Create Every Day

This last weekend was very busy for Dore and I.  On Friday night we had some friends over for a grand Belgian Beer Fest!  We made fresh giant pretzels, potato and sausage stew, and tried out a ton of different Belgian beers.  All in all it was awesome.  I have to brag: I make a mean pretzel (well, Dore made the dough and I cooked the pretzels).

On Saturday we slept in nice and late.  We finally got up and went out to breakfast/lunch at IHOP.  Later in the afternoon we met up with our friend Lauren, who took us to a park out on Ellwood Mesa to see the monarch butterflies.  It is pretty late in the season, but there were still a ton of butterflies in the eucalyptus trees.  The park goes all the way out to the bluffs, so we walked out there and found a path down to the beach.  We arrived on the beach right as the sunlight was getting low and orange.  It was really beautiful.  There was an old weathered wooden breakwater fence on the beach that stretched for hundreds of yards.  The light was hitting it at a low angle, which made the texture of the wood stand out fantastically.  I was really having a good time taking photos.  I posted some of my photos on my Picasa page.

On Sunday, we met up with our friends Maria and Matt and went for a hike on the Jesusita Trail, which goes up into the foothills above Santa Barbara.  We made a couple of wrong turns along the way.  At one point we ended up at a fence with a sign that read, “You are already way too far from the trail.  Please respect private property.” (In case you coudn’t gather, California trails tend to have tons of offshoots with no markings.)  Sadly the sign did not actually tell us how to find the real trail. Finally, after much searching and reproachful looks from Dore we found the right trail and continued on our way.

We stopped after a while and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Oddly, it turned out that Maria and Matt and Dore and I had independently brought the same snack.  Apparently peanut butter and jelly is the perfect trail snack.  Hunger satisfied, we decided that we had had enough hiking for the day, and headed back down to the car.

When we got back to town we decided to reward ourselves with a meal at Dargain’s, an awesome Irish Pub downtown.  It was really nice walking down State street in the sun, and we all had a very nice time.

When Dore and I finally made it home, we were both exhausted, and dropped down for a nap almost immediately.  We got up after a while and lazed around the house for the rest of the evening.

Dore and I spent the weekend up at her mom’s house in Los Osos.  On Saturday we went shopping in San Luis Obispo.  I needed some new pants, so we hit up Gottschalks first.  I found a nice comfortable pair of jeans that were on decent sale and a really nice shirt that was 70% off.  (Of course, retail on the shirt was ridiculous, so in the end it was just a decent price.  But it does look really nice, so I’m happy.)

After Gottschalks we headed over to BevMo to check it out.  We had never been in one, and were interested.  For those not in the know, BevMo is a beverage outlet store.  And by beverage I mean booze.  And root beer.  We weren’t meaning to buy anything, but they had some great selections.  We found:

• Moose Drool (from Missoula, Montana!)
• Franziskaner Dunkel Weissbier (my absolute favorite beer during the time Eric and I spent in Europe)
• A host of Belgian selections

We ended up getting about seven different bottles of Belgian ale.  But we are planning on having a Belgian beer fest at our place next weekend, so technically we were just getting party supplies. 🙂

After BevMo we went next door to Costco to pick up some samples to tide us over until we could find some real food.  We didn’t really see anything there that interested us (although we had a lovely tomato soup that I’ll look for next time) so we headed out.  We decided that we really did want some Belgian beers, so we went downtown and hit up our new favorite restaurant: Bel Frites.  They serve two things: Belgian beer and Belgian-style fries (with dipping sauces).  They are both excellent.

Our hunger and thirst satisfied, Dore and I walk around downtown to settle everthing.  We headed over to Ross, where I managed to find another pair of jeans and a couple of pairs of nice dressy shoes.  I desparately needed something nicer than my dirty old tennis shoes to wear to work, so I was glad to find these ones.

We finally hit our shopping limit and headed back to Dore’s mom’s house to make spaghetti for dinner and wind down.

Sunday we went downtown again and walked around, but we didn’t really do too much.  We headed home in the afternoon and made an awesome chinese food dinner from Trader Joes — home of the best frozen food aisle on the planet.