If you’re a good detective, you probably picked up on the clues in the title up there and the above photo and figured out that Erin (who normally lives in Oregon, where we visited her and Rocco last fall) is in California. She’s working in Pasadena this summer, doing an internship involving figuring out how to send satellites into orbit, or something that sounds totally unrelated to her field of expertise which is geology. You’d have to ask Erin to explain it better.

Even though Pasadena is a two-hour drive from where we live, and even though Erin and Rocco (who’s flying down this weekend) are coming to our house for the 4th of July weekend, we drove up there just to have dinner one day last week. I don’t want Erin to be that close to me all summer and end up only seeing her twice! I’m going to take advantage of it as much as I can, traffic be damned. So I dragged Troy and Annalie up there with me. I even roped Brenda and Bug into coming with us, because I was excited for two of my best friends to finally meet each other. Too bad they couldn’t stand each other.

Just kidding!!! Everyone got along great, which was no surprise to me. Erin and Brenda are both very likeable, and they’re both friends with me, so they must have at least a few things in common.

We picked Erin up at her work and drove downtown for pizza. We ate and talked and laughed, and after dinner we let the kids run around for a few minutes by this funky fountain that had what looked like a bug totem pole in the middle of it.

The shortest route to the minivan from the restaurant was right through the courtyard of City Hall. Pasadena has an impressive city hall, I must say. There’s a huge fountain in the courtyard and the building glowed in the late-evening sun. We happened across a wedding rehearsal as we walked through, which was rather comical because we kept trying to get the kids to quiet down and they just kept asking louder and louder, “But WHY do I hafta be quiet? WHY can’t I run?”

We took Erin back to the college dorm she’s living in for the summer, and I had to laugh because it smelled exactly like every college dorm I’ve ever been in, like fabric softener and pizza and communal living. Seeing the Christmas lights Erin had strung up around her room made me smile too, because Erin and I always had those up in the dorm rooms we shared as college freshmen many years ago.

Erin made Bug and Annalie’s night by letting them climb up on her loft bed for a few minutes. Then we had to go, because it was getting late and Troy had to go to work the next day. We didn’t want him to turn into a pumpkin on the two-hour drive home (which was actually a three-hour drive thanks to the lovely SoCal traffic). We said our farewells, got everyone buckled into the minivan, and headed home. As we drove off, Brenda said, “I like her! She’s fun.” I had to agree.

See you again soon, Erin!