The Daily Sabs

my memory is terrible, but for some reason i try to give it a kickstart at the end of every year and list out my top ten highlights of the year. last year was a spectacular one, but this one was a lot more lowkey. Let's see how it compares:

1 - Oh the midwest
Although my family has roots in the midwest, I'd only been out there a handful of times. This year, however, I was there three times. Once for Blogher where I met so many amazing folks and had one of the craziest nights of my life . Once to join anneh at a wedding - we also hung out with erin and josh. And then once to visit my grandma and dad and play in the snow.

2 - Happy anniversary vacation staycation
This year randall and I celebrated our first married year together by heading up to napa for tasty foods, delicious wines, bike rides and kayaks. It wasn't staying home, but it wasn't going far away either.

3 - The whole gang went to portland, randall and i went twice
Juju and Wes were visiting scottel and so randall and i jumped on the bandwagon and joined them there. Our car broke down on the way, so we went again a week later.

4 - Five words: Award Winning Mac and Cheese
Anneh came up with the recipe, i just made it look pretty. Either way we walked away with an achievement.

5 - I saw more movies this summer than I have in the last three years.
Special thanks to DK of the DK & Sabs Summer Movie Series.

6 - I became a tourist in my own town
This year I didn't go on a lot of trips out of town, but I did spend a lot of time exploring the town. From the Seward Street Slides (twice) to Alcatraz, there was a lot of fun to be had in town.

7 - I watched people butcher pigs in a hipster bar
Only in san francisco does this happen. And oddly enough, it happened more than once for me. Both times were super delicious.

8 - I got crazy sick
This is not a highlight, but I spent a good chunk of March sick so I thought it was worth mentioning. I hadn't been that sick for that long in quite some time.

9 - Scottel and I became super amateur wedding photographers
First there was stef & alex, then there was karen and shin, and finally the C+C Wedding Factory.

10 - The househusband makes me dinner
This one is a mixed bag, on one and it's a highlight and on another it's not. Randall joined the ranks of the dotcom 2.0 bubble bursty economic downturn unemployed (part of the reason it was a lowkey year) which was a lowlight. However, this gave him a lot of extra time to cook, which was a highlight in that there were many many delicious meals to partake in.

While much more lowkey than last year, this year is still difficult to sum up in just 10 bullet points. Some honorable mentions include: reuniting with a very old friend, top model photo and videoshoots, my favorite haircut in years and years, jarvis cocker shouting out to bean and stef, finally making it to the alameda antique fair, dancing at my leisure, a warm summer night walking home from dancing all the way from soma, octopus garden costume, the state reunion, a cake with a face on it, karaoke birthday, three years at sugar, all the old friends with new babies, and finally, a entire summer filled with delicious lunches.

well folks, that's my list. I hope you had a great 2009, and here's to a fantastic twenty-ten!

xo,
-sabs.

as you can see in these photos, i am exhausted (just look at those pandas). which is sort of crazy considering i've done a lot of nothing over the last few days. this morning we woke up to discover it was snowing. we threw a few scoops around, but it was too powdery and dry to even make a proper snowball, let alone a snowpig. that was probably the disappointment of the trip, but what are you gonna do?

in the afternoon we drove around and then went back to my grandma's nursing home. today was bingo day and she had made us promise to play. bao ended up winning twice and i won once. grandma didn't win at all. as you can see, she didn't appreciate that fact. let's just say that she's a bit competitive.

as an aside, why didn't anyone tell me that snowflakes actually look like those kind you make in school? you know, the kind where you take paper and fold it and make random cuts? i just assumed that was some sort of romanticized version of snowflakes.

icymi, i'm not a native californian. i was actually born in havre, a town in northern montana. my dad was stationed at the air force station near there and it was actually my mom's first home in the us. it was small and probably a bit of a culture shock -- there were about 200 people there and you know, all that snow.

this morning bao and i decided to venture to the upstairs area of my grandma's house (it's unheated and sealed off, and no one's been up there for a while - but most of the cool stuff has already been taken out) and i saw this picture hanging up in my dad's old room. it's a picture of the air force station where i lived (that's right station, it wasn't even big enough to be a base). i spent the first year of my life here before moving to california. my dad says that the radar stuff and everything but the housing is still there. it would be neat to see it, but it's not like i have any memories of it. only pictures.

speaking of pictures, i also found some funny old pictures in my grandma's house. this one was my fave. it's my mom in her early 20s in taiwan. i think bao, samshrew and i all have this default fake smile.

i woke up ridiculously tired this morning (insert long story here about box elder bugs and sleeping in a chair), but when i finally got going it was time to play in the snow. bao and i wanted to build a snow pig, but my dad laughed at us when we said so. he said the snow wasn't "that kind" of snow. being snow n00bs, we had no idea what he was talking about and tried anyway. we failed, so it was snow angels instead. only the snow was really powdery and we just sunk in instead. i mostly managed to get one made, but bao gave up after he fell in and couldn't stand up on his own, let alone get turned over correctly.

afterwards we headed to grandma's home (as in nursing home) where we had coffee with the 2pm coffee club and then were dragged to communion services where it wasn't as weird or miserable as i anticipated. i'm just gonna leave it at that.

also, i've been taking a lot of photos of the snow, you can see some here, but here's my favorite so far.

late last night, bao and i hopped on to (separate) red eyes and headed east into winter to surprise our grandma. suffice to say, she was wonderfully surprised.

For some reason, i decided to fly out to minnesota for the time
between christmas and new years. my flight leaves in 40 minutes and
I'll board and fall asleep and wake up and it will be winter. I don't
know what I'm doing and I have no idea what I'm getting myself in to.
Yesterday my dad said there was 18 inches of snow. 18 inches!

At least I won't be alone, in addition to my dad already being there,
I conned bao into going too. His flight leaves from la and arrives
right before mine. That's right, I conned him into taking the red eye
to winter also. And by conned I mean gave him no choice; I paid. He
can consider it his Xmas gift to me. We're going out there to visit my
grandma. It's going to be an adventure. Or something.

As an aside, It was surprisingly hard to find a place at the airport
for a glass of wine. It was only 11pm, but all the cafes/restaurants
past security were closed, save for one lone sushi place. They stopped
serving food, but you could get your drink on still. I figure one
glass of wine will be a nice way to ensure a little sleep on the flight.

Ps. Wish me luck with this winter thing. Bao too. I don't even think
he owns a coat.

geoloc

I hope you're still snug in your bed. It's too early to be awake. Best
wishes to you and yours!

i accidentally spent most of the day working on that dumb decade list. it's at 100 songs now, but needs to be cleaned up and orderized. i didn't mean to spend a chunk of today doing that. i meant to spend it wrapping gifts and baking things. i also didn't meant to go shopping today. in fact i wasn't going to leave the house at all (that was part of the plan in order to get everything done in time to do have a relaxing evening - things didn't go exactly as planned), but i randomly decided that it was time for a new baby digital camera and headed over to best buy. i got front row parking and managed to sneak in and out in five minutes, i didn't even have to wait in the bajillion people long line and they even had what i wanted on sale. merry christmas to me.

well folks it's time for bed. santa's on his way, but really, the early bed time is because we have to get up at 5am in order to get to where we're going on time.

5am!

Samshrew once told me that the smell of cinnamon (red hots not pumpkin
pie) always makes her think of me. As a kid I loved cinnamon
toothpicks. I used to stop by this pharmacy on my way home from school
and buy them. Twentyfive cents for a little pack of ten or so. I
didn't realize that I went often enough that my sister would think
that I always smelled like them. I also hid them from everyone. I
didn't want my mom to know I stopped at this pharmacy (once she found
out, it was banned as it was unsafe in her mind) and I didn't want to
share (I was shall we say selfish back then). Too bad I never realized
that everyone knew anyway.

These days my dentist has me on this weird toothpick regiment, I
wonder if these cinnamon ones are okay in his book. I'm going to stop
buying them though, I think it's time I learned how to make them
myself, because inflation sucks. A pack of ten or so cost 2 bucks now.
Sure now they're "quality" toothpicks, but still. 2 bucks for some
splinters?

This evening burger called to see if me and Randall were interested in
grabbing a bite to eat. It took a little while to figure out where to
chow down but eventually we decided on contigo in Noe valley. It's a
new place (I swear it was a sushi place before, can anyone confirm?)
that just opened a few weeks ago. The food was great and the
atmosphere warm and inviting. Service was good and bad at the same
time, dinner definitely took longer than I had anticipated, and there
was a small period of just waiting around. However the company was
good and the churros, oh the churros, made me less annoyed by the wait.

Afterwards burger and I stood on a street corner and exchanges gifts.
Actually she forgot mine so that is my disgust face.

Ps. Are my eyebrows too pointy? Randall said I looked like a cartoon
character.

geoloc