because we're bad at returning phone calls.

So long, farewell.

2011-02-27T22:35:00.001-08:00

I doubt anyone checks this site anymore, but if you do, come visit us at our new home:

toourowntune.com

Feeling all accomplishy.

2010-10-12T03:17:00.000-07:00

Yeah, turns out that folding a fitted sheet is super easy. I recommend this video, if you want to learn. #51 on my list, check.
***

#53 was learn more about world geography, until I changed it to learn all the world's countries because that's actually what I want to do. Europe and Asia - check. I've been taking quizzes that I'm pretty sure are meant for kids in elementary school.

***

#79 is to complete 10 of the 52 projects. This weekend I finished Project 50:

"Go to the library. Find your favorite writer’s books. Then, see which writer comes next on the shelf. Someone you’ve never heard of before? Good. Check out the works of this newly discovered writer and start reading."

My favorite author is Anita Shreve. The next author after her was Porter Shreve. I brought home one of his books and read it in 2 sittings.

Also - the Berkeley library has self checkout, like it's a grocery store. Weird.

Buffet.

2010-10-03T23:57:00.000-07:00

James is peeing more. As in, when he goes to the bathroom, more liquid is coming out. This is exciting progress! The bad news is that he's peeing basically anywhere he damn well pleases right now. Not sure how to discourage this while encouraging the peeing. Quandry.
***
I finished a book today about schools for girls. Their history in this country, their benefits, their downfalls, etc. It makes me a bit sad that I didn't go to an all girls school at some point. I think middle school would have been the best time, because everything sort of goes downhill around then, am I right?
***
I worked a bunch on my list this weekend, but didn't necessarily complete a lot of things. However, I did make these cupcakes. I've discovered that I would like lime icing on pretty much all of my desserts.
***
Watched some NASCAR today. Sent me right back to some college memories. Tommy got me into NASCAR originally and while I never could (and still can't) watch a whole race, it's such an interesting world. I know many people disagree. I may write more about this later this week.
***
The Giants won their division today. I'm finding myself strangely excited about it, even though baseball really doesn't usually excite me. The 49ers lost today (not surprising), and I'm also a bit sad about that. This afternoon I realized that it seems I've adopted the San Francisco teams as my second favorites. I never felt this way about Washington/Baltimore teams, but maybe because I never felt like I had no access to Pittsburgh events in Reston. Here, it's a really big day when the Steelers are on regular cable.
***
We gave Lily a bath. She did not enjoy it.
***
Went to Target today for the first time since...July maybe? I haven't been going since the whole kerfuffle over the summer. I had a gift card I needed to use up, and specific items we needed, so off we went. It was shocking how easy it was to only buy what we needed. I feel like I used to walk in, inhale that Target smell (you know what I'm talking about) and then...buy many many things. I guess in these months we've been apart, I've built up some tolerance to Target. I can't decide if I'm excited or disappointed.
***
I'm thinking of renaming the blog's URL to 'onlykkwriteshere.blogspot.com'
***
Have a lovely Monday :)

Smorgasbord.

2010-09-27T00:31:00.000-07:00

This week, we had to take James to the vet because he's having some urinary problems. Along with some other instructions, the vet sent me home to 'monitor' him peeing. I'm here to tell you that cats actually don't pee that often at all.
***
Today is my grandmother's birthday.
***
It's finally hitting summer temperatures here in the Bay Area. Tomorrow, it's supposed to be 88 degrees in Berkeley. I'm pretty excited to bust out some sandals. It's almost beach time. The past couple of years, Dan and I have found ourselves on nearby beaches, in appropriate weather, the first weekend of October. It's rad.
***
This weekend, Dan and I had Cold Stone Cake Batter ice cream for the first time in a looooong time. While we were in grad school, that flavor (with chocolate chips and rainbow sprinkles mixed in) completely served as our version of flowers in every way - 'I'm sorry,' 'Congratulations!' 'It's Wednesday' and everything in between. It brought back good memories and made me remember how damn tasty it is. Welcome back to my life Cold Stone. I've missed you.
***
I have no meetings scheduled for tomorrow at work.I opened my calendar and actually thought to myself, "Did people forget to invite me?" and then I quietly made a decision not to remind them if they did.
***
Maybe a month ago, I saw a woman wearing a pair of Tom's Shoes that I immediately, deeply coveted. (Tom's are the shoes that every time you buy a pair, the company donates a pair to someone in need) So I went to the website, and they weren't there. I tried to tell myself that there would be others. Two nights ago, I went to the website again, because I decided that it was high time I had a pair. These shoes are everywhere in Berkeley. All the cool kids have them. You have no street cred unless you have some Tom's. Get this - they had the shoes!! I clicked the link, and ran - literally - to get my wallet. Yes friends, they were out of my size. Heart. Broken.
***
Recently, I've been feeling like I haven't been reading very much. Usually I put a lot of my free time into reading. I like a Sunday where Dan and I make brunch, then I curl up with a cat, a book and a mug of tea (that I have to reheat over and over because once I get into the book, I forget it's there). Anyway, I checked my list of books I've read over the past two years, and this whole year seems to be a reading fail. Usually I've read about 40 books at this point in the year. This year, 20. Very strange. I'm chalking it up to either a) the fact that I was working so hard over the summer, which is when I usually get a lot of reading in, or b) too much time on the computer and watching TV. Either way, not cool.
***
I'm going to try to post some photos from our Seattle/Gorge trip this week. I know you're excited.
***
I'm not sure everyone has gotten the memo that Dan got a job as an RD (same position as mine) at a different university, about 30 minutes away. It's a live in position, so he'll/we'll be spending 2-3 nights a week up there. We spent some good time up there this weekend, and I've decided to call it our vacation home.

Fin.

Kristin is...

2010-09-15T02:18:00.000-07:00

...a super fast speed reader.
...surprisingly, almost alarmingly, careless about some things and incredibly rigid about other things.
...almost nocturnal, but fighting it.
...so emotional about animal cruelty that the sad ASPCA commercials are banned from our house.
...a Gleek.
...sometimes overly ambitious (see "100 Things, 1000 Days" list above).
...happy being domestic with Dan and two cats.
...happiest around her people (that would be you, CC).
...passionate about teaching women self defense.
...often lost in bookstores for hours at a time.
...daydreaming about where to travel next.
...? (for you to fill in. interactive!)

Right Now...

2010-08-25T00:35:00.000-07:00

...I am dreading reading the duty report for tomorrow morning because tonight it's 80 degrees and there are no classes tomorrow. Cue hundreds of first year women wandering up to the fraternities in too tall heels and too short skirts. *heavy sigh*

...I am playing four songs over and over.
'Dynamite' by Taio Cruz (which I've heard about 478 times since Saturday at various move in events...don't judge me)
'Fire and Rain' by Mat Kearny
'Breakeven' by the Script
'Rock and Roll' by Eric Hutchinson

...I'm looking over the setlists for recent Dave shows because I'm going to my first concert of the summer tomorrow (!) Am pretty excited.

...Dan and I are working up some motivation to pick a flight to Orlando. It is not going well.

Pixar fail?

2010-08-03T00:35:00.000-07:00

Did you see Toy Story 3? Did you like it?

I saw it, and...not a fan. Even if I hadn't seen Despicable Me a few days before (which was awesome!) it still wasn't good.

I never expected to not like a Pixar movie. My world has shifted a bit.

-----

Well that was her point of view. I'm admittedly biased because my work had me pressing to get a meeting with the producer of Toy Story 3 before the movie came out, but I liked it! Sure, it wasn't as good as the first 2, but there were some good moments, maybe? Certainly not the over dramatic unnecessary forbidding doom. Ok... maybe just 2 good moments I can remember - Ken's fashion show and Andy with the little girl. And now I feel bad for the computer animation teams who spent so long on the movie. Great.

Progress Report: 8 Things Down

2010-07-28T01:27:00.000-07:00

A little while ago, my mom asked me how I was doing on my list. And I felt like I had been doing OK, crossing some items off completely, and making some progress on others. But when I checked to see how many days I have left, I may or may not have freaked out. At that point, I should have had 16 items checked off (strictly going by 1 thing accomplished every 10 days) but I only had 6. And now, probably even more 'behind.' But, since it's my list, I'm going to stop freaking out about it and just keep plugging away.

Done!
#11 - Berry picking. It was hot.
#28 - Always take off my makeup before bed. Yep, I get back out of bed if I get in bed without doing it. That counts as done.
#34 - Transition from plastic to other materials in the kitchen - Done, and I'm so happy with it all. I thought it would be weird to use all glass storage because they're so heavy, but it feels totally natural now.
#80 - Find my professional organization home - Yes! I'm actually, finally, really getting involved with an association that I like. I went to a conference earlier this summer and had a bit of a revelation that this group was just my size. Because I'm a classic over achiever, I'm already on two different committees.
#97 - Dolores Heights stair walk. Reliving it makes me tired.

In Progress
#7 - Go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras - planning has now stalled. I'm lazy.
#12 - Plan a trip with friends - Orlando. Space Shuttle Launch. We'll see.
#42 - Bake 5 new kinds of cupcakes - 1 down, I made the Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Chambord Frosting. They were OK. Am taking suggestions for new recipes (no cream cheese frosting though).
#43 - Taste 50 things on the Big Eat lists - This is a most enjoyable goal. 30 items down, some new favorite foods discovered. (Secret Breakfast ice cream - vanilla ice cream with Jim Beam and cornflakes. wow.)
#46 - Learn to play chess - I have 1 game left to play! This has taken forever, I know, but I've found that I have to have a certain motivation to spend an hour racking my brain to play a game and then still get my ass handed to me by Dan. It doesn't come often.

The thing we work the most on is #39 - Finish cooking our way through our seasonal cookbook. We make recipes from this one cookbook at least 2-3, usually 4, times a week. Since we've joined the CSA, we definitely have more reason to cook with vegetables, so that has really been helping. And honestly, I feel like we're learning how to really cook as we follow all the recipes, which is a nice skill to learn together. (cue: awwwwwwwwwwwwww). But, even though this is one of my goals we focus on the most - we've only made 108 out of 308 recipes. So, this won't be checked off for awhile.

I'm curious what you all are working on as personal goals, regardless if you have any sort of list or not. Tell me, and I'll make them into a fun "let's celebrate each other's accomplishments" post next time around.

For starters, check out Ro's ultimate purse.

City Walk: Dolores Heights (#97)

2010-07-25T02:33:00.000-07:00

This city walk is in an area that's sort of in between a couple of different areas that we commonly visit. Before we did this walk, we'd never been to this specific neighborhood. I'm going to guess that it's because it's on the top of a big hill. But since I went ahead and wrote out this ambitious list of things I want to do in a span of time that is ever growing shorter, we got our butts up the hill.

To be perfectly honest, this walk was pretty rough. It was a relatively warm day in SF, and the walk consisted of several stairways up, just to go downhill again. Not exactly a peaceful meandering stroll. The scenery was lovely, the architecture was great, and the views were breathtaking. My interesting information stops there though - this wasn't a walk full of rich history. Photos, though. Photos we have.

Sculptured redwood bench, because that's how San Francisco rolls. It was actually very comfortable.

So up near the top of the picture there, you can see that the house has what the book calls an "octagonal belvedere" and what I would call a "cupola." You should know that it is roofed in a pattern of blue and lavender tiles. That's right. These fools put a dome on the top of their house, and covered it with a mosaic. Friends, they need to find a new way to spend their money.

What you're seeing above looks like two streets but is actually the same street. In 1924, San Francisco "improved" the street by lowering the grade on just one side of the street (on the left there) and raising it on the other. What resulted is a street where some people's garages are now completely useless.

I want to live here. With a different car though.

Walk stats: 1.47 miles, 1.5 hours, same day that Spain won the World Cup!

A Day in the Life: Natural Disasters.

2010-07-19T01:37:00.000-07:00

So, I'm pretty sure that most of you reading this blog have no idea what I do. I think that a majority of you know that I work for UC Berkeley, maybe that I work in Student Affairs (maybe?) Some of you would get bonus points for knowing that my job title is "Resident Director" or describing it as either "a grown up RA" (my least favorite description ever) or as "the person who supervises the RAs."

Regardless, I haven't been really great at really describing to others what my job is about - what it is that I actually do. And also, why I do all these things. So, every now and again, I'm going to describe a day in the life - at least the interesting ones. Every day in my job is different - while I have the same core duties, my job is basically to respond to all the stuff that comes up in the lives of the 500 students and 10 staff members I work with. Yeah. Sometimes it gets hectic.

For example, while I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago, one of my buildings (I supervise two residence halls - this one is not the one I live in) caught on fire. ON. FIRE. As in, they are still repairing the fire damage. Luckily, the flames were confined to the basement storage area, but the smoke was thick in the entire building. Let's just say it took a few days for the hallways and rooms to air out. Another, extremely different example would be when a student breaks up with their partner, fails a test and comes home to find their roommate has eaten all their granola bars. This pushes them over the edge into a hysterical crying fit. You know where they end up? My office. I stock tissues.

I also thought it would be handy to keep a record of what's going on for me during the year. I mean, the number of topics I'm trained on is always expanding - because we never know what's going to happen each day. I try not to get freaked out by it.

So, last Wednesday was my third day of professional training for the year. (Sidenote - every year, before we start the two week extravaganza that is RA training, the professional staff also have a couple weeks of training to prepare for the upcoming year). Yesterday started off with a discussion about the newest supplies that we would be adding to our emergency supply inventory. This is an ongoing discussion for us because the threat of earthquake is extremely high in this area - and what are we going to do for our students in the case of a really devastating quake? My unit alone houses 1400 students and Bay Area emergency services tell residents to be prepared to care for themselves for 5-7 days with no assistance in the worst case. So we spend a fair amount of time discussing questions like: Where will we go if a building collapses? What will we eat? How will we care for injured students? What if, what if, what if?

New supplies for our RA staff included matching helmets and bright green vests. We got the same PLUS crowbars (awesome!), first aid supplies AND handheld radios. Without feeling too ridiculous, we learned the protocol for the radios: "Kristin to Laura" "Go ahead Kristin" "Kristin to Laura, your bedroom color palette is aMAzing!" "Copy that Kristin" and so on. (Sidenote: We also have another set of radios that are actually police issue radios, connected directly to our university police department, which is...nerve wracking.) We're always adding to our supplies in an effort to feel like we are as prepared as possible for any given emergency.

Lunch break.

So, for all of our discussion about earthquakes or other disasters where we would be forced to evacuate our buildings - we realized we didn't have as much planning done for events that would require us to stay inside. Active shooters, for example. Chemical or hazardous material spills, for another. We realized we didn't know the difference between lockdown (a police order stating no one can enter or exit) and shelter in place (a safety recommendation where you go inside the nearest building, and shut the windows and doors). So lots of planning ensued - how to let students know about the situation, what to do if a student wants to leave the building anyway, how to know when the restrictions have been lifted. Etcetera. The number of questions that come up for us in these situations is sometimes overwhelming - because everything we discuss is one more thing that we need to mentally prepare for, and also train our staff for.

Even though emergency preparedness isn't what I went to grad school for, it's a huge part of my job here, and part I bet you didn't know about.

Maybe next time I'll talk about the stuff you were expecting, hugs and feelings and stuff.

**I started this post last week, but tonight, no joke, there was another fire. Outside of my building, luckily, and this one much more suspicious, but maybe five more minutes and my other building would have been on fire again. Awesome, right?

On Standing...

2010-07-07T23:59:00.000-07:00

Hi there. So, we were on the East Coast for a few days recently, so the blog has been a bit slow. I'm sure it didn't help that the last time I was here, I was a bit feisty. But, you should be happy to know that I have lots of ideas for upcoming blog posts, so hopefully things will pick up here for a bit.

Anyway, I saw this list on a blog I read, so I'm repeating the idea.

Places I have stood:
+Inside of a very large tree
+At weddings, watching friends and family walk down the aisle
+On the Golden Gate Bridge, in the Sydney opera house, and inside the Capitol Rotunda
+In a crowd of several thousand, listening to them sing me "Happy Birthday"
+At the edge of a doorway on a plane, right before jumping out of it
+On a water trampoline in Mexico, laughing my ass off with Dan, Missy and Franklin
+At the Flight 93 memorial
+On a fault line
+In a line waiting for the next Harry Potter book to be released

Now you go.

Advice: Don't tell me I'm 'overreacting'

2010-06-22T17:14:00.000-07:00

At any given time, there is inevitably a commercial or two on heavy rotation that makes me want to throw the TV out the window and then call up the company and go all upset feminist on their ass. Usually, I also end up hearing something on the news or seeing something online about how others are also upset about the ads, and boycotts and the company responds by apologizing or pulling the ads (and then creating something else horribly offensive next week). But, I haven't heard anything at all about these ones.

The current model is the Miller Lite 'Be a Man' campaign. I found out from this site that we've actually only seen two of the ads so far - 'purse' and 'skirt' - and three more are yet to come - 'lower back tattoo,' 'panties,' and 'antique.' There is no softer way I can say this - I hate these ads and everything they stand for. The link above has them posted in case you haven't seen them, as well as a nice breakdown of some of the reasons for my anger.

They make me crazy. The ads basically put men in situations where certain objects make them LESS than. The purse or the skirt make them less masculine. Their friends reinforce how much less of a man they are. And you know what this makes them? More feminine, more lady like, more womanly. So, the message I take away from this is that basically, not being a stereotypical white straight man makes you a woman. And why the hell would you want to be a woman? That's LESS than. The fact that the ads have female bartenders makes me even more upset. Like it's OK to say that crap out loud because it's coming out of a woman's mouth.

I get so tired of this. I get tired of advertising companies thinking the best way to sell their product is by telling all of us exactly how to act and be. Men, buy our beer so your friends won't call you a bitch or a fag. Women, buy this product so you can try to achieve an unachievable, incredibly narrow definition of beauty and feel bad about yourself along the way. I know this isn't a new discussion. Today I just needed to vent.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2010-06-08T00:31:00.000-07:00

Wow, a lot of people have stuff going on lately.

One of Dan's best friends just got engaged (and got a kitten)

Jess moved back to DC to start her job

Meghan found an apartment in Maine (and in the pictures, it looks lovely!)

Laura got an apartment in Alexandria

Dana's sister just had a baby (making her an aunt for the 7th time!)

My boss's partner is having a baby next January

Two of my co-workers are getting married this summer

Is this just what happens from here on out? Lots of life events, all happening concurrently? It's sort of overwhelming.

Captions provided by the letter S and Y, and the number 8

2010-06-01T01:46:00.000-07:00

Dis mixin bowl is just my size.

Dude, you smell.

James: Is that food?
Lily: You're all idiots.

Food? Food? I swear I heard food.

Go berry picking (#11)

2010-05-27T22:06:00.000-07:00

Everytime we go pick up our CSA box, we get a newsletter along with it. It tells us what is in our box for that week, what the vegetables are, how to store them, and some recipes for how to use them (which has been handy). The second time we picked up our load of veggies, our newsletter had a little headline "Don't forget to sign up for strawberry days!" Turns out, the farm plants twice as many strawberries each year as they predict they will need for the CSA boxes and then opens the farm up to visitors four days a year so we can come pick our own berries.

So, we of course signed up and found ourselves driving up to the farm one lovely sunny Saturday afternoon. We found the farm, drove around and couldn't find a living soul to figure out where the strawberries were. Because we weren't supposed to be there until Sunday. Awesome. We wrapped up Saturday with some outlet shopping and a trip to Costco.

Anyway, on Sunday, we went back to the farm, slathered on some sunscreen and joined about a hundred other folks who were also out picking. Lots and lots of kids, which I can't imagine trying to wrangle and explain the art of strawberry picking to. Strawberries grow close to the ground, the plants probably only grow about 10 inches, and the berries often lay directly on the ground - there is a lot of reaching and bending involved. Even so, Dan and I persevered and picked about 5.5 pounds of berries to take home with us. We just finished cutting them all up for dessert tonight and we picked them almost 2 weeks ago. I'm super impressed with how long they've kept in our fridge.

It's also sort of boggling my mind how achieving one goal (CSA) directly led to another one being achieved as well. Hopefully this sort of karma continues. There clearly has to be something to the theory that if you make your goals/dreams known, then others will somehow help you achieve them.

That being said, is there anything on my list that you also want to do? Let's make that happen. Or, is there anything you want to do that I can help with? Let's make that happen too.

Transition from plastic to other materials in the kitchen (#34)

2010-05-21T20:17:00.000-07:00

We have been making a big effort to transition our entire kitchen from plastic to mostly stainless steel and glass. It took awhile to complete it because every time I thought we were done, we noticed something else was plastic. First we replaced all our mixing bowls and storage containers with Pyrex bowls and food storage. Then, duh, our colanders were plastic and...oops, plastic mixing spoons and spatulas. And, oh hell, our cutting board. Then, shopping trip to replace them with pretty wooden spoons, recycled paper cutting board, and metal colander. And...maybe some other things.

The hardest thing to find were measuring cups that weren't total pieces of crap. We have metal measuring spoons, and glass measuring cups for liquids. But measuring cups continued to elude us. It was really difficult to find options that weren't really flimsy. We found to be any sort of substantial, they had to be one piece of metal instead of cups with the handles fused on separately. And...most of those sets were $40 or more (Paula Deen's were $70). Um....for measuring cups? How about...no? But, when I was looking on a friend's wedding registry, I noticed a $20 set that was exactly what I was looking for, score.

We do still have some plastic items, for specific purposes. We're looking for a non-plastic ladle that holds a decent amount and isn't ridiculously expensive. We kept a silicone spatula to use on our non stick pans, because you can't use metal on them. Also, ice cube trays. Where the hell do you find non-plastic ice cube trays?

Anyway, I'm counting this goal complete because all the things I really wanted to find have been replaced. A lot of people have asked me why this was a goal in the first place. I'm not going to write a long winded report about studies and everything, but the more I read about plastic and chemicals leeching into our food, the more I just didn't want to chance it. Some plastics were safe a few years ago, and now are known to be harmful. Maybe the same thing will happen with metal or glass, but getting rid of plastic is a step I'm taking for now.

The measuring cups in action:

The purée button is my favorite

2010-05-20T01:19:00.000-07:00

In the last year, I've learned how much I melt over a well crafted soup. There's soup and then there's soup! I can strangely relate to the passion the Soup Nazi put into his creations on Seinfeld. I can distinctly recall some of the most flavorful and perfectly concocted soups I've had recently (and for when you're in the Bay Area, many of those have been seemingly simple and utterly astounding sips of bliss at Digs Bistro).

Attempting to create my own bowl of fabulousness has become a new found love affair almost entirely attributed to the purée button. I can't really explain it in any logical, reasonable manner that will make any sense, but I just love that darn button! KK will tell you that I actually get a bit disheartened when we make a soup that doesn't call for any purée festevities of any kind - as if it's less of a soup because it isn't puréed! KK dreams of a stand mixer; mine might be an immersion mixer. Regardless, KK says we can stop buying soups in a can since ours have turned out so well. I say it's because of the purée button. But all the fresh ingredients and significantly less reliance on salt to add flavor probably give us an edge up on the canned stuff too.

You'll find the bulk of these ingredients fresh in the summer months. And just a quick lesson learned for today:

Lime juice is AMAZING. Try it fresh squeezed over a veggie pizza... holy goodness in your mouth!!!

Southwestern Corn Chowder

Serves 4. Or 3 if you like big bowls of soup like me.

1/2 cup sweet onion chopped

Sauté in 1 tablespoon olive oil in a soup pot until soft.

2.5 cups corn (equates to roughly 5 small-ish cobs)

3 cups chicken or vegetable stock

Add and cook for 10 minutes. Remove 1 cup of solids & 1/3 cup of broth and place in blender. Purée until smooth. Return purée to soup pot and and heat until nearly boiling.

1 medium red sweet pepper chopped

1 small tomato peeled, seeded, and chopped

Stir in and heat another minute.

1/2 fresh lime

3 tablespoons fresh cilantro finely chopped

Squeeze lime into soup and top with cilantro immediately before serving. Garnish options include Tobasco sauce, lime wedges, plain yogurt, or sour cream. (Or if you're classy like us, the salt from a Ritz cracker was a perfect match!)

I blame the French

2010-05-19T01:40:00.000-07:00

I blame Julia Childs. Actually, no I blame the French. Why does everything in cooking sound more difficult than it really is? Is it to be fanciful or is it to make you feel as if you could never actually accomplish this feat on your own. ...cooked in a wine reduction sauce and served with a tossed jullienne salad... instead of ...we simmered some wine and cut some vegetables in long thin strips.

I believe the answer to my question lies in the fact that even the simplest task requires significant concentration and skill. The knife skills alone in chopping, slicing, dicing, mincing, creating rondelles or chiffonades such that every cut is identical only comes with dedication and practice. Who cares about identical cut pieces anyway?

Just in case you didn't know, today's cooking lessons learned:

Similarly sized pieces will cook the same and thus have a similar consistency/texture throughout your dish. No more biting into one perfect bite of potato or a bigger bite that didn't cook through or a smaller piece that was overdone. Maybe you all already knew that, but I had never really considered the science behind that before I started cooking regularly. You put it in a pot and it cooks!
Google how to chiffonade. Seriously made my life cutting greens, leaves, and basil so much easier!

Back to simple tasks. I believe it is Chef Tom Colicchio (Top Chef anyone?) who said his test for chefs applying for a job was to have them cook a single egg. Seems simple, right? After recently making a single attempt for the perfect poached egg, I realize the complexity of the task. One, I don't know how TomTom likes his eggs. Screwed from the get go! Not too mentioned picking ingredients to add, how to plate, how much heat, do you cook it through or leave it a little runny. My brain hurts. Last but seemingly most important, do you add cheese or not!?!

So here's the real question to you all: How do you like your eggs? If you need help, here's 100 ways to Crack an Egg.

We attempted a soufflé. Again, always thought they were complicated. This was SUPER easy, light and delicious!

Brunch Soufflé with Strawberries

Serves 4.

3 cups strawberries (or other fresh fruit of choice)

2 tablespoons sugar

Sprinkle fruit with sugar. Toss gently. Set aside.

1/2 tablespoon butter

Preheat oven to 375F. While oven heats, place butter in a 9 inch pie pan and place in oven to melt. Swirl pan to grease bottom and sides.

3 eggs

1.5 cups milk

Beat together with mixer or blender

3/4 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Add and beat until smooth. Pour batter into pie pan and bake until edges are golden brown and center is set, 25-30 minutes. Top with berries and plain yogurt.

Bon apétit!

We are what we eat

2010-05-18T00:13:00.000-07:00

I've taken far too long of an absence from being a contributing writer to our blog as opposed to merely proofing and editing the KK show here. We're changing all that right now. It's a big day. I have a lengthly list of life updates and topics that somehow never learned how to magically write themselves into interesting posts. There's not an app for that yet. But really, it's an interesting challenge to write about our lives and only hope it is intriguing enough to spawn comments and continued motivation to share. On the other hand, instead of writing about it, I'd much rather just show you our lives.

I don't want to alarm you, but we like food. A LOT. Shocking, I know. Especially considering we don't ever talk about it or blog about it or anything. But then I realized we have never actually written about our own cooking. (Don't worry, we're working on new blogs to discuss other people's cooking too.)

We didn't eat like this before. And if you look at the country as a whole, we're pretty sure most people don't either. Supposedly the trend is swinging back. But, if the saying, 'You are what you eat' is true, then I'm pretty sure we're a couple of organic, sustainable, no added hormone, grit in your teeth hippies. The grit in your teeth isn't to be trifled with. It also means washing greens is time consuming and we suck at it.

The aftermath of joining a CSA is of course figuring out how to cook all the stuff into something appetizing you actually want to put into your body. A few years ago, I don't think I could have told you what Swiss chard was, told the difference between green garlic and green onions, or known that egg yolks are actually naturally much more golden yellow than most of us likely know.

Now I know this isn't actually our food blog, but I'm declaring this Food Week here! Mainly because it'll force me to post once a day, you to check once a day, and KK isn't here to stop me from such a declaration at this time.

We regularly cook 3 or 4 nights at home with all our local fresh goodness. So here's a few cooking lessons we've learned along the way, along with a recipe, and photographic evidence.

Best lesson we've learned: Fresh produce tastes amazing!
Best cooking advice we have to give: Don't screw up things that taste amazing.
Also, don't burn the kitchen down. I'm sure KK is eager to post about my attempts at this one.
Balsamic anything is scrumptious. For example, onions grilled in balsamic to top a burger with, balsamic glazed asparagus, balsamic cheesecake (totally made up, but I bet it'd be good!)

Maple Walnut Scones + Chilled Strawberry Soup

(These are two separate recipes that I decided to combine)

Maple Walnut Scones

Yields 10-12 scones.

3.5 cups flour

1 cup walnuts finely chopped

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

(we added a healthy dose of brown sugar in here too)

Combine thoroughly.

2/3 cup butter chilled

Cut in until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

1 cup milk

1/2 cup maple syrup

Stir in and work into soft dough. Knead 5-6 times. Roll out to 1/2 inch thick and about 7 inch round. Cut into 10-12 wedges. Place on greased baking sheet. Bake in preheated oven at 425F for 15-18 minutes or until golden.

Serves perfectly with a bit of honey in the morning or drowning in strawberry soup for desert.

Chilled Strawberry Soup
Serves 6.

1 cup apple juice
3/4 cup water
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
Combine in saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat. Remove from heat and let cool.

3 cups strawberries
1/4 cup water
Puree until smooth in blender. Pour into a large bowl.

2 cups plain yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
Add to pureed strawberries with apple juice mixture. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled.

It's more smoothie or shake than soup, but I still licked the plate, so enjoy!

Sending you elsewhere

2010-05-14T00:27:00.000-07:00

I've hit a bit of writer's block. I don't feel like I have anything interesting to talk about, even though we are doing a lot lately. So, I thought I'd just go ahead and entertain you by sending you elsewhere. Have fun!

13 year old rocking it OUT

Not so mindless entertainment

Because it's important to mind your manners

Maybe you've met her?

The Uniform Project's year in review

Why haven't I visited these places?

Hopefully, soon I'll be out my writing funk. Until then, I think I have enough kitty photos to hold you over.

Join a CSA (#31)

2010-05-09T00:44:00.000-07:00

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Basically, you pay a farm directly, and every so often you get a box of whatever fruits and vegetables they grow on their farm delivered to you. I'd been wanting to do this for awhile, because I love the idea of the people who grow the crop actually getting paid for it directly, rather than selling it for less than what it is worth to large companies, who sell it to grocery stores, who sell it to you. Also, cuts way down on the amount the food has to travel before it gets to you. This way it gets picked, and delivered...that's all.

The CSA we chose has a pretty wide distribution in the Bay Area and they have the option of pasture raised eggs, which I'm pretty excited about. The picture shows everything we got in our box last week. We get a box every other week because it is actually a LOT of food in there.

If you click on the picture to make it larger, you can see: swiss chard (leafy green with bright red stems), radishes (small, purple and white), onions (huge and purple), a bundle of fresh rosemary, fava beans (right in the middle, they look like huge pea pods), carrots, a bag of fresh baby spinach, asparagus, green onions, strawberries, sweet potatoes and the eggs. The paper bag on the left side has dried peaches in it.

We've picked up two boxes so far, and we're pretty happy with it. It does take some adjusting to, and it does help if you've been comfortable making dishes that rely on vegetables, which we'd gotten used to. But now, we get our box and then have to plan our recipes and go to the farmer's market to pick up anything else we want/need. Also - this is all fresh picked, harvested. That bag of spinach still had dirt and mud, so it is a little bit more time intensive to clean/prepare, but we enjoy it.

I'm not sure we'll stick with this specific farm (we have two more boxes to go on our trial run) but I think the CSA idea may stick. Either way, goal complete.

Can. Not. Take. It. Anymore.

2010-05-07T01:50:00.000-07:00

While the blog has undergone a mini makeover, I am SO TIRED of Blogger. We will probably be migrating soon to a new site, stay tuned.

Also, Dan started a (small) fire in our kitchen. We're down two kitchen towels, a knife block, and some knives. Full story to come.

Impressive, no?

2010-04-30T14:30:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, my mom completed her 3rd Avon Walk for Breast Cancer!

She and her friend Loretta walked 39.3 miles over two days in the 90 degree heat.

The whole walk had 3000 participants, including 271 breast cancer survivors, and they raised $6.8 MILLION for breast cancer research.

STRONG.

Congratulations v.14

2010-04-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to my cousin Christine and her fiance Kevin!

They got engaged yesterday :) And isn't this picture sort of ridiculously happy looking (this is not from yesterday, apparently they are always this happy looking).

You may remember this post where I was having dreams about this very event, but my predicting the future skills are a little off - I was about...10 months early.

Progress Report

2010-04-22T00:23:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Missy! :)

Congratulations to Meghan and Jess on being gainfully employed! I'm so happy for both of you :)

Before my dad sends me another entry about his visit here, I just wanted to say that for maybe two days after finishing my 100 things list, I was a bit overwhelmed. But, since then, I've pulled myself together and some items are being knocked off my list, and others have been started, although I still have a long way to go.

One of the other blogs I read posts an update to her life list every Friday, and she's mentioned it helps keep her accountable to keep working on her goals, and also that it helps her feel supported.

I don't know about all that weekly update business, but I'll try to occasionally.

Monthly stuff
#10 - Go somewhere new and local once a month - haven't missed it yet. that's right, I'm 100% for 2 months in a row!
#78 - Write a letter to someone every month. This one actually started in April, so I'm doing awesome so far.

In Progress
#7 - Go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras - planning has definitely begun!
#12 - Plan a trip with friends - Mardi Gras will be double counting it seems.
#18 - Figure out when it's necessary to make a will - Yes, it seems that it is in fact necessary, especially as Dan and I live together but are not married or partners in the eyes of the government
#34 - Transition from plastic to other materials in the kitchen - almost there with this one. Just have to get rid of some of our plastics, but we have replacements for them.
#46 - Learn to play chess - I have learned how, but I'm waiting to play 5 complete games with Dan before I count this as complete. We're currently 1.5 games in, played the first one with my dad!

The big news of today is that we have joined a CSA (#31). We picked up our first box today but I'll write more about that later.

See, writing that all down definitely feels like progress.

Dad's visit, Day 3

2010-04-17T21:07:00.000-07:00

(Sidenote: My dad came to visit in late March, and he's going to be sending me his account of what we did on his visit. The day he is talking about we drove north to eat oysters fresh out of the water.)

So many highlights – each day was unique and memorable! I’m jumping right to the oyster experience of day 3… sooo cool. The tastes and the ocean ambiance – sun and breezes and water lapping the shore mere feet from our picnic table - were all amazing, but maybe the best part was Kristin’s coming out: she really dug the raw oysters! We ate 3 dozen raw and 1 dozen slightly grilled and barbequed (almost shockingly scrumptious). Best oysters I’ve ever eaten!!

The drive up the coast was peaceful and scenic once we left the highway. The road wove through quaint little towns calling out for further exploration (maybe next time), then chugged through dense forested areas smelling of pine and chilled by shadows and cold mountain streams. Closer to our destination we were treated to expansive vistas with alternating views of near-ocean inlets to the left and steep hills to the right with grazing goats and cows. I can’t get enough of the road not traveled, so being a witness to this part of California – the Pacific Coast Highway - was such an unexpected treat for me, especially since I didn’t have to keep my eyes on the road! (Thanks KK & Dan… now that’s showing respect to your elderly elder.)

City Walk: Presidio (#88)

2010-04-11T20:33:00.000-07:00

If you look up the Golden Gate Bridge on GoogleMaps, directly to the south, there's a big green area - that's the Presidio. It's 1490 acres - much of which is just open space. It used to be a US military post, as recently as 1994. Congress wrote a law stipulating that if it wasn't needed by the Army, it would be maintained by the Park Service and become part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. So, here we are. This walk only covers a tiny part of the Presidio, specifically in an area called Fort Scott, named after a general.

We walked by the parade grounds, and all the old barracks which are being updated to be leased out as housing. We walked by the pits where the artillery used to test dynamite, the Brig and the officers Rec Hall. We peeked through windows of other abandoned, decrepit buildings. We explored the old batteries where cannons used to protect the California coast line. It's a bit creepy - an entire civilization completely abandoned and just allowed to run down. Except that on the parade ground were people out for runs, walking their dogs and a little league baseball game. Strange juxtaposition.

It is one of the only places in the city I've visited where you get pictures from "behind" the bridge, and this is the only spot to get them so close. From here, you can see how the bridge actually has a bit of a rise in it that you don't notice from far away, or when you're on it.

This is the pit where they used to blow things up. We couldn't get inside of it, and Dan was sad.

This is one of the buildings that has recently been renovated, you can tell from the non moldy paint on the exterior. I couldn't get over the fact that they installed the chest high phallic looking artillery shells on either side of the entrance. For serious?

We completely missed this cemetery when we drove in, but had to stop and take pictures once we finally noticed it. Clearly, the similarities to Arlington Cemetery are obvious, but this is much more secluded.

Walk Stats:1.8 miles, 70 minutes

Coming next: My dad as a guest blogger!

Age Appropriate Humor

2010-03-31T23:44:00.000-07:00

I got this from another blog, but thought it was worth reposting. Apparently, it's been going around as an email forward, as "Thoughts of a 25-35 Year Old," which normally I would think was stupid, except I agree with every single one of them. Good times.

· More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

· Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

· Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

· That’s enough, Nickelback.

· Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the “people you may know” feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?

· Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

· Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the hell was going on when I first saw it.

· I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.

· How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

· I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

· I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

· The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

· LOL has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to say”.

· I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

· Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.

· How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear what they said?

· I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

· While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it…thanks, Mario Kart.

· I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

· Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty.

· Whenever I’m Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. 546 pictures? Don’t mind if I do!

· Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I’m from, this shouldn’t be a problem…

· You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you’ve made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

· Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don’t want to have to restart my collection.

· There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

· I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes when I could swear I didn’t make any.

· “Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this ever.

· I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There’s so much pressure. ‘I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren’t watching this. It’s only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?’

· I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

· When I date someone new, I’m terrified of mentioning something they haven’t already told me but that I learned from some light internet stalking.

· Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles…

· As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.

· Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

· I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

· Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn’t know what do to with it.

· I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.

· I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

· The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There’s nothing like being made to feel like a fat bastard before dinner.

Updates

2010-03-20T13:53:00.000-07:00

OK, so I made the list into its own page (see link above) so I can update and cross things off as I go. I also divided it up into different sections, added some of the items you suggested (thanks Ro, Franklin and Dana!), and crossed off one thing already.

Also - just for Rosa, I made two of my previously secret items public. But I'm not telling which ones they are. You've got to work that out on your own.

In other news, I'm on Spring Break now. THANK HEAVENS. Last week was particularly brutal, so I'm happy to be home doing nothing.

Hello?? Echo,echo,echo...

2010-03-17T14:09:00.001-07:00

Seriously people. I need suggestions. Help me out here.

1000 Days

2010-03-15T00:23:00.000-07:00

So the idea of creating a "to do before you die" list isn't new. Recently, one of the authors of a blog I read has been sponsored by both Intel and Verizon to complete hers - it's been crazy to read the adventures she has had. It's turned into a bit of a movement - she asked readers to put their life lists on their blogs and send the link to her and she would post them. So you know I read them all. Sometime in December, a reader submitted a link to their lists of 100 things they wanted to do in 1000 days, with the last day being an important milestone of some kind.

The idea was being appealing to me - especially when I realized that in about 1000 days, I would be turning 30. So, I spent a lot of January brainstorming and in early February, my 1000 day countdown to 30 began.

In talking to Rosa tonight, she wanted to read the list, so I'm going to put it up on the blog in hopes of being held more accountable but also because I need suggestions! I only have about 70 items so far - I'm hoping you all can help me out. They are in no particular order or categorization, just as they came into my head.

Onward!

100 things to do in 1000 Days
1. Get some "professional" pictures of me and Dan (Franklin - call me!)
2. Figure out when it is necessary to make a will. If it's now, then make one.
3. Look into life insurance
4. Look into pet insurance
5. Get James microchipped (Lily already has hers)
6. Start planning for retirement (eek!)
7. Finish the emergency kit
8. Buy more handmade, give more handmade gifts
9. Make an advent calendar
10. Do want/need/wear/read one year for gifts
11. Find out more about bartering websites
12. Get at least 6 massages
13. Get at least 2 henna designs
14. Join a CSA
15. Move away from using antibacterial products
16. Use homemade cleaning products
17. Transition from plastic to glass in the kitchen (storage containers, utensils, etc)
18. Have some concrete plans for world travel
19. Have some concrete plans for where we are living next
20. Have some concrete plans around buying a home
21. Buy some really nice bras
22. Stay in Vegas on the Strip
23. Read at least 120 books
24. Learn how to play chess (in progress)
25. Learn how to play pool
26. Learn how to knit
27. Learn how to can/preserve foods
28. Learn how to make piecrust
29. Learn how to crack a whip (literally, not figuratively)
30. Learn how to properly fold a fitted sheet
31. Learn how to poach an egg
32. Learn more about world geography
33. Learn ____________
34. Learn ____________
35. Learn ____________
36. Lose a couple of pant sizes
37. Find a physical activity I love to do
38. Find my professional organization home
39. **
40. **
41. **
42. Get CPR/First Aid certified (again)
43. Stop biting my nails
44. Always take off my makeup before I go to bed
45. Finish researching the "list of women I should really know"
46-60. Individual San Francisco stairwalks (they each get their own number because each one is really a whole day trip)
61. Make cupcake list
62. Make chocolate list
63. See the Grand Canyon
64. Be up to date on our scrapbook
65. Go dogsledding
66. Complete a triathlon
67. Finish cooking our way through our seasonal cookbook
68. Go to a Steelers game
69. Get a good skincare regimen
70. Stay overnight in a treehouse
71. Reopen doors with other student affairs people I've lost touch with
72. **
73. **
74. Relax in a natural hot spring
75. Go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras
76. Visit 3 new states

(sidenote: the numbers with ** really do have items next to them, but they're secrets)

So there you have it. As you can see, I need 24 more things to do and 3 more things to learn. What would go on your before 30 list?

Chihuly gallery - Las Vegas

2010-03-13T00:17:00.000-08:00

Exhibit A

2010-03-08T22:42:00.000-08:00

of "Why I miss living on the same coast as everyone I know"

Scene: Facebook chat, last night

KK: Wow, you found that picture fast. A little creepy.

Ben: Don't be jealous of my facebook powerz.

KK: You're in the interwebz stealin their fotos.

Ben: I AM THE INTERWEBZ.

Fin.

City walk: McLaren Park and Excelsior (#99)

2010-03-07T21:46:00.000-08:00

Ugh, that last post about the brewery tour would have been so much better had I written it when I actually remembered something - apologies. Hardly my best work.

While Dan and I have a car this month, we've been trying to get to different places in the city that would take a wee bit longer on public transit. So, we decided to do the city walks that were furthest from our apartments. This walk mostly takes place in the second largest park in the city, McLaren Park, which we had never heard of, so it was nice to explore a completely new area. The park was named for John McLaren, who was the chief gardener at Golden Gate Park for 60 years. I think that is a lovely gesture.

The walk took us through a bunch of groves, play areas, a couple different lakes, and other nature type things. At one of the lakes, Dan took approximately 47 pictures of ducks, which I have not included here, I know you're disappointed.

Other things we encountered:

Statues meant for children that also sort of look like they were made by children.

This woman with her 7 or 8 black lab puppies who were all not on leashes but all ridiculously well behaved who sort of adopted the bull terrier (the one that doesn't look like the others) and then the terrier would. not. go. back. to his owner. It was sort of heartbreaking to watch him have to leave his newly found gang.

The Jerry Garcia amphitheater. Underwhelming, don't you think?

This dog hanging out of his house window, just chillin, watching people go by.

Steep, steep stairs. Can't really tell from this picture, but remembering makes my calves hurt.

Walk stats - 2.3 miles, 1.5 hours

Anchor Brewery Tour

2010-03-01T18:29:00.000-08:00

Way back in January, we went on a tour of the Anchor Brewery which is a San Francisco based brewery that has been making beer since 1896. They also make whiskey and gin, holler. Their steam beer is wildly popular in the Bay Area, so popular that I had to call in October to get a spot on the tour for January!

We learned that they make beer in a pretty old fashioned way, although I can no longer tell you details of the process (it's been a while since we went). I do know that they do everything in one small factory from the brewing to the fermenting to the bottling. The woman leading our tour was very knowledgeable, and gave us lots of statistics that I swore to remember to put in this very blog entry, but alas, I have forgotten them. The one I do remember is that Budweiser produces more beer in one DAY than Anchor Brewing produces in an entire year. Quality over quantity people.

After the tour, we got to do a tasting, which I was really happy about. While I like the Anchor Steam beer (most popular variety they make), I got to try several other smaller production varieties that I really enjoyed. They make a liberty ale, a porter, a holiday ale, and a barley wine style ale which is sweet - an after dinner beer. I'm a big fan. We've been on the lookout in stores but we haven't found any yet. I think a trip to BevMo is in our future.

Beer anyone? They are tasty!

Hops.

Paint crew

2010-02-22T23:28:00.000-08:00

Scene: Missy and Franklin have bought and moved into their first new place. Home improvement is needed, ugly yellow paint must be covered. Cue several nights of college crew painting parties. Apparently, we really like painting because we are positively giddy in these photos. It may have just been that several of us were in the same state at the same time.

Winner in above photo: Franklin with blue tape. Seriously, don't we all look disgustingly happy?

Rosa loves to paint! Especially over the previous owner's hideous paint job! (Seriously - I never thought I would mock anyone's paint, but wow.)

Cabinet doors anyone? Also - the living room you see here now has couches and chairs and such.

Ben sanding, freakish injury and all.

I focus on what's important.

See, you can have fun AND take the proper safety precautions. Good job Franklin!

Keep the warm thoughts coming.

2010-02-18T22:10:00.000-08:00

Well I know after the last blog entry, you probably only thought that things could get better. But, you would be wrong. Not three weeks after my grandmother passed away, my grandfather (her husband) peacefully passed away in his sleep at home. It came as a surprise - while we knew that he was obviously heartbroken and that his own cancer had advanced - we weren't expecting to be dealing with another loss so soon. Before he went to bed that night, he told Janis that he was going to be OK when she left. (My aunt Janis was actually still in Johnstown - she had been there since my grandmother's death, and had been delayed leaving because of all the snowstorms. ) That wasn't to be.

My mom went back to Johnstown last Sunday - just in time for their next snowstorm. His service was yesterday (Wednesday) which they delayed so that he wouldn't be buried on my mother's birthday, which was Tuesday. My family is planning on heading back to their various homes this weekend, and then coming back together sometime this spring to work out what to do with their house and so on.

Everyone here has been incredibly supportive, which has been helpful because honestly, the cumulative effect of everything is building up - I'm having trouble concentrating and remembering things lately, and the idea of interacting with people for long stretches of time is overwhelming. Still in shock. Thank goodness the Olympics are on for distraction.

Also, Dan has been good about trying to get me out of the house when I'm not in my pajamas, so we do actually have fun things to post about too - city walks, birthdays and such. We'll get to them...soonish.

Blog silence over.

2010-02-11T11:47:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been awhile - I thought I'd update you on the ridiculousness that 2010 has been so far. I was hoping that February would be better than January, but that theory has been proved wrong already. My co-worker has me convinced that if we follow the Lunar Calendar, it will all get better after the New Year (this weekend) so, that's something to look forward to at least.

Most of you know by now that my grandmother (mom's mom) passed away on January 18th. I'm obviously very happy that I got to visit with her for more than a couple of days over Christmas, and I'm happy that Dan also got up to visit. We talked to her about our plans for the future, and said all the things that you say in these situations. Honestly, I never expected to hear about her passing so soon after we visited. But I'm fairly convinced that she hung on through Christmas and New Years so that everyone could come visit - she had an iron will, after all. So, we made plans to get home to the East Coast for her service. I couldn't imagine not being there. I worked some crazy long days in order to be able to leave again - the halls actually opened again for the spring the day after she passed, so the students and the staff had just barely restarted.

We made plans to leave here on Thursday, with the service being on Friday morning. The plan was for Dan and I to fly to Baltimore, my dad would pick us up, and drive to Johnstown that night and stay in a hotel. Everything was going fine - we got to the airport super early for our flight, and noticed immediately that our flight had been cancelled. Awesome! We were flying through San Diego to Baltimore, which is out of the way, but the other options had us flying through Chicago Midway, which I don't like, especially in the winter. That day, San Diego was experiencing gale force winds, which usually aren't that big of a deal, except this day, the winds were moving north-south. Unlike normal winds, which move east-west. So, San Diego shut down the airport, because planes apparently can't land in gale force crosswinds.

Southwest easily and cheerfully rerouted us through Las Vegas to Pittsburgh, my dad easily and cheerfully readjusted our plans, everything seemed good. We had about 90 minutes before our flight boarded, but as we sit there, more and more flights are being cancelled, as the LAX, Burbank, Albuquerque, and Phoenix airports also shut down due to winds. Our flight starts being delayed. 2 hours later, we're still delayed as they keep telling us that Las Vegas is the only airport that has a north-south runway, so it will remain open, just that all flights are now going to Vegas and they're backlogged. Another hour later, I'm having a breakdown in the airport and telling Dan that I just want to get in a cab and go home. He persuades me to wait because he knows I'll hate myself for not trying my best to get there. And then, of course, our plane boards.

We get to Vegas, the flight isn't bad at all. We arrive at 4:30, only 4 hours late! Our flight to Pittsburgh is supposed to take off at 5:10. At 6:30, my second breakdown is coming on as they announce that we can't leave because we have no crew. The crew who is supposed to be on our flight is coming from Phoenix (which, you may remember, has been sporadically closed all day). I call my dad, and tell him that I won't get into Pittsburgh any earlier than 2 AM, which means we won't get back to Johnstown any earlier than 4 AM. He tells me it just started freezing rain in Johnstown. I call my family at my grandparent's house and tell them I'm throwing in the towel, I just can't get there. We've been travelling now for 10 hours and haven't gotten any further than Vegas. My grandfather tells me not to get on any other planes, it's just not meant to work out. And then, my friends, I do the full on ugly cry in the middle of the packed Las Vegas airport.

After a few deep breaths, Dan asks if I want to go back to Oakland that night and I look at him with a "you're kidding right?" face. I couldn't fathom going to bed that night in the same place I woke up, feeling like I hadn't accomplished a single damn thing. So, I called Franklin instead and asked him to look up hotels for us. The Hooters hotel was $20/night. So off we went (thank GOD we hadn't checked our bags that day). The room, truly, wasn't horrible. The bed was super comfortable and there were Hooters wings available right in the hotel. Dan got dinner, and I crashed. The next day, we weren't sure what we were going to do - stay or leave. When we looked out the window, all the trees were bent in half from the wind, so flying seemed to be out. We looked into driving, and the storm bringing the wind was bringing lots of snow to the mountains between Nevada and California...and the roads over the mountains were closed. So, we ordered room service, explored the new City Center hotels, watched the Bellagio fountains and the lions at MGM, and then went to a Cirque show that night. We bought a candle, went back to our room, and I said all the things to Dan that I'd wanted to say at my grandmother's service. It seemed...appropriate.

The next day, the roads were open and flights were outrageously expensive. Cars were cheap, so we rented a car and drove the 10 hours home. And then I put on PJs and ate whatever I wanted and slept whenever I wanted for the next two days. On Tuesday, I finally rejoined productive society.

Eight days later, Dan's grandmother (dad's mom) passed away on February 3rd. Sometimes life is just ridiculous. Anyway, Dan had also gotten down to see his grandmother over the holidays - he was there for two days, without his parents, so he got some good quality time with her, which he's obviously thankful for. Her service was set for the following Sunday - which was last Sunday - which was right after the first blizzard of doom on the East Coast. Looking at the weather, Dan was less worried about flying but concerned about having to drive on rural North Carolina roads to get to the small town of Mount Airy. He decided not to go, which was really hard for him. I offered the perspective that not going is better than trying to get there and failing (which I have some experience with, no?) but it still doesn't make it easy.

In between all of this, my mom was in the hospital overnight for some neurological concerns - headache, double vision, etc. She's OK, after running gobs of tests, they told her it was probably just the enormous stress she'd been dealing with. This did not do well for my own stress level, as her phone died while she was there and so I called my dad flipping the hell out that I didn't know what was going on.

PS - My dad, also, deserves an award for the past few weeks - he went up to my grandmother's funeral prepared to do whatever I needed, and then stayed to help my family out. Then he listened to my crazy phone calls while my mom was in the hospital, and called around to get information so that I could deal with some crap at work. (Ugh, that was also bad news, but I can't talk about it here). Cheers for dad.

Overall, we're doing OK, just a bit broken. Thank you for all of your cards, emails, phone calls, etc. We know you're there.

Amongst all this, I will say that we did celebrate Dan's birthday in grand style. Post coming soon.

Life is Unexpected

2010-02-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

So... life has been rather hectic and unpredictable lately. Abrupt even.

Some good advice we've been given recently: Breathe in. Breath out. Repeat.

Hang in there friends; we'll actually write something of substance to explain ourselves shortly.

Actually, not so much.

2010-01-19T21:41:00.000-08:00

For reasons beyond my control, the everyday posting is going to have to be delayed for another time. We're just sort of in survival mode over here, trying to get everything squared away to go be with my family for the weekend. Thanks for all the well wishes, warm thoughts and love you're all sending. I can feel it :)

Songs of doom

2010-01-16T22:50:00.000-08:00

The last five songs that have gotten stuck in my head for DAYS at a time. I now know all the words and I wish I didn't.

Tik Tok - Ke$ha

--WHAT IS WITH the money sign? And seriously, days and days and days. It will not go away. So, I play it over and over so that Dan can also experience the torture.

Meet Me Halfway - Black Eyed Peas

--Just a few lines from the chorus actually, which makes it even worse.

Party in the USA - Miley Cyrus

--I'm so ashamed.

Bad Romance - Lady Gaga

--Paired with mental images of horrible outfits

Halo/Walkin on Sunshine mashup - Glee Cast

--The tempo is so frantic! I find myself rushing whenever it's bouncing around in my head.

Sweet Dreams - Beyonce

--Am I the only one who things Beyonce and Shakira look alike?

So what songs have been torturing you lately?

This Holiday Season = epic fail.

2010-01-16T13:21:00.000-08:00

Since, three days in, I already failed at posting everyday, I thought I would list how else I mostly failed this holiday season.

These are all things I totally planned on doing and then I woke up and I was on a plane back to the East Coast, so didn't quite work out.

--No holiday cookie baking

--No advent calendar making

--Last minute Christmas shopping for family (hello, December 23)

--Cards sent out way late

--No cards for my staff and co-workers

*sigh* I feel much better after baring my soul to the interwebs. Thanks for listening.

Holiday favorite things

2010-01-14T23:16:00.000-08:00

1. My aunt Janis being incredibly thrilled when she unwrapped a Hickory Farms summer sausage from Dan in her stocking (because, no lie, she loves encased meat)

2. Doing three puzzles at Missy and Franklin's while watching several Harry Potter movies

3. Talking with Josh on Skype and Ben on Gchat on New Years Eve, with their images on a huge TV, technology blowing everyone's minds

4. People loving the holiday gifts I chose for them (great feeling, for serious)

5. Josh Greenspan's mustache

6. Visiting our friends Chris and Holly (and their daughter Lily) and playing Catchphrase, finally looking at the clock and being shocked it's almost 4 AM, and we still have an hour drive home

7. Sneaking Dana out of her awful afternoon meeting

8. Visiting Dana and Larry's first home! It's pretty amazing. They're grown ups.

9. Making a fantastic, if not disfigured looking, chocolate mint 2 layer cake at 1:30 AM with Dana

10. Having our plane in Las Vegas (layover) smell like burning rubber right before we were supposed to leave the gate, all the flight attendants rushing to the front of the plane. (We got a new one)

Almost a month of silence.

2010-01-13T20:21:00.001-08:00

Well, we almost reached the month mark without any blog posts. Because we're awesome. But, in our defense, most of that time we were away for holidays and furloughs and everything, so I don't feel that bad.

I've decided that we're going to try and focus less on what we're doing, and more on what we're thinking, reading, etc. Of course, if we travel, we'll talk about it, but that's all we've talked about since summer, and that gets boring to read I think. Hey look, someone we know went somewhere that we haven't been personally! Not exciting.

I'm also hoping Dan blogs more, because my spring semester is going to be some flat out crazy busy. Spring semester is always always faster paced than fall, but this spring I'm teaching again and have a 10 hour/week fellowship in another office in addition to my job. So, yeah. I'm going to be tired.

But, to ease myself back into blogging, I'm going to try to post every day for the rest of January and it will be the month of lists. Just because I like lists. I toyed with the idea of today's post being a list of the other lists I'll write, but decided that ventured too far into the bad place.

How about a general goal type list to go with the New Years Resolution feel to start us off.

Things I'm doing this year

-Visiting a new local attraction every month (January - local beer brewery)

-Learning something new every month (January - how to play chess!)

-Taking my makeup off every night before bed (don't judge - this is harder than it sounds)

-Not acquiring any books until June 1, possibly longer (my "to be read" pile is close to 150...)

-Eating vegetarian one entire week every month

-Ignoring frustration and trying out new ways to exercise until something works for me and doesn't feel like a punishment

-Reading at least 55 books (because last year I read 54)

-Going to the Gorge again if I can

-Continuing to be crunchy

-Video-chatting with Deborah in Australia, skype-ing with anyone who wants to

What are you doing this year?

Top 10 Books of 2009

2009-12-15T23:44:00.001-08:00

These are the books I've read this year that I have enjoyed the most with a little bit about them (a teaser, if you will), because I just know that due to my recommendation you're going to run out and read all 10.

Get excited.

Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld

Girl goes to prep school, lots of teenage angst, a little bit of attitude towards her parents. Good writing, a little longer than your average novel.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

Exactly what the title says - explained many things in science that I had never understood, usually in 3-5 pages per topic. Covers a LOT of ground. Easy to read a little bit and then pick up again later to read the next topic. Written by a travel/humor writer, so makes you laugh out loud.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon

Tells a story about a curious incident from the perspective of an autistic boy, who narrates the novel. I know I'm really behind on reading this, but I really loved it. Easy to read and super interesting.

You Suck, Christopher Moore

Nontraditional story about vampires (hence the title), which also makes you laugh out loud. Set in San Francisco which was fun for me. Author of lots of other popular books, so you may have read some of the others.

Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg

Semi-autobiographical story of a transgendered woman coming of age and coming out in the 1970s. Some parts are tough to read, especially when you realize they're based in truth. Made me want to be an advocate.

The Dogs of Babel, Carolyn Parkhurst

Story of a man looking for meaning in his dog (I know it sounds weird) after his wife dies, intermixed with chapters of the story of the couple meeting, dating, and falling in love. Super sad, but fantastic characters.

The Meaning of Wife, Anne Kingston

A historical perspective of how the meaning of a wife has changed over hundreds of years. Written from a smart-ass feminist perspective, so if that's not your thing, you won't enjoy it. Interesting take on things. Lots of writing in the margins.

Bee Season, Myra Goldberg

Story of a girl who has been completely uninteresting until she wins the school spelling bee. Family of characters who have dysfunctional relationships with each other, and separate lives that the rest of the family knows about.

Testimony, Anita Shreve

My favorite author! How a scandal at a New England boarding school changes the lives of everyone directly and indirectly involved. Heart wrenching at times. Definitely made me think.

The Devil in the White City, Eric Larson

Just finished this today, and have gushed about it all day. Intertwining true stories about the planning, and building of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and a serial killer in Chicago at that same time. All derived from primary sources, it's a great read and even better when you take a second to remember that it's a true story.

What are your favorite reads from this year?

Her Birthday from Her POV

2009-12-07T17:48:00.000-08:00

Well, Dan gave you the basic rundown of what he did for my birthday - it was amazing! Not only did we spend the whole day eating (but not overeating - which was impressive) but he planned out a really detail heavy experience. Considering that I'm most often the planner/details oriented/organized one of the two of us, I was happy to not have to do so for a day. Anyway, Dan mentioned the list of the 100 best things to eat in SF. The list can be found here if you really want to read it. Before my birthday food extravaganza, we had had 10 of the items already (#2, 6, 35, 40, 46, 49, 53, 63, 74 and 97 if you really care). The list hangs on our fridge, and I occasionally look at it, but it's not what we focus our trips to the city on. Besides, I have a long enough list of restaurants I'd like to try all around the Bay Area that list doesn't need to be any longer, thankyouverymuch.

Anyway, the morning of my birthday, we left the apartment about 50 minutes late, me already stressing out about ruining all the timing of Dan's elaborate plan. Seriously, all the way into the city I was worrying about it, and Dan was totally fine, of course. I felt better when we got to our first stop for brunch and we got seated after only a couple of minutes.

Brunch: Buckwheat crepes and French cider at Ti Couz (#88)

This is an amazing creperie in the heart of the Mission, that serves all sorts of sweet and savory crepes. I was a little hesitant to get a savory crepe, because most of the crepe places I've been, they use the same crepe recipe for both types of crepe, which really confuses my mouth. Eating eggs and whatever else rolled up in a thin, sweet pancake is weird - I don't like sweet and savory all at one time. Happily, their menu talked about the different types of crepes they make, so we ordered one of each - sausage, tomato, cheese (savory) and pear, chocolate nibs, and brown sugar (sweet). Also, they make AMAZING cocktails. The bloody marys the bartender was making were epic, and I had a Ti Couz cocktail which included blackberry puree, champagne and vodka. If you come visit us, we will probably bring you here.

After we left, we walked maybe five blocks until we hit our next stop, which was a bakery that has sort of a cult following in SF, and I'd actually been wanting to try it for awhile, so Dan already was doing really well.

Morning snack: Morning Bun at Tartine Bakery (#8)

The place was completely packed, which was to be expected for a Sunday at brunch time. Before we left that morning, Dan had told me that at one of the places, he was probably going to have to limit me to just a couple of choices and this was the place. I have no willpower in bakeries. I want to try everything! But, this time, knowing we would be eating more, I refrained from getting the bread pudding, or the croissants, or the everything else and settled for what we came for...and a couple of macaroons (they're little!) The morning buns are incredibly soft and flaky without tasting like straight butter, even though I know they use plenty, and then they top them with an orange flavored glaze. Droooool.

We walked a block over to Dolores Park to eat our pastry and generally people watch. It was a beautiful day and there was lots of SF "uniqueness" to watch. Afterwards, we hopped on bus and went North to...a bar. Confusion.

Pre-dinner cocktail: A Fernet at R Bar (#71)

I think the first time I read this on the list, I assumed it was a mixed drink. Wrong. It's actually just a shot of a type of liquor, fernet, which I had never heard of. And you probably haven't either, but it's an Italian liquor that for some reason, is super popular in SF. This particular bar, which is just your average non-descript bar, apparently pours about 25% of SF's total consumption of it! It tastes...completely different from everything else I've ever had. And I fail at words to describe it really, but a few days later, I saw this Boston Globe article on Fernet, which is a good quick read. The bartender told us a lot about it, and served it to us with a ginger ale chaser, and told us to just throw the first shot back to see if we liked it. Tasty! We each had two and then headed on, almost ready for dinner. This picture below isn't of the booze, because we didn't take one, but just of some of the bottles the bar goes through every month.

We walked another few blocks, and ended up outside what looked like a small, family run Thai restaurant. Dan told me he planned to order an item here to go, and then we could take it near where we would be eating dinner and eat it as an appetizer. Good planning.

Appetizer: Papaya salad with salty crab from Sai Jai Thai (#27)

Ok, when he told me what he was ordering, I was psyched. I love love love papaya salad, and I love crab. How could this possibly go wrong? Knowing that I like spicy, but simply can't usually handle it, Dan even ordered it medium spicy so I could enjoy it. And this is where things went wrong. We took the salad down to the waterfront, opened it up and...my eyes watered from smelling it. I had one bite, basically started crying from the spice and couldn't eat anymore. Dan had maybe 3 bites, and then had to go beg for water from a nearby restaurant, who totally turned him down. Seriously, I tasted spice anytime I coughed for the next half hour. We think we may try again, after telling them NO spice because I bet it is really good. (We did bring it home and Dan tried again a couple of days later...he got through half and then drank all the milk we had and 4 glasses of water)

So, Dan told me then that we had to get to our dinner reservation at 5:30, but that we had to hurry through because we had to be somewhere else at 7. I was starting to worry about getting way too full...but I shouldn't have worried.

Dinner: Shaking Beef from the Slanted Door (#7)

This restaurant is in the Ferry Building, right on the water by the Bay Bridge. It has been on my list of restaurants to try for a long time, and is currently one of the "places to go" in SF. Dan apparently had to call a few times and talk them into giving us a reservation, since they were all booked up, but he managed and we got one for right when they opened for dinner. We had a few different dishes but the highlights were the ones in the picture below - squash rice cakes and shaking beef. The squash was pureed, combined with rice, fried, covered with fresh coconut. Could have had them for dessert. The shaking beef was a beef and vegetables dish, in lime sauce with rice. Yummo.

So, because we had gotten there early, we were out of the restaurant in plenty of time, and we started walking a few blocks to wherever we had to be at 7 PM. Like I said, I was thinking we were off to eat still more, but I was wrong.

Dessert: "The Bathing Ritual"

Dan had found this awhile before my birthday and shown it to me, but I never thought we'd actually go do it. Basically, the spa is on the top floor of a hotel, and they have huge tubs that are outdoors on a balcony. There is plenty of cover, if you choose to undress to get in, but when you're in the tub, you can see the sky above you. The tubs are Infinity tubs, so you can completely fill them, and water just spills over the side, and refill on their own (like Infinity pools). oh. my. gawd. They are amazing. See picture in previous post.

Happy Birthday to me.

Her Birthday from His POV

2009-12-05T14:11:00.000-08:00

What do you get a foodie for her birthday? If you said dinner, you'd be wrong. At some point a few years ago, birthday dinner turned into a week of dinners to celebrate.

She is constantly reading food blogs, aware of the newest restaurants, and even knows the names of top chefs in not just San Francisco, but the entire Bay Area. People, she knows where Chez Panisse gets their eggs from! No pressure or anything on my part to surprise and impress.

Fortunately, there's this list of the 100 best food items in San Francisco. It's on our fridge in fact. It's not even a list of the 100 best restaurants; no no, 100 of the best specific individual menu items at 100 different restaurants - the fries at one place, but the burger at another.

I planned a food tour of SF for the entire day, from brunch to dinner. 5 dishes off the list, an entire day of eating, and a special extra surprise to end the night. I was very conscious that we could easily overeat too soon and not make it through the whole day. It was actually a thrilling logistical challenge to spread all the food out, plan all the travel on public transportation, and still ensure we could make our reservations throughout the day. I mapped out a route, had timetables, made contingency plans... we're pros here and ready to do food tours and vacation planning for hire or all of our guests when you visit.

I'll leave you with a teaser and let her discuss the food, but there's a reason these items are on the list. They were delicious!!! (Ok, one did got a bit awry, but it sounded so good.) Brunch, snack in the park, drinks over football, appetizer outside by the bay, and dinner on the pier in time for the sunset.

And a special surprise to relax after all that food.

Maize Maze

2009-12-05T13:34:00.000-08:00

I think KK has been boycotting writing until I take the time to contribute more. For all you loyal followers, we've clearly been way behind in our posts... sorry about that. We have a lot to catch up on!

Now that it is December, let's talk about Halloween! It is always a fun time for us, mainly because we pretend everybody partying in their crazy costumes are all out celebrating KK's birthday. I found something we'd totally

never normally do, so naturally I wanted to do it. She was of course a little hesitant of my crazy idea. A gigantic maze of corn! C'mon, how cool is that!?!?

It was actually really amazing to walk through. The corn is so high, you really can't see anything else, but you hear other people's voices and lots of screaming little kids. OK, perhaps that does sound a bit scary. It took us a solid hour to wind our way through the whole thing. Granted we made some purposeful wrong turns in the beginning to get good and lost. They stay open so you can do the maze at night too... guess what we're doing next year!?!

Just to give you an idea... this was their maze in 2006. To give you some sense of scale, those things that look like bushes at the bottom are actually trees.

A quick game of hide and go seek.

An overlook bridge built into the maze.

Meow?

City Walk: Potrero Hill

2009-11-22T13:40:00.000-08:00

Another day, another city walk post. This area of San Francisco is called Potrero Hill, which is south of the downtown area of SF, and is a bit more industrial than other walks we've been on. It is also a really tight knit residential community, and supposedly where the "up and coming" folks in SF want to live. It is pretty obvious that if you want to live on the top of the hill, your income better be up as well.

A fun fact about the neighborhood is that is was entirely unscathed after the 1906 earthquake and fire, so big numbers of people who lived in the city at the time migrated here. Tent cities popped up, and many people never left. So, this neighborhood's history is really ethnically diverse, where other areas tend to be more homogeneous in background.

This building used to be a recycling center, but is now an office building, and also holds a culinary institute. When the offices were built, this feature on the ground level was added to "give historic perspective"

Me on a colorful bench created by the residents of course, in the mini park at the very top of the hill (300+ feet).

A shot of Vermont Street, which is actually the windiest street in the country. It's just much harder to get to and not nearly as pretty as Lombard.

One of the bonuses of living in the Bay Area - this community garden is on a residential street, which takes up at a lot that could hold a single family home. Where else would a garden hold more precedence than another house?

Views, views, views!

Our starting and ending point. A compass rose made of....beans?

Congratulations v.12

2009-11-12T12:36:00.000-08:00

A bit of a belated welcome to Madeline Alayne Foster! She was born on October 17, weighed 5 lbs, 1 oz and was 18 inches long. She's home now with Meredith, Geoff, Chloe and Delilah. This is her Halloween look. Hopefully we'll get to meet her soon :)

Highlights of home

2009-11-08T12:25:00.000-08:00

So after the Gorge trip, and working a couple of weeks, I headed back to the East Coast for a week. Dan didn't come with, because when we were making plans, we were unsure about his work stuffs. It ended up being a good thing - he got called for some interviews while I was away! Funny how it all works out.

Anyhow, my main reason for coming home was to celebrate my grandma's birthday, which the whole family came in for. We all stayed for a couple of nights, hung out at my aunt's house, watched some football, went to church and a very fancy dinner. I didn't even know they had fancy dinner spots in Johnstown, but they do! Where I ordered a prime rib side (like surf n' turf) and they brought me a prime rib the size of two people's heads. Seriously. AND, my cousin Megan's boyfriend, of two months, came to everything! Met the whole family (which as many of you know, is kind of overwhelming with my family), came to the fancy dinner AND brought my grandma flowers. It was so cute. He's a keeper.

But overall, my grandma had a great time and didn't have to make one single meal or do a bit of cleanup. Successful weekend.

Other exciting happenings:

I got to visit with Kelley, Laura and the boys for a few hours. They are SO BIG. Not in a "what are you feeding them?!?!" way, just in a "gosh, kids grow so fast!" way. We opened the door and they crawled (!) over to me, and I had to lay down. They are easily the cutest, most adorable, happiest, want to squeeze them babies ever.

Got down to Blacksburg to visit for a couple of days to do lots of buying Tech gear, driving around and exclaiming at new buildings, reading at the river and such. So relaxing. Blacksburg in the fall is wonderful. I stayed with Tony who has the best dog ever (second to Parker and Cosmo, obviously). Anddddddddd she sort of loves me.

Met Lily, Chris and Holly's daughter. She is also a ridiculously happy baby. Except in the car seat, but whatever, no one's perfect. Most of the time, she giggles and smiles at everyone and has smooshable cheeks. It's pretty great.

Pacific Northwest: Miscellaneous

2009-11-06T23:20:00.000-08:00

While we drove all the way up to Washington primarily for concerts, we did manage to do some other stuff too.

In between the second and third shows, we took a side trip to Idaho. Because...when the heck else would we ever be in Idaho? Granted, we didn't get very far inside the border, but we visited a really cute lake/resort type town (who knew they had them in Idaho??), went to lunch, took pictures for proof, and then left. Idaho, off the list. No, we did not have a single potato at lunch. But the people were very nice.

On the way back from Idaho, we stopped in Spokane, because we wanted to go on the ride! Spokane has some pretty awesome waterfalls running right through their downtown area, and they've figured out how to profit off of them - the Spokane Falls Skyride. It's basically the same as the skyrides you see at amusement parks, when you want to get from one end of the park to the other. So you get a really nice view of the waterfalls, up and close and personal like.

Spokane also happened to be having a fair when we rolled into town. Who doesn't love a fair? Or fair food?? I was all excited to have funnel cake, or crepes, or whatever, when two girls walked by with strawberries, dipped in chocolate, on a stick. It was AMAZING. It took us a really long time to find the booth - named the "Shishkashack" for their "Shishkaberries." You can get them dipped in chocolate, chocolate with sprinkles, nuts, oreos. Whatever, I'm just hoping they get another cart and come live in Berkeley outside my apartment. They were amazing. Dan got dark chocolate with white chocolate swirls, named, I am not making this up, the "Halle Berry." I have a picture of it, but it's not as sexy as this picture of me with my oreo berries. hawt.

After the concerts were over (sad), we left Washington, only to have hundreds of miles to go before we actually got home. But as I mentioned before, we stop at every possible attraction, or scenic overlook.

Exhibit A: Scenic overlooking the Columbia River

Exhibit B: Multnomah Falls

These falls are the second highest year round waterfall in the US - 620 feet high. (I'm so glad I remember to get pamphlets so I can report these facts back later to you). The bridge (the historic Benson Bridge) was first built in 1914.

So yeah, Pacific Northwest, pretty awesome. Don't tell Dan, but I'm already planning our trip back next year.

Pacific Northwest Roadtrip: The main attraction

2009-10-21T12:08:00.000-07:00

So, the big trees happened. About 13 hours of travelling happened. Onto day 2.

We spent the first night in Albany, Oregon I believe, which is a bit south of Portland. We hung a right at Portland and found ourselves in the Columbia River Gorge. Which is full of those "wow, this is really gorgeous" moments. The gorge system is basically what the Columbia River has formed over thousands of years, sort of like the Grand Canyon. It's 80 miles long, and is the boundary between Oregon and Washington. It's one of our new favorite places. There are a lot of sports to try (kiteboarding anyone?), cute towns to stop in, and there's lots and lots of wine. Random, I know, but there are wineries all over the place up there. Good times. We found a little town that we're already trying to find an excuse to get back to called Hood River, where I think I can lay around in a bed and breakfast and read while Dan does various active type things.

We highly, highly recommend Springhouse Cellars as they have some very unique tasty wines, at very reasonable prices. But they make our favorites list, even more so, for being very personable, incredibly small compared to our CA wineries, and beyond incredibly kind to us. They even ship to just about everywhere (sorry PA and MD folks reading this). We drove and drove and drove. We ended up driving directly to the first concert because it just took us longer than expected, and we didn't have an extra 2 hours to get to our hotel and back. (Yes, the closest hotels to the concert are about 45 minutes away). We had no idea what to really expect, especially when we parked the car and we didn't even know which direction to walk because we couldn't see anything that looked like a stage. It was weird, but we followed the crowd over along path, up a slope and then at the top of the hill, looked down on this:

That's the stage there in the middle, with the gorge and the river behind. This picture is taken from the top of the lawn, and you can't see where we sat at all because the lawn is so freakin steep. The whole setup is literally built into the side of a cliff and is beautiful and wonderful and my happy place.

Closer up of the stage itself. The seats below are where we sat - two nights off to the right, one night almost dead center. Right now, you can see through the stage setup to all the scenery behind, but there were screens there once the band started.

For the next two days (days 3 and 4), we spent the night in a lovely little hotel out in the middle of nowhere (Moses Lake, WA) listening to trucks drive by on the interstate, and eating all the food we brought with us and then going to the concerts at night. It did not at all resemble real life.

We got pretty lucky in that the people sitting around us were cool. For me, if you have a jackass guy next to you or a drunk chick who can't stand up, it takes away from the whole experience you know? Actually, we spent a couple of nights near the same people, as they had also requested their tickets through the fan club, so that was nice. The first night we had one woman almost throwing up, but her boyfriend wisely decided that they should leave before any actual incident. The second night we were sitting next to a father and son who had driven in from Seattle, and they seemed very low key and calm, so we were excited to have more normal folks to sit next to. And....then the band came out and the son lost his shit. Seriously. You can hear him on some of the video we took that night, it was intense.

The other thing that is awesome about concerts here is if you drive, parking really isn't an issue, and neither is the wait after the concert to get out of the lot. Thousands of people camp at these shows. Because it's a multi-night event, and it's so far away from civilization, there are campsites much closer to the venue than hotels. And wow do people camp. You can see the tent cities from the lawn, and they are huge. Originally, I got Dan interested in going by telling him we could camp...and then I read stories of all the drunk people, and stuff getting stolen, and no showers, and no shade and...then we went to a hotel. Once he saw the tent city, especially in the rain on the second night, I don't think he felt like he was missing out.

So yeah, the Gorge. 3 nights. Favorite.

This shot is from the second show, it is not zoomed in at all.

And here we are, also on the second night, grinning like loons.

Next time will include highlights of our outings: Spokane, a short jaunt into Idaho, Multnomah Falls and strawberries on a stick.

Pacific Northwest Roadtrip: Very large trees

2009-10-08T23:33:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I was going to write this post tomorrow night, as I have a pretty rockin headache this evening. But tomorrow, we have to take the cats to the vet, and as it's a production even getting them in their carriers, I think tomorrow I'm just going to want to sit down with a couple glasses of wine. So, apologies for lack of quality writing here. My head, it is pounding. *********************************************************************** So we left off with me sharing that we decided to drive up to Washington state, and you probably rolling your eyes at our crazy nutjob ideas. I can't blame you for that. We did decide, though, that we would see the sites along the way, as we probably would not be making the drive again. This was the perfect opportunity for us to see the largest and tallest of the California redwoods, which are up along the coast near NOTHING else. No towns, no airports, no anything. Just five or six hours north of the Bay Area along winding mountain roads. We've actually had the redwoods on the list of things to see in California since before we moved here, but here we actually found an opportunity to get there. Instead of taking the major interstate north, we took the less traveled, less convenient side road, which, while beautiful, was going to extend our first day of driving by about 4 extra hours. (For those who have ever driven 81 down to Blacksburg, this was like taking the Blue Ridge Parkway...magnificent vistas, but so...much...longer...) Plus, Dan and I are sort of ambling roadtrippers, so our trips are not short. We're liable to stop at any random touristy attraction we see on a billboard...hence our trip to the drive-through tree. And our need to drive all the way through the Avenue of the Giants. And pull over at the One Log House, if only to take pictures and mourn the fact that we arrived just after it closed. I have to tell you, the trees up there are really freakin big. Truly, you can't believe it unless you see it. The Avenue of the Giants is a side road to the previously mentioned side road that winds through the densest parts of the forest alongside some of the tallest, widest, oldest trees. There were several times that we thought we were going to be entering a tunnel up ahead, only to keep driving and see that, nope, just big trees next to the road. They block out the sun. And they smell fantastic. We were lucky enough to be up there when there weren't really other people around, so we spent some time lying down in the middle of the road to try and grasp how small and insignificant we are, and climbing in and around trees that had fallen over. It was really amazing. Even though I was cursing our trip when we entered our 12th hour of driving that day, I'm really really glad we went. Definitely one of my favorite sights so far, you know, in my life. So, this is the Chandelier Tree, is 315 feet high, 21 feet in diameter and it's maximum age is 2400 years. We got to drive through it, because there is a big enough hole in the bottom of it for (small) cars. The hole was made sometime in the late 1930s, and it's one of (I think) 3 drive through trees that are still standing. No more have been created, what with the opinion that this sort of thing is probably really bad for the tree. Here I am actually driving through the tree. It made me super nervous that I was going to get my tiny rental car stuck in there, but nope, all went well. Can you imagine calling roadside assistance on that? "Hi, I went ahead and got my car stuck in a tree...probably going to need a tow truck." These are some big big dense trees along the Aveue of the Giants. No picture is really going to provide the perspective that's necessary, so just believe us when we say really really big beautiful trees. This is a tree we found that has, obviously, fallen over. Again, this picture doesn't really provide a lot of good perspective on the size of this enormous tree. Which is why I have provided the next picture. Scroll down. That's Dan, all six feet of him, standing with lots of room to spare inside that same tree. They are huge. I do not know how else to express this. This is just a pretty shot of the moon near the end of the daylight on day one of our epic drive. Coming soon: Hood River, 3 nights of concerts, Spokane and Idaho. Get excited.

Pacific Northwest Roadtrip: The build up

2009-10-04T17:34:00.000-07:00

This story actually starts in April of this year, when Dave Matthews Band released their tour dates for this summer and fall. As many of you know, I'm a pretty devoted (read: crazy) fan, and go to at least one show a year. Since we've moved out here, Dan and I have seen them play in Mountain View (where Google lives, about 45 minutes away) and then last year, they played a weekend series of shows right on campus, which was amazing. This year, when the tour dates came out, they weren't playing in either of those places. Um, what? They had one tentative date for a TBA location in San Francisco, but the details were sketchy. Not having tickets to a show for this year made me itchy.

As they do every summer, they were planning on playing a three night weekend series at The Gorge Amphitheater in central Washington. I've always wanted to see them at the Gorge - it's an amazing venue. It's outdoors, built right into a hillside that overlooks the Columbia River. I've seen lots of pictures, and heard a lot of recordings from here, because DMB releases a lot of their live music. You probably know where this story is headed - yes, I requested tickets for all three nights at the Gorge. When I found out that I got tickets for all three nights, I was beyond excited. As in, this is something I can check off my "life to do" list excited.

Now I just had to figure out how the hell to get us up there, and where we would stay. The actual concert venue is not in a town but is closest to George, Washington (seriously!) I recommend you Google Map it to see how much it is in the middle of nowhere. Two hours away from Seattle, 90 minutes away from Spokane. 45 minutes from the closest hotels, oh my. I originally sold Dan on the idea of going at all with the idea of camping - because the band plays 3 nights in a row, camping near the concert venue is offered, and I think somewhere between 8 and 10 thousand people actually go and camp. Dan was all about the entire experience - but after I read some boards about no showers at the campsites, stupid drunk people at all hours, things getting stolen, we changed our minds. Also, we own no camping gear to speak of.

So we drove. From Berkeley to central Washington. I reasoned that if we flew, we'd just have to rent a car anyway, so why double the expense, plus plane fare over Labor Day weekend was kind of ridiculous. However, it was far. Google maps told me about 16 hours up, and 14 hours back (different routes), about 900 miles. Luckily, we had the time to split up the drive over two days each way. But yeah, still really far...

Coming up: The California redwoods, Columbia River gorge, and many concert photos

The time Phish crashed our friend's wedding

2009-09-27T19:52:00.000-07:00

Holler, I'm finally getting around to posting (Franklin's) pictures from Ben and Jess's wedding, which was now about 5 weeks ago. The entire weekend was pretty gorgeous.

Dan and I took the red eye to Albany on Thursday evening. I literally left the unit after training my RA staff since 10 AM, and went directly to the airport. We took an enormous plane to Chicago, where we switched to a teeny tiny jet, which made me uncomfortable. Jess's brother picked us up, and went to Jess's parents' house, where they very kindly let us nap and take showers before we all headed over to the Mansion. (fyi - "The Mansion" should be said with a heavy accent)

Most folks arrived on Friday evening, so we ordered dinner in and drank a lot of wine, while people arrived all night. It was a rockin good time for everyone to stay in one place, so that we were all together most of the time, and didn't have to worry about going anywhere else. Saturday, we went to the rehearsal, and then got all dressed up and went to the Saratoga racetrack to watch the horse races, which is what people DO there. People were into it, let me tell you. Jess's family went to the track at 6 AM to reserve tables for us to sit at later that day, and then people had to hang out there all morning and afternoon to keep saving them, it was crazy. Saturday also included a BBQ dinner back at the Mansion for anyone coming to the wedding, followed by wine, dancing and ridiculous photos.

Sunday, of course, was the wedding, which Phish was invited to. The amphitheater they were playing in was literally right next door to the wedding hall. However, we didn't hear a damn thing once the (awesome!) band started playing at the wedding. Because it was pouring rain, we did see a lot of scantily clad Phish fans right up against the doors of the hall trying to get some cover from the weather.

The wedding was gorgeous. And Ben and Jess are both very pretty people. All in all, it was very aesthetically pleasing.

The Mansion Inn, site of wedding good times

At the races, blending right in with our hats

BBQ before dark

BBQ after dark. We love wine.

The Hall of Springs, wedding site

Fancy groomsmen

Josh and I walking down the aisle before the ceremony. Afterwards, our smiles are more forced because Josh was sweaty and my feet were numb.

Ceremony, all personal and emotional and stuff.

College crew with the newest bride and groom.

City Walk: Eureka Valley

2009-09-18T00:42:00.000-07:00

We really have been in the Bay Area for selected parts of the summer, I promise. During part of that, Deborah was staying with us (before she abandoned us to move to Australia I mean) and one of the things she really wanted to do was go on a city walk with us. So to the city we went. Deborah chose our walk - Eureka Valley. The area sits on a hill, beneath Twin Peaks and right above the Castro. The walk was pretty long with some of the longest hills we've encountered yet, and easily the windiest day we've done a walk. This turned out to be unfortunate, because Deborah is in way better shape than Dan or I. There's no real history or fun facts I can give you about this area, because our book mostly talks about the Castro, and also Harvey Milk. I won't go on about Milk here except to say that if you have no idea who I'm talking about, I need you to go rent the movie "Milk" that came out last year. SO GOOD.

This is an alley between two homes, and is super cute, leading to a little neighborhood park. It's actually called Acme Alley, and used to be a path used for taking cattle across the city to pasture.

These are the Seward park slides, which were waiting for us at the end of that stairway. They are AWESOME slides. All the neighborhood kids have left stacks of cardboard for anyone to use, and the slides are super fast. We regressed a few years to play here for awhile.

Clearly, playing here is for serious.

Some of the hills here are so steep that stairs are built into the sidewalks. Not as a separate set, but carved right there into the concrete so that you don't have to lean into the hill like a crazy person while you head uphill. This is one example. Probably one of the longest hills we've done. My calves are burning thinking about it.

This is ONE house. It was built for $100,00 in 1872 and has 5 stories, 45 rooms, 52 closets, 10 fireplaces and 272 windows. It's now 15 one bedroom apartments.

You can't really tell, but the city is pretty much laid out behind us. Good walk team!

(Walk stats: 2.02 miles per Google Earth, 2 hours)

Up next: Saratoga Springs, NY. Weddings and horse races.

Wedding pictures for Uncle Mike

2009-09-15T23:38:00.000-07:00

The culmination of the Deep South Roadtrip was Brian and Christy's wedding in Houston. Honestly, pretty much everyone who reads this blog was there but I thought Uncle Mike might enjoy seeing some fabulous photos. Plus, the roadtrip series needed a finale entry, don't you think? I had the BEST time with you all in Houston. Hugs. The groomsmens' tuxes were very fancy, as displayed here by Franklin and Josh.

Clearly enjoying ourselves at the reception. We figured we wouldn't be able to get a photo with Brian and Christy until later, so we worked with what we had.

Cutting the cake.

Shiny and happy married couple :)

Um, this is why we love you so much.

B. Drake.

On the way out from the reception.

At the bar after the reception. Christy brought her bouquet and wore her tiara, and kept yelling "I just got married!" at random strangers. It was amazing.

Wow. This post is so late it's irrelevant.

2009-09-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

New Orleans what? Right, so two months ago, we were in Louisiana. We did a lot in two days. You've seen the ninth ward photos, and the swamp boat tour, which were the highlights. Also, we ate a lot. There is SO MUCH GOOD FOOD in New Orleans.

So, as a quick recap, we toured around the Garden District, walked around Tulane's campus, drove all through the French Quarter and the Marigny, got some drinks on Bourbon Street - where there was more nakedness than I expected in low-tourist season on a Wednesday night,

and generally decided that we would like to go back to spend some more time. So much culture and pride in a place. I really enjoyed it.

I thought it would be ungodly warm while we were there, but it turned out to be really nice. The weather was warm, but not sunny, so we weren't in the bright noonday sun ever. And, all three days we were there, it stormed right around 2 PM to cool everything off. It was perfect weather. Although, bugs. Big bugs. Ew.

Dan and I after the swampboat ride. Notice Dan's windswept hair.

In the Quarter.

Jackson Square at night, while we searched for a working ATM to buy some beignets. (It never worked out, we ended up getting them the next morning en route to Baton Rouge)

Dan, excited about a muffaletta.

Beads still hanging in the trees on Tulane's campus.

Muddah Nature In His Act

2009-08-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

Hellllooo??? Is anyone out there??? It's been 17 days since our last writing. I feel like I need to visit a confessional for my sins of not writing lately. If you haven't noticed, KK does most of the writing, but as she's been overloaded with training for the past 2 weeks, so now is my moment to shine! We have a lot of living to catch up on - there have been weddings, anniversaries, more scavenger hunts, and lots of work ramping up, but before we get to all that - ever more of our Deep South Roadtrip! yay! When I realized how close to the Mississippi delta and bayou we were actually going to be in New Orleans, the first words out of my mouth could have been 'Bourbon St. here we come' or 'Angelina Jolie!' or 'mmmm... Cajun food.' No no. Instead, my mind immediately asks 'Can we please go on a swamp boat!?!' You know, those boats with the big giant fan on the back that look so fun. And so that's exactly what we did. It's shocking that just 30 minutes outside of New Orleans, the landscape changes from such an urban city to swamps and watery roads that people literally call their backyards. Considering it is the wetlands and in the southern tropical climates, we shouldn't have been surprised by the thunderstorms and tropical downpours that rolled in around noon each day we were there. But we were surprised how quickly the storm clouds rolled in. We don't get thunderstorms here. And we miss them. However, lightning storms and big metal boats with supercharged fans strapped to them running across water just don't mix kids. Thankfully, we were able to switch to an afternoon tour and drive around the post-Katrina ninth-ward neighborhoods while we waited. We took a tour in one of the smaller performance airboats that reaches 60 mph, turns on a dime, and can glide down some of the tighter water ways in between the trees. And when we didn't quite fit, well, the boat just hops the dirt/logs/muck/swamp grass in the way. We glided over a very vast calm body of water, hung a left, and all of a sudden everything was green. The water, the trees, the sky, everything! Small lilies covered the water, moss on the grounds climbing the trees, and Spanish moss hanging from limbs as we passed under. It's odd to say, but the swamp was simply beautiful! This literally was our tour guides backyard... as in for real, his family owned part of this green soup. (I still can't get over someone calling the water their yard!) He was born and raised in the bayou, and we couldn't understand a word he was saying. But we had a blast and we highly recommend 1-800-GO-SWAMP. I'm not kidding! You can even have parties and receptions there! Here's KK super excited to be on a boat. Green Watery Road Gator Muddah Nature In His Act

Deep South Roadtrip: New Orleans Katrina tour

2009-08-03T00:02:00.000-07:00

So we arrived in New Orleans on Tuesday, and did a whole bunch of fun things before we went on this Katrina driving tour on Wednesday. But, I'll post about those later. I figured we'd start with the heavy stuff and then talk about the restaurants and whatnot. The reverse somehow doesn't feel appropriate. I would suggest clicking to enlarge the photos.

********************************************************************************

We only drove around one area, the lower ninth ward, and only one small section of it. It wasn't the part of New Orleans that was under the most water, but it is the section of the city that has the least amount of re-building since the hurricane. The part of town we were in flooded due to a levee breach on an industrial canal right next to their homes. The water rose to between 4 and 10 feet, and remained anywhere between 23 and 29 days.

We were there four years later. It's stark and sad and humbling. Everything is gone - these homes were destroyed and ripped apart and then rotted in feet of stagnant water. Some homes are still standing because their owner hopes to rebuild, but it hasn't happened yet. These homes are completely surrounded by 4 years of grass growth and a lack of care.

Other homes are obviously new. But, very few families have been able to completely rebuild on their own. This neighborhood was not affluent. You can tell when you see three remnants of foundations in an area folks from my suburban hometown would call a "small lot."

Otherwise, you see foundation stones. Front gates. Steps leading up to invisible porches. It's clear something is missing. And it's clear much has been ignored. Some streets are completely covered in plant growth and haven't been cleared. Street signs are handmade by residents. Maybe Kanye West was right.

Four years later.

A good representation. We were in the area where most of the red is.

Afterwards, we drove across the canal back towards the French Quarter and diverted down some side streets.

While homes here were not completely washed away, the amount of water and wind damage you can still see is shocking. Some homes clearly have families living in the them. Others - maybe every third home - is boarded up or abandoned. Many homes still have the spray painted tag on their front - left from recovery personnel the days directly following the storm. Businesses are closed. All the signs stapled onto powerline poles are about how to reconnect your air conditioning, or for house leveling, or putting floors down. The sense that so many people were still living daily with such clear reminders of this event was hard to see. You can see a tag, in bright red, on the house below. The date the house was searched was 9/12. The hurricane made landfall on 8/29.

This area was more emotional for me to see, because supposedly, this area wasn't "as bad" in terms of damage. Clearly though, lives were destroyed. And no one has helped put them back together. We had to stop taking pictures.

Four years later.

Before we left, I wasn't sure what we would see, because most of the updated information or photos I could find were not recent. There is a bunch of information from the year anniversary. And then...nothing new. Naively, I sort of thought that no news meant good news! That things were being rebuilt, citizens being helped, support systems in place. That's not what we found.

Deep South Roadtrip: USS Alabama

2009-07-30T12:35:00.001-07:00

Picking up from last time, after we left Montgomery, we drove south to Mobile, straight to a hotel. Monday's drive = About 9 hours, about 525 miles.

We had volunteered to take all the leftover booze from the Savannah rental house, because we were driving right to Houston for another weekend of partying, which made a lot of sense. Except, we had to take it in and out of all the hotels and such, because it was just so hot outside, we didn't want the beer and wine to go bad. Two 12 packs of beer, 3 oversized bottles of wine, and lots of half empty bottles of liquor. Ugh.

Anyway, I collapsed in the hotel feeling all kinds of crappy, but Dan ran me a bubble bath and went out to get dinner (awwwwwwwww. I know right?) We planned to get up the next morning, pack up the car and head out to tour the USS Alabama, which is permanently docked in the Mobile Bay. We ended up having our breakfast, going to the ship and coming back to the hotel to pack up and change. Pat on my own back for good decision making because it was SO HOT that morning. We were at the ship at 9:30, and on the ship for about 90 minutes and were pretty much drenched in sweat. There was no shade to park in, all the booze would have gone bad.

Priorities!

The USS Alabama has quite the history of service, which you can read about here if you would like. It has been a fixture in the Mobile Bay since 1965, open to visitors - along with a submarine (the USS Drum) and several different planes. The Alabama has three different self-guided tours that you can follow, and you can go pretty much anywhere on the ship, which is why we wanted to go. Like I mentioned - super hot, very sweaty, but incredibly interesting. I also learned for sure that I would never want to live on a battleship.

Dan as a sailor. He's still smiling because this was right at the beginning of our wanderings, and he is not yet ridiculously sweaty.

Deep South Roadtrip: Tourism-Lite

2009-07-28T00:13:00.000-07:00

We left Savannah both celebrating our awesomeness for helping pull of such a great surprise, and also coughing, complaining and wishing for antibiotics. Well, that second part was just me. I had fully succumbed by Monday morning to Jess's death cough and fever, and Dan had woken up feeling just great! Of course.

On the drive, we had tried to find out if there were things that would be worth stopping for in towns we at least recognized the names of. I knew I definitely wanted to get to Montgomery, AL and Macon, GA is right on the way. Except, there is pretty much absolutely nothing in Macon but one huge, ornate church. We pulled off the highway, stretched, wandered around the church for about 10 minutes, lit some candles, drove around the nothing that is the town, switched drivers and continued on. Yeah, you can skip it in your travels. You're welcome for taking that one for the team.

St. Joseph's cathedral - Macon, GA

4 hours after leaving Macon, we arrived in Montgomery, Alabama. Actually, this part of the drive was probably one of the highlights for me...we got off the interstate and took some back roads, which was really gorgeous. We also got to eat Chick-Fil-A, which Dan was super excited about. I was driving, so I was more excited that I managed to cut an entire hour off the arrival time the GPS projected for us. Best driving time ever!

Montgomery really only had three highlights that I wanted to see. One, state capitol building. It looks shockingly close to another capitol building many of us are familiar with. We walked a lot of the grounds and WOW does Alabama love to commemorate stuff. On the grounds of the capitol are: the Moon Tree (the seeds of the tree travelled in the space shuttle), a statue to the father of modern gynecology, a rock memorializing where the state highway commission started, some creepy busts of Alabam senators, lots of stuff about the "War Between the States" and some other stuff that we took pictures of but weren't sure what they were later. Seriously, there was an insane number of plaques, statues, memorials, etc. Alabama. Land of the Inscription.

The Capitol is pretty though.

One of the smallest plaques of the day, for one of the most interesting facts. This star marks the spot Jefferson Davis was sworn in the first and only President of the Confederate States. (Which in above photo is between the 2nd and 3rd columns from the right)

The second thing I wanted to see was the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church, where Dr. King was the pastor from 1954-1960. I sometimes have trouble conceptualizing that such intense events happened where I am on any given peaceful "normal" day, idly taking pictures. But, there they were.

The last thing was the Civil Rights Memorial. It's the only memorial that honors those who died during the Civil Rights Movement. Reminiscent of the Vietnam Memorial, it's a black granite circular fountain, with the names of those who died around the edges like a clock, which is front of a large granite wall, also a fountain, with one of Dr. King's quotes on it. It's a pretty powerful place.

Sorry, Mobile will have to wait until later. Also, New Orleans approaches. I know you can hardly wait.

Deep South Roadtrip: Savannah

2009-07-25T19:05:00.001-07:00

Stop One on the roadtrip was Savannah for Ben and Jess's surprise bachelor/bachelorette party. As I mentioned in the last post, Carrie and Brian had planned most of it - we rented a vacation house for the weekend, and basically partied it up.

The house was supposed to sleep 7 people, and we had...18. And a dog. It was awesome. Head count: Ben, Jess, 5 of us from Reston, Ben's sister Gen, her boyfriend, and three of her friends, 4 RPI folks and one of their friends, and Ben's cousin. Ben and Jess's dog Puck, who is the best dog I've ever met, also hung out most of the weekend.

Dan and I flew into Jacksonville, which is about two hours south of Savannah, and landed at about 11 PM. Then we had to get our luggage, pick up our rental car, and you know, drive there, which put us at the rental place at about 1:30 AM.

Apparently, though, it all worked out to plan, as Ben and Jess thought the surprise arrivals had ended a few hours earlier with Ben's cousin Charlie, who came in after dinner. When we pulled up and walked up the steps, it was probably the best Ben face I have ever seen. Totally, completely flabbergasted. And you know, Ben is pretty expressive, so it was great. He ran inside and up the stairs to get Jess, who was getting ready for bed at this point. She was also pretty excited. (See below).

Laura, Franklin and Josh (who had been driving straight since leaving Philadelphia!!! that morning) arrived at about 3 AM, which made for another round of great surprised faces, especially since they came bearing fantastic gifts from South of the Border (which included funny hats, an enormous fly swatter, and sparklers, which Franklin promptly burned himself with). So that night, before all was said and done, we probably got to bed about 6 AM.

Saturday we woke up not nearly as late as you think, and headed to the beach on Tybee Island. Carrie had packed us all some food, we had games to play, and books to read, it was a great day. It's super fun going to the beach with that many people because when everyone gets in the water, it looks like you brought quite a posse with you (which I guess we did). There was always

enough people for bocce ball, and soccer. The weather was perfect, it was just a really good day. Around 6, a wedding started on the beach behind us, so we stuck around to watch, and tried to avoid being in their professional wedding pictures. (Aw, honey look, it's our first kiss! Who is that in the bathing suit behind us?!?)

We had a fantastic BBQ dinner, and then we separated by gender to do the official bachelor and bachelorette party business.

Here we illustrate the differences between "good times" for men and women. The men, after pouring lots of straight liquor into a coke bottle to share, headed to Forsyth Park, and proceeded to get drunk and have a huge water gun fight (serious PVC pipe water guns) and then head to the nearest pool hall. The women got dressed up, went to the local swanky lounge, sat in VIP and drank lots of wine. The contrast provided for lots of entertainment. I should note that Jess was being a fantastic trooper at this point, because she had the death flu that we all had later on, and

was still smiling and even willing to go out.

Anyway, we all eventually met up at the pool hall, shut it down at 3, poured into cabs, got back to the house...and kept drinking. I know for sure we saw the sunrise around 7. I think we all thought we were 18 again.

Sunday morning, a lot of folks had to leave after brunch, but those of us who stayed had a pretty quiet day. Many of us were by now feeling the early symptoms of Jess's illness, and also had only gotten a couple hours of sleep over the past two nights. How Josh drove all the way back to Philly on Sunday morning is beyond my comprehension. Anyway, Ben us showed around Savannah, we rented a movie (Bolt...because we're all under 10), and we had dinner and a movie night. It was very relaxed, as by now, we all felt like great friends even though many of us had just met. But...we had been through quite a bit of drinking, and the aftermath, together. I hope it was entertaining for Ben and Jess to see their worlds colliding together at high speeds.

Coming up: Macon, Montgomery and Mobile. All places I don't need to go again.

Deep South Roadtrip 2009: Introduction

2009-07-23T23:14:00.000-07:00

So, the roadtrip evolved out of two separate events that happened to be one week apart in very different areas of the country, and also about as far as possible from where we live. Carrie, the maid of honor in Ben and Jess's wedding, and Brian Baum, the best man, who many of us have gotten to know over the years, planned a secret bachelor/bachelorette party for the bride and groom down in Savannah, where they live. They basically invited anyone and everyone, on the condition that no one spill the beans beforehand. Dan and I were invited, and since I felt bad about not being able to attend the bridal shower, I sort of hunkered down and tried to figure out how we could get there without spending enormous amounts of money. The problem was that Brian and Christy's wedding was in Houston the following weekend - actually, we were scheduled to fly in on Thursday. There was no way that we were going to go to Savannah, fly back to California and then go back to Texas four days later. No thanks. We toyed with the idea of heading up to DC for a few days, and then I started looking around at other options. Recently, I've decided that I want to visit all 50 states - and I realized that I'd never been to Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana. And then one day I found a SUPER cheap deal on a one way rental car, to use all the way from Savannah to Houston, and just sort of booked it without having any other plans...good thing Dan is flexible, and that we usually fly on Southwest, who doesn't charge you extra to change your flights (which is really awesome, if you think about how much you pay for that crap on other airlines) As we talked about what we wanted to do, and where we wanted to go, we decided to: ~Fly into Jacksonville Friday night and drive up to Savannah (2 hours of driving) for surprise party, stay through the weekend ~Leave Savannah on Monday, drive to Mobile AL to spend the night (8 hours of driving), stopping in Macon and Montgomery for some tourism-lite en route ~Visit the USS Alabama in Mobile on Tuesday morning, and drive to New Orleans (2 hours of driving), stay until Thursday morning ~Leave New Orleans, drive to Baton Rouge, do a drive through tour, and head on to Houston (about 6 hours of driving) ~Hang out in Houston, attend wedding, have various good times and fly back to Cali on Sunday (I know that our plans totally just made my mom have convulsions) Honestly? It was rad. The whole thing. We didn't even kill each other about directions, parking, whatever have you - because usually when Dan and I fight, it's in the car. But yes, it was totally worth the time, money and hours in the car. 3 new states off the list!* Tomorrow's post: Savannah, with Franklin's pictures. Because Dan and I get lazy whenever Franklin pulls out his camera, as his photos will inevitably be better than ours. *States count as visited if you obviously stop there OR drive through them. Layovers at an airport in that state do not count. I have 24 left to go. How many states have you visited?

Back Safely

2009-07-21T23:10:00.001-07:00

Well, we have returned safely from our 2009 Deep South Roadtrip. It was a blast.

Some stats:

States visited - 6 (Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas)

Different homes/hotels stayed in - 4

Cars rented - 2

Huge surprises pulled off - 1

Alligators seen - 10+

Miles travelled - 1500+

Suitcases ruined - 1

We will be blogging the heck out of the trip for the next little while, we have so much material to cover! However, I will not be starting this evening, because I have been backsliding into the illness I picked up in Savannah ever since we got back to the West Coast. Plus, getting back into working after 10 days off has not been fun, just mostly exhausting.

Just as a sneak preview, however, please see the highlights below from the very tail end of our trip. When we arrived safely in Oakland from Houston, Dan's suitcase was...not in great shape. The frame had been bent really bad, and there were holes in the sides of it that basically looked like they were the result of being burnt. The holes went all the way through the sides, to some of the stuff inside - ruining a pair of pants and a pair of dress shoes.

The guy in the Southwest baggage office told us that most likely, the bag fell of the cart and ended up being dragged over the pavement, which caused all the damage. Whatever, we put in a claim and they should be either replacing it or sending Dan a check. Hooray! The bad news was that we had to leave the damaged stuff at the airport, which meant we brought all of his stuff home in a new Southwest duffle bag. Good times.

Where's the love?

2009-07-05T01:15:00.001-07:00

So we post every day for a week about stuff, and my Uncle Mike is the most frequent commenter. Rosa, Meghan and Laura (and everyone else!!!) - you're losing out to my uncle. For serious. Hope everyone had a Happy 4th!

Not lost, just not found

2009-07-03T01:51:00.000-07:00

Lily had a little outdoor adventure, for about 12 hours today. There was plenty of fretting, searching, crying, calling out her name, and fear packed into one emotionally draining day. Due to some commotion by James in the middle of the night, I was up at 4am grabbing litter since James disapproved of the cleanliness of his facilities. While I was cleaning up, Lily snuck out into the hallway, which usually isn't a problem because there's at least 2 other locked doors she needs to get past in order to reach the wilderness outside. Clearly 2 is no match. She's also usually not in the hall at 4am when I mistake shadows for her inside our apartment. Lily spent the rest of the morning in the hallway and around 7am escaped the fortress as the morning staff began working in the building. We're relieved, to say the least. Exhausted from worrying. Is this what you parents go through everyday? Oy. We're actually more curious to know where she went on her journey! We pictured her prancing down the sidewalks as if she owned Berkeley. Just as we decided to make some flyers to hand around the next day, we found her crying for us just outside our door. It may have also been dinner time, but let's be honest, she likes us more than food. It was really hard to find a picture for a 'Lost' flyer. She puts her face in everything! Kittien! James helps look for her. She's actually sitting in our suitcase full of underwear. I told you she gets into everything! A quick edit for the flyers that we thankfully didn't even need.

I'm dizzy with anticipation! Or is it the wind?

2009-07-01T23:58:00.000-07:00

Ahhh! Woooh! What's happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Okay okay, calm down calm down get a grip now. Ooh, this is an interesting sensation. What is it? Its a sort of tingling in my... well I suppose I better start finding names for things. Lets call it a... tail! Yeah! Tail! And hey, what's this roaring sound, whooshing past what I'm suddenly gonna call my head? Wind! Is that a good name? It'll do. Yeah, this is really exciting. I'm dizzy with anticipation! Or is it the wind? There's an awful lot of that now isn't it? And what's this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like 'Ow', 'Ownge', 'Round', 'Ground'! That's it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it'll be friends with me? Hello Ground! - Whale, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy So Dana & Larry came to visit in June (yes we know it's now July) with a laundry list of things to accomplish - visiting Alcatraz, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, seeing redwood trees, a campus tour, wine tasting, and jumping out of a plane. Oddly enough, many of which KK had done without me, so I had promised Dana I'd wait for her on these adventures. Last part first. Skydiving was AMAZING!!! Jumping out of a plane always seemed like a fun, but scary idea; until I realized, the professionals you're strapped to jump between 6 and 8 times a day. Oh, and they probably don't want to die either. To which Dana, Larry, and I thought it might be good idea to talk to our tandem pro just to see how they were feeling that day. Good spirits? Excellent. They have the routine down to a science, and you don't get much say as your basically pushed out the door. In Dana's case carried because she was in the back of the plane. In my case, a gentle roll out, as I was the first one out the door. Immediately, it was one of the most relaxing and freeing experiences of my life. You're basically weightless and can't do anything but look around at the serene views. Ok, maybe you can also scream. 60 seconds of free fall, another 5 minutes floating under the parachute, and worth every moment (and penny). Larry actually steered his chute, which I'm a bit jealous of, so if anyone wants to go, let me know... Alcatraz Island is actually only a tiny speck of land in the bay, which we see all the time when we look out to the bay. I was expecting a boring history lesson, but I actually surprise myself by now highly recommending the audio tour. Unless you've been living under the rock, you at least know it was a prison. It is also home to an old abandoned military fort, the oldest operating lighthouse on the west coast of the US, and a massive amount of bird habitats. Other past residents include Al Capone, tribes of Native Americans during a slightly hostile takeover, and several children. KK wrote about it from her first summer here, but the prison guards used to actually live on the island and their children played on the grounds outside the prison walls. They took a ferry over to SF each day for school. Dana, Larry, and I happened to visit the same day one of these kids was on the island to sign copies of her latest book about life in and out of the prison grounds. (She's no longer a child.) However, she was still a child living on the island during the worst escape attempt. When she heard the sirens, she thought it'd at least make a great excuse for being late to school. Our other adventures with Dana and Larry we're equally thrilling but perhaps repeats to all of you loyal readers. You can read about the first time we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge here. You can also read about wine tasting here, here, here, here, and here. And now for some pictures. Best seat in the house.

Roll out.

Required embarassing chubby cheeks picture.

Best photo ever.

The Rock.

Day of birth.

2009-07-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

It's my Dad's birthday! I would say wish him a Happy Birthday on Facebook, but he doesn't log into his account (boo). So, maybe in the comments?

General Life Update: KK

2009-06-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

A lot of our posts of late have been very picture heavy, so I think a "How the heck are you?" post is in order... Most of what we've been doing lately gets posted here, although you all really do get the highlights - our everyday is not quite as adventurous as this blog may lead you to believe. :) Currently, I have a bit more free time because it's summer session here and I'm not in charge of any the residence halls over the summer, and instead my primary responsibility is working on the training team, planning hall staff training in August. While training is a huge task - I'm on a 6 person team working on it, so it doesn't consume my life. I've been reading a lot, I'm up to 30 books for the year. Dana and Larry were here to visit a couple of weeks ago, and we had some fantastic adventures with them - campus tours, wine tasting, SF highlights, Alcatraz, and skydiving, which Dan is going to write a separate post about for tomorrow. Just before coming to visit, they moved into the house they just bought - which is amazing for them! I'm so impressed that they have a HOUSE, like grown-ups or something. I know that several of our close friends have homes that they bought too (Kel/Mike, Mer/Geoff, Chris/Holly, Matt/Katie, Tommy/Kristen) but this was more impactful for me. I think because Dana and I finished grad school at the same time, and so we officially started "being grown-ups" at the same time too. Clearly, we have different paths, but she feels much further ahead on hers. Hmph. Anyhow, it was great to see them. You may have heard in the news lately that California has approximately $13.48 to its name, which makes it hard to pay it's millions of employees, provide decent education, and the like. So, while I am NOT in danger of losing my job (mom, please read that sentence as many times as you need to) all educational institutions in the state are taking big cuts. Because I work for an auxillary unit of the university (which means we have our own source of income beyond tuition - ours is room and board) we aren't hit as heavily as some other campus units. But, the university is considering either pay cuts across the board, or furloughs - which basically amount to a pay cut. If the university enacts either of those plans, we will have to do the same...just because. So, next year should be super exciting! *Heavy sigh* I have had two dreams in as many weeks that my cousin Christine is engaged. Uncle Mike - any news you want to share? Lily and James are doing just fine - although they have developed quite the endearing habit of waking up and then waking us up at 4 or 5 in the morning. We're working on it. The scavenger hunt diamond ring thing continues to be weird. I'm slowly telling my colleagues and people here about it, but it's hard to do because most people kind of stop listening and make their own assumptions about how the story ends. The pictures that the event released (that we posted here after the fact) are not helping matters. And, no I don't wear the ring around. If there is any more related news, trust me, you'll all be the first to know :)

Extreme archery!

2009-06-29T23:07:00.000-07:00

Because it was 103 degrees. One hundred and three degrees. While we were outside. Shooting arrows at targets. And also, while we were packed inside a tiny NON air conditioned room taking the informational class beforehand. Ugh. But, learning archery has been one of Dan's "would most like to do" things for awhile now. Lately, my quest has been to begin enjoying the Bay Area on the cheap, or even on the free. Hence the free diamond scavenger hunt, outdoor movies, street festivals, more city walks, etc. I get much of this information from a website, cleverly named funcheapsf, and last week they added an event -- "Archery open house!" So clearly, it was quickly put on our list of things to do. It was about 45 minutes away at a private members-only archery club, that opens up twice a year to the public for lessons and a chance to shoot, and have lunch. Anyway, we got there after driving up into the hills - it's about as close as I've gotten to the boonies of California. Andd also 103 degrees. Anyhow, we got there, feasted on our corn dog/chips/fruit roll up lunch (yes, seriously. I felt like I was in 3rd grade) and then we got to sit and take a class about safety, shooting stance, and archery terminology. The guy talking was a BIT too detailed. All I really needed was how to stand, how to hit the target and not shoot anyone in the leg or anything. I got, though, a pretty thorough history lesson about the bow and arrow, it's development, all the different types, all the equipment, and on and on. (D: It was prety cool to learn that if you have a friend with the last name Fletcher, back in the day they likely made arrows for royalty.) 40 minutes later, we were free to go try it out. It was nice to try it out - they had a lot of their members available, and you basically got one on one coaching through your first quiver of arrows and then you get to shoot as long as you wanted. I'm happy to say that I was the first of the two of us to get a bullseye, and ended up with three actually, after about 30 minutes of shooting. Dan, of course, got 5. Ass. Enjoy some photos: I sort of felt like a badass while we were there. I feel like I mostly look the part...as long as you can't see my flip-flops. Dan, demonstrating excellent form. I think his aviator glasses helped out his badass archer look. The huge friggin bruise on my arm, caused by the bowstring snapping on it on my second try. Clearly, my form was not correct when this happened. Let me tell you that every shot after that, my form was perfect. Yes, it hurt. Yes, we wrote several posts this weekend, which are scheduled to post almost everyday this week. Come on back for more tomorrow!

City Walk: Pacific Heights

2009-06-28T23:26:00.000-07:00

Continuing on the quest to appease Rosa, and to get through all the urban hikes in our book o' city walks, we completed another one last Thursday. I know you may be kind of tired of hearing about them. If so, sorry...because we've done 10 of them, and there are 26 total. Get excited. If I had been reading ahead like I usually do, I would have noticed that this one basically connected to the walk we last posted about here, and we could have completed them in one day, although that would have been a lonnnnnnnnng walk. So, instead, we had to go all the way back to pretty much the same area as the last walk. This walk was in Pacific Heights, which started being developed into a residential area after the first cable cars started running up and over the hills in the 1870s. Parts of it are pretty flat, so the lots were able to be drawn large, and rich people bought them right up and WOW. The homes are enormous. I feel like I have said that about a few of the walks already, but these are a new level of outlandishly huge. They're more like homes you would see on a plantation, with hundreds of acres of land around them. Except they're in a city, right next to each other, on the same streets. View of the Bay from our starting point This is where the Consulate General of Norway hangs out. We passed by a few residences of Consulate Generals...including Norway, Indonesia, Italy, and Ireland. Alta Plaza Park, built on a really steep bit of land. Problem solved with LOTS of stairs. Great view at the top though. Also at the top - a picnic table full of adults letting their children run amok in the playground, and their dogs chase each other, while they chilled with several bottles of wine. The port-o-potty down on street level that Dan had to run down and use, since the bathrooms in the park had already been locked for the day. I'm pretty sure he was actually in there when I took this picture. (TMI?) House. Not sure what else to say about this. Except, WHY do people have this much money?!? House again. Hahaha not really. It's actually a private school for K-8th grades. Still, pretty ridiculous. (D: It still used to be someone's house!) Aston Martin. Parked on the street, in front of a house with a garage. What on earth is in the garage? And now, for movie fun facts of the day: House front that was used as the school front in The Princess Diaries House from Mrs. Doubtfire (Stats, for Rosa. Per Google Earth, walk was 2.55 miles and took us 1 hr. 45 mins.)

The story continued...

2009-06-27T23:30:00.001-07:00

So the scavenger hunt folks recently posted pictures of the event, and of course, we are in them. Here are a few (we look FANTASTIC in them, let me tell you). Lovingly provided with captions of what I was thinking at the time. This is Dan looking for the ring while I am still running to get there. You can't really tell from this angle, but his feet/knees are in the bay, while he looks around close to water level. Ewwwwww. Holy crap, you found it! What is this camera guy doing in our face? Good job baby! ...thank goodness this is over...i am le tired. Aww fake engagement photo! I swear to you on everything holy that at this exact moment I was thinking "Holy crap, I should probably put down my water bottle. Siggs are NOT romantic." Hence, this photo. I'm not turning away from Dan because I'm repulsed or anything.

Just Another Weekend

2009-06-23T01:32:00.000-07:00

We honestly don't even know where to begin this story. I could easily blame our recent commitment to go to more local events. I know KK will blame me for getting her out of bed at 6:30 in the morning (a brave undertaking in itself). Regardless, we entered a treasure hunt of sorts... and... well... we sorta won. (cough) We sorta won a diamond. (Double cough) We sorta won one of those diamond things placed on top of a ring in a certain way like some people are known to do with such diamond things. (Triple cough) The motivation to do this actually comes from one of the blogs we read (DC365) who introduced us to Urban Dare. It's a scavenger hunt game that tours major cities throughout the year where teams race to answer trivia clues which send you to yet more clues all across the city. Well, we were really excited to try it this year in SF and we missed it! But, as you might know, we're getting pretty good at being SF tour guides and our urban hiking has filled us with plenty of random knowledge. SO, we really wanted to test our city trivia! I repeat, we REALLY just wanted to test our knowledge of the city. Fortunately, a free scavenger hunt just happened to arise this weekend. Who cares if the prize is a diamond ring, we're never going to actually win. So, Saturday, we had to wake up so early because the starting point was way far away from where we live and you know us with the no car thing. There must have been 200 teams there, almost ALL with bikes. I swore we had stumbled on a biking club. I was wrong. We sort of missed the boat on the bike idea, so we pretty much immediately felt out of the running to win. To fill the time and make up for our inadequacy, we decided to mock people. There was plenty of material. There were people stretching and warming up, other teams are all in workout gear with camelbaks on, and one team even had professionally made team t-shirts (the front: Got Diamond? the back: Team Bling). Two of organizers of the event (from the diamond company, who I nicknamed Sleazy 1 and Sleazy 2) were the kind of guys you'd avoid at a bar. They were a little too arrogant, a little too much hair product, etc. They let us know that you can't use any public transportation. Good thing we were depending on that. Cool. (KK: I honestly was ready to go home at this point. I was pissed that we had gotten up, hauled ourselves across the city, and couldn't hop on a bus or anything, even though the website had said we could use public transport) All the clues were delivered over text message. You replied with the correct answer to get your next clue. We missed our first question. Cool. Googling answers and calling Franklin (thanks!) to look up SF photos just wasn't working out. We pretty much gave up on the game and resigned ourselves to just seeing how we would do at a slow pace. Turns out, we did pretty well. The last clue required some word jumbling and code deciphering, which we actually do for fun. Next thing I know, I'm the only one running to the final location - which happened to be the Wave Organ, which we had just visited in our city walk a couple of weeks ago. That walk actually was super helpful. I was pretty much the first one to the end and KK was perhaps the first to text in the final answer, and I was there, searching and searching as the Sleazies arrived and kept asking where KK was (I had run ahead). They started taking pictures of me, and there was a video guy and they just kept asking where KK was. I called and told her to run, especially after Sleazy 1 mentioned that "She'll probably find it when she gets here...." (KK: Dan left ALL of our stuff with me when he took off running, water, backpack, etc. It took me awhile to run bogged down with our stuff, ok?!) They waited and waited and waited until KK showed up to (1) blatantly put down the ring that was never hidden in the first place, and (2) tell me where they had just dropped it. All of this in front of another team who had shown up. Awkward. They had also already asked me "Hey, what are you going to do with that ring once you get it?" Double awkward. And then when KK got there and I "found" the ring, and Sleazy 2 actually began to whisper "Do it" under his breath. Wow. It was the ultimate moment in awkward. So in a gorgeous location, but under scrutiny of sleaziness, cameras in our face, and a circle of onlookers (tourists, other teams, etc) ... we whispered in each other's ears that we'd put on a fake show... and I got down on one knee. (KK: I said NO! jk) Afterwards, the organizers chauffeured us to the after party in the trunk of their SUV. Literally, in the trunk. It was all very romantic. Let's just be clear. We're not engaged. It'll happen one of these days, on our terms, in our way. Until then, we have a funny story to tell and you all have to settle for fake engagement photos.

Some friendly competition.

The view from the start. One of those diamond things.

City Walk: Presidio Wall

2009-06-17T13:53:00.001-07:00

Since now there are enough daytime hours on the weekends for Dan and I to sleep in, make breakfast, BART into the city and do a walk without rushing, we've decided to take up the urban hiking again. This walk started at 379 feet above sea level and took us around some enormous homes, the Palace of Fine Arts, the Marina area, and skirted alongside the edge of the Presidio. We also wandered through the Letterman Digital Arts Center, which is the home of Lucas Arts. Yes, that George Lucas. Stairs looking down - the Lyon stairway. And looking back up. The hearts are all over SF, each painted by different artists. Kind of like the donkeys/elephants and pandas in DC. These aren't an exhibit anymore, the ones we run into have been purchased and permanently placed where we find them. Welcome to working where George Lucas has enough money to get you an office with a sweet view (Golden Gate Bridge in the background) and great landscaping. So the Letterman Digital Arts Center was named for the Letterman Army Hospital that used to live on the site where Lucas Arts is now housed. It took 5 years to build, has a gold LEED certification, houses 1300 employees and a Starbucks. And this beautiful fountain. Why yes, that is Yoda on top there. Close-up. I maintain that he looks amazingly realistic - like he could talk to you any second. All the ponds and creeks that you saw in the above picture are manmade. Evidence below. Out on a jetty into the Marina is the Wave Organ. It is a scuplture (of marble and granite, recycled of course) with pipes extending down into the bay. The tubes that are above the surface project the acoustics of the water movements, hitting the pipes below. It's pretty awesome. View of SF from the Wave organ Later on in the walk in Pacific Heights - Imposing entrance to a home Someone's fish tank - outside their house. The faucet that fills the tank, also waters the plants above the tank, which grow on the wall. It was a pretty sweet setup. We tried 6 times to take a picture of ourselves with the bridge behind us, and finally jsut gave up and went with the "pseudo-artsy-but-really-just-can't-take-a-good-picture" style.

Hoping to do another this weekend. Stay tuned.

Letter from the Management

2009-06-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

So, we've heard from a few people that you can't leave comments on the blog, which we have double-checked and updated in our settings. Everyone can, you just need to make sure to click on one of the last two options -- either "Name/URL" where you can just type in your name, you don't have to leave a URL, or "Anonymous" where you can just leave your name with your comment. In the past, we've been moderating comments - so we have to approve the comment before it posts - but I removed that to instantly reward you for commenting - you get to see it right away! Hopefully, this will all work. If you still have problems, let us know!

Congratulations v.11

2009-06-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

Please say hello to Lillian Elizabeth, born on June 13, 2009 weighing 9 lbs 9 ozs and 22 inches long!

Holly, Chris and Lily are all doing well.

Can you believe that hair?!?!

Take 5 Tuesday, KK and Dan edition

2009-06-09T19:30:00.000-07:00

Just to get us back into the blogging spirit. Bonus edition, with answers from both of us! 5 of your favorite TV shows K - West Wing K - Queer as Folk K - Jon and Kate Plus 8 (so sad lately) K - Friends (love some syndication!) K - Whale Wars (a new favorite, it is CRAZY) D - Sportsnight D - Simpsons D - Family Guy D - Daily Show D - Fraggle Rock 5 things you did last weekend K - Costco run! K - Baked a pie (strawberry/blueberry) K - Lusted after some handmade purses K - Drank some mimosas K - Cuddled with James D - Went to a new farmer's market D - Baked a massive pork loin D - Watched people at a street festival walk by eating mango with cajun spices, and drooled. D - Bought 9 mangoes due to aforementioned craving D - Went to Whole Foods twice in one day 5 places you’ve been on vacation K - Deutschland K - Aruba (favorite!) K - Denver K - The thriving metropolis of York, PA K - Troy, NY D - Venice, Italy D - Budapest D - Ocean City, Maryland D - New York City D - Cuba 5 places you would like to go K - Ireland K - Machu Picchu, Peru K - Galapagos Islands K - Egypt K - Hawaii D - New Zealand D - Thailand D - Greece D - Brazil D - Spain 5 dream jobs you wanted to have as a kid. K - Supermarket cashier (haha seriously. I have grand aspirations) K - Vet K - Lawyer (for about 10 minutes) K - Teacher K - Crazy cat lady (it's TOTALLY a job) D - Marine biologist D - Archaeologist D - Pilot D - Rock star (lead guitar specifically) D - Jeweler If you made it all the way through that, you should be commended. We are boring. Feel free to mock us.

Hello? (echo, echo)

2009-06-09T00:28:00.000-07:00

Well, I realize that it's been about a month and a half since we've written here, so who knows if anyone will actually read this. I'm not entirely sure why we haven't been updating, but we do feel pretty bad about it, and the stern talking to we've gotten from some folks has just heaped on the guilt. I doubt we're going to be able to catch up on individual posts from what has been happening in the past 5 or 6 weeks, which totally sucks because I was all ambitious with the East Coast trip series (Follow through needs work me thinks) but I think we'll just start looking forward.

However, here's a short list of what we've been doing since we last wrote:

~Finishing up the school year (Kristin)

~Meeting with potential clients (Dan)

~Traveling to Mendocino, CA and horseback riding on the beach

~Listening to Dave Matthews Band's new album (and loving it)

~Planning our trips this summer

~Going to the Farmer's Market every week and cooking locally based meals (Goal accomplished!)

~Seeing native African animal species in wine country, CA

~Backing up my computer

~Not hating Angels and Demons, surprisingly

~Pretty much avoiding the telephone (you may have noticed?)

~Spending a lot of time in our local sports bar watching the Penguins in the playoffs

~Anxiously awaiting Dana and Larry's visit

~Eating all vegetarian on Wednesdays

~Reading, although not as much as I'd like

~Switching to compostable cat litter (another goal from this post)

~Finishing the Six Feet Under series

~Paying off a loan, woot!

~Wishing we could get another cat

~Building a website (more on that later)

~Heavily sighing over the fact that it is never warm enough in the Bay Area

~Laying around in the park, people watching and drinking wine

And here's a photo from the time a student group from Hong Kong stacked all their luggage on our porch. They had arrived from the airport two hours before they could check into their rooms, so they put their luggage on our porch and just LEFT IT there for anyone to steal.

What have you been doing lately?

Congratulations v. 10

2009-04-28T01:12:00.000-07:00

So, Meredith confirmed some of our suspicions and announced today that she and Geoff are expecting their first preshus baby this November!

CONGRATULATIONS!

Congratulations v.9

2009-04-28T01:09:00.000-07:00

Introducing...Thomas Emery Watts III :)

He arrived Friday, April 17th weighing in at 8 lbs, 6 oz! Kristen and Tommy are, obviously, enamored. See below.

Day at the park

2009-04-19T23:53:00.000-07:00

Dan and I went to our favorite nearby park today because it was HOT outside. It was lovely to sit in the shade, eat some cheese and drink a bottle of wine. But mostly, it was lovely to people watch. The following list doubles as "things we saw today" and "reasons why berkeley will never stop being entertaining" **Jugglers **The people who came and popped open a camping tent, big enough for probably 6 people **A big water balloon fight **A VERY unhappy cat on a leash **Possibly the hairiest man alive, showing the most ass crack I have ever seen a man display (niiiiiiiiiiiice) **A creepy guy going around to people on their blankets and towels and asking the women if he could pick them up. As in, literally, off the ground. I pretended to be asleep when he came over our way. **A couple who brought their pet turtle and let him scamper around on the grass for awhile **Lots of pot smoking right there out in the open

Trip East: Part One

2009-04-12T23:07:00.000-07:00

The trip we just took home was the longest amount of time we've been away from California since we moved out here. So, in our minds, it was a super long time, which meant that we had plenty of time to see everyone we had ever met in our entire lives. Turns out, that means a lot of time spent driving from place to place and days packed full of things to do and little sleep...but it was so worth it. I needed a good healthy dose of friends, family and home. Trip summary: Places visited: 4 (DC area [including DC, Reston and Arlington], Eastern Shore, Richmond, Johnstown) Different beds slept in: 5 (Mom's house, Dad's house, hotel in Johnstown, Dan's parents in Richmond, Matt's beach house on the shore) Miles put on rental car: 1300 Trip East Part One: Jet lag and babies So, we got in really late, went straight to mom's and "crashed." Dan crashed. I was wide awake until something like 4 AM. So, much of the next day was spent lying around, Dan doing laundry (he flew to DC after 10 days in Texas working South by Southwest), and getting the rental car. We had dinner with mom...Ledo's pizza. (food #1 I was excited about that I can't get in California) And then, we went over to Laura's who had prepared quite the Mexican feast for Missy, Franklin, Sarah, Mike, Kelley and the babies. Of course, Frank and Blue were also there, and were attempting to covertly sneak Ryan or Jack away when Kelley wasn't looking. (alright, let's be honest, it was mostly Blue). We spent a lot of time watching the babies, talking about what the babies were doing, saying what we thought the babies would say if they could talk, feeding the babies, you get the idea. After the babies left, we looked at each other blankly for awhile, and then Missy, Laura and I tried to name all the cast members of all the Real World seasons ever (can you believe they're on season 23?!?!) We did pretty well, up until I'd say the last 5 seasons when we kind of lost interest. You want baby photos? Excellent. Ryan, close up of his cheeks. They demand pinching. He was only taking a power nap in this photo. He was completely, totally cashed out and then woke up ready for more play about 20 minutes later. Ryan, clearly having an awesome time with me and Laura. The next day, Laura, Dan and I went over to Kelley's to hang out, have lunch, and "lend a hand" (which roughly translates to hold the babies as much as possible). Mission accomplished. We hung out through lunch, two feedings, lots of spit ups - mostly on me, although Jack got Kelley really good when he shot formula out of his nose...twice, doggie excitement, and more laughing. Nighttime found us home with mom for dinner, and then over to Missy and Franklin's for a night of Wii playing. Good lord do we love the Wii. More baby photos? You are insatiable. Jack and his big eyes. Jack and Dan both actually asleep. You can't really tell in this photo, but Jack's pacifier says "Chicks dig me" which is you know, adorable. And true.

I know, I'm disappointing.

2009-04-10T02:00:00.000-07:00

I'm also sick. Body aches, headache, fever, night sweats (which, ew) the whole thing. So, have not been updating. But, I have been watching all the episodes I've missed from Dancing with the Stars because I'm addicted to it. So, I promise to blog about our trip home, with pictures and everything, just after I get better. Dan is totally over me being sick, by the way. Today, I wanted popsicles, and then like, 10 minutes later on his way out the door, I decided popsicles would be too cold. 5 minutes after that, I decided on pudding. Pretty sure he's going to grind up some sleeping pills in my tea real soon here.

Blizzard '09

2009-04-08T22:13:00.000-07:00

Icicles of doom. So these are some photos from when we went up to Tahoe with some friends over Valentines Day. It snowed. A LOT. I look ridiculous. It was SO COLD. mmmm sleet. Up the lift. Pretty, yet freezing. Ski run. Notice the abundance of fresh snow. **Coming tomorrow, posts about our crazy whirlwind trip to the East Coast. To be posted daily, just for my uncle Mike.**

Back!

2009-04-08T21:58:00.000-07:00

Well, in political news, here are the highs and lows: Highs: Vermont IOWA. I mean really, Iowa can get their ish together and where the hell are we California? Geez. Lows: This article... A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt namesthat are “easier for Americans to deal with.” The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans. Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver’s license on school registrations. Easier for voting? State Rep. Betty Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if youcould adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?” NICE.

5 x 5

2009-03-17T15:41:00.000-07:00

5 things you've made recently. 1. Quiche lorraine 2. Sauteed mushrooms (um, easiest dish ever) 3. Many a "To Do" list 4. A working BSpace site for my class 5. A monthly budget 5 things you've discovered recently. 1. It really irritates me when students I supervise tell me things that I feel like they should be asking. For example "I can't come to the meeting" vs. "Can I be excused from our staff meeting?" 2. I really don't bite my nails if they're painted. 3. I'm not that much of a movie person 4. I care quite a lot about doing my part to waste less, use less energy, etc. 5. When I really like something (books, wine, cats) I want as much and as many of those things as possible. Seriously. Books and bottles of wine are the things we have the most of in the house. Cats, not as much, but only because I'm not allowed to have more than two. 5 things on your "bucket list" 1. Travel! Esp: Greece, Ireland, the Galapagos Islands and Egypt 2. Be an EMT 3. Learn sign language 4. Live by the ocean 5. Do my job, but to be defined by the other things that I do 5 sounds you hear right now 1. Me typing 2. The vent over the stove 3. The front door of the next residence hall over slamming shut 4. Water from the cat fountain 5. Toilet flushing upstairs 5 things you did this morning. 1. Got up too early to let Lily out 2. Had trouble getting back to sleep 3. Forgot to make enough time for breakfast 4. Missed a meeting 5. Congratulated myself on remembering to schedule a haircut