oipom.com

This post has next to nothing to do with babies or pregnancy but gets progressively more exciting as you read on. I promise.

Apropos of nothing: Law & Order SVU, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE? Netflix has recently added a bunch of Law & Order episodes to the Instant Play option and I have watched SO MANY EPISODES this week. I love watching and reading crime stuff like that.

Also: Law & Order is SO much better than CSI. I always think that I like CSI but every time I watch an episode I am never sure whether it is a joke or not because the whole show is so CHEESY. Bad puns! Over-the-top dramatic acting! Totally absurd plot twists that Daniel mockingly suggests to me, only to have THAT VERY THING happen in the next scene!

(You will recall that while we have a television, we do not have television, like channels or cable. We use the TV for the Xbox/other video game consoles and DVD watching. I therefore miss out on all current television and catch up months or years down the line when it becomes available on Netflix.)

I got all my Christmas shopping done.

My tactic: Shopping Black Friday exclusively online, from the comfort of my own home. I make a spreadsheet for what I’m planning on getting and where (including links where necessary) and have at it. I’ve done this a few years in a row now and let me tell you, it’s SO NICE to be done by early December. No stress.

I injured myself finishing my Christmas shopping.

Even though my shopping tactic is lovely and effective, Daniel and I had two people we still needed to buy for last Saturday, so we set off downtown. WHY I thought it would be a good idea to walk all over kingdom come for hours and hours I have NO IDEA, but by the time we got home I could barely move. My pelvis felt so bad and hurty and my back felt bad and hurty and UGH. I tried sitting. I tried laying down. I tried laying on the floor. Everything hurt. I felt a little better on Sunday, but still definitely painful.

I got a pedicure!

And I think it improved my pelvic pain. It sounds hilariously weird but hear me out. Kerri and I went to get a pedicure at our usual place. The chairs they have are the silly massage kind with the attached remote control. I turned my chair on and immediately noticed these butt-squeezy massage things that I swear I have never experienced the other couple of times I’ve gotten a pedicure there. It squished your buns from the sides and then this sort of panel came up between your cheeks, kind of like a bike seat.

It was the WEIRDEST EVER and I kept giggling to Kerri about it, because seriously? A buttcheek massage? I don’t know. And then I wanted my chair to stop being so recliney because I wasn’t even touching the back of the seat, so I pressed the “forward” button but it went REALLY far forward and I almost couldn’t see Kerri anymore over the side of my chair. More giggling. I couldn’t get it to go back down! Plus, it was so jiggly that I finally had to turn it off because the pedicure girl kept telling me to stop moving. Whoops!

All this to say that we did that on Sunday and so far this week my hips/pelvis have felt very much improved. I am not cured, obviously, as I am still pregnant and achey but oh man, the difference is great. Pedicure chair FTW. Now all I need is a massage.

22 Weeks:

I bought a car!

YES. Okay, so. For the six years we have lived in Portland, Daniel and I have not owned a car. Our neighborhood really doesn’t require one to get around, so it hasn’t been a big deal. We have a Zipcar membership and there are buses all over the place and we’ve survived so far.

Thing is, with this whole business of adding a new member to our family, I have begun to get nervous about things. Things like how we get to doctor’s appointments with a brand-new baby. Or things like, what if my water breaks and I need to go to the hospital to deliver? We hadn’t really thought of a plan yet when I received an email from Kerri.

It turns out that Kerri’s parents are lovely people and are giving her a car for Christmas. Since she does not need two vehicles for one person with one parking spot, she generously offered to sell her current car to Daniel and I, for a very reasonable price. Big heart.

We weren’t really looking into buying a car, exactly, but the opportunity came up and I am pretty sure I’d be an idiot not to take her up on it. The official switcheroo should happen sometime in the next couple of weeks or so – we are both visiting home for the holidays so we are still working out the timing, but I am so excited. I don’t have the faintest idea how to own a car in Portland but I am just so glad we have a Plan A that doesn’t involve calling up random people at 3:30am with requests for rides to the hospital.

Yes, I went to the midnight release!

Me and a group of friends met at the coffeeshop beforehand and then drove down to the theater. We were there two and a half hours early, which went by REALLY REALLY SLOWLY. We talked about people’s outfits (there were a couple great Dumbledores in attendance), some people went back out for food, we shared book recommendations and twitter handles.

Finally, it was time for the movie! Here’s what I thought:

Massive spoilers ahead if any of you haven’t seen it yet… (more…)

• Scene: Yesterday evening. I am in the kitchen talking to Daniel. I happen to be wearing gray jammie-pants, dark gray tee, and his light gray sweatshirt.
  Daniel: You are awfully monochromatic.
  Me: Oh, ha, I–
  Daniel: “By the power of GREYSCALE!”
• Our friends’ save-the-date that came in the mail today:
  
• Impromptu crafts, especially ones that involve Harry Potter:
  
  (This is one of several. I don’t want to share them all just yet!)
• My birthday coming up on Sunday. Woo! I will be 24. And yes, my birthday this year IS Harry Potter themed, hence the crafts I am so spectacularly excited about. And the pumpkin pasties (as in, “Two pumpkin pasties please!” -Cho Chang) Daniel is currently making, and the butterbeer recipe I perfected yesterday.
• Our lovely visit with Daniel’s mom and sister this past weekend, wherein we ate a lot of wonderful food, celebrated Gretchen’s 30th birthday, had dinner for Kerri’s birthday, and generally had a very good time. Daniel’s mom brought our Christmas present with her, which was a hand-painted basket (she’s a basketmaker) painted with coffee! Rad!
  

Now, back to cleaning the apartment. I don’t usually think of myself as a very messy person, but YOW does the living room get filled with junk when I am not looking. Sweatshirts everywhere, half-finished craft projects all over, and piles of things waiting to be sorted…

It was brought to my attention on Sunday morning that I might need a bike. I do, after all, live in Portland – land of bike-friendliness; Daniel recently acquired a bike; and nearly all of my close friends have and use bikes as a primary mode of transportation.

We had visited Little Red Bike with several of these friends and I realized that the only reason we used our Zipcar account that morning was because I was the only person in our whole group of friends who did not have a bike to ride. Sad! Even Daniel could have ridden there but I would have been left at home all alone.

I halfheartedly checked Craigslist for something that seemed appropriate, but as you well know, I am very, very short. My chances of finding a women’s bike (not a little girl’s bike) that was my size for a decent price were extremely small, and I really didn’t expect to get this lucky this quickly.

The headline said something about it being a “bike for shorties” so I figured, what the heck, I’ll call. After I made the call and agreed to met Mr. Bike Seller after work to check out his wares, I realized with horror that I:

• Know absolutely nothing about the prices of bikes, bike sizing, or really anything about bikes at all other than that they have wheels and make you go;
• Had just agreed to meet a male stranger on the East side of Portland in an unfamiliar neighborhood to me;
• Would be by myself. The whole time. And I might end up with a bike afterward that I wouldn’t really know how to get home since I didn’t know where I was and I would probably have to take it on a bus and HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO PUT A BIKE ON THE FRONT OF A BUS?

I called Daniel in a panic.

“Hi I know you are at work but I just called about a bike and could you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ask any of your bike-type friends if they would be willing to come with me to check this thing out? I know nothing about bikes! WHAT AM I DOING?”

Daniel managed to recruit Tim, who is a lovely person with a (un?)healthy interest in bikes and I am so very, very grateful he came with me and told me what to look for. He even helped me put my bike on the front of the bus! WIN!

Meggan’s new Centurion, by Tim:

Thanks to my friend Todd, my board and I are ready for the mountain! I am not sure if I officially mentioned it here or not (other than in my 2009 goals entry), but I decided to go snowboarding with several of my co-workers this winter.

I own my own board, boots, and bindings, which is why I agreed to go in the first place. However, it turns out that large advancements have been made in boot-making during the seven or eight years it’s been since I last snowboarded, and it would have been lame and uncomfortable of me to use my very old, very sad boots. Who knew? So I found boots on sale. They’re Burtons, black with purple accents.

Then… it started to become clear that the bindings currently attached to my board, courtesy of my younger brother(s), were not going to cut it. They were the “clicker” sort, which my boots were not compatible with, they were old, and they were the wrong size. Dang. So I found bindings on sale. They’re white with gray-ish green and silver accents.

My board is this hilariously small thing, bright navy blue with a bright yellow bottom. I joke that it’s a kindergartener’s board, since it’s so small and primary-colored. It appears to be just the right size for me so I’m not complaining too much – I got it used about ten years ago.

I’m self-taught and I ride goofy-foot. I can’t carve to save my life, so if it looks like I need to carve, I swoosh my board around so I end up riding regular-foot. Then I swoosh it back. Sidewinding back and forth like that seems weird when I explain it, but it was much easier for me than learning to carve because I stay heel-side the whole time instead of moving forward onto my toes.

Wish me luck this season! I hope to start going up this weekend. Woo!

Several years ago, around this same time in December, Jem posted something about The Quilting Bee on her website. I was intrigued, since I had seen a bunch of people with links to their Qbee quilts on their site, but I figured I wouldn’t have enough time to be a part of another club with mandatory activities.

What I gathered from that post was:

• It’s okay if you don’t have a lot of time. As long as you keep up with your trades, you aren’t required to participate in the activities.
• That said, the activities are actually really fun and they don’t take a whole lot of effort.
• It’s okay if you aren’t the best at pixelling. You will learn! Lots of members started out pretty crap at first but they practiced (activities are a great way to practice!) and got better. Besides, the club is more about friendship and fun than it is about the artwork.

Jem convinced me with that post and now I have been a Qbee member for three years. I still don’t participate in every activity, but the major holiday activities are the ones I prioritize and make time for.

This holiday season, we are exchanging Christmas cards! I made cards for my Qbee neighbors and have received cards from some of my other Qbee pals. There is also an ornament hunt! Last year’s activity ornaments have been hidden across the entire website and it’s up to us to find them. Supposedly there are 54 and I’ve accumulated a paltry nine, but I will keep plugging away in my free time to see if I can find some more.

Through the Qbee, I’ve made some more Internet friends and it’s been just lovely. If you can commit to about 30 minutes per month to trade with other members and do a bit of upkeep, you are golden. It takes a weensy bit of setup up front (installing Bubs’s MyQuilt Admin, for instance) but overall it has been very manageable.

If you’re interested but want more info, feel free to comment and I’ll answer your questions!

(Today is “Post About The Quilting Bee Day” so if you see a bunch of these around the intarwebs, that’s why. )

Tomorrow, two of our good friends are getting married.

Aren’t they just the cutest? I can’t wait!

All is well on the passport front, thank heavens. I signed up for email updates with the travel.gov website since I was super anxious to know what was going on, and earlier this week I got a notification that said it should get to me on or about May 3rd. Happily, it showed up only a day or so later, and they didn’t even charge me the expedite fee. Huzzah! My passport is now safely nestled in my attractive passport case from TinyMeat and I can stop hyperventilating.

I went ahead and booked a hotel in Victoria, BC, so all is well on that front too. We ended up going with the less expensive place, but splurged on the better room. I figured that was a good compromise. It really was the difference between a $650 hotel stay and a $1300 hotel stay, and I know we will be newlyweds and all, but there is only so much time you can conceivably spend in a hotel room, so I think it’ll be fine.

(more…)

A few weeks ago, I suddenly became convinced that Christmas shopping was really important and I started planning out what I was going to get everyone. I am pretty sure Daniel thought I went a bit crazy, but I really think gift-giving is fun and I like finding things people will appreciate.

I got a bunch of stuff on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving here in the U.S. – for some reason it’s a huge shopping day) BUT! I did not leave the house at all because I didn’t want to get swarmed by mobs of people trying to get their holiday savings. Instead I shopped online and got a TON of stuff taken care of ahead of time. Yay me! The only glitch has been that I accidentally typed a “2″ where I wanted a “1″ and now I have more than one of the same present for someone, and as it turns out, it will actually cost me money to return it to Amazon (the error was my fault so I have to pay for shipping) and now I don’t know what to do with it.

I have also been intermittently making crafty things for presents. That’s the one sucky thing about handmade gifts – I can’t very well post them online because then the giftees will see them ahead of time. I even made a Christmas tree ornament today, after reading about them in the latest Blueprint magazine. You’ll recall my pathetically cute avocado tree, yes? I’m thinking it will probably be our Christmas tree this year. Once I get more than one ornament on it I will take a photo and we can all laugh about how it has grown. It filled out a bit up top so it’s less stupid looking, and we transplanted it into a hip IKEA flowerpot so it is not a victim of a cheap plastic living space any longer. It is still mostly a stick with leaves but it has more leaves now.

Now that NaBloPoMo is over, can I say something vile and snarky about it? I applaud everyone’s efforts and this is not a comment about you as a person, but I am not impressed. At all. I spent a couple of years posting every day (or nearly that) so I know it can be done. I started thinking that since my posting habits have absolutely fallen through the floor lately that maybe it would be pretty hard for me to have done NaBloPoMo at this point in my life, and then I thought, WHAT? You honestly just have to make sure to have computer access every day and you are golden. I used to have some anxiety about posting every day, as though I had all these fans that were just clamoring for my every word. This was not the case. This is still not the case. Lots of my posts back then were totally asinine and I’m embarrassed for having written them, but I just got it into my head that I “needed” to post every day since I had a blog and I got my knickers in a twist if I couldn’t get to my website in time so I posted whatever came to mind.

Everyone hates it when people apologize for having not posted in a long time, and I can see how that’s obnoxious. I honestly really don’t know how I’ve gotten into the habit of neglecting my website, except that I seem to have decided that posting super often is just less crucial. I have made a couple new friends recently, and I’ve been keeping busy at work and crafting things at home and managing to post every small thought I have so I’ve got something up daily is apparently no longer a priority. Part of my problem is that I’m reluctant to post things that I haven’t thought through, so if I can’t come up with some coherent thoughts on a topic I don’t post it, where in the past I would have. Like the bubble-gum pink tree on the front of the Blueprint magazine, for instance – HATE. Burning, fiery hatred. But that’s really all I have to say about the matter so it gets left out.

I’d love to get into some kind of predictable habit, like maybe every third day or every other day. Something semi-regular so you know when to check back and you don’t get faced with the same stupid post title day after day (that irritates me to no end on other people’s sites yet I do it to my own readers all the time. How lame of me.) if you are the sort of person that does not use feed readers. I’m finding that I’m doing all right with keeping up on Twitter and once I eventually do a redesign of this site I’m planning on having a space for my Twitter updates.

My workplace moved offices on Friday and all of us helped out, so every muscle in my body is on fire and I have bruises all over my legs from hauling boxes. Our new space is super rad though – it has exposed brick walls in some spots and hardwood floors all around. It’s very hip. Some of us also came in this morning (yes, on a Saturday) to finish some stuff up. Hoping I get lots of brownie points for that.

I bought two really embarrassing Christmas music albums lately – the first, as documented by the wonderful Kerri Anne, was by Julie Andrews of Mary Poppins and Sound of Music fame. The second was “Merry Christmas from the Beach Boys.” So far, I vastly prefer the Beach Boys, but then again, that one is on CD and Julie Andrews is on vinyl and there is just something about vinyl that sounds nice.

I have also read several books, most notably “The Poisonwood Bible,” and LET ME TELL YOU, I did not think I was going to like it at first, but I had DREAMS about the characters. The premise of the novel is that a family of six moves to the Congo as missionaries. The characters include the father, who is a pastor and terribly hard-headed, the mother, who attempts to be the perfect wife while facing incredible hardships in their living situation; Rachel, the oldest daughter and the typical 1950s teenager, Leah and Adah, twins who could not be more different, and Ruth May, the 5-year-old baby of the family. The narrative switches between all five girls who tell the story in their own words and it is positively captivating.

I do have more to say (remind me to tell you about my holiday dress!) but in the interest of good sleep habits and your personal free time, I will stop here. Until next time!

Daniel just came home and told me that his co-worker Matt gave him a ride home and…

…AND…

MATT KILLED THE SPIDER.

He held the lamp aside, grabbed a phone book that was laying on the stairs, and SKOOSHED it! (Apparently, he is tall.)

If you need me, I’m going to be composing a heartfelt thank-you card to our wonderful, spider-killing friend.

This last week has been totally insane for me, in the sense that I have not gone to bed before midnight since last Saturday and I am out of bed by 6:45am on most days. I deal all right with lack of sleep, but I’m finding I get to a point where I do not deal well with chronic lack of sleep, and that has been my life for the past week.

Last Saturday was the roller derby finals (Our team won! They went undefeated the entire season!) and then dinner with Paul’s parents. Sunday was the Pumpkin Patch and Corn Maze out on Sauvie Island. I think I have photos but they are still hidden somewhere on my camera and I can’t be bothered to figure that out at the moment. Not sure what the deal with Monday was, but I was up late, and then Tuesday I stayed up attempting to get re-caught up with my Qbee activity trades and other websitey things. Wednesday was the first pumpkin carving with Callie and Paul (as is our tradition) and Thursday was pumpkin carving with Tom, Carrie, Brian, and Brian’s lady friend. I actually nodded off in their living room at one point and nobody knew where I went. I mean, really, it was either that or passing out on their kitchen floor blocking a doorway because I was THAT. TIRED. Daniel rented a movie tonight (Premonition – it looked good and I am surprised he picked it out himself) that we are sort of planning to watch, but I am trying to sleep as much as humanly possible tonight since tomorrow is Saturday Morning Coffee With Friends with a Halloween party later on.

I have so much I want to say about all of these events but due to lack of sleep and poor memory I’m going to condense it into short, summarized sentences. I’m sure I’ll accidentally leave out a bunch of it but I want to remember that something happened.

DERBY:
The games were actually really well matched this time so the whole thing was super exciting. Ate calamari afterward.

CORN MAZE/PUMPKIN PICKING:
Lots of pumpkins were squishy and dead. Corn maze was ridiculously muddy. Spent an hour that night washing mud off of shoes. Found two good pumpkins each.

MONDAY:
Honestly, I do not really even remember Monday happening. It must have though, I guess.

TUESDAY:
Skipped bowling night to work on website. Have new design in mind. Probably will not build it for some time yet.

PUMPKIN CARVING #1:
Supah fun. Callie was pretty sick later on in the night (get better soon!) and I gave her some chicken noodle soup. Paul’s pumpkin was ridiculously amazing. My pumpkin was stupidly thick and difficult to see any light through. Paul helped thin it out.

PUMPKIN CARVING #2:
Made several pumpkin sketches and then decided to wing it. Nearly fell asleep on floor. Did fall asleep in living room. Ate too much dessert, and should probably get Tom’s pumpkin cake recipe from him. Brian’s lady friend made an awesomely scary pumpkin that I forgot to photograph.

TONIGHT:
Exhausted after a long (long!) day at work with the prospect of having to work over the weekend to finish it all.

Eventually here I will post the photos from the pumpkin patch, but for now, have a good weekend!

The decision to attend the They Might Be Giants show at the Roseland Theater was sort of impromptu. I mean, I’d been meaning to buy tickets for weeks but just hadn’t gotten around to it, so the night before the show when we saw that it still hadn’t sold out, Daniel and I agreed that it would be a huge mistake to pass it up.

Turns out we were totally right. They played a bunch of songs off their new album, and they played a bunch of our favorites like “She’s an Angel,” “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” “Alphabet of Nations,” and “The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight).” They did a special feature in which they accepted calls from the dead, and Carl Sagan called and asked how he could successfully use his new iPhone since it’s heat-sensitive and his fingers were “bone and ash.” Hee.

I was really impressed with their trumpet player. He hit so many high notes and did them all perfectly. It’s really hard to play high on a trumpet (or it was for me, at least) so I could appreciate the talent. The trombonist and saxophonist were great as well.

The very next night, we went to the Edguy show at Rock N’ Roll Pizza. Tobias Sammet is my favorite metal vocalist EVAR and it was hugely exciting to see Edguy live. The venue was pretty small, I think mostly because there are not nearly as many Edguy fans in the US as there are in Europe. They fill 10,000+ venues over there and last night there were probably 100 people total. Tobias Sammet kept trying to pump the crowd up, and we tried to be loud, but I think he was kind of disappointed that there were so few people.

Tobias had on a sleeveless t-shirt with the words “HELLFIRE TOBI” on it and very, very small black pants. We joked later that we should all have shirts made with our names on them in place of “TOBI.”

The guitarists and bass player would occasionally line up and start swaying their hips in sync with each other and the music and it was cracking me up. Tobias kept turning around to face the drummer and HE DID THE “PISTON” DANCE. Daniel has this outrageously embarrassing dance he does occasionally, and it involves systematically squatting down and raising one fist in the air, and on the second squat, you bring the first fist down and raise the second. It’s awful. AND TOBIAS SAMMET DID THE DANCE. Tom, Brian, Carrie, Daniel and I all burst into hysterics at the same moment as we all realized what he was doing. There is video evidence here (the dance lasts for only about the first second or so before it turns into something a bit more normal), but sadly I do not have Daniel’s dance on video for comparison.

Totally random: One of my favorite things about European bands is that they pronounce Portland like “portl-and” instead of “port-land.” The “L” noise is very distinct and I think it’s wonderful.

The band was super generous with their band-related paraphernalia like guitar picks and extra drumsticks. We weren’t close to the stage so after their encore was finished and they walked off, we slowly made our way up front hoping to grab something of interest. Everything appeared to be gone, but then we spotted a guitar pick on the stage! I couldn’t reach it, so we hovered close to it for a few minutes until a stage tech came by and I quickly asked him if he could please grab the pick for me.

True to form, they played the song “Avantasia” during the encore. It’s so exciting to hear that song live since it’s so operettic. During the show, they also played “Lavatory Love Machine” (a song about being intimate in an airplane), “Save Me,” “Vain Glory Opera,” “Tears of a Mandrake,” “King of Fools,” and “Fucking With Fire,” which is quite possibly one of the greatest rockin’ metal songs ever written.

Two shows in two days while coming down with a cold (again! I know!) may not have been the greatest idea on paper, but it was so worth it.

I went to my first Roller Derby last weekend and it was glorious. If you are not familiar with roller derby, I’d recommend watching this video. The type is ugly but it explains the basics of roller derby really well. I was glad I had seen it when I actually went to a derby. Additionally, reading Schnozz‘s blogs in the “Roller Derby” category (especially this one) would be informative and anyway they are hilariously entertaining.

Daniel and I took some really awful photos of some of the jams, which does not do it justice because MAN it rocked and now I sort of want to be a rollergirl.

I mean, I can’t skate. I don’t own any wonderfully promiscuous clothing or my own roller skates. But it sounds like fun, much in the same way Powderpuff football sounded fun in high school and I had a blast doing that. We shall see.

Before I begin, I would like to say THANK YOU TONS to Elea for driving Daniel and I around San Francisco on Saturday. We spent a good portion of the time hopelessly lost and laughing hysterically. It was loads of fun.

Friday, August 31

We get to the airport earlier than we need to, and I momentarily hold up the security line for not having my ziplock bag OUTSIDE of my messenger bag for screening. A girl behind us jokingly says something about holding up the line, and then has her bag pulled off to the side, actually holding up the line, since she had full-size bottles of shampoo and conditioner in her bag. The security guard unceremoniously threw them into the trash, making me wonder how many unfortunately-circumstanced people could be helped by donating these toiletries instead of trashing them.

Getting into San Francisco was easy, as was finding our hotel. Getting food, on the other hand, was not quite so easy on a Friday night with no reservations. We end up waiting outside some podunk Italian food place for a LOOONG time before being seated. They served ridiculously giant portions.

We head back to the hotel, only to learn that the thing nobody mentions about it is that there’s a nightclub next door and on the roof. Fortunately we are not too picky and are able to sleep through it fairly easily. Sleeping through the people mucking about on our emergency-escape landing was not so easy.

Saturday, September 1

Ritual Roasters was our first destination, where we met up with Elea for coffee. After perusing the Internet with her pretty MacBook for things to do that day, we decide on visiting Haight & Ashbury and then Golden Gate Park. Stop by Amoeba Records and buy some vinyl (single of NIN’s “Only” for me) and eat lunch at Escape From New York Pizza. Incidentally, this is not the Escape From New York we have here in Portland. Seems to just be a coincidence.

On the way to the car, we realize that a bathroom is desperately needed by all. Most places do not have public restrooms and we are faced with a quandry. Miraculously, someone spots a public library! They must have bathrooms! Fortunately, they do, and while I felt sort of guilty about using them simply for their facilities, nobody said anything and we all felt better afterward.

Golden Gate Park was huge! We got lost in the AIDS Memorial Grove and couldn’t figure out how to get over to the gardens or the observatory thing. Finally resorted to getting the car and driving closer to it. Took lots of photos.

Headed to the Sunset neighborhood for dinner and decided upon Cafe Gratitude (on recommendation by Elea’s friend). It’s this great raw and vegan restaurant that is sort of hippy-dippy but in a fun, I-heart-the-earth kind of way. Every item on their menu is named some variation of “I Am [blank]” so that kind of became the catchphrase for our vacation. (Daniel and I visited a different location of Cafe Gratitude on Monday, and while a (super-nice, extremely laid-back) waiter desperately tried to reason with a loud customer, Daniel discreetly said “I am IRRITATED” and I dissolved into hysterics.)

Proceed to get really, thoroughly, lost trying to find our way back to our hotel. End up asking for directions at some weird grocery store where the clerk laughs in our faces upon hearing we are aiming for the Mission District and says, “Wow, you are lost.” Finally make it back, where Daniel and I bid Elea goodbye and wish her a safe trip home.

Sunday, September 2

Fisherman’s Wharf! I know some people said to avoid this because it’s so touristy, but we just wanted to check it out for ourselves. Of course, everyone was right. It was insanely busy. The restaurant we decided on for lunch said it offered seafood and Italian cuisine, which is good for us because I desperately needed fish n’ chips and Daniel is vegetarian. I ordered a Long Island Iced Tea with lunch (they had it advertised on the back of the menu, so I gave in) and got embarrassingly tipsy on a very small amount of it, and then proceeded to drink the rest. I kept joking with Daniel that he wasn’t allowed to let me walk down any stairs because I might not make it. Note to self: Do not drink hard liquor on an empty stomach without expecting these kinds of results.

Realize the wiggly street is close by and decide to walk. The hill is very, very steep, but I’m glad we did it.

Aquarius Records on Valencia street had a great selection of metal and I got a Vintersorg album, a Thyrfing album, The Faint’s “Blank-Wave Arcade” and a Tristania album. Can’t think of the names at the moment. Definitely worth checking out if you like small-ish indie music stores with great metal selections.

As mentioned earlier, we headed to the Mission District location of Cafe Gratitude for dinner. Yum! I totally recommend this place, but you have to have an open mind about the selections. For instance, the “cinnamon roll” is not so much a cinnamon roll as it is an oaty brick (a delicious oaty brick, but oaty and bricky nonetheless) with caramel sauce on top. I’d get the chocolate mousse if I were you.

Monday, September 3

Check out time at the hotel was 11am, and our plane didn’t leave until 10:20pm, so we were faced with the dilemma of having to lug our wheely suitcase around all day. Daniel called the airlines and asked if we could check it in earlier and from what I understand, was rather shortly told that early bag check would not be an option. I thought about it later and realized there’s probably some sort of liability involved, but it was worth a shot. Asking around at the hotel, we learn that they actually offer to hold bags if necessary. Hurray!

Daniel wanted to make it over to Blue Bottle Coffee, some sort of kiosk downtown. Again with the getting lost – took us forever to find since we went the wrong direction at first. The neighborhood was super neat though; it had a lot of indie shops and one called “Lavish” was my favorite. I bought a sewing book there, and probably would have spent several hundreds of dollars on neat things if I had kids, since a lot of it was totally rad baby clothes and bibs and the like.

I wanted to go to the Aquarium, so we headed over to the Fisherman’s Wharf area again. Most of the photos I took were crap, even though I set my ISO speed for 800 hoping that would help. I do not claim to be a photographer so I’m not even sure if that was the right thing to do, especially since it makes my camera auto-shift the quality from “Best” to “Good.” I liked seeing the Moon Jellies, anemones, and starfish. Lots of people thought it would be a brilliant idea to leave their baby strollers unattended in the walkways and I got annoyed. They had “touch” pools at the end where I got to pet a Leopard Shark and some starfish.

To kill some time, we decided that seeing a movie would be a good idea and – get this – I managed to convince Daniel to see a scary movie! This rarely happens, and if it does, it involves a lot of peer pressure. We saw “Invasion” with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. I liked it; I think Daniel did too but it’s hard to say since scary movies are not his thing.

Dinner that night was from Burger Joint on Valencia. It’s this retro-y diner place that had the foresight to serve veggie burgers so we could both be happy. The french fries were delicious. Right after, we ran by the hotel to pick up our bag (yes, singular – we packed both our stuff into one wheely suitcase) and headed to the airport.

When we got there, none of the lines were that bad, but after about five minutes or so they were awful. I became convinced we were going to miss our flight, even though I didn’t know what time it was. If you got past the extremely long, rather slow-moving line, security was a breeze and we made it to our gate okay.

After the plane got delayed 15 minutes due to mechanical failure (a seal on the pressurized door was faulty or something) I began thinking a very late-night flight when Daniel had to be at work at 5:50am and I get up at 6:30am was probably a bad idea. This was the first plane I’ve been on that had video screens and they played an episode of the American version of The Office. It was a funny one, something about new employee orientation and Tim-who-is-not-Tim (Jim?) came back from being away? Or at another branch? I don’t have TV so I don’t know much about this version. Didn’t get to see the end since we had to land.

Made the executive decision to take a taxi home from the airport and avoid the 45+ minute MAX ride home, and paid through the nose for this luxury. Oh well. I suppose you can be extravagant on occasion and live through it.

Overview

So! Overall the trip was a sucess. I liked “The City” and had fun being lost absolutely everywhere. Food was pretty expensive, but I’m really, really glad we decided to go this route instead of dinking around at home or trying to rent a car to drive to the coast. It’s actually given me confidence that we could travel other places! Farther away! And have an okay time doing it! One thing I would have changed was coming up with an itinerary beforehand, since I think we wasted a lot of time every morning trying to decide what we would go see that day. Other than that, it was great.

What could be more fun than going to a small-ish show where people bring their 7-year-olds, babies, and grandmothers to listen to two boys dressed in Hogwarts uniforms sing songs about Harry Potter books? Nearly nothing, save for going to the FIFTH HARRY POTTER MOVIE later that night! Woo!

Yes, I went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

WARNING: Movie spoilers ahead! Proceed at your own risk! Run away now if you haven’t seen the movie yet!

(more…)