A couple East-Bay recruits visit (and if I keep calling them that I might be pushing my luck...)

Awesome news, everybody: Jess and Bridget are getting married!! Woo Hoo!!

And so are...

Chuck and Elizabeth!! Super-ultra Double Woo Hoo!!

These two came to visit over MLK's birthday weekend. They tied it with Elizabeth's business trip and stayed in SF their first two nights. The next two the stayed with us, but we still had to share them with the rest of their SF family.

Pretty much the instant Chuck entered our apartment he pulled out his camera and headed straight for the balcony. He was about 15 minutes past sunset and the night didn't even seem visually impressive to me, but he still managed to take the best-looking pictures from our balcony. He's good like that.

We had plans to go out on their first night in Oakland, but we all felt content to stay home and catch up in person in the comfort of our living room. We threw together some last-minute veggie burgers from the freezer and stayed up drinking wine, contemplating the human consciousness for hours. I love these two for good conversations.

On Saturday Elizabeth left us for her SF pals and we finally made it out of the house to show Chuck a little more of Oakland. We took him to the Farmers' Market where he did a lot of this:

Resulting in these:

That garlic looking bulbous item up there we took home with us. They turned into Chinese Paper-whites. This is what they look like now:

According to the vendor who sold them to us, the flowers should last for six weeks. Once they die we're supposed to trim them back and put them in the refrigerator to simulate Winter for four weeks. Then we get to start over.

Chuck and Elizabeth made us feel like great hosts. (Shhh, don't tell them that we already think they're cool enough to stay here without the sucking up. Praise feels good.) Chuck especially seemed to be taken with the East Bay. As it turns out he'd really only spent time in SF in the past and had been missing out on all the glory of our side of the water. We had big ambitions to go to Yoshi's for dinner because it's sushi/jazz combination seemed perfect to Chuck. Once we realized that we'd need to get all dressed up, stand in line for a long time, pay tons of money to eat and potentially leave Elizabeth out, we decided to plan to do that the next time they come to visit. As a "consolation" we met everybody at Jupiter (go to their website, the picture on the homepage is totally inviting.) The plan B jazz bar was exactly what we were in the mood for. With their outdoor heaters it was warm enough to sit out on the balcony and share a pizza while catting amidst the live music. None of us took any pictures there, but to satisfy every one's overarching curiosity, here's a picture Elizabeth took earlier in the day of the other two that joined us:

These are Stacy (in pink) and her boyfriend/Chuck's bro, Steve. I wasn't even in the same city when this photo was taken, but something about the cupcakes and those awesome red chairs makes me dig this shot enough to share it.


A downside to hosting active photographers is my laziness with my own camera. As a consequence, this blurry shot with Apollo and me is the only one I've got of Elizabeth...

We dropped Elizabeth and Chuck off at SFO after breakfast on Sunday, sad to see them go. Now we just have to convince Elizabeth that making a transcontinental move is the right choice. You can do it, Liz! It's impossible to compete with your "real" family, but we love you out here on this coast!

A few more photos like these can be found here.