventful, weather was good, and life is grand. our napa friends loaded us up with tomatoes and other fruits and veggies still in their garden. YUM!
this is already a novella, but i wanted to get it recorded. may elaborate later, but wanted to get the basics down.
i heart my life, and i heart my friends.
life is good.
peace.
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