Off to Alaska!

We’re off to Alaska for a cruise! We fly to Vancouver, then, head to Ketchikan, Skagway and Juneau! I’ll try to blog or post pictures during our trip.

Playing tourist on Father’s Day

Last Sunday was Father’s Day and my parents came up to visit for the weekend. After trying to think of the best things to do with them, I finally just asked my mom what she wanted to do. What she and my dad really wanted was just to eat clam chowder in bread bowls and crabs down in Fisherman’s Wharf! This is definitely one of the most touristy things you can do in San Francisco. But, I guess its somehow popular because people love to do it… over and over again. My parents do this every time they come and visit us.

So, on Sunday morning, we went down to the Wharf (which is only a 15 min. walk from our apt.) and my parents ordered up an array of crab, clam chowder and calamari for all of us. The bad thing is that if you order from the sidewalk vendors, you have few choices on places to sit. If you eat in a restaurant, you’ll be paying a premium for seafood that may not be as fresh. Anyways, we did the sidewalk vendors and I found a large cement block that we sat on to eat. Some benches would have been nicer, but, we all seemed to enjoy ourselves anyways. I love crab, so, this was great. The clam chowder is not that great though, in my opinion. There was hardly any clams in it. It is just a creamy mess where you occasionally find a potato, piece of celery and a clam part (if you are lucky).

I actually had the best clam chowder that I’ve ever eaten last Tuesday at the Hog Island Oyster Company. Here, you just get a seafood broth and a bunch of clams (still in the shells), so, you really taste the clam. The broth isn’t thick, so, it doesn’t really feel like a heavy chowder.

Anyways, after our feast on the wharf, we walked down to look at the sea lions that my parents had never seen on all their visits to our city. I always find this fun. Apparently, the male sea lions grow to as much as 800 lbs! The females only get up to 300 lbs.

At 3:00 PM, we took them on Mr. Toad’s Tour of the city. This is a tour on an antique car that takes you through various parts of the city including North Beach, Pacific Heights, the Presidio and right next to the GG Bridge. This was pretty entertaining. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn as much city history as I had hoped. My parents seemed to enjoy it though. Their favorite part was the drive through the multi-million dollar homes in Pacific Heights where the likes of Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi and Larry Ellison all own homes.

Finally, to end the day, we took them to our favorite pizza in the city, Little Star Pizza. Its Chicago style pizza which my parents have never tried. They really enjoyed it! My dad also liked that it seemed like a good value   All in all…this was a very successful visit!

Midnight Yoga

Last Friday, Kevin and I decided to try something a bit new. We went to a two hour yoga class at “Laughing Lotus” in the Mission district from 10 PM – midnight. Normally, I am getting into my pajamas by 10 and asleep by midnight, but, we thought we’d see what this scene was like. The teacher was someone that I had taken before at our gym. I liked her. She wasn’t my favorite instructor, but, I definitely learned a couple of new techniques from her.

The class had about 20 people and was pretty interesting. It was a beautiful, dark space with a live band playing during our yoga. There was a little more singing then usual, but, I sort of enjoyed this on a Friday night. On a normal weeknight, I’d probably prefer to skip the singing to save time. But, here, I enjoyed it. Most of the yoga was pretty standard. We did do a “Bird of Paradise” move that I had heard about, but, never tried, so, that was fun. Here is a demonstration of the Bird of Paradise:

I couldn’t pull this off with a straight leg, but, at least I was able to get my leg up in the air along with the arm bind.

We also practiced some poses like Firefly and handstands which Kevin enjoyed. He’s really into the strength moves/arm balances which I’m usually not good at. But, he seems to be able to do them after a few tries.

By the end of the two hours, the time seemed to fly by, which was a nice feeling. We felt great afterwards and has some tea and animal crackers along with the other yogis.

On Saturday morning at 9 AM, we ended up going to another yoga class, “Forest Yoga”, at Aha Yoga, a studio that Kevin went to the previous week. This class was really great. It was challenging, hot and sweaty, but, the flow of it was really good.

Yes… two yoga classes with 9 hours. That’s what happens when Kevin gets obsessed with something… But, I’m thinking being obsessed with fitness is a good thing. Other obsessions could be a lot worse.

Many Milestones – weddings, babies, houses and graduations!

I’ve been absent from my personal blog for quite a while now. I think its because I’ve been doing a lot of work related activities (including my first speaking engagements … woo hoo!) as well as keeping up with all of our friends’ milestones. Here are just a few things we helped people celebrate:

1. Our friends Josh and Libby got married in May, so, we attended the rehearsal dinner and wedding in Cupertino!

2. Kevin and I celebrated our three year wedding anniversary! We dined at Absinthe in SF and had a grand time sipping their cocktails and munching on some of the best fries in the city.  We both agree that anniversaries should be celebrated in a more festive way than birthdays. You’ll have a birthday no matter what…but, you have to really work for the the anniversaries

3. Our friends Ellis and Barbara had a baby girl, Zara! Yay! We visited them last weekend and hopefully brought over a small bit of relief for the tired parents.

4. Our friend Amy got her PsyD after five years in graduate school! We went to dinner with a couple of her friends and her parents last night at Le Colonial. To think that we knew her when she was still wondering what she was going to do with her life…. now, five years of grad school are done! Unfortunately, we’ve lost her to NY.

5.  We started looking for a house again. Ok, you never know how serious we are about buying since we always seem to be looking for a house. But, we have several friends who have bought recently and the lower mortgage rates seemed to have us thinking again…

Here are a couple of the houses that we really liked from this weekend. Unfortunately, we didn’t think either of them were a good enough deal to make us take a plunge. They were quite lovely though.

239 Duncan St.

60 Buena Vista Place

I think life is finally slowing down a little bit. My work is less hectic and we are off on a vacation to Alaska in a couple of weeks!