C-a-l-i-f-o-r-n-i-a

*This is how I felt after being awake 24 hours*

I went to go visit my sister in California last weekend and boy, do I have stories. The Dallas skies decided to have a thunderstorm as I was on the way to the airport, which pushed the first leg of my journey back an hour... and then another and another until there would be no way to catch my connecting flight in San Fransisco.
I got put on standby for a flight out the next morning and tried to prepare mentally to sleep in the airport. I called Melissa to tell her, and she decided to drive 4 HOURS to San Francisco to pick me up. (Which I am SO glad she did)

I meet her in San Francisco, have a bit of a scare when it looks like I can't get my bags, but then that turned out ok and we went to Denny's to sustain ourselves for the 4 hour drive back home.

*I don't have pictures of the 2 am crazies at the Berkley Denny's so this cactus will have to do*

By the time we made it to her house, it was 6 am Texas time and I was spent. The next morning she woke up and made awesome lemon poppy seed muffins with almond icing, apologizing for not having a belated birthday cake for me. The muffins were awesome! We spent the rest of the day, which was Cesar Chavez day, shopping for groceries and dresses to wear to the rehearsal dinner.

When we came home, things were in full swing at the "Mangrove", what we call the block of town homes she lives in.

*nothing celebrates the rights of workers like a good game of beer pong*

We made Indian food, and some couscous pancakes from a recipe in the vegetarian cookbook Melissa got me for my birthday. We didn't realize we needed to use "quick cook" couscous so they came out, crunchy? gritty? I don't know. We feed them to the neighbors, and they didn't seem to mind. We spent the rest of the evening hanging out, chatting, and watching the various inhabitants of the Mangrove set things on fire. (We did this both nights)

*neat*

The next day was filled with a trip to the local farmer's market, where I got a jar of olives (yum!) and homemade apricot jam, more clothes shopping, and some homemade pizza. And of course, more fire and beer pong.

*Now is a good time for a picture of the cat*

Little Dude, the cat, is one of my sister's roommates. How do people take pics of their cats? He was very camera shy.

Then it was time to go back home. Upon arriving at the airport, I learned that since I hadn't taken my standby flight, United had canceled THE REST OF MY TRIP! I immediately lost all pretense of calm and burst into ugly, red-faced tears. I think if my flight out hadn't been so draining, I would have handled the situation better, but I had reached my airline crap quota for the next year or so. Through the grace of God, I managed to get a seat on a later flight and make it to Dallas by midnight, instead of the Monday at 2 in the afternoon flight that was the airlines original proposed "solution".

As a karmic payback for my good luck, I spent the longer of the two flights stuck in a seat between an evangelical Christian from Plano and an Agnostic Jew from San Francisco who decided to talk politics, religion and ABORTION, the entire flight. Nothing like a tense discussion of religion with strangers to make you feel like you're in a circle of hell.

I did get some knitting done in all of the crazy, but I haven't had a chance to photograph it in decent light.

This is truly the longest post I've ever written.