Old Doc Westbrook is Greater Than 30

You know how I am less than 30? Well, Eddy is definitely not. This year for his birthday, I planned a variety of things he loves to do. They will take the form of a before and after blog post here.

First, I surprised Eddy by making him a Japanese breakfast. He loves surprises. Before:

After:

Next, we went on a bike ride.

Along the way we stopped at a church bazaar.

It was an adventure. Eddy loves adventures. There are some after shots of the bike ride, but they mostly entail sweaty Eddy, so I will spare you. After the bike ride, I took Eddy on a super secret surprise adventure to drink bloody Mary beverages at Leon's Lounge. Before:

After:

Did I mention that Eddy loves bloody Marys?  Then we hung out with our neighbors and played Wii. Later I took Eddy out to a nice dinner at Benjy's. Before:

After:

Hope Old Doc Westbrook had the best birthday ever!

Cobb Extravaganza

My parents came to visit us! It was beyond awesome.

In addition to eating lots of yummy things (which we totally did) we also showed them some of the Houston sights. For instance:

The aquarium

I mean, they have some fish there, but also they have these tigers...

The biggest surprise hit, though was the Texas Renaissance Festival which we thoroughly enjoyed last year as well.

See if you can spot mom photo bombing above.

They also got to come by and see our new house and pet the cats' butts and all of that good stuff.

Thanks for visiting, mom and dad! See you in STL!

All Hallows Eve

Remember Halloween? We had a really good one this year! First we went to my friend Rachel's house for her Halloween Birthday shindig.

We played this awesome game called Shadows Over Camelot.

Let's just say it is now a thing in our household to say whether or not a real life event should be considered a "despair card." Afterwards, we bundled up and headed to Discovery Green for their Halloween showing of the Addams Family and the Nightmare Before Xmas.

It was cold that night.  Please do not mock me!  On Halloween proper, we spotted this amazing decoration in our neighborhood.

Sadly, it was only up one day. We also had our very first ever Trick-or-Treaters, thanks to our new house! Days after the Halloween excitement fizzled out, we saw this crazy dude in the parking lot of our grocery store.

Just goes to show that weirdos in costumes are welcome all year round.

Congratulations Jessie and Ryan!

So the other, other reason Eddy joined me in CA was to celebrate Jessie and Ryan's wedding.  We didn't actually get any pictures of them because, well, they were blurry in all of the photos Eddy took. But here are some pictures of us having fun!

Alright, to be honest, we didn't take many of these either, Ian did.

I look like I am about to punch Eddy's face in that one. Here is Eddy being picturesque.

Yeah, so congratulations Jessie and Ryan!

Japan... I mean, San Francisco

Eddy met up with me on my California adventure.

We did Chinatown (alright, we went there to buy waving kitteez)

We cruised by Eddy's old SF apartment.

We played around at Haight-Ashbury.

We also did a little road trip up into the mountains around the bay area.

And down by the water near Berkeley.

We saw some CA sights, like this "love shack." We think that greasy sack on the windshield might be filled with weed.

We also went to the Japanese Garden.

I guess this trip was basically the same as Japan. But with hippies.

Librarians Descend on Monterey

A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Monterey, CA for Internet Librarian.  While there, I got to check out some of the beautiful surrounds.

California was beautiful. Everything was blooming. Apparently, I am allergic to this.

Right after the conference I traveled to San Francisco with my work friends Rachel and Sean. Here we are at Ghiradelli, but through this photo, you basically get an idea of what the whole trip was like--Sean playing with his iPhone, Rachel taking a picture of Sean with her iPhone.

Seriously, though, we had a lot of fun. We rode the cute cable cars.

And we walked around Fisherman's Warf.

Rachel and Sean and I had a great time traveling together--that is, when they weren't calling me "sniffles" and leaning away from my sneezes.

Nicci is Less Than 30

This year, I had to spent a lot of my birthday in the airport on the way home from San Francisco.  But Eddy did get me some nice presents.

He also took me to Crave Cupcakes

I guess that makes up for this miserable 5 am shot of me at SFO.

I am going to do my very best to enjoy this last year of being in my 20s!

Japan Silliness

We saw some crazy funny things in Japan.  Things that went well beyond Engrish.  For instance, have you ever seen me wear a pair of glasses this large and attractive before?

This was at the airport/train station, so I am thinking it is meant to appeal to gaijin?

Eddy is certainly an "old dude" although I am not sure I would describe him as "cool."

This was at the sumo stadium.  They had a whole advertising campaign with this sumo wrestling poultry group.

Japanese people love cut outs you can stick your face in for photographs.

Yeah, so also, there was this whole brand of clothing called Edwin--stores everywhere.  Their moto is "Original wear styling at an exceptional value."  We didn't actually find this to be the case as everything there was super expensive.

I am a trash talker.  So is this trash can.

Also, when I was in Japan, I met my new love.  He kind of looks like Eddy, don't you think?

Yeah, so we stayed at a ryokan where they provide yukata for you to wear.  Thank goodness, because Captain Duvet was getting kind of chilly that night.

We also have lots of the good, old fashioned Engrish pictures if that's what you crave.  Just check out our Japan set on Flickr.  That's all for the Japan posts!