Back at work, ahhh. But it’s slow so I can share with y’all some of my favorite things about the honeymoon…

We stayed at a vacation condo for six nights in Santa Barbara, which we determined is a nice place to visit, but we wouldn’t really want to live there. It’s no cheaper than the Bay Area, and it’s more “SoCal,” which is a no-no in my book. Lots of blonde hair and surfer style and rich yuppies everywhere you turn. BUT ANYWAY, we avoided all that and just enjoyed each other.

The apartment was amazing. Even nicer than I expected. Everything was just so well-made and decorated (except perhaps for the clown dolls). Details like good sheets and towels. Heavy limestone tile floors and granite counters. Modern windows, with screens. In other words, things that are missing from our apartment. It was a definite getaway.

The weather was warm every day, even when it was cloudy. We had a private terrace and I wanted to be out there all the time. It had a gas grill, where we made dinner a few times.

We walked around barefoot a lot in the condo, something not done much at our place. Brr.

We missed our cats a lot.

We took a hike in the Santa Barbara hills. We kind of got lost on the way to the trailhead and ended up climbing ever steeper into the mountains, past “estates” that got even richer and richer as the air got thinner. Every single house had a long driveway, a security gate with a fortress-like door and intercom entry, and immaculate landscaping. We could only imagine what actually lay inside the gates. Houses were only visible on distant hillsides, huge and opulent, basically making the neighborhoods in the Berkeley Hills look like Hayes Valley (SF in-joke). As we drove around, we didn’t see the people who lived in these houses, only the people who worked there.

But anyway, finally found the trail and hiked for three hours. It was lovely. Lots of creek-hopping and lizard-spotting. Pictures will be up someday…

On the honeymoon we did plenty of laying around, too. As one does on vacation. Ate too much fatty food, yum. Went shopping (but not too much). Took a long walk along the beach and filmed it with the video camera.

Every morning I woke up before my husband and went into our little kitchen to make a pot of Anodyne Cafe coffee. It was so good. I now want a coffeemaker. I don’t know if I can go back to brewing from the tea kettle into plastic filter cones again. I’ll have to though, since we are now so broke. Ha.

We took another hike, this time to the botantical gardens. It was much tamer. But we did explore in a miniature castle made of green branches. Filmed that, too. Movie will be online, someday…

The drive home took ten hours. We kept stopping and backtracking and taking scenic highway 1. But it was fine. We got cheap perfect strawberries from a roadside stand, and visited overtouristed Cambria, and saw Hearst Castle from a great distance. Made more video, this time of the rocky spectacle of the Pacific along the highway. Saw Big Sur for the first time, it wasn’t like I imagined. Saw many cows, and Brian kept saying: “get in my mouth.”

But at last we were home. The cats were very happy to see us. We were right in time to see the new episode of “the Family Guy.” All is well, we are married, it is awesome.