The Swensons turn two

In honor of the plunge we took into wedded bliss two short years ago, we decided to go on what I considered the “ideal date.” For years I have been begging Shane to take me to the batting cages and go on a Land Shark tour. And on August 20, 2007, thanks to my wonderful (and observant) husband, my dreams came true.

To my recollection, the last time I ever held a baseball bat might have been in the sixth grade. The only guaranteed memory of holding a bat was in the second grade, when I was a part of a neighborhood girl’s softball team that had one practice before it was disbanded during the Painted Cave Fire of 1990, when the air conditions were too bad and several of the girls’ homes burned down. But despite my long softball reprieve, I maintained a relatively impressive average (given the circumstances, of course).

Following our invigorating 4 token expense at Batty’s Batting Cages, we hit up Rusty’s Pizza, located in an old light house across the street from the beach. I grew up going to Rusty’s with mom and the neighborhood troops. And true to my roots, I concocted the most impressive one trip salad for me and Shane which defies both gravity and the common notion of what a “personal salad” should look like. (See “Duomo Cathedral,” Florence, Italy). Just as the last sip of root beer and the last slice of canadian bacon and pineapple was gobbled up, we saw the Land Shark pull up at the curb across the street next to the pier. Anticipation at its peak.

It is a common sentiment around town that the Land Shark amphibious tour bus is one of the dorkiest things about Santa Barbara. And that, my friends, is one of the reasons why I have been dreaming of it for so long. Not only is it an open air bus that gives sarcastic tours of some of the hidden gems around town, but it also functions as a boat that took us around the harbor, pier and out to the sea lion buoy. I smiled with glee as I waved at all the passing tourists on beach cruisers and kayaks. And although it was a tour of our own town (we were the only locals aboard… about 75% were from out of the country), I never once found it dull. I relished in all of its dorkiness and would do it again.

We went home, cleaned up (Shane in his new shirt that I picked out for him… it is the cotton anniversary, after all), and headed out again for dinner. We dined at Via Vai, an Italian Trattoria in Montecito. We ate on their patio, surrounded by palm trees with views of the warm sunset light on the Santa Ynez mountains. Santa Barbara is coined “The American Riviera” and it was especially obvious why last night. The menu was in Italian (with English translations below, which we tried to ignore), and the food was everything we had remembered and missed from when we were there over a month and a half ago. We drove the long way home, through the windy foothill roads with the top down and warm summer breeze in our hair.

What a lovely way to spend our second anniversary.
The Swensons on our 0th anniversary:

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Chop Chop

Shane here. A week or two ago Jayna decreed that I was to be rid of the facial hair I had accumulated through retirement for any upcoming job interviews. That seemed like a reasonable suggestion, but I decided that the road to clean-shavenness need not be quite as straight and narrow as she might have expected.

Our starting point:

A bit of progress:

Now we’re talkin’:

That one was fun. I kept it around for a couple of days (you can see a bit of stubble growing around it if you look closely) and sort of forgot about it. One evening when we were rock climbing in the hills above Montecito, a couple of friends from work came to join us and had a good laugh when they saw the “molestache.” At that point I realized it had been with me all day, and I wondered with a bit of embarrassment if any of the other climbers I had been chatting with that day felt any reservations about climbing with the obviously misplaced hick pretending he knew how to climb.

For some reason Jayna kept calling me, “Officer Swenson,” while I was wearing this one :

Somehow most of these seemed to go most appropriately with the 25-year-old aviator-style sunglasses Dave found in the glove compartment of his car.

The new (well old, really) me:

Click one of the photos or go here for a few more.

That was fun. Now I should probably see about finding a job. Wait, that was Jayna’s idea too. I’m beginning to sense a pattern….

Job Hunt: Day 5

It’s been 5 days since we returned from our trip, and we have made very little tangible progress towards securing actual jobs. Instead, we seem to have joined the circus.

One nice thing about not having to go to work is that I have more time to cook (purely as a hobby. We are staying with my parents, after all, who feed us quite well). I have been making breakfast every morning that I wake up before Shane (he’s still on a funky schedule, so I don’t feel too bad that I don’t want to make him breakfast at 6:30am) , and today I made lime/cilantro chicken salad wraps (with roasted bell pepper, toasted sesame seeds, sweet onion and cucumbers) for our slackline picnic lunch with his buddies from work. Missing Italy, I made dark chocolate gelato for dessert. And this is what Shane does since he is retired (and Jeff, for that matter. He, too, is unemployed): He watched the ice cream churn for over a half an hour.

I think someone needs to get a job.