Tourist in My Own Town -- Part III

-- Sunday morning and we are up and at 'em for dim sum! We arranged to meet Chris and Sharon at a place in Millbrae where none of us had been before. With a name like "The Kitchen", we were skeptical about the dim sum part. "Sounds like Denny's", I remarked to Chrissy, but we headed out anyway, excited to see Chris and Sharon (whom we had randomly tracked down in Sevilla, Spain a couple of years earlier and whom Chrissy hadn't seen since).

-- (As an aside, it cracks me up that two pairs of friends named Shari and Chrissy... and Sharon and Chris are hanging out together. Confusing much?)

-- As it turned out, we needn't have worried about whether The Kitchen served dim sum or not. We walked into a huge open restaurant with zillions of tables and every single one of those tables filled with laughing, eating, chatting groups of people.

-- I smiled at the hostess and before I could even open my mouth to say "Hi, we're meeting some friends here", she quickly jerked her head to the left and said "Over there. Around corner."

-- Sure enough, there's Sharon and Chris, tucked away at a small table for four, hidden behind a wall and jammed into a corner. We look around and see that we are literally the only table of non-Asian diners. We laugh as it becomes crystal clear how the hostess immediately knew which table we belonged to.

-- The food was excellent and we ate way too much... When the bill came, Chris picked it up and said, it's $45. I handed her three twenties and she looked at me and laughed, "No, $45 for ALL of us!" Sweet! Given how much we ate, I couldn't believe this, but I wasn't going to argue.

-- The girls gave us some suggestions of what to do in the city that afternoon, so we jumped back in the car after dim sum and headed back to SF. Parking at the Civic Center Garage, we wandered through Hayes Valley and enjoyed all the small shops and the fun architecture.

-- We stopped at Blue Bottle Coffee since it had been highly recommended by our brunch mates and I had a hot cocoa while Chrissy had the real deal. Both were delicious. On to Miette (gorgeous sweets shop) where we were good and just window-shopped... no purchases!

-- Outside one store, we stopped to talk to a guy who was pulling a wagon with two Daschunds. As Chrissy photographed the two docile subjects, our buddy told us the story of how he rescued Vinnie and Guido (no joke) and explained how they get a sponge bath every morning and they either ride in the wagon, in the basket on his bicycle or in his old school Cadillac. Vinnie, Guido and their Dad were all execptionally sweet.

-- We then walked down to the Haight where I wanted to stop in at the cafe "Love 'n Haight", but I honestly couldn't come up with another excuse to eat yet again.

-- We headed home around 6:00, made pasta for dinner and then .... yep, you guessed it, went out for ice cream! (You thought we'd broken the Golden Rule, didn't ya?)

The next morning, I dropped Chrissy at the airport and we agreed to do another girls' weekend before too long... I wonder where our next destination will be....

Tourist in My Own Town -- Part II

Today is the day for some exercise! (As if hiking up and down SF hills on Friday for 10 hours wasn't a decent calorie-burner.) We decide to head to Half Moon Bay for a lovely walk along the coast:

-- First things first... off to Target to buy a new knapsack (where in the world is my old knapsack?? I think it's been lost in the shuffle from SoCal to NYC and back to NoCal) and provisions (ie. snacks) for the trip.

-- We head up the 101 and exit at the Half Moon Bay exit, admiring the beautiful scenery as we wind our way towards the beach and find a parking spot. We're lucky that it's another absolutely gorgeous day and the marine layer has almost lifted already.

-- We set out on the path and complete a full 5 mile loop, chatting about everything and nothing and taking photos of anything interesting that appears. We pass many other walkers, runners, bikers and a TON of people on horseback. I love how freindly everyone is when out walking on a sunny, Saturday morning.

-- As we approach the turnaround point, we catch a whiff of something absolutely putrid just as a girl comes running up from the beach, doubled over and wretching as she goes. After a few more steps, we deduce that there must be a dead animal on the beach and we don't bother going any further (or else we'd BOTH be wretching, too!)

-- On the drive in, we had spotted a promising looking Mexican restaurant on Highway 1, so after trekking back to the car, we took our now famished selves to "Tres Amigos" and pigged out on enchiladas, tortilla chips and salsa. Yum!! It was still packed at 2:00 in the afternoon, so it must be a local fave.

-- We drive back down south and hit "Sugar, Butter, Flour" in Sunnyvale for a long overdue cupckake! (See, I told you that every day on our travels had to be punctuated with something sweet at some point!)

-- As we completed our treats, we looked at each other, thinking the same thing... time for a nap! So, off we went back home where we grabbed a few z's and then roused ourselves for giant salads at The Prolific Oven for dinner. (Our trade-off for the cupcakes earlier in the afternoon!)

Tourist in My Own Town -- Part I

This weekend, my good friend Chrissy came up to the Bay Area for a visit and for some long overdue girl time. I was excited to spend some time with her, not only because we're great friends and it's been too long, but also because Chrissy and I have traveled together in Europe (a couple of times now) and it's always just so easy and so much fun. We are born travel buddies for sure.

I took Friday off from work and here's how our day panned out:

-- After a last minute conference call in the morning, we struck out for the city and even managed to find our destination parkade without too much fanfare. We trekked up Grant Avenue through Chinatown, poking around in various little shops and making our way to North Beach and Telegraph Hill.

-- Get a Facebook notice from Chet that he will be in town "for one night only!" and are we free to grab a drink in the evening. Yay! Another long lost friend descends upon the Bay Area! We make tentative plans to meet up and agree to update each other via FB or texts as the day unfolds.

-- Grab lunch at North Beach Pizza (yes, again!), this time having the vegetarian special. Just as good as the carnivore extravaganza from a few weeks ago.

-- Set off again, up over the hill and down towards Bay Street where we can cut over to Pier 33 where we can...

-- Visit Alcatraz! Chrissy had the foresight to book us tickets in advance (see, I told you I love traveling with this girl!) and we spent a good chunk of the afternoon cruising around a formal federal penitentiary. If you go to Alcatraz, I highly recommend the audio tour. It takes about 45 minutes and it's done extremely well with the voices of old inmates and guards telling the story of The Rock. At one point, the audio guide invites you to step into one of the isolation cells ("The Hole") and close your eyes in the darkness while he explains the feeling of living in darkness and solitary confinement for days on end. Creepy-dot-org for sure.

-- After Alcatraz, we walked down The Embarcadero to the Ferry Building where we indulged in some incredible gelato. (When Chrissy and I travel, we ALWAYS get ice cream or something sweet at some point in the day -- It is our Golden Rule of International Roaming and shall never be broken.)

-- Next stop, shopping! We poked around in a bunch of stores in the Westfield Mall and elsewhere until we worked up an appetite and then ended up at Cafe de la Presse for a glass of wine and filling french dinner.

-- I text messaged Chet and let him know we were running behind and that we were still in the city. He was running behind, too, so we agreed to meet at Lavande in Palo Alto around 11:00 or so for a quick drink and for the opportunity to hear Chet's fun (but sometimes rather gross) stories about what latest "delicacy" he had to eat on a business trip to Taiwan. (Cow eyeballs, anyone? Careful with your fork, they're slippery little suckers!)

-- We said our good-byes, headed home and fell into bed, happily tired from a fun-filled and busy day.

Things are Looking Upward

After a roll of really bad movies and bad luck even with live theatre, I think Special K and I may finally be clawing our way back to some level of palatability and respectability as far as our cultural endeavours go. (At this point, anything that doesn't focus on any part of male anatomy, either real OR fake, would be an improvement.)

This past weekend, I made a quick 48-hour trip down to Orange County and on Saturday night, we hopped in the car and headed to North Hollywood in search of some culture (minus the petri dish).

After an unsuccessful attempt to talk our way into one play (Special K: "I know my assistant made the reservations last week"), we went next door and were happy to see that this particular theatre was featuring a Ray Bradbury play, entitled "Falling Upward".

I do the mental math: Well-known playwright/author with a good track record. Check. I've actually read stuff that he's written. Check. Well-known indie theatre in the entertainment capital of the world. Check. Available seats 5 minutes before curtain. Check check check. It all adds up to me.

As we buy our tickets, the agent says, "I have two tickets left in the front row.... you'll be sitting just a few seats away from Mr. Bradbury."

Do what now, y'all?

I'm still processing this last bit of info as Special K tugs my arm and leads me into the theatre. And sure enough, there is Ray Bradbury sitting at the end of our row, in a wheelchair, accompanied by a couple of folks.

Completely star struck, I am thrilled when he introduces the play himself and describes how the time he spent in Ireland (while writing the screen play for "Moby Dick") generated the humanistic observations that allowed him to write the three short plays that were ultimately fused to create "Falling Upward".

The play takes place in Heeber Finn's pub (a real place that Bradbury frequented) and you immediately get the gist of the environment when you see the sign on the pub wall, "No women, no fighting, no swearing". And indeed, this is the watering hole, gathering place and sanctuary for a diverse group of Irishmen. One of the key characters (and narrator) is played by Pat Harrington -- I did not recognize him until Special K said something about "Schneider" and then it all came rushing back to me. Harrington played the building sup on "One Day at a Time" way back in the day. What a trip to see the swarthy, macho Schneider as a soft-spoken, elderly Irishman.

While the play didn't exactly have a solid plot line, the characters were likeable and fun, the dialogue was clever and the situations were authentic and believable as part of this motley crew's day to day routine. (Think of British films like "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain" or "Waking Ned Devine" and you'll have a sense of the quirky nature of the characters and the overall situations.)

And of course, I introduced myself to Mr. Bradbury at the intermission and imposed upon him for an autograph.

And now the fire has been fanned once again and I am jonesing for a trip to Ireland. (Get ready for some Guinness, Special K!)

Exit Stage Left.... Please!!

As I mentioned in the previous post, Special K and I managed to take in a bit of culture in SF while he was last here... and if you're thinking bacteria in a petri dish when you read "culture", you wouldn't be that far off.

After some serious scouring of both online and print sources, we finally found a play in a small, independent theatre that had boasted a number of pretty positive reviews in various media. No matter that the theatre itself was in the shadiest part of San Francisco -- it's the low rent that attracted the starving artists, right?

We always know that any performance can be a dud and that the Dud Quotient rises substantially as you get into the 49 and 99 seat theatres, but with some positive feedback actually published about this particular play, we were feeling pretty confident that this would be a good one. (And we've been on a bit of a bad roll lately with films and performances, so we also figured that the universe owed us a favour.)

But alas, the universe felt it fitting to punish us just a little bit longer.

We spent far too long watching three desperate Hollywood wanna-be characters (and one mostly unconscious character) throw each other around a stage, roll around in fake vomit (which sure looked real) and Funyuns (just as gross as the fake vomit) and generally torture each other both physically and emotionally. And then there were the strap-ons. (Sorry, Mom!) That's right, I used the plural form.... not just one, but TWO... generally not visible, but rather used to make a, um, point about the efficacy of viagra mixed with a cocktail of illicit drugs.

The play has indeed garnered some positive reviews, for instance "astonishly witty dialogue and riotous situations" from a pretty well-known media outlet, so I won't skewer too much here, but leave it at the fact that Special K and I were checking our watches surreptitiously (hopefully) fairly frequently after intermission (and before, if you must know). We could have stayed out on the streets of the Tenderloin and probably seen pretty much the same show.

(The show's run ended just after we saw it, but if you want to know what it was, shoot me an email.)

Tender is the Night

A couple of weeks ago, Special K managed to swing a bit of an extended visit to my NoCal pied-a-terre and while the weather was decent (i.e. no rain) on Saturday, we decided to head up to San Francisco and enjoy the city.

The only concrete plan we had was to visit North Beach Pizza for lunch (again with the pizza!). Special K had been many years ago and loved it and I had heard from countless people over the past few months that it was indeed 'za bomb. We were definitely not disappointed. We were seated along one of the windows where we had a great view of the top of Coit Tower and so we ordered the "Coit Tower Special" just because (no vegetarians in this duo) . In a word? Amazing. (We had lunch around 2:00 and still weren't hungry at 10:00 pm that evening.)

After pizza, we hiked (you don't merely "walk" on those steep streets) around the hills of North Beach and Telegraph Hill, made it to the Coit Tower lookout and then walked down the stairs towards the Embarcadero where we visited the Ferry Building (a must-see for SF visitors!) and then on to Hotel Griffon for a glass of wine. We had the vague notion of wanting to see some theatre that evening, so while sipping on our vino, we put my iPhone through the paces, trying to find a local theatre with a show that sounded good, but that wasn't a broadway epic style musical. (As an aside, it was nearly impossible to find good, reliable, up-to-date theatre info either online or even in the local freebie arts newspaper.)

We finally found something that sounded interesting and hopped in a cab to head over the box office. From my iPhone's map application, I gave the driver the cross streets of our destination.

He looked up at me in his rearview mirror. "You sure that's where you want to go?"

"Yes, definitely -- the theatre is in that block."

He sighed. "Ok.... "

A few minutes later, we jumped out of the cab and turned the corner to head towards the theatre, and that's when I realized that I had unwittingly requested that we be dropped off in the heart of the Tenderloin.

The Tenderloin is a small, dense neighbourhood in downtown San Francisco that, in spite of its rich history and recent revitalization efforts, still remains an area of squalid conditions, homelessness, crime, drug sales (and abuse) and prostitution. And we walked right smack into the middle of ALL of that. We picked our way around the homeless and those under the influence and once we checked in at the theatre box office, we hustled down towards Market Street to kill some time in the shops before curtain.

After the play, we spilled back out onto the street and while the neighourhood hadn't seemed THAT bad in the daylight, the darkness brought out the most sinister, shady and sleazy elements, and made you not want to linger on the street discussing the show you just saw. (There were also other reasons you might not want to discuss that particular show, but I'll save those for another blog post.)

As I instinctively reached for Special K and hissed "Hold my hand!!", two grubby men seated on the sidewalk repeatedly nattered "Yeah, you BETTA hold her hand! You BETTA hang onto that one!"

You BETTA believe he will! And if he won't, I most certainly will!

Facebook -- Time Travel for the Rest of Us

All of us are well acquainted with Facebook's ability to teleport us into the past as we reconnect with high school and college buddies, former colleagues from long-forgotten jobs (and companies) and and other random people you thought you'd never see again.

But tonight, Facebook has also managed to transport me into the future.... three hours into the future to be precise! I posted a comment to a Group wall and Facebook tagged it as posted "at 1:48 am tomorrow". (Peep at the screen shot.)

Holy cats! Call Doc Brown and Marty McFly!

I wish I'd had the time advantage LAST week when I was picking my bloody brackets for March Madness.

What a fun little situation when your computer's clock is still set on Eastern time (even though you moved from NYC about six months ago), but you're connected to the internet via an IP address in the Pacific time zone.

The Facebook Theory of Relativity. A whole different space-time construct.

Bracketology -- I Need a New Area of Study

Latest updates:

- Siena, Cleveland State and Arizona were big bracket busters for me, beating Ohio State, Wake Forest (!) and Utah respectively.

- My irrational emotional attachment to my alma mater cost me valuable pool points. (Darn it, you Bruins!)

- Looks like Syracuse is about to cost me more valuable points.

- At least my Final Four are still in tact, but there's no way my total number of possible available points is enough to put me back in the lead at any point.

At least I had the foresight to capture the screen shot that showed me in the lead for one brief, glorious moment!

Bracketology

The month of March has a lot going for it. It's home to the first official day of spring (on which, incidentally, it snowed in NYC this year as Mother Nature's firm reminder that no matter what the calendar says, she's still in charge), and in fact, it's really the key transition month from winter to spring (the whole "in like a lion, out like a lamb" thing). It's also a BIG month for birthdays as my dad, Special K's brother and half the Kaboodle office can attest.

AND it is the calendar home to the perennially exciting NCAA men's basketball championship tournament. (And when you think about it, it could ONLY be called March Madness -- February Fever or April Action just don't pack the same punch.)

This year, in support of the madness, we set up an office pool and all made our picks across all the various brackets the day before the tourney kicked off and we've been closely following the 1st round progress over the past two days. (Ready for 2nd round to begin today!)

While I have always enjoyed college basketball, I am now feverishly following each game, even to the point of having the Siena/Ohio State game on mute on JetBlue last night. (Darn it, O-H-ten, you guys cost me a point!! Good thing I didn't bet on you to get any further than the 2nd round!)
And because I know this moment is fleeting and short-lived (the game by game shifts in bracketology are swift and dramatic), I just had to post a screen shot showing that at one point in time yesterday, I was actually leading the pool with 21 out of 24 correct picks! (And then Ohio State, Utah and Wake Forest all crumbled... and now Mad Mamma's Ballers have eclipsed me!)

Stay tuned for more updates!

(Special thanks to Special K who debated the picks with me, discussing who's hot, who's on a roll and who would be a killer upset. What a team we make! On and off the court!) ;-)

That's What I Meant to Say

Does your cell phone have an auto correct feature? And does it sometimes wreak havoc on what you're trying to say to someone via a text message, an email or a Twitter post? Yep, mine too.

And the funny thing is that my iPhone seems to learn certain words, but retains a solid mental block against learning others -- as if it can passively bully me into adapting the vocabulary it wants me to use.

Often at the end of my texts to Special K, I'll sign off with "xo", but if I'm not paying attention, the phone will correct it to "so". And since my attempt at "xo" generally comes at the end of the text, Special K will often reply with "so what?", wondering why I didn't finish my thought.

I tried posting something to Twitter once, starting with "whoo hoo" and my two first attempts were met with iPhone edits of "shop hop" and "shoe goo". "Shoe goo"? Without a correction, my post would have read something like "Shoe goo!! We just closed a huge advertising deal!! Shop hop!!" Not exactly the effect I was going for.

Special K does not have an iPhone, but his device does have an auto correct feature and it seems to actually lose its memory over time and then has to be retrained. The best example is when it comes time for the NFL season to start again. Between the playoffs and the start of the following season, Special K's phone seemingly forgets the very important word "Steelers". So, for the first couple games of the season, Special K's phone tries to send text messages that exclaim "Go Puddles!!" instead of "Go Steelers!!" Again, not exactly the impact we're looking for.

(As an aside, the first time he told me about "puddles", I almost blew Coca-Cola out my nose, I was laughing so hard..... "Go Puddles!! Shoe goo!!")

And finally, tonight while I was waiting for a friend to show up at a restaurant in Palo Alto, I tried texting Special K "Hi hottie!" and it auto corrected to "Hi hogtie!" THAT just about made me choke on my red wine. I actually left it like that when I sent the text, figuring that Special K would either chuckle or write it off to my glass of Pinot Noir.

Buon Appetito!

There's just about nothing better than good Italian food. Am I right?? (Unfortunately, it's also way too easy to stumble across mediocre or even downright bad Italian food. As a general principle, I stay away from those family-style Italian places where the servings are HUGE but every dish is some banal version of pasta with an acidic marinara sauce. Not mentioning any names, but you know who you are, Buca... di... well, you know.)

I was delighted to discover that there is an excellent Italian place literally just down the road from my office. I was first at Il Postale in Sunnyvale for a business lunch a couple of months ago and was pretty happy with the 4-cheese ravioli I ordered. In fact, I liked it so much that I dragged Special K there for dinner one night a couple of weeks after my inaugural lunch. We had another excellent meal and then just last week, I arranged to meet Ginger there for dinner after work. We were very strategic in our ordering, splitting a bruschetta starter and then also splitting our salmon and rigatoni entrees so we could try as many different things as possible.

So, at this point, I'm 3 for 3 -- can't complain!

And on this last visit, I made friends with Joe, the owner, who was wonderful and very helpful with his menu and wine suggestions.

Aside from the food, Il Postale is absolutely adorable as a restaurant -- it is located in the original Sunnyvale post office building ("post office" sounds SO much better in Italian, doesn't it?) with a fairly intimate indoor dining area and a quaint outdoor patio. You can also get the full menu at the bar (which is exactly where Joe set Ginger and I up, so he could take care of us all evening).

I highly recommend Il Postale. And if you're questioning my tastes based upon previous posts about pizza and barbeque, you should know that CitySearch.com voted Il Postale Silicon Valley's best Italian restaurant for 7 out of the past 8 years.

Il Postale is located at 127 W. Washington Avenue in Sunnyvale.

Pub Crawl

Ok, it wasn't really a pub crawl... it was more of a wine bar crawl.... and it actually only involved two bona fide wine bars and then one A-mazing dessert place (which may have had wine in the back room, but we didn't think to ask once we had laid eyes on the cupcakes).

On my last trip to New York, I met up with Sia on a Saturday night for some good girl time and some great gastronomic fun. Sia is a gourmet and epicure extraordinaire, so I always know I'm in for top-notch eats and vino when I'm with her.

We started at Bar Veloce in Chelsea. We settled in and caught up over a diverse spectrum of Italian wine and great tapas-style dishes. Veloce is modeled after a European "fast bar", so it's meant to be a place where you pop in with friends for a drink and good bite to eat and then move on. While there are cocktail height tables as well as the actual bar, there is no wait staff, only bartenders. That means that if you are seated at a table (as we were), you had to push your way over to the bar and flag down a harried bartender in order to place an order for anything -- beverage or food. It was quaint, but not easy since the bar itself was jam-packed with a person at every seat.

Next stop was in the West Village. Warmed from our first glasses of wine, we headed off down 7th Avenue for a nice brisk walk on a cool February night and finally burst in through the doors of another quaint wine bar on Greenwich Avenue, Gottino. We installed ourselves at the bar this time, made friends with the bartender/sommelier, Kevin, and ordered a couple of glasses of his recommendations. We also sampled more food (of course!) and in a true New York moment, we started chatting with the couple next to us. She was a singer-songwriter and he was her best friend whom she'd tried to pick up 12 years ago in a bar -- until he informed her that he was gay and they've been BFF's ever since. (I LOVE the random encounters that happen in NYC -- no other city is quite the same way.)

Finally, after exchanging hugs and email addresses with our new friends, Sia asked if I was interested in dessert. Have we met?? She knew a place just a couple of blocks away that she promised would be perfect.

Batch did turn out to be perfect. It's a tiny place run and owned by renowned chef Pichet Ong. Pichet's specialty is pastries and desserts and now I know why. We each ordered a cupcake (both were to die for) and then Pichet (whom Sia knows personally) gave us a complimentary chocolate chip cookie. Which sounds like not a big deal, but let me tell you about this cookie! Even though it had been baked earlier in the day, the chocolate chunks were still gooey (made with special Valhrona chocolate) and Sia and I both thought we'd entered a new dimension after the first bite. (For all you foodies out there, Pichet has worked in the kitchens at Jean Georges and Tabla in NYC and Olives in Boston -- he is the real deal with many accolades and many, many three-star reviews over the course of his career. And to top it all of, he was just a nice, down-to-earth guy who kept trying to give us more free desserts.)

After our cupcakes and cookies, we waddled back outside and up to Greenwich Avenue to catch a cab and I headed back to my hotel where I'm sure I dreamt about even MORE food.