Category Archive: Uncategorized

Happy new year!!! Okay, so we’re now one month into 2010 and it’s been well over a month since my last post. After a great 2 week trip to Long Beach life has been nothing short of crazy around here so I apologize for not keeping our “fans” up-to-date with all that we’ve been up to! I’ll be updating all of you wonderful folks on what we’ve been keeping ourselves busy with and hopefully be caught up by this weekend.

Thanks so much for visiting!!!

Love,
Lisa (oh yeah, and Kevin too 🙂 )

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

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??

Saying that our life in SF is different than our life in Long Beach is an understatement. When we were living in LB, with my job, going to school, and being a co-leader for my niece’s Girl Scout troop my life was crazy. I knew that moving up here would be a great change for me, even just for a new level of sanity, and I’m happy to say that it’s true.

I can’t say that my first two months of work have been easy and stress-free. I was thrown into the thick of things and it hadn’t slowed down until just this week. I’m both the Admissions Counselor and the Registrar for the teacher education program for 300 students on three campuses. So end of summer is crazy time for Admissions and then right when all Admissions offices can begin breathing, it’s the beginning of the school year which means crazy time for Registrar’s offices. Luckily, tomorrow is the Add/Drop deadline for the university so that means that my inbox isn’t full of 100+ e-mails a day anymore, woo hoo!!! 🙂 I can say, though, that the past two months the latest I’ve ever stayed at the office was 5:45pm…no more Girl Scout parent information meetings until 9/10pm anymore!

Okay, so work is good and I finally have free time. Awesome. So as most of you know, Kevin decided to go back to school for aviation mechanics at City College of Alameda. His classes are Monday-Friday, 4:30pm-10:30pm (though on Fridays he gets out at 7:30pm). I have to admit, the first 2-3 weeks of this schedule were extremely rough on me. I’d wake up and leave home by 7:15am while Kevin slept in, then at night I’d go to bed around 10 and Kevin doesn’t get home until 11pm at the earliest. So for four days of the week when we interact, one of us is always half asleep. But just knowing how much Kevin LOVES the program and is learning so much and has finally found his niche in the world, it definitely has helped me in not feeling sad at nights when he’s not around.

I know that having Lola around has helped immensely. Each night after work we take a walk to the dog park and spend 45 mins. to an hour there, running around with the other dogs and playing fetch. The past four weeks on Tuesdays we’ve gone to dog training classes too and we’ve been learning a lot. Tomorrow’s our last class so hopefully Lola will shine amongst the other students! 🙂 I’ve also been involving myself in a few different groups that have kept me busy. I’ve been a part of meetup.com for a while now but when in LB I never had any time to attend meetings (or if I did, I just wanted to be at home!) So I’ve joined a few different meetups and have really enjoyed myself and have met some new friends. I’m in a Spanish-language meetup (where people of all levels get together to speak Spanish…I’ve been to two so far and it’s all come back to me so easily!). I’m also in a bookclub called “Booze ‘n Books” where people get together to discuss books over cocktails…what a fantastic idea, don’t you think? I’m currently reading “Shadows of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon for my first meeting next week. And lastly, I’ve joined the “Latin Potluck Party” meetup and have actually volunteered to be an Assistant Organizer and have planned our October meetup, so we’ll see how it goes! Once a week I also get together with my sister Jessie and some other friends for a LOST tv show fan group that Jessie created. We’re watching the shows each week starting from season one to get caught up before the last season premiere in December (If you’ve never seen the show, you’ve still got time to Netflix ’em all and get caught up too! Can you tell we’re huge fans?!) Lastly, I’ve been practicing the piano pretty often and can now play “Jingle Bells” and “Oh When the Saints go Marching in” (don’t be jealous!)

So though my nights are a little more lonely without Kevin around, life is still good and it just makes time with him over the weekend so much more special. 🙂

Finally, all of the picture frames have been put up and the boxes have all been unpacked (phew!) so I finally felt like our apartment looked semi-good enough to take pictures of and post online. Enjoy!

Yes, that is a keyboard…I’ll start playing more this fall when Kevin’s away at night school and me and Lola are left alone to hang out! It’s been a dream of mine for a long time and I can’t wait to get started. 🙂

The second most important room (and our only other room in the apartment to mention!)…the living room

Close-up of our frame display…more to come in the near future!

Lola’s favorite room…the kitchen!

Lola checking in on mom and wondering what the heck she was doing

So as most of you know, Kevin is still looking for a part-time job to work while he’s going to school full-time for Aviation Mechanics at the Oakland Airport, so the past few weeks he’s been hanging out at home and he has become quite the chef! So far I’ve come home to enjoy some delicious dinners, including: tilapia with mango salsa, homemade Naan bread, buttermilk biscuits with homemade butter, Jalepeno Adobo burgers, carnitas tacos (are we drooling yet??) Here are some pictures of some of his creations…I just wish we could live off of one salary for good so I could enjoy this everyday! 🙂

After lounging around all morning, Jessie and I made our way to the Stern Grove Music Festival that takes place every Sunday afternoon during the summer. We got there after it had already started, so it took a while for us to find a spot to sit. The music was pretty good, it was just so incredibly hot and crowded that after drinking some wine and eating some yummy snacks we decided to head out. But we’ll definitely be back this summer when Kevin’s here and we get there earlier!

The hoards of people enjoying the sunny day in SF!

Me and Jess loving the sunshine!

I thought an update on work might be nice so I took my camera in today and took some photos to share:

The building where my office is, Alliant Int’l University has half of the 1st floor and all of the 2nd floor, there’s an art university and another company that shares the building.

Good ol’ Pier 39, directly across the street from my office (it’s still exciting to me…I’m afraid all the tourists might get old pretty quick though!

Here’s my office! Not much to look at yet, I didn’t bring much of my decorating stuff with me, so it’ll be a few weeks before I get it looking more like “home” 😉

I’ve pretty much just jumped right into work, they’ve put me to work pretty quick so I’ve been really busy my first three days there! What we’re working on heavily right now is going through all 4 years worth of credential student’s files and streamlining them into one clear format. So it’s basically paper shuffling right now 🙁 but this process is going to make my life a lot easier in the future!

My sister and I looked at six apartments over the weekend, but there was one that I really liked and I applied for. Today I got the phone call from our new landlord letting me know that we got the offer! 🙂

It’s an in-law unit (basically the basement of someone’s house that’s been made into an apartment) that has one bedroom, a full kitchen, living/dining room, full bathroom, and a yard…and the absolute best thing about it…we can have a dog!! We’re going to wait to get our new bundle of joy until Kevin gets a part-time job, but I’ll definitely keep you in the loop.

The neighborhood it’s in is the Portola District in southeast SF. It’s not the prime location, I’ll be honest, but the more I read about it and drive around the more I feel like it might be the perfect location for us to get our feet wet in SF.

Here are some photos of the new place!

The main house is the dark brown one in the middle,the entrance to our apartment is just to the right of their main staircase

The outside of our apartment (the black gate is the entrance [goes into the kitchen] and the window is to our living room)

The living room/dining room (the window looks out onto the patio)

The bathroom

The bedroom

The back patio (not much to look at but the landlord says they don’t use it often so we might do some gardening and
put a table/chairs out for get-togethers!

I left at 6:30am this morning and having never made the drive up north on my own, luckily it was a lot better than I was expecting! A little traffic here and there, but it was mostly smooth sailing until the Bay Bridge.

Feeling much more awake after a little Starbucks/Pleasant Valley State Prison, anyone?

Traffic?! I thought I was far from L.A./A view of the Bay Bridge

I got into the city around 1:30pm and met Jessie and her boyfriend Kindrid at Dolores Park.

What do people do with a sunny day up here? Head to the park!/Jessie and Kindrid

Jessie’s apartment (they’re on the top floor)/Her bedroom (isn’t she amazing??)

We went to check out one apartment near Golden Gate Park but it wasn’t what we’re really looking for. So Jessie and I spent the rest of the afternoon in her apartment, listening to old records and blogging! Tomorrow we’re going to hit some more apartments and have dinner with our dad who’ll be visiting. Then Monday I start my new job! 🙂

Sisters blogging away the afternoon