The biggest highlight of all was my beautiful sister, lovely husband, and cutest baby had their wedding/celebration of love in Minneapolis. They held it at Summit Manor but the whole weekend was a whirlwind of festivities and family time. The wedding itself was 1 Sept so here we are with the main event in the proper month highlights (some sort of system is needed for this mega-summary approach to the second half of 2019!).
The wedding was awesome! Brady and Ricardo have awesome family and friends. SMS and I had the best time aaannnnnddd…I got to give a MOH speech! Brady was such an amazing MOH that I wanted to be one to and, at a minimum, I didn’t embarrass myself! I also did some important MOH duties like booking a group nail appointment (which I missed due to flight delays) and day of make-up and hair for the bride!
The day after the wedding, we went down to a brewery that SMS had found. We wanted to ride scooters but thought, no way would four show up all together and…manifesting to the universe worked! There were four scooters in a row and away we went, me bringing up the rear as a scooter chicken! SMS and Ed were the bravest, going off-roading down a grassy hill with zero casualties. Good job!
I got the beer sampler and, as luck would have it, got the confused newbie who gave me medium sized cups instead of the sampler cups. My sister-in-law was very jealous to which I say…
Here are a few shots of SMS. On the left is in Minnesota and on the right is somewhere in the Bay Area the next weekend.
Below is a New Yorker cartoon I find very funny. I think I’m going to order a print of it.
Above are a few photos from Coronado. Left to right, a pretty sunset; my balcony garden; SMS being the consummate law-abiding pedestrian waiting for the walk sign without his renegade wife; the queen-sized Ikea bed I put together myself!
I saw three author talks in San Diego: Colson Whitehead (Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys), Rebecca Makkai (The Great Believers), and Bruce Holsinger (The Gifted School). All three were excellent. I liked Bruce Holsinger’s talk the most because it focused a lot on the academic practice of writing since both he and the interviewer are Literature professors.
We went up to Sonoma with Rip and Linda for two Harvest Parties: Medlock Ames and Lancaster with a stop at the Hawkes tasting room. It was an awesome weekend. I love Medlock Ames wines and they threw a great party!
On Sunday, we went to Armstrong Redwoods State National Preserve to walk among the Redwoods, which I think is the thing to do since there aren’t too many old-growth redwood stands around! Logging was so widespread in the 1800s that most redwood forests now are second-growth and while impressive, do not even approach the size of the 1000+ year old trees!
Portmanteau Suitcase 