we'll talk about this in person REALLY soon!!!

you can stay with me in Mountain View (about 40 mins away from SC, but still......)

Oh! Santa Cruz is my favorite place in the world! I am a UCSC alumna as well. Santa Cruz is super pricey for even the cheap hotels, in my opinion. I just did a quick search on Expedia.com, and the cheapest room in town is $159 a night that weekend. There's only one hotel that actually has rooms at the beach, if that's important to you, but is of course the most expensive place to stay. If you want less expensive, you may have to stay over the hill in Mountain View or somewhere similar. I can get you recommendations from my MIL if that's a better option.

I totally recommend Vasili's greek restaurant. Scrumptious! Very garlicky!

I don't know if you've been to Santa Cruz often, so I won't ramble on about my favorite spots. PM me if you want more detail.

okay, here's my backstory:
i lived in norcal for most of my life. most of that time was spent living in the bay area & to further narrow it down, i lived on the peninsula before i moved to oregon in late '03 to get out of a toxic relationship that still gives me nightmares. i have a LOT of history there. i have stories from santa cruz, half moon bay, the city, san jose, san mateo, burlingame, san bruno (i'll stop showing off now). oddly, haven't spent much time in east bay. i was truly bitter about leaving cali & had a hard time liking portland (now i'm a total transplant).

i had some friends that i made when we all worked at tower records together. our 10-year anniversary is next december! i've never had a friend that long, so these people are important to me. ironically, i lost touch with them shortly after i moved & found them again last autumn. yay!!!! none of us live near each other, but the one place we can all agree to get to is our favorite restaurant in santa cruz, the saturn cafe. it's where i became a vegetarian & where i would go on some dates with one of the friends i'll be seeing this summer. good thing we're not into each other anymore (to be fair, i was way more into her than vice versa).

the reason i want to stay in SC near the beach is because i'm not planning to do a lot of driving & i want a private, safe haven for just me & sol to retreat to. i also want to wake up saturday morning & walk over for his first touch of mother ocean. the pacific is very dear to me & i would like to introduce him properly. since every affordable place is booked over that weekend, i'm trying to get them to change weekends. we'll see what happens, but i'm really hoping my girl can get a different weekend off to drive up from LA.

it looks like i'm gonna try to book a private room at the santa cruz hostel. just not that weekend. *sigh* i'm still pretty stoked, tho, to see my people & catch up on how we've changed. i'm the only one with a kid, one of my girls is now a guy, another sister used to be punk & is now pretty straight. the only one who hasn't changed much is my piny, picky, beautiful lesbian sister from LA who doesn't know a good woman when she sees one. damn her. but seriously, she's kind of an old lady. LOL