Category Archives: bay area

Here goes nothing …

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A week from today is my last day of work.

Just think about that for a moment.

Eight months ago, Dan and I were sitting in a booth at Chili’s (don’t judge me – their honey chipotle chicken crispers are the BOMB), talking about potentially, maybe, possibly moving to Seattle. It was just an idea. It didn’t even seem real.

At the time, I was an emotional wreck. My parents had just purchased a condo in Sonoma, and were talking about moving there full-time, and I was feeling abandoned. I had moved back to the Bay Area a year earlier with dreams of raising my kids here and having my retired parents around to babysit. I wanted them to be a bigger part of their grandkids’ lives than my grandparents were of mine. I saw Fremont as temporary. I was looking at houses in Daly City and South San Francisco – places that were only twenty minutes from my parents’ house rather than an hour.

But even if we moved farther north, Sonoma was still too far for them to have any regular interactions with us or our children. An hour doesn’t seem like much, but when it’s driven on rural highways, on busy weekends, and by aging parents who no longer want to drive at night, it becomes problematic.

So I pulled the trigger. Because if everyone else was moving on with their lives, why shouldn’t I? I’d wanted to live outside of California for more than a decade. Now was my chance, and no one was going to be around to tell me “no.”

Weeks went by. Dan talked to his boss. His boss agreed. An offer letter arrived. I started house hunting. We dealt with real estate drama. And then suddenly, it was February. Suddenly, we were ten days away from a day I never really thought would come.

I’m starting to feel guilty about leaving all of this – our friends, our families, the life we’ve built here – behind. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

When I moved to Santa Cruz, and then to Merced, and then back to the Bay Area, I moved with the intention of leaving everything behind, of starting fresh. But you never can start fresh, because wherever you go, there you are. Your life story travels with you. Your relationships travel with you. There is no escaping who you’ve become.

This move feels different. This time, I want to move my whole life to Seattle. I want to bring everyone and everything with me. Because I’m not moving to escape – I’m no longer that girl. Instead, I am moving to move on, to experience, to gain.

And with ten days left to go, I can finally say, “I’m ready.”

A World-Renowned Braggart

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This morning was one of those mornings where my eternal optimism (that’s a joke, y’all) and deep breathing techniques came in handy. I left my house fifteen minutes early (YES!) which means I had time to get Starbucks (DOUBLE YES!) and hop onto 84 just in time to get stuck in traffic FOREVER.

Normally, traffic makes my blood boil. But this morning, for some reason, I was able to take it in stride. In fact, the only thing that annoyed me on my entire morning commute was this (apparent) USC alum I got stuck behind on my way onto campus.

I get it. I really do. You’re proud that you went to one of the most respected private universities in the nation, and that you survived (presumably) four years in one of LA’s scariest neighborhoods. But do you really need the sticker AND the vanity plates? It’s like wearing plaid and paisley together. You really need to pick one or the other, because together, it’s just not a good look.

“You gotta get with Dr. Dre if you want to make it!”

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Dan and I BARTed into the city yesterday for the Giants game, and on our way, we had the pleasure of meeting a man who claims he is going to be BIGGER THAN EMINEM! This dude jumped on the train in Oakland and immediately started rapping about how he was the greatest, and he was going to be on television, and all the ladies were going to want to get with him. (Nice try, dude. I wouldn’t get near you even if I was convinced you weren’t insane.)

An entire train car full of people was doing everything possible to contain their laughter, but it was pretty difficult. This was Crazy Guy’s response once he realized that people weren’t taking him seriously, with a majority of threats directed at some poor dude who was just standing by the door, listening to his iPod and minding his own business.

(THIS is why I love public transit, you guys.)

Let’s gnome, Giants!

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Yesterday was the amalgamation of all that is insane in San Francisco. You have, on one hand, a BEAUTIFUL San Francisco day – temperatures in the mid-seventies, not a cloud in the sky, and a sweet sea breeze blowing through. On the other hand, you have the Bay to Breakers, an annual race which couples serious runners with drunk people in ridiculous costumes. (Case in point: Some drunk girl in Ke$ha-style face paint and a hot pink leotard threw up all over some poor guy on our Bart train that very morning.) And as if those two things combined weren’t going to make the city ridiculous enough, the Giants were having a promotional giveaway – the much-coveted Brian Wilson gnome.

[via Sons of Johnnie LeMaster]

Brian Wilson is arguably the most popular player on our team. He’s basically insane, has a disgusting beard that he refuses to shave, and constantly loads the bases before closing out a game and earning a save. But people love him, and we knew we’d need to get there early if we wanted gnomes. The ballpark holds around 43,000 people, but they only had 20,000 of these babies to give away. So we agreed to meet my friend Vicki and her boyfriend Kevin at the King Street Gate at 11:00, in hopes that showing up two hours prior to game time would reduce our wait time and ensure gnome procurement.

Dan and I were on the ballpark shuttle train when we first saw the line. Or rather, the end of the line – AT PIER 36. At first I thought, there’s no way that can be the line! We’re like five blocks from the ballpark! These people must be lined up for something else. (Isn’t denial the first stage of grief?) But as our train continued along the Embarcadero, I realized that all of these people were in Giants gear. And the line wasn’t ending. And they were all walking towards the ballpark. And OH MY GOD WHY DIDN’T WE GET HERE AT NINE.

For those of you who need a map to understand just how insanely long this line was. Point A is the King Street Gate; Point B is where the end of the line was.

We met Vicki and Kevin at the gate, as promised, and started walking back, back, back towards the end of the line. But we lucked out – the line had to stop at a cross-street to allow traffic through, and we snuck in behind the last people on our side of the street, just two blocks from the park, rather than five. The line was pretty fast-moving, and I don’t think it took more than fifteen minutes for us to move through the gates and secure gnomes.

Also awesome: Even though our tickets were for View Reserve (aka. nosebleed heaven), Kevin is a season ticket holder on the Club Level. So he brought passes with him that let us into the Virgin America Flight Deck, where there’s a bar that makes some of the best Bloody Marys I’ve ever had in my life.

Oh, and I got to spend a few minutes hanging out with the World Series trophy, too. No big deal.

For the remainder of the afternoon, Vicki, Kevin and I had a blast watching the game (Especially Vicki, since her team won) …

Kevin isn’t pictured because he was probably busy checking in on FourSquare or something.

… while Dan napped quietly in his seat next to me.

I guess I can’t really talk shit, though. I fell asleep on Bart on the way home, all but face-planted into my sweet potato fries at Red Robin, and then came home and promptly went to bed …

… at 7:00 PM.

That aside, I’d call it a very successful (and VERY fun!) day.

Mother’s Day

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We were supposed to go to the Valley to spend Mother’s Day with Dan’s family, but instead decided that we needed some family time and celebrated my Mother’s Day (you know, because I have four furbabies) by taking the pups to Point Isabel in Richmond.

The goal was to take Nix and Leela down to the water and encourage them to swim, followed by a relaxing picnic (sandwiches for us, peanut butter Kongs for them). We had to flip that plan of attack around a little bit after realizing that while Point Isabel is a HUGE park, it is also FILLED TO THE BRIM with people and their ill-behaved dogs. So lunch (and some vigilant guarding of our dogs from extra friendly and overly curious puppies) came first, and then we were off to the water.

Dan took Leela in first, and though it took her a couple of tries, she was eventually happily splashing around. She is half Lab, after all. Nix, on the other hand, was suspicious. None of his breeding predisposes him to swimming, and given how much he hates baths, getting him used to the water is bound to be a slow transition.

I tried to encourage Nix to step into the water by standing on rocks a few feet into the surf, but he climbed right up onto those rocks with me, completely avoiding the water altogether. What can I say? I have a very savvy (and apparently aquaphobic) dog. (These pictures probably make him look happier than he actually was at the time.)

After deciding that Nix had had enough of our water torture, we headed back to the trail (and eventually back to the car) to head home. Nix was anxious to get away from the water, and basically dragged us the whole way back to the parking lot. He probably would have dragged us the whole way back to Fremont if we would have let him.

The car ride home was quiet, with the dogs giving in to their exhaustion from all the excitement that afternoon and falling asleep on top of each other in the back seat.

Cutest Mother’s Day ever.

Back to Baysics

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Once upon a time, I wanted to move to Chicago. And I almost did, until my parents told me that if I went out of state for college, I’d have to take out loans and be in debt forever and ever. So with my acceptance letter to UIC weighing heavily on my mind, I instead accepted admission at UC Santa Cruz, about an hour and a half from my childhood home in San Francisco, for which my way would be paid in full without my accruing debt.

I spent the next three years being homesick, every single day. Not so much for my family, but for the city of San Francisco. I came home at every opportunity, revisiting the places I had loved growing up and wishing I could make them a part of my daily routine.

When I graduated from UCSC in 2006, I was determined to move back to San Francisco. I had my heart set on becoming a journalist, and applied to every newspaper and magazine within city limits. But of course, with journalism dying off in favor of online print formats like blogs, none of them even called me back. So I instead took a staff job with the online education program I had worked for as a student in Santa Cruz, and then eventually my job in Merced, all the while wishing and wondering how I was ever going to make it back to San Francisco.

I was convinced for a long time that no one could leave San Francisco and ever make it back. Between the city’s expensive living and competitive job market, it seemed the only way to spend both your childhood and adulthood in the city was never to leave at all. I kicked myself for leaving in the first place, wishing I had just gone to San Francisco State like so many of my peers.

Then I met Dan, and two years later, he got a job that would move us back to the Bay Area. I was sad about leaving my house and my friends in Merced, but ecstatic at the chance to get back to my hometown. Of course, we wouldn’t be able to move there at first – the change in housing prices from what we were paying in Merced was too huge a jump to make suddenly, and Dan’s job required that he live in the East Bay – but it was definitely progress.

But now that we’re here, within striking distance, I’m finding that my husband is unwilling to strike. He “hates San Francisco,” he says. He doesn’t want to live there. And I just can’t wrap my head around that.

IMAGE COURTESY OF DIGITALSIGHT.COM

I read Tina Fey’s Bossypants last month, and she has a great line in there about city folk vs. country folk:

Trying to force Country Folk to love the Big City is like telling your gay cousin, “You just haven’t met the right girl yet.” They just don’t like big cities. It’s okay. It’s natural. They were born that way.

What this leads me to conclude is that Dan is gay. For the country. (Or at least the suburbs.)

But I need my husband to learn to at least tolerate San Francisco, if not like or love it. Because I want to raise my kids there. I want them to learn to use chopsticks before they can use a fork. I want them to attend one of the top high schools in the nation, against their will, just like I did. I want them to not learn to drive until they’re forced to by the God-forsaken town they attend college in because why would they need a car when they have Muni?

In short, I want my kids to have the same opportunities and experiences that I did growing up in the city. Public school in one of the most diverse cities in the world taught me about different races, cultures, and religions. Riding public transit taught me responsibility and made me independent. Shopping on Haight Street taught me not to give money to runaway teenagers from Nebraska just because they harass you for it. And by the time I started college, I was better prepared to balance my schoolwork, part-time job, and underage drinking than any of my peers from suburban or rural backgrounds.

I know Dan’s frustrated, because we’ve moved three times in five months. And I’m not talking about moving any time soon. I’m committed to what I said after our last move, which is that I didn’t want to move again until we bought something. And I don’t want to have kids until we buy something. So doesn’t it make sense to buy in San Francisco?

I need to figure out a way to convince Dan that San Francisco is the right girl.

The Night Before Christmas

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… is Jewish Christmas where I come from. Which means we take our loud, inappropriate, drunk family out to Chinese food. And then order the entire menu.

But that comes later.

We got to my parents’ house early in the afternoon so Dan and my dad could watch football while my mom and I made latkes to make up for all the latkes we didn’t get on Friday night. Making latkes is a laborious ordeal, and not something you do often, partially because they’re holiday specific, and partially because they stink up your entire world.

(I’m not exaggerating. It took me two days and three washes to get the smell of fried potatoes and onions out of my hair.)

But it was totally worth it, because for one, it made my mom really happy.

And for two, I had the pleasure of watching Dan eat latkes for the first time ever. He ate them with his hands, but marriage is about letting the little things slide, right?

Several hours later, after I was sufficiently drunk on latkes (and wine and vanilla vodka), we ventured down the street to Golden Rice Bowl, formerly known as Beijing on Irving, affectionately known as “Lou’s.” This place has been our Chinese restaurant of choice since I was three or four years old, and actually used to be owned by the family of my orthodontist’s assistant. (Six degrees of San Francisco, anyone?) Their family sold the restaurant a few years ago, but the new ownership retained Lou, their star waiter, who knows my entire family by name.

Jewish Christmas dinner was, as always, fantastic. Lou is a champion of multitasking, somehow managing to satiate all the needs and cravings of our massive group of fourteen while also handling nine other tables of three or more people.

What can I say? The dude is a (very underpaid) saint.

The only qualm I had with the evening was that there were TOO MANY PEOPLE at the restaurant. Remember when Chinese food and movie theaters on Christmas used to be just for Jews? Apparently, those days are long gone. And Golden Rice Bowl was filled to the brim with people in Santa hats. Many of whom were dirty San Francisco hipster transplants who probably couldn’t afford the plane ticket back to Ohio (or wherever the hell they’re from) for Christmas.

Yelp needs to stop making the things I love so popular.

But even with the influx of hipsters and Santa hats, Jewish Christmas was a resounding success. I was so filled with pot stickers and general’s chicken and Szechuan eggplant that Dan practically had to roll me out of the restaurant at the end of the night. Because this is how Jews do:

They came to kill us. We prevailed. Let’s eat.

Hello! We want to live here!

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By the time I was offered a job in the Bay Area, we literally had a week to find a place to live. In desperation, we found a townhouse in an apartment complex. And it’s everything I dreamed it would be – cramped, noisy, inconvenient. So with Dan’s blessing, I’ve started looking for houses.

It’s hard to find a rental home with two large, young dogs. People don’t want to rent to families with pets. Especially when those pets are dogs. And especially when those dogs have really big, wrinkly heads. Availability of homes that allow pets is limited, and you sometimes have to settle for something just because they’ll let you keep your dogs and provide them with a giant yard to run in.

I went to look at a house yesterday. It looked great on the internet – huge kitchen with new countertops, remodeled bathroom, enormous yard. I was so excited to go look at it. And then I got there, and reality set in.

It wasn’t bad by any means, but it was tiny. The master bathroom was literally a sink over a toilet with a shower in the corner. The bedrooms may fit a bed. (It’s still to be determined.) And the closets are going to force me to SIGNIFICANTLY reduce the items of clothing that I own.

But it has a garage. And a washer and dryer. And a huge backyard. And it’s in a wonderful neighborhood, less than a mile from where we live now. And as far as I’m concerned, the pros outweigh the cons.

We put in an application, and expect to hear back within the next week or so. And I’m hoping the news is positive, because I put a lot of effort into creating this:

For those who don’t know, it’s a pet resume. I’ve heard from multiple people with pets that it’s the easiest way to get you and your pets into a new rental, because it makes your pets seem like real, lovable animals, as opposed to potentially destructive information on an application.

Nixon’s blurb says the following:

Nixon is a two-and-a-half-year-old Catahoula Leopard Dog. We adopted Nixon as a puppy in 2009. He loves people of all shapes and sizes, and is a big fan of tennis balls. Nixon completed PetSmart’s puppy training class in August 2009 and is also house-trained and crate-trained.

Nixon is neutered and receives anti-flea and anti-tick medication on a monthly basis. He receives regular veterinary exams and is kept up-to-date on all of his vaccinations.

On days when we’re at work, Nixon spends a majority of his time at home sleeping on our bed. We board Nixon and Leela together at a “dog hotel” when we are away for longer periods of time (ie. vacations).

Because our current home lacks a backyard, we walk Nixon several times a day, and have also been taking him to a local park to run off-leash. At our previous home in Merced, which we owned, he and Leela would often spend hours in the backyard running and playing, but were never left outside unattended.

Leela’s blurb is similar, but says she’s shy around new people and is crated when we’re sleeping or not home to supervise her.

The landlord didn’t seem impressed with the resume at first. She sort of looked at Nixon’s picture, asked if he was a Pit Bull, and then asked if he or Leela had ever bitten anyone. But I later found out from Dan (who went by the open house later on his way to work) that the landlord loved the resume – that it told her everything a landlord would need to know about our pets, and that she was happy to have been given the information. She also told Dan about her dogs – one of whom exceeds a hundred and fifty pounds – and gave him the distinct impression that she would be comfortable having our dogs at her property, assuming everything else checks out.

Keep your fingers crossed for us! My pooties NEED this yard:

#girlsweekend

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Those of you who follow me on Twitter probably saw the #girlsweekend hashtag attached to all kinds of crazy tweets this weekend. That’s because Raeann and Meghan came to visit, and we spent the weekend drunkenly organizing my kitchen and basking in the insane glory that is Bridezillas.

The best part of the weekend was our shopping trip to FoodMaxx, where Raeann shopped for the gourmet dinner she would be preparing for us that evening and Meghan and I helped ourselves to … whatever the fuck we wanted.

We came home, reorganized my entire kitchen, unpacked the new china that Dan and I got for our wedding, and ate what was truly my first home-cooked meal in the new house. (Boiling pasta doesn’t count, as much as I’d like to think it does.)

The next morning, we discovered what is by far my new favorite breakfast place. The Vine, located in Fremont’s historic Niles district, was the cutest and most delicious restaurant I’ve been to in a LONG time. They have ricotta pancakes on the menu, and OF COURSE I ordered them, and OF COURSE it was the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. Meghan ordered sweet potato waffles, which will be the NEXT best decision I’ve ever made in my life, and Raeann ordered something with eggs and ham and etc. that I didn’t eat because I didn’t feel like dying.

I give this weekend two bottles of Jack Daniels Honey, bottoms up. Thanks for an awesome time, ladies!