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A thank you to our visitors, anxious puppies, and Golden Gate Park

Posted by Lisa On November 21st, 2009

Howdy folks!

I just had the best surprise a few minutes ago and that prompted me to get my butt on here and write another post…a few weeks ago I added a map to my blog to show where people are logging into our blog (you can see it on the right column) and lo and behold we’ve had quite a few hits from all over the world! Of course, Southern California has the most hits but I believe I can make a shout out to a few people outside of CA that I think have been visiting: Erin in Illinois, Sneha in NYC and our farthest visitor ever…Shige in Japan!! It’s so amazing to know that people are actually interested in what we’re up to and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for continuing to read our blog! Also, there’s someone who logged in from it looks to be Nebraska or Kansas though I’m not sure who it is…so post a comment if it’s you so we’ll know who you are and can thank you properly! 🙂

I’ll update about Thanksgiving in another post later this week but a few things that we’ve been up to since my last post…

Lola’s been acting up a lot lately and it started to really get to me and put a damper on things. Kevin leaves for school between 2-3pm every afternoon and I get home between 5-6pm so Lola is left outside for a few hours a day. Each night when I’d get home, I could expect to be greeted by an excited Lola but also a nice pile of crap that she tore up while she was alone. I’ve come home to a bag of charcoal torn up and strewn across the yard, the hose pulled off the stand with a few holes added to it, her water and food bowls torn up to shreds, and the best yet…her doggy bed torn up and the stuffing all over the yard. It was getting extremely difficult being happy with her in the evenings after having to clean up her crap and knowing that money was just being chewed up and spit out each day.

So one night last week when I came home to a bag of wood chips torn up I decided to Google the issue and see if I could find any solutions. Come to find out…she has anxiety problems! (Go figure…) Each time we would leave her, she’d get separation anxiety and would act out as a result. The most eye-opening part of my research was that us humans were the ones causing the problem in the first place. Something I found extremely interesting and also quite sad is that separation anxiety is the #2 reason why dogs are put up for adoption and euthanized…the dogs seem unruly and just plain ol’ “bad” and so are given up…but in reality the humans are the ones that need to be trained to fix this behavior. I found two great articles on this topic (links here and here) and Kevin and I have been working really hard this past week to help Lola with her anxiety problems. It really seems to be working…she’s getting more used to being by herself even when we’re home (so that when we do leave it’s not such a shock to her) and she’s starting to calm down before and after we leave so that our leaving is not such a big deal anymore. Tonight we were actually gone from 1-7:30pm and when we got home not a thing was torn up! 🙂 So far, so good!

Last weekend on Saturday we decided to take a trip to Golden Gate Park and have a picnic lunch. We went to a part of the park that’s pretty quiet and off-the-beaten-path (on this map, we were near number 25 in the key) and spent a great few hours in the sunshine, enjoying our sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies, and playing fetch with Lola. We’re trying to take advantage of the sunny days because we won’t see many of those for a while come December!

Lola anxiously awaiting Kevin to throw the ball for her

A very tired and happy Lola

Hanging out with mom

Our pretty little girl (who thinks she’s a model with that pose, haha)

Updates

Posted by Lisa On November 15th, 2009

This past week has been pretty stressful for me at work because it was our university’s time for review by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Luckily they’re allowing us to continue to run a teacher credential program (thank bajeezus!) though we have a few things we need to improve on, luckily nothing in my role is affected by that. I also came down with a bit of bronchitis (fun!) though luckily it wasn’t as bad as I’ve had it before and thank goodness it wasn’t the dreaded swine flu!

Lately we’ve been laying low over the weekends and just hanging out at home with Lola. On Saturday we had Jessie and the LOST fan group come over to our place for our mini-marathon (four episodes). Then that night we decided to take the BART downtown to walk around Union Square. Last week they put the large Christmas tree up and also the ice skating rink so we went to check those out and then got some yummy ice cream (even though it was pretty chilly last night!)

Kevin and I both have really enjoyed moving up to SF where living green is not only a part of the general public’s consciousness already but it’s also integrated into the law (where plastic shopping bags are forbidden to be used in major grocery chains and composting was just made the law for residents and businesses in October). Every year Green Festival s are hosted in major cities across the U.S. and this year’s SF Green Fest was this weekend so Kevin and I spent a few hours there today. There were tons of booths with different organizations and companies that are committed to sustainable living and they had great free samples and handouts. There were food booths and demonstrations and speakers and a lot of great information was being shared. Our favorite part was learning about the home composting system called the Worm Factory which seemed like the easiest and quickest way to home compost we’d ever heard of before.

When we got back to our neighborhood we decided to stop off for a late lunch to one of our new favorite spots called Cali Pho Nia. They have got some of the best bun (vermicelli noodles with veggies, a choice of meat, and fish sauce) I’ve ever had (bun [pronounced ‘boon’] is my favorite Vietnamese noodle dish ever and their grilled beef is the absolute best we’ve ever had!)

Not much else is going on in our little world…next weekend we’re going to visit our friends Stacey, Jay, Isabella and Tasi (see previous blog post about visiting them here) and we’re looking forward to having some visitors during Thanksgiving which is going to be a lot of fun. So we might not have much to blog about for a bit but don’t fret I’ll be sure to update again when there’s something worth updating you all about!

Hope all is well with you!!

Here are some cute photos of Lola to bring a smile to your face! 🙂

A week of Halloween festivities

Posted by Lisa On October 30th, 2009

I had a great Halloween week! The weekend before Halloween (Fri. 10/23) Jessie and her roommates hosted a pre-Halloween bash at their apartment. This year I dressed up as a gypsy and Kevin put on his annual gory wound makeup.

Me and my wounded husband, haha

The yummy spread!

Jessie the go-go dancer and her roommate Jessie the cat

At the party we spent a lot of time talking, laughing, drinking, eating and dancing away to some great tunes. Then a group of us (Lisa R., Cathy, Jessie, me and Rebecca–pictured below) decided to keep the evening going and went to a couple of bars in the area.

Bus ride to The Mint

On Halloween night, Kevin and I were invited to hang out with our new friends Maya (my co-worker) and her roommates Katie and Lizzie. We went to their apartment in Noe Valley (a really cute neighborhood a few miles from us in SF) to pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters and watch scary movies (we watched Sleepy Hollow and Grindhouse Planet Terror). I was just happy to have a second chance to wear my costume! Kevin decided to go as Kevin Halloween night. 😉

Trying to get into character!

Katie had some sparklers so we decided to go out front and light ’em. I mean, who doesn’t like sparklers??

My first birthday spent in SF

Posted by Lisa On October 28th, 2009

My 26th birthday was the first one while living in SF and I had a really wonderful day. I went to work that day and nothing terribly exciting happened at work. But when I got home there were some beautiful flowers on the kitchen counter that Kevin got me. 🙂 This went along with the iPod Touch that he got me the night before (thanks Kevi!!)

We met up with my sister that night and went to Yo Yo Sushi for dinner (yummmm!) It was very reasonably priced for a sushi bar in SF and the sushi was delicious!

Then we decided to top off the evening with some yummy crepes from Ti Couz (Jessie had taken us here a couple of times during the last few years when we’d come out to visit and it is fantastic!)
Kevin got a fruit-filled crepe, I got chocolate mousse (but he heard me wrong at first so got me a Nutella-filled crepe with bananas on top and when I told him that the order was wrong he gave me my chocolate mousse and let us keep the crepe!), and Jessie got a crepe flambe.

So are you drooling yet? 😉

I had so much fun spending my birthday with two of my favorite people in the whole world. Thank you two for celebrating with me! 🙂

October trip to Long Beach

Posted by Lisa On October 27th, 2009

Kevin and I had a great time back at home and can’t wait to go back!

Thursday 10/15
We landed in Long Beach early Thurs. AM and Kevin’s mom Dorothy came to pick us up. Kevin went to visit some friends at Yamaha where he used to work so Dorothy and I went to lunch together at Grounds Cafe (they have delicious sandwiches!) That afternoon we hung out with Kevin’s family and then that night we went to spend some time with my mom. We went to dinner at Lola’s Mexican Restaurant (they have the BEST cilantro salsa I have ever had and great molé!) and had a lot of fun just spending time with my mama.

Friday 10/16
We took it easy Friday morning and just hung out around my mom’s house visiting with my family’s dog Luke (who’s an old fart now!)

Then my mom took Kevin and I on an adventure in Little Saigon–Chinese massages! My mom’s a big fan of getting these so for our birthdays last year she said she’d take us so we finally made some time to do it! It was quite the experience. We enjoyed it a lot and felt pretty refreshed (and a little beat up! haha) afterwards. We treated ourselves to some Vietnamese noodles and soup afterwards at a small cafe in the shopping center.

After that adventure (thanks again mama!) we went with Kevin’s parents to our nephew’s high school football game to see him perform in marching band. Josh is a sophomore at Mayfair HS and he just started band this year playing the trombone.

Josh is the one in the middle wearing the glasses

We met Kevin’s sister Judith and our neice Katelyn there and had a fun time just hanging out at the football game!

Dorothy, me, Katelyn and Judith

George, Kevin, Dorothy and me

After the halftime show we went to spend some time with our friends Brianne and Brian (the ones who visited us a few weeks ago). We went to eat at Lucille’s BBQ (one of our favorite restaurants!) and then went to hang out at their apartment. We got to meet their little kitty named Eva (sooo cute!) and we watched “I Love You, Man” which was quite entertaining (yay Jobin! haha) We used to spend a ton of time with them because they lived only a few blocks from our old apartment, so it was great feeling like old times again. 🙂

Saturday 10/17

Saturday morning we went to visit my Aunt Tina and had a great visit with her. She’s looking really great and was in the greatest of spirits when we saw her (it’s been a long while since I updated her blog, but in case you’d like to see it here’s the link!) She’s actually going to get her tracheotomy removed soon and will have a wheelchair that she can maneuver on her own in the next couple of months! She’s making amazing progress and I know that she’s only going to continue to improve by great leaps and bounds. 🙂

That afternoon we spent some time at the Edmonds’ home having a barbecue. Dorothy made my favorite ribs ever and it felt like old times again hanging out in the backyard with Dorothy, George and Thomas.

That night came the long anticipated Oktoberfest! We had gone three years in a row while living in LB so wanted to continue the tradition while we were in town. Kim, Frank, Alison, Seth, Brian and Thomas joined us to drink some beer and do the chicken dance. 🙂

Kevin, Brian and Thomas (pretending they’re too cool for the chicken dance!)

Alison & Seth (good friends from Redlands)

Kim & Frank (Kim’s a really close family friend)

Bet you can’t guess what we’re doing…

We’re such German-wannabe nerds!

Me ‘n Kev

The group

Sunday 10/18

Sunday was our last full day in town and Kevin’s family hosted a joint birthday party for our neice Katelyn (her birthday was Oct. 11th) and mine (my birthday was Oct. 20th). Sarah, Rob, Judy, Lisa, Brian, Brianne and the rest of the “regulars” came to celebrate.

Yummy cookies with funny Katelyn-designed quotes written on them

Kevin, Judith and Thomas

Rob & Judy

Katelyn opening up her gift from me and Kevin. We didn’t have any gift bags so we put it in a Christmas stocking. As you can see, she was pretty excited about the stocking itself…then she opened it up to find a pair of socks (haha, gotcha Katelyn!)…then she was pleasantly surprised to see a real gift inside. 🙂

The birthday girls

That night we went back to my mom’s with Brian, Brianne and Thomas and spent time hanging out with my mom. We had to hit the sack early that night because of our early AM flight the next day.

Overall we had a wonderful time back at home! It was a bit strange having not been back in three months, not having a car to drive ourselves around, and thinking of Long Beach as a vacation spot for us after having lived there all of our lives. Thanks to everyone for chauffering us around town and taking the time to hang out with us! When we’re down for Christmas we want to see more of you!! 🙂

Long Beach bound

Posted by Lisa On October 14th, 2009

Hi everyone!

Kevin and I are VERY excited to be making a trip down to Long Beach this upcoming weekend after 3 1/2 months away! Lots of fun events planned–seeing our nephew Joshua perform in the halftime show at his high school’s homecoming game (he plays trombone in the marching band), staying at my mom’s house over the weekend and all the crazy fun that is sure to ensue, seeing my family’s dog Lukey, a BBQ with the Edmonds family, meeting the newest member of the Lord family (baby Dylan born 9/24 to our good family friends Celia and Chris), a joint birthday party with my niece Katelyn who turned 10 years old last weekend, and of course Oktoberfest!

We’ll be jumping on a plane early tomorrow morning and be in Long Beach through Monday morning. My sister Jessie’s going to be watching Lola over the weekend and I know they’re going to have a great time, so hopefully she’ll want us back by the time we return home! 😉

Hope you all are doing well and if we don’t get to see you this weekend, we’ll be in town for a longer period around Christmas so hopefully we’ll meet up then!

Lots of love,

Lisa

Trip to Alameda & Oakland

Posted by Lisa On October 12th, 2009

On Friday 10/9 I had the day off from work and Kevin had the night off from class so we decided to take a road trip to Alameda & Oakland near where Kevin has classes. He had driven by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Park, Arrowhead Marsh many times before but didn’t have much time to visit so we took a day trip there with Lola. It’s a really pretty area and a nice, peaceful retreat in the middle of the city of Oakland.

A good ol’ egret

There was this very strange piece of artwork (at least that’s what we think it was) right in the middle of the grass area so Kevin decided to climb up it with Lola. Watch the video here:

Lola, like a little kid, playing on the whale playground toy

Though I don’t think we’ll be driving across the bridge just to go to this park again, it was a nice get away from the city for a change!

Brianne & Brian’s visit (Oct. 3rd-5th)

Posted by Lisa On October 11th, 2009

Our really great friends Brian and Brianne came up to visit us Oct. 3rd-Oct. 5th and we had a blast! We gave them the whirlwind tour of the city and I think we did every touristy thing you could think of except for riding the cable car and the tour of Alcatraz. So here’s some photos of their visit!

After picking them up from SFO airport early on Saturday morning, we headed straight for breakfast. We ate at Just for You Cafe in the Dogpatch neighborhood and it definitely earned a thumbs-up from us (especially for their Beignets, a delicious New Orleans inspired fluffy donut covered in powdered sugar…mmm…)

After hanging out at our apartment for a bit and getting them acquainted with Lola, we hit the streets by bus for a true SF experience. We took the 44 bus for about 30 minutes all the way to Golden Gate Park and strolled through the park a bit. Then we jumped back on a bus that took us to the Golden Gate bridge.

Brian was pretty hungry that day!

After that we took the bus to the Fillmore Street Festival which we were pretty excited about but ended up being a bust. 🙁 The festival was only a block long and you had to pay for tickets to do wine tasting which didn’t sound extremely exciting to us at the time. So we hopped on another bus and went down to Union Square.They were a little too excited about the bus trip, haha

Me and Kevin in Union SquareThat weekend ended up being pretty popular in terms of visitors because my friends from Redlands, Sneha and Beka, ended up coming to visit that day as well! Sneha was in town for her mom’s birthday (she’s from San Jose and now lives in NYC) and Beka is now going to school at Stanford so is in the neighborhood. We met Sneha and Beka at the Cheesecake Factory at the top of the Macy’s building in Union Square and had a great lunch/dinner together.

Me, Sneha and Beka at the Cheesecake Factory!

After saying bye to Sne and Beka, we hopped on another bus to head back home. We had a pretty quiet night because of all of our walking that day and we knew we’d have another busybusy day in store for us on Sunday!

Sunday morning we piled into the car (enough buses for the weekend!) and went to Fisherman’s Wharf. Our landlord has a friend who works at a parking lot near Pier 39 so was able to get us in for free!

Brian and Brianne ordering up their lunch

Chow time! We had fried calamari (mmm), crab chowder (mmm), fried shrimp (mmm) and garlic fries (mmm)…talk about a healthy lunch!

After lunch we stumbled upon the Musee Mecanique antique coin-operated arcade at Pier 39. From the outside, it didn’t look like much but it ended up being really entertaining!

Brianne getting her fortune told by granny

One of the many creepy figures they had there

You’ll just have to ask Kevin personally what he saw (or go there and pay a quarter to see for yourself!)

They had some of the funniest little arcade machines and we spent a ton in quarters watching them do their thing. Here’s one, the Thimble Theater, that I couldn’t resist putting my quarter in (watch the video):

And Kevin decided to go up against one of the funniest ones there (it’s a video too, so give it a look!):

The last thing we did at the arcade was take a group photo in the old photo booth they had there:

After spending a roll of quarters (not really) at the arcade, we headed out to Ghirardelli Square.

We were pretty exhausted by then, so we headed back home and relaxed for a bit. Then we decided to go to dinner at Goood Frikin Chicken (one of our favorite spots in SF so far!) and Brianne and Brian were definitely impressed! 🙂 Then we went to meet up with one of my co-workers for a weekly trivia night that she and her friends attend at Noe’s Bar. We celebrated into the late hours of the night as it approached Brianne’s birthday, so we had a few drinks to commemorate her entrance into her 25th year! 🙂

On Monday I took the day off and we did some more sight-seeing. Our first stop was Haight Ashbury and though it was pretty quiet on a Monday mid-morning, there were still some sights to be had!

We were so happy that B&B came up to visit us and we can’t wait until they visit again! 🙂

Taking a pit stop in the Presidio to get a look at the Bay

Sarah & Rob’s visit (Sept. 25th-27th)

Posted by Lisa On October 11th, 2009

Kevin’s sister Sarah and her boyfriend Rob came up to visit Fri. 9/25-Sun. 9/27. They drove up Friday night and after hanging out a bit we went out to dinner to Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack (a delicious and fun Italian-inspired restaurant whose menu changes occasionally so you can never get tired of their food and it has a great atmosphere that even includes a DJ on the weekends).

On Saturday I unfortunately had to work from 8:30am-2pm in Oakland so Kevin took them sight-seeing and then I met up with them near Golden Gate Park and we headed out to the Golden Gate Bridge to check out the sights. We made a pit stop to Bi-Rite Ice Cream Shop (a MUST for anyone visiting SF!) and enjoyed some honey lavender, raspberry white chocolate swirl, salted caramel, balsamic strawberry, and mint ‘n chip ice cream (are you hungry yet??). Mostly we just drove around the city and it was nice for Kevin and I to be tourists for a change. 🙂 Saturday night we were fortunate enough to be wined and dined by Sarah and Rob who made us a delicious dinner. And then Kevin and I surprised Sarah with some yummy strawberry cupcakes for her birthday.

On Sunday we went to our trusted brunch spot, Zazie, and I think we made two more fans outta them. 🙂 They had to leave that afternoon to drive back down to Southern California so we didn’t have a ton of time to spend with them that day. Overall it was a really great visit from them and we were so happy that they came up to visit!

Sunny Sunday at Crissy Field

Posted by Lisa On September 20th, 2009

Today was a beautiful, hot sunny day in San Francisco so what better way to spend the afternoon than at Crissy Field with Kevin, Jessie and Lola? Crissy Field is in the Presidio and is a great dog beach right near the Golden Gate bridge. Though Lola had experienced the water at Granite Creek where we went camping in August, she hadn’t fully immersed herself in the water because it was so cold there. So this was the first time that Lola went all in and she absolutely loved it! It took her a little while and some prompting from Kevin to go deep into the water where she couldn’t touch the ground, but once she did there wasn’t any stopping her! She had a blast playing fetch and stomping and splashing around and I know that we’ll be back many more times!

Doesn’t look like much of a sunny day, eh?? The fog started coming in pretty strong by the time we got out there, but luckily it was still warm out.