So, today Jeremy and I went to cut down a tree for his condo! We tried to on Tuesday night, we made hot chocolate and everything
turns out they close at 5. Guess they don't want people sawing away at tree stumps in the dark. The whole cutting down your own tree thing was very exciting to me. I remember my dad used to cut ours down back in the day, but my sister and I never got to go with him. Not sure why you wouldn't want to bring a whiney kid along with you to complain about being cold and wanting hot chocolate :)
Anyways, we regrouped and decided on today instead. We drove through the entire tree cutting area, looking through lots L, J, G, D, B...A. We found 'the one' in A. Jeremy starting the cut-down me, getting prepared me, trying to saw the tree, but not being very successful (but I do have a look of determination, or frustration, or constipation... Jeremy being all 'manly'
The stump I reassured the tree it would have a good home for its remaining days.
Ok, I'm going to say it. I'm lucky to have Sandy as a sister. I'm happy that we are able to get along and hang out. I was psyched to have her extend her work trip from the LA area and come up to SF to spend time with me. I even got to score a day off work!
So, we didn't make any solid plans, we took things as it came. Saturday I was having a craft party, so we started in on the gingerbread house that my parents has sent in a care package. That icing proved difficult to use tho! What didn't help was that a couple of the walls were cracked from shipping it 3,000 miles. We were almost done too, when it finally caved. Oh well!
Sunday I took Sandy to the infamous Mama's, which is basically a staple that I MUST TAKE EVERYONE WHO VISITS ME TO. At least it seems to be the case. I don't mind though! Afterwards we went to Golden Gate Park, to walk through the Botanical Gardens and hit up the Conservatory of Flowers. The conservatory was pretty awesome. It was broken up into five different rooms, each with various fauna for the region. I'm just going to post some pictures that I really enjoy from the day, but if you want to see more, check out the full album.
I like this one because the leaf was so huge! Cool tortoise shell like plant orchids (they had a lot of orchids actually!) i didn't realize some orchids grow on trees
some carnivorous plants Ah yes, the obligatory face cut-out picture wall
After the conservatory, we happened upon a roller skating party complete with pumpin' jams and people doing hula hooping tricks! I know there's more video that Sandy has on her camera, but for now, this will have to do for your enjoyment, (oh and I apologize, I do not have the software needed to rotate them upright. You can always turn your monitor!)
The last one is obviously the finali! I'm pretty sure Sandy has one that shows me looking even MORE awkward if you can believe it.
A day at the park that ends in hula hooping is a damn good day!
More art fun around SF. This weekend I caught the opening reception at Gallery 1988. Erikka told me about this artist Luke Chueh and I thought this would be a great opportunity to check his stuff out. He only had three pieces there among a bunch of other really fun and talented artwork.
I'll try to write who did what, but for those I don't remember, I'll just post them for some visual entertainment/stimulation.
Oh, I also wanted to mention Luke Chueh was there with another LA artist doing FREE one of a kind sketches, for their fans. I wanted to wait in line, but realized it would be at least 1-2 hours before I got my own drawing, so I moved on with my night. I just thought that was really great.
Then, I didn't make the opening of this, but did get a chance to head on over to check it out this afternoon: Post Postcard 11 @ The Lab. It is basically a small format art sale. It was fun to see various work from local artists and I even bought a few.
So in honor of having people visiting all last weekend for the holiday, I figured I'd share a little bit more and show off some of our adventures. It is cool having visitors because it definitely gets you to do fun things you've probably been wanting to do anyways.
Friday morning we met up with Perry, Heather, Jerry and Brian up in North Beach for some breakfast at Mama's. This is the best breakfast place I've eaten at in San Francisco, and probably one of my top 5 breakfast places ever. I plan on taking as many people here as possible. Anyways, there was a crew, my roommate Amanda came, plus Charleen and Jeremy. Afterwards, we walked up to Coit Tower Yarrrr!
Later on we went to the Union Square Tree Lighting. Before... I'm pretty sure it was a full moon! You can see it blurry in the upper left hand corner. After!
After debating what to do next, we headed up to North Beach to get dinner with Perry and Heather and play some Guitar Hero III on Wii. Good choice! We ate french fry sandwiches from a local eatery (sooo good) and turned up the ROKK! Apparently, while Jerry and Brian were staying there, they stayed up till 3am at least every night playing Guitar Hero. SICK! We tore ourselves away ONLY because it meant we could go to Bow Bow for some amazing karaoke. Somehow I only managed to record one song! This is Charleen singing Summer of '69. A classic.
Saturday morning we took the ferry to Oakland to eat at Kincaid's (Jeremy's place of employment). He offered us some free clam chowder and, well, we are from the east coast! Plus we all got to admire him all dressed up in his 'work' clothes Not only did we get some great, cheap food, we also got to taste 150 year old Grand Marnier! This was sort of random Later on that night we went to Vesuvio. This is a cool little bar known for being famous writer's hangout, such as Jack Kerouac. It is located at Jack Kerouac alley too! This is from upstairs, looking down onto the bar The bathrooms had fun little vending machines. In the men's: and the women's:
Lastly, on Sunday, before Jerry, Brian and Charleen went to head back to Southern CA, we had brunch at Tangerine. Where Jerry threatened to hit me, or maybe it was give me a hi-five. Something about rye bread if I remember correctly...
