The Brain Scrambler

You never know what happens when you mix drinking beer on Erik's front stoop at Haight & Fillmore. Erik became the master tenant of his apartment recently. It'd been over a month since we've seen him so we dropped in for a visit.

Naoko's SF Visit

A friend I met in Japan came to San Francisco at the end of her 3-week visit to the States. Everything about San Francisco intrigued her. As we were driving past Japantown she said she wanted to stop in and take a look. Not a lot going on there, some shops and restaurants and this photo op.


I took the afternoon off and got to go to the Academy of Science when it wasn't crowded. I was pleased to finally see the Rainforest exhibit. It's a big clear sphere with a large spiral walk way that takes you through the different levels of the rainforest. This picture is taken from below the rainforest (in the aquarium) looking up. A huge, blue moth landed me too! Hint: Wear something bright and you'll have a good chance of having a butterfly/moth land on you.

Mama's gotta brand new bag

Mandy and I are trying to do a crafty sewing project once a month. My sewing experience is pretty much limited to hemming jeans but Mandy has some really cool quilts and awesome costumes under her belt. She guided me through making this cute purse.

Biscuits & Gravy

Andrea invited us over for some biscuits & gravy taste-testing. Kevin was the main guinea pig since Sean and I don't eat meat. I made a veggie version with TVP which was pretty tasty too. Everyone went back for seconds of their respective biscuits and gravy. Since we also had bloody mary's and cupertinos, brunch lasted well into the evening :-)

Watching the Obama Inauguration

I walked to the Yerba Buena gardens to watch the Inauguration. A few hundred people gathered outside to watch two large screens. There was collective groan when the screens went blank for about 5 minutes during Obama's speech. Fortunately his speech has readily available online.

Mandy's chops it off

It was another bright day in the bay. I grabbed a tank top and headed to Rockridge to meet up with Mandy and Andrea. The day had finally come for Mandy to donate her long, gorgeous locks to charity. She's had had enough of her hair and was ready to chop it off. We had a leisurely brunch at Crepevine then moved on to Filippo where we were informed they didn't have any champagne. We obviously wanted some bubbly and gasp, they only had "sparkling wine."
Ta-da! The finished hair cut! We continued our "sparkling wine" crawl down College Ave. Afterwards we got more champagne from trader joe's to round out the night.

Tahoe-Last day

I was sad to leave and go back to the real world. Jackie and Nick somehow found the motivation to go skiing on Sunday so the rest of us had hearty breakfast at the Truckee Diner. Since most of us had all these $1 bills from playing CLR, we left $105 all in $1 bills. The waitress seemed pretty happy.

Tahoe Weekend - Part Deux

After epic ping pong matches the boys woke up and half of them made to Northstar. We weren't expecting much from the overly crowded lines but after an hour we found the best lift with short lines and some good snow. The ski bunnies dwindled to just me, kevin and nick. It was a fun day and got to meet up with Jiri later that afternoon

Nick's birthday was a no-hassle ramen w/havarti cheese and salad. Yum. I've always been on the lookout for ramen enhancements and this was a winner.



Nick opened Andrea and Ferg's gift from Restoration hardware...ta-da--a magic kit! We're expecting a show next year!

Awesome "cake" of snicker bar and m&m!



Here's Yari and Jackie enjoying the fireplace. Put your tongue away, Yari!

Fun times, can't wait to go back soon!

Tahoe Weekend

When Kevin's coworker offered up her rental in Truckee we took advantage of it to celebrate Nick's 30th birthday. Kevin and I took Friday off to spend the day skiing at Squaw. No wind, blue skies but not so good snow for skiing. I felt grateful to be able to enjoy a beautiful day outside.


When we got back we took Yari to the snow piles at the end of the road. It was his first experience on the white stuff. He sniffed around curiously but I think his poor little paws got cold.

It was going to be a couple hours before everyone (Mandy & Cameron, Nick & Jackie, and Andrea & Ferg) else got up there so we made a mad dash to the Cal Neva. And it was good thing we did, Kevin and I each netted $100 from the blackjack table!

We had eaten at Steamers ( a pretty good pizza joint on the Lake) but the others put 3 frozen diGiornio's in the "fancy" oven. After relentless smoke alarm sessions the crew fed their hungry bellies.

Andrea introduced us to this simple dice game called CLR that easily gets out of control. Sean and Cameron ended up with empty pockets while rest of us won. But all the $1 bills came in handy on Sunday...

Happy New Years!

Andrea, Mandy and I started off New Year's Eve by drinking champagne and watching a matinee of Twilight. Awesome! We had a few more drinks afterwards and headed off to the Sunset to continue the festivities. I must have really rang in the New Year because my memory eludes me from about 11pm on. :-(

It's a been a very lazy vacation for me. Yari and I took long walks in the park, I read 2 Twilight books, hung out with friends and slept and slept and slept. Sigh... back to the real world.

Also, this blog posting marks a full year of more or less consistent updates! Whoo hoo!