Muir Woods

On Saturday Sean and I went to Muir Woods for the first time. I can't believe we have lived in San Francisco for 6 years and had never gone before. For shame! It was absolutely beautiful. There were huge redwood trees all over and the park and trails were extremely well maintained. It only cost $5 to get in (plus $3 for the shuttle that we took because we were afraid there wouldn't be any parking). We didn't have much time so we went on a short 2.5 mile hike, but there are tons of trails with a lot of different terrains. The best part is that it's shady and cool so for a fog child like me who doesn't fare well in heat it's a perfect hiking environment. You can even walk all the way to Stinson Beach, the problem with that is you have to walk back. Here's a pic of me hugging the largest redwood in Muir Woods that fell down 5 or 10 years ago.

So people don't get the wrong idea and think I'm too outdoorsy, this weekend I also watched 5 hours straight of So You Think You Can Dance with a friend. That show is awesome by the way. Even Mary's cackling is entertaining.

Poddington McHybrid

Wow, I can't believe it's been over a month since I wrote a blog. Sorry to my loyal readers (who probably aren't too loyal anymore). About 2 1/2 weeks ago Sean and I finally got our brand new Prius! I had to wait 6 weeks and was paranoid the whole time that someone was trying to screw me, but my patience finally paid off and I got the exact color and package that I wanted. It had 6 miles when we bought the car and now it has almost 2,000. Yes, we have gone on a few big road trips in the past two weeks :). I won't bore you with the grueling details of how we finally managed to get the car, but I will say that the waiting list we were on never panned out and we got really lucky that another dealership had the exact car that we wanted. It took about 5 hours of negotiating, walking out of the dealership and then getting called at 10:30 pm to go back because they agreed with our price but had to get the sale in by midnight. Apparently buying a car the last day of the month is the way to go because you have more negotiating power because they want to meet their projections.

I've always thought the Prius looks like a futuristic pod (much like a spaceship or some sort of alien transportation device) so we have aptly named our car Poddington McHybrid. So far we've gotten an average of 45 mpg, which is good considering we are driving it like a normal car (versus accelerating slowly etc). I might start driving it more like the famous Prius driver to see if I can get 50 mpg. Watch out world, here I (slowly) come!!

Chicken of the sea

Today I was in the kitchen at work and I noticed something very peculiar. There was canned chicken salad in the vending machine. It was wedged between cappucino cookies and rice krispie treats and really stuck out because it was the only item in there for $2.00. I'm not sure why people would buy canned chicken salad from our particular vending machine. Unless you would eat it with a cliff bar or dorritos, it doesn't go with anything. That's why I think the vending machine guy mixed us up with the office that gets saltines and celery sticks. They must have our donut holes (happy national donut day everyone!).

Different strokes for different folks

Two years ago Sean and I received a wedding gift from one of his co-workers. When Sean came home with the wrapped present I was extremely touched because I had only met this co-worker once and she wasn't invited to the wedding, so it was a gift given purely out of the kindness of her heart. We excitedly opened the present and pulled from the box some sort of twisted metal statue attached to a wooden heart shaped stand. Upon closer examination we figured out that the statue was two people twisted together in the shape of a heart. Huh...interesting. We didn't know what to do with it and felt bad for thinking it could have been a joke gift but sadly wasn't, so we decided to put it on the bottom shelf of our fish tank until further notice. A few weeks later we were at the grocery store in the section with the cards, flowers and feminie hygeine products (interesting product placement) and we noticed on the bottom shelf at the end of the aisle there was a box with a picture of our statue on it. I knelt down and picked up the box and lo and behold it was the ugly twisted metal heart statue, the very one in our house at that moment, and it was only $20 and came from Albertsons. Phew, pressure was off on having to keep that sucker.

Our next plan of action was to give it to our friend as a joke housewarming gift. We brought a few of our other friends in on it and surprised her with it during Christmas. She opened the gift and...that's right, LOVED it. We were all trying not to crack up and at one point I had to excuse myself so as to not blow our cover.

Fast forward two years later. Sean and I are in her apartment about a week ago and we notice the statue prominently displayed in her living room. We both start laughing and she asks what we are laughing at, but we pretend not to hear her. Sometimes it's the little things in life that are worth living for. This was one of them.

(unnamed friend, if you are reading this I'm sorry you are the butt of this joke, and that's why this post is annonymous).

Ode to Rock Band

Oh Rock Band, how I yearn to play you
Oasis, Metallica, even The Who
My fingers stroking your plastic keys
Fans singing along to my vocal tease

I get so much pleasure from rocking out
You give me something I've only dreamt about
A chance to be a star on the big stage
Playing my awesome songs that are all the rage

Let's go together on a World Tour
Let's play for charity and find a cure
Let's steal some roadies and drive a van
Let's play in Paris, Rome and Amsterdam

I know you are only a video game
And I'm 27 so playing you is kinda lame
But you are a temptaion that I cannot fight
So I'll pencil you in for Friday night

Civilized war?

I was reading an article this morning on Cnn.com about a treaty that 100 countries have signed to ban the use of cluster bombs because they are unrealiable, inaccurate and have too many adverse affects on civilians. Here is a quote from the article: "They are concerned that cluster munition remnants kill or maim civilians, including women and children, obstruct economic and social development, including through the loss of livelihood, impede post-conflict rehabilitation and reconstruction, delay or prevent the return of refugees and internally displaced persons, can negatively impact on national and international peace-building and humanitarian assistance efforts, and have other severe consequences that can persist for many years after use." Is it just me or is this slightly ironic? Not that I want cluster bombs out there threatening "international peace" but I feel like all war threatens international peace (yes sometimes you are fighting to keep the peace, but fighting for any cause still isn't peaceful). I am all for the laws of war or whatever, but when I really sit back and think about the fact that people try to make something as barbaric as war civilized it reminds me that the world we live in is strange.

What we really need is for the weapon producers to build themselves iron flight suits and go around the world destroying their weapons and making right their past endeavors that put civilians in harms way in the first place. And Robert Downey Jr. and I will be sitting on the beach drinking mai tais and tickling each other's feet, congratulating ourselves on our fine idea that will truly promote international peace.

How many accountants does it take to split a bill? Answer: more than three

Last night Lauren, Emily, Sarah and I had our second Supper Club outing. During our most recent spa day at Nob Hill Spa (see Grapes and Salami post on March 27, 2008) we decided to start a Supper Club. The inspiration was this season of Top Chef Chicago, which has four chefs from San Francisco. It was decided that we don't see each other often enough because life gets in the way, so if we have a monthly dinner it will force us to get together and we can check out the Top Chef restaurants. So far we haven't been to any of those restaurants, but we have plenty of time for that.

We went to a tapas place called Laiola in the Marina. Not to turn this into a yelp posting, but the place had a great atmosphere and they pour little carafes of wine for the wines by the glass, so it's more like 1.5 glasses for $12. Which is also the price of a pretty good bottle of BV at Safeway. This is of course beside the point because Supper Club would lose all of its elegance if it took place in the Safeway deli. The first suggestion I made from the menu was chickpeas and blood sausage. Lauren quickly informed me that blood sausage is some sort of coagulated blood, not actual sausage, at which point I almost knocked over my $12 glass of wine in horror. Needless to say I ended up ordering the grilled quail. After we finished our first five or six dishes, we decided to continue ordering. We got some advice from our waiter and he said that we should order the blood sausage dish and everyone agreed (except me). It was basically dark brown/red squishy bits of matter on top of chickpeas in a bowl. Gross. After a lot of pressure, I tasted a little bit and it didn't taste like much, but it was very salty.

After two hours of another successful Supper Club meal, the bill arrived. Everyone didn't have the same amount of alcohol, so we decided to divide the food by 4 and then everyone would pay for their own alcohol. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. Three of us are accountants and it took us about 20 minutes to figure this out. Part of this 20 minutes was taken up by our bitching about the "cover charge" which we thought was the bread and water. We were getting pretty fired up about being charged for something that was brought to the table without us ordering it and something that is customarily free. The waiter finally came over and asked if we needed help because it was taking so long (and I think they were trying to close and we didn't realize it). He explained that the cover charge was for the health care costs of the employees that San Francisco recently voted for. It was also written in bold on the insert with the bill. Hmm, that was embarrassing. Then we all got confused about how much to tip. What percentage should we tip and should it be before or after alcohol? Emily was attempting to tip 16% (that's right, not 15% or 20%, but 16%) and couldn't figure out how to use the calculator function on her cell phone. The whole scene was ridiculous, entertaining and sad.