sorry, dear readers, that i haven't written lately. it was a rather hectic month, with not only the holidays (and the mandatory travel and stress that involves) but also with a big job change looming over me, as i switch from the buying side of the equation (and a job i've loved for the past four years) to the program development side. i am excited, and nervous, about the switch -- and i did my best to leave my colleagues and team at my last job in a pretty good spot (most projects were wrapped up or ahead of schedule, and clients were generally happy). it felt amazing to walk out on my last day with any empty inbox and no blackberry (although i did have a carload of things from my office!).

we feel incredibly loved. we spent the holidays in michigan, seeing as many family members and friends as we could cram in -- and we still didn't see nearly as many as we would have liked. we came back to SF and had fun plans with friends the past two nights, have a sizable RSVP list for our party tonight, and are missing a couple of new year's brunches when we head off to hawaii for vacation tomorrow am. we are continually reminded of how lucky we are to have success in our careers, family and friends who love us, and -- most of all -- each other.

2007 was wonderful, and i can't wait to see what 2008 will bring.
happy new year, everyone!



------------------------

fave things of 2007:


restaurants and foodstuffs:
- Kokkari Estiatorio restaurant - yummy, yummy Greek food
- Frog Hollow Farm Meyer Lemon Marmalade - like eating a ray of sunshine
- the 'cowboy' salad at Mixt Greens


memories:
- cross country ski trip from Badger Pass to Glacier Point in Yosemite
- our amazing two week Hawaii trip
- a summer picnic and my birthday pizza party at Cottage Inn in Ann Arbor
- wedding dress shopping with Ann in New York
- visiting Bob-Lo Island with my mom (and staying at Rose Cottage B&B)
- going up to Dillon Beach with Liz & Steve-O for Steve's birthday
- John Legend performing at the TV Guide Emmy's party (and seeing Blair Underwood there!)
- paragliding along the cliffs of Malibu


things I got into:
- facebook
- goodreads.com
- cataloging all of my photos by geo-location on Flickr


fave books i read this year:
- Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey
- History of Love by Nicole Krauss
- Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
- Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

i am so bummed that we have plans on wednesday! we're missing the best event ever!

i love this photo contest: kids scared of santa claus!

it's been a nice, mellow weekend here.
we were in michigan last weekend, and got to see family and friends (thank you, everyone, who came to my birthday party!).
that means that this thanksgiving we were in sf sans family. it would have been sad if we hadn't just been to home, so we were fine with lying low. we went to jeffrey's for thanksgiving dinner. it turns out that, since he's a professional chef, he didn't get invited anywhere either. so we had what we termed a "white trash" thanksgiving: he cooked up the free turkey he got from work, and we had stuffing-from-a-box, frozen veggies, and cranberry sauce right from the can. we had a cheese ball (one of those awesome almond-crusted confections) to start, and finished it off with a storebought pie. yummy-tastic, with little effort.
we saw that band 'band of horses' on friday night at the fillmore, and then yesterday we went to the farmers' market and made a gigundous batch of soup. we've also been doing computer-related stuff (steve's been fighting with 'leopard' and i've been cleaning up my desktop and inboxes), as well as planning our holidays. we're throwing a new year's eve party here in SF, so if you're around, please come!
i guess that's the news here.
oh yeah, and steve thinks i should dress like this for the party. what do you all think?

i very much enjoyed this video, and can bet that you will too.

i very much enjoyed this collection of unfortunately placed ads, and hope you do too.

steve and i wish you all very happy and safe thanksgiving!

two things i'm really excited about tonight:

- hank was a shark for halloween (wearing the costume we bought him)
- rich bayless is opening a place here in sf. granted, it's an outpost in macy's, but i'll take what i can get.

things that i was really excited about last night:

- hot hot heat, which is great in concert
- the fact that the earthquake (a 5.6) wasn't scary at all

in case you need some help generating insults, this handy dandy kim jong il random insult generator could be of assistance.

i highly enjoyed these articles, and thought i'd share with you all:

- an article in american way magazine (yes, the american airlines magazine) highlighting several people lucky enough to be tasters at fun places (you'll have to scroll down to read it, since their website is lame)

- nytimes's piece on how global warming is changing greenland's flora, which has an especially cool slideshow

i was at the CTIA show this week (wireless/entertainment show) and i can tell you that the only thing that has had me excited about my phone since the iphone came out is the mobile version of guitar hero that's coming out on verizon soon. sweet!

this promotion between the MLB and taco bell is pretty cool. (thanks, k-bob, for pointing this out).

i don't know what to think of this product. cool? scary? i can't decide.

steve pointed out that this article about apple cider donuts isn't exactly hard-hitting news, but boy, oh boy, does it make me miss midwestern autumn.

we are both getting over nasty colds here, and had to cancel our weekend plans to be lame stay-at-home sickos. i got a number of random projects done, caught up on bills/magazines/etc, and we watched two movies, hot fuzz and the illusionist. neither one is going to be on my list of favorites, but both were fine uses of sick time.

of course, i surfed the web too. i found silly things like these special edition seattle seahawks sodas from jones soda co., which are really gross sounding.

i have to say, i love the sony bravia commercials, even though i realize i sound like a nerd for saying so. here's the latest beautiful spot:

check out these amazing photos from nikon's 'small world competition for photomicrography', which is the art of photography through a microscope.

Credit: Dr. Stephen Nagy, Photo courtesy of Nikon Instruments

i didn't see it (although i found a clip online), but stephen colbert appeared on larry king's CNN show last night. larry accused colbert of using the publication of his new book as a platform to run for president. colbert happily confirmed this, saying that he would seek the nomination from both parties. king then said this was a "cop out," and colbert replied that it actually demonstrated true "courage" because "i could lose twice."

check it out: a travel writer found one of my photos from kauai on flickr, and he's going to use it with some of his articles. you can see one of the uses (with credit given below) here.

we had a lovely and relaxed weekend. we went up to dillon beach this weekend with our friends liz and steve (& their ridiculous weinerdog, howard).
of course, my steve is sick.
we celebrated his birthday in an extremely mellow way. we took some walks on the beach, the boys flew kites, we played games (we let the birthday boy pick the game), watched a heckuva lotta college football, and cooked quite a bit of yummy food (chunky veggie pasta sauce, roasted chicken, chicken noodle soup, and big hearty breakfasts). that's the sort of mellow weekend i needed.
i have columbus day off of work tomorrow (!), so i now have a day to catch up around the house. that pretty much rules.

this article was on the edit page of the journal yesterday, with the subheading "michigan's worst defeat since appalachian state"
i've copied-and-pasted it in full since wsj.com is a subscription site and it's a pain to link to it.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Hail to the Taxers
October 2, 2007; Page A16

Actor Jeff Daniels makes a cool pitchman in those national TV spots inviting business to Michigan, but soon he may have to start pitching inside the state. At about 2 a.m. Monday, a handful of Republicans in the Legislature broke days of gridlock and handed Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm the $1.48 billion tax increase she has been demanding.

The state's personal income tax will rise to 4.35% from 3.9%, and the rest of the revenue grab will come from a new 6% sales tax on business services. Already 14th in tax burden among the 50 states, according to the Tax Foundation, Michigan is now headed up in the rankings. Congratulations.

The Michigan Chamber of Commerce estimates that two-thirds of the $750 million in new sales tax revenue will apply to business transactions that are tax exempt in most states to avoid a compounding effect that raises costs to final consumers. The tax is especially unfair to small employers that contract out for activities, such as office services, that large businesses provide in-house with no sales tax applied. By the way, last year Michigan introduced a new 4.95% business income tax, which will be applied on top of the sales tax.

Last year, amid the national expansion, Michigan was the only state outside the Gulf Coast to lose jobs and see a decline in economic output. Comerica Bank recently moved its headquarters to Texas, in part because of Michigan's hostile business climate. Michigan's 7.4% jobless rate is the highest of all states and far above the 4.6% national rate.

The state is suffering from the decline of Detroit's car makers, but that's all the more reason to promote policies that attract new businesses -- or at least don't drive current employers to Florida. Ms. Granholm argues that the combination of new taxes to balance the budget, and to finance such new public "investment" as job retraining and education, will reinvigorate Michigan.

She should check her history books. In the past 25 years, the only period when Michigan's growth has exceeded that of the national economy was in the mid-1990s after then-Governor John Engler's tax cutting and welfare reform. For a time, Michigan became the unlikely national leader in job creation. Now the total tax burden is returning to where it was before the Engler years.

Michigan last went on a taxing binge in 1983, and voters were outraged enough to mount a successful recall campaign against two state Senate ringleaders. This time, two of three Michigan voters have told pollsters they want budget cuts, not new taxes. It may be that the only way to get jobs back into Michigan is to make sure the taxing politicians in Lansing lose theirs.

check out this halloween costume my cousin made for her daughter:

i know it's a little weird, but i think it's pretty cool: nike designed a shoe specifically for the native american population.

.....................

we had amazing weather the last couple of days, but tonight the fog is rolling in. it's supposed to be nice again this weekend, thank goodness. my good friend ann is coming in from nyc and i'm superduper excited.

today i went to some meetings at google and we ate at their famous free cafeteria. although i've been there before, it's still amazing to see that sort of perk in real life. the indian food is especially good, and has the longest lines.

if i had all of the time and money in the world, i'd pass out these for halloween.

i love my new purse:

okay, so i'm a bit behind the rest of the ann arbor diaspora, but RIP, Shakey Jake . i hope they have a full-on "old fashioned New Orleans style wake throughout the streets of ann arbor, complete with casket and horns (and a few untuned guitars)" as one blogger suggested.

we had a pretty crazy weekend.
we went to LA, where we went paragliding over malibu on sunday (we did the tandem rides). it wasn't as scary as i thought it would be, since we didn't have to run off of a cliff to take off (like they do for hangliding). it's really just a huge kite that you take a few steps forward to pull into the wind, and then it just picks you up, up, up!

as if that weren't fantastic enough, sunday night we went to the TV Guide post-Emmys party. it was a pretty amazing party -- lots of celebs and a damn fine performance by john legend. the big event of the evening was a "surprise" visit from kanye west, who did a few songs then had a freakout of sorts and left in a hurry. 'gold digger' was my fave, and john legend joined him on that. i was about 3-4 people back from the stage for most of the show, so i had a pretty good view. i could see kanye's eyes through his glasses, and when john legend danced out into the audience, he went right by me, dancing with us all as he passed. there are some good party summaries up already, from e online and associated press. i'm going to scout for photos.

i highly enjoyed this video. it's not new, but courtney just pointed it out to me tonight. they go crazy around the 2 minute mark.

i'm pretty ticked off at meg white this a.m. for freaking out and causing the white stripes concert to be cancelled.

i was supposed to go see justin timberlake tonight, and that was postponed too.

sheesh.

today was neiman marcus's 100th anniversary, and in their stores they were giving away their famous cookies for free. you can also get an official version of the cookie recipe, as featured in a classic internet urban legend, for free here.

i bought this book awhile back, but now apparently the best parts are online. check out some great female porn.
steve hates it when i read this smut!

i guess i haven't really written much lately about what we've been up to.
last weekend we went up to sonoma to get some sunshine. according to locals, it wasn't a particularly bad (read: foggy and cold) summer, but it still was not what we midwesterners are used to.
we stayed at what must be the only motel up in wine country, and spent most of our time by the swimming pool, and we were pretty much the only ones there all day. we also went to jack london state historic park, which is cooler than it may sound. jack london had been just about to move into a huge (15,000 square feet, i believe) home he was building up in the mountains out of redwood trunks and huge rocks, when the mansion was destroyed by fire. apparently the fire's cause was never confirmed, but they believe it may have been caused by spontaneous combustion! anyhow, we got to wander around near the ruins and hike a bit, which was a lovely break from our poolside slothness.
we were going to try to do something outdoorsy this weekend too, but our plans were thwarted. we did host my long-lost-but-now-refound friend amy and her fiancee adam on friday night, and then got to see b-schooler derek on one of his study breaks. and last night i once again proved my karaoke meddle at chris & courtney's.
today we're lying low, planning to eat a lot of the farmer's market bounty that we bought yesterday. we're both catching up on work, and i'm hopefully going to finish a few random projects i've been working on around the house.
what are you all up to?

the chinese really are going to win. steve has pointed out that while most victims of mining disasters need rescuing, these badass chinese miners dug their way out after a mine collapse, eating coal and drinking urine to stay alive. take that, survivorman!

mmmm... these make me sooo hungry!

steve and i both really enjoyed this list of the most boring videogames ever.

i think this one was our favorite:

happy labor dabor, everyone!

what a fun weekend! we went to yoshi's tonight to see james carter rock the house. outstanding!

...........

i so totally want iKaraoke, which supposedly turns the music on your ipod into karaoke backup tracks. sweet!

i also so totally want a terradome, even though we're likely to have problems keeping it alive.

.............


i loved browsing the photos on this lowe's photo contest page.

in case you haven't heard...

BP just made a massive $3.8 billion expansion at their oil refinery in whiting, indiana. however, they claim they just wouldn't have the room to fit in a water treatment facility to deal with the increased waste being produced. therefore, BP asked the EPA to instead let them dump 1,500 more pounds of ammonia and 5,000 more pounds of toxic sludge into lake michigan each day.

the EPA has decided to let them do it.

please sign this petition, which will go directly to BP's CEO tony hayward and EPA Region 5 administrator mary gade, letting them know you are pissed off about the idea of dumping toxic sludge into lake michigan.

according to an article in AdAge this am, VW and audi are considering a move out of detroit. argh.

in other ad-world news, the long hinted-about ads on youtube have launched. i'd love to hear what you all think.

...............

we discovered a new restaurant last night that's waaaaay yummy. i had been complaining about a lack of good higher-end mexican restaurants in town. now that mexico DF exists, i won't complain anymore.

...............

i'm a huge fan of the BBC's nature programming lately (many of you have heard me rant about how great the 'planet earth' series is). i just got blue planet, their oceans series, and it's amazing. we watched their 'deep oceans' episode last night and it was full of crazy beautiful stuff.

today we bought kites in chinatown and then went to chrissy field to fly them. i have decided i'm going to get really into flying kites.



last night we went to see the comedian darrell hammond (from 'saturday night live'), who does really awesome impressions. he did one of my fave snl sketches, where jesse jackson and al-queida have a phone conversation. love it!

i almost ran over this little guy on my way into work the other day. he was crossing the sidewalk in our office building's garden area. i'm impressed that my cell phone photo not only looks pretty decent, but i was able to get the photo off of the phone and online without paying a zillion $ (at least, i think i was).

happy birthday, Feigenson soda (or rather, Faygo)!
i really like that the product locator on their site is called Pop Finder.

you must check out this video. asap.

in case you were wondering how to get your monkey helper through airport security, here are the guidelines, from the tsa website:

Monkey Helpers

* When a monkey is being transported in a carrier, the monkey must be removed from the carrier by the handler prior to screening,
* The monkey must be controlled by the handler throughout the screening process.
* The monkey handler should carry the monkey through the WTMD while the monkey remains on a leash.
* When the handler and monkey go through the WTMD and the WTMD alarms, both the handler and the monkey must undergo additional screening.
* Since monkeys may likely draw attention, the handler will be escorted to the physical inspection area where a table is available for the monkey to sit on. Only the handler will touch or interact with the monkey.
* TSOs have been trained to not touch the monkey during the screening process.
* TSOs will conduct a visual inspection on the monkey and will coach the handler on how to hold the monkey during the visual inspection.
* The inspection process may require that the handler take off the monkey’s diaper as part of the visual inspection.

mmm... yummy dinner tonight at kokkari, an amazing greek restaurant. soooo happy...

things i loved about my visit home:

- seeing everyone! and seeing the many mini-mes that they have!
- kevin + whitney having better made bbq chips ready for my visit
- singing along to funk on the radio (seriously, they don't play disco & funk anywhere else as often as they do in detroit!). steve is always amazed at how many words i know the lyrics to
- the very michigan-ness of "going to the lake", where we jumped off of the floating dock and rode the paddle boat around
- driving around bob-lo island with my mom

there are soooo many more things... but i really need to get work done today!

amtrak is offering free booze on selected routes. well, that's one way to make riding the train more enticing!

...

in other news...

Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero

SANTA MONICA, CA— "I played in career mode for hours and kept feeling like I was playing the same annoying circus tune over and over," complained a disappointed gamer.

...

on a more personal note, i've been in chicago the last few days for meetings. it was great to come back to the city again, especially since it's such a wonderful city during the summertime. i walked around grant park & millennium park a little bit on monday and really got nostalgic. i used to be nostalgic about nyc, but that wore off after a few years. i wonder if my nostalgia for chicago will wear off too, and how soon. you can see the fun photos i took while walking around here.

i know i'm about 4 days behind on this, but i have to say that i'm bummed that ben & jerry's didn't more widely launch their limited edition simpson's flavor "duff & d'oh-nuts". i'm not sure that i would have liked the "combination of chocolate and cream stout ice creams with glazed chocolate donuts", but i definitely would have bought several pints!

on a very different note, i'm glad that i'll be back in michigan this weekend seeing family and friends. however, i'm a little bummed that for the second year in a row i'll miss the gilroy garlic festival. drat!

i felt my first earthquake last night, at 4:42 am. it was a 4.2. it wasn't really very scary, but i still don't feel the need to ever do that again.

is it so wrong that i *really* want these white stripes USB flash drives, even if i already have about a zillion of these things? i mean, aren't they cute???

it looks like steve has uploaded some photos from his fabulous cross-country roadtrip! check 'em out here.
or, if you're lazy, here's one for you, of steve and adam with a petrified tree:

i wish i'd watched the "live earth" concert live, if only to see my new favorite band, nunatak perform. i guess i'll have to go and watch the archived stream to see how they rock it in antarctica.

soooo many adventures going on!
steve left town somewhat on a whim mid-week when we found out that our friend adam was taking off for a cross-country trip that would end in michigan. steve has meetings there in another week or so anyhow, so i suggested that he go along and explore the great u.s. of a.
so now he's in bozeman montana, on his third night on the road. he sounds happy as a clam and i'm jealous of the fun they're having.
on the other hand, i had a wonderful weekend here in northern california.
on friday night, meredith (adam's girlfriend) and i went to the de young museum and saw some really great exhibits, including a great photography exhibit of hiroshi sugimoto's work and some of nan kemper's amazing couture collection. then we went out for a great dinner and heart-to-heart.
yesterday i went to the farmers market, which had all of my favorite things: the 'green gulch farms' people had plenty of yummy lettuces, teeny-tiny sweet strawberries are in season, there are sweet peas, and the cherry tomatoes are like little bitty orbs of sunshine. i also bought myself some dahlias, which remind me of our dear fort awesome.
i made myself pea and shrimp risotto last night and opened a fancy bottle of wine. yes, i know steve usually cooks since i don't know how, so let's just keep this between you and me, okay? we don't want to rock the boat!
last night i hosted an impromptu get-together last night for an old co-worker (who i hadn't seen in 8 years!) and a few mutual friends. after much wine and conversation i was surprised to see that it was nearly 2 am.
today i left the city, which has been pretty foggy the last couple of days. my friend elizabeth and i hopped in the car for the shorty one-hour drive up to sonoma, which is now my favorite thing to do on a foggy weekend. we didn't even go winery-hopping, but just kinda mosey-ed around the town square, which is super cute and surrounded by shops and restaurants as well as some sort of historical site. it was a sunny 85ish degree day and soooo relaxing. we had a great lunch at the girl and the fig and then stopped mid-afternoon for a bit of a break (i had a really good glass of rose, which gets a bad name for no reason). we stopped at one winery before heading back, and then had a light sushi dinner at sushi ran, in sausalito, which i'd been wanting to go to for a long time. it was excellent, and i therefore want to re-do everything i did today but with steve with me. it wasn't bozeman, but it was still a great day.

oh yeah, i forgot to mention my other favorite "news" story today:

Congress Passes 'America Is #1' Bill

greenland in the news!

it turns out that at one point greenland was actually green. they've even put together a reconstructed image of how awesome it was:

dude! it's gross, but fascinating: competitive eating champ kobayashi lost the nathan's famous hot dog eating competition today to a new champ, joey chestnut.

i think abcnews's coverage is the silliest. their video hightlights includes an awesome quote about this being something like the greatest moment in american sports history.

mmmm, i don't think so.

i do like this quote, though: "With that heroic feat at the competition's Southwest Regional qualifier, America's hopes of reclaiming the Mustard Belt, once a seemingly impossible dream in the face of Kobayashi's inimitable prowess, rose like a phoenix from the desert sands of Arizona."

someone had fun at the news bureau covering that story today, that's for sure!

jessica and i got pedicures yesterday. i thought this was going to be a fun lavender, and even when i was at the salon it looked pretty reasonable. however, once i left i realized the name did indeed live up to itself: my toes are disco-ready:





.......................

in separate news, i love this article title: John Stamos: 'I Am Not David Hasselhoff'. he's referring to this TV interview, which both steve and i absolutely loved. take a few minutes and judge for yourself...

quote of the day (from RealSimple.com):

"Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon."
— Doug Larson

i went to a happy hour here tonight:



life is good!

it looks like all pro football 2k8 is gonna rock. i'm excited!

steve and i are really digging this secret diary of steve jobs.

i love gwen stefani after seeing her show last week.
here's why:



- she had a keytar player in her band
- aforementionned keytar player was from detroit!
- best breakdancers i've ever seen at a show: one guy did a windmill for about a full minute
- she called out not only her entire band by name and hometown, but also did that for all of her breakdancers (which is when the aforementionned windmill took place)
- awesome sense of style, including: excellent use of her initials logo by turning it into a very cool belt buckle and festive ska-ish black/white/red costume themes
- she came out into the audience (with big security dudes, of course) and kept swearing about how she loves san francisco
- she was smart enough to shout out to both san francisco and san jose
- she signed a fan's purse during the show and then dug into the fan's purse to see what else was in there (and then promptly signed the concert tee in there too)
- she sang a lullaby to kingston during her encore since she said he could hear every bit of the show from the tour bus
- she mentionned during the show that she'd been in my 'hood that day (south park) and loved it

i really enjoyed this article about some wild restrooms around the world.

of course, i really enjoyed the weekend too. too bad it's now over. :(

i have recently become addicted to facebook.
in related news, i love this cartoon from the onion:

such a great saturday here: nice weather and lots of fun plans. we went to the ad agency softball game today (which steve played in, and i cheered at), and the weather was sunny and beautiful!
and to make today more special, sharon asked me to be in her wedding. i'm so flattered! and so happy for her and don, of course!

i'm in NY tonight for work meetings this week. on the way here, i sat next to farmer john, whose movie the real dirt on farmer john, has won a ton of awards and looks really interesting. i felt pretty bad that i hadn't heard of it, but he didn't seem to mind. have any of you seen it?
we ended up sorta getting dinner (i got dinner and then we split a dessert). nice, wacky farmer guy. i wonder if we ever got his veggies in chicago...

we had an awesome weekend!
on friday night we went out with our new friend jeffrey (who we met through ann & andy) and had dinner at a peruvian restaurant, essencia. jeffrey's boyfriend works there and we had lovely service (of course!). the lamb was to die for, as were the orange madeleines. yummy!
we were supposed to go hiking on saturday with the U of M club in the presidio, but steve bailed on me. i still went, and it was a really beautiful lovely walk, which we ended by taking a little tour of the presidio wine caves, where some old army ammunition bunkers have been converted into a wine storage facility. then we had our friends melissa and david, and their adorable baby eli over for dinner. after that, we stopped by our friend chris's birthday party. unfortunately we were pooped after all of that activity, so we were kinda lame and didn't stay late.
today we went to see the giants play the As. neither of us is really into baseball, but you can't beat a sunny day game! afterward we got a casual dinner, followed by beard papa's creme puffs. yum!

wow! the special edition of vanity fair on africa looks amazing. check out the cover photos to see everyone that participated.

on a different note, i really want to buy poopoo paper. i know that everything is getting more and more digital (and my silly job is a testament to that), but i sooooo love stationary and the written word, and if it can be on paper made of poo, well, that's just plain neat.

greenland is in the news! crazy cool!

i'm sorry i've been so out-of-touch. i went to seattle for a week for work, and then we went to hawaii for two weeks. it pretty much ruled.
those of you that know me well know that i'm not good at chilling out. it's very hard for me not to be futzing around, and it's hard for me to disconnect from my office when i'm out.
i decided not to take my blackberry with me while we were out, and it was wonderful. there were business centers at a couple of the hotels that we were at, but i didn't check email AT ALL (soooo amazing for me!)
we were on the big island for about a week, then oahu for the weekend (in waikiki) and then on kauai for a week. we'd heard a ton about the "garden island" of kauai (apparently everyone in california loves kauai, and we heard from some folks on the island that what really keeps kauai green is californian's cash), so we knew to expect amazing scenery and lots to do. what we didn't expect was the lovely, uncrowded laid-back-ness of the big island. if you want to see our photos (which are not entirely organized at this point, but *close*), you can check them out here.

what we loved about the big island:
- we went snorkeling and to the top of a huge mountain (where it was under 40 degrees!) in the same day
- it's so clear on top of mauna kea that they have awesome observatories up there, and although we didn't get to visit any of them, we did get to look through a really fancy portable telescope and we saw all kinds of cool stuff, including an amazing view of saturn's rings
- we stayed in this amazing 'rainforest retreat' in the town of volcano, where we had our own little private pagoda-style house and a japanese soaking tub. ahhh...
- hawaii tropical botanical garden. i think we took about 100 photos here


what we loved about kauai:
- so much greenery!
- the canyons and mountains of the interior are so amazingly pristine! we helicoptered over them and saw waterfalls everywhere
- we hiked waimea canyon, which was crazy beautiful

there was so much that we wanted to do and didn't get to. there were about a dozen hikes that we didn't have time for, and many little reefs that we need to go back to snorkel around. i am already dreaming of my next vacation...

steve pointed this out: best headline ever.

i really enjoyed this Q&A with optimus prime, the star of the upcoming transformers movie. he's so famously reclusive!

it looks like we should all play in the dirt more, according to a british study which found that the treatment of mice with a ‘friendly’ bacteria, normally found in soil, altered behavior in a way similar to antidepressant drugs.

love it!

i also really enjoyed the "word of the day" theme this week from the email subscription service: words having vowels aeiou once and only once, and in order.

today's word was: annelidous (uh-NEL-uh-duhs), which is an adjective meaning "Of or relating to worms"

i guess that makes it a very dirt themed day.

____


on a very separate note, it was wonderful to see everyone when we were back in michigan this past weekend. i wish we made it back more often, because we do have such an awesome group of friends. we were happy and impressed at how many of you were able to come and partake of naan and yummy indian food goodness at shalimar, and it was especially nice for sharon & don to host a group afterward.

i had a really nice time with my family (both the paskys and the halls) and a special visit with my grandma. she is truly the world's best grandma, and we've stayed in touch via email, which is soooooo impressive (i hope i can adapt to new technology that well when i'm 80!). i also really liked talking with my 'sister' whitney. i've never had a sister before, so it's been nice to have one finally.

it was sad to see my childhood home. it's pretty beat up at this point, and it was empty except for a few scattered things that were being left behind for the buyers. they did leave a lovely note for "the previous owners of this house" that said that they love it, and i am hoping that someday i can stop by and meet them.

i've posted a few photos of the house on my flickr site, here.

hooray for debbie, who joins the rank of "mommies of two" (which is still an exclusive group among our friends):

matthew thomas was born on 4/11 -- the day after debbie's b-day, and he did so in style: debbie was watching a friends re-run where rachel gives birth.

nice!

hooray! the bang is happening in ann arbor while we're there. and (even better) it's a NINJA BANG! i shall have to ready my nunchuks!

this book always reminded my family of our little house:

it sounds crazy, but it's true: we went to the grand national rodeo tonight here in san francisco. it was at the cow palace, which is not only a great name for a venue, but also has the best logo font EVER.

what an emotional day! my childhood home, in quiet little willis, michigan, has been sold. it's been on the market for quite some time, since my dad moved to ohio and remarried. the real estate market in michigan has been dismal, so i hadn't really thought about it much.
i'm pretty sentimental, and so i'm a little tear-y. i was always embarrassed of that little house. it's teeny-tiny, and on a dirt road. i remember not wanting to have other people know it was my house: kids from school that i wanted to think i was cool, boys i had crushes on...
but when i was a little girl, and my best friend was the boy across the street, the backyard was a source of pride. i had a sandbox the size of a living room, and we had an open area the size of a ball-field, behind which there were fruit trees.
my dad had a big garden, and i remember it was my job growing up to pick vegetables for dinner. green beans and corn are still my favorites, and marigolds and cosmos will always remind me of the garden, since my dad planted them around the perimeter.
there were tiger lilies growing by mailbox at the side of the road. we had one row of daffodils in front of the house, and another along the side hedge. the bulbs were from my dad's older brother, who died when i was in 5th grade.
the house itself had many more memories, but i can't crystallize them into sentences right now. i loved the built-in drawers in the wall of my bedroom, and the way our refrigerator was nestled into the wall. i was horrified at how dorky the '70s patterned carpet was, and the orange countertops in the kitchen -- which had a built-in oven!
my brother's bedroom was so small that my dad built a loft, and since we had one bathroom with a mirror above the sink, my brother would come into my room before bedtime to use my makeup mirror to floss. "FLOSS PARTY!" he would announce.

...

i remember one day in college, when i found out that the power company had cut down a good portion of the branches on a majestic tree in our backyard. the tree had held our tire swing and treehouse. i felt robbed and betrayed.

i had much more emotional warning about tonight, but i'm much sadder. i have always been a bit of a sap, and i guess i should have known i'd be crying as i write this. i'm not embarrassed, though. i remember accompanying my friends erin & ian to their childhood home for their final visit, and it gives me great comfort right now to know that i'm not alone: the sadness i feel now is a measure of a happy childhood.

i really love the list of lifetime "to dos" that they've compiled on the visa signature living site. i think i will have to compile my own...

we've finally booked a vacation and will be going to hawaii in about a month. we're going for a whopping two weeks (i haven't taken a vacation that long since high school) , and we'll be going to oahu, the big island and kawaii. i don't believe we've ever been on a beach vacation, and i'm really excited about the mix of activities and the ability to spend a lot of time doing nothing on a beach. ahhhhh...

we had a lovely easter weekend. we went to the giants game on saturday and had amazing seats right above the visitor dugout. since they were playing the dodgers, it was quite a riotous place to be. then today we were invited to an easter dinner by our friends chris and courtney, who made lamb. mmmmm...

i love this idea, but wasn't sure how it worked until now...

sorry it's been so long since i've posted.
i'm exhausted tonight, so i'll just post one thing and leave the rest for the weekend.
steve and i are heading to michigan for a weekend: april 20-24. i don't get in until midnight on friday, and then we leave again on tuesday afternoon.
if you're one of our michigan friends reading this, we'd love to see you -- drop us a line. hopefully we can get our act together soon and piece together a shindig!

another fave photo!

(i love that photo)

oh yeah, i forgot to mention:

welcome to the world, finnian christopher (becky's baby, and little brother to liam) and ava julian (ben & erin's new bundle-of-joy). it's baby time!

we went to tahoe for the first time this weekend. it was a helluva drive back tonight, though: it took us about 8 hours to make the 4 hour trek. we just got in.


this video shows some of the non-moving traffic (although when the reporter is on camera in her jaunty purple coat, things are moving MUCH FASTER there than where we were).

it's beautiful up there, but it's good to be home.

time for bed...

things i'm so in love with right now:

meyer lemon marmalade: like eating sunshine

an old, light-up globe that i found in the trash, which is now cleaned up and on display in our living room

the wall street journal, in its new smaller size

my nike+ ipod connector kit

yahoo widget photo frame, which pulls a new photo from my computer to my desktop every five minutes

cool, cool, cool: one of my faves,

aaron eckhart has been officially cast as two-face in "the dark knight" (the next batman film).

things are great! work has been hectic and a bit stressful, but we've got a couple of new people coming on board soon to help with the new projects, so that makes me very excited and optimistic. we have a really great team, which i'm excited about (sheesh, i'm a geek).

i recently bought a few new cds that i'm really enjoying. i love these streets, by paolo nutini and savane, by ali farka toure. i also bought the new norah jones album, and i do acknowledge that steve is correct: i am cheesy.

i recently bought the nike+ ipod kit, which got me really excited about running. i went running three days in a row and promptly had sore shins for the following three days. anyhow, with moderation and proper stretching it's going to really be a great thing since it makes pretty charts for me about my runs and gives me lovely soothing reminders while i'm running about my pace and distance achieved.

i don't think there are any other updates here. i highly enjoyed several celeb-related news stories today that i thought i'd share:

- bill cosby's dog won the westminster kennel club dog show
- there will be a milli vanilli movie coming out (where in the heck is the sweatshirt i bought on their tour?!?)
- ralph fiennes supposedly joined the mile high club while on a STD awareness campaign tour for UNICEF

i couldn't write a better day of random celeb headlines!

steve is in san diego for work. i miss him! he got me sick before leaving, which only makes me miss him more. he's such a good caretaker...

i finally figured out what i need to get steve for valentine's day: intimately beckham cologne.

(seriously, doesn't the fact that posh & becks have fragrances named 'intimately beckham' gross you out?)

man, oh man, that pfizer news is crappy for my hometown. lots of jobs and tax revenue lost. is there no good news coming from the mitten state anymore?

on a positive note, the bay area rapid transit (aka "bart") is finally catching up with the other major US cities by launching a stored value card. about time -- sheeesh! (how much does it rule that it's called the "EZ Rider Card"?)

.....

sorry that i haven't written more lately. we have some new projects at work, and they were enough that we actually have a few new people. i'm busy, but happy. i think once everyone is up-to-speed, the workload will be reasonable.

this past weekend steve and i went to utah. we were there to go to sundance, but it turns out that none of the movies getting any buzz had anything other than bleak, depressing descriptions. we went to one film, offscreen, the first day. it was the most disturbing thing i've ever seen (steve agreed) and i actually couldn't watch the last few minutes. i'm glad i didn't, since i really enjoy sleeping at night.
anyhow, that led us to decide that since none of the tickets available to our group were for movies getting any buzz or for anything that sounded remotely pleasant, we would skip out on the films and enjoy the park city area. we went snowshoeing and cross country skiing, and steve went snowmobiling. the locals were complaining that there wasn't much snow (and i guess for downhill skiing, there wasn't) but it worked for us, and we had a lovely relaxing weekend. there was a little work schmoozing, but it wasn't overwhelming. in fact, i came back relaxed. much needed!

i so totally want to win this contest. i have to put a reminder in my outlook calendar for the 24th!

i so totally have to get myself to baltimore!!!

(for those of you who don't get that right away, i have a bit of a fetish for greenland!)

we were *very* productive today! we went through all of our oh-so-exciting mail, bills, etc. we got rid of our christmas tree. we donated several bags of clothes. we cleaned our bathroom. and we filled our fridge with stuff from costco. whew!

last night we had some new friends over and played a great game called citadels. highly recommended.

tonight we're off to dinner at our friend derek's. he's the most culinarily skilled person i know. he always makes tons of food gifts for the holidays, and has themed dinners. tonight it's "hawaiian fusion", which i can only dare to hope will include spam!

happy things that will remind me of 2006:

songs:
- "hoodie" and "9 to 5" by lady sovereign
- "when the night feels my song" by bedouin soundclash (even though it came out a couple of years ago, we discovered it via zac this summer

my fave neighborhood restaurants my 1st year in sf:
- koh samui and the monkey
- the butler and the chef, my fave breakfast place
- mehfil indian cuisine, dangerously located along my commute home

books i loved:
- assassination vacation by sarah vowell
- kindred by octavia butler
- elizabeth and mary: cousins, rivals, queens" by jane dunn (i still can't believe i finished this book - 505 pages in the version i bought in scotland - about the famous queens, which i thought would have been more dry and less interesting than it thankfully proved to be
- absurdistan by gary shteyngart
- the hemingway book club of kosovo by paula huntley

movies/performances:
- aaron eckhart in thank you for smoking (i now have a huge crush on him)
- casino royale (like most of the world, i thought daniel craig couldn't pull it off. i was wrong.)

events (in order of which they occured):
- snoeshowing in yosemite national park on easter
- a weekend getaway in mendocino
- seeing keenan + carrie at the hospital right before petra joined the world
- vacationing with my mom near traverse city (including a visit to young state park, where we always went when i was growing up, and a really great meal at boathouse restaurant
- drinking margaritas on the deck at sam's for our company summer party
- staying up until 5 am in las vegas on my birthday in las vegas