by the bay...

josh met up with me downtown this week after an early interview and we headed to embarcadero to check out the ferry building and some random sculpture i'd always driven by but never explored.

the city is so full of random things to see and do and i wonder why so many people that have lived here all their lives never take advantage of it.

what is the word for when you live somewhere so long that you take it for granted?
i wanted to say 'complacency' .. but that doesn't mean what i thought it meant.

i really hope to take this city in to its fullest.
and i hope that if i end up living here for a long time, i don't forget that.

we went to the golden gate bridge with a friend from madison after hitting up the embarcadero and he remarked quite a few times,
"it's a beautiful city."

and all i could do was just smile and agree.

adventures in the east bay.

one sunny saturday afternoon, beth and i decided to take a trip to the east bay to attend an event where we got to be the judges for a cupcake bake off! we visited this lovely place called rock, paper, scissors and ate some delicious cupcakes (my favorite -- the vegan lemon strawberry one -- ended up winning too!).

after, we decided to make most of our day on the other side of the bridge, so we had lunch in berkely as this vegetarian chinese place (the fake-chicken sesame was decidedly good). in addition, we went to this converted landfill which is now a lovely park with old art sculptures littered around the many random pathways. beth and her old band, acne attack!, actually played a show there a year or so ago and i was amazed that they lugged all their equipment on the long narrow rocky paths. we found a weird castle, some cool sculptures and even their old graffiti!















from here, across the water we could see these massive kites and we went on a mission to find out what they were. dodging traffic and navigating only by the tails of these kites, we finally made it to the marina where we got to witness the large squid kites up close and personal. the weather was perfect, sunny and very conducive to a lawnfull of kite flyers. we sat and watched before it was time to head home.







all in all, an afternoon well spent.