More

Crazy tree in park.

More early morning sight seeing

The Seven Sisters

8 am sight seeing

Coit Tower atop Telegraph Hill.

Kitty Adventure

70% explores native vegetation on an afternoon outing.

Anything that can go wrong . . .

. . . typically does. And that folks, was how I was going to start today's post, with a list of all the crappy stuff that's happening. But I am not going to do that because that is no way view the world around me.

Instead of starting with set backs that happened this week, I'll start with the wonderful things that happened this week.

• My school semester is ending this coming Friday and I will finish with an A in each of my classes.
• The Girl is enjoying work, she has had many meetings this week and is headed off to a conference in Indianapolis (where it is 45-50 degrees colder than it is here ~ send her warm thoughts, I mean that literally "warm" thoughts) where she will make nice with other scientists, show off her big brain and fill everyone in on why her lab's product is an awesome resource.
• Native plants are still blooming, and I get to see them as I walk and ride about town.
• We went for a walk today on a new path with new and different trees that smelled quite wonderful.
• As photographed earlier, 70% is now heading out to the path on a leash he is generally well behaved. As in the Small Wonder, he continues to be alarmed by other people and cars but also as in the Small Wonder state when he gets a-scared he runs right back to the door to the house and not off in a crazy direction. 70% is much smarter than he lets on.
• A friend from the East was in San Fran this weekend for a work conference and The Girl got to meet up with her for a visit, very fun.
• It took me many days and many tries but I finally got the DVD hooked to the television in the correct way ~ the Netflix movies have already arrived!!!
• There is wireless Internet in the house and it is AWESOME. Awesome. Did I mention it was awesome.

So, there have been some setbacks this week. But I have to think that they are just irritating bumps in the road. It was a bumpy week, but here's hoping next week goes more smoothly.

Peace

Twin Peaks and China Town

OK, so if anyone remembers the crazy show Twin Peaks, I don't think this is the same spot . . . though it may have been nearby?? There was no amazing pie and no midgets having weird dreams.

Saturday after hanging out with K and C we headed up to Twin Peaks, it is just what it sounds like, a mountain ( large hill?) with two peaks which, on a clear day, offer amazing views. We had a clear day but it was late in the day. We drove instead of walking to catch the last bit of light. Well, let me be the one to tell you, I am not sure we would have made on foot. Well, that is not true but it would have been a long, nearly straight up walk and we would have been hoofing it back in the dark. The road wound around and around all the while at a steady incline, we are new the area, man, our lungs haven't built capacity for these vertical climbs!!! We drove. But we have some lovely photos!!!

Then the Girl and I hit Chinatown. San Francisco's Chinatown is the largest in the country. I thought it was the first, but I don't really know for sure. I do know it is the biggest Asian community outside of Asia, I only know that because I had to look it up. We had dinner on the balcony of a restaurant that was in a pretty old building. The balcony was more like the second story ledge that someone put a railing around about 50 years ago that happens to still be standing there. Not sure how stable that railing was but we never had to test its integrity.

It is still a little surreal for us. We are on the other side of the country and we live here now. It's a little crazy. Last weekend we went to a movie theatre not far from the house. The theatre itself was a giant complex yet it was within a small shopping center. The sign for the theatre was humongous and visible for miles from the highway. As we were leaving The Girls said "You know, this sort of reminds me of Disney Land." I had to agree, we figured it was like Epcot and we were in the giant ball. We had a similar experience in Chinatown on Saturday. We ate outside on a second story balcony. We could see all the people below, we were elevated with the store and street lights and could see the lanterns dangle over the street all the way up the hill. That seemed a little like Disney Land too. Epcot of course, in China.

A Visit to San Francisco and Turkey Day

Happy Thanxgiving to all! I hope everyone had a lovely day filled with fun and food! And I hope you had a great and wonderful long weekend!

The Girl and I laid low on Turkey day, Tofurky day as it is know in our house. I make made macaroni and cheese and fresh bread during the day and the thought was that we'd have homemade pizza for dinner. We were way too full to even consider an evening meal. The pizza will be had this week, the dough is in the fridge. I had set up wireless Internet network in the house on Wednesday so Thursday was also a day filled with wireless Internet -- hooray! Of course my old, tired machine is a little slow on the uptake so I still hard connect, but The Girl is very, very happy to have Internet on the Mac.

Two Fun Filled Days in San Francisco

The Girl's childhood friend who lives in Portland was house sitting with her partner in San Fran so we went up for a visit. Fun! The only time I was ever this far west was when the Girl and and I came out to look for a place to live so I had never really had the opportunity to hang out in San Fran. Our friends were house sitting in the Castro district (read: The Gayborhood). We drove from our house, it took only about 45 minutes to get there. Our friends, K and C had been there since Monday and had been walking about the whole city. The told us that San Fran is a mere 7 miles by 7 miles, and let me tell you, they walked it. We only had to walk a bit of it. We headed into the Castro and made our way towards a yarn shop I had heard about from someone I met on my travels, it's called Imagiknit ( http://www.imagiknit.com/ ).

There were some crazy, crazy hills that were just as hard to go down as they would be to go up. The next day (Saturday) there was talk of walking more. From the Castro to Chinatown or Telegraph Hill, neither was crazy far but I was looking up bus schedules faster that you can say "transfer, please."

But on Friday, we walked. We started by going to the nearby downtown Castro District

On the way to the Castro we passed Pink Triangle Park http://pinktrianglepark.org/ a memorial to the 15,000 gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders who were killed during the Nazi regime.

A view from Castro and Market streets of the historic Castro theatre. They are playing Milk, the movie about Harvey Milk's life and murder here in the Castro district in the 70s. I found a link about him at the local NPR web site http://tinyurl.com/6djfzw

Me and The Girl at the Castro, night was falling so we have many shirts on under our coats and scarves to boot. It may be warm during the day but a girl can get chilly in the evening.

Later that evening we saw a memorial march for the anniversary of the murder of Harvey Milk. There were hundreds of folks walking, each with a candle. There were at least 4 helicopters in the air from local news organizations and three mobile vans from local stations. There was a heavy police escort, I don't know if it was for the traffic (it was a large intersection) or for the protesters? The Girl took these photos

The whole weekend was a little like a San Fran food tour. We had yummy dinner from an Elsalvadorian (sp?) restaurant. Vegitarian food for me and interesting beefy items for The Girl. In the afternoon we hit an "UrbanBread" cafe with coffee that was dee-lish. We each had a pastry, too. The pastry wasn't quite worth writing home about but it did remind me that I make a mean blueberry scone and that I should whip some up. The next day we went to Chinatown. More to come on that later and our trip to Twin Peaks.

Goodnight!