What I do when I'm home...

OK, so I haven't been the best about updating. I have, however, been good about catching up on sleep (bed time at around 12 or 1, and getting out of bed at 11:45ish), and eating. Surprise, surprise.

The ride home gave me lots of rainbows! I risked getting tickets and took pictures with my cell phone:

This one is actually from when it was pretty stormy on campus before finals... it was a bike ride down Mayfield, and I saw a beautiful one!

This one is taken as I'm heading north on the 280 to SF... didn't see a pot of gold as I drove along, though.

This one is in Kettleman City as I stopped for a burger and gas. Kind of hard to see, but it's out there in the distance!

OK, but now that I'm home, of course I've had lots of yummy things to eat, so I'll talk about that a bit. Other than that, home is quiet... I have two kitties to keep me company and a ton of books. I'm reading On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. I read the first when I'm feeling particularly highbrow, and the second when I want a page turner (albeit a pretty predictable one).

The night I arrived, I went to Yabu with my parents, a Japanese restaurant that we've been going to for quite a while. They have really yummy noodles, and as a call back to my childhood, I almost always get the same thing: hot tempura udon, with the tempura on the side. It's so good; it comes with crispy shrimp and veggie tempura (I don't like when they put it in the soup and it gets soggy) and I put lots of spicies into it. The bathroom had this funny little toilet-contraption, interestingly... it had a warmed seat... haha! Surprise! But there were these other buttons you could push (I didn't try) that included oscillating, pulsating, or wand-cleaning by way of rear cleaning, rear soft cleaning, or front cleaning (for the pink people). There was also a dryer function, which I suppose makes sense after all of that. The temptation to push the buttons was pretty strong, but I didn't want to flood the place and have water shooting out of the toilet.

Yesterday for a snack, I was inspired by Aroma and made myself a brie and honey crisp apple quesadilla. It was tasty! The brie melted quite perfectly, and the tortilla got pretty crunchy on the outside. The apples got kind of baked in the oily brie... yum.

Then last night, to celebrate 3 birthdays coming up, we headed to a yakitori restaurant (so much Japanese! so much yum!) called Nanbankan, where we had...

Handmade tofu! It came with bonito shavings (dried fish), and you put a bit of soy sauce over it (and spicies, if you like), and it's so creamy and delicious.

ASUPARA-MAKI! These are grilled pieces of asparagus (hence the "asupara") that are wrapped in pork. It also came in variations: shiso-maki (pork wrapped in a shiso leaf wrapped in pork) and okura-maki (okra wrapped in pork). We also had chicken wings (tebasaki), sea bass, oyster mushrooms, and so much more. Yummm...

Anyway, you get the idea. I'm going to go read or nap, or something.

I love vacation time.