Catch up Time with the Girlfriend

As I mentioned, Jenn was in town for the SWE Conference. And it was around the same time as her birthday. In the last few years, we seem to be somewhere offsite celebrating her birthday around this time of the year. Partly because it is normally a good season to travel after the summer rush and the kids are back to school. But now that I am married and with my current job, it’s a bit of a pity that we haven’t been able to pull this off yet. Since we both live far apart (with about 3000 miles between us), this kind of trips help to maintain our friendship and something we both look forward to in planning. This year, we resolved to hometown visits, where I went to MI to see her or she came here to see me.

During the week, she came over couple nights to the apartment. One night, I made seared tuna (from Tom’s sport fishing trip last month) and got her a birthday cake. On a second night, I made Tom took us out to dinner at Ortega 120, a local Oaxacan restaurant I meant to try for a while now. Afterward, Tom and Jenn played a few games of backgammon. I am not sure what happened there, I think my girlfriend beat him on the game by a lot.

She stayed couple days over the weekend to spend some time to catch up with me. Since our apartment is small, we couldn’t really accommodate anyone. I didn’t plan much. At the last minute, I decided that we should go off with just the girls and spend the weekend somewhere with overnight at a hotel instead. Let’s say it this way, I feel guilty to put either my husband or my girlfriend on the sofa. Yeap, so much with the “let go of the guilt.”

Jenn didn’t care where we go. Her only requirement was to have couple hours of California sun over the weekend. I decided we should head down to Huntington Beach since we were already heading south to my old massage and facial therapists for a half day pampering.

It was bright and early when I picked Jenn up from the Long Beach hotel to make our pampering appointments. The weather was a bit chilly but sunny. I think GOD was playing a joke on Jenn. When we made the appointments and deciding where to spend the weekend, Jenn insisted a narrow hours of the day for the perfect time of her sun bathing, something around the early afternoon so that the sun is high up rather than at an angle. Ok, I personally don’t really understand the significance of that but since she is the one getting the sun, I can’t argue much about it.

The sun was high up during the drive to the Hilton Waterfront Beach Resort at Huntington Beach. But about a mile from the coast, a THICK layer of fog/cloud slowly but definitely settled in along the coast. By the time we arrived at our hotel in front of the beach, this thick layer of fog planned for a permanent stay the entire weekend. At this point, we could only laugh!!! If you want the water, you don’t get the sun. If you want the sun, you just have to go inland!!! What can I say; I didn’t order that for our outing…

We didn’t do much over the weekend. We had a nice leisure dinner at Jaqu's with live music. I took long afternoon nap (way overdue as my body called for it) while Jenn went for a walk down the beach. The fog didn’t light up. We slept in the next morning, followed with a full brunch by the pool. The fog had lightened a bit, but still no sun in sight. We needed a bit of exercise after the heavy breakfast.

Here we go again; Jenn talked me into biking down the beach. Gosh, I haven’t gotten on a bike for a long time, like many years. I do know how to ride one, just a bit out of practice. And seriously, I was concern about getting hurt since I still had a long busy two months of work ahead of me. So she compromised and we hired a tandem bike for the two of us. She steered in front while I just followed instruction in paddling. It was really fun. I missed that. A weekend is way too short for us girls. But we take what we can. Hopefully, my life would slow down a bit in the near future so that I can catch up with friends and family and ME.