November 2004

What’s up everybody? Thanksgiving weekend is almost here and that means we have really short work week *yay*

Today was one of the laziest days of my life… I slept until noon and spent the rest of the day on the couch under the blanket :) nice and cozy… watching some funny and romantic Barbara Streisand-movie.
I don’t know why, but I am so tired by the end of the week that I need to get lots of sleep on the weekends! Is that normal? Do you experience the same? I talked to my sister this morning and she told me it’s the same thing with her, so I actually don’t feel too weird about it ;)
Guess what? I got my first full-time-paycheck last week – in fact, I got 4 (!) checks which was just awesome! I guess they’re trying to make up for all the last months, where they didn’t really appreciate my work *lol*

I got my normal paycheck, one for the holiday pay, one for an extra hourly pay rate for being a federal employee AND a tax refund, because they (whoever “they” is) decided that I don’t have to pay any taxes except disability tax (which is nothing!). That makes my monthly budget a lot better… no more “flipping every penny” anymore :)
So, what are you guys doing for Thanksgiving? J and I are going to Ventura!!

Ok now… finally some news from California :)

I had my parents and sister visit for the last two weeks of October, so that’s mainly the reason why I haven’t updated you on the latest news.

We had an awesome time!? I was finally able to show my family where I have been living for the last year and it was my sister’s first time in the US. I think she was seriously overwhelmed. I think she never realized how BIG California is compared to Germany.

On October, 18 it was J’s birthday and I got him a shirt and the new Michael Moore book. First I had thought about organizing a surprise party and inviting some of our friends over for dinner, but then I changed my mind and we had a nice romantic evening on our own.

We had to get up early the next morning, pick up our rental car and drive to SFO to pick up my family. OMG. I was so excited when I finally saw them again after such a long time. I think by the end of that week I had seriously gotten on my Mom’s nerves by repeating over and over how much I loved them to be here.

We spent the first week down in Southern California with Jon’s parents. It was their first meeting with my family and it couldn’t have gone better. I was really surprised and pleased that both my parents and my sister made a real effort to speak English – plus we were lucky that J’s Dad is fluent in German. That made things easier.

Wednesday and Thursday my family went to Las Vegas and Death Valley for two days, while I was attending an InSAR Workshop from my work in Oxnard (which is right next to Ventura).

On Sunday we finally set off for Northern California. We took Highway 1 along the coast which was beautiful and stayed over night in Monterey.
From there we drove up to San Francisco and tried to squeeze all the important sites into a day trip around the city.

Then we got to Sacramento and our new apartment. My family loved it. They really thought it’s a nice place (and it is!).
The rest of the week we spent with day trips to Davis, Downtown Sacramento and Napa Valley. We had planned to got to Yosemite NP for two days, but unfortunately we had to cancel that because of snow in the Sierra Nevada. I was so disappointed, because Yosemite would definitely have been a highlight of their visit. Well, that could only mean one thing… they have to come back!

Saturday we met with Mr. Swain and his family to go to the Farmers Market in Davis which is always quite an interesting event. This time it was “Harvest Festival” which meant that there was even more going on that usual.

Well, and then it was Sunday, the 31st… and we had to take them back to the airport. Time always flies! We got up at 6 a.m. which turned out to be 5 a.m. as we had forgotten that the clocks were changed from summer to winter time. We left quite early for SF and had lots of time to have a nice breakfast at the nearest IHOP and then to check them in (which turned out to be quite complicated, because they kept sending us from the domestic terminal to the international terminal and back… until they finally decided to let us know that the flights were re-booked to a direct flight to Amsterdam!).

J and I spent the afternoon with my godmother’s son, who came to SF with a student group from my old school and my godmother had emailed me if I wanted to meet with Marcel. We took him over to Berkeley and showed him the Campus and places where students hang out. I think he really enjoyed it.

Unfortunately by the time we got home it was so late already that we ended up not doing ANYTHING for Halloween, which was kind of sad as it is J’s favorite holiday.

Now I’ve been working again for about a week and it almost feels like I hadn’t been on vacation at all. It’s weird.