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HoltzLusiNationfor Brian and Melisse Last Modified 1999-11-29 |
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HoltzLusiNationfor Brian and Melisse Last Modified 1999-11-29 |
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..to enjoy the majestic Northern California coast.
Melisse clocked her serve at 67mph on our third trip this week to the San Jose Open, which Philippousis won after Agassi cursed his way to a default.
In the Southland we met Phylis's newborn son and then attended the wedding of Paul and Sarah Pongetti. Greg and Mary Beth were looking sharp, and Jon and Michelle helped hold the fort at the Lusin table. That evening we had dinner with Andrew and Lisa and Scott. On Sunday we hung out with Ruth and Peanut before flying home.
Chuck and Pat and Jim and Jaq rendezvoused with us in Reno. We gambled, dined, and saw a production of Fried Green Tomatoes. On Sunday we drove down for lunch with Aunt Rosie. Chuck and Pat stayed overnight with us in Redwood City and flew south the next morning.
John and Joe celebrate Dave Griscom's alleged 50th birthday at the Blue Chalk.
On a Texas business trip, Brian visited Duane and got him hooked on WebTV. (Note that the Web was already hooked on Duane, courtesy of the internet site for his Austin band The Hammicks.)
If they wind up only needing one bottle of whiskey, then parenting will not have been as tough as they thought!
We journeyed to Iowa to gather with Jerry and Kay for the wedding of her brother Don. Our generation of cousins had a down home rehearsal dinner at the Narrow Gauge, and then we rocked Petersburg all evening long after the wedding. Shaina had lots of energy, but Jenna is not a happy camper unless Linda is nearby. On Sunday we had brunch at Jenny's place and then took a sightseeing drive that included Bixby Park's ice cave.
...Joe and Nipun in the Sun doubles tournament, but lost in the finals to John and Dave.
Jacqueline met us in Las Vegas on Wednesday night, and Thursday morning we road tripped out to Zion Canyon in Utah. We stayed at the wonderful creekside Desert Pearl Inn right outside the park, and Jacqueline declared it the best accomodations she'd ever seen. Thursday afternoon we hiked the river walk at the bottom of the canyon, and Friday morning we hiked up to the Great Arch. Brian got the girls back to Vegas in time to pick up Andrea at the airport and dispatch them to Amy's roving bachelorette party. Brian retired to his fourth-floor room above the 'Q' at the Four Queens, where he had a front-row seat at the block-long big-screen Fremont Street Experience. A jealous Jacqueline declared it the best accomodations she'd ever seen. Saturday we cruised out to Red Rock canyon, which Amy's brother had trouble finding, probably due to a Y chromosomal phobia for relying on printed directions. :-) Once everybody was assembled, the ceremony was wonderful as the sun set over spectacular altar of red rocks. We all returned to the Golden Nugget for a nice reception to toast the happy couple. Jaqueline returned with us to the bay area for a conference, and before she left town we had dinner with Michelle Croucher and her friend at the Elephant Bar.
Don too finally decided to settle down this summer. He was a big talker :-) when my bachelor party was being planned, but on Thursday night all we did was get together at Masee's with his brother George, his dad, Mannie, Gope, Phillip, etc. and shoot some pool. Friday afternoon we got together at Christ the King church in Pleasant Hill and hammered out an agreement with the wedding coordinator on the details for the ceremony. The happy couple enjoyed a dinner in their honor Friday night, at which Maura gave Don an surprise photo album of their parallel lives from childhood on. The wedding on Saturday went smoothly, and after Brian was located for the photo shoot we settled in at Zio Fraedo's for a traditional Irish wedding reception. George composed his best man's toast at the last minute right at the head table, while Patti and Don enjoyed the band's Irish folk music. There are reports that Brian joined Melisse to dance during one or two songs, but no photographic evidence exists to confirm this speculation.
Brian spent the evening taking pictures of his right eyeball to explore cover ideas for the new book he's writing. Melisse is being very supportive of all this silliness. :-)
On Friday Wayne, Mike and I set out (in Melisse's CRV) for the trip over the mountains to rendezvous with Stu for our match at Colony Club in Half Moon Bay. In the stop-and-go traffic on the winding Hwy 92 we got rear-ended by a 1999 truck, built Ford tough for absent-minded drivers. It caused pains in the necks of us married guys belted into the the front seats, but curiously did not affect single-guy Wayne relaxing sideways in the back seat. Single guys obviously start the day with less pain in their necks. :-) The impact skewed the spare tire and dented the door, but the damange seemed mostly cosmetic so I swapped insurance info and pushed forward. Mike and Wayne won their second match in a row, but Stu and I lost in a third-set tiebreak. Our teammates were AWOL, so we had to default the deciding singles match. On the plus side, we stuck around for BBQ and beer and we all had a great time. Especially Mike. :-)
Three years ago this week and a month into their courtship, Melisse took Brian on a road trip to her native Southern California. We repeated our trip this year and again stayed over in Santa Barbara, whence we scouted the nearby Santa Ynez valley for real estate that might fit with our long-term plan. Lake Cachuma cannot be developed, but view parcels near Los Olivos are pretty interesting. Melisse especially liked the nearby Pony farm. Friday evening we stopped in LA to have dinner with Andrew and Lisa, both of whom have been bit by the Internet start-up bug. We had a nice time with Melisse's family. Ruth showed us real estate in San Diego County, and Brian fell in love with the floor plan of Jon and Michelle's new house in Orange.
Melisse always wishes that the Bay Area (or at least Genentech's site in South San Francisco :-) were warmer, so we left for a vacation in Mississippi, whose summer Brian had not experienced since (he thinks) 1987. Brian's folks picked us up in New Orleans on Saturday, and somehow talked us into going to mass the next morning. :-) Terry showed up in our pew, and afterwards we had lunch overlooking the bayou at Anthony's. On Monday we babysat Charlotte and Grampa drove her to a late lunch with Nancy who was just getting off work at Gulfport's Grand Casino. We were able to get in a little browsing that afternoon at Spanish Trail Books, which moved from Ocean Springs to Biloxi a few years back. On Tuesday we first went east with Kay and Jerry to Mobile's Exploreum, where we watched "Alaska" on an IMAX dome screen. Melisse and Kay tried out the robot arm, and Jerry and Brian lost to their wives in tug-of-war thanks to the principle of leverage.
Late Tuesday afternoon we headed west to pick up Pat and Jacqueline arriving in New Orleans. While window shopping Melisse found a Limoges store that was (alas!) closed, but the K Creole Kitchen was open and Brian rated their French Onion Soup as best on the planet. We stayed overnight in the French Quarter, where the shopping continued the next day and where Jaq got her beignet fix from Cafe Du Monde. We caught the Degas exhibit at NOMA but couldn't find any late-afternoon aligator swamp tours on the way back to Ocean Springs.
From O.S. on Thursday we piled into Rose Q's luxury van conversion (TV, VCR, leather captain's chairs) and drove up to the Vicksburg battlefield park overlooking the Mississippi River. We toured the fields and hills on (and under) which the siege was fought, and boarded the restored ironclad Cairo sunk by a Confederate mine. We stayed at the antebellum Cedar Grove bed and breakfast, which still has a cannonball embedded in an interior wall. Melisse and Brian took $45 in profit from blackjack at the riverboat casino, where a dehydrated Jacqueline drank enough to lower the river a foot or two. We took an evening dip in the pool, where the Mississippi mosquitoes continued to feast on Melisse. On our way out of town Friday morning we visited a soda shop at the first Coca-Cola bottling plant, and then drove south on the Natchez Trace Parkway, stopping to see the remnants of the centuries-old trail itself. We dined at the historic (and allegedly haunted) King's Inn at the southern tip of the Trace in Natchez, after touring antebellum mansions Stanton Hall and Longwood. We spent Friday night at a not-so-Super 8, where the Mississippi natives assured Pat and Jaq that the wayward big outdoor cockroach in their room was not to be feared as much as possible small indoor cockroaches. We saw the Rosalie mansion and a cotton plant before driving back to O.S. on Saturday.
No out-of-staters can visit O.S. without a trip to the local Hudson's salvage store, where random merchandise (including food and drugs!) is sold at a deep discount due to disasters both natural (flood, fire, scratches) and man-made (bankruptcy, recall due to health risk). Jacqueline bought a golf club, but Melisse returned her blood pressure monitor because it couldn't decide if she was hypertensive or clinically dead. Then Terry took us out to the nearby bayou, where we encountered three rare Alligator mississippiensis and a family of the all-too-common Redneckus mississippiensis, who were seining for bait fish. While we were engrossed in watching the alligators, they produced (from their pickup truck?) a dead snake and laid it across our path of egress. Terry and Brian were deploying into attack formation when they figured out it was already deceased. Melisse picked up the last of her two dozen plus mosquito bites of the week, and on Sunday we retreated to the safety of California.
Greg came out of tennis semi-retirement in Colorado to make a run through the draw of the Sun singles tournament. In a quarterfinal against #3 seed Nipun, Greg came on strong in the second set to force a tiebreak that Nipun won only after saving a set point. #4 seed Brian was up 4-2 on #2 seed John in both sets in their semi, but John came from behind to claim both sets. Then Brian and Greg settled in under the hot sun to watch John repeat this feat in the finals against #1 seed Dave. John came from 4-2 down to win the first set, lost the second 6-1, and was down 5-2 in the third before his backhand returns forced Dave into a TB. John was up 5-2 and then tied 5-5 in the breaker before finally winning it 7-5.
Don's sniping and Maura's stalking bested almost 20 of us.
Nimitz Trail in Tilden Park is probably the most pleasant bike path in the Bay Area. However, Melisse found out that even gentle slopes are brutal if your bike won't change gears properly.
While Brian was in Germany, Melisse called with the wonderful news that she is pregnant. The bundle of joy is expected in early June of 2000. Meanwhile, Nancy says she is expecting her second baby (already named Morgan) a few weeks earlier. Jerry and Kay are going to be knee-deep in grandkids soon. :-)
Melisse and Brian drove down to Santa Barbara to rendezvous with Pat and Jaqueline to shop and look at real estate. On Sunday we visited the fascinating Mission Purisima and then sat through a production of Greater Tuna at the Circle Bar B dude ranch. Even a great script like Tuna can be mangled if enough dudes are involved.
"Oliver Morgan Nix was born October 22, 1999 at 2:32 p.m. in San Francisco. He weighed 7 lbs 4 oz and was 21 inches long. Mom (and Dad!) spend two nights in the hospital taking advantage of all of the great nurses and then brought Oliver home to his new house. Thankfully, Oliver did not notice the fact that his mom and dad were in the middle of painting his room when mom went into labor. Needless to say, the only items in Oliver's room upon his arrival were paint cans and a ladder!"
At Albert Ogrodski's wedding in Anaheim Hills, Jon caught the garter and was being tricked into putting it on Albert's leg until his blindfold fell off. The rest of Jon's family found this highly amusing.
Stanford and Dana and Nicole had some friends over for pumpkin carving, including Mike and Cynthia and Melisse and Brian. Mike watched Cynthia carve their big pumpkin, but Brian and Melisse carved smaller pumpkins, which gave Brian time to do some Halloween candy safety-testing. Thorough testing revealed no candy problems. The pumpkin team was proud of their pumpkins, but Nicole's Energizer Bunny costume stole the show.
Melisse and Brian joined her family at Aunt Mitzi's for Thanksgiving, and then slept at Jon's house with Jacqueline and Jim, whom they had not seen since their wedding. Saturday Jon and Michelle took their four guests to the Irvine Park zoo, where Michelle calmly fed a goat, while the Lusin girls were scared the sheep would bite.
On a Sunday open house Melisse and Brian fell in love with a 3br San Carlos townhouse with views of Mt. Tam, San Francisco, Mt. Diablo, the Bay and San Mateo bridges, and rolling open space that begins right below the deck. Despite it having one shared wall, no yard, and unlit tennis courts in the complex, we made an offer well above the two full-price offers they already had. Unfortunately, our offer was then topped, and for that kind of money we'd prefer a detached home with a yard. The search continues.