10th Anniversary

The weekend before Christmas, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our first date. (I can't believe it's been a decade!) We don't celebrate this one very often, but it was also a fantastic excuse for a getaway at the end of a hectic quarter.

So Chris planned a lovely, relaxing trip to Calistoga, which is at the northern end of Napa Valley and is known for its mineral hot springs (pictures from the trip here). We stayed at a decadent resort called Solage, where we got a massage, and basked in their "Mudslide" treatment. Bliss. It was cloudy and drizzly for most of the trip – perfect weather to soak in hot water and hang out someplace cozy.

I loved this particular fountain, which looked like a cube of pure water, with fire burning on top. We thought we should be able to say a magic incantation and cause Callandor or Excalibur to emerge. Dorks to the core!

The resort also provided us with a couple of bikes so we could avoid driving as we went wine tasting. (Apparently it's not illegal to bike under the influence?) Happily, the sun was peeking through the clouds as we biked to the highly recommended Vincent Arroyo Winery, about a mile away.

They wine tasting is free, and when we tasted the wine, we could see why; we definitely bought lots of it before we left. The balsamic vinegar is SOOO delicious too! We also met J.J, Bodega, and Nameless, the black lab, brown lab, and cute marble-patterned cat, whom their wines are named after every year.

When we finished with wine tasting, we biked over to see the nifty Old Faithful of California, which went off about every 20 minutes.

I couldn't resist feeding a llama at their petting zoo.

For dinner, we went to JoLe, which is now probably my favorite restaurant of all time. We had the four-course tasting menu with wine pairings, and it was some of the most excellent food I've ever had. I didn't even believe in wine pairings (i.e. that it makes much of a difference) until that night. My favorite was the ice wine (very sad I forgot what it was called). I also might have a new favorite food: foie gras, which I had never tried before. And the scallops were to die for; I let Chris have the last bite and he was like, "wow, maybe you do love me". Haha.

We've come a long way from the Valencia Macaroni Grill in 1999!

Chilling with Cats

Last weekend, we visited my parents in L.A. for Thanksgiving. After gorging so much, I wasn't feeling photogenic enough to take pictures, but the remodeling they did was pretty cool -- very pretty hardwood floors. We saw lots of friends and ate a lot of food, of course. Embarrassingly, I got hooked on the Twilight / New Moon series, despite how bad I KNOW it is objectively.... We also played many rounds of Dominion with my brother. I'm hoping the dork points from the card game balance out the brainless teenage girl points from the movies.

Now we're back home and relaxing with the cats.

Pig Roast in Illinois

At the beginning of October, Chris and I flew out to Urbana-Champaign to see the Penn State vs Illinois football game. WOOHOO!! But wait...why Penn State vs Illinois again? Well, Chris's brother is a junior at UIUC, and some of Chris's relatives went to/grew up near Penn State, so it was a darn good excuse to have a family reunion. (Convenient that Illinois is in the middle of the country – we had representatives from Maryland, Texas, North Carolina, and California.)

Key stats for me before this trip:

1. I'd never been to Illinois (outside of O'Hare).
2. I'd never gone to a college football game.
3. I'd never gone to a tailgate.

Let me start by saying that Chris's uncles and their friend Loren did a professional job at tailgating. They got a 110-pound pig (that's 110 pounds AFTER gutting) and they started roasting at 6am (or something crazy early like that).

At first, I was imagining that there would be a pig rotating on a stick over an open flame (like Chris's frat did one year, with fairly gruesome results). But this was, I believe, Loren's SIXTH pig roast, so he knew what he was doing. He brought something called a "China Box" to slow-roast the pig:

The pig is inside the box, and those are the coals on top. I still don't quite understand how the heat went down (heard mumbles about the metal conducting the heat), but here's us enjoying the warmth, the delicious smell of roasting pig, and the beer at about 9:30am. (And yeah, my Advantage Federer shirt was the closest thing I had to orange.)

More pictures of the star:

We had fantastic sides like potato salad and this really great dish of beans, all thanks to Loren. The pig got the only piece of fruit we brought to the tailgate:

And it was soooo tender and yummy. Mmm! I didn't even mind smelling like pig smoke for days after we got back. We invited all the nearby tailgaters to come grab some, since well, we had 110 pounds of pig, but still had three or four gallon bags full of meat by the end of the day. Awesome.

At about 2 o'clock, we all headed over to the Memorial Stadium to see the game. The game itself wasn't particularly competitive, but I enjoyed the marching band:

Oh, and here's my obligatory picture with some corn. We drove by a lot of corn on our way from O'Hare/Midway airports to the university, but this is UIUC's experimental cornfield; apparently it's the "oldest experimental cornfield" in the United States.

Other tidbits from the trip:

• We saw Zombieland, which I was initially very skeptical of, but actually it was a lot of fun!
• We stayed at a bed and breakfast called Akademika, which was excellent. Big comfy room, yummy breakfast, and walking distance to campus, if you're ever in the area and looking for a place to stay.
• We pre-paid for a tank of gas at Enterprise, and brought the car back with the empty light on. Aww yeah. Getting our money's worth, haha. So now you know that a trip from Chicago to Urbana-Champaign and back is one full tank of gas in a Chrysler 300. (Btw, the Chrysler 300 is a terrible car.)

Last weekend, we tried out Loren's bean recipe. It turned out lovely, and we had enough to last us all week! Here it is if you'd like to try it.

Steve's Beans

1 (1-pound) tube regular or spicy Jimmy Dean sausage

4 (15- to 16-oz cans of different types of beans (drained) (dark red kidney, black beans, navy beans, pinto beans, Great Northern beans, etc.)

1 (31-oz) can pork and beans (drained)

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup barbeque sauce

1/2 cup ketchup

1/2 large onion, chopped

1 (10-oz) can regular of spicy chopped tomatoes, drained (I use Rotel diced tomatoes and chilis)

1 teaspoon liquid smoke

1 teaspoon mustard

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

6 to 8 strips of bacon

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large skillet, brown the sausage, breaking it up into pieces as it cooks. When cooked through, remove from skillet and drain fat.

In a very large bowl, mix sausage and remaining ingredients (except bacon). Transfer to a 9x13-inch or other large baking pan. Place bacon strips on top and bake for 1 hour. If necessary, run under broiler to crisp bacon before serving. Makes 15 servings.

Chris had to go to three supermarkets to find Jimmy Dean sausage, though to be fair, he started with Whole Foods and Mollie Stone's, and I don't think that stuff is full of local or organic goodness... Anyways, Safeway was the winner; they had an entire aisle dedicated to Jimmy Dean sausage, haha.

That's about it, but here's all the pics from the trip, if you want to see more!

US Open!! Aw YEAH!

Yup, Chris and I went to New York for two weeks to watch the 2009 US Open!! There's no way I can do justice to the whole trip, but here's an attempt some highlights, at least. We got the Night Plan, which means we got tickets to every night of the US Open, plus all the finals.

Before we went, everyone asked, wouldn't we get tired of watching so much tennis? (That is, everyone except Coach Rick, who was bummed that we "only" got the night sessions.)

Answer: Nope. Loved every minute.

This was the view from our seats in Arthur Ashe Stadium (Section 325, Row W, Seats 9 and 10, our home away from home):

We were pretty far up, but sometimes people left early and we snuck down to take their seats. Here's the closest we got. (See Federer in the background?! This was after he won against Soderling.)

The best match: Dent vs Navarro; not one, but TWO serve-and-volleyers, playing five full sets. What more could we ask for? And Dent is American so the crowd got really into it.

The best drink: The Honey Deuce. Grey Goose + lemonade + Chambord + three honeydew melon spheres on a toothpick (for the tennis balls, awww). Chris has been making these for himself ever since we got home.

The best song: I Gotta Feeling, by the Black Eyed Peas. They played this *every* single night as the players were warming up, and now I can't listen to it without being totally pumped to watch some tennis.

The best shot ever: We were there for Federer's self-proclaimed "best shot ever" and the entire stadium went totally crazy.

Over Labor Day weekend, my blockmates came to New York and got in on the fun!

Since most of us play some tennis, we were psyched to try to get some courts and hit a few balls together. Alas, it's insanely hard to get courts in Manhattan, with the cheapest private courts being $65/hour, and the lines for public courts being over THREE HOURS long! I've never even seen a line for tennis courts before, much less one with 17 people in it.

So instead, we took a stroll along the High Line, which I thought was really nice, but...

Best quote: "Okay, we have these in Alabama too, but WE call them weeds." –Phyllis.

Together, we explored Queens, ate at Katz's, ate Kati Rolls, and played Rock Band. They insisted that I sing...but after one song, I never got the mic back, hrm... :-)

My blockmates got the Holiday Twilight Plan, so they got to enter the grounds earlier (4pm instead of 6pm) which gave Chris and me a chance to wander around taking pictures (and eating more).

Best treat: Lemon Ice King. I never had Italian ice before, so thanks to a co-worker for the suggestion! On the way, we walked past the Queens Zoo and the most packed park I have ever seen; practically every square foot of grass was being used, seriously.

Best landmark: The Unisphere.

As I wrote earlier, this post doesn't do justice to all the awesome things we saw and did (and ate), but come talk to us, and we'll be happy to rant. And we have about 200 more pictures if you want to see them!

Tahoe Hiking Convoy

I wasn't going to blog about this, but then I saw the pictures and decided they were too hilarious. At the end of August, my team got to go on an awesome three-day trip to Lake Tahoe, and we had one morning where we were supposed to plan an activity on our own. Of course, everyone procrastinates like crazy and tries to join someone else's activity when it's clear that it's too late to plan anything.

This left us with ONE activity and NINETY-NINE (99) people. That's right, 99 of us went hiking around Mt. Rose, in what can only be described as a friggin' convoy.

Look carefully at all the little heads disappearing behind the bend. I didn't even catch everyone on camera.

Fantastic few days, plus I won at poker for the first time ever! I keep trying to remind myself that anybody could win with the ridiculously good cards I was getting (I think I got dealt ace-king and then pocket aces in two consecutive rounds at some point), but nonetheless, I am totally hooked.

Chris didn't get to come to Tahoe; poor guy was playing tennis in beautiful Carmel instead. We lead a tough life.

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