Steve’s mom came for a visit last week, so her and I went on the Victorian Walk through San Francisco. The tour starts in Union Square and you take a bus ride over to Lower Pacific Heights. From there you walk to Pacific Heights and on the way you see about 200 houses.

Our guide was Shawna, an extremely nice and well-informed woman. We learned quite a bit of history about SF. For example, San Francisco was always urban. In the 1800’s there was a small settlement of about 400-600 people. Then the gold rush hit and within a year the population increased to over 10,000! Always urban, always international.

I’m well acquainted with the different types of Victorians now too. In order below are an Italianate, Stick and Queen Anne.

Here’s the entire photo set.

The tour was fun and we had such a gorgeous day for it! I highly recommend it

I took this picture at Crissy Field yesterday. This little guy sat there long enough for me to get a couple of good shots. This one is my favorite. He has so much attitude. Humming birds always fascinate me, with their tiny bodies and super-fast wings.

Last month I finally got around to do something I’ve been interested in for many years: skydiving. I went with my friend Maritza. We decided to go on a Saturday night, and Sunday morning we were traveling across the bay to Bay Area Skydiving.

While we were signing up and getting ready, I was trying not to think about the logistics of it all. I just wanted to jump out of a plane and see how it felt to be surrounded by nothing but air (and a man strapped to your back). Our jumpers kept joking around with us as they put the gear on, I think they do that to break the ice for nervous people. I guess my biggest concern was getting motion sick. Fortunately it was not a problem.

As we left the plane I had to look up and back, he gently rocked us out and suddenly we were floating through the air. I just remember looking around and trying to take it all in so that I would remember it forever. We fell for about 2 minutes. During that time the camera guy came over to us. I blew him a kiss and he held my hands.

Then he pulled the parachute. And everything slowed down drastically. He showed me how to steer the chute, spinning us in circles really fast and then switching to the other direction. That’s when I started to feel sick. He stopped just in time and gave me the controls. It was really hard to steer, you had to pull on the ropes very hard. I didn’t turn us much. I mostly just looked around at the horizon, unobstructed by dirty glass, it was beautiful.

About 10 minutes or so later we landed on the ground. We had a pretty good landing. And I was so happy and excited about the whole thing. I would definitely do that again some day.

Here are all the pictures.

This past weekend we went to the SF Outside Lands Festival. It was a three day show featuring about 75 bands on 6 different stages. We bought our tickets months ago when they were only selling them for the whole event. In retrospect, we wish we had waited for the single day tickets, because we would have only gone on Friday to see Radiohead. They are my favorite band (Steve loves them too) and they gave a phenomenal performance, despite the fact that the sound cut out twice!

The festival was pretty nice overall. We got to see some other bands we like such as Primus, Cake, and Wilco. And we found some new bands that we like: Kaki King, The Walkmen, Grace Potter and Sharon Jones.

We rode our bicycles there, which was fairly tiring – especially by the third day. The ride was mostly flat (4.5 miles), but when you add walking around and standing to the mix, that equals one pooped out Nicole. The other benefit to riding though, is that we didn’t have to wait in long lines for cabs or buses. So it was a good choice.

The weather wasn’t that great. When we left our house in the Mission it was nice and sunny. By the time we got to the park it was cold and foggy. We needed several layers to keep warm! Sunday was a little sunny and warmer though.

Usually I have pictures to go with my events, but I didn’t take many. I was hardly ever close enough to the stage for good ones. And they didn’t allow any cameras with detachable lenses, so they wouldn’t have turned out that great anyway. It kinda pissed me off.

I really enjoyed Radiohead, and I can’t wait to see them live again!

I’m a little behind on the blogging… Two weekends ago (Aug 15-17) Steve and I went on the annual Sonoma Wine Vacation that our friends set up. This time there were 14 of us.

We all headed down on Friday. That night we hung out by the pool and hot tub, drank wine and made our own pizzas. It was a relaxing evening, full of catching up and what not.

Saturday the limo picked us up and took us to four wineries. Ridge Lytton Springs, Michel-Schlumberger, Sbragia Family Vinyards, David Coffaro and Locals Tasting Room. I liked Sbragia the best. Unfortunately Steve and I split all our tastings, so we didn’t actually get drunk, which defeats the purpose of having a limo! We drank tons of wine that night though, and ate delicious burgers and sausages from the grill.

Sunday was a very relaxing day. Everyone sort of did their own thing until lunch time. Erica made the prettiest salad I’ve ever seen (pictured above). After lunch we played this game called Caption.

I’ll attempt to explain it. You need at least 5 people. Each person gets a stack of 5 index cards (of however many people are playing – 9 people, 9 cards). Everyone writes a caption on the top card. Then you pass the stack to the left. That person reads the card (to themselves), puts it at the bottom of the stack, and then illustrates the caption. This gets passed to the left. The person looks at the image, puts the card in the back and writes a caption. You go around until the stack gets back to the original person. Then each person gets to read their stack to the group, showing everyone the pictures. It gets quite crazy! We played that game about 6 or 7 times, it was that funny.

We had a really good time, with some excellent food, tons of wine and wonderful friends

Over the weekend Steve and I went down to Laguna Seca for Moto GP. It turned out to be a great race, with two people (Rossi and Stoner) neck and neck for the majority of the race. Then Stoner made a mistake with about 7 laps left and couldn’t catch up with Rossi again. They were so far ahead of everyone however, that Stoner still managed second place.

The event goes from Friday to Sunday. Friday and Saturday involve practicing and qualifying. And it happened on Saturday. I fell asleep in the sun. I had my hat covering the top half of my face, which left the bottom half, including my lips, to get sunburned.

The sunburn was painful, but nothing compared to what was next. Three days later (Tues) I woke up to a cold sore, and not a small one. Which brings us to the gross part… It covered most of my upper lip, and both corners of my mouth. Oh that sucks. But wait, the next day is even worse. The magnitude of cold sore coverage caused my entire upper lip to swell up like a balloon. Very large and very painful. I’ve NEVER had it this bad before. And I didn’t realize that exposure to the sun could cause an outbreak.

This brings me to my question. Is it too gross to post pictures? Do my readers (all three of you) want to see just how bad it is? I’ve been taking pictures every morning to chronicle this masterpiece of ugliness. Just so I can remember how bad it can be. And I don’t know if it’s too gross to share with you. So if you are curious, leave me some comments.

BTW, I searched for worst cold sore, and most of the pictures I found were nothing compared to this monstrosity.

A week or two ago I made all the arrangements for our honeymoon in Thailand. While I was booking hotels I tried to contact one of them via fax and it was returned. So then I tried to call them, and got no answer.

The next day I called again and yay, a woman answered! I told her I wanted to make a reservation, I wanted a room with a balcony. She told me to hold on and got someone that spoke a little more English, but not much more. The conversation went something like this…

Me: I would like to make a reservation. I want a river-side room with a balcony.
Woman: blah blah blah, mumble mumble balcony.

Me: Yeah, I want a room with a balcony. Facing the river.
Woman: blah mumble, blah blah balcony.

Me: Uh yeah, I want to reserve a room with a balcony.
Woman: blah mumble blah, chicken and balcony.

Inner thought: Did she say chicken?
Me: Is this a hotel?
Woman: This restaurant.

Oh my gosh! I was ordering chicken and broccoli across the ocean! I promptly told her there was a mistake and got off the phone.

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.