Dinner and a Movie

Although we had always known it was pretty awesome to live right on one of the most popular parks in town, the stars aligned on Saturday night and its awesomeness was skyrocketed to a whole new level.  To make a perfect San Francisco evening follow the following recipe:

Add 1 brand new mini-grill

 A very excited and often well prepared crowd

An awesome movie

and a handful of good pals

Mix well with a generous portion of alcohol and voila! a perfect Indian Summer night!

Looking Westward

Sometimes its easy to forget that we once again live in a seaside city facing West.  Theoretically, we should have 365 days of glorious sunsets over the ocean.  But then add one hefty dollop of the notiorious San Francisco fog that creeps into town late in the afternoon and add a healthy palette of grey to the gloomy Pacific beaches and you don't  usually get crowds of people clamoring to watch the sun sink down over the Western horizon.


Enter Indian Summer and a week of fog-free afternoons and you have a mad dash westward to catch big orange retire for the evening.

Our trip to Baker's Beach not only allowed us to discover a gleeful nude beach but also gave us a glimpse of one of our most popular, yet elusive residents: the Golden Gate bridge.  For those of you that have visted SF, you probably saw this ole gal covered in her traditional white shroud.

Never ones to feel constrained by traditional definitions of how things "should" be done, our sunset picnic for that evening consisted of Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches from the questionably sanitary Saigon Sandwich in the Tenderloin. Top that off with a little rice-banana-dessert-suprise, and you have a pretty perfect little Monday night.

Weird Frozen Goodness



Almost six months into our tenure here in San Francisco, and we have finally made it to one of the city's alternative food meccas.  Like most cities, there are a number of ice cream parlors that vie for the title of the city's best.  This particular title was not of concern to us- we were more interested in the city's weirdest.  And weird it was.

With rotating flavors such as foie gras, strawberry black olive, and boccalone proscuitto, Humphrey Slocombe's is certainly a unique place.  My personal favorite choice thus far is the Secret Breakfast- a mix of bourbon and cornflakes.  So next time you are in San Francisco, seeking a refreshing frozen treat, but just wish that there was more than a hint goose liver in your dessert, you know exactly where to turn...

Look Who's Here!

Libby, looked in a cell in Alcatraz

..and Tara, rocking an unknown 21 year old Californian's ID

Gotta Know When to Throw Down

Well one thing that's for sure is that San Franciscans don't really mind throwing down air-tight dance moves whenever and wherever the need arises.  Here are a pair of unsung local superstars caught in action:

PINK PANTHER

Dolores Park (a.k.a. Our Front Yard)

LITTLE GENERAL

China Town

King of the World on a Boat Like Leo

Pop Quiz:  What is the deepest lake in the U.S.and the 9th deepest in the world?  If you answered Lake Tahoe that would be incorrect.  But good guess.  Crater Lake in Oregon at 1,949 ft is the winner.  Tahoe is pretty weak at 1,644 ft deep, good for the silver medal in the U.S. but a loser-esque 16th place in the global rankings.  Despite its depth lameness, we decided to give it a whirl for Labor Day weekend at our friend Ali's place.  Turned out to be a pretty solid gamble.

The Host

The House

The Crew

The Bartender  

The Badass

Stay Tuned...

Hello faithful blog readers!  We have to apologize for our lack of writing lately, but we have been a bit busy.  I have found a contract position planning a fundraising event for the Bay Area office of KIPP charter schools, which has been very stressful, time consuming, and sometimes hilarious as I deal with lots of demanding personalities.  Here's an excerpt of a Monday morning email I received:

I mailed my invitations yesterday except for "Sally's." I told someone that she can't come but somehow her name was still on the list. Also, fyi, there were two sets of handwriting on the invitations, one was really nice the other looked like a child's, was that intentional? If not, you might want to check your staff/volunteers' handwriting before you have them address invitations. If it was intentional, that's another story.

Pretty standard stuff.

In addition to dealing with the random impulses of rich 70 year-olds, we have been doing quite a bit of traveling around our new home state.  While California is not as big as Texas (actual size comparison, pictured right), it is still quite a big state...  more posts to come on some of those travels in the very near future, I promise.

 

So, please stay tuned in as we work to post some new adventures of your two favorite traveling Texans!

 

Phantastic Voyage

Oh Yeah.  After all these years, all it took was moving to California to have Phish come out to visit.   Three shows at the Greek Theater in Berkeley and Lindsay was kind enough to invite me to all three nights!  What a catch.

So despite the fact that nobody is looking at the camera, these were our friends and concert companions over the three-day adventure.  You faithful blog-readers out there (assuming you still exist), may recognize Paul and Addie as our good pals from Cape Town.  For these two, 10,000 miles is not too far to travel for some good times.

Now I can't claim this guy, but I was impressed by his love for Quincy.

No my camera didn't improve mid-concert.  This comes compliments of some talented photographer that showed off some fine smuggling skills by sneaking in what must have been some truly fancy optical equipment.

What an awesome and action-packed three nights.  Most people would say that three nights is surely enough to get one's fill, but not the case.  Less than 24 hours after the third Greek show ended I was boarding this beautiful prop jet on my way out to Colorado for two more nights of music in Telluride.

Unable to afford a $1,000+ ticket to fly directly into Telluride's legendary and horrifically scary mountain-top airport, I had to fly into nearby Durango and catch a ride the rest of the way.  Luckily, Steve was there to save the day. And not only did he get us to the Sunshine Campgrounds right outside of Telluride, but he treated us to a free display of his outdoorsmans skills and crafted a top flight Colorado campfire.
   

Meanwhile, Chad was camping out with all the Phishies littering Telluride High School after catching a seven hour ride from Denver.  Not to shabby of a place to pitch a tent, but Steve had hooked us all up with a place to stay for the next two nights that was a touch nicer.

We headed up the mountain via the local gondola commute to Mountain Villiage.

Steve cashed in on his local ties and hooked us up with this beautiful mountain sanctuary.

What a group and what a balcony view. 

Not too shabby .  A big thanks to our wonderful hosts and former Telluride residents, Ali and Kevin.

So as nice as it was, our mountain house wasn't where the action was.   Back down the gondola...

 ...and into downtown Telluride.

Free Karl Denson show to get things started.

Great show but soon enough it was time to call it quits with the free music.  In the words of one of my favorite redheads (who may or may not be pictured above): "why get something free when you can pay for it".  Yeah I know that doesn't normally make sense, but in this instance it was the right move. 

What a place to pre-game.  Yes Rocky is wearing a tie...but not just any tie, a limited release from one of America's top designers at Pearl Southern Couture.  If you haven't heard about it before, check it out.  Girl's got talent.

And yes that is a feather in Steve's hat.  In short, he lost a bet, but became a legend.

And finally the music...not a bad week in the life.

Crawl to Walk

This weekend, I held down the fort in SF while Jared continued his tour-de-Phish in Colorado and continued onto Dallas for his 10th high school reunion.  Although I am sure that I would have enjoyed the awkward moments that Jared certainly encountered reuniting with the Class of 2000, I had important work to do: drink and dress up in a ridiculous outfit- all for a great cause.  Last Halloween weekend, a friend from high school, Kendell Hall (pictured above, right), was in a terrible car accident that left her paralyzed from the chest down.  Since that time, she has made an amazing and incredibly inspirational recovery that has allowed her to regain full arm movement and progress toward walking again!  Her determination and hard work has led to features on CNN news and Anderson Cooper.  Learn more about Kendell and contribute to her recovery fund at www.help-a-fwend.com .

 

To help cover the costs of Kendell's rehab program, her family organized a pub crawl, "Crawl to Walk" in SF this weekend.  The pub crawl was jazzercise/workout themed as a tribute to her intense daily physical therapy sessions.  High school friends Whitney Ashley and Nicole Zaccanelli traveled up from LA for the weekend, happy to embarrass themselves and practice drinking endurance in support of Kendell. 

I am not sure how much we raised from our cut of the bar tabs, but from the amount of silliness going on, I would guess it was pretty substantial.  So here's a big cheers to Kendell, the Hall family, and to the purple stretchy pants that are now a part of my wardrobe!

The Finer Things in Life

A recent excursion to the De Young fine arts museum allowed me to showcase the impressive cultural offerings of our new city and the importance that fine arts play in our lives here.  

OK, I can't continue any longer with this charade.... it was free day at the museum and I thought it would be more fun to view the impressive collections with others that were sure to be as equally clueless as I.  In actuality, with our artistic knowledge combined (my "mastery" of Latin America + Addie's obsession with colonial America + 2 kids with cultural parents + Michael's eclectic college coursework), we could follow along fairly well.

The actual structure of the de Young is equally impressive as its collections and we braved the crowds to check out the viewing tower, which overlooks Golden Gate park and part of city.  If I had to describe the structure, I might say that it is, "Constructed of warm, natural materials including copper, stone, wood and glass, the new de Young blends with and complements its natural surroundings. Ribbons of windows erase the boundary between the museum interior and the lush natural environment outside, and four public entrances segue naturally from the park’s pathways, welcoming visitors from all directions."  What is really crazy is that the museum's website describes it in exactly the same way!

Never ones to rush the finer things in life, we took the opportunity to stroll the rose gardens after leaving the museum and were moderately impressed with the array of varietals and some of the clever hybrids the gardeners had engineered.

After a tranquil day viewing lovely specimens of natural and human creation, we looked forward in anticipation to the beer, fast food, and jam band music fueled weekend that was to come.

Southern Visitors

Look who's here!

Two of our favorite zany characters from Cape Town, Paul and Addie, are visiting the Bay Area on "business."  Between lectures at Ivy League schools and making human DNA a less mysterious world, Paul has managed to squeeze in no fewer than five Phish shows out here on the West coast.  Good thing Jared requested a week off from work for musical reasons.  In the meantime, Addie and I will be filling our time with Cape Town non-profit gossip, comparing SA and CA wines, and losing at Pictionary.  Stay tuned for post-concert pictures and adventures....

Primero Aniversario

That's right, one year ago, your favorite traveling Texan team officially tied the knot. And what a year it has been... we have lived in 3 cities, crossed the equator 6 times, visited one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, eaten about a hundred tacos (including one with cow brains yesterday on our actual anniversary.... don't ask.) and shared memories with new and old friends alike.  Thanks for helping make it such a great year and here's to many, many more!