Weekend Round-Up: Entourage, Kiddie Pools & BBQs

June 12, 2006

Life is better, now that my nasal cavities are relatively clear, my tuberculosis cough is now a minor inconvenience, and I'm no longer a walking Typhoid Mary. Oh yeah, and I should be able to finally re-start my allergy shots...oh joy.

FRIDAY

Friday rolled around to finish off a hectic week at work. I'm not looking forward to the next couple months, as my boss is on sabbatical, another co-worker is on maternity leave, and with everyone else taking vacation, it's going to be utter chaos.

Our good buddy, Adam, was back in town this week, on the first of his three trips in June back to the bay area where his company, The North Face, has it's corporate headquarters in San Leandro. So, on Friday night, Will, Abe, Adam and I headed down to the good ol' Mission (in Adam's sweet gold Cadillac rental car) for dinner at Luna Park.

Luna Park is one of those steady neighborhood joints that you can always depend on to have good food for reasonable prices (most entrees around $15), yummy cocktails (I love their Mojito!), and a trendy, if not a bit noisy, crowd. They don't change their menu much, but that's okay, it's nice to know that they'll still have your favorites on the menu when you show up.

Adam started with a great cocktail, the "Blue Ribbon Treatment", which I had never seen anyone order: PBR in a Can with a Shot of Jack or Hornitos and Beer Nuts




I figure you're all dying to know what we ate, so here goes:

Appetizers:
Warm Goat Cheese Fondue with Grilled Bread and Sliced Apples
Marinated Hawaiian Tuna "Poke" with Fried Wonton Chips
Grilled Artichoke with Lemon Aioli

Entrees:
Bea - Nicoise Salad: Seared Tuna, Mixed Greens, Potato, Green Beans, Tomato
Will - Breaded Pork Cutlet Stuffed with Mushrooms and Gruyere Cheese with Mashed Potatoes, String Beans and Apple-Cranberry Sauce
Adam - "Pot On Fire" Slowly Simmered Beef Brisket, Carrots, Turnips, Leeks and Potatos in Broth
Abe - Rigatoni with Spicy Sausage Raggout and Pecorino Cheese

Dessert:
Will - Bananas Foster with Banana Ice Cream

After dinner, the full-tummy-coma threatened to overtake us all. Adam had an early flight out the next morning back to Montreal, and the rest of us headed home. Will and I recently got addicted to the HBO show "Entourage", as the first two seasons are out on DVD. So, we watched a couple episodes and finally got some zzz's (despite my pleas of "Just one more episode?").

SATURDAY

Saturday was dedicated to a long laundry list of errands. I was helping to host/plan a bbq at my sister's house on Sunday (in lieu of a baby shower), so there was lots to take care of for that.

Will made me a great breakfast on Saturday morning, with an omelette of chicken apple and basil sausage, avocado, tomato, purple onion and monterey jack cheese, and some yummy Ore Ida potato patties on the side. After the brekkie recharge, I headed off to Crossroads Trading Company on Fillmore and sold some clothes (a quarterly spring cleaning effort), headed downtown to exchange/return some stuff, and then to Costco (on a Saturday...I must love my sister very much!) to get all the bbq stuff. I was quite successful most of my endeavors, I made $60 at Crossroads, got some goods in Union Square, and was in and out of Costco in less than an hour!

The rest of the afternoon was spent trying to book a flight to New Zealand in November through United Airlines points, which was a challenge unto itself. There are plenty of economy seats available, but I wanted to get a business class seat (dude, it's a long flight to NZ!) and that was near impossible. And United Award Travel was not too psyched to help me out with all the stopovers I wanted to make (Queenstown, Papeete). So, Will and I are still trying to figure out how we're going to pull off our 3-week travel plan in November...stay tuned for updates on this endeavor.

After a couple more episodes of Entourage, Will and I settled in with some beers/ciders, Mandarin orange chicken from Trader Joe's, and watched Game 3 of the NHL playoffs between the Edmonton Oilers and the Carolina Hurricanes. It was a great game, with the Oilers taking the 2-1 win. Goalie Jussi Markkanen, who replaced injured Dwayne Roloson, was gold in the net, as he really stepped up after a tough game 2 loss. Edmonton's penalty killing was also key in shutting down Carolina's top-ranked power play abilities. And, Michael Peca was a madman in the faceoff circle, winning 70% of his faceoffs, mostly against Carolina captain and Game 1 hero, Rod Brind'Amour. So, Edmonton is still down 2-1 in the series, so hopefully they can take Game 4 in Edmonton and head back to Carolina with an even series.

Will and I were fired up by the Oiler's win and I was definitely feeling the four ciders that I had enjoyed during the game, so we left the house and headed to Union Square to meet up with Pete and JonZ at the sweet, sweet Gold Dust Lounge.



Pete, JonZ, Natasha and Emily had a great table at the Gold Dust, and we only stayed for one cocktail. From there, we walked up Powell and over to Bush street to the Tunnel Top, a great joint on top of the Stockton tunnel. The reggae tunes were blasting and we scored a great table.



Wendy and Carl joined us shortly thereafter, and next thing we knew, it was late-o-clock.

SUNDAY

On Sunday morning, I collected a pooped Wendy around 9:30 am and we headed down to San Jose for the bbq at my sister's house. I had accidentally triple-booked myself and had to miss both frisbee practice and the SF Giants baseball game that I had tix to. Darn.

As expected, the weather in San Jose was delightfully sunny, a typical contrast to the foggy gross mistiness of SF. We did some prep work and folks started arriving just after noon. The kiddie pool was filled and the kids loved it. Wendy and I felt like we were in another dimension as most guests were either with kids or expecting...don't drink the water in San Jose!


















One of the highlights of the bbq was the pony keg of Fat Tire that Jack had organized, and finally, someone has designed a beer cup that you can write your name on with your fingernail...brilliant! They're called Etch-It Frost Cups and you can get them at BevMo...



By late afternoon, Wendy and I ran away from suburbia (and all the kids and pregnant moms-to-be) and headed to Pacifica to stop into the bbq at Jeff and Brandice Eastham's new place, which was also a going-away for MikeyZ and his girlfriend, Katie, who's off to school in Boston.

Now that's a bottle of wine...

99 Degrees before the separation

So long Mikey Z and Katie, good luck in Boston!