Whale, Snow & Celebrity Sightings!
If you can’t tell by the title here, Bjorn and I have had a very exciting January! Yes that’s right peeps: We had our very first celebrity sighting since moving to California. And if you know me, you know it has been very impatiently awaited. More on that in a bit.
Bjorn and I had a really special holiday season. This was the first year we have spent Christmas with his family, and also the first year I have spent Christmas in a warm climate. So for me, it was a year of firsts. I’ll admit both were hard - first time away from mom or dad at Christmas, and there wasn’t even any snow to make it feel like home! But we had a wonderful Christmas Eve and Day, even though I had to head right back to work the next day. It was very nice to have two long weekends (and short weeks) in a row, and Bjorn and I were finally able to have some quality time together after a 2.5 week finals marathon. On New Year’s Eve we went to dinner in Palm Springs (at our fave Mexican restaurant) with friends from Bible Study, and over the holidays my mom came into town, and we visited her brother, my uncle, who also was in town with his wife….All in all - a great holiday in 2006.
But after December comes January - the January blahs. It hit us hard, too. Almost immediately after New Year’s, Bjorn came down with a terrible cold - and I was quick to follow. We are both still recovering. In spite of our sickness, we were able to do some fun things this month - and had more firsts!
The first significant first (sorry, that was the best I could come up with as I speed type) was absolutely mind boggling to me. I STILL can not believe this happened. I woke up on a Friday morning and as I opened the door to leave the house, I stopped dead in my tracks (I have gained a whole new appreciation for that saying….). I may have stood for a full minute before I finally began to accept what I thought my eyes were seeing. Bjorn, sitting at the table behind me, probably thought I had suffered some sort of medical emergency - I was speechless. There was SNOW on the ground!!!! So needless to say, if you click into the photo gallery, you’ll see pics of something I thought I would NEVER SEE - snow on my front porch, my grill cover, Bjorn’s car, and our “lawn” (And BTW, the mist behind Bjorn’s car is, obviously, the sprinkler system…what the heck. this is so backwards…). It actually flurried as I drove to work. The snow was of course, gone by the time 9 am rolled around - but wow, was it a sight. A friend who is a teacher text messaged me and said her kids were beside themselves - most of them had never seen snow in real life. Crazy!!!!
The next first that we had this month was that we went whale watching. My dear friend T (Sara Torgerson that is) was in San Diego for the month of January with her boyfriend, and Bjorn and I drove down to visit a few weeks ago - and the plan for the day was whale watching. We really had a fun time. The pics don’t really do the event justice, because the whale we saw didn’t do any big flips - and our camera has a delay - but still, it was a fun thing to do (also, the aircraft carrier pictured is the USS Ronald Reagan. Last week it left San Diego for the Far East but I believe it had been in SD for a few months…). My co-workers made fun of me for going whale watching - but it was very easy for me to turn their excitement over snow around on them, and then we were even :) The things that excite Californians vs. the things that excite Minnesotans - very amusing!
Ok, and the moment I know you’ve all been waiting for: the celebrity sighting! Last weekend, Bjorn and I were lucky enough to be able to spend the weekend in Santa Barbara. The heart of wine country: and we were both so sick we barely left the hotel room! We did get to do a little roaming (we’ve been there before so we got to explore some new areas) and had a wonderful weekend. Bjorn was presenting research at a conference, and this is where our celeb sighting comes into the picture. On Sunday morning, I had to drop Bjorn off at the Four Seasons for his conference. Now, I was not about to pass up an opportunity to have a (legitimate) reason to go strolling through the Four Seasons lobby - it may have been my one and only opportunity to see the inside of a hotel quite that nice :) We took a quick spin, and in my hazy, congested and sinus-pain-filled-stupor, I missed it the first time: Bjorn saw….none other than…..Doc from Back to the Future (Christopher Lloyd)! Kinda boring - but we were quite excited. After Bjorn’s whispered “Did Christopher Lloyd just walk by?!”, I caught a glimpse of him as we passed again - and hence the big excitement of 2007, so far. This is coming from a girl who has been on the lookout for a year and a half, to no avail - so I do hope you’ll understand my giddiness. Sure, he’s no Brad Pitt - but let a girl revel!
And so begins 2007. We can only hope we’ll have more good luck as we proceed: good health, high board scores, a speedier commute to work and sightings of more powerful celebrities than Doc. And no more snow!
Bjorn’s Bday, Christmas & New Year’s…
I have put some pictures in the photo section of Bjorn’s 27th Bday, and our Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. Enjoy!
