Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a LONG two weeks for yours truly to say the least! My travels began with a trip out to the very chic Parker resort in Palm Springs. I had never been to Palm Springs before but I had seen the show "Welcome to the Parker" on Bravo and I was excited to say the least. I, as is standard on work outtings, was the baby of the group but the age gap didn't matter a bit! I honestly couldn't have asked for a more wonderful group of women to spend 3 days with. We spa-ed, laughed, ate, drank, shopped, and traded work stories to our hearts' content! We even saw Betsy Johnson herself lurking all around the property for the last few days of our trip, which was the cherry on top for all of us. We also got to meet the eccentric and wonderful Mr. Michael Crawford (who was featured on the show) when we dined at Mr. Parker's on our last night. He told us tons of naughty and hilarious stories and had us laughing so hard we couldn't eat or drink a thing while he was at the table. If you ever get a chance to visit this fantastic place you MUST do so!
The entire time I was out in Palm Springs I had one eye surrounded by face mask and nestled under a cucumber and one eye on Hurricane Ike. Each day I would return to my room and check the new forecasted track for the big guy and to my dismay, it never seemed to shift away from Houston. Needless to say rerouting my travel plans to exclude stops through Houston for a solid 2 weeks was hell on earth at best. After many hours on the phone speaking to pretty much every type of person from every type of background imaginable, I managed to secure a route to My grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary in Pittsburgh which was the weekend after my jaunt to Palm Springs.
The weekend was wonderful. I can't tell you how much I admire and respect my grandparents for making it 50 years! It seems these days that such feats are almost unheard of with an astronomical divorce rate permeating our society. It was also so nice to finally be with all of my family on my dad's side. I had never even met the little stud who is my newest cousin. The coolest thing about the weekend (to me) was that not only did they renew their vows after 50 years but they did it in the church that they were married in 50 years ago to the day. After much celebrating and some emailing to confirm that our company trip to Napa was still on depite hurricane Ike's effect on Houston, I was on my way back to California.
Let me just take a minute to do you all a favor by telling you to NEVER EVER fly United airlines. I booked a one way flight from Pittsburgh to San Francisco via Dulles the night before my flight and thought that everything would be fine and dandy and that I would make it to San Fran around 11:30 with plenty of time to spare before Lisa and I's reservation at 7:30 that night. After a day of being searched up and down, not taking off the first time because the latch didn't close electronically, getting bumped off of a flight that I paid for a seat on that was overbooked by 15 people, and sitting around Dulles waiting for a flight with even one free seat on it i FINALLY got into San Fran at 5:30 which was just late enough to not make our reservation in time since we had to drive another 2 hours to get to the restaurant. Needless to say I will never fly United ever again.
San Francisco/Napa was even better than last year. This year we stayed at Calistoga Ranch which is what I imagine Heaven to look like. The property was beautiful, the rooms were amazing and even came with beatiful outdoor showers which were a blast to use, and the staff were out of this world. In what seemed like a blur I had a cooking class and then ate the delicious end product, rode in a balloon, tasted TONS of wine, ate around a metric ton of delicious gourmet food, went horseback riding, competed in a wine blending competition, and hung out with some very fun bankers. Everyone left Friday but Lisa and I stayed the weekend to take advantage of our boss' Quintessa harvest party tickets that he unfortunately couldn't use. We toured some of our favorite wineries, ate at some more great restaurants, saw the redwoods in Muir woods, shopped, and just relaxed and enjoyed ourselves without any of the pressure of work or work people. We flew back into Houston Monday with over weight bags and bodies from a week (or two in my case) of pure perfection.
Believe it or not this is actually my version of a "quick" post. I have been swamped ever since I got back from this trip and I leave tomorrow for Peru. I promise that my peru recap will be much longer than this minescule recap but I wanted to make sure i was "caught up" before I left. TakSee you next week!
Posts
