Happy New Year! As Frosty would say... I had no idea anyone was still reading this, but a reunion of sorts at none other than Heather's wedding over Labor Day Weekend inspired me to come back and put up an 'ol post. Lots of people asking, "Wherefore are your blog updates?"

My last one was in... December? Well, lots has happened, yet nothing has happened. Akhil and I have managed to:

1. Gain some control over our haphazard garden, adding lavendar, sedum, yarrow, new David Austin roses, narcissus bulbs, and a kumquat tree to the mix
2. Get to a place where 6-7 day workweeks are the norm (for him, anyway)
3. Buy a buffet, a coffee table, a new arbor and a wheelbarrow
4. Entertain the neighbors with an authentic Indian meal prepared mostly by my gracious mother-in-law (95%); only slightly by me (5%)
5. Took a class on xhtml coding, and though I got an A realized I'd *much* rather be taking a course on photography (next)
6. Slip in at least a few good vacations, at my obsessive prodding, of course
7. Went through (Akhil) a massive, competitive bread-baking phase, and learned to make baguettes, pizza, and foccacia
8. Met Floyd Landis at a book signing in Pasadena (Akhil)
9. Rediscovered jogging, biking, and the tricep machine at the gym

Besides all this, my brother Todd has up and moved to Denver, Colorado; and the army of babies continues to grow! We've got Will, born to Regina and Bill in the spring; Ethan, born to Debbie and Justin this summer; & Isabelle, born to Carolyn and Rob on Aug. 30.

Meanwhile the blogger.com interface has changed - now it's connected to my Google account and automatically saves my drafts. Awesome. Maybe I'll try and get back here more often.

Now for the fun stuff: vacation summaries. That's what I'm here for, folks.

I celebrated, reluctantly, getting another year older in San Francisco with Akhil, who took me to the Cliff House for lunch and to the Presidio and the MOMA and all around town to help keep me distracted.

In May we spent four days in Sonoma. We hadn't been to the area since our first year of courtship, in 1999. This time we stayed at the Inn at Sonoma and it was fantastic. I tried a mud bath at Calistoga, Akhil bought tomato plants in St. Helena, which they let us fly home with in a paper bag, and we managed to get as far north as Healdsburg, the new wine snob's favorite place to taste and shop. Our tomato plant experiment was incredibly successful - each of the 3 plants is now about 5 or 6 feet tall and I think I've eaten 300 tomatoes this season.

A month later, for our fourth anniversary, we spent a long weekend in Big Sur (can you tell with like Northern CA?) which truly deserves its reputation as one of the most beautiful and other-worldly places on earth. It's almost heartbreaking. We stayed in the yurts at TreeBones, which were cozy and literally on the edge of the cliffs overlooking the water. At night it was silent save the sound of the waves and the sea lions barking. Hiking at Julia Pfeiffer and then the incredible beach of the same name were pretty much all there was to do, gloriously, besides dine, indulgently, at Nepenthe and at the Ventana Inn, where Ed Norton had the table next to us at cocktail hour on the outdoor patio.

Through the summer we both worked a ton, and were good and ready for the Labor Day weekend celebration that was Heather and Jon's wedding in Providence. Following we hopped a plane to Paris and spent 6 days in Normandy, plus a little Bretagne on the side. I'll give that trip it's own post.