Rob and I spent this past weekend in the Bay area and had a great time visiting with my friend Roxanna and her fiance Pavlos. Roxanna and I have been friends for more than a decade, so it's always an absolute blast spending time with her. I hadn't been to that part of the country since age nine, so I finally understand why everyone who has ever lived there insists that there is no place else for them. We got to spend time in San Francisco, Oakland and wine country (Napa and Sonoma) and loved it all. Too bad we didn't win Mega Millions today. A vacation home in Napa would be fantastic. We still don't know much about wine, even after visiting four wineries, but the folks at Simi were particularly friendly and we liked everything we tasted there. So that's our very uneducated recommendation.

Being the brilliant woman I am, I nearly attempted to carry on a couple bottles of wine onto our plane from Oakland to LA. Rob caught me before security did. We had to scramble to find a place in the airport that could box up our wine in a form that we could check as baggage, but luckily we did. It would have been very sad to leave behind the most expensive bottle of wine we've ever bought -- a splurge on the order of $40.

Now we are in LA helping Libby and Colin with the final wedding preparations. I can't believe Libby will be married on Saturday! Tonight my mom, Libby and I spent some time assembling placecards, and there is still much more assembly to be done. Rob and I also got to go with Libby as she checked on her wedding dress alterations. Libby looked gorgeous modeling her dress for us, of course.

Tomorrow I get to make an unplanned stop at Libby's dentist, though, as I appear to have cracked a filing. Excellent timing. I thought I could just suck it up until I got back to Chicago, but let's face it, I'm a wimp when it comes to physical hardship.

Back to tending to Libby's needs I go. But hopefully I'll figure out how to post some of our San Fran pictures soon.