Home Alone 4 - Enjoying S.F.

With out the roommate around, I'll be honest, things are a tad lonely. But, the up side to having the apartment to myself is that I can walk around naked. HA, kidding. Well, if I wanted to walk around with it being 40 degrees... I suppose I could, but no. The good thing is that it forces me to get out and walk around OUTSIDE, which I already enjoy doing anyway, because sitting around in a dark box when it's gorgeous and sunny out in this city is simply depressing and a waste of photo ops. :)

So, after sleeping off the throbbing headache that kept me company all through the night, I put my favorite Christmas present to use, my new dirt devil vacuum! It's amazing and I love it. Judging by my apartment, you'd probably never know it, but I actually love to clean.

Afterward, I strolled on over to the bank, then proceeded to zigzag between the beautiful homes in the Marina, made a pit stop at the Apple store, stopped to read a couple chapters at a sunny bench in the park and grabbed some grub at Safeway before heading home.

Here is just one of the many beautiful things I saw during today's walk.



One last thing I wanted to share, and for those of you in S.D. - check it this place out. It's one of my favorite casual places to eat in Downtown San Diego. The Downtown Fish Joint! My mom and I went there for my goodbye lunch before leaving to come back to SF yesterday. They have the absolute BEST fish/shrimp/calamari tacos EVER. During this visit, I opted for the 'garlicky shrimp burrito'. My mom got their halibut and shrimp tacos. They come with a side of amazing home fries and decent coleslaw (I'm just not a fan of coleslaw in general). Here's a photo. Get a napkin to wipe the drool from your face.

Happy Holidaze!

Oh ho ho, the holidays. It's nice being back at home. For the past 10 minutes I've been debating whether or not there should be quotes around the word 'home' in the previous sentence, as it's no longer my physical residence. It got me thinking about all of the "home is where the heart is" crap... and what makes any particular home YOUR home. Seeing as how San Francisco is my newly adopted home, San Diego has been my home for the past 19 years, and I have friends and loved ones in both cities.... well, I've decided I have two homes, dammit. Who says you can only have one anyway?!

It's been good seeing all the familiar faces I'd expected to see, even the ones I didn't expect to see at all. I'll be honest, I wanted to avoid as many of those awkward "Hey, I haven't seen you since high school, and even then we never talked, but I couldn't run away before we made eye contact... how have ya been?" situations as much as possible, but I guess even those make for some interesting stories afterward. It can also be pleasantly surprising to see how people have changed (or stayed the same) in the past couple years during the few moments it takes to exchange a few words with them. Regardless, every face was friendly and I've enjoyed my time back.

After the severe amount of overeating that occurred this past week, I felt it was about time to hop back on a bike, my little sister's awesomely bad-ass Panasonic road bike (which I'm going to steal away to SF one day...), and ride over to Coronado. The ride is maybe a little more than a 10miles from my house and today was the perfect day to take it. The weather was absolutely gorgeous; the sun was out and the air was clean and crisp from the rain a few nights before. I went at a leisurely pace, taking care to notice what gifts the low-tide revealed along the bay's shore, and playing along with the suicidal, dive-bombing sparrows' games to see who would be the first to get crushed by my front tire. It was lovely as the sky was blue. I stopped along the way to snap a shot of my "half way" marker into town.



After the hour it took to get to town, I enjoyed an amazing lunch with a friend at a great Thai restaurant, Swadee, followed by some equally amazing gelato, then retreated to my old haunt/work, good ol' Cafe 1134 to relax my tired jaw. This is where I do most of my catching up with Coronado. There are nothing but good memories (mostly) with that place. I spent a good 3 years of my life in this cafe, so I couldn't resist sharing with those of you who haven't been there before. This would be my 3rd home. :)



Well, I'm excited for going back to SF. I'll have a visitor for a couple days and we've yet to figure out what to do for New Years Eve. If you've got any suggestions, feel free to throw them my way. This will be my first "real" New Years Eve night, seeing as how all of the past ones had been spent at home in front of a TV with one other person, if I was lucky. The pending events will most likely be covered in the next post. Realizing that this post had little to no substance, I'll be ending it now. Until next time.

The Red (and white) Invasion

Yesterday was a lazy Saturday. Getting out of bed at noon has become sort of a trend with the tapering off of the school work load. I was enjoying it at first, catching up on sleep, but it's now left me restless and wanting to get out of the house and explore - what I've been wanting to do since the craziness of school began.

When the roomie and I finally managed to leave our warm little nest and our butts made it into the seats of 45 bus line, we got a nice surprise as we passed by Washington Square. I think that every Santa I've ever seen in my life x 150, had found their way into that park. Watching them hurl red rubber kick balls at each other, drinking and being merry, made me somewhat bitter that I had to work on a project for art direction and couldn't play with the Santas.

The picture below doesn't quite show the scope of Santas that were around, there were at least twice as many to the left of the shot that didn't make it in the photo, but it'll give you an idea.



After the Santa invasion, a game of pool, and the art direction photo shoot/photo shop tutorial that took place in Daniel's apartment complex, we headed over to the Brickhouse cafe and bar to see their 'Bite Size' art show, where they hosted a range of artwork from photography, illustration to mixed media. The pieces were all relatively small and well, 'bite sized'. A friend of mine had some of his work in it so we swung by to check it out as well as to see what the other artists had to offer. Without bias, my friend's pieces were still my favorite in the whole show. You can check out some of his ridiculously detailed/bad ass stuff here. Below is one of my favorite of his pieces from the show.



So now... I'll leave you with one last panda piece, appropriately named "Lazy Sunday" with Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg. The roommate and I can't get enough of these SNL digital shorts. Enjoy.

This little Panda moved to San Francisco.

This will be the first of many blogs to come. They won't be about anything in particular, just the observations of a harmless creature in a new environment. I decided that with all of the amazing little things I've seen and experienced in this new city, I needed somewhere to write them down, and to share all of the inspirational tidbits I've encountered since being here. In these short few months I've met so many wonderful people and stumbled upon little jewels tucked away from the crowded streets. I can't wait to see what else this city will reveal to me in coming 3 years.

So, with that, here is the first panda piece from me to you.




Somewhere between going crazy from the heavy work load of grad school, trying to catch some ZzZz's and wanting to enjoy the city, I decided to begin walking again. I think a more accurate way to describe it would be wandering up and down ridiculously steep hills. One day, maybe a week or so ago, about half way into purposely getting lost in the city, I found a playground hidden behind a short chain-linked gate and some greenery, somewhere on Greenwich walking East down Russian Hill. If it weren't for the small rusty sign posted on the wooden planks that guarded its entrance, I wouldn't have thought twice about approaching the gate. The facade looked more like an entryway into someone's porch, not to an abandoned playground whose company included wooden park benches, a basketball half court and large patch of grass.

Out of curiosity I walked through the sad little gate and found myself looking down a flight of stairs, out onto a plot of land about half the size of a football field. To my left was a lone bench on a wooden porch that over looked the playground to my right. I found it strangely beautiful, especially with its red and purple flower backdrop. At 8 a.m. I wasn't expecting to see any kids running around. I thought that I might encounter a few during my visit today around 2 p.m., but there were none. My only company was a couple sitting on the lonely porch, quietly chatting away while I snapped a few pictures before returning to my walk. Enchanting and nostalgic. It's my new favorite walking pit-stop.