One of my grad school girls, Coco is in town this weekend. So of course we had to hit it up and have fun.

I got up early on Saturday to attempt to clean my house best I could for her arrival (and so she had a place to sleep). After I picked her up from the airport we headed to Scottsdale for some lunch. She was craving Italian, so I was thinking Bada Boom Pasta Room, but decided to walk around a bit first.

We ended up running into the Scottsdale Fine Art and Wine Festival The art was unique and interesting. There were quite a few pieces I would’ve loved to walk home with to help decorate my apartment. Of course we did some wine tasting as well. I was very fond of a few Italian wines that were available at a local Scottsdale wine shop called Arcadia Fine Wine. I bought two. One was a white that tasted a little like banana and the other was an effervescent red. Yes, I actually purchased (and already enjoyed) a bottle of red.

Later in the evening we decided to hit up Barcelona with my friend Kayla. Completely forgetting about the parties for All-Star Weekend, and ended up at Snoop Dogg and Lil Wayne’s party. It was a blast and I’m glad we had our cute dresses and dancing shoes on. Unfortunately, due to an unforeseen incident, photos are not available. We were rock stars though, you can count on that.

Sunday, we were both craving breakfast big time. Before we headed out to try U.S. Egg (which is now my fave breakfast place within walking distance of my house) and go to Verizon to have her liquid spilled phone looked at, I had a phone incident as well and ended up without my BlackBerry. We ran some errands, picked up her car, and then I let her get settled while I relaxed some. I was able to catch up with 30 Rock and watch Vicky Christina Barcelona. Later on, we went to Angel Sweet Gelato in Chandler, which has some of the best fruit flavored gelato I’ve ever had. I ended up choosing half pineapple and half sweet cream.

She leaves for LA tomorrow but hopefully we will get some lunch in. It’s been a blast.

I just have to say that while I miss Vancouver and all my IxD friends terribly, this is what I saw on my drive to work this morning:

It was so beautiful and I remembered part of the reason I don’t regret my move here one bit.

While my original plans for tonight and tomorrow included organizing my checkbook, sorting out bills, doing laundry, and writing up my thoughts on Interaction 09, they will have to all be crammed into a mega session tomorrow. I had overlooked the fact that it was my friend Bob’s birthday today so I treated him on our afternoon trip to Starbucks!

Tonight he had his birthday dinner at Cibo, and since it’s on my list of restaurants to eat at, and it was a birthday, there was no way I was missing it. When I was first told of Cibo, I noticed they had a white pizza section, which instantly puts a restaurant on my list as I cannot stand tomatoes unless I’m really hungry or in other rare circumstances.

I ended up having a pizza with sausage, cheese, and potato on it and some of it is still in my fridge for tomorrow mmmmm. I’d also like to mention they had an amazing Moscato d’Asti (reason 2 for me to visit an establishment). It was so delightful I had to capture the name for future reference:

Another thing I was looking forward to was a repeat of the many Crepe-palooza sessions I had in Vancouver. Unfortunately not only was I terribly full after pizza and wine, but I realized nutella and banana crepes (reason 3) wouldn’t be the same without Mario.

As a special treat, our party favors for the birthday dinner were vintage unopened packs of pop star trading cards as well as Yo MTV Raps trading cards. We didn’t feel the least bit odd as we looked through our cards, traded them, and had contests such as the MC Hammer Off, which was a competition for the best MC Hammer card. Dinner was followed by gelato cake (mmmmmmmm)and some Rock Band.

Tomorrow I finally get my dirty furniture looked at by the claims person for the van line that moved me from Detroit to Phoenix. I get to stay home a little longer, so hopefully that means I can sleep a tad bit more and maybe get some random stuff accomplished in the morning.