Happy 39th to me!

Another year, another birthday, which to some appeared to be my 39th birthday. A customer who saw my bday decorations at work asked if I was turning 39, as if he was being kind and generous in his guess. When I looked incredulously at him he guessed '38??'. Um no, 37 - thanks. Then my ever considerate co-worker, Tony, told him 'yeah, she didn't age well...'. Thankfully the day did get better thanks to my pain in the ass co-workers who, for just that one day, acted like they liked me. They even took me out to Ikkyu, my favorite P-town Japanese restaurant, for lunch. I appreciated the effort even if I am convinced it was done out of fear. I'm used to it, I tend to have that effect on people. 

And for my birthday cake? Pumpkin cheesecake with shaved white chocolate from Upper Crust Bakery! My piggy co-workers ate that sh*t up, so I didn't have any to bring home. :(

For my birthday dinner I chose Leon Bistro, where we take our cooking class, because it doesn't get much better than their calamari steak. 

I got so many wonderful and thoughtful gifts I'll be enjoying for months. So, my work birthday party was on Thursday since we're not open on Fridays, my actual birthday was on Friday which consisted of a lunch date with a co-worker and my dinner at Leon Bistro, and then on Sunday two of my girlfriends took me out for day two of the Sierra Oro Farm Trail. You have a passport with the names of 29 participating wineries and specialty farms in Butte County that you travel to for food and wine samples. The girls had taken their hubbies on Saturday to places in Oroville so we did some of the Chico stops on Sunday. 

We did Odyssey Winery (where I bought an ahhh-mazing port) and Emerald C Winery that were off of upper Cohasset, north of my house towards the airport. On our way up we stopped at the airport complex for Mooney Farms which makes the Bella Sun Luci brand of sun dried tomatoes. They had sun dried tomato risotto, pasta with their brand pasta sauce, cold antipasto salad, warm sun dried tomato artichoke dip, two different tomato spreads, and a shop where you could buy their products direct for a steal! While up on the north end of town we popped across Hwy 99 and went to Roney Winery, a small operation which only sells direct. Our final stop was their gift to me, HoneyRun Winery, because nobody but me likes their stuff. It's sweeeeet fruit honey wine (mead). So, if you don't like dessert wine, you won't like their honey wine. I love it though - their blackberry honeywine is my favorite. Those five stops alone took us 6 hours, so how anybody could complete the 29 passport stops in two days is beyond me! But after seeing how reasonable the prices are ($25/person and you get a free wine glass) we're definitely thinking about doing it next year. So far "39" is starting off pretty good...

Birthday concert

For the Canadian's 40th birthday (later this month), I'd bought concert tickets to see Kings of Leon at the Sleep Train Amphitheatre in Wheatland last Tuesday night. It was our first time to this outdoor venue, but thankfully the drive and parking were a breeze. The show started at 7:00 pm so we got there around 6:00 pm and had some incredibly overpriced food inside while we waited. $14 for a beer, really?!? Our seats were in the first section of fixed seats (there was an open area right in front of the stage that they had folding chairs set up in) and much to our "delight", the only other person initially seated in our row was a drunk girl from Forest Ranch that was right next to Chris.

Drunk girl liked to dance. A lot. And usually that meant throwing some ass and elbows into Chris. Then she'd turn around and yell at everyone in our section, "why aren't you dancing?!?". Angry drunks....even better.

The opening bands were Kongos and Young the Giant who were both great, but of course the boy was there see his favorite, Kings of Leon.

The main show was about 2 hours long and played all the stuff Chris wanted to hear. We left during the last encore song so we had no problems getting out of the parking lot. It was a great show, except for all the douchebag kids who snuck into the empty seats in front of us and spent the entire evening smoking, and thankfully the venue is only about an hour and a half from home so after stopping for some late night chicken nuggets in Oroville, we made it home around midnight and I was smart enough to take Wednesday off. Compared to a concert I'm afraid his actual birthday is going to be relatively dull!

Invading the southern territories

I just got back from spending a lovely weekend in SoCal crashing with my sister, Wilson. On Friday we spent some time at the mall so I could spend a ridiculous amount of money on costume jewelry before heading to the nearby arboretum to enjoy some fancy gardens.

After getting chased out by the peacocks (seriously, they ran us out of the herb garden) we moved on to Old Town Pasadena where we had to wade through the news crews, cops, and hundreds of people in line for the new iPhone 6. It's just a phone people!

Saturday we made our way to the Getty Museum which was amazing. Got my fix of Van Gogh and Renoir paintings as well as my yearly quota of stairs. So. Many. (*&#%. Stairs.

We spent the afternoon fitting in a quick visit to UCLA, including more !#*$ stairs, so Wilson could fix an alarm problem and then headed out to Santa Monica for some window shopping at the 3rd Street Promenade where I made Wilson smell every scented lotion I could find to slather myself in.

I think that was the moment "Susana go home now" started entering her mind. And the best part of the trip? Waking up to this face staring at me Sunday morning;

"Oh great, you're up! Now you can pet me!"

An overall excellent weekend filled with great shopping, great eats, and great company!

All about August

So while we did a lot during August, I just didn't getting around to documenting. it. First was a long weekend trip to Bend, Oregon towards the beginning of the month which included a trip to Crater Lake, a stop at the Saab owners convention in Redmond (where we saw Mr. A.), and a visit to Chris' alma mater in Klamath Falls.

Later in the month I had Face over for the weekend for her 20th high school reunion from PHS. Mine is next year, but I went as her plus-1. We were able to spend some time with Sarah, David and Poppy which we haven't got to do in years.

Then, last Friday I went all crazy with myself and went to an appointment for eyelash extensions. I'd met a gal who had them at my friend Kari's cabin and absolutely loved them! They're just like nails where you have to get fills done every couple of weeks as your regular lashes fall out, but so far I'm in love!

BEFORE

AFTER

The initial application took two hours because she glues on each individual lash, but fills should only be 45 mins to an hour. The hardest thing is not rubbing your eyes, but who does't love waking up with perfect eyeliner and lashes?!?

And last, but certainly not least, at the end of the month we booked another Viking River Cruise for this November!

We'll start in Budapest Hungary, go to Bratislava Slovakia for a day, spend a couple of days in Austria, and then end in Passau Germany. This cruise is only 8 days long so a little shorter than our last, but we scored and got the only handicapped equipped room on the ship which is a 1/3 larger than the normal rooms. Time to get those passports dusted off!

Taste of Italy in the summer

This last Tuesday the boy and I joined some of my co-workers for another cooking class at Leon Bistro. This time it was Italy in the Summer. There were 11 courses, but somehow I missed a picture of the cheesy polenta topped with sauteed mushrooms. Hopefully you'll enjoy the 10 other courses....

 When we sat down, each of the place settings were already set with an appetizer plate. Caramelized onions over a wedge of soft cheese, pumpkin seeds, roasted beets, salami, figs, haricots verts with almonds, beans, mini fresh smoked mozzarella balls, and cantaloupe.

Next was two slices of pizza - one margherita pizza (tomatoes and mozzarella) and one with roasted peppers and onions. The margherita was the best because it was nice and salty.

Possibly on the of the best courses of the evening - figs stuffed with gorgonzola butter, walnuts and wrapped in prosciutto before being baked and topped with balsamic vinegar. Oh..my...gawd....so good!

Crostinis topped with a thinly sliced, seared beef, olives, capers, and mini gherkins.

Spinach and ricotta gnocchi, which were larger and more like dumplings, in a lemon artichoke cream sauce topped with bread crumbs. Really, really rich - we each only ate one gnocchi.

Another favorite - Bacala which were basically fish cakes. Our recipe said to use cod, but Chef Ann used halibut. It's a mix of poached fish, mashed potatoes, cream and spices breaded in cornmeal and browned. Loved, loved, loved.

Calamari with cherry tomatoes, olive oil, parsley, and garlic toast. By now, fitting anymore food into our person was getting difficult so I ate according to priority. Calamari, check. Garlic toast, skip.

Panzanella (bread salad with tomato and red onion). Too full to eat our own servings, the boy and I shared one serving and then each only took one bite. Stomachs....wanting...to...explode....

Oh my god, how could there still be more courses?!? This was lamb topped with fried onions and served with a side of cold lentil and onion salad. Barely touched it because like hell was I going to get screwed out of my dessert!

Final course - almond biscotti served with cherry infused goat cheese and cherry granita (shaved ice). I'd take a bite, pray I wouldn't puke, take another bite, pray I wouldn't puke...

The following day I literally wasn't hungry until dinner time, having only some yogurt for lunch, but it was worth every bite!

Breakfast and burros

The Canadian and I got up early this morning to head over to the Durham park for their Exchange Club's pancake breakfast and Cruzin' Classics car show.

The boy has had a hankering for real, honest-to-goodness gluten filled pancakes and these hit the spot for him. For $8 we got a plate of scrambled eggs, sausage, and pancakes with orange juice and coffee on the side and some free James Taylor being blared out of the PA system. Can't beat that! We got there around 8:30 am so not all the cars had arrived yet for the car show so we spent a little time first checking out the crap, I mean craft, booths and Chris made a new friend, Sally the burro.

When I was finally able to tear him away from his one, true love we made the rounds through the cars. Lots of great restorations and paint jobs, but my favorite car shows are always the European cars, not these big American classics.

We got out of there while the day was still young so we put in a little time at Barnes & Noble and grocery shopping before I took some time for my usual weekend nap. And then it was time to settle in for some NASCAR, World Cup, and IndyCar. Good thing we got up early and took a walk because clearly we're not going anywhere beyond our couch anytime soon.

Mini kitchen makeover

First it was our front and back yards, then it was the windows, now it's tile in the kitchen on the boy's to-do list. Chris has been talking about wanting to put up a tile back splash in the kitchen so we've made trips to Lowe's and Home Depot to check out our options. By far our favorite tile was:

 So earlier this week Chris picked up a bunch of squares of this tile from Home Depot and when I got home from church today I was greeted to a construction zone in the kitchen and the boy half way through installing the tile:

About an hour and a half later 99% of the tile was up, pending a couple of pieces around the window sill that need to be trimmed.

Now we wait a day or two for the mortar to set before slapping on the grout, but what a difference a little bit of color makes! Apparently I'm married to the Canadian Bob Villa.