crissy field: part 1

We cashed in a Groupon this summer to get our Christmas card pictures taken. We opted to have the photos shot at Crissy Field in San Francisco.  I love that we were able to get some beachy shots, some with the Golden Gate in the background and then just some good shots of all of us.

Side Note: Crissy Field is a perfect spot to take your dog if they are good off lease.  Barkley is not good at all off lease, but she still enjoyed it immensely.  You might ask how I know that...well, she's smiling in nearly every picture.  God bless this happy dog.  She totally stole the show.  The miracle of miracles ~ the pictures that Barkley isn't in, the photographer is actually holding her leash and taking the pictures.  Talk about multitasking, Beth at Dekker Photography is fantastic.

Here's a sampling of some of our favorites. I seem to have overloaded my allotted photo storage, so once I figure out how to add more pictures, I'll share the rest.  But as for now...
Enjoy!

field trip: hd buttercup

We are in the quest for a dining table.  (We've been on this quest for over 4 years now.) I am pretty sure this quest will never be realized and as long as we live in our apartment we will enjoy the perks of a fold up card table as our dining room table.  It actually does have its perks, and I should remind myself of these every time I curse the fact that we have been using a card table for 4 years.  I know I've mentioned it here before but occasionally if there is something good on tv or if it's a blustery rainy night and we need to be closer to the fireplace, we'll pick up shop in the dining room and set the card table up in front of the tv or fireplace.  This isn't something we'd ever be able to do with an actual table.  I should be happy.  However, my quest for a stay-in-one-place-non-ghetto-looking table continues... 

...and that quest brought us to one of the coolest furniture stores in San Francisco - HD Buttercup. This place is a wonderland emporium of tables, chairs and all fun things to decorate your house (hello! an entire wall of old trophies! woo-hoo!)  I would have stayed there all day measuring things with the free tape measure that they gave us when we asked.  (I'm easily pleased, just give me a measurement device and I'm set for the day!) 

Pardon the blurry pictures...this was the start of my droid dying.  Now that I have an iPhone however, watch out world, this girl is taking some pictures!

While we didn't bring home a table from HD Buttercup, I think eventually whenever that day comes that we have more than 3 rooms to furnish, we will be back.

(I think we might just be doomed to keep the card table at least for one more year.)
Oh well! Table for 3 by the fire please!
(Yes, 3.  Barkley sits by us at the table.  And you thought you had a spoiled dog!)

like toms, for your eyes

You know how when you buy a pair of Toms shoes, they donate a pair of shoes to someone in need?  I have never done that, but I did just buy a pair of Warby Parker eye glasses and the folks at Warby Parker donate a pair of glasses for every one pair sold. So I might not have just put shoes on a child in need, but I did just help them see better so that they don't stub their toe on a boulder...(I'm pretty blind, so yes, without glasses, I probably wouldn't see a boulder under foot.)

Warby Parker has an at-home try on program where they send you 5 frames of your choosing for you to try on.  Anywho, I'm super pumped about my new glasses. I haven't received my actual pair but I might have gone to 7-11 on Friday in my fake pair of glasses to buy a Mega Millions lottery ticket. The fake glasses didn't bring any extra luck...I was not a winner.  sadly.  I had such great plans with that 640 gagillion dollars I was going to win. 

Ok, back to my new glasses.  I'm blind and apparently in the last 6 or 8 years (I have no idea how old my glasses are. They are just...old.) have become more blind as my glasses just weren't cutting it anymore.  I guess I should have realized this when my contact prescription kept changing for the worse year after year but I never got a new pair of glasses. (mainly in just one eye - details people, I like details, therefore I don't typically hold anything back from you, like the fact that you really didn't need to know that one eye is deteriorating at a quicker rate than the other...my right eye.)  It had gotten to the point where I thought, huh, I can't read the score of the basketball games on our tv (in the past on our 19 inch non-flat screen tv, this was understandable, but not today when we are watching life size men compete on our 46 inch tv... ok, almost life size...you would think they were life size had you watched anything on our old tv...)

Anyway, the winning pair are the pair called Zagg - there are also the ones that I was wearing when playing "fun with mirror and camera" on the bottom right picture.  pardon the bad lighting...the game doesn't account for adjustments on the camera while playing the game.

Fun Fact:

Warby Parker is named after Jack Kerouac's personal journals named Zagg Parker and Warby Pepper.  Jack helped pioneer the Beat Generation and holds a special place in the heart of San Franciscans, particularly at City Lights bookstore - where the Beatniks met regularly post world war two.

book binding

I love my Ipad.

I love my Ipad's house. 

It's a Dodocase.  and it's made right here in San Francisco.

yep, right here.

well, not right here. they don't make it in my living room, but pretty close. someplace, I'm actually not sure at all. 

I read an article in the San Francsico chronicle about the 2 guys that started the company. 

there are a lot of young people that start companies in this town. There must be something in the water.

Me?

I just buy the things people my age invent.

like method soap

and this dodocase, which is the entire point of today's post.

it's pretty neat.

the map on the outside is a literary map of san francisco.

Doesn't the "property of" sticker just scream writing your name in red crayon?

I think I just might.

tiburon, ca

Sometimes it's good to remind myself that I live near this:

and then I feel lucky and thankful... because living by the bay is pretty neat.

...and if I were the least bit daring, I could drive a boat like this one below.  But I'm not daring. Not in the least.  Especially not when it involves water and rip currents and waves and sharks.  Nope, not for me.  I like to stay on the shore and admire. 

And with views like these, I could admire all day long.

These pictures were taken in the Tiburon.  A cute, little town that I'd been suggesting to Mike that we check out, and I'm sure glad we did.

a walk down Sansome

You know what's fun about a nice day in the city with a camera? You take pictures.  So let's take a walk down Sansome (which by the way, I've spent the last half hour trying to come up with a joke about Sansome and Goliath...turns out, I can't make up a joke, but I can crack myself up trying.)

If only I could find a street named Specifics, you know because of my blog name

 

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Pacific Coast Stock Exchange (no longer a stock exchange, but still a pretty sweet building, on the Pacific Coast - no less)

The end.

those french guys

You know those Impressionists of the early 19th century?  They are really, really cool.  A visit to the Monet exhibit in Chicago while in high school, got me hooked.  Our recent visit to the de Young museum in San Francisco only sealed the deal.  I would like to personally thank the Musee d'Orsay for closing up shop for a bit and sending some sweet paintings across the pond.   My love for Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Degas, and Sisley has grown immensely.  You know what the best part is?  There were so many amazing paintings when we went, but now there's a new impressionist exhibit at the de Young with EVEN MORE!   I'm so there. Only this time, we will not be attending during the last weekend that the exhibit is open.  Lesson learned my friends, lesson learned.

And, as you can see - the fun even started outside the museum when I made Mike take my picture with these plywood masterpieces. 

alley

I love a good alley...you know in that not-so-creepy-back-alley kind of way.  Just mere steps away from the hustle and bustle of shoppers on Union Square, there are beautifully quiet streets that transform you to far off places. The man pictured above can sing an Italian opera tune like you wouldn't believe. 

Just give me a good bottle of California wine, crusty bread & cheese, the man serenading me while I enjoy the sights and sounds and I'll be a happy camper.  (Oh yes, and the cute boutique shops can't be beat either.)

blazing saddles

Blazing Saddles. This could be the very best name of a company ever made in the history of the universe.  I loved the name so much that we didn't look at any of the other bike rental places in the city to compare prices of which place we wanted to rent with to bike the bridge.  You can rent bikes by the day or by the hour with Blazing Saddles. The bikes are nice and you can choose between mountain bike tires and the "street" type tire (i.e. 10 speed bike tire meets a rugged mountain bike tire).  I'd advise upgrading to the "comfort" seat.  I didn't realize that I got the comfort seat until about 30 minutes into the bike ride when Mike was cursing his bike seat and I was raving how great the seat was.  Little did we know we weren't on an even playing field. I had the barcalounger of bike seats while Mike could have been borrowing Lance Armstrong's tour de france bike.

Starting off at the west end of Fisherman's wharf, we were armed with a backpack full o' sustenance and the map included on the bike.  The map offers a fairly understandable route to get you onto the bridge (the gaggle of people you are following on the exact same bikes that we had and the signs on the bike path didn't hurt either.)

There were several hills that require you to work on your trek, but once you get to the bridge, it's smooth sailing.  I, however, am a bit afraid of heights and right about in the middle of the bridge it dawned on me, "holy bridge batman, I'm biking on the bridge and the ocean is RIGHT there!"  And then I looked behind me to see Mike leisurely biking about a football field length's distance behind me, just taking it all in. Apparently he doesn't have irrational fears of bridges or heights.  But really, the teal of the water is amazing. I had no idea how blue it was, coupled with the orange of the bridge and the color of the fog just spells San Francisco.

The fog was billowing into the bay while we were biking the bridge, but even with the fog, it was still an amazing ride.

Stay tuned for the second installment of blazing saddles where we make the decline into Sausalito and the sun shined so brightly I got the funkiest tan in all the land.

Go Cars

If you were to tell me that I’d enjoy something that involved putting on someone else’s used helmet and driving around in a three wheeled electric contraption, I would have said, you, my friend are insane. I’ll do that driving thing but I’m not about to wear a used helmet. I was a preschool teacher for two years and we had lice.

An epidemic of lice.

Moving on.  That little contraption was on the spend-y side of sightseeing operations in San Francisco, but totally worth doing once. I’m not so sure it’s worth doing when all visitors come into town. (I got away scott-free of the lice once, I’m not so sure I’d like to take my chances again.)

Let me get past my fear of head bugs and tell you about this fun Sunday afternoon activity we enjoyed with Dan & Megan. You can rent the go cars for 1, 2, or 3 hour tours (or any increment of time there after – they charge in 15 minute increments, but I warn you, if you are in this car for 3+ hours, your legs might not work anymore – the leg room is THAT spacious. Anywho, the amount of time you choose dictates the routes you go on. However, if you know your way around town (or can read a map better than me) you can ditch the GPS guided tour and take your own tour.

We did a little bit of both. The first hour was dedicated to the tour: China town, North Beach (little Italy), Union Square, Embarcadero and back to the Go Car store to drop off the car at the end of Fisherman’s Wharf. We did that, except we didn't drop the car off, we carried on for another hour. It was fun; however, the GPS wasn’t quite on its “A” game that day - telling us where to turn just after we went passed the proper street. (By the way, these yellow contraptions are street legal and drive with scooter like handle bars.)  And people will stare at you. It’s like you are a one car parade, or in our case, a two car parade. I’ll be honest, I waved. I like parades.

Back to our tour… so the first part was fun, the GPS lady gives some fun facts while you are driving past different significant places. The other benefit of doing the go cars is that Mike and I felt like we were able to see so many new things because you don’t have the roof of the car in the way and you can’t drive too fast so many places that we’ve driven past many times, seemed new and interesting.

In the 2nd hour of our tour (suddenly I’m signing the Gilligan’s Island theme song, and yes, I realize that was a 3 hour tour, but we already went over the fact we weren’t going to sit in the Go Cars for 3 hours.

I digress.

In the second hour of the tour we high-tailed it past China town, North Beach and Union Square to make it over to Alamo Square and the Pink Ladies (of Full House fame) and on the way we were able to check out Japan town and on the way back we sailed past City Hall (I love City Hall).

Word to the wise: between Union Square and Alamo Square there are a lot of hills. A lot. And, my oh my, they are steep! These little cars aren’t meant to scale some streets; as a matter of fact, I jumped out of the car once and ran up a hill to make sure that Mike would be able to get the car up the hill. The little engine that could chant was being said a lot.

[view of the transamerica building from north beach]

All in all, the Go Cars really are an interesting way to take in the city. We were able to see a lot of sights in just 2 short hours. The Go Cars can be picked up at 3 locations in the city: 2 different store on Fisherman’s Wharf and one spot on Union Square. You can also ride these Go Cars in San Diego, Miami, Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon. Check out their website for more info: http://www.gocartours.com/.

[city hall]

a day with nothing to do

You know what is so cool about living in the bay area? Well, let me tell you...when you have nothing to do, you jump in the car and are at the beach in no time at all. It's windy and cold but HELLO! It's the Pacific Ocean! Sweet!

So last Saturday, with nothing on our agenda, we jumped in the car and away we went to the ocean. The waves were great and there were quite a few surfers trying to catch a wave or two.

And then after about 15 minutes of watching the surfers, we become chilled to the bone and we needed to make the decision to either put on 12 more layers or just get back in the car and get out of the wind. Well, we decided to hit the road (because we are midwesterners that have totally become wimps) and go for a walk in the city. The weather was great and the crowds had gone home and instead of focusing on all the great people watching that you can do in the city, I took pictures of the buildings like this one below of The Palace Hotel. The Palace Hotel is a real beauty, some day, if you are lucky, I'll blog about the inside of this hotel. The chandeliers are to die for. I hate to leave you hanging but I don't have any pictures of the inside, so until another weekend excursion, you'll just have to be satisified with the top of the building.

San Francisco's Fleet Week

I've never seen an air show.

I've never been to Fleet Week.

Wow. Coolest thing ever.

[don't you think you would throw up if you did this? i would.]

[yikes! blue angels]



[4 jets that performed before the blue angels. they were really great.]

[this big plane moved with such grace]

[tall ship. this guy always is in the bay, but i just love it.]

The blue angels along with biplanes and some other jets entertained us for a few hours and it was wonderful. I thought that each trick was better than the last. People around me said, just wait for the Blue Angels, they are The.Most.Amazing. So we waited. We waited for a few hours in not enough clothing because I always seem to misjudge how freaking cold San Francisco's wind can be. It seriously could rival Chicago. Seriously. Anyways, the Blue Angels made their entrance and went directly over our heads. Never in my life have I heard anything so loud. So loud in fact, I felt as if I understood every dog that was cowering behind their owner. I cowered behind Mike for a moment. The Blue Angels made two or three passes and then were gone. We waited around for a half hour or so until a nice little Park Ranger told us to go home. The fog was coming in too low for the Angels to continue safely. The end. Too bad. Mike and I were pretty bummed, but understood that it needed to be done. We were just happy to experience the few minutes of Military awesomeness. Seriously, Fleet Week is awesome. And I also love to see all the sailors walking around. Such a great day.

If there were any weekend in specific that I would recommend someone to visit San Francisco, it would be Fleet weekend. Fall is so spectacular here. Yes, it's a bit chilly, but if you dress properly it is perfect...and aren't a wimp like this girl from Minnesota! This event was so cool and really celebrates the diversity of city, because you can really tell that this event really brings out the locals. The people watching in San Francisco is like no other place I've ever been and having hundreds of thousands of people to watch today at Fisherman's Wharf was just the reminder I needed to say, "Wow! Look at where we live! This is fabulous."