Weekend Re-Cap: I Think I can, I Think I Can

August 28, 2006

Holy bejeesus, it's already the end of August.

FRIDAY

After work on Friday, I dropped Will off at the airport, as he was headed home to Calgary. I'll be joining him on Tuesday afternoon, as we go back home for a wedding and some quality time with the folks.

I spent the start of the weekend pretty much like the last weekend, dedicating my Friday night and most of Saturday to helping my sister with the kiddies. It was unfortunate that due to my San Jose good sisterly duties, I missed out on Patrick and Bridgette's post-nuptial shebang at the Pink Palace...so instead of playing beirut, flip-cup and dodging Patrick and whatever gardening tool he manages to dig up, I was busy with feedings, burpings, dirty diaper changing and more not-sleeping. At least this time, I got two hours of sleep instead of just one. And as a bonus, I managed to get both Simon and Charlotte on different feeding schedules so that Angie and Jack could get some much-needed sleep.

I also watched a horrendous film called "Hostel", a film associated with Quentin Tarantino. It was, quite possibly, the goriest film ever made. It really was quite unnecessary for me to watch, but it was near impossible to not watch. Awful, indeed.

Some mandatory kiddie pics:

SATURDAY

I left my sister's house late Saturday afternoon and headed over to Terrina's house, where she was hosting a Relish At Home party. Relish is a great boutique in Berkeley, who will do house parties and you can do all your fun accessory shopping at a friend's house. One of the owners of Relish used to be a buyer for my favorite SF boutique, Ambiance, so it was a given that I would do some damage (I got some earrings and a necklace...hooray!)

And, by the time I got home, I was so overly exhausted that I didn't do any of the following social options:

1) Meet up with Angela's birthday celebration - I was too late to meet up in Cole Valley for the afternoon session of revelry....HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANGELA!

2) Meet up with Vitaly's birthday bbq (featuring crayfish, shaslik, and vodka and at Baker Beach - I was also too late to meet up for bbq...HAPPY BIRTHDAY VITALY!

3) Go to Emeryville for teammate Chuck's woe-is-me-I'm-injured dinner - I was not too late for dinner, but the sad, sad truth is that I had no energy to drive my baby-puke smelling ass over the bridge for dinner...SPEEDY ANKLE RECOVERY CHUCK!

SUNDAY

A very satisfying 13 hour sleep was sufficient to help with the sleep deprivation from Friday night. I went on a massive cleaning spree, overhauled my closet, dusted, vacuumed, and dropped of a sizeable donation at Goodwill.

From there, I met up with Key and Wendy at Levende Lounge to try their infamous brunch. I head heard rumblings of this great brunch spot but had never managed to get there for brunch. I had also been to Levende plenty for dinner, so it was interesting to see this place under the natural light of day.

They have a fantastic make-your-own Bloody Mary bar, which I'd love to sample on another day (I had frisbee practice in the afternoon and it's a good standard not to show up to practice completely lit from too many Bloody Marys). Their brunch menu is very good, they seem to like the make-your-own theme and have sections for making your own: egg omelette/scramble, eggs benedict, buttermilk pancakes, traditional breakfast combos.

I chose the Stuffed French toast, filled with ricotta and raspberry stuffing and with a corn-flake crust. It was phenomenal. It was decadent. The maple syrup was to die for. As you can see above, my chaser was a side of applewood smoke bacon...yum!

Both Key and Wendy made their own Eggs benedict. Pictured above is Key's creation, with a crabcake on top of english muffin, and covered in a chipolte Hollandaise.

Wendy's version of the benedict had a scallop cake with regular Hollandaise...yummy too!

Oh yeah, we had a side of home potatoes too, which were delightfully seasoned with some spices that made them taste almost like Kettle chips...

We finished brunch and next thing I knew, it was time to head to Castro Valley for frisbee practice. No rest for the wicked. So, four hours of running (cleverly disguised sprinting drills were abundant) and after practice, Wendy and I were off and running to meet Katharine for girls' catch-up dinner. Kat was heading to Europe soon for part of her sabbatical and as I was heading to Calgary, it was a good opportunity to see her before her travels.

We headed over to Inner Richmond to check out Q Restaurant.


Q does great comfort food in a funky and relaxed atmosphere. It had been a couple years since I had been here and I always wonder why I don't wander into this neighborhood more.

They have a wonderful raspberry iced tea, while Wendy found the lemonade to be too tart.


Both Wendy and I chose the Southern Fried Fulton Valley chicken with braised vegetables and mashed potatoes to die for.

Kat chose the Wild Salmon Salad.


For dessert, Wendy had to have the apple crisp with whipped cream, which was also amazing.

And the weekend ended with a very tired note, as I felt like I was running on low steam and collapsed into bed once more. And, I'm off to Calgary on Tuesday afternoon for some family time, a frisbee wedding and more good times. Stay tuned!

Weekend Re-Cap: Twins = No Sleep

August 22, 2006

I have confirmed that the best form of birth control is volunteering for night duty for your sister's newborn twins. Seriously, if you or anyone is in need of some intervention, my sister and brother-in-law would be happy to have some help any night.

I headed down to San Jose immediately after work on Friday night, with the intent to give them an extra set of hands for the night and most of Saturday. Babies are tough in general, but if you throw in two, it makes it more than double the work. If you're "lucky", the twins are not on the same eating schedule, which requires some major finesse if there's only one person (or patience with manic crying). It's always a good idea to change the diaper before they eat (a joyous experience as always). Both of the twins are healthy eaters and they eat every 2-3 hours. Like most premature babies, experience some level of acid reflux or indigestion, so both Charlotte and Simon also need to be held in an elevated position for at least a half hour after they eat. And, burping is an artform and essential for a happy baby. Simon is also on a rigorous medication schedule due to his longer stint in the NICU, so there's an elaborate tracking sheet that they use for the feedings.

So, 28 hours of baby-filled excitement later, I drive my sorry, sleepy butt back to San Francisco and promptly fall into a comatose sleep. My poor sister...

Sunday was filled with a nice sleep-in, brunch, and then a late-afternoon frisbee practice with my team. Check out our new website, it's a work in progress...

Bye Bye Emily!

August 18, 2006

Last night, promises of Thursday being the new Saturday and the last chance to hang out with Emily before she relocates to Boulder for law school, enticed me away from my comfy couch and gluttonous MTV shows out into the brisk evening. Where? To Wish in SOMA, of course...

Big Deal (Chuck) and his sweet wonderful, eyebrow-stitching girlfriend, Sarah

Oh, how we'll miss our party girl, Em

Frankus gave Em a sweet belt that has a flask as the belt buckle...ingenious!

Snakes on a Belt!

And so it is, a sad occasion when a new friend has to move away. If only we had gotten to know Emily years ago, she would've known a Bea that could stay out longer than midnight on a school night, and Wendy would've had a rollerskating partner and caused far more trouble than she does now...

But now we have a great excuse to go to Boulder...during ski season!

Weekend Re-Cap: Discos Calientes

August 16, 2006

Sheesh! It's Wednesday and I'm finally getting around to updating the blog from the weekend...it's been a little hectic at work lately.

I spent last weekend in hot, hot and hot Chico, CA, where my frisbee team played the 3rd out of 3 tournaments in a row...whew! This tournament was called Discos Calientes. The story doesn't change much again from the last couple weekends, we were short on men subs, but everyone was smokin' hot on the fields. We also unveiled our new Patagonia uniforms and I'm in love with our new shorts.

Our first games on Saturday didn't start until 2 pm, so it was nice to sleep in my own bed and drive up in the morning. I carpooled in Lavonda the Honda with Wendy, Anna and Linda...girls' car! BTW, it only takes 2 hours and 40 minutes to drive from SF to Chico in the early morning hours, a major miscalculation on my part for planning. That said, it was nice to get to Chico so early that we had time to have a nice big lunch and to digest it before we even had to lace up the stinky cleats.

It was REALLY hot and humid, and we slugged through victorious in three games in a row. We then had a bye to rest before we were to play in the showcase game (under the lights!) against Portland team, Whore$hack, who we lost in finals to just the week before.

We were psyched and ready to play, and it was a wonderful relief when the temperature dropped with the sun and it became the perfect playing temperature. We were a little nervous in the first half, but managed to clean up our act and clean house in the second half to win the game 12-9. It was great to see the Brass Monkey of old, pulling out the sweet plays, throws and catches. Unfortunately, one of our boys, Brokaw, dislocated two fingers on his throwing hand and was out for the game...our poor boys! Down to 5 healthy guys!

We didn't finish our game until close to 10 pm and were really psyched to grab some dinner at the nearby Sierra Nevada Brewery Tap Room & Restaurant, only to be disappointed that they were already closed. Boo! So we headed over towards downtown Chico and our hotel. Upon arrival at the hotel, most of our team jumped in the pool for a nice cool-down team swim session...

We discovered that Josh is a really good human catapault:

Our team tidies up quickly and we headed over to this diner-type restaurant, another addition to ourgrowing list of diners in frisbee towns: Jack's Family Restaurant. They have a nice variety of typical all-American food, and the most impressive Cobb salad...

We were graced with a nice sleep-in on Sunday, and our first game wasn't until 12:30 pm. We headed back to Jack's for another meal, this time breakfast, and got to the fields in time for the mercury on the thermometer to hit some sweet (and by sweet, I mean not-so-sweet) high notes.

It was insane for our guys in the quarters and semis. Henrik had to leave after the quarters, so we weredown to 4 guys for semis. These guys did amazingly and it although it was great to win the quarters and semis games, it meant facing Mischief and their army for finals...again. We were able to pick up Dave Owen and Matt Ruby (go BM alumni!) for the finals,which helped tremendously. But, we couldn't quite pull it together and we ended up losing by a few points. It was a pretty good tight game despite the battle for our guys. I'm so proud of them for battling through this weekend.

So, the last three weekends have been a rough but good re-introduction to the frisbee season. Track workout last night was brutal as usual but I'm psyched for this fall...go frisbee!

More Baby Pictures...Hooray!

August 11, 2006

Current baby-related tallies include...

Number of babies that have peed on me: 2 (Simon and Charlotte)
Number of times that Charlotte has peed on me while changing her: 2
Number of times that I have cleaned up Charlotte's baby puke: 1
Number of diapers that I have changed on my visits: ...lots...

My Mom and Charlotte

With Simon

Simon likes to sleep on his side, in fact, this first day home, he immediately spooned Charlotte

Hello Simon's eyes!

Baby Simon is Home!

August 9, 2006

Baby Simon is home! More baby pics if you're interested...

Olivia with some sparkly MAC lip gloss...

Hungry, Hungry Hippos!!!!

Weekend Re-Cap: The Little Frisbee Team That Could

August 7, 2006

I've officially fallen off the coffee wagon. That's right, I drank a nice 16-oz cup full of some sweet French Roast this morning. I had pretty much cut out coffee from my daily routine a few months ago, instead relying on water, some chai lattes and the occasional green tea. But this morning as I drove to work, still exhausted from a weekend full of sun, frisbee, hotel beds and plane rides, I realized that the toothpicks holding up my eyelids would not be enough.

I was in Portland, OR this past weekend with my frisbee team, Brass Monkey, for the 2nd out of 3 tournaments in a row, namely, Kleinman Eruption. And, for the second weekend in a row, we had a fairly small squad to do battle on the fields. This time, there were 7 women and 6 men (with one potential male addition on Sunday)...yikes!

I flew out of SFO on Friday night and arrived in Portland around 9:30 pm. Our hotel was conveniently located only 15 minutes from the airport, and even more conveniently, a 2-minute walk to the fields. With a deli mart/liquor store on the way. Sweet!

Saturday was a blur of 4 games in a row. One of our guys, Chuck, went down with a bad ankle injury in the first game of the day, which didn't bode well for the rest of the guys. We didn't have our shade tent, but Nate's uncle, a Portland local, was sweet enough to go find us one, which saved us in the scathing heat. We managed to finish the day with an undefeated record.

Our hotel was also host to a gaggle of folks who were in town for a nearby "car show", as there were lots of hard-core car dudes, suped-up vehicles, and hootchie mamas strutting their stuff.

The classic line in the elevator: "You here for the car show?", when I clearly wasn't.

Most of our team (which didn't amount to very many people) went for dinner at the nearby Shari's chain restaurant, a Denny's-Marie Callendar's mixbag of food. Kerry Soo couldn't stop raving about their peanut-butter pie. I just liked the fact that it was a 2-minute walk from the hotel.

After dinner, we resigned to some raucous dominos, and some bad TV watching. The arrival of some Seattle dudes (one of which was going to help us on Sunday, Ben Wiggins) inserted a little life into the night and I soon found myself heading off to the tournament party with Kelli, Josh, Ben, Idaho and Skip.

The party was in downtown Portland near the heart of the Broadway strip of action at the Imago Theatre. The tournament directors had rented out the theatre, provided kegs and a sweet DJ. Kelli and I did some dancing to loosen up our sore muscles, and by 11 pm, we decided to pull the chute and be wise and go get some rest. Before we could leave however, Ben suckered me into participating in a boat race. Turns out that if you pour a little bit of beer into a cup of water, it looks like bad beer and it's much easier to chug. I managed to spill most of it on myself, but anchored my team to a win. And that was the clincher for my night.

Sunday morning games weren't starting until 10 am, so we were able to go back to Shari's for a good brekkie, instead of "continental breakfast" at the hotel. Our quarters and semis games were good and efficient, as we won both in good time.

The finals match-up pitted us against Whore$hack, the Portland team that we defeated last year in Florida to win nationals. They had an impressive army of 30 or so people against our piddly squad. However, we gave them a really good game and by the end, the locals were even cheering for us. We lost the tight game 14-12, but it was a great game, much better than our finals game the previous weekend. I'm pretty psyched to see what we can do with bigger squads, as we will be seeing both Mischief and Whore$hack at Chico this upcoming weekend, and at Labor Day weekend.

I flew home to SFO on Sunday night around 9 pm and happily crawled into the luscious king bed for whatever zzz's I could get.


SUPER CUTE BABY UPDATE:
On another note, baby Simon is coming home from the NICU today!

Thursday Night Baby Fix

August 4, 2006

Hello Friday!

I was in east bay for a tournament last weekend, will be heading to Portland for another this weekend, and am due to be in Chico the following weekend for the third tourney in a row...phew! I'm tired just typing that. So, last night I headed down to San Jose to see my mom, who's in town for two weeks, and to hang out with my nieces and nephew (baby fix!)

First thing I noticed when I got out of my car was how stinking hot it was in SJ. I'm so "spoiled" with the cool fog in SF that I forget how the rest of the schweaty bay lives.

Olivia is doing pretty good for a new big sister. She has her moments, but is apparently exhibiting similar behavior as her mother when I was born. Regardless, she's still her expressive and entertaining self.



I can't even begin to describe how wonderfully chunky Charlotte is. Her cheeks have really solidified and she's living the high life of eating-sleeping-pooping (not necessarily in that order).




After dinner (yay! Mom's cooking!), Angie and I headed over to the Good Sam NICU to see Simon. Simon is doing so much better and looks great. He's still dealing with a little acid reflux, and they diagnosed him as being anemic, so two blood transfusions later, life is good!


Simon gets fed sideways to help with the acid reflux.





There's a good chance that Simon will get to go home this weekend and my sister can finally have her family all together (and the real chaos will ensue!). The timing may work out well too, with my mom in town to help the new big family adjust to the arrival of Simon.

I'm off to Portland tonight for the Kleinman Eruption tournament. We have another savagely small squad, so it'll be a nice good kick in the ass again this weekend...joy!