My best SoCal friend, Esther, called me up midweek and decided she wanted to get out of town for the long weekend. She couldn't have surprised me at a better time. It's been 5 months since she last came to visit and we always have a blast together! Not to mention I was more then ready for a weekend powwow with a good friend after a stressful beginning to my 2011.
Unfortunately for us the weather was trying to keep the fun out of our weekend. It was very cold and rainy almost the whole time she was here, but we refused to let that keep us from having a good time. Plan: Have Fun No Matter What was a total success! We kept a running mental list of all the highlights and funny moments so they could be shared with you all.
A quick recap of President's Day Weekend with my favorite Guatemalan:
Friday Night -
Esther got in from her 8 hour drive up around 10pm (LA traffic, as usual, was awful. One of the many reasons I could never live in LA) and we immediately started getting dressed up to go out for drinks and dancing. We made our first stop at Radio Bar, left for Oasis where it was absolutely dead, and then just went back to where we had started. We had a few drinks and laughs, but the highlight of Friday night was the hot dog vendor still out on the street so late even with the cold and rain. We quickly purchased and inhaled our hot dogs in a matter of seconds. Thank you for braving the weather hot dog lady!
Saturday -
We slept in late, and had a very laid back and lazy day, as we knew we wanted to go out again that night. We mostly just watched the tv shows we bonded over when we first met, snacked, napped, and filled each other in on the past few months of our soap opera lives.
For dinner, I took Esther out to one of my latest addictions,
Coach Sushi, for the best sushi and bottomless sake in the east bay. As we devoured our sushi and giggled over our sake we had a great heart to heart about: Relationships, Men, Love and all other confusing matters of the heart. I shared with her how texting Nassim had turned into a habitual updating routine that I couldn't seem to break. It's as if he had turned into my personal twitter account, constantly updating him with random things from my day, and how I was trying to break that habit considering the circumstances. And she told me about her romantic entanglements back home, about a man fraught with issues, but who she couldn't quite let go of. I tried to comfort her by telling her that she should be careful, but that "I don't know what you feel like inside and guys can be really hard at times"...in the moment I didn't realize what I was saying sounded so completely WRONG, and Esther proceeded to laugh hysterically, yet slightly uncomfortably, at me.
The restaurant closed at 10:30pm, and we lingered sipping sake until we were the last people out the door. As we got to the car across the street, we saw that Coach ended up walking outside, and in the most endearing way tried to wave goodbye, except it looked like he was trying to flag us down because we forgot something. So we had two minutes of me shouting across the street at him asking if I needed to walk back over, and fumbling around seeing if I had all my things. Turns out Coach waving his arms widely in the air was just his way of saying bye and have a good night. Once we realized this, we laughed and blew the sweet old man kisses from the car as we drove off.
We ended up right down the street at Luka's for the remainder of the night for drinks and dancing. We had a blast...even though someone did accidentally walk in on Esther in the bathroom, lol =P
Sunday -
After bottomless sake and drinks at Luka's we slept in until noon. You can imagine we were a bit sloshed. After waking up and lying around cursing both the horrible weather and alcohol, we decided to trek to In-n-Out for lunch. While most everyone was walking in wearing their Sunday best for a meal with their little ones, Esther and I crawled in with smeared makeup, wearing our pajamas looking for a cure. I think I bleakly whispered to her something like "I used to be one of those sweet little girls going out for lunch after church, and somehow I've ended up a hungover braless broad!"
As we drove home from lunch we resolved to detox and be good to ourselves the remainder of the weekend. We decided to be so good to ourselves in fact, that for the first time for either of us, we had an all out spa day. We found a spa special that was going on for couples for the month of February, obviously for Valentine's day last week. None the less, we split the cost and decided to be each others dates for a pamper session. We got our own deluxe spa room for an hour with a sauna and huge jacuzzi with twinkling lights on the ceiling, and a 90 minute full body massage including a body scrub and table shower. The whole experience was divine.
After our spa day, we stopped for a light snack and then went to a candle lit yoga session at Yoga to the People. While it kicked our ass, it was totally rejuvenating and worth it.
Monday -
Esther left me on Monday, but first we stopped at the Cal store to see if she could find some clothes for her dad, and had Fenton's for lunch. She had to get on the road soon after though to get back to Orange County.
It's my turn to suck it up and drive down to L.A. to visit her next. I think the next chapter of the Esther and Jessica tales will be a long weekend in SoCal including Disneyworld and the beach in a few months when the sun comes out again =)
