Prunedale & Santa Cruz

After Sacramento, I stayed for a few days with my friends Susan and Stephen (aka Magpiemolly and Icyhotnot), who I met in the World of Warcraft.  They live on a farm outside of Prunedale, which is about 2 hours south of San Francisco.  I met to take photos of their geese, goats and llamas, but I forgot.  :(  We had the extra treat of one of our fellow Sen'Jin friends, Brandon (aka Tigglezar) come down from Palo Alto to spend the night and hang out.  Needless to say, we spent about 8 hours total discussing Warcraft, but I won't bore you with the details of that, other than to say that Brandon is hilarious.  Can't wait to see you online soon, Brandon!

Gaby, Brandon, Stephen & Susan

Molly -- dammit, I mean Susan -- is a full-time production artist (I am always accidentally calling guildmates by their game names, but in return I am usually called "Moo" so I guess it's OK).  For the past several years Susan has worked in melted glass, where she shapes things from plates of glass, colors it with colored glass dusts, and melts it in her kilns.  Her studio is on her farm, and we took a tour of it.  While small, the tour was really interesting and Susan's work is really cool.  I wish her website did her pieces justice; they are much more sparkly and ephemeral in person.  In a year or so if I still cannot find a job, I may go and apprentice with her for a few months.  She thinks I will do the cooking, but I know I will learn to create beautiful glass art!  :P

Susan's studio (with Brandon)

Susan's most popular piece, packaged for sale.

Brandon had to return to Palo Alto, so only Susan and I were able to explore Santa Cruz, which was about an hour north of Susan and Stephen's home.  Santa Cruz is mostly a college town, although it does have its own downtown area.  It seemed a little yuppie-ish to me, at least for the home of one of the most liberal colleges in America, but it was cool and funky and I liked it.

Santa Cruz

We drove around the college for a bit and were lucky enough to find some banana slugs, which are an animal and also the UC Santa Cruz college mascot.

A banana slug

Next to a car key, for scale

A banana

UC Santa Cruz is known for being a little ... out-there.  But I liked it.  And I liked discovering random art in the middle of the woods.  Stuffy places like my alma maters don't have slugs and random art in the woods!

After touring the college and some lunch, we drove down to the beach.  The first thing I smelled as I got out of the car was some still-burning mary jane.  A little pile was lying on the ground next to the car, in fact!    Santa Cruz continued to live up to its reputation by greeting us in a super friendly way as we approached the beach:

The water was cold, but since I stood in the Atlantic a few months ago, I couldn't pass up the chance to stand in the Pacific too.

And we spent some time admiring the new-ish lighthouse before heading back home to prepare for dinner.

Dinner was in... oh, some town a little to the south, and one of Susan and Stephen's friends joined us.  She picked a sushi place for us and I was very pleased.  I was especially pleased with how fresh the fish was and how large the pieces were, especially the uni (sea urchin), my favorite.

Just look at that uni!

A lot of the time at Susan and Stephen's was spent just hanging out and chatting about life, work, families, friends, WoW, etc.  It was a really great and relaxing time with a lot of laughs.