Birthday Princess Weekend

Whence the concept of Birthday Princess Weekend? I don’t rightly recall, but I suspect that The Pig Overlords had something to do with it. Sounds like their sort of thing.

This past weekend was my yearly Birthday Princess Weekend. As my last chunk of time off was not particularly restful, I decided that I’d earned a bit of a break. Birthday Princess Weekend was extended from its usual two days to a very welcome four. Four and a half if you count that I took off early from work that last day. Here, briefly, is the rundown for the past weekend’s festivities:

• Thursday evening
  Viva Sloth! Dinner was chips and salsa. The most exciting event was my getting a five star rating on Tattooed Love Boys in Guitar Hero II. And that’s exactly the way I wanted the evening to go.
• Friday
  Gym followed by a massage followed by a lovely lunch at Della Fattoria followed by a decent haircut followed by another meal of chips and salsa and an evening of sloth. Weekend progress? So far so good.
• Saturday
  Up and on the road early, today was moving day for Guy and Megan. Yes. They had to move. Again. But they traded up where houses are concerned and didn’t have to pay for the movers, so it wasn’t so bad. It was, however, very tiring. I got home somewhere around 11pm and immediately crashed.
• Sunday
  Nicole’s visiting and you haven’t cleaned the house in weeks? Screw going to the gym since the first half of the day is devoted to making the place presentable. She arrived in the early afternoon and, after very patiently waiting for me to transfer the Black Death Stout to secondary fermentation, we took off to munch our way across my fair town. Being the wild and crazy gals that we are, the evening was spent watching Firefly, drinking mead and me trying to teach her how to knit. I say “trying” because I myself am just starting out, not because she wasn’t learning.

• Mon-_Birthday Princess_-day “Happy Birthday! What do you want to do today?” Uh…I had no idea. Over breakfast Nicole suggested wine tasting, which sounded like a good plan. I’d yet to visit the Russian River part of wine country, so that was our destination. Rodney Strong was the first stop and was the only one which was a “name”. The wine was good (the reserve pinot noir good enough that I got some) but the atmosphere was not welcoming. After that we spent our time at the very small wineries that are tucked into the nooks and crannies of the valley. Limerick Lane, Christopher Creek and Acorn were all very enjoyable stops, all of which will definitely be receiving my business again in the future. We stopped for lunch in Healdsburg and ate at Bovolo, time well spent though the gelato left something to be desired. After spending some time wandering around the appropriately adorable downtown square we headed for home. Phase 1 of the day was done.

  Phase 2 involved me zipping down to SF to pick up (HURRAH!) the newlyweds (HURRAH!) JR and Jen (HURRAH!). They’re spending a whirlwind week in Northern California, the first day of which was in San Francisco so I wasn’t about to miss the chance to take them out for a bite to eat. A month before I’d made us reservations at Incanto{.broken_link}, a choice which met two criteria: (1) Italian fare, as requested by the guests of honor, and (2) I’d really wanted to try it for a while. I don’t know about the other two at the table, but I fully enjoyed the meal. Ain’t every restaurant that’ll serve lamb neck, after all. Or make it taste as great as this one did. Wine? Great. Service? Stan, you’re a great waiter, man. Dessert? Eh. About standard for SF, but the dessert wines were choice. Afterwards we drove over to Cafe Flore for coffee and talk. They were finally dropped at their hotel around 9:30pm or so, which is pretty late by their internal clocks. It was great seeing them again and being able to celebrate the very recent wedding.

• Tuesday
  *sigh* Back to work. I tried to avoid being bitter about having to turn the alarm back on last night, but I admit to failing in that one. However, Birthday Princess Weekend was still not quite over! It had one more surprise up its sleeve in the form of a four-part Glickstein serenade of birthday wishes this evening.

As you can see, a full weekend all around. Many thanks to all of the many people who helped keep me make the 2007 Birthday Princess a big success! You guys are great. 🙂