Mike and Laura

Last weekend Mike and Laura came out to visit. Susanna and I picked them up and we headed to hollywood. We hung out there and saw the sites and then met up with my brother and his roommate. Eric and Evan show us around Mulholland Drive. We saw Nick Nolte's house (and there were cops outside, but we never figured out what was up). Then we saw two houses and at least one of them was either Steven Seagal's or the governator's. We also drove by Monica Lewinsky's house at some point. The view from Mulholland drive was incredible. We then went down to Burbank and drove by some of the studios. Thanks Eric and Evan for showing us around.

The next day we took off to Santa Barbara wine country. Thanks to some suggestions we were able to find some good wine. At some point I think we did enough tasting that it should really be called drinking. We had dinner in Solvang, the food was nothing special, but the town is cute. I almost forgot - before we headed off to wine country we went to the avocado festival in Carpinteria. It was a bunch of booths selling food, most of which was avocado centric and then a lot of booths selling crafts and such. Ate some good avocado related food. Thanks Susanna for being the designated driver.

Monday we took it easy. We headed to the beach then of course the hot tub. Then took the top down on the mustang and cruised down to Ventura to get some lunch. I tried Peruvian for the first time - pretty good stuff. The restaurant was Peruvian and Thai food - no idea what the link is between those two countries. Then cruised up to Santa Barbara where we walked state street. Even though I've been to state street it was a new experience being there on a week day since it was almost empty instead of packed. I also do not think it struck me before just how crazy fancy that street is. We stopped by the pier and watch some people fish - I didn't think you'd catch anything from there, but one guy was pulling them in 5 at a time. Then we found a restaurant and Susanna met up with us for dinner. Thanks Mike and Laura for visting.

Wine Country

Over the weekend my parents were in town. On Saturday they headed to carp with Eric and we all headed up to Santa Barbara wine country. It was our first journey up there so we did not really know where we were going, but it seems like most of them are off of one road so it was not hard to find a few. The drive up is really nice - it goes through a national forest. The wine was ok, nothing impressive, but we just hit some random places. The wineries were interesting, they ranged from pretty snobby to basically a bar where you buy a wine glass and they just keep refilling. It was good to spend some time with my parents and brother.

The other thing I did over the weekend is watch the new family guy dvd. It was very funny! It is actually three episodes that will be on TV that they made fit together plus some filler. The reason to buy the dvd other than the filler and commentary (as you will learn by listening to the commentary) is that there are a number of jokes that will be censored in the TV version.

Sorry Steve

Hey Steve - just noticed you weren't listed under friends on this site (I was going to click on the link to see if you had updated your blog and noticed there wasn't a link) - not sure how that happened (you're on my main page and even mentioned in the only comment I made in the source code for this site...). Sorry about that.