boo!

i carved my pumpkin last night! so scary!

they did it

if i wasn't so damn happy last night after the game when i saw this commercial for the first time, it would have made me cry. and if i wasn't at work right now, it would make me cry again. it's really beautiful. nike totally summed up in a few short minutes why last night's win was so meaningful:

watch fenway park 1919-2004

so, my dear friends...

here's to the red sox winning the world series!

(and to my red socks, which i can finally take off!)

(happy birthday!)^24

happy birthday to my baby bro'! the big two-four! yay, colin!

friendly faces

last night was a blast. not only because the sox won game 3, or that geer made a "johnny saves" t-shirt with damon's hairy face adorned with a halo on it... but because one of my bitchybitches (i.e. a fellow rower from my "glory days" of competing with the MIT lightweights) was in town visiting. she's in the bay area for a bunch of interviews with various law firms for a summer internship and luckily had a few hours to spare to come hang out with me.

we met up for the baseball game, to drink a few beers, and shoot the shit before retiring to bed. her 9:30 am interview today was about 2 blocks from my office. so she got to experience my oh-so-fun MUNI ride commute to work. yeeee!

i just hope she survived her interviews... sounds like her schedule this week is a little brutal.

and man, it's all too fun and easy to tease her about her power suits!

she and the rest of my bitchybitches are some of the greatest friends i think i'll ever have. ain't nothing like experiencing day upon day of miserable practices, bitter cold, callused & peeling hands, the evil charles river and it's monster swells, and showering together day in and day out for 4 years to form a bond with 8+ awesome chicks. they frickin' rock. yay rowers!

speakin' of which - the head of the charles was this weekend in beantown! aside from the mit crews, though, i didn't really know anyone who was rowing. sigh. i wish i was.

next year?

peet's

i read some article once that said residents of seattle preferred peet's coffee over their other coffee chains (starbucks, seattle's best, etc.). i didn't really get why at the time because i was adamantly addicted to starbuck's toffee nut latte and couldn't imagine possibly drinking anything else.

well lately, i don't like all that sugar in the morning, and so i switched to drinking plain lattes again (grande, regular milk, i add my own sugar). i started out with starbuck's and was mildly disappointed in the quality of foam, not to mention the overall too-much-milk taste. it just didn't stand up on its own - not like my neighborhood Beanery which makes the world's BEST latte...

sadly, when i'm downtown near my office, there is no Beanery to go to.

remembering the article about seattle, i decided i needed to swing by peet's and give it a shot. it was a slight diversion from my usual path to work, but what the heck? i could use the extra walking time.

and mmm... i must say... i now understand why seattle-ians love their peet's.

miss millie's

for the record, those of you who live in (or will be visiting soon) the city of san francisco, there is an awesome restaurant in noe valley that serves DELICIOUS breakfast. it's called "miss millie's" and it is well worth the 30 minute wait (bring your nytimes and ask for a cup of coffee when you get there, and 30 mins go by really fast). it's at 24th street and diamond.

conor and i had a tough time making up our mind between the lemon ricotta pancakes, huevos rancheros, pumpkin custard bread pudding, artichoke/olives/feta/spinach/egg tart, curried tofu and spinach scramble, and about 20 other great-sounding dishes. but we finally chose two winners: dungenous crab hash (with roasted potatoes, cipollini onions, spinach, peppers, peas, poached egg, red pepper sauce, creme fraiche and sourdough toast), and the gingerbread waffle (with fresh pear compote, pastry cream, candied pecans, and vanilla creme fraiche).

amazing! every day should start with a breakfast like that.

stink-eeee!

poor catfoo. she had to touch the red socks. i haven't washed them since i put them on at the bottom of the 14th inning during that fateful day when the Sox turned around and started winning games.

i wear them for every game now, and i don't plan to wash them again until the fateful day when we (gasp!) win the world series. and we are GOING to win. i know it. i feel it in my gut.

but... now i have to go knock on wood and do all the other necessary precautions that one has to do when they say such things outloud and in print on the web. i mean, how dare i!?! i can see the fans coming after me with pronged forks and sticks on fire right now!

:)

bring it on

chris thinks he's soooo cool. mister "i'm the copywriter, therefore i will win the blog-off" blogging co-worker of mine. he just doesn't realize that since i have the coolest boss ever, i will AUTOMATICALLY WIN.

some people, when getting "caught" at work blogging would probably get in trouble. some people may even have their internet privileges revoked, meaning that a smarmy IT guy in their office would cut off any access to the domain "blogspot.com".

but not mine. he just wanted the url.

ha ha! take that, chris. my boss is cooler than yours.

candy scramble

what are the candy companies doing to my candy!?! this week, i had the "luxury" to try, from chris's make-my-coworkers-fat-bin:

1. a snickers bar that seems to have been injected with nestle crunch particles!
2. a nestle crunch bar injected with caramel
3. an inside out reese's peanut butter cup
4. a white-chocolate reese's peanut butter cup
5. a kit kat that was injected with peanut butter

what's next? a white chocolate kit kat bar shaped like a cup, injected with peanuts, peanut butter, caramel, and nestle crunch particles? i mean, if we keep this trend up, we'll have ONE GIANT CANDY BAR left in the end... and how fun is that?

CHOKE!

that's the headline from the article in san francisco's examiner this morning.

here are some more headlines - all from new york papers. o glorious day!

the choke's on us
damned yankees
hell freezes over
what a choke!

ha ha. great stuff. last night was wild! i dreamt about baseball all night. thank you, red sox! now go read the sports guy's article, because he describes the game SO much more poetically than i will... i need to attempt some real work and try to shake this hangover (i'm so glad i have a red sox cap to hide under).

say cheese!

thanks, shawdee, for this rockin' shot of the prudential center!

splish splash

man it's wet out.

ain't nothing like being in a florida rainstorm, but it sucks for san francisco. we've had TWO whopping days of it, and people are freakin'! on the news, i heard about a kazillion car accidents because of the 0.6 inches of rain we got sunday. yes, that's right -

zero point six. that's not even an inch.

and people freak.

granted, there was probably about 6-months-worth of oil caked on the highways, since we haven't had rain in eons. so maybe it was a bit like trying to walk on an ice skating rink in tennis shoes. impossible. i don't know. as you're aware, i was home watching sports all day (insert embarrased grin here).

speaking of which (i swear, this is all i'll write about the sox today), YEAH BABY! WE LOVE YOU, ORTIZZLE!

back to the rain discussion. i woke up early to work out today, as i have been doing on and off the last 2 weeks. after trekking all the way to my gym in the downpour and wind, water pouring off my hood and into my eyes, people's umbrellas inverting and flying every which way, the wind picking me up and chucking me down the street, after walking through ocean-sized puddles, i make it to the gym and find that they're closed because they lost power.

darkness.

and it's not the waking up early part that pissed me off. nor is it the fact that i got to work at 8 in the morning. and it's hardly the fact that i got so dang wet during my walk back to my office. nope. it's the fact that i didn't get to shower. that's what pisses me off.

thankfully, i brought my "Cowboy Up!" hat today to cheer on the... oh shoot. broke my own rule. i swore i wouldn't mention them.

well, thankfully, i brought a hat to cover the mangled mess of gnarly, wet hair on my head. now if only i had a hat to cover the rest of my stinky bod...

snapshot

the AIM exchange with my co-worker during the last few minutes of the game, sox 2-0, bottom of the 1st. we're in the lead. it feels nice. (these screenames have been changed to protect the innocent):

[14:30] coworker: woooooo!!!!
[14:30] me: :)
[14:30] me: yayayay!
[14:30] coworker: WOOFUCKINHOO!

tid bits

mmm. i just finished lunch (at work, at my desk actually. i spilled soup all over my pants. yay.) and since i officially declared that "i'm not getting much done today" (thanks MLB & your f%$@#!! 2pm start time!) i am going to take a few moments to blog. then, i will alternate between working and baseball for the remainder of my afternoon and hopefully somehow i will succeed at both.

so let me take this moment to cheer, because we survived one inning of the yankees at bat! go team! and f-you, jeter (my #1 most hated yankee)! eat THESE 3 strikes!

here's the update on my rally attire: apparently winning & losing is independant of my hats... so i needed to move on to more literal gear. i'm wearing my red sox today. seriously. i put them on at the bottom of the 12th last night, and moments later ortiz nailed a homer that won the game. thank you foot fungus, you are our key to success.

because i have not. given. up. hope. not like those 3 fair-weather fans who traded in their sox caps for yankee caps after saturday night's game! wtf was that all about!?! so who cares if i don't watch every single season game - i won't leave them when they're down! man i'm glad i wasn't there or i would have punched them.

okay enough of my blathering about this team. what else did i do with my weekend? i ate food, i drank. i watched football, baseball and drank more beer. am i turning into a guy!? no no, that's just catfoo. we can't BOTH be turning into guys... maybe there is some weird fungi in our apartment that is infiltrating our brains. fun. guy. get it? ha ha.

YAYYAY! 1-0 sox! 2 men on base! 1 out!

yeayeayeah, i know. back to work. chris will read this and rail me for days if i keep slacking off.

play by play

i am, for the record, NOT GIVING UP HOPE for the red sox. not yet.
i am dutifully (and happily) wearing one of my 2 hats to work, every day.
i am watching what i don't get to see on tv during the start of each game (thanks to the stoopid 5pm start time!) on the awesome game day app hosted by the MLB off redsox.com which reminds me something of the marauder's map in harry potter. that was a very confusing sentence. sorry. but it's worth checking out if you get stuck at work like i do.

and now, thanks to catfoo,
i am also reading The Sports Guy.
freakin' HILARIOUS coverage. blogs rock.

game #1 blog
game #2 blog

an excerpt from game #2:

9:04 -- In the second inning, after Cairo walks and Cool Papa Lofton singles, Pedro eventually gets out of the jam by whiffing A-Rod. Unfortunately, he's thrown 46 pitches after two innings -- which means he'll be gone by the sixth. I swear, these Pedro starts at the Stadium are like putting the iPod on "shuffle" and ending up with the same song 20 straight times.

he really is a red sox fan. die hard, too. funny as poo. and he speaks the truth. what more could you want from real-time-sports-blogging?

shark update!

the shark has left woods hole!
i repeat, the shark has left woods hole!

brian sent along a glorious .pdf file (82 pages!) about the shark. it is chock-full o' articles, some awesome pictures, and plenty of information for my shark-loving readers out there.

check it out:
the shark: the pdf document.
(compiled by dr. b's diving chief)

pumpkindrid spirt

what a joy! starbuck's "fall line" of drinks contains a pumpkin spice latte that is so super tasty and delicious i could hardly stand it. it was like a thanksgiving party in my coffee. what a great surprise to my morning routine!

and... it's only fitting considering this weekend was all about pumpkins! well, not ALL about it... but on our way home from santa cruz, while driving up route 1 (looking for the bonny doon winery for our tasting adventure)('cuz they make my favorite riesling), we ran into a gazillion pumpkin patches.... and i mean a gazillion.

YOU PICK 'EM!

okay! we will!

it was like pumpkin heaven. by the time we finished wandering the never ending rows of squash, we walked out with an extremely large pumpkin to carve, six babies for me to share with my group at work, and another biggie to cook with, and it only cost a whopping 12 big ones. 12 bucks. unbelievable.

santa cruz was a blast. for the record, i could never live in that town. it's like the california beach town equivalent to boulder, CO - chock full of hippies, college kids, and some bad chain restaurants. but, every time i visit i have such a great time! it's the perfect place for a weekend escape. it's got exactly what you need for such a thing - a beach, a bowling alley, a few bars, a boardwalk with bumber cars, soft-serve ice cream, and greasy food, lots of cute surfer-types, and it's usually sunny.

anyhoo - i went down because an old friend of mine from MIT (jake) threw a housewarming party friday night (he's working on his phd at ucsc). a sizable crew from the city drove down south so we could party it up with him, and i have to say - it's always great to see my friends from college. they're really freakin' cool. very obscurely smart, funny, and crazy. all at once. not to mention ridiculously nice. and clumsy. three people fell into the small goldfish pond in jake's backyard. pete takes the cake on that shenanigan since he more or less DOVE in. accidentally of course (PETA: all fish were spared).

but enough patting my self on the back for my fun friends... i just felt like they needed a little shout-out! friends need love, too! yay for my friends!

fear this.

oh maaaaaaan. the angels have a RALLY MONKEY. and THUNDERSTIX! what kind of baseball fans are these!?!

btw, read what a naughty naughty monkey he is. tsk. tsk.

and it gets even weirder. they actually play these movies on tv.

a disturbance in the force?

the red sox kicked ass tonight!
go sox!
and the yankees lost!
go sox!
and the vp debate was so... weird! can they both lose? is that possible?
go sox!

happy home maker's mark

gee... i sound like a f'ing martha stewart wannabe from my last two posts... meanwhile my roommate is galavanting around town like a modern day great gatsby! my, how the roles have changed in our happy home! it's like we are living in our own mini version of the movie face/off. which, for the record, i haven't seen yet. but i hear it's great, especially with a beer in hand/belly. it's on the top of my list for movies to see, sitting right below urban cowboy. apparently, i need a john travolta fix.

anyways, so last night, i was innocently looking for a news program to fill the background noise in my apartment, while i sat on the couch digesting dinner and doing my finances with the glorious software program quicken (oh how i love thee, quicken!) and don't ask me how (it was a combination of thumbing up and down on the channel buttons of the remote), but i stumbled upon NBC's new show, LAX. and i was immediately hooked.

freaking LAX.

honestly, i wanted to hate this show from the moment i heard it was going to air this fall. i mean, i knew nothing about it, but i just wanted to hate it. the concept sounded so lame! it's about an airport! but nooooo.

FREAKING lax.

honestly, i tried to resist liking it.... flip. the. channel...

FREAKING LAX!

it sucked me in. the ending made me cry. honestly, cry! argh! lax!

[shaking head in disbelief]

and to think how much i hate that airport. i can't believe the %@$#% show did this to me! i. am. so. ashamed...

caramelicious

this weekend, i learned some fun things in the kitchen. most noticably: how to make caramel sauce from scratch! even though it took me three tries, it was remarkably easy. mmm. now i get to make caramel-coffee at home on the weekends. if only i had a latte machine so i could go a step better and make caramel lattes. someday...

btw - on the first try, i used a different recipe which failed miserably. once conor came home from work and saw my disaster, he taught me this method... but on the second try i used half & half, not cream, as it was all i had on hand. laziness bit me in the ass, because attempt 2 failed miserably, too. lesson learned: use cream.

ok, here's what you do (this is SO easy!):
1. pour a few cups of sugar into a sauce pan (i think i used ~2)
2. fill the saucepan with water so that the sugar is submerged and you can see about 1 cm between the top of the water line and the sugar sitting in the bottom of the pan.
3. turn on the heat! don't stir! don't touch! boil it until the bubbles start getting really slow and glassy. boil it until the hue turns pale brown... then right when it gets to be a medium to dark brown, proceed to step 4.
4. turn off heat and pour in cream. watch it boil and fizz! start stirring until its smooth and creamy... keep adding cream to your drippiness consitency (it will thicken a lot once cooled, so for this amount of sugar i needed about 1/2 pint of cream.
5. cool it. try it. wa-lah! caramel! yay! fun! delicious.

note: pleaes don't taste it while it's hot, because sugar can really burn you and your tongue. i hear it's worse than being burned with hot oil. seriously.

crepe!

on monday night, i went with my roommate and our friend geeta to a free cooking class (it was more like a lecture) where we learned how to make crepes! filled with yummy poached pears and topped with chocolate sauce. mmmm. i love crepes. i lived at the crepe place on MIT's campus while i was there. they had a fantastic lemon crepe, and a fantastic butter & sugar crepe. they also had a killer double mocha, but that's a whole other blog topic... so good...

anyways, the three of us were the class volunteers which meant we got to practice our skillz in front of our audience of ~15. pretty fun. but the teacher was SO ANNOYING (although not nearly as annoying as one of the other "students"... i swear she was a paid actress planted in the class). at least the food was good.

point of the story, though: i'm becoming a crepe-master.

first, i made them for megan&dan the night of the debates (thursday), and they were pretty good. admittedly, not as good as i'd hoped, but i was nervous... it was the first time using my new pan, and my first time using my new technique. all that said, they were much better than my pathetic pre-class crepes attempts!

and then there was tonight. tonight! tonight i proved i'm on the road to crepe-masterdom. they were thin! they were delicious! and the new pan & new techniques were glorious. ahhh. mmmm. what a fabulous dinner. crepelicious!