Going back to Cali..and..FINALLY

Sorry for the lack of entries..I have been busy with work and the wife out of town.
So..the latest updates are as such:

My wife went to California to see family and friends for Passover and Easter and a vacation in general; she needed it and deserved it..and we both would have gone, but 2 things prevented us: my job, and our dog. At only 9 months, we did not want to kennel him for 4 days or so. As it turns out, I had a business trip scheduled while she was in California, unbeknownst to me, so we had to kennel him regardless.

Ok..so lets go back in time. Our 3 year anniversary was Wednesday night (April 12th), and we had a great dinner and time together. Thursday, Audra left for California and I went to work as normal. The rest of the week was fairly uneventful, spending time with Maximus, doing chores, went out to lunch with my friend Allen, watched "A History of Violence" (thumbs down..a little slow and boring, but well acted and a few good action scenes) on Netflix and did some cleanup and such.

Sunday, I went to Dawn and Darby's in the afternoon for an Easter dinner. Yes, this Jew went on over and sat with the goy for dinner. They asked me to bring Maximus along..which was good for him to interact with new people, other dogs and so forth..but their daughter ended up feeding him a lot of food he doesnt normally eat..and come Monday, Maximus got sick and had the runs all over the house. This was, of course, 5 minutes before I had to take him to the kennel and before I had to head to the airport for a flight to Emeryville, Ca for training. Less than pleasant. Maximus looked so sad too, knowing he had done something wrong. I was not mad at him of course..I felt bad for him. He had been batting 1.000 though at potty training, so now he is less than perfect. Argh. :)

So..I flew to Emeryville (near Oakland/SF) on Monday afternoon..which was stupid since my training started Tuesday morning, and they flew me out at 2:30pm. Needless to say, I got to my hotel by about 5pm and killed the rest of the evening by hanging out at a Barnes and Noble and then seeing "V for Vendetta" (I enjoyed it actually, but it was totally predictable).

Tuesday, my training began and it was pretty boring for the most part, but the instructor, who is a dead ringer for a gay Michael Stipe, tried his best to make things reasonably fun. The other people in the class were friendly as well.
The evening was the best part of the day because FINALLY, after about 5 or 6 years of talking to Natasha online, I met her for the first time, for dinner. Yes yes, before you all ask, my wife knows about her..shes just a friend. There is no romantic interest on either side, just a mutual fondness for each others humor and insight. She also has a blog here (but rarely posts anymore) and sometimes comments as well, and she is the one who made me go to myspace and so forth.

So on Tuesday she drove up from San Jose and she picked me up at my hotel about 7:15pm and we went to San Francisco. She drive us to a restaurant called Cafe Lulu and we split some anitpasti (several cheeses, leeks, salmon and other goodies) and then split some Seared Ahi Tuna and other miscellaneous items on the plate which I cannot recall. Then we went to North Beach and went into some Italian bakery for espresso, canolis, tiramisu..etc. Natasha apparently has a very big sweet tooth, since she mentioned that she might want to take me to a place called "Bittersweet" on Wednesday. After the coffee, we just walked around North Beach for a while and she took me home about 11:15pm. I watched some Letterman and went to bed about 12:30am.

On Wednesday, the training was not any more..or less..interesting and Natasha also came up again form San Jose (a good friend, huh?) and we went to Japantown in San Francisco for some sushi. She thought it was terrific, but being the sushi snob that I admittedly am, I thought it was mediocre at best. Still, anytime I can eat sushi, especially on per diem, and with good company, I cannot really complain. A funny thing that I am sure she didnt want me to mention was that we were trying to figure out what some of the rolls were going by on the little sushi boats. Well, one went by and she said she thought it was an "enema sushi". She could not remember the word "sea anemone". It was funny and I told her she would be mentioned in my blog for that one. Her revenge was that she took some funny photos of me that I am sure will be on her blog shortly.Maybe I ought to mention that Natasha is Russian, and while her English is almost perfect, she occasionally uses a word incorrectly or struggles to find the correct word and sometimes something cute like that happens. That said, I only know about 10 words of Russian..so, I cannot really talk smack. After that, we walked around some shops in Japantown, including a great bookstore, and then went over to Union Square to walk around and to some restaurant for another canoli and a cappucino...I forget the name..Kotell's perhaps (Bittersweet was closed for the night). She dropped me off at my hotel around 9:45pm and I passed out watching tv around 10:30.

We had a good time and I hope she can come up to Portland sometime to visit the city and my wife and I. She had mentioned she will have her own cooking show featured on tv soon, called "Natasha Eats", so be on the lookout for it..and you can see one of her quick recipes on her myspace account, her blog or on "YouTube".

I go back to Oregon on Friday night, after not seeing my wife for about 9 days and my dog for 4-5. I look forward to both very much.

Talk to you all soon!

Ps - Laura..I just won my fantasy basketball pool :)