Had such a great weekend in Vegas, but nice to be back home with the boy.
Love this:
Had such a great weekend in Vegas, but nice to be back home with the boy.
Love this:
Just one favourite today. My mom painted this for Derek and I as a gift for our first anniversary. We met in Hawaii, and all of the signs point to places that are special to us.
Lanikai is my favourite beach, Derek used to work at Sand Island, and the Barefoot Bar is the place where my parents met him for the first time.
I love it.
And also, my mom has mad skills.
It’s such a gorgeous day in San Francisco I just want to go play outside. I find it strange that it is 60 degrees here in July and 90 in mid-October, but that’s just one more thing to love about this weird little city.
I am literally don’t think I can eat any more turkey, but I feel really guilty going shopping for any other food while we still have so much left because there are lots of people in the world that don’t have enough to eat, so there is actually no other food in our house.
As a direct result of this situation, I had a very large coffee and some chocolate for lunch today and it was delicious and decadent but between the caffeine and the sugar rush I am feeling a bit crazy and I might be developing a twitch in my left eye.
It might just be excitement though, I’m off to Vegas tomorrow to see two of my most favourite girls, drink a lot of margaritas and spend all my money. It’s not the gambling that gets me, though I do seem to have a unusual talent for craps, it’s the shopping.
There is a Zara here in SF, but for some reason when I walk into the one in Vegas I want EVERYTHING! Plus they have a Top Shop. Life is good.
Monday was Thanksgiving (I try not to call it Canadian Thanksgiving even though I’m sure some people think I just can’t read a calendar because it kind of feels weird and dis-associative. It’s MY Thanksgiving so I feel like I shouldn’t qualify it, as though I’m saying it’s not REALLY Thanksgiving).
I haven’t been able to be home for Thanksgiving in a very long time, but it’s become a tradition to celebrate it with friends, food and lots of booze, and it’s far enough away from American Thanksgiving (ha) that I’m not interfering with anyone’s plans with their family.
I’ve had some very memorable celebrations, the time at our Sheridan St apartment or “the ghetto” as it was less than affectionately referred to by our friends, when we didn’t have any furniture except for a tiny, musty futon and ended up eating and cooking most of our meal sitting on the living room carpet.
There was the year that my sister made electric purple sweet potato casserole that was way too nasty looking to eat. The year my friends in North Dakota surprised me with a Thanksgiving celebration of fries and gravy (poutine’s cheeseless counterpart), ketchup chips and perogies even though in their opinion, and this is a direct quote “Canadians don’t even believe in pilgrims.”
And one of my fondest orphaned Thanksgiving stories, my first year living in Honolulu when my room mates who I’d only known for a couple of months surprised me with a KFC picnic in our new dorm room to celebrate. It was my first holiday so far from home and to this day I think it was the nicest thing that anyone’s ever done for me.
This year was no exception, Derek and I had a turkey cook off (I’m pretty sure I won, ahem) and a bunch of our favourites came over to help us eat it (even though there were 10 of us, we didn’t put a dent in that turkey, in case you were wondering what I’ll be eating for the next two weeks). We had perogies, mashed potatoes, stuffing and some amazing mac and cheese, way too many desserts, and some very intense beer pong matches.
There was the small matter of a puppy almost getting ran over by a car, but it’s pretty likely that it’s not even possible for horrifying catastrophes to occur on Thanksgiving, and everyone walked away unscathed.
So as a status update, today I am feeling fat and happy because of all the delicious things I’ve had to eat lately, and also lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to make so many good friends, all over the place.
Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
I’m trying to decide what I want to dress up as for Halloween, but so far I can’t come up with anything. I even tried doing word association to hopefully inspire a cool, completely never done before costume and in a flash of inspiration while looking out the window I screeched out, “OF COURSE! I WILL BE A TREE!”
So it’s clear that I’m going to have to take a different route to finding my costume. I saw this project the other day and have since been obsessed, even though it’s not even close to being the right season to plant more things, but then I started thinking, what if I covered MYSELF in gold leaf? Not my whole body, since there might be children present, but just gold leaf makeup.
I think it looks so gorgeous, and also kind of like you might have a contagious skin condition, so perfect for Halloween. The only problem is, it’s not really a costume, is it? When someone asks me what I’m supposed to be and I just say “Gold”, that might be odd. So now I’m trying to think of an actual costume I could make out of plastering my face with gold leaf.
So far I’ve come up with an Oscar, Goldmember, Queen Midas, or the sugar plum from the Nutcracker (although I’m not sure why since I feel like she would be white and silver?)
Here is my makeup inspiration so let’s see what I can come up with. Although hopefully with less gold dandruff.
Last Friday night we went to see Matt Nathanson at the Fox Theater in Oakland. The Fox is gorgeous, I love the enormous gold statues flanking the stage, and it also has 11 bars, so that’s beautiful as well.
It was also First Friday in downtown Oakland, I’ve been hearing about it for a long time but just hadn’t made it down to check it out. They close down a whole street in downtown Oakland and there are bands and food trucks and artists and vendors selling all kinds of things. There was a school bus full of vintage clothes, I had my eye on a faux fur vest when Derek unceremoniously dragged me away.
They had a bunch of old cars and really neat motorcycles, and I even saw a few rap battles, and I had an amazing tri-tip sandwich for supper. It was a really neat crowd and I’d definitely like to bring some people back there with us next time.
The concert was wonderful, Matt has been my favourite since the first time I heard Still, and if anything we are even closer now as he made every single person sing “I Want to Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston at the top of their lungs and he wouldn’t stop until everyone joined in, and also qualified a song where he talks about Jewish girls with “I’m a pervert, not a racist”.
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| Sitting on a sidewalk in Oakland eating supper, because I’m classy like that |
Love this.
Next week is Derek’s birthday, I’ve been trying to decide what to get him. Last year, we went on a road trip down the coast and just kind of crept around Santa Cruz, Monterey and Carmel exploring. It was really fun and spontaneous.
I’d really like to do something like that again this year, I was thinking Morro Bay. There is so much beautiful coast line in this state, and I’d like to see as much of it as possible while we’re here. We even bought a tent this summer that hasn’t been used once as I bought it for a camping trip and then ended up sleeping in the boat under the stars.
We’re so busy this month that we wouldn’t be able to go until November, but it’s California, how cold can it be by then, really? I’ve camped many a May long weekend in Canada where there was snow on the ground and nothing but red Sourpuss and Sky Blue coolers to keep me warm.
There is something so romantic and wonderful about just getting in the car and driving with no real plans. Maybe we’ll make it to the campgrounds, maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll visit Hearst Castle, maybe we’ll get mugged on the beach. It’s a mystery, but I bet you it will be a memorable weekend.
We’re seeing Matt Nathanson at the Fox Theater in Oakland tonight, I saw him last year at Now and Zen and he is great live, so great that I am willing to overlook his nose ring.
Also on the agenda for this weekend, a massage, book club, and making perogies for Thanksgiving next Sunday while I creep all over the internet trying to find season 4 of Downton Abbey because it doesn’t air in ‘merica until January.
A few weeks ago I was out wandering around the city and came across an art supply store. I ended up going in, and buying anything that drew my attention, even though I’ve only been to one painting class and have basically no artistic ability whatsoever.
I’ve been bringing them out and experimenting a bit lately and it’s pretty fun. Maybe I’ll never show them to anyone, and they are probably terrible, but maybe they will sit in my closet for years collecting dust and one day after I die someone will find them and the world will mourn that such an amazing talent wasn’t recognized until it was too late.
No need to look so skeptical, that sort of thing happens all the time.
loveliness. 