They Declared a Pandemic on my Birthday

I had a major milestone birthday on March 11th.  We got to go out and celebrate.  But it was also the day that the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a worldwide pandemic. 

I’ve been meaning to blog about my birthday for a long time now (2 months).  But things have been SO different since then that it’s hard to even go back to when it was kind of normal.  Things like eating out and going to an art supply store.  But here it is, for memory’s sake! 

Todd took the day off work to celebrate with me.  It was also the day that his company declared that everyone should work from home from that day on, until May 1st.  They’ve since extended WFH indefinitely.  The day began with Todd showering me with gifts. 

I got an Apple Pencil, a tracing board with lighting, and a Baby Yoda sketch book.  Great gifts!  I had been into drawing already so these were prescient gifts for quarantine, it turns out.

I wore my “Fifty Years Young” Baby Yoda shirt that I bought from Disney Store online.  We were supposed to spend a few days at Disneyland for my birthday.  I was looking forward to all the new Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge rides and attractions.  But the pandemic changed all that.  Disneyland was closed, and I didn’t get to go.  But I still had my shirt!

We had my birthday lunch at Bencotto in Little Italy.  They had already instituted social distancing, so the seating was spread out and only at around 50% capacity max. 

I had squid ink gnocchi with shrimp and it was delicious!

Todd had gnocchi with spicy marinara sauce and sausage.  He really enjoyed it.

After lunch, we walked down the street to Blick Arts so I could peruse art supplies.  I purchased a few pens in their loose pen section.  Some of my favorite types of pens, where I didn’t have the colors yet.  Then we walked over to Extraordinary Desserts, where we seem to celebrate our birthdays, anniversaries, etc.  We got my favorite cake there, Truffe Framboise, and took it home to share later that day.

In the evening, we went to the movie theater and saw “Onward”, the new Pixar movie.  It was great!  It was right before movie theaters shut down, but after people pretty much stopped going to movies.  So there was hardly anyone there and we were naturally socially-distanced.  I really enjoyed the movie.

It was a wonderful birthday! 

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How We’re Celebrating 25 Years of Marriage This Year

On June 25th, we celebrated our 25 year wedding anniversary.  It’s an awesome achievement and something to be celebrated for sure.  I dug this up out of our photo archives.  We looked so young in 1994!

At the beginning of the year, we thought about what we would like to do to celebrate our 25 years of marriage.  In true Christine & Todd fashion, we decided to have many smaller celebrations instead of one big one.  Why not celebrate all year long??

In April, we took a week of staycation to hang out around town.  We went to the beach a couple of times.  We went to the movies at the theater, and watched movies at home every night.  We ate out.  We made homemade nachos and chicken & dumplings.  We read books.  It was fun and relaxing.

For our actual anniversary, Todd took the day off.  We had lunch at Pacifica Del Mar with ocean view.

We went to the Aerospace Museum at Balboa Park.

And we went to see Toy Story 4 at the movie theater at night.

Todd’s company had a company shutdown for the first week of July, so he had the week off.  We had another week of staycation where we did many things around town, and also spent a day in San Clemente.

Sometime in May, we were in the middle of the final Game of Thrones season and having so much fun watching the episodes and listening to all the podcasts together.  I found out there’s an annual Game of Thrones convention called Con of Thrones, and this year it was July in Nashville, TN.  Wheels started turning in my head.  Part of the success of our marriage is we have so much fun together being obsessed about different things, and being quirky about it.  We enjoy being geeks together about different things.  I thought, what better way to celebrate that than attending the Con of Thrones in July?  So we booked flights and hotel, and we went!  I’m going to write a separate post about Con of Thrones so I won’t go into the details here, but we had so much fun!  Three full days of geeking out over our favorite podcasters, book details, themes, show costumes, show art work, cosplay, etc. 

In early August, we flew to Ohio for Todd’s 30th high school reunion and to visit his family.  We had an awesome time!

We have four more trips to go the rest of this year!  We will be going to Malibu, Vancouver BC (Canada), Ohio again, and Texas.  It is a full year of celebrating our 25th anniversary together!

But wait!  How are we splurging on all these trips when I’m not working anymore?  We actually got the idea for a year of celebration in January, when we found out about a really rare deal on the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority card through Chase.  We applied immediately because it was too good to pass up.  Here are the deets:

• $149 annual fee
• Spend $4,000 in the first three months of getting the card, and you get FREE (well, for a $11.20 fee) companion tickets for the ENTIRE YEAR after that!
• You also get 30,000 Southwest points
• $75 of annual Southwest travel credit
• FOUR upgraded boardings per year (when available)

Here’s how we made out.  We used the 30,000 points to buy Todd’s ticket to Nashville.  My companion pass was free.  We would have had to pay $11.20 fees each for those tickets, but since we had $75 of travel credit, it was free.  We also used two of our boarding upgrades to board in the early A group, which would have cost $80, but it was free.  For the Nashville trip we saved $980 just by having the credit card.  You can see the savings from the rest of the spreadsheet.  We saved $2,135 (the green highlighted amount) by having the credit card.  I got to travel for free all year.  We only paid $1,357.12 (including the $149 annual fee) for FIVE roundtrip tickets for two people.

We couldn’t be more thrilled that we were able to do this on a budget this year!  If you ever see this deal pop up again, and you would like a year of free companion tickets to travel, you need to jump on it!

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Neck Deep in Finishing 2018 Taxes

I spent about four full days this week doing our 2018 taxes.  I knew when the tax law changed for 2018 that it was not going to be favorable for us.  I was right.  The new tax law disproportionally punishes people who live in high cost of living states/areas.  We pay SO MUCH California state income tax AND property tax and it used to be completely deductible.  For 2018 that specific deduction got capped at $10,000.  For us, that means that $15,000 of state and local taxes that we paid is now NOT DEDUCTIBLE.  Which caused our tax bill to increase by about $4,000.  That is very punishing.  I am NOT pleased at all.  Like I said, when I read the tax reform, I knew it was not favorable to us, but now it’s quantifiably unfavorable.  Thanks Trump.

I also had to learn how to do taxes as a small business owner.  There was so much to learn and a steep learning curve.  Startup costs can be a one-time write-off.  I had to figure out my end of 2018 inventory $ amount for both raw materials and finished products.  I had to calculate Cost of Good Sold directly associated with every product I produced.  I kept very good records so it was easier than someone who may not have kept good records.  But this first year was still quite a learning curve and tedius.  However, now I know exactly what categories go into what on the tax forms and I can cater my record-keeping to that, so that next year when we do our taxes for 2019 it will be easier!  No wonder people hire tax accountants to do their taxes.  I am an accountant but NOT a tax accountant, but I’ve never hired someone to do our taxes.  I always feel like I know enough to do our own taxes.  Plus I feel like gathering all the financial info is already half the time, so why not just enter them all myself?  Anyway, glad they are done and filed!  We ended up oweing some federal taxes and getting some state taxes back.  It was not a horrible result, but it was a $4,000 difference than if the tax laws did not change.  I feel like there is no incentive to purchase or own a house in high cost of living states now.  If we can’t deduct those taxed amounts then who would want to own a house?  No wonder our housing prices have seen a downturn, and nobody is buying!

Some brighter topics… I’ve had these flowers for a couple of weeks now.  They are finally wilting.  My good friend Meera gave them to me when she took me out for birthday breakfast!



I did a good amount of cleaning last week.  It felt really good to get a couple of areas cleaned up.  I sure wish houses didn’t dirty themselves, LOL.  On the weekend, we went for a walk along the coast.  It was a really nice day and we had an important conversation.  Walking outside is my favorite, but I don’t seem to do it enough!



Last weekend we tried out a new dumpling restaurant called Harmony Potsticker.  We thought it was decent.  The potstickers were good!  Todd had regular pork potstickers while I had shrimp and chive potstickers.



We also got some tofu soup and smashed cucumbers.  The tofu soup was good but the smashed cucumbers were not our favorite.



On Sunday, Todd spent a few hours making his world famous triple chocolate mousse cake so that he could bring it to work for a project-ending celebration on Monday.  It was as good as I remembered it!



It had a base layer of flourless chocolate cake, followed by a layer of whipped chocolate mousse, then topped with whipped white chocolate mousse,  It was as amazing as it looked!  Many of Todd’s coworkers said it was restaurant quality cake!



This past Monday I went to Costco to stock up on some stuff, but also to get my passport photo taken!  I need to renew my passport so we can take a trip later this year to celebrate our (gulp) TWENTY-FIFTH wedding anniversary!  I really can’t believe it’s been that long.



On Wednesday my friend Erecca, from where I used to work, took me out to lunch at Gor Gai for my birthday.  It’s my favorite Thai food around here.  It was fun to see her and catch up! 
On Thursday I received a super awesome package in the mail from my friend Peppermint for my birthday!  She picked out a Happy Planner for me and it’s perfect!  I haven’t been scrapbooking but this planner style of decorating with stickers and jotting down stuff seems like it will be fun!



Since it’s an 18-month planner from July 2019 to December 2020, she also got me an undated extension so I can start to use it immediately in April.  So nice!  I’ve already put date stickers on all the monthly and weekly pages in the extension so I’m ready to go for April!  So excited!
Then yesterday (Friday) my friend Anne treated me to high tea at Marlene’s Tea and Cakes for my birthday!  (I am so so blessed with caring friends who seemed to have celebrated me all month long.  I don’t take it for granted at all, and I’m super-touched and thankful.)  I had NEVER been to high tea before and was so delighted at this new experience.  Here’s a sneak peek at it.  I will be writing a post about it in a couple of days.



Here’s a cute Noodle photo to finish off the post!

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Forty Nine Memories

Today is my birthday!  I am forty nine!

Todd and I celebrated my birthday yesterday, since he had to work today.  We went to lunch at Bluewater Boathouse Grill at Coronado, where I had the ciopinno.  Then we had ice cream at Moo Time Creamery, followed by book browsing at the independent book store Bay Books.  It was perfect!

In honor of my birthday and 49 trips around the sun, I made a list of 49 random memories, in no particular order!

1. When I was three, my parents went out and the babysitter let me play with water in the bathroom.  I got water EVERYWHERE!
2. I had a yellow canary as my first pet.
3. I learned to ride a bike when I was seven.  I LOVED my blue glitter banana seat bike!  I was sad when we moved to the US in 1979 and couldn’t bring my bike with us.
4. My paternal grandparents were farmers and lived in the countryside in Taiwan.  They had chickens everywhere, including inside the house.  And they pooped everywhere, including inside the house.
5. One time when I was 6 or 7, there was a big earthquake in Taiwan.  Our apartment was shaking and I didn’t know what was going on.  My mom threw herself over me and my little sister.  I asked her what happened and she said there was an earthquake.  The love and protection of a mom!
6. Eighth grade school dances where Journey and Spandau Ballet ballads ruled.
7. Tenth grade social dance during PE.  Ugh.
8. Meeting Todd for the first time on our dorm floor.  He was new.  I was an older sophomore!  We lived in the geek dorm Taylor Tower at Ohio State.  We owe the Ohio State computer for putting us on the same floor.  I don’t think we would have met otherwise, since he was in Engineering and I was in Arts & Sciences and Business.
9. The first time I realized my parents were humans with faults and frailties. 
10. The $20 bill that my dad gave me when I was a junior in college.  I was going to graduate in three years with a Psychologoy degree and was going to pursue grad school and Psychology.  But a comment by the Psych professor that I was doing research for (work study) led me to quit that work study job and re-consider going into Psychology.  I was worried about finding another work study job, I really needed the money.  I had scholarships and grants, but it was not enough.  My dad stopped by my apartment and gave me a $20 bill and consoled me and told me it was going to be alright.  And it was.  The event changed the direction of my life forever.  I never spent the $20 bill.  I still have it in an envelope.
11. Moving to San Diego in December of 1999.  Getting into our rental car at the airport with our two cats and the first song that came on the radio was “Bright Sunshiny Day” with the lyrics, “I can see clearly now the rain is gone”. 
12. Finding out my mom had cancer.
13. Being there when my mom passed away.
14. Meeting Todd’s family for the first time.  His parents were younger than I am now!  And his sister was only 11 years old at the time, LOL.
15. Making the 8th grade cheerleading squad in middle school.
16. Going to the library for the first time in the US, and checking out books with lots of words I couldn’t read. 
17. The first day of school in 4th grade in a new country.  I didn’t speak English and it was very scary.  But I had to put up a brave face for my younger sister, who was in kindergarten.  They came to find me in my classroom because she wouldn’t stop crying.  She cried and asked me, “Why don’t they speak Chinese here?”
18. Todd playing in rock bands and touring in Austin, TX.
19. Todd making me a silkscreen sweatshirt as a gift.  It was much harder back then.  You had to draw on the screen and cut it out with an exacto knife.  No such thing as an electric cutter back then!
20. When I got my first job offer out of college.  I still have the offer letter.  The company has been spun off twice, but I ended up working with the same company for 25 years.
21. The first time I had pizza in the US.  I thought it was so gross!
22. Our 10 year anniversary party.  We rented a boat for 30 people and had dinner catered on the boat.  Cruised around San Diego Bay and got to see the sunset.  Best party ever.
23. The day I started talking to my friend Peppermint on the internet and we became fast friends.
24. Going to San Diego Comic Con and getting squished on the trolley and in the halls, everywhere.  It was so crowded!
25. Running into Geena Davis while walking around in La Jolla.
26. All the times I worked as an extra on the TV show Veronica Mars.  Making television is very tedious and takes forever, filming the same scenes over and over again.
27. Building our first house in Miamisburg, Ohio.
28. Buying our first house in San Diego, which was up the hill from our current house.  Oh the sticker shock!
29. Seeing our current house for the first time during open house and falling in love with it.  We immediately went home and I calculated all kinds of numbers to see if it would work.  That was 18 years ago.  It worked out.
30. Discovering the internet for the first time, in 1995.
31. Going to the San Diego Charger Girls tryout in 2004 and trying to follow the choreography to Britney Spears’ “You Drive Me Crazy”. 
32. Our first home fellowship church group of young married couples in Dayton.
33. Todd playing trumpet in the orchestra and me singing in the 80 person choir at our church in Dayton.  I miss a church with a big choir and full orchestra.  It was so fun.
34. Adopting our first two cats, Pete and Pepe, in 1995, a month after we moved into our newly built house.
35. My college pet, a hamster named Buddy.
36. Being a candy striper at John Muir Memorial Hospital during 9th grade.  My day was Mondays and I’d watch Monday Night Football with the patients while feeding them or chatting with them.
37. Discovering digital cameras for the first time!  What a life-changer!
38. My girls trips with my friend Sally to Puerto Vallarta and Cancun, Mexico.
39. Going to Maui for our honeymoon and having to be in five airports to get there (Columbus, Chicago, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Maui). 
40. Loving Hawaii because people looked like me, and couples looked like me and Todd.  In Ohio we still got stared at occasionally. 
41. My parents taking care of teenage kids every Saturday because we had youth group at our house.  My mom worked tirelessly cooking for everyone.  It was like a second home for some of those kids.  My dad was a church pastor and the youth group impacted the kids so much that two of my friends became pastors as well.
42. My dad having an ulcer and had to go to the same hospital that I volunteered at.  It was sad seeing him in the hospital bed. 
43. Growing up poor and really not KNOWING it until I was an adult.  We had everything we needed.
44. Going to Jalapa, Mexico to visit my sister while she was on a one-year stint there working with college kids. 
45. My sister living with us for a year before getting married.  Our cat Pepe used to sleep with her every night, she was his favorite.
46. The last day at my 25 year job.
47. The first day I opened my Etsy store.
48. Going to Arizona for baseball Spring Training with our good friends AJ & Meera.
49. Snorkeling for the first time and seeing colorful fish and other undersea creatures.

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The Sky is Always the Bluest After The Rain

We’ve had a LOT of rain the last few weeks in San Diego.  Last week we even had hail.  There’s been tons of snow in the mountains near us, only an hour away.  But on Saturday Todd & I went for a walk at the coast and it was the clearest as it gets in San Diego, which is very clear and very blue!

It always makes me feel so great when we walk by the ocean.  It makes me feel super grateful to live here.

On the making front this week, I made a whipped shea butter body butter, just for experimenting with ingredients and formulation.  It’s made with shea butter, safflower oil, isopropyl myristate (to cut the oily feel and make it feel smooth), vitamin E oil, and lemon, orange, and grapefruit essential oils (but not at the amount that would cause photosensitivity).  It feels and smells great. 

I also made 25 candles for a custom label order.  I’ve never made 25 candles at once before, so I timed myself every step of the way so I could see how efficient I could be, ha ha.  This was the “prep all the glass jars and wick them” stage.

This was 2.5 hours later, after pouring all the candles.  They’re setting/curing.  They are scented in Sea Salt & Orchid and smell REALLY good!

While I worked on this candle order, I discovered the “Songs To Sing in the Shower” playlist on Spotify.  It is soooo good!  I literally danced my way through the candlemaking, LOL.  So joyous!

My nephew Andrew has a channel on YouTube called “Rogue Films”.  He had a video he made go viral last week and he texted us to tell us.  (It has over half a million views now!) So Todd and Noodle watched the video together.  I guess it became some sort of meme?  I have no idea what the kids like these days!

Speaking of Noodle, he is loving the sunshine that has returned to San Diego.

Sideways sleeping on his infinity bed.

Todd got to play Mozart and Mahler classical pieces with his musician friends on Saturday.  They get together from time to time to play together, just for fun.  I went and recorded a bunch of videos for him.

Every time I hear him play, I’m in awe of his talent, but more so his hard work.  He practices piano a lot, almost daily, after dinner.  He also plays trumpet in a brass group at work during lunch on Mondays.  They are going to play songs from “The Greatest Showman”.  Which, by the way, we watched for the 2nd time on Saturday night.  It’s even better the second time around.  So now I’ve been listening to the soundtrack all day on Spotify today.

Todd continued to celebrate his birthday this weekend, because several of his “free birthday food” coupons were expiring.  On Friday night we went to Burger Lounge so he could get his free milk shake.

Then on Sunday we went to brunch at Miguel’s Cocina so he could use his $10 off $30 birthday coupon.  They also gave him a free birthday mud pie and sang to him!

I had the carne asada benedict and it was delicious.  But what I really go to Miguel’s for is their cheese queso dip with chips, LOL.

I’ve been reading through Marie Rayma’s book “Make It Up”.  It is sooooo awesome!  I’m excited to try some of the formulas for DIY foundation, blush, lipstick, eyeshadows, etc.  The idea that I can custom make cosmetics for myself that matches my skin tone exactly, and also make colored cosmetics to my liking, is very exciting to me!  Especially since cosmetics is a category of products that’s marked WAAAAY up in retail sales, to pay for the marketing.  I have a feeling that fairly soon, I’m going to end up with lots of little jars of DIY makeup.  So fun!

I have already talked about Atlas Market in a recent blog post, but I went there today and got our whole week’s produce for $8.74! 

I got:

3.3 LBS of beets = $1.09
2.82 LBS of papaya = $2.79
3.87 LBS of naval oranges = $0.77
1.75 LBS of fuji apples = $1.21
1.9 LBS of green beans = $0.94
2 jalapeno peppers = $0.32
4 tomatillos = $0.48
Bag of bok choy = $0.85
2 bunches of cilantro = $0.29

Total $8.74

I think I mis-weighed some items, because it looks like I got way more than I needed.  I think the scales in the store may have been in kilograms, LOL.  But anyway, that means I could have only paid like $6 for all the produce that I needed.  That’s just incredible!  Seriously when I wheel the cart out of this place, I'm so giddy like I just stole some food! Local friends, you absolutely NEED to go to Atlas Market for produce and fruits!  It's an international market with a food hall, with emphasis on Korean and Persian food. Tons of other Asian and Middle Eastern food. They make announcements in English, Persian, Korean, and Chinese, LOL. In the food hall they have Korean fried chicken, which is soooooo good. And there's a Persian Bakery too. Basically I want to live there!

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Winter In San Diego

I hesitate to even call what we’re experiencing in San Diego as “winter”.  It is unusually cold and unusually rainy for SD, but really nothing as far as what a true winter is.  We moved from Ohio to San Diego in mid-December back in 1999.  I remember both of us exclaiming with glee that we were “skipping winter” from now on.  We still feel that way, and feel so fortunate to live in sunny San Diego.  Oh, don’t get me wrong.  There’s plenty of wrong things with San Diego.  The traffic.  The lack of parking anywhere you go.  The crowds everywhere.  But boy, do we have year-round good weather, beaches, and great food!

We watched a bunch of birds (pelicans?  we couldn’t tell from afar) nose-dive into the water for fish.  It was so cool!

Todd bicycling in January on the coast.  In JANUARY.  At the COAST.  As he always says, “This ain’t happening in Ohio.”

So, after we both recovered from being sick for about a week at the beginning of January, it was full steam ahead!  I started planning monthly release products for my handcrafted store on Etsy.  It was actually quite time consuming to plan out all the product releases for each product category from January all the way through June.  And then source the products and buy all the supplies and ingredients, and tools/equipment/packaging.  But it was also fun.  And FUN is why I’m doing this, because lord knows I’m making a mere fraction of what I was earning in my previous career in corporate finance.  Like tiny fraction… much less than minimum wage when you consider all the time I put into it.  But hey, it’s fun!  And I’m exercising my creative brain again.  I saved money for 25 years so I could quit and do something like this before I was too old.  So you know, here I am!

So far I’ve sold out of many things in January & February.  This is mainly because everything is handcrafted by me, in small batches.  I really can’t make big batches, because I don’t have big equipment.  And because I can’t really afford to have inventory sitting around not sold.  I’d rather miss out on revenue than have inventory sitting around unsold.  In January my best selling item was this 3 oz lavender coconut lime scented heart-shaped body butter bar.  It had a luxurious blend of shea butter, coconut oil, beeswax, and vitamin E oil. 

My February best seller that sold out pretty much overnight after my newsletter went out was the Cotton Candy Emusified Sugar Scrub.

I will write a post later this week on behind the scenes at Pacifica Grace Studio. 

I started to exercise again, only to be foiled by my “busy-ness” getting my product releases out.  I plan to make it a priority, but it really needs to be scheduled and put on my calendar to make it happen.  I always feel so GOOD when I exercise though!  I was watching an exercise video and following along.  Noodle claims he was exercising.  But look at him.  I don’t think so!

One day a while ago, he begged for lap sitting so I picked him up and he sat on my lap. 

I petted his head.  After a few minutes he suddenly jumped off and ran away.  Thus the ensuing text conversation with Todd, LOL!

Noodle loves Todd.  Noodle will hang out with Todd, even if it’s on Todd’s keyboard.

We have discovered a few new-to-us places to eat around town that I’ll share.  I think if you’re local you’d enjoy them too!

On Sunday 1/20 we went to lunch at Bluewater Boathouse Grill on Coronado.  We had never been before.  I had seen the crab BLT sandwich on Beach Bites with Katie Lee on the Cooking Channel, so I knew I had to try it!

Todd got the salmon sandwich.

We also really enjoyed the sourdough bread loaves that they bring to the table!  So good!  After lunch we headed to the Coronado Playhouse to watch our friend Cecile in the musical “Guys And Dolls”.

It was such a fun show!  She was so good in it.  We love community theater, especially when our friends are in it!

After the show, we went to Moo Time for our favorite ice cream.  They had both salted caramel AND apple pie flavors!

The 2nd restaurant that we discovered and have been to TWICE since the new year is Taste of Hunan.  This is the real deal Chinese food!  As in “the only non-Chinese people in the restarant are accompanied by Chinese people” authentic.  The first time we went, only Todd and one other person was not Chinese.  But the food is so good! 

We’ve had a noodle soup with pork and pickled veggies.

Sauteed Chinese greens.

Spicy stir-fried Tofu

Chicken noodles

And both times we had the pork and chives dumplings because they’re so delicious!

The third place we discovered last weekend is Atlas Market in Poway, next to the Target.  It’s hard to describe it, but it’s like an international market with a food hall, with emphasis on Persian and Korean food!  We tried out Korean fried chicken at Furaido Chicken and it did not disappoint!  I’ve never had Korean fried chicken before, but the coating is rice flour instead of wheat flour.  And they fry it twice, so there’s no fat left in the skin and everything is crunchy!

I got the glazed garlic soy chicken and I deemed it delicious!

Todd got the red savory glaze.  He thought it was ok, he liked mine more.

They give you gloves to eat it with your hands, ha ha.

There’s also a Persian bakery there and we tried out these filo-dough pastries with savory beef and onion in them.  Delicious!

In February we celebrated both Todd’s birthday and Lunar New Year.  We drove in the rain up to LA to visit my dad and Shelly.  It was fun and I gave them some of my handcrafted candles, wax melts, soaps, lip balms, and body butters.  I forgot to take photos though. 

For Todd’s birthday celebration (he took the day off the day before his bday), we went to URBN Pizza in North Park, one of his favorite pizza places. 

Afterwards we went to Extraordinary Desserts, where we got a tres leches chocolate cake to share.  And Todd got an entire Truffe Frambois cake to take to work the next day to celebrate his birthday with work friends.

So Todd’s birthday this year was smack on Chinese New Year.  And it is the Year of the Pig.  Todd is a Pig in the Chinese zodiac.  It’s every 12 years.  So if you do the math, you know how old he is!  My dad’s wife Shelly got Todd this popcorn-eating pig.  It’s Todd exactly for this birthday, the Year of the Pig!

On this actual birthday, we went to Phil’s BBQ for dinner to celebrate him.

Later that week, I got invited to a Lunar New Year dim sum lunch with some of my friends from my ex-job.  I found this festive Chinese jacket that my mom gave me YEEEAARS ago and wore it.

The dim sum was so good, and it was so good to see those friends again.

The jacket.  My mom.  I miss my mom so much.  My mom passed away from cancer on Valentine’s Day in 2007.  Todd and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day anymore, because not only is it a Hallmark holiday, it is also too bittersweet of a day for me.  I miss her every day of course, but even more on Valentine’s Day and her birthday. 

This catches up from the holidays to the present!  On Thursday I will write a “behind the scenes” post of my Pacifica Grace Studio handcrafted business.

Thank you for being here still and reading, by the way.  I know I haven’t been the most consistent blogger recently.  I’ve definitely regretted not documenting my life and forgetting all the details.  I love writing and I love to share, so hopefully I can get back on a regular track for blogging.  I put it on my calendar! 

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