Elaine’s Birthday & Sausalito

To celebrate Elaine's big 28th this week, we went out for a nice day of shopping in and around downtown Walnut Creek. Then, on the night of her actual birthday, we went out to The Olde San Francisco Creamery, an old-fashioned ice-cream parlor that has fantasic homemade ice-cream. It was lovely, as usual. :)

As a surprise for my sister’s birthday, her husband tried to plan a ferry trip to Sausalito. He intended the event to be a surprise, so Eric and I took the bart, walked to the SF ferry building, bought our tickets, and hopped on the boat ahead of time before Elaine was supposed to arrive. Well, the plan didn’t quite work out as we would have hoped… Andrew told us the wrong time to meet up and failed to mention that there are two different piers in SF where the ferries dock (of course we went to the wrong one and of course Andrew doesn’t have a cell phone). So, we tried to make the best of our day, despite the fact that we never did meet up with Elaine.

The weather was unusually nice that day, with temperatures hovering around 80-85 degrees or so. I have always wanted Eric to take me on a ferry ride, which turned out to be beautiful! I took some pictures of the bay since it was so clear out that day. Luckily I had sunscreen on, but as luck would have it, I ended up getting a sunburn anyway.

When we embarked at Sausalito, we took a stroll up and down the main street, in hopes of finding Elaine along the way. No such luck. I had stuffed a Hello Kitty Build-a-Bear for Elaine the day before and was planning to give it to her there, but Eric ended up toting it around all day instead. Starving at this point, we eventually stopped by a small bakery and split a sandwich before heading back to the ferry. Overall, it was a good time, but it would have been better if I could have shared it with my sister for her birthday! Since we had dinner plans with friends that night, we didn’t have much time to hang around Sausalito, so we ended up leaving the bear on Elaine’s doorstep later that night before we headed out to dinner. At least she enjoyed her Hello Kitty bear :)

This is Why I get Nothing Done!!

It’s May already and there are only 2 weeks of classes left before the semester is over! The statistics courses that I teach have surely kept me on my toes. Each week, I have a lesson to plan, anywhere between 60 to 120 assignments to grade, and miscellaneous emails to keep on top of. And every single week, I seem to procrastinate until the very last minute to get everything done. It’s been a massive time commitment on top of everything else I have to do, so needless to say, I’ll be glad when it’s over!

To top it off, today I taught a statistics lecture course consisting of about 200 undergraduates, since their professor was out of town for a guest lecture. I wasn’t nervous at all, which is unusual for me, and the lecture went great! I planned some examples using data from the asthma clinic at Children’s Hospital and I even managed to have enough time to conduct an entire ANOVA test from start to finish. At the end, a few students came to me and complimented me, recommending that I press on to be a teacher, which was very flattering to say the least- it’s always heartwarming to learn that my efforts are appreciated and acknowledged.

Finally!!

In preparation for our trip to Texas in July, I’ve been shopping around for a new swimming suit. I have never been a fan of the typical swimming suit and usually go to great lengths to avoid them. Personally, I just don’t think that women (and young girls!) should be floating about in super tight panties and barely-there tops. This isn’t to say that I don’t own a suit of this kind, I just refrain from wearing it if I’m hanging out in the sun or around other people. So, to protect my pasty-white skin that burns in a matter of 2 minutes and to maintain some level of modesty, I typically opt for the one-piece variety. But the selection is always quite slim and boring. So, for this search, I turned to the web and actually found a great alternative to the blah one-piece suits- A swimdress! Eric heard that I had ordered a swimdress and immediately pictured his plump grandma’s swimdress with the horrendous, bright floral print and the flouncy skirt. But I managed to find one that is actually modern and cute (and even comes in smaller sizes)!


Now I don’t have to worry so much about burning all over, nor do I have to wear a towel to cover up my skimpy old suits! (go to newport-news.com and check out their selection of cute swimdresses at great prices).