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!

CocoRosie

June 9, 2006

Last night, we had an early kickball game against Beer B4 Kicker (dark green team). This was the last game of the regular season, with playoff games starting next week. We were on a two-game lull with lackluster offense and defense suffering from comedic foils in the outfield. Thankfully, we pulled it together and looked like the Lager Louts of early season, finishing out the game with a 7-4 win.

After the sound victory on the kickball fields, Will and I headed home to grab some grub before picking up Abe and heading to the Great American Music Hall. For Abe's birthday, we had picked up tickets to go see CocoRosie at GAMH.

CocoRosie was formed in 2003 by two sisters, Bianca Leilani (a.k.a. Red Bone Slim) and Sierra Rose. Their first project was a hip hop project "Word To The Crow", shortly followed by "La Maison de Mon Reve" and their third "Noah's Ark". Their sound is interesting and unconventional, with Bianca's raspy blue-ish voice and Sierra's lovely and operatic tones. They use harps, acoustic guitars, grand piano, electric organ, sound box, and two dudes that beatbox their percussion and other sounds. Highly entertaining and odd at the same time. They also had a large screen perched above the stage that displayed some visual arts images/video shorts remniscent of something that would be show in the SFMOMA, and most of the images scared the living crap out of me.

Bianca and Sierra

Sierra in her Indian headress




CocoRosie is classified as "electronica", and it somewhat qualifies in that category, though I am stumped as to how to classify or describe their music. Regardless, their live show was very good and definitely entertaining. Sierra was full of energy and Bianca was a little odd, but true to her sound. Check them out sometime, you may or may not like it, and you may or may not be scared witless by their weird movie montages.

My Big Sister's Birthday

June 7, 2006

Yesterday, the famed "mark of the beast" day (06/06/06), was actually my big sister's 32nd birthday. Will and I headed down to San Jose to meet up with Angie, Jack, Olivia, Terrina, Andrea (also pregnant with a baby boy) and Andrea's husband, Kenny, for dinner at Consuelo Mexican Bistro in Santana Row.















Yikes! Hard to believe that in my sister is 32 and she's going to have three kids!!!

Date Night

June 6, 2006

Monday nights are up in the air these days, as we're on an 8-week break between the Spring bowling league and the Fall bowling league. I'd been itching to get out on the golf course and try my new driver, so Will and I decided to take advantage of the late sunsets (before solstice anyway) and hit the tees after work. I headed over to Harding Park to meet Will so that we could golf the Jack Fleming 9-hole course.







I got a new driver for this season, a Calloway Big Bertha FT-3 Fusion driver (a.k.a. Condo-On-A-Stick), with a huge 460 cc head and 10 degree loft. It is super sweet. Will had to give me a few pointers to make sure that my stance was correct and once I figured it out, I was bombing with my sweet driver.

Condo-on-a-stick!



It was a great night to hit the links, we managed to squeeze in the fastest round of 9-holes I've ever had in NorCal, as we finished in under 90 minutes. In the end, my score was not so stellar, but there were a couple pars, sweet drives, good putts, bad putts, and lots of trees that got hit.



From the greens, we headed to the lanes, specifically, Serrabowl...just because our league is on hiatus doesn't mean that we have to be. We decided to do three lightning-quick games each in under an hour and we ended up bowling:

Bea: 161-160-127
Will: 130-205-232

It's pretty easy to tell that I get worse with practice and Will gets better. D'oh. I think I need a more reactive ball...yeah, that's it.

After bowling, we headed home to catch the first NHL playoff finals game between the Edmonton Oilers and Carolina Hurricanes, which Will had recorded. Ok, Will watched the game, while I couldn't stand it and looked up what happened online, and kept myself busy while Will was in agony watching the whole game. I was completely distraught to hear that Oilers' goalie Dwayne Roloson is out with a knee injury for the rest of the series...WTF!

So, the summary of date night is as follows:

- my new driver is sick
- I need a more reactive bowling ball for the third game of any series
- the hockey gods are testing the Oilers to prove that a Canadian team is worthy of the Stanley Cup

Foodie for Thought

June 5, 2006

It's no secret that I love me some good food, and as Will knows, I definitely love me new restaurants and the San Francisco dining scene.

For the last month or so, the foodie blog "Between Meals" by SF Chronicle's Executive Food and Wine Editor Michael Bauer has been vastly entertaining, and the comments that readers post on that blog are interesting too.

I've also recently discovered a blog site called "Tablehopper", that's written by a freelance journalist named Marcia Gagliardi, a woman with her finger on the pulse of everything that's going on in the SF food scene. She often scoops the major papers on new restaurant openings, chef gossip, great food reviews. She also has a weekly newsletter that you can sign up for that's a sweet piece of culinary reading. And the piece-de-resistance of her offerings is a feature called "Tip Please", where you can ask for a restaurant recommendation when you're parents are in town and you have no idea where to take them. She takes into consideration the occasion, date and timing, vibe/atmosphere, budget, and preferences for the recommendation. What's impressive about Marcia's Tablehopper is that she is able to cover as much ground as the entire Food staff at the Chronicle and it's not even her full-time job.

Also, while Will's college buddy Kareem was in town last week, he introduced us to his girlfriend's food blog (Geneve's Kitchen). Geneve's day job is in pharmaceutical sales, but she definitely has a passion and talent for food, which is evident in her blog. Geneve experiments with fantastic ingredients to create healthy recipes, and documents her experience in her blog, complete with the full recipe and a mouth-watering picture to make you insanely jealous of Kareem reaping all the benefits of having a girlfriend skilled in the culinary arts.

In seeing Geneve's food pictures, I confirm to myself that I need how to learn to take better digipics! And maybe get a new digicam...

This is where I draw the line at calling myself a true foodie, as I like to eat, but I'm not so creative in the kitchen. After all, we have a kitchen the size of a closet and by the time I get home, I default to my standby 30-minute recipes. So, I guess I could call myself an "Indulgent Foodie"...?

If you're interested in checking out these sites, I've added them to the "Foodie Links" sidebar on my blog. I also added the link to OpenTable, the online reservation system that I've been using since 2004 to book reservations to a bulk of the restaurants in the city. It's great now that the majority of restaurants in the city use this system and it's a great way to find new places to try as well. There's an OpenTable for almost every major city in North America (Calgary too!).

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Where In The World Is Robert Update

"Back in hanoi, Vietnam after 3 days of trekking around Sapa (very close to the china border). Trekked through hilltribe villages with amazing views and even spent the night at a tay villagers hut. They cooked amazing food including a duck they killed on the spot. Wonderful time. I just got back to Hanoi after a 10 hr overnight train ride. Spending one more day in Hanoi before finally starting to head south. 12-14 hr bus ride to hue tomorrow. Couple of days there and then onto China Beach for several days of beach relaxation and then to hoi an for further chilling and to have some clothes made and shipped back to the states.

Oh ya, I ate snake the other week. They kill the sucker right in front of you and then drain its blood into rice wine. You drink the bloody rice wine. They then take out the still beating heart and add some rice wine and you drink it down. After that they cook up every part of the snake into about 10 different dishes. Some are good and some tasted like dirt (i.e. the fried up ribs). Interesting experience. I have photos and video of all."

Cal States

June 4, 2006

It was bound to happen, weeks upon weeks of sweet parties, non-stop action, and an inconsistent sleep schedule would eventually take a toll on my poor immune system. Last Wednesday, the sore throat signalled rough roads ahead. No amount of Airborne, healthy teas and vitamins could prevent the germ onslaught and I finally succumbed. Two days of fever, chills, coughing, sneezing and other general flu-like symptoms got me a lot of bad looks at work and even when I went home, I was too miserable to get any rest. Finally, I loaded up on Tylenol Dayquil, Robitussin Cough Strips, and Theraflu (in a surprisingly good Apple cinnamon flavor), and I got some sleep on Friday night.

Early Saturday morning, Will, Coco and I had to head down to Santa Cruz for the first big frisbee tournament of the season, Cal States. We picked up Chuck on the way and we were on the road by 6:45 am...ick. Our first game was at 9 am, and we were slated to play at least 3 games. I felt better throughout the day (or was it all the drugs?), and played a little bit, thankfully there were lots of women subs. It ended up to be a very sunny and hot Santa Cruz day, and the typical breeze from the ocean was not present to cool us off. At the end of the day, we won all our games pretty handedly. Needless to say, I was very psyched to see our new team in action this weekend. We were missing a lot of our core folks on Saturday, but the team did really well on the first go together. Despite the normal growing pains and learning to play with eachother, we looked pretty good.

After our games, we headed over to our hotel, the Mission Inn, conveniently located next door to a yummy thai restaurant, Thai Orchid, where most of our team had dinner.





After dinner, most of our team headed over the tournament party, held at Rosie McCann's Irish Pub in downtown Santa Cruz. I only lasted for about 45 minutes and then dragged my sick butt back to the hotel and into bed before 11 pm.

Sunday morning brought more sweet sun and a bunch of reinforcements for the men. We played three more games (quarters, semis and finals), and managed to pull out three great victories to claim the first title of the season for the 2006 roster of Brass Monkey.

We were missing our favorite little Swede this weekend, as Anna has headed back home to the land of yellow-and-blue for part of the summer. But, it was her birthday yesterday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNA!), our teammate Kerry Soo baked an amazing raspberry chocolate torte for her, even though she couldn't make it. Henrik took some lovely pictures of the dessert, and here are a couple:




It's pretty obvious that when I'm sick, I lose most of my motivation to carry my camera everywhere and take pictures for the blog. That and the fact that my little digicam doesn't take good sports pictures at long distances, so I rarely pull it out for tournament pictures.