Our living room awaits a new TV

After at least six months of drooling over LCD and plasma TVs, Kevin finally bought a new TV for our living room. Actually, he would have bought it a lot sooner had I agreed to it. I finally caved. Anyways, the TV doesn’t come for another week, but, I just sold our 47″ Sony rear projection TV on Craigslist. For the meantime, we moved our bedroom TV to the living room. It looks so tiny and silly in our gi-normous living room.

Anyways, for those who are wondering, Kevin ended up buying the new Samsung LN46A550.

Volunteering at June Jordan

Last Friday, I took a few hours out of my work day to join some coworkers who were volunteering at June Jordan School for Equity. June Jordan is a “small by design” public high school in San Francisco’s Excelsior neighborhood that serves mostly under privileged minority students. Our group was there to act as “community members” and provide feedback during some student presentations. Each student at the high school is required to give a presentation before leaving 10th and 12th grade. They picked from four categories including Math, Science, English Lit. or Humanities. This was pretty unique.  I didn’t have to do anything like this in high school. I observed two presentations including a 12th grade one on Arithmetic and Geometric sequences and another on Linear Equations.

It was pretty strange walking down the halls of the high school. As we walked past all of the lockers in the hallway, I noticed a lot of hand-made posters by students and multi-cultural artwork which was pretty cool. In the classroom, I noticed how a lot of tables and chairs were all pretty run down and the computers that they used were several models out from the newest releases. This is probably pretty common, but, coming from corporate America where I sit in a $1000 Aeron chair and have 4-5 computers at my disposal, it was a change.

A part of the senior presentations included the student’s plans for the future. In the one I observed, the student described wanting to go to college a year after graduation and eventually become a midwife. However, she hadn’t taken SATs, applied to colleges or fully figured out if she could pay the $3500-$12000 tuition at the various schools. It made me a bit sad to think that she might let these dreams slip away because she just didn’t have someone pushing her to take these necessary steps. After the presentations, the observers, which included teachers, peers, community members (us!) and family gave the students positive feedback as well as some areas of growth. During my turn, I told the student that she should feel proud of her accomplishments that day and I gave my advice on steps she should take to reach her college goals. I’m not sure if the advice resonated, but, I tried.

The entire experience was a great one. I have volunteered for a lot of various projects, but, none where I was helping out students who were like the majority of my high school (underprivileged and minority). All of the students that I saw at the school were either African American, Asian, or Latino.

My team at Adobe is hosting some of these students this coming Tuesday at our office. There will be a couple of presentations on how subjects like Math help in careers like software. Another coworker of mine is also giving a talk on what it was like after high school and the path she took to get to her career. My team was partnered with this high school by my VP at work who is on the board for San Francisco School Volunteers. All of these events make me really proud of the team that I work for.

Just Like High School Again

This past weekend, Kevin and I went to Chicago to attend Kevin’s high school friend’s wedding. It was a fun mini-reunion of the old cross country running crew (some of whom I’d never met before). While the wedding was fairly small, there was decent attendance from the Evanston Township High School class of 93.  All of the old friends were now either married, getting married (soon) or practically married (if it was legal to the federal govt.)

After the wedding, we decided to hang out at one of Kevin’s friend’s parents house. At the last minute, we were invited to this friend’s parents house for dinner. We had nothing else to do and wanted to continue hanging out with these old friends, so, we accepted. On the way over, Kevin had a bit of guilt that we were imposing on a family meal. But, I thought of it as returning to the days when we were in high school again. There were many times when our friends’ parents would offer up free food and we were trying to avoid going home, so we always accepted. Did we even feel a little guilty back then? probably not. Anyways, not only was this a family dinner, but, it was a Jewish sedar. Luckily, it wasn’t a formal deal. I knew by the large loaf of bread on the table that this wasn’t a rule abiding Jewish family. His parents were extremely welcoming and it probably made them feel younger again to have a house full of their children’s friends over mooching off of their food.   There wasn’t even room at the adults table for us, so, we ate our tasty matzo ball soup and other goodies in the other room (I’ll call the ‘kid’s table’).

This 10K is dedicated to the girl from modified P.E.

Kevin and I accomplished a goal together this past Sunday by running a 10K race in Golden Gate Park! This was my first 10K and it was Kevin’s first 10K race in almost ten years! We decided to do the race about a month ago and started training by running about three miles 3-4 times a week. We pushed ourselves to run four miles and then five miles on subsequent weekends. Race day was my first six mile run EVER!

Now, let’s be clear, I am not a runner and never have been. While I have religiously gone to the gym for over a decade now, my workouts are not that strenuous and I have never called myself athletic. So, this was a big challenge for me. I was always one of the last kids chosen from elementary to high school for sports teams in physical education. Plus, in seventh grade, I was even in what they called “modified P.E.”. Most people don’t even know what this is. It was pretty much physical education for kids who couldn’t meet the requirements for stuff like running a mile, doing sit-ups, flex arm hang and stretching. We were pretty much a class of fat kids. For me, I dedicated this run to that adolescent kid who felt embarrassed to be with all the other fat kids in P.E. I proved that I could do it! Take that P.E. teachers!

My fear of falling so far behind in the pack and getting lost in Golden Gate Park didn’t even happen I was far from last and ran at a much faster pace than I have in the past. Don’t get me wrong, Kevin finished the race almost 15 minutes ahead of me. However, I expected to be as much as half an hour behind him. Check out our race results! By the way, its never too late to do a run like this. In the results, you’ll see tons of people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s (some who had much better times than me).

We even got these ribbons for the race. I felt so proud of both of us! We are already looking towards a 5K in two weeks and another 10K sometime this year.

Birthday Celebrations

Kevin’s birthday was this past weekend and it was a lot of fun. On Friday, we had dinner reservations at Delfina, a phenomenal restaurant in the Mission district. When Kevin and I lived in the Castro and Mission Dolores, this was our standard “celebration” restaurant. Now, that we are living in Russian Hill, we haven’t been back for at least three years. Although Delfina has been around for a long time, its still hard to get a table there. I called for a reservation about three weeks ahead and I could only get a 9 PM reservation for two. Oh well… this, just gave us time to get a beer or two.

We wanted to hit the new restaurant/bar “Monk’s Kettle” on 16th street because of their long list of Belgian beers. But, as a friend had warned us, Monk’s Kettle was pretty crowded. Oh well… instead, we headed to our old stomping ground, Elixir, which is on the same block as Kevin’s old apt. on 16th street. This bar is such a great one. It had a good number of neighborhood folks, but, there was room to move, breathe, and even sit! The best part, however, was that they had Kevin’s favorite beer on tap! Leffe! This is the Belgian beer Kevin drank while we were in London at least twice a week. This was an amazing surprise seeing as Leffe is not common and Elixir isn’t known for having a selection of foreign beers on tap.

Dinner was great, as usual. We especially loved our salt cod appetizer which came with fennel flavored crackers.

On Saturday, we had some friends over for brunch to celebrate Kevin’s birthday. I had a fairly ambitious menu which included:

A Butter Lettuce Salad

Streusel-Crumb Coffee Cake

Roasted Rosemary Potatoes

Six Layer Egg Dish

(layers of bacon, eggs, sour cream, green onions, mushrooms and cheddar cheese)

Five Layer Egg Dish

(same as the last dish sans the bacon)

I got the egg dish recipes from a recipe book that we bought while staying at a bed and breakfast in Forestville, years ago. The recipe book had one of my favorite breakfast recipes, a blueberry stuffed french toast. So, I hoped that the eggs would be just as good. They weren’t Maybe I just executed it wrong. Oh well! The rosemary potatoes could have been cooked a bit longer too and they aren’t the best once they’ve cooled. However, my coffee cake (which I’ve been making for 7 years now) was fantastic. Its super rich, so, I don’t make it often, but, its never failed me. Here’s a picture below. There wasn’t a piece left after people left.

starting to blog again

I started a personal blog while in London, but, I haven’t used it since leaving Europe. If you haven’t visited it, its at http://laffsf.vox.com. My personal opinion on vox as a blogging service is that it sucks. Friends need to sign up as members just to leave you a comment. So, I didn’t see much traffic (in comments). It made me a bit lonely in this blogosphere when in fact I had at least three lovely readers including my father in law and a couple of friends. Hi guys!!! Plus, vox, had no way of seeing your blog stats (like wordpress does). I know this because I also keep my geek blog on wordpress. If any of you actually care, its: http://butterfliesandbugs.wordpress.com.

Anyways, like the last blog, I will probably talk a lot about some of our food adventures (at restaurants and in the kitchen), but, mostly, this will just be a way to keep up with friends. I read a few blogs of friends in the area or who are hundreds of miles away, and I think its fun. It helps me feel connected.