Last month when I went home for Brother’s Bday, I stopped by Sandy and Carl’s place to meet their newborn baby girl. She was born on Jes’ bday and was only a few weeks old that day I visited. Little Mia was asleep for the whole time I was there but I guess that’s what newborns do best. It was great to see Sandy and Carl again and they seem to be doing as well as they possibly can at this point in time. Congratulations, you two!!
Here are some more photos:
I went to work this morning with a happy hop in my step. I had just found my keys last night and it was Friday. I got to work and our first patient of the morning was doing great. I stopped by another patient’s room to say “hello” and was stopped at the door. Apparently he had a fever and vomited all night. There was a sign on the door and the nurse said that he tested positive for Influenza A. Blerg. That’s likely to be H1N1!! Oh great. I paged Teresa (my PT partner) and the managers were informed. Since Teresa and I (and my intern) work in such close contact with this guy, we were told to wear a yellow mask for the rest of the day and had to call Employee Health. *sigh* I suppose this was a good year for my first flu shot. My manager was very happy to hear that I actually got it last month. According to the screening, we’re healthy enough to not be at risk of having complications but the nurse recommended that we take Tamiflu as a prophylactic measure. If we didn’t take the meds, we’d have to wear a mask at work until next Friday. Just the thought of that made me nauseous. With 10 days of pill poppin’, we would be able to return to work on Monday without a mask.
So, I got my free prescription from the pharmacist and I took pill #1. I read some of the side effects and there’s a small chance for me to have the runs, puke my brains out, and pass out. Yes! In solidarity, Teresa and I agreed to give daily updates to each other this weekend. We were initially hesitant to agree to the pills but it’s done. I’ll be sure to provide updates here as well. I feel just fine so far and I’m hoping to have dodged the swine bullet. It’s going to be a rough winter/flu season and I hope that this is the worst of it for Team Tiger.
For the past 2 days I’ve been scouring my brain, my house, my car, and everything else I’ve touched over the last 64 hours. On Tuesday morning as I was heading out for work, I couldn’t find my house keys. I swore that I had them the night before but didn’t have the time to really search as I was hurrying to catch the train.
Yesterday I still didn’t have my keys and had to sit outside of Jes’ office building for an hour as he finished one of his meetings. I sent him a text message saying “I’m downstairs” but didn’t really know if he had received it. He finally came down to hand me the keys and that hour of waiting certainly felt like an eternity. I would suck at being homeless.
I gave myself one more crazy search tonight and went through the trash, the dirty laundry, all the bags I had used within the past two days, and the coats and jackets that I had worn. Nothing. Finally, I had an epiphany. As I was going through the coat closet for the 3rd time, I remembered that I put on my snowboarding jacket on Tuesday morning to walk the dog in the rain. As I was heading out, Jes offered to walk the dog and I gladly hung up my jacket and went to work instead. THAT was the moment when I couldn’t find my keys!!!! I had put the keys in the pocket of the jacket (that I haven’t worn in months) and forgot to take them back out in all the excitement of not having to fight the wind and rain at 6:30 in the morning!!! So when I reached into one of the many jacket pockets and felt the squishy elephant keychain, I thought my heart was going to leap out of my throat and I yelled, “I FOUND IT!!!!!” Aaaaah…I had the biggest sigh of relief of my life. I was also confused as to why I didn’t find them the first time or second time I went through the closet. Oh dear. Perhaps my brain was trying to make me suffer a little so that I wouldn’t do this again. I was SO close to calling it quits and Jes was dreading the pain of forking over a bunch of money to get our locks changed.
I really hate myself sometimes.
On Saturday morning we took Koa to Fort Funston and he had an awesome time running, sniffing, and peeing. He was also very well-behaved and did a little rolling around in the sand.
In the afternoon, we took him down to the Bay Bridge to watch the Blue Angels. Unfortunately they had to cancel the show because the fog was too low. Oh well, it was still sunny and we had a McDonald’s picnic by the water.
At the end of the day, we had to take Koa to the Bathhouse for his least favorite thing in the world. Luckily I had help and we got it done in a jiffy. He hated it. I still got to’ up. And the dog is squeaky clean. It’s too bad it’s supposed to rain tomorrow.
A few years ago Ryan said “Dude, when it’s time for Vyl to turn 30 I will die.” Well, she turned 30 a couple weeks ago and so did her college friend Tammy. To celebrate, they reserved the private room at Nihon last Friday (10/2/09) and we had a bumpin’ time eating sushi, drinking whiskey, and hanging out.
Vyl had a tiara but refused to wear it all night so everyone else took turns wearing it for her. Ryan also finally showed up after dinner and he was as alive as could be. I guess turning 30 is not that catastrophic after all.  At the end of the night, we were still hungry and grabbed crepes from the crepe truck nearby.
Here are photos from the party.
I can’t believe it’s been a month since we said goodbye to Cinque Terre. That’s crazy. Well, here is a recap of our visit to Pisa and Cinque Terre:
On Tuesday (9/8), we left Florence by hopping on a train and headed out to Cinque Terre. On our way there, we stopped at Pisa to say “Buon Giorno” to the famous leaning tower. At the Pisa train station, we dropped off our luggage (yes, it’s safe) and hopped on the bus. It dropped us off at the piazza and it looked like we were at Epcot Center. The Leaning Tower was just standing there in its glorious tiltedness with tourists gathered all around taking the requisite “holding up the tower” photo. Of course, I took one but we didn’t stay much longer than that. Instead, we walked down the street for some lunch and walked back to the train station.
The train ride from Pisa to La Spezia was comfy but the train to Monterosso was crowded. Most of the ride was through a series of tunnels and we were pleasantly surprised by the blue ocean that appeared each time we came out of one of them. Cinque Terre is made up of 5 (cinque=five in Italian) villages and ours was the last stop. Once we arrived, it was such a nice change of scenery and pace. It was warm and breezy with not many cars or even bicycles around. The beach is rocky but there were plenty of people out in the water and sunning on the rented chairs.
We spent lots of time just hanging out by the water, drinking house wine, eating gelato, and reading. After a week of walking, sightseeing, and busy schedules, we were SO ready for some lounging around in the sun.
We also took a hike from Monterosso to Vernazza, which was more treacherous and difficult than we had expected. We both wore flip-flops and didn’t really bother bringing much water. Fortunately the view was lovely but my quads were burning by the end from all the stairs I had to climb.
Vernazza is another small village that seemed to have a larger number of old people. I think it bummed Jes out a bit. We had some yummy focaccia pizza and browsed the shops before heading back to Monterosso. Luckily we didn’t have to hike back and took the train instead.
For dinner, we ate a Restaurante Miky on both Tuesday and Wednesday nights. It had a Michelin sticker on the door and was a great tip-off for us. On the first night, we had an awesome dinner of mussels, anchovies, and lobster gnocchi. There were so many other items on the menu that looked good so we made reservations for the next day as we waited for the check. On the second night, I had a yummy frutti di mare and a very interesting cheetos-shaped pasta with pesto. Jes also ordered a fish baked inside a salt dome. They presented it at tableside and it was very tender and flavorful.
On Wednesday afternoon (09/09/09!), we hung out at Fast Bar and contributed to their wall of US dollar bills. I drew the traditional UCLA logo and we pinned it smack-dab in the middle of the bar. It’s nice to know that we’ve left a piece of us behind in such an awesome little village on the other side of the world.
I also had another fantastic plate of frutti di mare at a beachside eatery one afternoon. Cinque Terre is known for their pesto and seafood and boy did I take advantage of that. I can’t tell you how many mussels and clams I ate during those two days. It’s a good thing I learned how to like bivalves.
We had a great time in Cinque Terre and had some tasty tasty seafood. I also had a really good lemon sorbet paired with raspberry sorbet on our last night there. Mmmm…
Here are all 152 photos from Pisa and Cinque Terre.
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