Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Well, that didn't last very long, did it?

I've been packing and panicking for the last couple of days. We've also been trying to fit more quintessential San Francisco experiences in.

On Sunday afternoon, we had tea at Samovar. I had a really strong black tea with a matcha brownie.


Mmmmmm....

Elliott had the full on English tea service with a lemon tart, a scone, and a salmon crumpet. And contrary to the picture, he enjoyed it very much.



Except for when I snuck a bite of the lemon tart.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Day Eight - Penultimate* Day at Work

I cleared out most of my desk, had yummy Thai food with a co-worker, then yummy cake at a birthday celebration, re-read Neil Gaiman's Stardust (which, by the way, they've made into a movie!) and finished the second sock for my dad. It almost makes me sad to leave work tomorrow.


*Penultimate meaning second to last, not last, as we all learned from Danny and Casey on Sports Night.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Tag Sieben - Book recommendations?

Getting back to the other half of what this blog is purportedly about: books. I never travel without a book (or several) to read. I took Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting to Mexico, Persuasion to England, and The Remains of the Day to Wales and Paris. But I'm at a loss as to what to pack for this trip. For one thing, it's my first long vacation. Seven weeks without internet access and a steady supply of socks to knit (though I will take a small project with me) makes for a very restless Yao. I don't want to take anything from my current fiction stack, so it'll have to be a new book or something that I haven't read before. So, any recommendations? I'd like something in paperback and preferably modern but not necessarily.

PS: Elliott would like me to report that he's taking one Vonnegut book, Nabokov's The Gift, possibly one non-fiction book, one of the few Murakami books that he hasn't read, and possibly a book by Orhan Pamuk (though it'd be a little cliche to read it in Istanbul, especially if we try to stalk him in Nisantasi).

PPS: I think that Elliott really should update his own blog.

Day (Late) Six - Links Galore

Er, can we all pretend that it's still May 15th?

Here's what I meant to post had I not conked out early on Tylenol Cold.

New York Times review of Hitchens's new book that makes me actually want to pick it up

Murakami has a new book out

Ooooh, shiny collider

Gacked from a knitting blog that I read: Arcade Fire in concert, from NPR

Stupid YouTube video

Monday, May 14, 2007

Day Five - Last Monday at Work!

Because I was so excited about this week being my last at work, the universe decided to punish me by having me work for 5 hours straight this morning. Ooof.

Now I'm relaxing with a nice cuppa tea and the socks that I'm knitting for my dad for Father's Day. So, as promised, sock pictures.

These are the ones that I knit for Elliott's grandma, Betty.



(Ignore how weird my calves look.)

And what I'm knitting now:



Makes you want a pair of hand-knit socks, eh?

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Day Four - Sundays are for Miscellany

Our dinner party went pretty well last night, especially the fireworks interlude (provided by the local radio station KFOG) between the main course and dessert. Good timing, guys.

I know that I promised pictures of the food we made, but as always happens, I forgot. However, here is a picture of the resident dessert chef making an apple puff pastry tart.



And the table.



The official menu was:

Spring mix salad with mango and avocado with guava vinaigrette
Stuffed bell peppers (with turkey sausage and just plain veggie) with cous cous
Apple puff pastry tarts with honey
Blackberry pie (that Thomas brought)
A selection of ice creams from Bombay Ice Creamery

And now we're off to take over the city, as we do every Sunday. Ciao.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Day Three - Catching Up

Last month, Elliott and I went on a mini-holiday to California's Central Valley for some wine-tasting and buying. We stayed at a small town in Paso Robles, and drove out to the nearby wineries.

They looked like this.



We toured a cave filled with barrels of wine.



We drank a lot of wine, and "stomped some grapes."



And smelled some flowers.



All in all, it was a fantastically relaxing trip. We drove back up on the 1 and saw Big Sur.



Or rather, Elliott did. I was too busy trying not to puke into a plastic bag.

The end.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Tag Zwei - Anticipation Is the Better Part of Pleasure

Today was going to be sock picture day, in which I post pictures of all the socks I've made during my recent sock-knitting phase (which started shortly before Christmas and is on the downswing at the moment and which has resulted in a total of 8 pairs of handknit socks). But I was so tired from trip-planning last night that I never got around to taking pictures of the socks. So no sock porn today, but I'll try to put it up this weekend.

Speaking of this weekend, Elliott and I are having a dinner party tomorrow night, and so far it looks like most people can make it, but our friends tend to be a bit, um, flaky, so my fingers are crossed. And I'll take pictures of the as yet to be determined but sure to be yummy food we're making.

Stay tuned!

Thursday, May 10, 2007

30 Posts in 30 Days

I'm shamelessly stealing the idea of 30 blog posts in 30 days from a blog that I regularly read. This is day one.

I'm ridiculously excited about our upcoming trip, despite all the headaches involved in planning how to get from one place to another. I swear, Croatia is like the steel trap of Europe. Once you're there, it's really hard to get out, unless you're prepared to pay a ton of money to fly. Hence, Elliott and I are reduced to taking a 31-hour bus (NB: it may actually be longer) from Zagreb to Istanbul. Luckily, Istanbul looks like it's worth it.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

A Good (Not Quite) Year

I can't believe I just used that hideous Russell Crowe movie as the title. Oh well, moving on.

So, my profile needs a little updating since Elliott and I are moving out of the Bay Area and out of our beautiful, centrally located (half a block from the best bakery in America) apartment. We'll finally going back to school (graduate school at Columbia for him, the smartypants, and law school for me). Goodbye, 9-5! Hello, crushing student loans!

To celebrate at our newfound freedom (before school begins, anyway), we're taking a 7-week trip through Europe. So far, the plan is to go from Rome to the Puglia region in southern Italy (maybe) to Croatia to Istanbul to the Turkish Aegean coast to the Greek Cyclades islands to Athens and finally to Cologne to visit some of Elliott's relatives. Y'know, I've typed out this itinerary probably dozens of times by now, and it still doesn't sound real to me. Rome! Dubrovnik! Istanbul! Wheee! And we'll probably get to meet up with some of our friends in Europe, too. Double wheeee!

For those whom I won't be seeing this summer or for a long while, I'd like to post travel updates to this blog, so you can see some of the amazing places that we'll be visiting. Sound good? Gut. Bis dann.