FUNK be gone!!

I have had a much more generous feelings towards San Francisco today, despite my bus being 15 minutes late tonight. Our fight is over, for now. This could be due to a few reasons. Today was cloudy, windy and cold! YAY! I am now all cozy in my tiny little apartment, snuggled in fuzzy blankie, with heat dish turned up full blast. Ahh.... Just what I was looking for - appropriate weather for hibernation. I just picked up a cookbook from the library and after I finish this post, I will snuggle up with that. Again, I'll just say Ahhh....

Another possible reason is that I finally got back on the running wagon. Last night Linnea (from work) and I went running together and I have to say, the ambiance was perfect. It was dark and foggy and when it's dark, all the neighborhood lights go on, and when it's foggy, it sort of disseminates the light and makes it very cozy - like you are surrounded by a gigantic blanket of fog. So the run was fantastic - we went for 40 minutes and I just felt like I got a chance to "breathe" again - get the fresh air into my lungs and into my soul. It was very refreshing. And I also felt very cozy and snuggly - even outdoors. 

Another final reason that I'm feeling better was a visit to the Farmer's Market yesterday. It's hard to feel bad at a Farmer's market - all the friendly farmers and beautiful produce and other fun stuff. I went on my lunch break down to the Ferry Building Farmer's Market. 

I had such a nice hour - I got some really nice produce from local farms. It's amazing how much stuff is still available in November. In most parts of the country, farmer's markets are already shut down for the season. I got lettuce, tomatoes, apples, oranges, garlic, onions, carrots, bell peppers, salad greens, potatoes and a few other things that I can't remember now. I got more than I usually get in my Spud delivery, and for the same amount of money. 

I decided to try the market after finishing "In defense of Food" by Michael Pollan last week. I couldn't put that book down! I would encourage everyone to read it. While being full of useful information, it's also a well-written good read. He starts the book by asking the question, "What should I eat?", which appears to be a very simple question. He then spends the book explaining why this is not as simple as it appears. His prescription for eating: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Again, not as easy as it sounds nowadays. He explores the idea of the "Western diet" and how the nutritional scientists have tried to break everything down into their various nutrients and vitamins, with the idea that if we isolate the perfect nutrients and vitamins, then we can add them to our processed foods to make us more healthy. Because, lets face it, Americans are generally not healthy. His argument is that why does it matter which nutrients in real, whole foods are making us more healthy - if we just eat those real foods more often than we do the processed foods that overwhelm the supermarket shelves, we will be getting whatever nutrients are in there that do a body good. Nowadays, though, the term processed food also applies to our meat and dairy products. Because the cows and chickens and pigs are all eating diets of processed foods and grains that they were never meant to eat in the first place, by the time they get to us on the grocery store shelves, they are also highly processed, even though they appear to be whole foods. So it's getting increasingly harder to even find "real" food. Well, there is just so much in this book and I can't condense it satisfactorily into a paragraph. Just read it. I'm starting another one of his books called "The omnivores dilemma." I think I may have mentioned that when I read one of the books, I get really gung ho about eating and buying locally - thus the trip to the Farmer's market. I loved it and think I will put my Spud deliveries on hold for now and keep giving the Farmer's market a shot. I also found a grocery store near us called "Real Food" that is mostly organic and local. I will give that a try for awhile as well, even though it is more expensive. This new "exploration" of food has really interested me. I made chicken pot pie for dinner the other night with all locally-grown veggies and a wheat crust and I swear, it was delicious. More delicious than usual - or just seemed so. I don't know, but I loved it!

So, again, for any one of these reasons, my disagreement with San Francisco is over for the time being. Feelings of general well-being are back.

Neil and I had a very nice weekend. I did get a little bit of shopping therapy in on Saturday morning. Crossroads was only interested in buying two items from me for a grand total of $10, even though I hauled a duffle-bag full of clothes into the store. However, I found two pairs of jeans, which with the stuff that I sold only ended up costing $23. I will repeat - TWO pairs of jeans for $23!!! Best deal ever. So that made me happy. With shopping success under my belt, I headed off to the Green Festival, which is a HUGE festival of vendors and speakers all about the saving the environment and being green. One point of their festival was to be green even while having a huge event - big events being very large generators of huge amounts of trash and waste. So they had recycling and composting bins available everywhere you turned. Linnea (from work) was volunteering and she took me "behind-the-scenes" or out back behind the exhibition hall, where they were sorting the compost and recycling down even further. It was pretty amazing. So, supposedly, the exhibition was supposed to have a really low impact on the environment, even though thousands of people were gathering there. I saw some really fascinating stuff - the most interesting being the environmentally friendly coffins! Yes, I did just say coffins! They were bio-degradable. And then the also had some urns that were made out of sustainable materials and bio-degradable ones as well - if you wanted to be cremated instead of buried. I circled the building a few times and checked out most of the vendors, but there were SO many people there, so I hit the road after a couple of hours. 

Later that night, it was one of Neil's friends' birthdays, so we went to her party which ended up being very fun. Most of his art friends that we usually hang out with were there, plus a few others that I've met but haven't hung out with much. We had a really, really nice time just hanging out and talking with everyone. We didn't get home until 1:30 in the morning. It's been awhile since I've been out that late. 

The next morning we got kind of a late start picking up the car, but eventually got going in our Chevy Cobalt. We decided to skip the hike and drive south along Highway 1 towards Santa Cruz and Monterey. What a GREAT decision! 

About 20 minutes out of San Francisco, the houses were gone, the road got all windy and we hit the coast. It was a perfectly beautiful day - in the lower 80's. We had the windows down and the wind in our hair. As we wound along the coast, past beach after beach, we noticed a beautiful little cove, down a steep cliff. There was a parking lot up at the top, so we pulled over. When we crossed the highway and looked down into the little cove, we saw a little slice of paradise. 

It was so fantastic that we decided to take a break in the drive, even though we had just started, and walk down to the beach. Wow!! When we got down there, I felt like I was in Hawaii. The sand was white, the water was gorgeous blue and there was a little bit of mist that was just hanging down in the cove, giving it almost a magical feel. It wasn't crowded and there were families and dogs running around. Wow. I love this beach.

Look at the color of that water! WOW!

I think we'll be back here sometime soon for a day at the beach.

Unfortunately, we couldn't stay all day - we had much more of the coast to see. So we got back on the road again. There really isn't much to narrate for this part of the trip - just fantastic coastline, beautiful, lush fields and gorgeous sunshine. So I'll just post some pics:

About halfway between San Francisco and Santa Cruz is Pigeon Point lighthouse - an old lighthouse that the California State Parks Foundation (where I work), is working to get restored. So we stopped in to look at it and take a few pics. It was kind of cool to know that the place where I work is helping to restore a little bit of history. There is also a hostel there. 

Then we headed South again. The sun started going down and there was a beautiful sunset that just seemed to go on forever...

We pulled into Carmel - a really ritzy, art gallery-type town on the very end of Monterey Bay, just as the last few rays of light were disappearing. We walked out onto the beach there and stood and watched and soaked in the sound of the waves, and the warm November air (weird). 

After we had soaked up enough ambiance, we hopped back in the car and zipped back to SF on Highway 101. It was just a very nice day and great to have the sense of freedom of getting out of the city when we want to. I'm sure we'll be doing it a lot more now. 

I'm off to snuggle with the cookbook now! 

5 1/2 months of summer, and counting...

It's supposed to be 80 tomorrow. That's 5 and half months of summer for me so far this year - dangerously close to a full half year of summertime. I will stop the whine right there because I'm sure all of you Portlandites are dying for the sunshine. But I will just say that God made seasons for a reason! We all need the off-season to hibernate and re-charge our batteries so that we can enjoy the sun when it does come out. At least this is my pattern. Sun-sun go away, come again another day, little Stephie needs to rest, sun-sun go away! :)

So, long time no blog.. Sorry that I've dropped off the face of the earth but I have to admit, I have been feeling a little blue lately. Which doesn't make me want to write. I don't know if it's the beautiful weather that's been getting me down, or what, but I've been terribly homesick the last few days. Thanksgiving needs to come...NOW!.. I've been counting the days, and we're down to a week and a half (or so.. bear with me if a I shave off a few days to make it seem sooner). We're leaving Wed. morning in a rental car, and probably arriving LATE Wed. night. One of Neil's classmates is from Eugene and will be hitching a ride with us, so we'll have a little bit of company in the car.

The other thing making me homesick might also have been the adorable pictures that my sister sent of my little nephew in his kitty costume for Halloween. They were at a Halloween carnival that my parents school puts on... without us.Then they went trick-or-treating in our old neighborhood...without us. Actually trick-or-treated at our old house. (long, forlorn sigh...)

See also: Pumpkin carving and mom and dad's on beautiful fall day. ho hum...

Neil and I have been getting over head colds all week, so things have been pretty low-key. A lot of lounging around on the couch watching T.V. Nothing exciting to blog about, that's for sure. I thought I might be feeling well enough to return to running yesterday. Then I ran 1/2 block to catch the bus and thought I was going to lose a lung, so I decided against that. I'll take the weekend to recuperate... I have a long, hot bath on the schedule tonight. Neil will be at a lecture until around 8:30 - 9:00, so I will have some (more) alone time... Just what I need! :)

I have been getting a lot of reading in lately, though. I just finished a book called "Plenty" which is about a man and a women living up in Vancouver B.C. that decided to eat only what was grown/farmed/harvested within 100 miles of their home. It was a very fascinating and eye-opening book. Their stories are very interesting and the facts that they uncover and people they meet make for a great book. They managed to do it just fine, even though this meant giving up flour and white sugar (neither was grown within 100 miles of their house). And they became so much more in touch with their food and their environment. By the time they ended the challenge, they ended up still mosting eating locally-grown food, because they valued it and liked it so much more. It makes me think much more about the foods that we eat, and where we get them... I get my fresh harvest box each week, which I try to make as local as possible, but I did break down and buy bananas the other day - from Mexico... I felt bad when they finally arrived. I was also thinking that Spud is just a middleman, as well - so the farmers have to drive all their produce to Spud's warehouse, then spud drives it to me - doubling the fuel necessary. So I visited a farmer's market here in the financial district on Thursday and was pleased to find SO much fresh produce - and straight from the farm to the market, cutting out the middleman. So my next experiment is to discontinue the fresh harvest box and start getting produce from the farmer's market every Tuesday/Thursday (there are two markets).

I think it's good for me to read a book like that every now and then. It's interesting reading, plus it makes you stop and examine your own actions... Other books that i have read lately that made me think a little: "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver (also a local-eating endeavor story), "Fast food Nation" by Eric Schlosser (about the origins of fast-food), and there is one more that I just finished that I can't remember the title - it's about genetically-modified foods. I would recommend any of these as both a good read and very information/eye-opening.

Tonight, I am picking up a new one called "In defense of food" by Michael Pollard from the library. I'm not exactly sure what this one is about, but the author is supposed to be good.

On the docket for this weekend is the S.F. Green Festival tomorrow and also some shopping! YAY! I'm planning on swapping some clothes at Crossroads - the S.F. equivalent of Buffalo Exchange. I have a whole bunch of dressy work clothes that I don't need any more and I'm hoping they will take. I need jeans and sweaters instead... Hopefully the shopping therapy will lift me out of my "mood" because Sunday we are renting a car and driving out to Mt. Tamalpais to do some hiking. It's a lot harder to hike when you're down in the dumps! But that should keep us good and busy and hopefully there will be some good pictures to post on the other side of the weekend.

See you then!

Go-bama!!

I will just say briefly that it was very exciting to experience last night's election. I was amazed that it was over so quickly - Neil and I were settled in for a long night of election returns and nail-biting and lo and behold, they called the election at 8:30. Crazy. I'm sure the tv stations were not pleased with that...

I have to admit a deep dark secret that I haven't voted in a long time. In fact, I don't think I was ever even registered to vote in Oregon. Well, I have mended my voting ways and walked up the block yesterday morning to cast my vote in someone's garage. It was an interesting polling place.

Things have been fairly quiet here. The ants did mount a two-pronged counter-attack on Sunday. They appeared in the living room and through a tiny crack in the kitchen window. I merely applied the secret weapon again, and viola! no ants again. I think I'm finally starting to break them. There were a few coming up out of the bathroom sink drain this morning, so they must be really desperate and disoriented.

Halloween was interesting - in San Francisco it appears to be an adult holiday, not a kids one. I saw very few kids dressed up and no trick-or-treating. However, our neighborhood was filled with adults in costume. Having no such parallel holiday in Portland, Neil and I were caught completely unprepared, and uncostumed. Someone explained to me there is a lot of crazy people in San Francisco who love to pretend to be someone or something else for a day. They will take any opportunity to put on a costume. Sounds like a psychological problem to me.

Our neighborhood also tends to be filled with younger, fraternity/sorority types and so the most popular costume that we saw on Friday on Chestnut St. was some version of "slutty". I saw slutty nurse, slutty devil, slutty witch, and just plain slutty everywhere. In fact, it was almost strange to see a girl in a costume that did not involve a tiny skirt and a lot of cleavage. Apparently, halloween in our neighborhood is a chance for girls to be hookers for night - try that on for size, weigh their money-making options? I swear I actually saw the costume below on someone - this is slutty nurse...

We went to a Halloween party on Saturday night at my co-worker's house. It was a costume optional party, which meant that everyone came in costume but Neil and I. :) We actually saw some very interesting costumes there - very few sluts. I haven't been to a party in so long, it was like a weird flashback to being in college again, with the keg and people outside smoking. Neil and I enjoyed getting to be out and about on a Saturday night, but were over it pretty fast and headed home. Parties have never appealed to me that much, anyways. Everyone is so loud and it's not like you can have a conversation with anyone. I am reminded why we grow up and move on from that stage in life.

Friday I had an awesome day. My co-worker, Linnea, came home with me after work on Friday and we went on a long run together - the last one in the light of day. With the clocks going back, I will now be running in the dark. :( I've been running with her once a week and it has been really great! It's so much easier to run when you have someone to talk to - makes the time fly by! We saw a blue heron flying by at the end of the run. After the run, we went out to dinner at a little place on Chestnut St. called Pacific Catch. They have the best barbeque salmon sandwich EVER! And they serve sweet potato fries instead of regular fries, so you feel like you're eating better - even though they're still deep-fried. The restaurant is tiny, with just a few tables and then a long bar, overlooking the cooking area. So we sat at the bar, and it was very nice a cozy and we got to watch them cook our stuff. We had a nice time, with good conversation. Afterwards, we rode the bus to meet Neil and his art friends Lauren and Rochelle at Lauren's house. We sat around and chatted and shared a bottle of wine. It was just a very pleasant evening spent with new friends.

Saturday was the best day of all, though. I'm sure you are all tired of all the whining I've been doing about it not being cool and cloudy enough down here. Well, the weatherman more than made up for that Saturday. It poured all day long! It was fabulous. We had our heat dish on and were warm and cozy and lazy all day long! Neil stayed home from the studio and we hibernated all day, with a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. I couldn't have asked for better weather. And the really cool thing about the rain down here is that it feels like a Spring rain because it is still so warm. I noticed temps in the low 50's in Portland and it's still in the mid-60's up here. Nice and mild.

I feel a little tickle in my throat and am afraid that the fall bug is going to get me. It always right around the change in seasons that I get one of my two yearly colds. This might be it... So, I'm off to overdose on vitamin C. Hope all is well with everyone!