retreat? RETREAT!!

went to my first work-related retreat yesterday... in napa! got to eat dinner again at uva trattoria, spend some time with my combined residency friends, and sit through lots of presentations. fun! the hubby got to come up as well, and spent his time doing considerably funner things like playing tennis and buying cookies at butter cream bakery (as rachael ray might say, deeelish!!). i think i'd much prefer being the "spouse" at future conferences/retreats. spouses get to eat better food ;) feeling a little guilty as i ducked out early to come home and work on a presentation, but truly couldn't take another day of people talking... and talking... and talking. thus, i retreated. :P

we did need to make a presentation to introduce ourselves for the retreat, so i put together this little slideshow. i spent way too much time on it, so to extend its shelf-life, so to speak, i'm gonna post it here. enjoy. or not. i'm just happy to have another place to put it! hehe...

too much of a good thing?

have i mentioned how much i love ice cream? i guess it's a little bit of a fear/love relationship, given my increasingly distressing lactose intolerance... but with my handy lactaid packets at the ready, there's rarely an ice cream dish i won't try. though this little sundae did give me the slightest pause:my good HS friend jermo was interviewing for med school and visited- he needed to buy his friend (pictured above) some ice cream, so i recommended Leatherby's. they like to go big with their sundaes. and yes, we finished. all of it. mmm...
jermo's visit happened to coincide with Dine Downtown, a restaurant promo for 3 course $30 dinners. andy and i had gone out for dinner with the takagi family at 58 degrees, then when jermo came it gave me a convenient excuse to try another restaurant- chanterelle. margaret and shannon, my combined residency colleagues and sacto besties, joined us for dinner, then ALSO accompanied me for the THIRD dessert of the evening- at rick's dessert diner. twas a good day. but i do think i've learned something very important- there is such a thing as too much dessert. three was my limit. good to know.