Weekend in Napa

We spent the weekend in Napa and it was gorgeous. It's been quite a few years since I've been wine tasting in Napa/Sonoma so it was really nice to go back. I'd forgotten how gorgeous the area is. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to upload the pictures yet so you will have to take my word for it. :)

We went to a ton of wineries:
- Cakebread Cellars
- Peju
- Niebaum Coppola
- Markham
- Close Pegase
- Chateau St. Jean
- Carneros Creek/Mahoney
- Rochioli

By the end of it all we didn't want to drink anymore wine or see any wine for at least 24 hours .. but we did end up joining 2 wine clubs


Carneros Creek


Chateau St. Jean

Yes, we joined 2 clubs and still brought back 2 cases of wine with us. Wow .. who wants to help us drink up :)

Fountain of Youth

Supposedly David Copperfield has found the fountain of life on some island that he just purchased near the Bahamas.
News Story

Hmm .. I think I'll believe it when I see it. With all of the uber smart people in the world, wouldn't they have found the fountain of youth first? Instead, an entertainer is the one who made this miraculous discovery? Sure ... yes, I'm a bit cynical but with everyone who's much smarter and research oriented then a magician would have been sure to have found this miracle water way before him.

Renewing Wedding Vows

Nope, I am not renewing my vows. For goodness sake, it's only been a little under 2 months. I am talking about Britney Spears and her renewing her vows to the slimeball, er, Kevin F.

story

After a whole 2 years of marriage they are renewing their wedding vows. I think the whole idea of renewing vows is a bit silly ... and it's even more incredulous when you haven't been married for very long. It's a sign that things are going downhill really fast and that the couple is fooling themselves (for a few months longer) that things will work out.

Good-Bye Name

I had my name legally changed today to my new married name. It's sad saying good-bye to my maiden name. :( It's always been a part of me and it's sad to see it go away. I couldn't keep it because, let's face it, Wong Wu sounds just way too much like a joke. On the plus side, I have a new signature that I've got to learn to perfect

It was good having you by my side these past 26 years name .. at least I still get to have you in my Chinese name. :)

Superman Returns

I saw Superman Returns last night. Ming made me see the previous Superman movies with Christopher Reeves and after seeing those, the new Superman cannot hold a candle to Christopher Reeves. Christopher Reeves has a sort of classy, gentlemanly aura about him while Brandon Routh just kind of fizzles in that department. Brandon Routh does a decent job at the role, I suppose, but everytime I see him, I think of him as liking the other white meat instead of Lois Lane.

All and all, the movie was good but I'm not sure I'd go see it again.

Ron's Farmhouse

If you've ever met me you'd know that I'm the type of person who'd never set foot in a dive bar. It isn't because I have something against them; it's because that isn't generally where I choose to go nor where my friends choose to go. So ... where am I going tonight, Friday night? I'm going to one of the oldest dive bars in the area: Ron's Farmhouse. It even has a MySpace page: MySpace page

I'm going to attend a comedy night. I don't have any expectations of it so maybe it'll end up being a really fun night. We'll see just how "divey" Mountain View can get. I'll report back later.

Wedding Bells -- They are a Clangin'

It seems like we've got a whole bunch of weddings to attend within the next year. We've got a bunch of wedding invitations from friends and more on the way. I thought that we were done with wedding stuff for awhile until I see the mailbox with invite after invite ... I guess that is to be expected since we're at the age where we're getting married and our friends are too. We've got:

1 wedding in August (Bay Area)
1 wedding in September (LA)
1 wedding in October (LA)
1 wedding in Spring 2007 (details TBD)
1 wedding in May 2007 (Italy)
1 wedding in June 2007 (Bay Area)
----------------
6 weddings!

We're going to be doing a ton of wedding gift shopping and travelling. I guess it is time for me to go out and buy more outfits to wear. ^_^

Married Life

I've been married for a month now and become an official Mrs. What's different? Um.. not a whole lot except that I need to make a conscious effort to refer to Ming as "my husband" and that I need to try to find time to unpack. I still have not fully unpacked into Ming's house yet because .. well, I don't really have a good excuse. My excuse is that I've been busy and lazy.

Over the weekend to commemorate our month of being married we decided to make a big purchase. It was our first big purchase together and it wasn't really to commemorate our month of being married -- it was more like because it was time for Ming to have a new car. We bought a 2007 Maxima and he is currently enjoying it everyday on his way to and fro work. It's his new toy -- got all the bells and whistles of keyless entry, bluetooth , navigation, etc.



I don't get to drive it very often since it is his car but it is a really comfy car to ride it. It gets decent gas mileage for a full sized car and I love the wood trim ^_^

Honeymoon Photos

Finally got a chance to upload the photos from the honeymoon
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=16iblc65.7fmpd1dt&x=0&y=vp97ox

Back and Married!

I’m back from Mexico and now I’m a Mrs.! It’s hard to believe that after all the planning and doubts that the wedding went off beautifully. If there were any snaffoos, people hid them from me. I couldn’t have asked for a better wedding and everything went off flawlessly. Everyone looked great and now the only thing I’ve got to do is twiddle my thumbs for 8 weeks until the photographer gets us our photos. Yes, it really does take them 8 weeks before they will be able to get our photos back to us.

We had a fabulous honeymoon. We boarded the plane bright and early on Sunday morning and landed in PVR (Puerto Vallarta, Mexico) without any issues. The smallest problem we hit was that we got nailed at the airport by someone trying to sell us a timeshare. Uh oh. Luckily we managed to eventually get away from him and take the shuttle (a taxi) to the hotel.

The hotel was the best! Upon arrival they served us some cooling fruit drinks. The checkout process was us sitting on the couch, sipping our drinks, and the guy coming to us to say “are you ready to go up to your suite?” The hotel itself is totally gorgeous. It caters to tourist (both from the states and Mexico) so it’s got top notch everything!

Our honeymoon package was for an all inclusive resort so all of our food and alcohol was covered. We took advantage of this and ate 4 meals (on average) a day! We had to get our moneys worth, so to speak, so we had to eat $360 worth of food and beverages. We drank so many drinks and ordered a ton of room service. With every room service order we ordered a bottle of liquor. We only found this out on Thursday but, after finding out that it was comp’ed to the room, we kept ordering bottles of alcohol. We didn’t mange to finish a bottle but sure had a good time trying!

The rooms had a Jacuzzi hot tub and that is the best thing to relax in right before you go to bed. Your muscles are totally put at ease when you sit in it for half an hour before bed. I highly recommend it ^_^

The weather was gorgeous and we enjoyed 90 degree weather everyday. Both Ming and I ended up getting a really dark tan, not that we’re complaining! ^_^

There were 2 peacocks roaming on the grounds of the hotel. One was an albino and one was a gorgeous blue and green one. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get any pictures of the blue and green one. We also saw a huge green lizard/iguana on the grounds of the resort also. Everything there was so vivid in color – except the albino peacock of course.

We went into the downtown area of Puerto Vallarta for all of 2 hours before heading back. It was too much of a city for us and we wanted something a bit more remote and less dirty and touristy. We went to downtown to buy some Tequipal (Tequila cream) and then bee-lined it back for the hotel.

The food was completely amazing at the resort. I found out what real chalupas and gorditas are – not a thing like the Taco Bell ones! They were so tasty that I believe I ordered one each day. ^_^ We ate fine dining almost every night and consumed a ton of seafood, lamb, chateau briand, etc. We had some really good food. I could go back again and eat more foie gras … ^_^

Pictures to come soon …

Plastic cups

I'm about to spend nearly $200 for plastic cups for the wedding. The plastic cups (actually champagne flutes) are going to be used for a grand total of 5 minutes before guests throw them away. *sigh* You've gotta love all the "little" costs of a wedding

12 days left and counting ...

I can't believe the wedding is almost here. I've got 12 days to finish all the preparations. Whoa ... Am I ready? Absolutely not. O.o

The one really great thing will be that I get a chance to see all the out of town friends and relatives .. it's just the sprint up to the wedding that is the scary part!

Officially Domestic

I have officially become domestic. I subscribed to the San Jose Mercury Newspaper.


Ming and I will now receive the paper 6 days a week and, like proper Palo Altonians, faithfully recycle the paper daily.

All I wanted to do was receive the Sunday Ads (him for the Best Buy and CompUsa and me for the Target ad) and I ended up getting the whole paper. O.o

RSS Feed reading

I've finally gotten my act together and stopped doing the "old school" way of manually navigating to a site to see if it's been updated. I have finally gotten an the habit of reading the RSS feeds instead. I am using Google's RSS reader. It's so much easier to read RSS feeds now! I can't say that I love Google's implementation but its better than navigating to each site manually.

If anyone has another suggestion for a better reader, let me know ^_^

Lemon Squares Part Deux

While Ming was out enjoying Sin City with his posse of guy friends I made lemon squares this weekend. Since not everyone knew what lemon squares were the last time I posted, I decided to take a picture this time around.

They were so tasty ... I wonder how long they'll be around before we finish them all.

Rainy Days

Rainy days bring me down. There isn't anything to like about rainy days. I suppose that one could see something special and likeable about them .. but after months and months of rain, I definitely can't feel that way. Had I ended up working full time in Seattle I think I'd end up suffering a big period of depression. :p

I'm a sun person. The rain gets my clothes messy, prevents me from wearing nice clothes, makes traffic terrible, and generally just brings bad news and circumstances. I used to laugh when I heard that doctors prescribed tanning salons to combat the winter time blues. I laugh no longer. I can see now how beneficial it'd be to get some sun in and pretend that all is status quo (well, status quo is sun for Cali). If I wasn't so against tanning (and losing my nice pale complexion) I'd actually consider going to a tanning salon.

Tomorrow is Easter. I hope that the weather is better and brings some sunshine for people who celebrate Easter as their one special day of the year. Hell, maybe going to an Easter celebration would cheer me up and be my "tanning" solution to the spring time blues -- yikes, that term shouldn't even be applicable but it is.

My Schedule for the next week

Wednesday - Friday	Get butt kicked at work during working hours. Work on assembling and sending wedding invitations until the wee hours of the morning.
Saturday - Sunday	Tahoe for Snowboarding
Monday - Friday	Get butt kicked by work. If invites are not finished yet, really, really scramble to get them out and sacrifice any and all sleep.

Boy, it sure sounds like fun >_<

Healthy Dinner for those on the Go

This is a really cool company idea: http://www.myprepcook.com. The company basically delivers all the food prepped and ready to go. It allows busy people to cook their own food when they get home and requires the person to have minimal equipment at home. The menus look actually decent. Price is a bit steep at $15/meal + $5 delivery but for those people who are too busy to prep their own food, this is an ideal solution.

Ride Around The Neighborhood

I bought a road bike and finally had a chance to ride it today because it was sunny outside. It's been a LONG time since I've actually ridden a bike so I was a bit wobbly at first but eventually remembered my bearings. My first trip out with the bike and it ended up 2.5 ride. I rode with Ming and we had a ton of fun. We rode around Los Altos and Palo Alto and even made a pitstop to pick up some veggies for dinner. I saw many, many beautiful homes in Palo Alto and Los Altos. There was even a point where I thought that we had to be in a neighborhood filled only with CEOs because the houses were so nice. Each house seemed to be a villa/castle. It was insane. I hope to one day live in one half that nice. =)

Back from the Dead: Drink Club

I received an e-mail from Drink Club today. O.o I thought that Drink Club was totally dead! I haven't been to a Drink Club event for a long time. I guess the promoters got their act together and started throwing parties again.

For more details, go here: http://www.sfdrinkclub.com/emails/060317.html