Well, golly it's almost 2007. My profile has been viewed 52 times. Yowza. What the hey is that all about. Well, I guess about 42 of those were me viewing my own site - ha ha!

Miss Tara is finally here!!!

I left Massachusetts May 28th and flew to SanFrancisco. I rented a car for 3 weeks, then drove down to LA to meet my friend Pablo, who is Mexican, but attending school at USC in LA. He introduced me to his two friends Marguerite (from England) and Mox (from Egypt) and we piled into the rental car and drove to Mexico the next morning. I wanted to practice my Spanish, and in order to save money, we had decided to camp. We spent 5 days on 5 different beaches near Rosarito, Pueblo Nueva, Encinada and La Bufadora. It was pretty great. I only spent $35 the whole time (not counting the car). It took us awhile to cross the border, since Mox was racially profiled. He was taken away, where we couldn't go, and had to answer questions and fill out forms. When they were all cleared, an hour and a half later, we were allowed to go. While waiting for Mox, we saw one car pull up and when the authorities asked the driver to open the trunk, he did, and FOUR PEOPLE climbed out. We were really glad to get back to showers at the end of the trip.

That day, I drove through three major cities: Tijuana, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. It was pretty nerve-wracking, since I'm such a small town girl. I dropped the others off at Pablo's place, then scooted the 6 hours back up to San Fran to pick up Mark who had just arrived at the airport. He used to live in San Francisco, and had a great time during the lovely, lovely day, walking around the city. I showed up about 9pm, and he drove after that. Whew! We stayed the night in Santa Rosa. It was so nice to be back "home."

Friday, we reached Eureka late afternoon. My mother had already arrived and picked up Tara from her dad's. Mark and I found them at the hotel pool. We got Tara ready for her dress rehearsal for her ballet performance. The rehearsal went well, and none of the pre-show spastic stress that her teacher, Virginia, usually displays. Saturday she had two shows and did great. Dennis said Tara could stay with us all weekend, so Sunday the four of us just played. Mom took us to Samoa Cookhouse in the morning, then we drove down to Benbow, where there was a fair going on. It cost too much money to get in, so we went down to the river behind Benbow instead. That ended up being better, because it was great weather and peaceful and lovely and we just lounged on the beach for hours, and also explored lovely Benbow Inn and its grounds.

Mom left for North Idaho Monday morning. Tara went back to her dad's Monday. Then Mark and I left for our next adventure, which I will continue later...

Well, hey, I suppose the real journal entries are all the Haley relations yammering to each other about gardening and coffee and puppies each morning. I have just discovered this section and I may use it, but it won't be often until I finish this semester. I'd really like to just develop my own webpage, maybe piggybacked on Travis's trulove.cc site. Anyway, hello!