The moral of the story is...

I wanted to run a few errands today that badly need to be crossed off my list. Bank, groceries, pay my bills, laundry, get a social security number - all the things that make your life run smoother once they're over and done. The funny thing is that I actually love running errands. They are necessary, doable, and give you a sense of definitive accomplishment.

Today turned out to be a gorgeous, fluffy white cloud day. The perfect weather to go out and about, right? But then all my housemates decided to leave me one by one whether for work or visiting family. Along with finishing off my To Do list I planned on going to campus to read some papers and maybe get to the gym, but the allure of having the house all to myself was just too tempting.

I am, by nature, fairly shy and am introverted when left to my own devices. However, my secret is that I love being around people, but often need incentive from others to be social. The one exception is when I want to bake. I am one of those people that can't have other people in the kitchen otherwise I get grumpy and OCD. When I bake I need the lighting to be just right, some good music going on in the background and time to myself to figure out how I want to do the recipe.


So with an empty house and some beautiful afternoon sun streaming through the windows I decided to bake craisin almond scones. This was a pretty on-the-spot decision as I originally wanted to use raisins, but the lovely produce store across the street from me were all out. The recipe was coming along fine despite my lack of a sifter and white sugar, and I was becoming excited to find out how my flavour combination would work. On the last step as I stirred in the milk I knew something was wrong. There was just too much liquid, and the dough which could not be over-mixed was not coming together. So much for scones.

For some reason I thought that adding some whole wheat flour would be a good try at thickening the dough. And so I proceeded to try rolling it out. No such luck. I ended up having to drop-dough it onto the baking sheets cookie style, and crossing my fingers that this wouldn't be a total disaster. It kinda was.


I have a couple of hunches on why these turned out to be a bit like the consistency of corn bread (not enough flour), and with a bitter after-taste (raw whole almonds). Despite everything, I still ate two, and will of course slowly eat the rest. Oh living by myself and learning how to bake.

Ah well.

Happy Saturday!

The weekend where I asked to be carried up every hill

City Hall


I can't believe that this is their city hall

The Forever 21 and Gap downtown

Fisherman's Wharf (Pier 39)

Harro

Climbing up Lombard St., the crookedest street there ever was

I want to longboard down this

View from the top

I bet him that he couldn't balance the pomelo on his head all the way back down. He did.

The Academy of Sciences

turtle turtle

come to meeee





His attempt at being emo


this is a fish...

Chinatown!



somewhere between Chinatown and Japantown


Grace cathedral

Badger, badger, badger!

I got my second ever visit by someone from Vancouver! It was this boy:

Hello.

This past weekend was my most tourist-esque yet, but I definitely saw a lot of SF finally. Here's the breakdown.

Thursday
- city hall
- little Saigon
- walked around downtown SF
- Fisherman's Wharf
- Ghirardelli Square
- Lombard St.
- Coit Tower
- North beach

Friday
- Golden Gate Park
- The Academy of Sciences
- Bison paddock

Saturday
- Chinatown
- dim sum
- Tea Ren
- Golden Gate bakery
- Grace Cathedral
- walked all the way to Japantown

Sunday
- Palo Alto
- Stanford University

And then it was good-bye... forever?

Oh, Saturday

Woke up this morning with another random person sleeping in our house. Okay, that's a bit of an overstatement, but really our house plays host to so many people.

Over the past two weeks Curtis' brother, Max, along with one of his work buddies has been staying with us sporadically. Max is a 30 something-year-old road surveyor who lives well outside of San Francisco (about 2 hours east of here in the foothills as he puts it), but his work takes him all sorts of places. So when he's working in the Bay area it's most convenient for him to stay here.

And it is so nice to have Max around. As a married man and father of one, boy does he know how to cook. I think in the first 2 weeks that I've been here Max made dinner at least 3 nights of the week in huge portions, which meant lunch for the next day too. I am so spoiled, hehe.

Last night Curtis' friend from high school was in the area so the boys went out to the bar, while Channing and I stayed in and watched Grey's Anatomy on her laptop. Oh, America, why am I not legal here.

This morning was amazing. Us girls were not hungover so we decided to make waffles from scratch. Luckily Arman has a waffle iron so they turned out beautifully.

Saturday Morning Waffles
1/2 Cu. all purpose flour
1/2 Cu. whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp. sugar
2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
1/2 Cu. milk
1/4 Cu. oil

1. Mix dry ingredients together
2. Mix eggs, milk, oil in a separate bowl
3. Combine wet into dry
4. Put in waffle iron
5. Eat six of them in a row with butter and maple syrup





In the afternoon we all went to Ikea for 3 whole hours where I didn't have anything I needed to buy so I slowly lost my sanity walking around showrooms for that long. buhhh. I mimicked this johnny wander comic perfectly.

Hello there

This is where I will be living for the next 7 months. My address is:

1225 Capitol Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94112

Send me some mail =)



View down my street

My 'hood: Ingleside

This is Muni - one of 3 different companies that run transit around here. It's the equivalent of our translink but much less reliable and pretty oldschool. It does the whole thing where it accepts dollar bills and the driver hands you one of those transfers made from newspaper paper that are ripped according to your transfer time. Do you remember those from the 90's? Plus it's a tram car and often gets stuck behind a pile up of all the other different lines. I take the "K Ingleside"