Double-A Does San Francisco

September 21, 2007

It's always nice when Canadians come to visit us in San Francisco. This time, it was Double-A (a.k.a. Aaron) who was in town doing some training for his new job as a sales rep for Barefoot Wine. I met Double-A years and years ago back in Calgary when he was a wee little sales rep for Salomon. Oh, how far he's come...

Will, Wendy, Abe, Robert and I went for dinner with Double-A at Limon in the mission. It's been quite some time since I've been to Limon as well. I forgot how good the sangria tastes...

The Ceviche Limon (fresh halibut with mixed seafood marinated in lime juice, served with yam, Peruvian corn and mussels in a salsa criolla). The ceviche was lovely, generous portions of halibut that were perfectly marinated in the citrus.
Tatara de Atun (diced sushi grade Ahi Tuna, diced pears, roasted bell peppers and pine nuts tossed in sesame oil with aji Amarillo vinaigrette and wonton points). Seriously, Abe can't say no to tuna tartare.
I ordered the Arroz con Mariscos (clams, scallops, mussels, shrimp and calamari cooked with saffron rice in a pepper shrimp sauce). It was exactly what I was craving, fresh seafood with a very tasty saffron rice.
A couple folks ordered the Pargo Rojo (crispy whole red snapper basket, served with stir fried coconut rice and rocoto curry sauce). Insane presentation that the picture does not do justice to.

Ha-ay!!!!
From Limon, we walked around the corner and grabed some drinks at Double Dutch. Great old school hip hop blasting with very distracting breakdancing films on the TVs...

Good times indeed. Great to see Double-A in action in real life again, we need more visits and did we mention that we like wine???

Fall Series Begins

September 17, 2007

Last weekend was the start of the Ultimate Player's Association (UPA) Club Fall Series for my team, Brass Monkey.

We start with Sectionals, go to Regionals, and then hopefully qualify for Nationals in Sarasota, FL at the end of October. Our team has been competing since 2004, and we've had a pretty good track record at nationals (3rd in 2004, 1st in 2005, 3rd in 2006).

On early Saturday morning, we headed down to Stanford campus where we were playing. We played four games on Saturday with a 4-0 record, which was nice. It was great to see the team coming together and playing great frisbee.

On Sunday, we played semi-finals and then played a great finals game against Mischief and won finals. Hooray!

So now we head to Regionals in Burlington, WA at the beginning of October...wish us luck!

Ashley Goes Back To School

September 10, 2007

On Friday night, we went out for Ashley's "Last Night of Partying In The City Before She Leaves"...of course.

Will and I headed down to Bruno's in the Mission (where else?) early to grab a bite to eat. Pete's company, SolarCity, was also having a work party, so there were many folks on hand to catch up with.

I was a good girl and started drinking water for the latter part of the evening. Good Bea. Will may not have been as good.

Ashley hit the road early Saturday morning, so she's on her way to being back to school and will be enjoying Math camp this week. Fun! Good luck girl!

On Saturday, I went down to San Jose to help with the kiddies, as my sister's family is packing up to move to Santa Clara, where they just bought a new house...yay!

I drove Olivia to her first dance class of the season. So cute, little 4.5 year olds dancing tap, jazz and ballet. Olivia would be a very good dancer if she would look at herself less in the mirror...

I took her to McDonald's for a Happy Meal afterwards and then went back to the house to deal with mad-crazy babies while Angie and Jack were busy packing.


Look at how well Olivia draws, she drew a bunny!:
And Charlotte is now walking, a lot, everywhere.





The kids love to bang on pots and pans and have lots of encouragement from Jack:

On Saturday night, I drove back up to the city and only realized too late (close to SFO) that I still had Olivia's car seat in my car...grr! Which meant that I would have to go back to San Jose to return it the next day....egads.

On Sunday, we had frizzer practice at GG Park back at the Polo Fields, and then Will and I went down to San Jose to return the car seat and have dinner with the fam. At least there were cute kids to giggle at.

The Long Goodbye

September 7, 2007

It was sad news earlier in the spring when we found out that Miss Ashley was heading down to Santa Barbara for grad school...boo! So, we've been gearing up for her departure with a series of events with the discussion going something like..."hey, let's have dinner at my house with Ashley for the last time before she leaves..." and "why don't we have dinner at Wendy's house with Ashley for the last time before she leaves..." and so on and so on. You can imagine that we've been saying goodbye for some time now. Boo!

Well, Ashley decided that we should have a potluck dinner at her parent's beautiful house in the Marina with her for the last time before she leaves.

The house is set right on Marina Boulevard with a view of the marina across the street. Gorgeous!

There was quite the gamut of food brought by all the folks. I particularly enjoyed Key's prosciutto-wrapped melon....mmmm...prosciutto...







I made salmon, Wendy made butternut squash pasta with shrimp, Shaun made pineapple and shrimp skewers, Carrie whipped up a gourmet salad, and so on and so on.

So long dear Ashley, we will miss our Dean Machine, and we are looking forward to visiting you in SoCal...

Labor Day Long Weekend 2007

September 4, 2007


Sweet Jesus, it's September already! Two-thirds of 2007 is over!

Well, it was wonderful to have a long weekend, particularly one where it was actually sunny in San Francisco. Unheard of!

On Friday night, I went to Andalu to meet up with a bunch of Canadians in town: Eric, Marcia, Andrea and Bruce, who were in town for a wedding. Abe, Coco, Sonia and Wendy came too. We dined on the many, many yummy small plates typical of Andalu's menu.

Saturday and Sunday were spent in Golden Gate Park at the Polo Fields where my frizzer team, Brass Monkey, was hosting the Labor Day Mixed Championships. We played 4 pool play games on Saturday and 1 pool play/quarterfinals/semifinals/finals on Sunday. It was great, we played a lot better than we had earlier in the season, and lost to a Seattle team in the finals.

Shaun took some pics posted here, and I stole one of me and put it up below:

It was exceptionally insane in the park on Sunday due to the 40th Anniversary of the "Summer of Love" free concert that was being held pretty much next door to the Polo Fields. There was a lot of tied-dye and old folks wandering the park.

In between the games, the rest of the weekend was spent either sitting on my couch and feeling old and sore.

On Monday, Will and I joined the Canadians in town (Eric, Marcia, Andrea and Bruce) for brunch at the Pork Store in the Mission (I don't know if they can fit parties of 6 at the Haight location), and then headed to Upper Haight to do some shopping. Ooh...shopping...

After I dropped them all off at SFO to catch their flights home, I went back home and did some more sitting on my couch feeling old and sore.

It was a beautiful weekend, thankfully I spent most of it outside. And now I'm back at work cramming in 5 days worth of work in 4. Yuck.