Remembering

rosemary

Often times, after a visit with Mike’s parents, my mother-in-law would send us home with bunches of fresh herbs from her garden. Thyme, parsley, and always rosemary. Her bush was thriving and robust, and had been there for a very long time. Most of the time, I would make rosemary roasted potatoes– adding copious amounts of chopped fresh rosemary to olive oil dressed potatoes, and a good shake of sea salt and a grind of black pepper.

About a year ago, I was sent home with some rosemary cuttings. Most of them were stripped and used to make roasted potatoes, but i took one of the cuttings and rooted it. I remember doing this a little before our annual trip up north to visit my parents for a week. I wasn’t sure if it would survive, but it did, growing from a spindly little thing to a robust plant after I transferred it to a planter on my balcony, where it thrives next some unidentified sprouting bulbs that my mother-in-law gave me once upon a time. Where they tulip bulbs? I honestly don’t recall, but I’m glad to see them so happy and green. I think Ellen would be happy about it too.

sprouts

Amex: Extended Warranty Coverage

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?

My Ipod Nano broke after nearly 2 years. No powering up, nada. Just a silent blank screen. Where is my music???! More importantly, I had no way to play the awesome podcasts produced by NPR’s This American Life. Impossible! So I went out and bought a new shuffle. I wonder how long this one will last? No screen = one less thing to break, right?

But this post isn’t about my sound playing devices and their modest durability. It’s actually about the extended warranty program with my credit card company, American Express. I have had my Amex Costco card for the past 6 years, and one of the benefits of using this card to make purchases is the extended warranty coverage you automatically receive. For purchases with warranties between 1 to 5 years, you get an additional year under warranty by Amex. For purchases with less than a year warranty, you get a warranty extension equivalent to the purchase warranty length. I only became aware of it a few days ago.

I was nearly a year out of my warranty with Apple, so I called up Amex on friday and asked if their program would cover my broken ipod. They had me tell them what was wrong with it, the serial number of my product, date and location of purchase, purchase price and state tax rate. Good thing Apple emails me my receipts. A quick email search and I found it. I asked them if they needed me to send any receipt documentation or the failed product itself, and they said they didn’t need any for now, but would call me up if they required additional documentation.

This monday (aka 1 business day after I initially called), I get an emailed document from amex saying that my claim was approved, and the money would be credited to my account. Woohoo… pretty awesome!

One more reason to use my amex card to purchase items instead of my debit card.

The Hitchhiking Dog

There’s a slow 7.5 mile drive from the Bottchers Camp (the trailhead we left the Jeep at for our last trip) back to Highway 1. Most of it is only wide enough for a single vehicle at a time and it doesn’t look like it’s regularly maintained. Part of the road follows a creek through a redwood forest dotted with small wooden houses covered with moss and various arty structures. It’s very peaceful.

Around one bend we came across a dog trotting along in the middle of the road. When she saw us coming she turned and came over. I stopped the jeep and she came up to my window and wimpered. There weren’t any buildings around this area so I hopped out and looked at her tags. Jules and I decided we would drop her off at her owner’s place. Unfortunately we didn’t get any reception in this area so we prompted the dog to get into the jeep. She didn’t need to be asked twice.

As we drove toward the coast she would make wimpery noises every now and then but was otherwise very well behaved. When we got to the coast Jules was able to call the number on one of the dog’s tags. The owner informed us that his dog roams freely around the area and she regularly gets rides from the locals. In short, we were used!

We drove back to a spot where the owner said she would be fine and opened up the door. The hitchhiking dog happily jumped out and continued on her merry way.

Lake Berryessa

Copied from Mike’s post at ThisMoment:

On Saturday Jules and I wanted to go on a hike so we drove north in search of a trailhead. We passed by one little lake that only had some fishermen and no signs of trails. Even though I thought Lake Berryessa would have more boat-happy people, we made our way over there.

As it turns out, we were the only ones in the parking lot. In fact, when we got there we didn’t see anyone on the lake at all. No boats, no people. So we decided to walk along the edge of the lake for a while. The water level looked low, but with the recent rains, some of the plants that had started to grow near the water line had become submerged. You can’t really tell from my photo, but there were bubbles forming on the leaves of the plants. Oxygen creation in action?

We continued to hike around and watch the water fowl. Eventually we made our way to a small hilltop overlooking the lake and I gave Jules her birthday present: a small blue bag from Tiffany & Co. I let her unwrap it until she got to the ring case and I promptly snatched it back. I sheepishly got on one knee, opened the ring case and blurted out “willyoumarryme?” at such a rate that Jules didn’t even hear what I said. But she assumed correctly and said yes. At that point I looked at the ring case and noticed I was holding it upside down. Why would the bigger half be on top? That doesn’t make any sense.

After she said yes I proceeded to try and put the ring on her finger. Failure! The ring was too small. So we had to pack it up for later.

After a little while we decided to leave the lake and check out a dam that we saw on the map. The dam itself ended up being fenced off but we got a pretty good view from the parking area. Apparently it has one of the largest spillways of any dam. They actually referred to it on the sign as the “glory hole.” Perhaps they didn’t know?

After the dam we returned back to Yountville to prepare for dinner at Ad Hoc!

Lake Berryessa

Jules pointing

mike

lupin

mikejules

Skewing the Feedback system

It always irritates me when I see feedback that doesn’t really pertain to the quality of the product they are reviewing or the service they received, like, “I love these earrings. Great quality. However, these earrings are smaller than I would have liked, but they are true to size”. And then mark 3 stars out of 5 because the earrings were smaller than they would have liked, even though they knew the exact size before they purchased them. That’s really not the fault of the product, and I don’t think that they should mark a product down for something like that. If they didn’t like them that small, they should have paid attention, and purchased the larger size. There was nothing wrong with the product itself, as they noted.

PS. I bought a pair of earrings from Blue Nile. I like them.

What Does Your Name Mean?

I’ve been slacking on improving my chinese, but I’m determined to get back to that. Today, mike showed me that my macbook had a built in ability to type chinese. Woot. I’ll have to show it to my parents. In the mean time, I used my trusty resources to piece together what Mike’s name means. I used it to figure out the cantonese pronunciation as well, since he always pronounces it in mandarin. Cuz I’m biased like that. I’m pretty happy that I finally got around to figuring out how to pronounce his name though… hehe.. now I can use his chinese name when I’m mad. Right? Right?

The characters in parantheses signify verb, adjective and noun forms, respectively. Cantonese pronunciation is bracketed; mandarin pronunciation is not.  So Mike is a vibrating honor filled person? Or maybe he restores honor and glory? Hmmm.. what a bright and shiny name.

Bamboo Fun

I bought a little Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet to play around on. It’s a little awkward to use right now, but I’m sure it will get more comfortable with time. And hopefully my drawing skills will improve as well. Time to get back to work!