Tag Archives: Life
On Food and Memory…and Nutella.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about food and memory lately. There’s something about the tastes, scents, and smells that unlock moments long forgotten or shoved aside to make room for dealing with reality. Some of my strongest memories of my time in Italy are of us in various bars drinking the local drink, or crowded into a room eating the best butternut ravioli I’ve had in my life, or of my mother, grandmother, and myself eating pasta while watching the sun set along the canals of Venice.
It’s true that sometimes what takes my mind back there is a tourist on the street chatting away who says something about “la foto” and I fall in love with the perfect male/female disagreement in that statement. And sometimes when I’m stressed by work and my skin shows it I long for a week by the lake in Perugia again, because I never washed my face properly and I was sweating all the time, but somehow my skin looked perfect and smooth and you could wear a sundress without freezing your buns off, too.
But usually it is a glass of white wine on someone’s deck, or the sounds and smell of the espresso machine, or a tiny little fried doughnut that takes me back to a time in my life that continues to shape my perspectives to this day.
So naturally, I am a HUGE fan of a favorite both here and abroad….la Nutella. The best crepe I ever had was at an Ikea store in Italy, and Nutella was the star of the show. I am getting to that point in my life where I feel guilty just eating it…but I have been known to consume whole (tiny) jars (that double as juice glasses) in one sitting with a bag of pretzels.
Instead of just eating it plain, I find myself incorporating it into whatever I can. Nutella and banana sandwich? Sounds good. Nutella-peanut butter cookies for the holidays? I brought them to three separate events last year. Nutella toffee brownies? Diabetes in a pan, but they are always a crowd-pleaser. Oh and there’s a cafe near the train station that serves a Nutella latte…but I only take the train on holidays when the cafe is closed. It’s on my SF bucket list to try that thing out though.
On a rational level, I know Nutella is not any every day food and that it’s kind of terrible for you (like most things, if you over do them), but my mind can never say no to it. (This is why I hide the Nutella behind all my canned tomatoes.) I think it’s because Nutella is associated with so many things that are all wrapped up together…first it was this weird thing that this super posh girl I knew fed me once on some bread at her house (in my house, we had sugar toast, but this girl spoke French so it seemed natural that she ate differently too), then it was something I ate on crepes in college…then I ate it with pretzels when I was stuck indoors with a broken foot in a foreign land for a month. It’s a symbol of what I had yearned to become as a child – cosmopolitan and always exploring new things – and a part of a culture that I love, and comfort food to boot.
Living in a foodie mecca like San Francisco, I have the opportunity to try new tastes and cuisines all the time. I’ve grown to like the sour taste of Ethiopian inerja, I can kind of cook thai curry now, and I’ve discovered that I can eat a lot of El Salvadorian pupusas. But it is only when I have an experience or a memory to tie food to that I really love it.
What’s one of your favorite dishes or confections? What memory makes you love it so much? I’m curious to know.
How I Got a Model House-Worthy Room
On the 4th of July, this is what my room looked like. Most of my friends were shocked…let’s just say that while I adore modernist design, I’m not sure how anybody lives in those houses. Seriously, where do they keep their stuff?!
To what did I owe this sudden turn in minimalism? A bunch of furry little mice.
I had seen a mouse or two in the kitchen in recent months, and the landlord patched up some holes that they had found in the kitchen, and I kind of thought that was that. Case closed. Except it wasn’t closed. First, my roommate saw one come in through our kitchen window one evening. She screamed and the piercing shriek seriously freaked me out. The next night, I saw one run THROUGH MY ROOM.
Holy shizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
This thing just went to a whole new level. I spent the entire night living in terror. See, I was convinced that they were having dance parties all over my apartment. (They kind of were – we found evidence of them all over my room, and all up in our pantry.) Suddenly, all the noises that I attributed to living in an older place with neighbors (“oh, the building is just settling”) seemed like mouse attacks. Were they headed for food? Scurrying through the wall? Nesting in my shoes? Oh holy shiz, one is running behind my desk towards the kitchen!
I pride myself on being able to handle most situations pretty well. Possums, ants, mold and other gross stuff, and earthquakes I can all handle. But when it comes to mice, I am terrified. I know they don’t want to eat me (not while there is a ton of food around…and I live over a restaurant so it’s safe to assume they can feed off of non-humans easily enough), but I hate how they sneak around…and how they are so danged LOUD when they are in your walls…and most of all, how they can carry DISEASES.
I know that I hate mice more than the average person…mostly because I never had to deal with them as a kid.
Growing up in the country, I saw coyotes walk down the middle of the street in the afternoon (nothing like that image to make mothers fear letting their kids play outside), chickens got massacred by both coyote’s and dogs, possums totally got into our garbage, gophers were all over the place (as a means of eradicating the population, my dad likes to asphyxiate them, so he lights their holes on fire and it looks like we have a gnome war going on), and at one point some ‘coons tried to live directly over my bedroom. I swear I thought those things were gonna fall through the roof during one of their spats! Between the farm cats and the owls and everything else, I never saw a mouse in or near my house growing up! There were way too many other predators!
So when I saw a mouse IN MAH ROOM at the age of 24, I had no clue what to do. My home felt totally invaded.
My hearing seemed to be extra sharp, and every noise I heard – mouse related or not – made me jump out of my skin. I started playing hulu non-stop at night to try and drown out the noises – but somehow, every few hours, I’d hear something that would make me jump, and then get all sweaty and make my heart race. This was not a good way to live.
There was a plus side to all of this…..my room got a makeover. I threw out so much extra clutter and things I had been holding onto. I disinfected and dusted everything, I re-washed all my sheets and clothes, and organized what was left of my crap. I had so much stuff I was “going to use later” or craft “when I get the time” or “post on craigslist when I take photos”. All of that stuff was unceremoniously thrown out.
Of course, I couldn’t bear to pick up anything that could possibly have a mouse’s nest in it, so my dude had to do a lot of the “heavy lifting” aka opening things up to make sure they weren’t full of any live or dead mice.
But the next day I SAW A MOUSE scurry by my bed (one of my “walls” is set of french doors, so they can just run through my room to get to what they want in the kitchen). As it turns out mice are most active in the wee hours of the morning – when I’m waking up to go to work.
I set up so many traps…but mice are really good at avoiding them. From what I’ve gleaned off the internet, mice are pretty damn smart! But their sense of smell is very strong (it’s not just those three famous mice that are blind) and they don’t like peppermint….so then my house, especially my room, became a peppermint-scented island. Let me tell you, it isn’t the most relaxing scent for humans, either.
After over a week of seeing mice, finding evidence of them, cleaning up, trying to find and patch up holes, setting traps, and spraying peppermint….my roommate finally caught a live one and found the hole that it came in through. Success! I know there was more than one mouse in my place – they are different colors (ew, I’m freaking myself out again) – but at least we were making progress.
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve seen a mouse but I’m pretty sure they are either lurking in the walls, waiting for the peppermint to wear off, or hitting up my neighbors’ apartments (which I feel bad about, because nobody should have to deal with this, if you ask me). But the terror is mostly gone, and I can almost have a good laugh about it…almost.
Have you ever had a situation that made you suddenly purge and clean out all your stuff? While I don’t want to relive this whole ordeal, I definitely feel like there’s less stuff weighing me down at home. Having more space and everything off the floors really makes me feel like my room is a place where I can think, unwind, and let thoughts swim around until I make sense of them. It’s a nice feeling.
Renegade Craft Fair 2012
On Saturday, I got to go to the Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco with one of my college roommates and general craft enthusiast, Rachel. We had so much fun ogling at all of the indie craft goodness…and of course we came up on some cool buys.
Let’s start with how GIANT this thing was….no seriously Herbst Pavilion at Fort Mason is huge!
My camera died, so all these photos are taken with my not-so-great iPhone 3GS. I think it's time to upgrade my phone!
We got there right as it started so we didn’t run into huge hordes of people until right as we were leaving….I don’t know about you, but in my experience, crowds of people + cute/shiny things to look at = bumping into things left and right. We all get distracted by something that catches our eye, drift toward it, and forget all the people around us. So getting there early may have been the best idea I had all week!
There was a good mix of different things – some food/snack companies, some jewelry, some housewares, some print/card shops, some clothing, some kids stuff…and all of it was high-caliber offerings. No glittery pinecones for sale.
Of course, most of the things I bought were paper goods.
Hillary Bird must know I love Caturdays!
I wanted to buy all of the cards and prints from Hillary Bird, but I settled on just three (one has already been sent out to a friend).
I know so many people who are having babies.
I also picked up a Bay Area produce calendar from Krank press to keep in my kitchen! They make them for about a dozen different regions, so that you know a) what to plant and b) what’s in season each month. Nifty!
I found out that Kate from Little Things Studio is from Mississippi and loves the incredibly temperate San Francisco weather…luckily she has an Etsy shop so I can order more of her prints! I’m not showing you what I bought because it’s a gift for someone who (might) read this!
Poor lighting and focus. Self-portraiture on the phone is not my strong suit. But you get the idea.
I decided that it’s a good thing my ears aren’t pierced because I loooooved a bunch of earrings that I saw…I did get this AWESOME necklace from VOZ Clothing and Art. I even wore it to work the next day, even though I really shouldn’t wear dangly things to work. Ha ha.
All I have left to show for my purchase is this photo, cause I only resisted for 36 hours before eating this thing up.
There was one find that I totally didn’t expect though: meeting the girls from AWESOME BARS! They are based here in SF, and they make these really amazing granola bars. They are vegan and gluten free, and taste really great. I thought their name was a little audacious at first, but really they are just telling the truth. I will never eat Chewy bars or those Kashi GoLean bars again. (Well, I have half a costco box of Kashi bars, so when I finish the box, I’m never eating them again.)
I also found out that some local coffee shops sell Awesome Bars, so I decided not to buy a whole bunch of them at the craft fair…a total mistake since I want to eat them all the time now!
Nomnomnom. So tasty.
All in all, I had a great time geeking out over indie businesses and crafts. But I have to say that I felt that there were some things that didn’t quite match my expectations. A lot of the vendors were from out of town – NYC, LA, Portland, etc – which I wasn’t really expecting. On one hand it was neat to get to see stuff from all over in person, but on the other hand I couldn’t help feeling like the event didn’t feel local, and when I think of indie fairs, I think local. I had been hoping to connect with local craftspeople, and hopefully network with some of them. I follow a lot of blogs and shops that are not from around here, but for some reason I don’t follow that many from the Bay Area, so I was hoping to find some shops that were from this part of the world.
Even when I did see some amazing local work that I fell in love with, the people running them couldn’t care less. I spent five minutes looking at jewelry in one booth, and the owner never looked up from her iPad. No hello, nothing. At another booth, I was literally waving money at someone so I could buy something (there were two people running it and one person was processing a Square transaction), and they didn’t even acknowledge me. I’d have been cool with a “we’ll be with you in a moment”.
I finally realized that a lot of these vendors don’t sell in person that often – the advantage of platforms like Etsy and BigCartel – so the customer service skills hadn’t been honed all that well. Unfortunately, all that work that went into creating great products and a good-looking booth was overshadowed by that interaction, which left me feeling like they couldn’t care less if I wanted to buy something or not.
(But! This wasn’t true for every place I stopped in at! Like I said before, Kate and the Awesome sisters were so friendly! And there were tons of others that I didn’t buy anything from but were still lovely.)
In a way, these experiences made me feel intimidated about my hopes of selling at a craft fair. There are so many details to think about – business/licenses, product/inventory, payment, packaging, publicity, booth design/asthetic, AND being a great booth “host” at all times, even though you’ll be there allllll day without breaks? That seems like a LOT to live up to!
For now, I’m just going to bask in the glow of all the great stuff I just bought. Christmas in July! It exists!
May in Instagrams
May has come and gone in a big, food-filled blur…this month I’m definitely going to have to learn how to eat out less…or at least cook at home and eat in the sun!
- I renewed my love for consuming books via the San Francisco Public Library — seriously the best library system I’ve used. I read The China Study and started a book about Bay Area sports legends and Rob Lowe’s autobiography.
- My friends and I went to Japanese Heritage Night at the Giants. The bleachers are the best seats in the house – the cheap price means more money for fries and beer!
- I went to Alamo Square with some friends. The park is most famous for being in the intro credits to Full House.
- We had some Mondrian-inspired fun…mini photo shoot.
- My allergies knocked me OUT. I missed two days of work due to them, and took a renewed interest in my health as a result.
- Driving through Pac Heights reminded me that in San Francisco, summer starts in May. Just look at that view.
- I celebrated 3 years with a lucky dude.
- Other than vegan cookies, this avocado-tomato-spinach-bean-quinoa-cilantro salad was my favorite new recipe find of the month. I think I need a new name for it though.
- I took some time to get re-acquainted with all of the urban wonders of downtown San Francisco.
- Patterns and pillows…what’s not to love?
- My new job has enabled me to continue my obsession with post-it notes.
- Sometimes you gotta treat yo’ self…I was really missing Italy.
I’m pretty sure the month’s photos are a mix of food obsession and declaring my love for the City by the Bay. And since San Francisco is a food destination, it’s basically just one big love letter to the city that I’ll willingly pay half of my paycheck to live in – I’ve traded in a car and most of my disposable income budget to do this, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Nutritionally, I wavered between hyper-vigilant and careless/lazy on the whole vegan diet. It’s so easy to just care about convenience and taste when eating out — but when I am at home I’ve gotten pretty good at making vegan meals. I didn’t buy meat, eggs, or dairy at the super market in May! Most of that would-be expense went into lots of beans, vegetables, and the latest “treat yo self” splurge – soy yogurt.
Work was pretty tumultuous and I had a hard time striking a good work/life balance — but I’m okay with that for now. I’m still young and change — good and bad — excites me. I’m nowhere near satisfied with where my life is (not that I’m incredibly unhappy – it’s just that no 24 year-old feels like they have established a solid career, life, etc) but as long as there is change, there is hope that I can grow and change and things can move in the right direction. It’s hard to remember, but life has shown me time and again that every disappointment and rejection has led to something better…sometimes it can take months or years to see it though.
On the plate for June:
- At least one run at batch cooking and freezing meals (I don’t know why but freezing my own food seems weird)
- Finishing the last of my Paper Gatti red tape (I’m so sick of lines at institutions right now)
- My dad’s birthday/father’s day
- A trip down the coast to see my family
- the Northern California Soy & Tofu Festival (okay that was last weekend, but it happened in June!)
- Reading 3 more books
- Get a haircut – last one was in October
- Run or walk at least twice a week – allergies kept me indoors too much in May
Things Are Afoot
I have a whole bunch of different things to share about my life, which has gotten quite busy outside of this blog.
I have a new job! For those of you that know me, it’s the same company and location…just a completely different department. Most of my old job functions belong to other people now. I’m excited to learn new aspects of the business and put my analytical strengths to work, but it’s also bittersweet because it’s not really a creative role…the further I get from design school, the more I realize how design and creativity are central to what makes me thrive.
Soaking up sunshine is also critical to my happiness.
New jobs kind of mean less free time in the beginning…but I think that this will actually give me more creative juices to put behind MY business. Less of my artistic brain-space will be taken up with the creative things I used to do at work…I’m not great at math so I could be wrong, but I’m thinking this translates into some more space for my own projects!
On the red-tape side of things: I’ve paid up my fees for the SF County fiscal year that starts in July; and I’m getting more of that “legal” stuff taken care of this week. Things are getting ready to roll!
In the short term, I’m more focused on getting my job down; so the blogging will probably be happening less frequently. (I hate people who apologize for not blogging often, so I won’t apologize but I will tell you this infrequent posting bit won’t become a habit.) I still need time to eat, shower, and sleep after all! I’ve fallen behind on stalking other peoples’ blogs and twitter as well; I’m looking at it like an opportunity to soak up inspiration from the people and places near me instead of looking to the ‘net for it.
I’m still looking forward to trying to batch cook some food after my next pay day…the food budget is kind of gone until then! Of course I also have to eradicate the mouse population in my building before I do this as well…I saw one out of the corner of my eye while eating lunch today. It totally killed my appetite. City dwelling is still not something that I have mastered.
What I Ate: Dosa on Valencia
If you follow me on twitter, then you already know that I celebrated an anniversary on Monday. I know I don’t talk about him much, but the Dude as I call him and I have been dating for three years!
It’s kind of crazy to think about where we were three years ago and where we are now. I’m so grateful for all of his love and support, especially in the past few months as I’ve taken on more with work, with my community life, and with this blog and my dreams. As much as I like to cook, he always makes sure that I’ve got something to eat if I’m too tired/stressed/broke/busy to fix dinner. It might not always be what I want to eat, but hey, I appreciate the fact that he won’t let me starve!
Speaking of food, we decided to celebrate by doing something a little different and eating at a new restaurant. I usually have a difficult time getting the Dude to try new things (still can’t get him to enter a strictly vegetarian establishment) but we both had a really fun time eating new food!
We went to Dosa in the Mission district. Dosa specializes in Southern Indian cuisine, including the dosa which is essentially a savory lentil crepe. I’ve been to Dosa on Fillmore before – my uncle introduced me to it when he came to San Francisco. His family is from the southern part of India and according to him, most of the Indian restaurants you see in California are North Indian and/or Pakistani — which not only has different flavors, but also totally different dishes. At any rate, the last time I had a dosa was almost two years ago (I remember because the World Cup was going on…my how time flies!) so I was totally ready to try them again!
We started out with some celebratory drinks and some chip-like crackers.
I was starving so we tried out a chaat (small plate) of pani puri. It’s an Indian street food snack and you have to carve a hole out of the puff balls and stuff it yourself — playing with your food brings out the kid in all of us! I was surprised at how much the Dude liked assembling his food.
We got the masala dosa……this thing was HUGE! Twice as big as your average french crepe. The Dude loves crepes so I knew this wouldn’t be a hard sell once I actually got one to the table. We ate this thing up and it was soooooooooo good. The masala inside had so many layers of flavor and the sauces that came with it just really brought it over the top.
This is the poppyseed prawn curry. One of the main differences in South Indian curries, I found out, is the use of coconut milk. It gives them a much lighter flavor and, in my opinion, is a cross between the Thai curry and Indian curry that one typically finds in California. It was a little bit spicy, which went well with the coconut rice.
One of the great things about Indian fare is that it is practically vegan by default. A lot of dishes are made without meat, and the ones that are never feature the meat as the main ingredient. I went ahead and ate the prawns in our curry because I haven’t had them in ages, but it would have tasted just as good without them!
It looked like the sun is blazing into the restaurant, but truth be told…the fog has finally come back (my flat hair is a major indicator). I’m hoping that it will make my allergies calm down a little bit, because my sinuses are KILLING me!
An Afternoon at the Museum
[Hello little blog - I know I haven't been writing as often as I had been. My health is making me step away from the computer a bit but I am confident that it's nothing permanently debilitating!]
When some friends came from out of town a few weeks ago, they suggested that we go to the Walt Disney Family Museum. They are huge Disney fans (annual passes to Disneyland!) and really wanted to go. Personally, I was convinced that this was just a way for the Disneys to reach into my pockets a little bit more while pushing their own propaganda…which is probably why I hadn’t been to this museum yet, even though it opened in 2009 and is in my backyard.
The museum itself is located in the Presidio area of San Francisco — it used to be an Army base until it was decommissioned a few years back. Now it’s open to the public, but it’s still very much its own place. I used to think nobody lived out there, but apparently there are houses and condos and whatnot, as well as a bowling alley, bank, YMCA, and of course a museum! It’s still a wooded area, unlike the rest of “urban” San Francisco. There’s great views of the Bay and the Golden Gate bridge as well.
My mother’s great aunt was stationed there at one point in time – she made her career as an Army Nurse – and my mom got to visit when she was a kid. She was really impressed that people would stand up and salute her aunt wherever they went (I don’t remember the specifics, but Aunt Maude was pretty high ranking).
Anyways, getting back to the Museum. I was kind of skeptical because admission was $20, but in the end it was worth it.
The museum focused on Walt Disney’s life and career. I’m familiar with the works of Disney, but not so much with the things that Walt himself accomplished when he was alive. (Walt Disney died in 1966, twenty one years before I was born.) In learning about his parents and family life, I realized that his family’s story is not unlike all of the other hopeful people who have come to America in search of a new life. His family photos look like MY family photos. Of course, he went on to lead a radically different life than my great-grandfather did, but the origins are much the same.
One interesting coincidence: Disney’s first daughter is named Diane Marie, which also happens to be my own mother’s name! (The president of the company I work for also has the same last name as my mom’s family, but I’m pretty sure we aren’t related.) I’m going to take this opportunity to mention that Hallmark would not have approved of my forgetting to mail my mom’s mother’s day gift until it was too late to get it to her on time – even though I had made it a month ago – but I’m her daughter every day of the year, so I’m pretty sure she’ll get over it.
No photos were allowed inside the museum, but the bathroom decor shows you how notably "un-disney" the decor was - I was expecting Mickey Mouses on everything like at Disneyland!
One of the other things that I really got out of visiting the museum was realizing how much of a creative and an entrepreneurial spirit Walt Disney had. Creatively, everything was worth investigating. If something didn’t work out, he just moved on to the next thing. By the time he was my age, he had already started a cartoon studio – and watched it go bankrupt. At one point he felt like he was too late in the cartoon game to break into it and develop a career – which in retrospect he was completely wrong about!
As a 20-something in today’s world, I feel a lot of pressure to be on some sort of a “career track” and it seems that wherever you are when you turn 30 is an indicator of how the rest of your entire life is going to go. I have seen more than one friend stress over this as they approached the big 3-0. I also find myself wondering if I will ever get to achieve my goals – I graduated from college three years ago and I feel like I’ve made so little progress toward my big “career”. At the same time, I have enjoyed learning new things and embracing where life takes me. While Walt Disney’s death was unexpected and a reminder that life is short, the sheer number of different things he was involved with and the huge amount of successes he had gives me hope that I too will be able to live a life full of rich and varied experiences.
There seems to be an endless number of things that can stop me from achieving my own entrepreneurial goals – red tape, money, finding time, marketing, being “original”, and all of the negative voices I encounter – but visiting the museum really helped to remind me that I have everything it takes to make it possible. And that’s worth at least one $20 bill.
Take Me Out To The Ball Game
So apparently I have RAGING seasonal allergies. I didn’t develop them until about a year ago, so when they hit me this time I kind of didn’t realize what was wrong with me. I also haven’t found a drug that helps alleviate them without nasty side effects…boo. At any rate, because I didn’t know that all the crud flying around in the air was making me miserable, I went to a Giants game. If I had known, I might have stayed home…what a shame that would have been!
I attended Japanese Heritage Night at AT&T Park with some friends…it was so much fun!
We hit up a local restaurant for some brews and some (non-vegan) fish tacos. They were delicious!
AT&T Park is right on the water…it’s definitely my favorite ball park. I’ve only been to three of them, but this one has the best views and it’s fairly new as well. Although most places aren’t so cold and foggy all the time, which makes the overall experience here a little iffy some times. Luckily the weather was great!
I found out that the bleacher seats are where it’s at. People were heckling the opposing team’s outfielders (although I was a little bit sad when some fans chose to harass the opposing player about his Japanese last name – surely there are other things to pick on that aren’t xenophobic or racist?), kids were jumping around all over the place, and because the tickets are cheaper out there the beers were flowing pretty freely.
We were down for a long time but the Giants finally got some runs in. The Brewers got in another two runs in the 7th inning to take the game, but we were pretty excited about the runs that we DID get in!
We had some of the famous garlic fries (ate them all before I could snap a photo!) and I also had an Irish Cocoa!! I loved it, but I am also worried that I am turning into my mother. She loves Irish coffee.
Of course, I forgot to get a photo of the whole crew (there was a group of 30 of us). It wasn’t until the game was over and the sea gulls were dive bombing for food that I remembered to get a picture….most of the group had already ran for cover!
Succulent City
Happy Monday…I’m getting back to the grind after a weekend off. I’m tuckered out from all of the festivities, so I’ll go into detail about them later this week.
Succulents are so “in” right now and I have always thought they were kind of cool…my grandparents live in the desert and while their home is predominantly populated with Joshua trees (not quite as pretty) I think it is pretty neat that anything can thrive in the desert!
One of the neighborhoods I was in had tons of planters on the sidewalk with succulents in them…here are a few of them!
Love the pink edges on the outside of each leaf.
This one's a bit older..but not mature! Googl-y eyes AND a sombrero!
There's a whole tiny world going on in this bucket.
My friends gave me a mini-succulent home (made out of a cork!) so I’m on the hunt for a tiny, pretty succulent to start in my house…looks like I have something on my to-do list for my next day off! I don’t really know much about them so if you have any suggestions on the selection and care of these things, please let me know!
April in Instagrams
I cannot believe that it is already MAY!!! Insane.
- I had some good food with a friend who wears rad t-shirts.
- I also had some good brews with more good friends at the Nikkei Student Union 10th anniversary event in Berkeley.
- I slept through the day for almost half of this month…when you add it up, I worked 6 overnighters and spent an additional 7 days recovering.
- Luckily I didn’t forget what the sunrise looks like.
- I spent a considerable amount of time waiting for trains to pull up to the platform. (It was also Earth Day in April – which reminded me that transit is annoying but I am also living up to one of my idealistic goals that I set in college – to support public transit whenever possible.)
- I also spent some time above ground – running along the embarcadero – which offered some great views.
- I tried to work out some more. Key word: tried.
- I went shoe shopping and had a difficult time deciding between these two shoes. (First world problems.)
- I started shopping for Mother’s Day (right around the corner!)
- I also took in some new sights in the Financial District.
- I also took up being a part-time vegan! (Food from Juicy Lucy’s.)
- Some vegan days were more desperate than others. (Almonds, dried apricots, and Rockstar are all vegan!)
All in all, I really can’t believe the month is already over. It went by faster than I realized, probably because I spent over a week sleeping during the day! April brought a good round of great weather AND my vitamin D treatment seems to be working now, so I experienced a lot less chronic fatigue this month (YAY!).
I found out that my older cousin (on my dad’s side) and my younger cousin (on my mom’s side) share an April birthday – I cannot believe that the younger cousin turned 18. His mama is my mom’s youngest sister, so she was the “cool young aunt” when I was growing up…this officially makes me feel old!
I also cleared a business-y hurdle (business registration) and plan to tackle a few more in the coming month. I spent some time discussing how ridiculous it all is with a friend who owns his own business in San Francisco.
In terms of my blog, Paper Gatti sponsored its first blog (dianapantz!) and through that Paper Gatti had its first giveaway (it’s open through tomorrow!! go enter it now! I’m giving away stuff before my shop is even open!). I also saw traffic go WAY up in response to my DIY canvas tutorial – exciting! I also completed another DIY project – a tshirt scarf – and completed a couple more afterwards as gifts.
May promises some fun times at a Giant’s game, and I have some fun times with friends lined up. Cinco de Mayo is coming up, as well as Bay To Breakers – both events bring some extra fun to the city. And don’t forget…mother’s day is in May as well!
