this here is my new favorite blog. well, it's tied, i guess (since i still love datawhat). anyhow, the new fave blog is all about taquerias around town. mmmm...

on a very different note, i just signed up for my first ever charity walk, the AIDS walk san francisco on sunday, 7/16 in golden gate park. i probably should be doing some sort of charity run since i need to get back in shape... anyhow, i'm walking with the UM club of golden gate, and i'd *lovelovelove* it if you felt like donating and helping me reach my fundraising goal. you can submit a donation very easily via my webpage. thank you!

steve and i had a lot of fun on the folger's 'tolerate mornings' website, which has a kick-ass wakeup call application (the "eagle" selection is much better than "lucy" or "sheldon").

as it says, you're awesome -- like bacon.

ugh. i have been fighting a summer cold for about a week (which i -- of course -- got from steve). my throat hurts and my head is filled with phlem. ew.
we did have a pretty good weekend, though. we discovered a cool little bar right near us with good burgers (score!) and had dinner with some new friends (although i had to beg out early since my throat hurt.

laugh du jour: chris from family guy meets a-ha.

wine spill update: the cleaners can't get the red wine stain out (drat!). i guess that means i have to go into the restaurant and show them, and then try to convince them to give me $ for new pants.
the pants were from ann taylor, and i went to ann taylor yesterday to try to find some similar pants, but had no luck finding anything in my size that was the same color (kind of a grey-ish tan). i'm thinking my best bet is to print out the home page of the pants section on anntaylor.com and show them that pants are generally about $100-130 at that store. thoughts, anyone?

hooray! we rented out our condo in chicago! we have tenants moving in july 1. we did have to pay a month's rent to an apartment finder, but hey, at least we won't be throwing quite as much money down the toilet each month.

well, this has never happened to me before...

i was at dinner with a colleague (aka business friend) and the waiter spilled half a bottle of (pretty expensive) wine all over me. my shirt-front and lap were SOAKED. i had no idea what to ask for, and the red-faced waiter was clearly ready to do pretty much anything (he pretty seriously offered to even let me somehow borrow his pants to get home -- which i declined in favor of wearing an apron over my stained pants).

what should i have asked for?
i got the bottle of wine comp'ed (as well as dessert and coffee), and am taking in my dry cleaning bill.

did i wuss out? should i have aimed for free dinner? originally they only offered the wine -- was that sufficient?

argh.

i must go now. steve says i smell like cabernet...

that's weird -- i just noticed that my last post (which described my trip on 5/9 to E3) was posted on 5/5 somehow. i think i must have done that accidentally, and that i was actually posting someday around 5/12. so, um, yeah, i changed it.

...

i hate to say it, but i can't stop looking at this silly one page ad for windows live messenger. i am a dork.

i only have a couple of friends on myspace (my bro, a couple of coworkers) since i only really use it to tinker around and try to understand what in the heck everybody sees in that site. however, i've just added a new friend, which increased my # of friends by 25%. check out the most depressing friend on myspace ever.

...

it's been a crazy month here at the hall household. lots and lots of travel.

after my trip to LA, i was here for a few days and then steve and i both parted again. i went to a search marketing conference in hilton head (brutal to get all of the way there via non-direct flights for a one day event). i wasn't originally planning on going since it took for-frickin'-ever to get there, and since i don't know much about search (we work with an outside company on most search marketing campaigns) but then steve pointed out that if i don't know much about search, i really *should* go, and then i realized that i had a conference two days later in florida that had early morning (7:30 am!!!) starts each day, and realized i would be silly not to go out east a couple of days early to get acclimated to eastern time. so... off i was to hilton head. i had about 36 hours in between conferences and didn't really feel like blowing my own money to stay over in hilton head alone (i got tons of mosquito bites the one evening i was there anyhow) so i went up to michigan for about 30 hours, and hung out with my mom for mother's day. it was damn swell -- we got along great, and i took her to a day spa. :) she also agreed to let me eat at two of my favorite places while i was there. we took a few walks (her favorite thing) and i taught her to do sudoku puzzles (she's now addicted as well). all in all, it was a great trip. i just wish i had been in michigan longer so that i could have spent more time with friends. i am back in four weeks though, for the mega-trip that involves steve's bro's wedding, my dad's 60th, my best friend's baby shower, and perhaps some sort of way of honoring another friend's 40th (even though her party is during the wedding, which means that i can't make it)

whew. i'm tired already thinking about that trip. of course, it's late, so that could be it too...

wow! a list of the biggest stupid online ideas! i love it!

what i love about the northwest part of the country: no bug screens needed on windows!

sorry it's been so long since i wrote. i have been traveling, and it's been nuts. i'm so exhausted that i'm going to keep this short...

last week i was in seattle. microsoft has this big shindig for advertisers, which has gotten bigger and bigger over the years. this year's agenda included the taping of a couple of segments of donny deutsch's show 'the big idea' where he interviewed both bill gates and jay-z. it was pretty damn interesting to hear bill gates speak. i saw him before a few years ago, and i think he's even more nervous somehow. he talked a lot about his love of technology, and about his philanthropy. however, the thing that all of the news media really seemed to focus on in their coverage was that (when asked) he basically said that being the richest guy in the world is a huge hassle, which i can totally imagine is true. he has to ride a different route to work every couple of days, i've heard. and apparently (according to unverified rumor) there was some sort of kerfuffle with jay-z's posse since they usually pack heat and that wasn't allowed on the campus in redmond.

poor bill was sweating up a storm under the lights. he so totally needs certain dri, which i am a huge personal fan of. he had pit stains the size of grapefruits. :(

jay-z was still overwhelmed by bill. he was so obviously in awe that it was cute. too bad he didn't give bill some fashion tips



anyhow, after the conference ended i stayed in town and saw my college buddy shannon, who just had her supercute baby clara five weeks ago. she and her hubby greg are so hip -- they took me to this cool restaurant/bar that served yummyyummy crepes. it made me think of cafe zola in ann arbor.

then on saturday i went to my first ever crew regatta. my friend john rowed with UM and now lives up in bellingham, wa. he was already planning to come down to seattle for the weekend when he found out that i'd be there, and he and his lovely wife ashley took me along with them to see the UM crew team get crushed. they were rowing in this major regatta that had about a dozen races. they were honored enough to be asked to row in the big race at the end, but the poor club team at UM was racing against the varsity team at washington (which had several teams) and the RUSSIAN NATIONAL TEAM. now, i have no idea who thought of that, but that was just cruel. russia let washington row near them for awhile, and then kicked everyone's butt. still, it was a neat thing to see, and the alumni club had a big tent there with free food and drinks. i got to meet a couple of ex-crew-ers that were up from sf, so maybe i even made some new friends.

speaking of michigan, steve got to see some folks there last weekend while i was finishing my trip to seattle. i came back to an empty apt here and was a bit sad. it was nice to have some time to just do silly sara stuff (like organize insignicant little piles of things around the house and stay up reallyreally late) but i was lonely. on sunday, though, i had a great girly day. i went with a friend-of-a-friend (my childhood buddy anna's friend jessica) out for girly brunch and pedis. it was awesome, and it was the chummiest girl outing i've had since coming here. i actually walked with her when she went to catch her train afterward and was really sad when she went home.

then on monday i left again and went to LA. i had some meetings for work, and i also got to attend E3. it's as nuts as they say. the visual stimulation is overwhelming, and the booth babes really are incredible. i had my photo taken with a few just for laughs, but didn't have a decent camera with me (stupid pixel-y phone cam) so i'll have to scan in the one that was printed out for me.

i'm not a gamer, as many of you know, but the convention was still amazing. EA's booth was probably the coolest. their superman game really impressed me, and they have this game called spore that i think i could really get into. i'd link to the reviews, etc, but i'm sooooo tired. i also got to see tony hawk bail mid-trick in the promo show for his new game, and i got to see fatal1ty (crazy famous gamer) kick a whole lot of ass.

i could have stayed over last night, but i was sooooo tired, and hadn't seen steve in a week. in fact, i'm still tired now and haven't seen much of him, so i'll sign off.

happy and tired in sf..

hooray! we had a fun weekend!
steve and i went up to yosemite this past weekend, and had a great time. we loved the place we stayed at, evergreen lodge, which had nice cabins (ours had a faux woodburning stove), a pretty darn good restaurant, and a bar where they had a live band playing on saturday night.
the weather even cooperated -- which was a bit of a surprise after 2 months of straight rain here in n. cal. saturday the sun came out a bit and we hiked around stanislaus national forest and saw the major touristy things in yosemite valley, and then on sunday we got up early and snowshoed around some giant sequoias. it was so peaceful and lovely! we were the only ones on the tour with our guide, eric, and didn't even see other snowshoers until we were almost back at our car at the end of the trip. snow was falling most of the time (it was actually sort of "wintry mix"-y) and yet we didn't even mind. i had my hat off after a while because it was the sort of lovely precipitation that you don't really mind.
it was a nice bonus that i'm apparently pretty good at snowshoeing. the guide kept making cracks at how i was going to break the course record (steve and eric let me go first) and i kept running ahead of the boys. i guess i was just excited!
we didn't take many photos, but the few that we took that are okay are posted on my flickr site, here.

it has been soooooo rainy here since we moved. it's been a big bummer for me, since i like walking to work, and i don't think i've worn a skirt more than once and my white pants *at all*.
i finally started leaving my favorite shoes at the office so that i don't have to lug them back and forth every day. i'm especially loving my funky new black pair. i wear black pants never every day, so these are going to get lots and lots of use...



on a very different note, steve agreed to take a mini vacation this weekend. i have tomorrow off and we're going up to yosemite national park. i'm sooooooo excited! it's beautiful up there! i've only been in the summer, and it's still snowy there due to all of the rain we've had lately, so it should be really different. we've rented a cabin here and are planning to go on a tour, as well as do a little bit of hiking, biking and snowshoeing. our cabin has a fireplace and the lodge on the property (which reminds me a bit of a summer camp) supposedly has a bunch of activities this weekend, including a billiards tournament and easter brunch. woohoo!

happy easter, everyone!

ooooh...poor detroit!

life is good.

tonight i went to my first meeting of a local bookclub group. we ate sushi, drank good red wine, and had really good discussions about a book i thoroughly enjoyed: the undertaking: life studies from the dismal trade.

i suppose it's cheating just a little bit to have a book (and a topic!) that's so ripe for conversation and count the bookclub as something to be excited about, but i really do feel the group could be a good fit for me. it's an especially nice surprise to have enjoyed it so much, since it was a random bunch of women brought together by craigslist (which, hey!, worked for me in chicago!).

i still desperately miss my group back in ann arbor, but i'm optimistic. the women tonight were a good mix, ethnically (black, white, asian), professionally (banker, boutique owner, teacher, artist, chef, non-profit manager, and me) and personally (married, dating, swinging single, mom). i just hope that i like the next book that we read as well. we've picked two and the folks that couldn't make it will help us narrow it down.

in the meantime, i'm going to attend another meeting of a bookclub that friends-of-friends invited me to. we're reading assassination vacation, which i'm also excited about. the meeting is during passover, and we're having a kosher potluck.

in other news, i am pining for a new handbag. well, that's not really news. still, i am really sick and tired of everything that i own, and i'm finding that my clothes here don't seem to fit in as well as they did in chicago. and (despite the fact that i'm female) i dread shopping, and so i'm craving a new bag. i particularly like this one, although i'm not sure if i like it better in brown or white. i would like to think that if only i bought it i wouldn't lug my computer home every night and would just carry around one fashionable bag instead of a big fat bag of work and an overloaded purse.

last item of the night (and then i'd better go read for a bit): check out sonya kitchell. she's a niece of a woman that i work with, and i got her CD back in january. she's been picked by starbucks as an artist that they're going to help break, and the CD just got released today in all starbucks locations, as well as traditional outlets. she hit SXSW, and now she's going on tour. i'm excited to go and see her at the swedish american hall here in town (and yes, the venue has something to do with my excitement -- maybe steve and i will whip up some of the meatballs that we bought frozen at ikea beforehand for a thematically appropriate supper). let me know what you think...

sorry that i haven't written in awhile, amigos.
life is good.
it's rained ever since we got here, and i've been insanely busy with work, but i'm still so happyhappyhappy.
somehow we're happy as larks with each other. steve's been sososo good, making me dinners, doing laundry, and being my personal trainer at the gym (even when i was nearly in tears on saturday because i was in so much pain, he praised me for being "tough"!).
i'd say i was blessed, but i think that has connotations beyond what i'm trying to convey.

i am feeling very nostalgic lately, though. i think i may have already blogged how i had a dream about walking through fort awesome, and very clearly remembered the view from the bathroom window at night (i guess i dreamed about the bathroom because that's where i was most likely to be in the middle of the night). i had a similar wave of nostalgia when going food shopping here, missing my dear coleman's in ann arbor, and fox & obel in chicago's streeterville. i miss walking through the old west side to see what everyone has planted in their spring yards, and to admire the jack o'lanterns in the fall. and i miss walking along the chicago waterfront, whether at the marina in grant park or over the bridges that cross the river.

i am sure i'll feel nostalgic someday about it here too. i guess it only takes a couple of years. for several years i was nostalgic about my singleton days during the wild 90s internet boom in new york. i don't really pine for that anymore. i love the city, but that lifestyle is apparently too far away for me to viscerally miss it.

san francisco is a beautiful city geographically. the hills are completely transfixing to a midwesterner like myself. whenever we cross the bay bridge (either way) i am grateful for steve driving so that i can look at the houses all precariously perched on the hills over oakland, or the curvy roads lined with apartment buildings and victorians here in the city.

i will admit that we have failed a bit in the same way that we did in chicago: we picked a non-neighborhoody neighborhood to live in. there are a few little shops and some cute restaurants here, so it's a bit better than chicago, but i do miss seeing the flower-filled yards, the neighborhood parks with kids playing baseball, and the the sense of community those sorts of thing seem to create. it's going to be baseball season here in my neighborhood (two blocks from Pac-T&T-SBC-Park) very, very soon. i suppose that may conspire to make me feel a part of the city -- and therefore *love* the city -- in a way that i don't quite yet.

i so totally want these stamps. i mean, i know that i can't really pay for postage in yen in the US, but they still rock.

also, i can't get enough of google romance. sure, i'm already taken, but the fact that it's "a free date plus the added accrued value of the past decade’s worth of post-Industrial Age online marketing genius, all tied into a real-time, video-based, GPS-tracked, psychographically astute and environmentally pervasive promotional system" has really made me think twice about the good and bad qualities in my long-term relationship. i think steve and i need more buzzwords.

i don't exactly work on advertising for super-sexy brands, but then again, cleaning *can* be sexy.

speaking of sexy... well, actually, i guess i'm NOT continuing on in that vein -- i'm heading in quite the opposite direction: check out these superheroes on the toilet postcards. i especially love wondergirl.

i don't know what's more depressing: reading about the state of the US auto industry, or reading about the war in iraq. ick.

things here are really crazy, but good. but then again, don't i always say that?

this week has been exhilirating. i've been working on some side projects, and then working with my main client on some big strategic stuff. i've sold through some mega-big ideas, and so overall i'm fine with the fact that there have been long hours.

...

i woke up in the middle of the night the other night, and as i trudged down the hallway to the bathroom i remembered the way i loved the moonlight coming into the window in our bathroom in ann arbor. the floor was always *really cold* but the light was diffused at a beautiful angle through the bathroom window and it was always so peaceful at night.

i'm not sad to have nostalgia about a2: i miss my friends there, but i'm happy to have pleasant memories.

hopefully each stop on our little road through life will have random memory-inducing moments like that. :)

i so totally need this shirt.

you should have heard how it made steve laugh.

these cards make me laugh a ton. so yeah, we're laughing a lot tonight. i had a hard day and need it.

here's one more funny thing: i ask myself this question all of the time.

i am so sorry that i've been a bad correspondent.
i've been working a zillion hours (well, not really a zillion, but a LOT) and i'm so exhausted and tired and yet i am feeling a massive amount of guilt because i owe everyone an email and call, and i miss hanging out with steve.

:(

my crunch period at work is almost over, though, and i've accomplished a helluva lot over the past few weeks, so despite how worn out i am, i feel good about the work that i'm doing. i'm good at it, and i've achieved some awesome things the past few weeks. i've sold through an almost 300% increase in my budgets and am now working on the staffing plan. i'm taking over some smaller accounts from one of our sister offices and am pitching a HUGE new account.

one thing i need to do (other than find a time to workout!) is be a bit better about managing my stress. i must remember to be "little miss sunshine" as much as i can at work, even at the end of a 14 hour day, and not inhale the lovely gifts of chocolate and cookies that vendors ply me with.

and, oh yeah, i need to sleep.

i miss you all. my last big project (well, of the ones i know about) is over on monday at noon, so please cross your fingers for me that the meeting monday morning goes well. you'll hear much more from me after that.

lovelovelove,
s.

farewell to fort awesome...

our friends adam and rachel live in a hip, funky loft in the not-so-swanky part of soma here in san francisco. they invited us to a party with the best theme i'd heard of in a long, long time: cake vs. pie. tastings were scheduled for 9:30 with voting shortly thereafter.
it all sounded so perfect.
i read further down in the emailed invitation. they listed their phone number and email address for RSVPing, and then their address: the number, street name, and the name of their place: fort awesome.

i gasped aloud.
"steve! adam and rachel call their apartment 'fort awesome'!!!"
we had to verify with them that we weren't somehow reading it incorrectly.
and we weren't.

i felt a little trigger of sadness, since i felt such ownership of that home name. i know that we haven't lived there in over two years, but still...
we packed up the personalized pint glasses, and steve took them over as a host/hostess gift. we kept one since i'm such a sentimental sap.

alex is here visiting, and i told him the story. he agreed that i have a reason to be a bit sad. even if adam + rachel's place is awesome, our fort awesome will always hold a place in my big ol' sappy heart.