sometimes, when the weather is like this, life feels like a surreal movie. today, after another fruitless afternoon of househunting, randall and i headed over the golden gate for some fish. we also strolled down main street sausalito just for fun. okay, it was actually just to buy candy, but still, we strolled around. i don't get this place. folks who live there, is it weird that you live in a movie set, including all the shops no one really wants to shop at?self-portraits of someone who hates self-portraits
Color
be seeing you
sometimes, when the weather is like this, life feels like a surreal movie. today, after another fruitless afternoon of househunting, randall and i headed over the golden gate for some fish. we also strolled down main street sausalito just for fun. okay, it was actually just to buy candy, but still, we strolled around. i don't get this place. folks who live there, is it weird that you live in a movie set, including all the shops no one really wants to shop at?in which i scrutinize the fall collection
this evening, after what seemed like the longest week ever, i met anneh at the latin american club for a quick drink. it had to be quick because she had to pop back online for the independent spirit awards.
afterwards randall and i went to dinner at loló where we ate some delicious foods. i particularly liked the pistachio encrusted salmon, as well as the complimentary harissa sauce and bread. i also really liked the fact that we were seated immediately, even if it was because someone had canceled their reservation at the last minute.
on our way back to the car, we stopped by fabric8, a gallery/shop in the mission district. i splurged and bought a painting from husband and wife team scuba. this painting, called fall collection, is love love love. i mean, just look at this bear, and owl. they're so great, and so fashionable.
ps. one of the cutester things about loló was their check. when it came, instead of being in a small folder, they put it inside of books about dogs.
Escaping from shutter island
This evening April, Randall and I went to the kabuki to see shutter
island. I wasn't necessarily into seeing shutter island, but it was at
the kabuki screen 1 balcony and that's pretty much the only theater I
care to go to anymore. I knew very little about the movie going into
it, and for the most part I enjoyed it (maybe a tad too long).
I won't spoil the movie for you, but i'll just say, it felt old
school. Very traditional scorsese. The music, the dialogue, and some
of the scenes, all just felt like an older movie. Or an homage to an
older film era. And the end, well i think I'd seen it before. Oh and
also, apparently the trailer/commercial (which I haven't really seen)
is making it look like a thriller. Don't be fooled, it's not. It's
suspenseful, but it's not a horror (although some lady did awkwardly
scream in our screening). Yet I thought scared would be a more fun
emotion to portray than intrigued, so here ya go.
island. I wasn't necessarily into seeing shutter island, but it was at
the kabuki screen 1 balcony and that's pretty much the only theater I
care to go to anymore. I knew very little about the movie going into
it, and for the most part I enjoyed it (maybe a tad too long).
I won't spoil the movie for you, but i'll just say, it felt old
school. Very traditional scorsese. The music, the dialogue, and some
of the scenes, all just felt like an older movie. Or an homage to an
older film era. And the end, well i think I'd seen it before. Oh and
also, apparently the trailer/commercial (which I haven't really seen)
is making it look like a thriller. Don't be fooled, it's not. It's
suspenseful, but it's not a horror (although some lady did awkwardly
scream in our screening). Yet I thought scared would be a more fun
emotion to portray than intrigued, so here ya go.
the sf dumpling queens
to celebrate the new year, julie decided to host a dumpling dinner. last night, after our awesome 99 ranch run, we made the fillings in order to be ready. and tonight, we put everyone else to work. we made over a hundred potstickers, and then topped those off with mochi ice cream and delicious sesame and peanut balls soaked in ginger syrup/tea. afterwards we went outside and lit sparklers (the real kind made from metal!) and ran around as if we were a dragon line. julie's housemate took a video, and as soon as she posts it, i'll share it with you.
Happy New Year (again) everyone!
don't set the church on fire
tonight was night two of nert training. the main focus of today's class was how to shut off all your utilities (don't turn the gas back on once it's off folks!), how to deal with hazardous materials, and how to put out small fires (and when to know when it's small). we also watched them set things on fire in the church (where the class happens to be held in).
the class is pretty interesting so far, and i'd recommend it if you're interested in this sort of thing (aka paranoid like myself). the only downfall is that the class is from 6:30-9:30, which means dinner is late on tuesdays. tonight we ended up going to pomelo. we chose it because it's open til 10, and isn't too far from the class. it was also really delicious. you know how i know it was delicious? randall ate the tofu. that's how delicious it was.
beauty is in the pie of the beholder
i am so glad i took today off of work (it technically wasn't a real holiday at sugar, but a "float" one). in addition to getting a lot of pesky chores done (i hadn't been home for anything longer than a sleeping spell since last monday night), i was able to head over to the east bay for a bit of pie tasting. you see, my pal jessi (the award-winning piemaker) is gearing up for the national pie championships and wanted her friends' opinions on a few of her creations. so naturally, randall and i complied. (although i should point out, randall doesn't even like pie.)
there were three creations (all variations of apple-huckleberry) and twelve people. we judged each pie on looks, flavor, creativity, crust, and anything else we could think of. essentially jessi just wanted us to give constructive criticism and metaphorically tear each pie apart.
we did one better than that. as you can see, we literally tore them apart too.
happy new year's valentine's day.
this morning morm and i got up early (as in hours before i'm normally awake) to go volunteer down at temple. each year, for chinese new year's, they have a huge celebration. unlike other religions, this one (or at least the temple my mom goes to) doesn't have services. you're supposed to go on new year's day, but you go when you want to (well between 8am and 7pm). you say your thanks and prayers, ask for your blessings, offer your fruits, ask your questions and then go home. it's how most of their day-to-day behavior is, but on new years, they ask you to stick around and partake in a feast (and yes, it's fully buddhist and therefore vegetarian, but even randall liked it).
i ended up on serving duty: eggrolls, fried taro, and then sweet and sour crispy soy item. samshrew, randall, and chris showed up later, but didn't have to stick around long (samshrew got roped into eggroll duty for a while, but got out of it when the rush ended). morm and i left after six hours of serving up food, and needless to say, i was pretty exhausted at the end of it.
also, i never really considered myself a religious person (i only go to temple a couple times of year, and mostly because of morm), but you know there's something sort of amazing about a religion that says, hey come say what you feel like and before you go why don't you eat a boatload of food. not to mention it sounds like it was invented just for me.
A fine mess I got ourselves into
Randall does not normally stand around with his hand on his head.
Especially not after he's had a lovely evening hanging out with his
wife and seeing a funny (and surprisingly romantic) comedy show. He's
only doing this because his wife (aka me) decided to put his ring on
the wrong finger and it's stuck and he's trying to reduce some
swelling. In her (aka my) defense, she only did this because he's
gotten so skinny the ring keeps slipping off his ring finger and so
she thought, hey great solution.
At first it didn't seem like that big of a deal, but after a few
minutes of trying to force it off, his finger swelled up. He's giving
it a rest (he still can feel his fingertips it doesn't appear to be
cutting off circulation) and is trying to make the swelling go back
down so we can try again.
Needless to say, I feel pretty bad. Especially because I thought it
was funny at first and it's going to really suck if we have to go have
this ring cut off (it's special and mechanical and not really
something that can just be melted back together). Although hey, at
least right now there's no way he can lose it.
Ps. If you look closely the photo in the Lego frame is our engagement
photo.
Pps. The comedy show we saw was wegent & Paige and they're performing
at the darkroom in the mission again tomorrow night (sat. Feb. 13).
It's worth the ten bucks.
Especially not after he's had a lovely evening hanging out with his
wife and seeing a funny (and surprisingly romantic) comedy show. He's
only doing this because his wife (aka me) decided to put his ring on
the wrong finger and it's stuck and he's trying to reduce some
swelling. In her (aka my) defense, she only did this because he's
gotten so skinny the ring keeps slipping off his ring finger and so
she thought, hey great solution.
At first it didn't seem like that big of a deal, but after a few
minutes of trying to force it off, his finger swelled up. He's giving
it a rest (he still can feel his fingertips it doesn't appear to be
cutting off circulation) and is trying to make the swelling go back
down so we can try again.
Needless to say, I feel pretty bad. Especially because I thought it
was funny at first and it's going to really suck if we have to go have
this ring cut off (it's special and mechanical and not really
something that can just be melted back together). Although hey, at
least right now there's no way he can lose it.
Ps. If you look closely the photo in the Lego frame is our engagement
photo.
Pps. The comedy show we saw was wegent & Paige and they're performing
at the darkroom in the mission again tomorrow night (sat. Feb. 13).
It's worth the ten bucks.
how a radio works (the ruffles have ridges version)
this evening the thirtieth issue of the bayfarer hit the (faux) newstands. this time around the "reporter" i worked with wanted to do a piece on how a radio works. we had way too many pages of research to plow through, but in the end we had an illustrated numbered diagram on how it works.
i'd have taken a pic of my "reporter" for you, but that whole we're not supposed to have contact outside of the workshop rule probably also includes a don't exploit their little faces clause. however he did tell me that he had a facebook and lots of friends. i think this might mean that facebook is officially over?
ps. i wore this ruffled sweater today even though i though the dress also has ruffles on the top and the sash. it was sort of a ruffle overkill and kind of bothered me all day, but oh well.nert tuesday
nope, that's not a typo. i actually did mean to write NERT. it stands for Neighborhood Emergency Response Team, and is a free class offered by the SFFD. tonight randall and i went to the first of six sessions. after six classes we'll be certified, and more importantly "self sufficient in a major disaster situation." so far we've just gone over earthquake safety and preparedness and some other disaster overview stuff, but the rest of the classes sound really informative. plus, the very last class has us actually putting out fires and triaging some faux-wounded volunteers, and that sounds sort of cool.
now i'm just hoping we never have to really use these