25 Lusk

December 20, 2010

My birthday is on December 21, but Will and I are leaving for the east coast on the 22nd, so I wasn't so eager to go out the night before heading for the holidays, as I really didn't feel like I had my sh*# together and could use some down time before getting on another flight.

So, Kat, Key, Sue Hee, Robert and Will took me out for dinner on Monday night instead, to the schwanky new joint called 25 Lusk in SOMA. 25 Lusk is incredibly well-designed and made a good first impression with it's fancy cocktails. I fell in love instantly with the Grapefruit Gimlet.

Amuse bouche of potato bisque:

Starter of salad with speck, fig, parmesan:

Entree of grilled prawns, polenta and vegetables:

The salad was great, and the entree was okay. I was more impressed by the gimlet :), but it was overall a good meal. The setting is incredibly sexy and a definite recommendation for those looking for a good location for a hot date.

We're off to the east coast for the holidays, wishing everyone a fantastic one this year!



Cliff House

December 20, 2010

On Monday, our team from work had a pre-holiday-thank-goodness-2010-is-almost-over lunch before everyone took off from the office at the Cliff House in SF. It was an overcast day, and the rain was off-and-on, but it was still gorgeous and dreamy out the windows of the restaurant.

To start, I had the tuna tartare with pine nuts, asian pears, mint, habanero-infused sesame oil and quail egg:
                                    
Followed by the grilled sea scallops with gumbo sauce, dirty rice, and pepper-scallion salad:

Both dishes were superb and although lunch was pretty quick (had to get back to work!), it was nice to get out of the office.

Happy holidays!

Holy Crap! It's Almost Christmas!

December 19, 2010

After winding from my last work trip of the year, I quickly realized how close we are to the Christmas holidays...eek! This year, I had to get my Christmas shopping done pretty early (as everything was getting shipped to Albany, NY to my sister's house, as she's hosting the family for the first time on the east coast). But, seriously, I've barely had a chance to breathe, much less enjoy the holiday spirit!

On Friday after work, I finally got a chance to head over to Cindy's place and meet her brand-spanking new (5-week old) baby twins: Sabina and Alexander. Super so cute. Fresh babies!

After the visit, I headed down to SOMA to join my friend Kerstin for dinner at Nancy Oakes' new venture, Prospect. I apologize in advance, my travel/work-weary body has become a lazy food blogger, so I neglected to take any pictures and spent the entire time catching up with Kerstin (a reasonable excuse, right?). However, I like the space, had a good schmancy cocktail (called the Stallion, which tasted like a sweeter negroni), and enjoyed the food (shared the artic char crudo and then had the sea scallops for an entree).

On Saturday morning, I joined Ashley, Sandy and JoJo for brunch at Serpentine in Dogpatch. Once again, I claim blogger's remorse from lack of photos, but the food was super (the red flannel hash with beef brisket, horseradish creme fraiche, beets and poached eggs was sooo good!). From brunch, we headed over to the holiday Renegade Craft Fair, one of my favorite things to do twice a year.

Conveniently, there was also the Underground food market at SOMArts, where we tried some delectable treats and I picked up some wicked bread pudding from Schulzies for Will. That guy loves bread pudding and I'm a rad fiancee.

Frequent Flyer: London (Err...again?)

December 15, 2010

I was back in London in Canary Wharf for work only 9 days after my last trip. The two things that were much better on this trip: 1) the "Big Freeze" had waned a little (no snow on the ground, but still very chilly), and 2) this was my view out of my hotel room every morning:

After three days, it was back home to work insanity.

Oh, and the last saving grace for this quick work trip: I made Star Alliance (United) Global Service status (higher on the pecking order!). Yowza.

Owie: North Face Endurance Challenge Half Marathon

December 5, 2010

What do you do when you've been on a plane multiple weeks in a row and haven't been running? Give your bib for the 10k distance for the North Face Endurance Challenge (San Francisco) to someone else and run the half-marathon distance instead? Of course!

I gave my 10k bib to Gail and took Sara's bib for the half-marathon to keep Sue Hee company. We survived, thankfully, due to good comraderie, lots of quality catch-up conversation, and familiarity with the pain we were in for from doing the race last year.

Also, we only got rained on a little bit here and there, so the raining gods smiled on us. We celebrated with brunch in Larkspur, and then went home to nurse our weary muscles.

Frequent Flyer: London (Again)

December 3, 2010

As the Thanksgiving weekend was winding down, I had less than 24 hours to turn around and then head back to SFO to catch my flight to London for a work trip. Who needs to ease in after a two-week vacation?

There are only two things to report from this work trip:

• Canary Wharf is a pleasant and well-developed business area (see pics below), but quite far away from the real action of London.
• "Big Freeze 2010" as the London media called the snow storm that rolled in when we did and caused all sorts of transportation issues. Thankfully, LHR was not impacted like the other airports, roads, and railways. We were able to get home as planned and out of that damn cold weather.

Random: while walking through the mall, there was a book signing with famous UK writer/TV personality James May, who is promoting is new book "How to Land an A330 Airbus".

I'm heading back to London in ~9 days, back to Canary Wharf, for work. I hope it's warmer.

Thanksgiving in SoCal

November 28, 2010

Will and I flew down to San Diego on Monday, and then drove an hour or so to San Diego Country Estates (near the town of Ramona), where Mike and Susan have their timeshare. This was our 6th year down there for the Thanksgiving week (having skipped 2007 when we were traveling), and it's always a good chance to get some golf in and learn new card games.

Susan whipped up an fantastic Thanksgiving feast, which we shared with the Bensons and McDougalls:

I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday!

Costa Rica - Video style (Part 1)

I took some low-quality videos with my digicam in Costa Rica, check out some of them below. This is part 1, the rest to come in a future blogspot.

Off the Catamaran:

ATV-ing and zip-lining:

Pura Vida!

Costa Rica - Video style (Part 2)

Here are a few more videos of zip-lining from Costa Rica (whee!!!):

Costa Rica - Zip It!

FRIDAY (November 19)

On Friday, Will headed out for another surf session at Playa Grande, while I went for breakfast and pool-lounging with Arissa and Aisha.

Check out the massive iguana that was sunning itself by the pool:


Will came back from Playa Grande with four stitches and a big goose egg on the back of his head, courtesy of a surf board fin and steep waves at Playa Grande. Thankfully, he's relatively intact and was ready to take on the afternoon adventures.

We joined a group of 12 folks for an afternoon of ATV-ing and ziplining (whee!!!).

We rode the ATVs for about an hour, up north through Brasilito and into the hills. We got to go through some creeks and generally saw some great landscape.


























We ended up at the Congo Trail Canopy Tours in Artola. The ziplining course consists of 11 different ziplines throughout the forest, taking us higher and higher above the canopy. The action was super fun, the harnesses were not so comfortable, but well worth the experience.

See below for a selection of the many, many photos we took:











Louis-Jules going upside down:

















Louis-Jules going "Superman":




Seb going "Superman":



A bunch of other folks also tried the various "positions" (Will did the Superman and mentioned that it's not-so-comfortable with the harness...). The tour guides were hilarious, and made it a super good time.

It was raining as we finished, but as we rode away on the ATVs, we headed back towards the beaches and better weather. The route back was beautiful, via Playa Potrero, Playa Flamingo and Brasilito.
















It was an amazing day, thanks to Sophie and Kelly for planning!

Pura vida!