The Daily Sabs

Today Randall and I hopped on a plane and headed down to LA. Chris's
film is screening at the LA Asian pacific film festival, and we
decided to come down to support. Besides we kept telling bao we were
coming to visit and a trip was long overdue.

After an afternoon of catching up, tito's tacos, and checking out
bao's place, we checked into our hotel, had a quick drink and then
went out to hunt for dinner. We didn't actually have to hunt hunter/
gatherer style, but we did cast a wide net. We originally thought we
go to sara's ham hung recommendation. But the English only menu was a
bit crazytown and Randall played the veto card. I was bummed at first,
but we went a block down to Honey Pig and my bummers went away. Honey
pig was Korean BBQ extreme complete with buzzers at the table to let
people know you need assistance. The food was pretty great, but sadly
the gimmicky pig shaped lighters they gave us at the end of the meal
was my favorite part. Honey pigs = Happy pigs!

Okay gotta go, it's time to go mingle at this really weird film
festival party.

My house, and well actually my whole family, has our own language.
It's mostly inside jokes and it's constantly in motion (meaning some
phrases die out in just a few months), but it's complicated and you'll
need a glossary. No really, it's like crazy cockney rhyming slang. So
here goes, glossary entry number one. Get ready, this one's a keeper.

Sylvia: thank you.

Now here's why:
We want to say thank you. In French thank you is s'il vous plait. S'il
vous plait sounds like Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath is too much to say,
so it's shortened down to sylvia. Now you know, sylvia for listening.

Ps. I have no idea what this picture has to do with anything. And man
I look sleepy.

Pps. Today is my Friday!

today was reiko's birthday, and since she is a self-proclaimed little frog, we decided to celebrate froggie style (translation: lots and lots of frog things). there were frog stickers, frog mouse pads, frog gum, frog candy, frog absolutely everything. my contribution to the frog parade was the cupcake pond base (the talented made the amazing marzipan frogs) and the weird dopey frog headband that reiko was kind enough to sport.

happy birthday wee froggie (and lawrence too)!

and now, for the amazing mieko's frog army!

This evening jeff (who's a new face to the sugar HQ) and I met up with
Carolyn for some drinking and eating. The three of us used to work
together back in the tower days and like to hang out every so often.
Sadly, we hadn't grabbed eats in almost a year. It didn't feel that
long but it was. Funny how time flies.

Speaking of time flying, it's hard to believe we spent almost three
hours at fang (the fancy version of honk). I'd like to say that it's
just because we were enjoying each other's company so much, but
reality is the service there is pretty crappy. They never even asked
us if we wanted another round of drinks and it took like an hour to
get the check. It was like the exact opposite of honk. (Good thing we
had a lot of catching up to do.) The food however was delicious (if
not lacking that wok essence I expect from honk). But all that said I
had a great time and enjoyed my company tremendously. It just might
have been even more fun with a second cocktail.

i have no idea why, but this evening i decided to pull out my sewing machine. i splurged on this sweet bernina baby right before i started working at sugar, but once i got the yum job i suddenly had no more free time. i was living, breathing (not to mention eating) food 24x7, and there was seriously no time for another domesticated hobby. but that was three and half years ago. we all know that time constraint can't have been true this whole time. i think the better reason why my bernina got dusty is that i have very little skill. seriously i can barely do straight lines correctly. maybe it would help if i had a chair that was the same height as desk. but well, that's another story.

as an aside, i've been having really weird (not to mention stressful) dreams lately. none of them are recurring -- i've never really had a recurring dream -- but lately there's been lots of subway stations. really huge grandiose ones, and lots of weird trains. i always make it on to the train (sometimes it's a close call) and they're always different. sometimes they look like a generic subway train, sometimes they look like airport tram trains, and sometimes they look like old trains. anyone have any theories?

san francisco weather was amazingly epic today (even if i did spend the first few hours indoors reading comic books and crunching critters in a sunbeam). i was originally going to weed the backyard (it's out of control, i don't think i've touched it since october), but it was actually too nice to do so; besides sundays are open house hunting ridiculous new hobby day. we saw some interesting prospects, but nothing that wowed us.

that killed a few hours but then it was time to go home and face the music. sadly (or not-so-sadly) weeding the backyard never happened. you see, i got distracted by a popsicle instead. if you ever pick up a box of trader joe's fruit frenzy bars, you'll understand how easy it is to get distracted. (seriously though, they're delicious, raspberry-lemon-strawberry.) also popsicle-approved days are rare in sf, so you gotta enjoy them when you can.

as an aside, every time i hear the word popsicle, i think of this song:

this morning samshrew texted to see what we were up to. since the only thing for the afternoon agenda was laundry, i told her that we had nothing planned. amazingly she also had nothing planned, so we decided to all meet up and go to the beach. that sushi dog entertained us for a while, but when we got bored we left and had joe's ice cream - for the record, root beer swirl ice cream is delicious.

speaking of delicious, after beach time, randall and i came home and got ready for an early 5:30 dinner seating at baumé in palo alto. tonight was the quarterly scheelbarrow dinner (aka pitstop) and we decided to go all out and order the 15-course tasting plus wine pairing. it wasn't the most amazing meal i'd ever had, but it was definitely worth it. while i've had bits of pieces of molecular gastronomy infused meals, i'd never had one where it was the focus. i can't remember the last time i had so much fun at fancy dinner (even if it initially felt weird, stuffy, and with colorful plates out of 1997. sure it's gimmicky, but it was a blast, and luckily for us the gimmick tasted great too. plus they get bonus points for bringing us an extra dish just for photos/videos (they wanted to make sure we all ate ours right away). if it wasn't for that we never would have proof of randall the magic dragon - it was better the first time he ate it, but its still awesome, see for yourself:

okay. if i didn't make it clear earlier, i just had a 15 course menu with a wine pairing. it's time for a nap before bedtime.

but first, some random photos from today:

This nerd Friday led Randall and I on an adventure in a stolen car.
Okay, it wasn't stolen, I'm carsitting for Julie because watching her
willingly get another ticket seemed stupid. Yes, willingly, because
according to her calculations a parking ticket for not moving her car
on street cleaning day is cheaper than a week's worth of longterm
airport parking. She might be right, but it seemed stupid. So I took
her car and tonight we went out for a nerd Friday joy ride. First up
was tacos and then off to stonestown. I hate that place but Randall
needed an apple store and they have parking so off we went.

For nerd Friday it was pretty good. There is now a 3:1 computer:human
ratio in our house. Seriously, I sort of wish I was kidding.

this evening randall and i headed over to baker and banker for a postponed birthday celebration. since we don't do fine dining much these days (thank you economy!), we decided to go ahead and splurge on the chef's tasting menu. i really enjoyed everything, and while it was all perfectly done, i actually thought it was a bit under seasoned. it didn't stop me from eating it though, it was definitely a great meal. the kicker though, was the dessert - a perfectly cooked (as in crispy on top, gooey on the bottom) peanut butter blondie, with bacon brittle ice cream and a stripe of chocolate. it was such a smile-inducing dessert, that it was sort of ridiculous that the dessert itself looked so unhappy. but then again, that made me smile doublyso.

ps. it took almost an hour to get home today. apparently someone was hit by a muni train at my station. the news is pretty unclear, i'm not sure if it was an accident or on purpose. either way pretty awful, i wonder how the scene will look in the morning.

pps. we were totally sat next to former mayor willie brown. i wasn't 100% sure (it was dark and i didn't really want to stare), but it was confirmed when he got up leave and put on a ridiculously fancy hat.