Volunteering

Last Friday, Shane and his team at work volunteered at a soup kitchen!

That's Shane in the top right

I don't really have any details other than Shane had fun with his friends. I just wanted to share his good deed :-)

Weekend, in Review

This weekend we ate at a great little restaurant called Dottie's True Blue Cafe.  This restaurant has been on our radar ever since September when we came to SF to visit.  Someone told us it was a San Francisco must-eat and we were going to eat there for breakfast one day, but the line was crazy long and somebody (me!) got impatient and hungry and cranky and made us leave.  So we finally ate there on Saturday and OMG it was delicious! I got my traditional over-easy eggs with ham, home fries and buttermilk dill toast and Shane got some sort of gruyere and pepper scramble with chili cheddar cornbread and jalapeno jelly.  HEAVEN.

 

Then we did a bit of shopping.  First I made Shane stop and look with me at all of the street vendors (i LOVE street vendors) and he bought me the coolest/cutest ring for $8!

I like the other ring he bought me more though ;-)

Next we headed to Niketown for new running shoes. Since Shane and I have been killing it at the gym (upcoming post about our fitness and diet regime coming soon), we decided we were ready to invest in some shoes with better support and voilà...

Please note Shane's insane-o calf muscles

I also saw this super cool shirt that made me miss old Millsaps friends badddd...

So we finally walked back to the BART and it was surprisingly dead! We had a whole BART car to ourselves, and craziness ensued (inspired by this clip from Tosh.0 - our new fave show)....

Again, please note the ridiculously large calf muscles. They look like tumors or something (in a good way lol)!

Hope everyone has a great week!!

Life Lately

It's been almost a week since my last post and a full month since my last "Life Lately," so enjoy this half-hearted attempt at keeping you informed and entertained...

It rained...

 We ate these things for dinner...

Porkchops!

Bruschetta!

Chicken Parmigiana!

Pot roast!

I saw this Crazy on the BART...

I ate a lot of fruit....

Archie made these faces...

 

I saw these things while walking to the Post Office...

Somewhere in Chinatown

Transamerica Pyramid

Jackson Square

I ate this cupcake...

Happy Thursday!

Our Morning Ritual

As I've mentioned, Shane and I are serious creatures of habit. We eat at the same taqueria every weekend, we eat the same thing for breakfast everyday, etc.

Well, yet another of our rituals is the work sendoff.  I invented this during my brief unemployment period (because I had nothing better to do with my time), and now that I am back in the workforce (yay!) and I leave before Shane does, he indulges me....

First, Archie watches you walk down the stairs to the front door..

Once you get halfway down the steps, you hear Archie bounding across the living room (we call this a puppy stampede) and out to the balcony to say goodbye one more time...

And finally, as you walk to the BART station, Archie waves his tiny puppy paw and says "Bye Friend!"

San Francisco Segway Tour!

My friend Kennedy was just recently hired by Electric Tour Company as a segway tour guide. Oh. My. Gosh. You cannot imagine my excitement.  I have always wanted to do a Segway tour! Saturday afternoon, she had some room in her tour group so I was able to go and watch her in action!

First of all, segways rule. They are so fun to ride and are surprisingly easy too.  I was so nervous that I'd fall or roll off a cliff or something, but alas, I survived!  AND now that I've officially mastered the segway, I can go on the advanced tour that goes down Lombard Street, up to Coit Tower, and various other super cool places.

Secondly, for a girl who moved to the Bay area just a few months before we did she sure knows her stuff! I was seriously amazed at how much cool San Fran knowledge she has and dang do I live in a cool city!  I have compiled a list of a few of the most noteworthy San Francisco factoids that I learned during the tour:

• Cable cars were invented by the Scottish man who invented cables.  They operate by having a continuously moving cable underground that the car grips onto and releases at each stop.  The cable moves at 9.5 mph which means... you can beat it if you're racing it on a segway!
• Many people believe that Joe DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe at the famous Sts. Peter and Paul Church because they had a ton of photos taken there on their wedding day, but they actually got married at City Hall because the church would not recognize Joe's divorce from his first wife.
• The tour guides at Alcatraz tell you that no one ever escaped from Alcatraz, however, there were 3 men who made it off the island by making a raft out of raincoats.  They were never found, but their raft and clothes were all found. Sounds like an escape to me!
• The verb "Shanghai" (as in: "He was Shanghaied") originated in San Francisco during the gold rush.  People would kidnap (or "Shanghai") men and throw them on a ship headed to far-off locales like Shanghai to gather more people to return to America and dig for gold.
• Bonus factoid: Kidnappers would identify men in bars as having crew experience (and therefore be ideal for kidnapping) if they were eating with their elbows on the table because that's what you'd have to do at sea to keep your plate in front of you when the ship was rocking back and forth.
• Russian Hill is not named for the Russian population here (Russian Hill doesn't actually have a significant Russian population).  It's named Russian Hill because when people were settling here in the 1800's they discovered a cemetery with Cyrillic (Russian) writing on the headstones.
• During the gold rush, people most often arrived to California by ship and were in such a hurry to get to Sacramento to dig for gold that they'd often abandon them in Yerba Buena cove.  Some ships just rotted there, some were turned into hotels, saloons or brothels, some were stripped for materials, but all of them were eventually covered over with sand when the coastline was extended.  Today, builders have discovered many ships beneath the city (one was discovered as recently as 2005!).  There are "Buried Ships" plaques all over the city to denote where they have been found.

Now that you've all learned a little something, I'll conclude with some photos.  The first two are just sightseeing photos I took on our segway breaks (you're not allowed to take photos while on the segway for safety reasons).  The rest are self-explanatory...

Fisherman's Wharf

Golden Gate Bridge

Read it and weep!

Before & After: Our Dinner Party

Shane and I had the pleasure of hosting our friends Kennedy & Dan for dinner on Friday night.  Shane has been talking forever about cooking a huge beef tenderloin, but we've never had an excuse to do something so large (since we exclusively cook for two and neither of us particularly care for leftovers). 

Well, we finally decided to go for it and share it with our friends.  It was such a wonderful night of wine, amazing food, and lots of laughs.  I give you the before & after...

Before...

Shane is the master of meat

I am the master of décor

and After...

Nom nom nom nom....

What's new with Archie?

If I had a nickel for every time somebody asked me this...

Just kidding. No one has ever asked me this because he's a dog and has no life.  However, I'm here to tell you what's new with Archie anyway... via photos!

This is Archie's precious puppy face...

This is Archie's new friend, Jewel.  Jewel is Kathy-the-Dog-Walker's dog.  Don't ask me about the puppy shoes -- I have no clue...

This is Archie's new ENORMOUS bone. We bought 10 of them, so we'll see how long that lasts us...

This is Archie's bone in his crate, where he keeps it (for protection, obviously) on the rare occasion that it leaves his mouth...

This is Archie's scratched-up nose.  No clue how he did this (though it didn't seem to hurt him or anything) -- that dog gets into everything...

This is Archie's puppy paw! He likes to sleep outside on the deck chairs when it's sunny...

This is Archie being spoiled rotten with a leftover T-Bone (under close supervision of course)...

FREE STUFF

Dear blog readers,

I love free stuff and I love photos.  If you do too, check out this deal - VALID TODAY ONLY - for 25 free prints from Walgreens.com.  Seriously, totally free.  Just upload your photos at their website and enter FREEDEAL at the checkout.

Enjoy!

Playing Tourist

Three weeks ago we had our very first visitors! Our friends from Florida, Buck & Sheena, came to stay with us for a few days (yes, that DOES mean that our guest room is finished which also means that yes, you CAN come visit now and yes, there WILL be a blog post with before & after photos coming soon!).  Some of these photos have already been on facebook and if you're one of our parents (hi moms and dads!) you've received printed copies as well, but for the rest of our readers, here's a few photos as we played tourist with our visiting friends!

Union Square

Chinatown

Chinatown

Embarcadero

Bay Bridge

Smiley faces

Ferry Building

Tulips at Fisherman's Wharf

Carousel at Pier 39

Alcatraz

Pier 39

Skyline, from Pier 39

Fisherman's Wharf

Golden State Warriors game

Silly faces