Steve’s sister Shana came to visit us for a few days. While she was here we went to Napa, among other things. We had a late start so we only made it to two wineries, Goosecross and Miner. Goosecross is a small winery that doesn’t distribute, so you can only buy the wine there or join their wine club. We really enjoy just about everything they have, so we joined the club. They’re also a blast to hang out with. They go off the flight and joke around, we had a really good time.

Miner is a bigger place. They stuck to the flight and were generally boring. After that we went to the Rutherford Grill for dinner. And to our amusement we ran into Steve’s friend Erik and his wife Lauren. It amazes me how small the Bay Area can be sometimes.

By the time we ate Shana and I had a pretty good buzz going (Steve offered to drive home), and we took some goofy pictures at the restaurant, available on Flickr of course. There are some photos of us drunk (actually I guess all of them are), some where we tried to tweak Steve’s nipples (he wasn’t going for that), and various other odd shots.

All in all we had a really good time.

If you love shoes then you must check out endless.com. There are several reasons for this site’s awesomeness. First, there’s no charge for shipping, to you OR from you (returns). Second, they have a bunch of useful filters for finding the exact shoe you are looking for, such as color, size, heel height, type of shoe, brand, etc. Third, you get the shoes one business day later, which I find terribly convenient. To me this is so much easier than getting my lazy ass to the store and hoping they have the shoe I’m looking for. I see no harm in buying three pair and returning them all - they just make it that easy.

And from a UI perspective I think the site is very easy to use.

The founders of Bebo threw a huge party last night to celebrate being bought by AOL and thank everyone who made it happen. I was sick, but I went to the party anyway because it was going to be a big one. There were a lot of people there, current and former Bebo employees, Facebook people, apps people… and MC Hammer. I didn’t actually talk to him much, but I got my picture taken with him. And Steve got to tell him about how we are all still living in Hammer Time (more about that here). Which highly amused Hammer. Though Steve didn’t have the guts to ask him to stop Hammer Time. It was fun nonetheless.

(Yeah, I’m a cheeseball.)

I find it very difficult to blog on the weekend. I fully intended to write some things because I’m participating in 50-100-50, but I just couldn’t drag myself in front of Wordpress to do it.

On Saturday I would have written about how nice my day was, despite the fact that I could feel a cold coming on. I went to brunch with some friends and afterward we went to a spa. The three of them got massages but I got a mani/pedi combo with 20 minutes of extra massage. It was so nice and relaxing. I don’t think my toe nails have ever looked this pretty before.

Later that night Steve and I were walking the dog which takes us past our favorite bar, Double Play. We usually go there for brunch on Saturday or Sunday. We obviously hadn’t gone that day. So we were walking by and our favorite bartender, Christopher, bangs on the window furiously, waving for us to come in (he always lets us bring Joe inside).

Apparently he was trying to get a hold of us for a week because he had some free passes to a cruise on the bay. They already expired, but he still needed to give us shit for not calling him back. He called our land line, which no one uses and explains why we didn’t call him back. So now he has our cell numbers in case any such freebies come along in the future.

At any rate, we ended up hanging out for two hours and then talked him into coming to dinner with us.

Post #4 (50-100-50)

I was taking a new profile picture of myself and noticed that it reminded me a lot of Tina Fey. I called Steve over to confirm, and he agreed. My face resembles a cross between Tina Fey and Maggie Gyllenhaal. What do you think? Maybe it’s just the hair and glasses.

Saturday, well actually the last three days, were extremely and uncharacteristically warm here in San Francisco. We were going to ride the motorcycles with our friend, Jordy, but Steve’s bike wouldn’t start. After failing to get the bike running (I won’t go into details here), we decided that a trip to the park or beach would suffice.

I half expected it to still be a little chilly at the ocean, but it wasn’t. The day was truly a warm one. We went to Fort Funston, a beach that allows dogs. The parking lot was full and we had a long walk to the beach itself, which was probably about 100 feet down a sandy cliff.

As soon as we reached the bottom Joe took off running after all the dogs. It was like dog heaven, there were so many running around, splashing in the water, chasing each other. And Joe was running! Yes, actually running (this is also extremely rare)!

We settled down and hung out for a while. Surprisingly Joe just did whatever we did. If we were up and moving, he was running, if we sat on the blanket, he was laying next to it. After a while he made friends with a chocolate lab that kept him chasing after her. Joe is sitting in most of the pictures because I failed to take the camera out soon enough. But you can see how dirty he got while having tons of fun. (Here’s the photoset)

When we were all done we had to hike back up that cliff, which was not easy. You can kind of see it in the background of this picture (I added a note). Joe was so tired from it all that when he reached the top he laid down to rest for a while, but we kept moving. He went about 10 more feet then laid down again. He was so pooped! What a fun day

More Crab Day Pictures

Every year during crab season, which around here is November to June, we drive down to Half Moon Bay to buy some crabs right off the fisherman’s boat. This year we spent crab day with two couples, Orion and Rebecca, and Mike and Meg.

O+R drove down with Steve and I, M+M met up with us later. We ended up buying 20 crabs, and got 3 or 4 box crabs for free. Those things are crazy looking, they fold up into a tight little ball that looks like a rock, with two perfect holes - not sure what those are for. Neat little critters, and they tasted delicious, a fluffier more delicate meat.

As soon as we got back to our place, Steve started cooking all of the crabs. He did about 4 at a time. When M+M arrived they went to the grocery store with Orion to get ingredients. Rebecca and I started shelling some of the crabs. I believe we de-shelled 8 or 10 crabs, the rest are frozen for later. We had a really big bowl full of crab meat, it was difficult not to stick my face in it.

I’m usually clean up crew, so aside from de-shelling, I mostly drank and chatted with everyone. They made two types of crab cakes, some pasta thingies (even made the pasta) and more.

And now for the Lost part, usually we would watch the TV show, Lost, but it hadn’t aired yet. So instead we watched a mini series called The Lost Room. It was a fun show, at the end I found myself wanting more - both crab and lost.

Here is Orion’s post about crabs.

We watched Saturday Night Fever over the weekend. There were a lot of parts that I had never seen before. As a youngster, I was watching the TV version, which had no swearing or nudity. And those sex scenes that were hinted at, my mind just glossed over in a sea of three-year-old un-understanding.

With this new understanding of the movie, I felt it was a bit of a downer with some fun dancing mixed in. It wasn’t great and it wasn’t terrible. We were thinking that it would be extremely fun and neat to learn their big dance for our wedding. We’ll see how that goes.

This is dedicated to Paul, who requested more postings…

I subscribe to Netflix and I just got an email update for the next movie that will be mailed to me. The subject line read: “For Sat: Saturday Night Fever.” Made me giggle.

It was one of my favorite movies as a three-year-old (or maybe I was four, donno). I wanted to marry John Travolta at the time, or so my uncle teased me. I’m sure revisiting is not a good idea, as movie/show/cartoon revisits usually aren’t. Like watching Scoobie Doo as an adult. What a dumb cartoon. It’s the same story every single time. What’s the freakin likelihood of a criminal dressing up as a scary ghost? And floating around? Zero, that’s what it is.

I have never done this to my dog before. I always thought it was stupid and silly. But then I saw a flyer for a pet parade in our neighborhood and thought it might be fun to participate, and costumes were required. So I shopped for one online and today we went over to the parade. I now see why people do this. The moment I had Joe dressed up as a cowboy I was laughing my ass off. It’s nothing but hilarity. It’s so freaking funny when it’s your own dog looking like a goof ball. If you have a pet, I highly recommend you try this at least once. And the parade was a blast too, seeing all the dogs, and a hamster and a lizard, all dressed up. What a riot. Tons of fun. Check out all the photos here.