Not as Hard to Find in Real Life

Welcome to the 99th annual Bay to Breakers 12k race/festival/costume party. A few weeks back we teamed up with some of our new friends to form a massive gang of everybody's favorite candy striped characters: Waldo and Wenda.

Turns out we weren't the only ones with this genius idea. Flocks of Waldos flowed through the city streets that Sunday and tied  with bananas and jazzercise chicks as the most popular costume. Fortunately the perrenial favorite for most common costume, the old naked dude, was limited by chilly weather.  All in all it was an amazing introduction to the zany culture of our new city.  And just to validate that this is actually a race I figured I would highlight the winner.  No suprises here, but it was won by a Kenyan. Congrats to Sammy Kitwara who ran roughly 7.45 miles in 34 mins (pictured somewhere below).  Not sure how many Five Hour Energys that guy drank, but that is insanely fast!

 

Anyways to close, I'd like to show you some of the more colorful participants and hopefully inspire all you loyal readers to block off your calendar in order to join us next May for the 100th edition of this grand tradition.

 

Peanuts & Crackerjacks

Peanuts & Crackerjacks- those aren't quirky nicknames we have made for ourselves in our friendless state. And no, it's not a cut-out folks, Jared was really at scenic AT&T park on Saturday to enjoying America's favorite past time.  Although we didn't get to see the one home run of the game that went over the fence and into the water, it was still a pretty nice little Saturday activity.

Blood Traitors

Goodbye tiny spaceship, cactus, and oil rigs.  We will not miss your terrible design, but more what the plate symbolized in this seven-character, vanity plate-obsessed state we now inhabit.  

Hidden Food Foe

Beware health-conscious eaters!  There is a new danger lurking in the refrigerated aisles of your local Whole Foods. For shoppers mindful to nutritional content, there are certain food items that are considered generally safe: fruit, vegetables, lean meats, yogurt, whole grains, etc.   Other food items are filled with danger: "homemade" baked goods, ice cream, breakfast sausages, cream-based sauces- you get the picture.  But don't be lulled into this type of thinking- you must always be alert, lest you fall into a similar fat-filled trap as I did last week.  

Probiotics, Greek yogurt, healthy bacteria- all the health rage, right? Wrong! Inside of this little Greek Gods yogurt container promising calcium, protein, and healthy intestinal flora was almost half the DV of saturated fat!  wtf?!?  And in a product that is purporting to be a healthy snack.  Appalling.  I really almost puked as I read the label on the back of my just-empty cup.  This completely negated all healthy choices that I had made for that day- for the week that matter.  And it didn't even taste like pizza!

 

Greek God? Not with this in your diet. I can assure you that this is not what Adonis was eating as he was working on this six pack.

Eggplant Parmesan

At some point in time, someone told me that cooking was an art and that baking was a science.  Connecting this adage to my surprisingly resilient sponge-textured cake ("Baking powder? Baking soda?  Same thing- right?") and my inherited inability to cook bread without setting off the fire alarm was not difficult.  In general, when I look at recipes in magazines and cookbooks, I usually see them more as "suggestions" than strict guidelines.  Clearly, I fit more in the "artist" category than the "scientist."  For this reason, I have always been kind of scared of the oven, seeing it as this intimidating appliance that required compliance to rules and special instruments to master.  Nevertheless, I have had a lot of free time on my hands and have recently been trying to work within the stringent rules that the oven requires.  Following a recipe to the tee is probably never going to happen for me, but lets just say that I have been taking some of the recipes' "suggestions" a little more seriously. 

One of my more beautiful creations of late was this lovely eggplant parmigiana.   Created with homemade bread crumbs (not because I am super crafty, but more because I didn't decide that I was going to create this masterpiece far enough in advance to purchase actual breadcrumbs) and eschewing Martha's 7000 calorie suggestion of 2 cups of shredded cheese, this little guy came out looking and tasting pretty good.  Enjoy the fruits of my boredom....

Sunday Morning Mystery

I am going to prelude this post by saying that this is probably something that my mom wouldn't want me to post about.... saying that it would "embarrass the family" or something like that.  Something similar to the time when I accidentally brushed my teeth with hydrocortisone cream or the time when I sprayed myself with industrial strength bug spray meant for use in an outdoor space 6 hours before human use.  But having little to no pride, I am going to publish anyway.  For you, my reader.  Its all for you.  Because if you can't laugh at the misfortune of others, what can you laugh at?

On Sunday morning before heading out to a much-needed breakfast taco brunch, I noticed some discoloration, redness, and broken blood vessels on my chin.  I instantly freaked out.  I don't particularly mind having bruises the size of my hand on my leg, strange growths on my wrist, or random rashes, but I simply do not like when things are wrong with my face. Not cool.  After running through the various options of what might have caused this outbreak with my personal nurse (aka mom), we came up with the following possible triggers: 

1. The water from the mountain spring I drank on the hike the day before.    
                    A) Was there pee in it? Possibly.

                    B) Chemicals? Who knows.

                    C) Bacteria? Probably.

2. The leaf that I blew my nose on while hiking.  Seemed like an eco-friendly option at the time, but then again some leaves cause angry outbreaks...

3. General clumsiness.  Always a possible culprit, but in this case it wasn't really an option as I certainly would have remembered jacking my chin on something hard enough to leave a mark.  Nevertheless, it was not ruled out as my tendency toward clumsiness overruled the reliability of my memory.

Over breakfast tacos, I contemplated possible causes while Jared made sure to keep a safe distance from me in the event of any possible infectious diseases.  When I took a sip of my water, revelation struck!  I knew what caused it!  The night before, Jared had very inconsiderately passed his hiccups on to me.  Not a very gentlemanly thing to do. One of our companions suggested her tried-and-true cure of drinking water out of a glass from the opposite rim while leaning upside down.  Having already tried holding my breath and the whole sugar on the tongue thing, I was game for anything.  I secured my lips on the opposite rim of the glass while leaning over and attempted to drink.  Unfortunately, gravity and the pressure of the drinking motion caused the glass to stick to my face.  Ergo..... popped blood vessels! Discoloration! Redness!  Elementary, my dear Watson. Elementary.

On the usefulness of following directions

This weekend Jared and I decided to get out into the great and beautiful wilderness that surrounds the city of San Francisco.  We settled on the closest and most popular hiking area, Mt. Tam, located just across the Golden Gate bridge from the city.  With hundreds of different trails with varying levels of difficulty and duration, we figured this was a good place to start. 


We settled on a trail that would take about two hours and lead us through a Redwood forest (exhibit A) and then along the side of the mountain that overlooked the coastline (exhibit B).

                                 exhibit (b)

             exhibit (a)

Unfortunately, we missed the turnoff for our desired trail and ended up adding on an extra hour of hiking.  This wouldn't be a huge deal normally, except for the fact that this extra hour was somehow completely uphill and we didn't bring enough water.  Being the ever-resourceful mountain woman, I solved the water problem by filling our bottle from the trickling mountain stream.  I figured that I would rather possibly drink someones pee than have no water at all and be dying of thirst (didn't bring up this thought process with Jared, BTW).  Despite the small detour, we made it back to civilization safely and learned our lesson about trail maps and extra water.

Performance Update: New Activity Alert

A surprising number of our readers have expressed interest in receiving continued updates regarding my progress toward my weekly performance metrics.  I am sorry to say that unless a spreadsheet master (aka Jared) starts updating my numbers in Excel, you are not going to be seeing a chart each week.  So from now on, I will just be adding anecdotal updates and tagging any posts detailing activities that would count toward achieving said goals under "performance metrics." 

So, here's the first update:  I have a new activity that I feel is productive in two of my performance categories(Apartment Organizing and Physical Activity): gardening! 

We have a small garden behind our apartment complex that has over the past weeks/months/years turned into a frightening and dangerous jungle world.  I have spent the last week or so trying to make the garden a place that is accessible to humans and can be entered without fear of impalement by the various thorns and branches jutting out into the walkway. 

For those of you who know me well, you know that I cannot accomplish any task without creating a few enemies along the way. Please meet Enemy #1:

The dreaded thornea shitheadius (its real Latin name, I swear). I have no fewer than 3 splinters in each finger from this little branch of fun, despite the fact that I was wearing gloves the whole time. Not only is this little guy thorny, but he has very deep roots. It also apparently haunts the local forests because this picture was taken in a national park nearby.  We are not friends.

Never one to let my enemies hold me down, I dominated that little branch and have turned our garden into a happy urban retreat.  The fact that no one will probably ever use this area since we have a huge park across the street is insignificant. The point is that one must triumph overall enemies, big or small.

Who Says XXXXL Shirts Are Out of Style?

Not Justin "Guess What Ladies I Now Play Bass" Cohen.  I apologize for tearing open those ever tender scars that Cohen formed when he departed Dallas, but the D.C. celebrity was recently spotted flaunting his vintage J. Hughes "Farewell Tour" tee on the slopes of A-Basin.  Notice the off-center lettering ...

and the über-exact profile logo....

Man that is one badass shirt.

This Just In...

Stephen "Cuddles" Carleton and Justin "Hey Ladies I Can Play the 90's Chicago Bulls Intro Song On My Keyboard All Night Long" Cohen have amazing vertical skills.  Not sure where they got it from but they sure were kickin ass that day.

Me on the other hand would have been lucky to out jump Uwe Blab in my early 90's Pearl Jam attire.

Performance Metric Dashboard

In order to oblige the request of my lovely and results-oriented friend Eva, I have created a dashboard to report on my progress on various activities since my move to San Francisco.  Here are the results for this week:

SUMMARY: Effort levels have been quite varied in all categories other than maintaing contact with old friends.  These trends reflect swings in my motivation levels relating to activities such as job hunting, finding new friends, organizing the apartment, and staying physically fit.  The category of money making/ spending requires additional explaination: my primary income generation method this week has been via the sale of household items on Craigslist.  Monday, I brought in $150 and Wednesday I brought in $175.  Unfortunately, on Monday I also succombed to mall kiosk miracle products, negating the day's earlier sale.

Hopefully this will please our readers that are more interested in performance metrics and proven results than sunset pictures and intoxicated escapades (both regular features on this blog). Any suggestions for forecast goals or future action items can be refered to my accountablility manager, Ms. Eva Gascue.

Breakin' the law!

No one has ever accused me of blindly following the sometimes-arbitrary suggestions called "rules."  So when we noticed that our apartment rooftop could be accessed via a creaky, poorly lit, back stairway we forged ahead despite signs prohibiting passage ("it is a violation of your lease agreement to use the rooftop for anything other than emergency purposes").  From an early age, I realized that things are usually forbidden because some people hate fun and excitement.  Our rooftop is no exception as it offers fantastic views of the city skyline and the undulating expanse of the city's neighborhoods.

Luckily, on Saturday night we did have an emergency- a beautiful sunset that required picture taking- and had a valid excuse to access the rooftop.  Enjoy the fruits of our rule-breaking emergency.