I had a wonderful weekend, and I’m feeling much better. The weather this weekend was awesome: I hit the pool every single day and well, it goes without saying that exercise does wonders keeping depression at bay. Of course, it also helped that my re-entry into baking resulted in a delicious loaf of banana chocolate bread. Haha, the bread was a success (despite my recipe tweaks), and I even earned Bub’s stamp of approval.

I’m also getting excited about our upcoming trip. I have the entire 3-stanza poem memorized for the wedding. I’m still a tad shaky on the last stanza, but I’ll smooth it out before next Sunday. I’m also ready to go with her makeup application. We did 3-4 dry-runs, so I’m optimistic she’ll look glowing and natural. I need to start packing too. Psyched about getting dressed up; just hope my shoes are totally broken in by then and I hope I remember everything!

This past Saturday, John and I toured about Mountain View, which is near my work. We drove by a few rental communities. Most places in my ideal price range ended up being freakishly reminiscent of the old and creepy GatorWoods Apartments in Gainesville, Florida, so I’m thinking we’ll end up somewhere in between my ideal price and our current rent. We did find one community that was decent… but we’ll see. We really prefer to rent from a private homeowner rather than an apartment community. We’ve certainly had our fill of shitty management.

I do like the possibility of going home for lunch and/or biking to work. Plus, I like MV– it has a nice vibe.

On the down side, I would still miss our current place: awesome, empty pool and hot tub, small yard for the pups, quiet neighbors. Argh, housing is such a goddamn gamble. Well, we’ll see what my superstar realtor digs up.

This summer is shaping up to be a busy one. Originally, I was feeling rather bummed about having an uneventful, boring summer with limited travel and such, but as it turns out, we’ll be getting visitors. My good friend’s mom will be in LA next month, so we’ll meet up half way– maybe check out San Luis Obispo for a day or two. Then, my parents told me today that they would like to visit at the end of July. What a relief, because I hate going back to Maryland. So boring. In August, my dear friend in Shanghai will visit the US for the first time ever. Will be great to see her and maybe show her around a bit.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Focus on the immediate. Upcoming trips. Swimming, dancing, baking sweets.

Maybe I’ll watch a movie on Netflix tonight. Anything to replace the depressing story of Revolutionary Road. God, anyone watch that? I totally identified with their disillusionment… we felt that way before we moved to China. Thank goodness we up and left. Was totally the right move for us. So weird to think that people’s reactions to our decision didn’t really differ much from people’s reactions in the film (and what decade was it, the 1950s?? 1960s??). We got the same shit, like, “Can’t you be happy here? This is what life is– mundane. What are you running from?” Whatev.