how was your weekend?

it was ... ok. i got like a 24-hour flu or something. all day saturday i felt like crap. my body ached all over and i kept getting hot flashes. so i just tried to rest the whole day. then sunday i was a lot better. and now i just have residual coughing ... yep, pretty lucky. sounds like most people are getting it for a week or two ... fun how the flu bug was so considerate of my workweek.

not us, but pretty close to what our saturday looked like (source)

how was your weekend?

if to one of the fatherly types around the office ... not too much. took my dad up to napa for brunch for father's day. it was nice. we didn't get to do much else though because there was tons of traffic, so it was kinda late once we were done ... there was one pretty long stretch of 80 that was just PACKED like a parking lot. we were delayed like 45 minutes. can you guess where everyone was going? ... we thought everyone was going up to see the nascar races at infineon. totally wrong. apparently, THE place to go for father's day is marine world.

the view from our table at brunch

or if to a non-fatherly type ... not too much. drove down to san jose to watch one of my friends in a women's hockey game. it was pretty fun. first time i'd watched a whole game. and they were pretty good ... no, they actually have a rule against checking ... and it's funny, the friend who was playing, i've never seen her in normal clothes. the first time i met her was at her wedding, so she was in a gown with her hair up and everything. and this was the first time since then, and she was in full hockey gear.

can you imagine, with all this action, we were the only ones in the bleachers

how was your weekend?

this weekend, i have two options for a response.

one ... i became an aunt! my brother's wife just had a boy on saturday. he should be coming home next month, so i'm really excited. it should be interesting with a baby in the house ...

welcome to the world, alex!!!

two (if i don't feel like getting too personal) ... went up to napa for the day. there's a really cool new hotel up there. bardessono. we didn't stay there, just got drinks. but they were really nice and let us walk around. if you end up in the area, you should check it out, especially the pool. that was our favorite. we almost wanted to hide out and stay there the whole night.

(pictures from here)

[seriously, check this place out. the hotel's lobby with its vertical garden has been blogged and written about tons. it's definitely neat to see in person, but because i'd already seen tons of pictures, i wasn't wow'd. but the pool area was awesome. there were rows of cabanas lining the long, narrow pool. the lot of us piled into one of the larger cabanas and shared daydreamy what-if scenarios of spending an entire day lazing away, being fanned with palm fronds while sipping champagne. that is, until we had to hop out and jet to our dinner reservation.]

it's summer!

it's different for everyone, that specific something that signals the beginning of summer. for me, it's the posters and banners for the stern grove festival

it will be the 72nd year of free summer concerts in stern grove. since stern grove is within walking distance for me, every year i say i'll go check out a concert. and every summer passes by so quickly with packed weekends. so i still have yet to go. we'll see if it changes this year.

this year's poster features illustrations by spanish clay illustrator irma gruenholz. you'll have to hit the streets to see it larger.

the style kinda reminds me of a clay version of jessica hirsch's work. check out her site. super fun stuff.

how was your weekend?

i've never really been one for small talk. that, coupled with having pretty terrible memory (both long-term and short-term), i always find myself stumped on monday mornings when faced with the seemingly simple question, "how was your weekend?"

i typically answer with something like, "good!" and leave it at that. or when i'm feeling extra talkative, "pretty relaxing. only had a couple hours of work." neither response really encourages conversation, as you can imagine. instead, there's an awkward silence while my colleague waits for his coffee to finish brewing and i wait for the copier to cooperate.

so anyway, i've decided to come into the office prepared each monday morning with something interesting to share when i inevitably get asked "the question." (and trust me, i really do need to prepare, due to my aforementioned terrible memory.)

so this past weekend ... really nice. the war memorial was doing a simulcast of the opera tosca at at&t park, so i went to that. they were doing a live feed of the whole opera up on the huge hd screen. it was almost like we were there, except we were huddled up in our blankets, sitting on the grass way out on right field, eating hot dogs ... even my friend who was home for the weekend from des moines came out for it ... they just started doing it recently and not super often. you should check it out. i think the only other one this year is in september.

this was similar to our view, except we were on right field, not left. (source)

filled stadium ... more or less where we staked our area (source)

[it was superfun. we were there from 6 until around 11. and it would have been a perfect night with great weather, free entertainment and good friends, if it weren't for the jerk who kicked me in the arm. he was trying to show off his acrobatic deficiencies or something, and succeeded and essentially hammered his heel into my arm. and the jerk didn't even apologize, at least not until we prompted him to. and he was in his late-20s, early-30s, by the way. so he obviously should have known better. seriously, who acts like that??]