Today is the very last day of a fantastic and adventurous year.

It had lots of ups and downs and many challenges and trials, but I couldn’t be more thrilled for where I am now, and what lies ahead of us for 2009.

A few of the things we did in 2008, in absolutely no order at all:

• moved out of my beautiful bachelorette pad on 76th and York in NYC
• moved in with Earl to an amazing apartment in Manhattan’s UES
• created, from scratch, a lovely and large garden on our patio.  What a lot of hard work.  When it was finally finished, we up and moved!
• My awesome (and reliable!) best friend Lauralea helped me pack and move, TWICE
• got the runaround from a few corgi breeders regarding getting a puppy
• found and adopted our 5-year old Toothless Wonderdog
• realized my 13-year long dream of OWNING A CORGI!!!
• began living with a cat for the first time since grade school
• got my ASS KICKED bigtime at a beginner level hip hop class at Broadway Dance Center. oof.
• got too many flat tires
• crashed my bike, hard
• completely stopped enjoying riding due to ^^^ reasons
• started swing dancing every Monday night with Earl, and got to the intermediate level with Margaret
• went swing dancing at Lincoln Center with our friends Heather and Pete
• enjoyed many (but not enough) girls night outs with Lauralea at Lincoln Plaza and then our favorite NYC bar
• left the finance industry, where I had been working for the past 5 years
• went camping with my nieces
• Met Earl’s family on their farm in Wisconsin.
• Had my first ever – and subsequently became addicted to- CHEESE CURDS
• romped around in the hay with Earl in his parent’s hayloft
• decided to move to San Francisco
• invented the best sandwich, ever
• discovered the joy of snuggled up naps
• spent almost a month on the road, traveling all over the United States from Chicago to Wisconsin to Iowa, Tennesse, Mississippi, Louisisana, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, Reno and finally California
• went to Graceland, the Field of Dreams, New Orleans Halloween Parade, the world’s steepest train and Dinousar National Park, to name a few!
• visited MANY amazing friends and family on our journey- we saw Earl’s parents, and our friends Kate and Brennan, Nick, Dana, Shannon, Pete and Heather, and my old college roomate, Amy.
• taught our friends Mike and Emily, my old across the hall neighbors in NYC, how to ski.  They were from Florida and Emily had never even SEEN snow in her entire life!
• saw an alligator up close and personal
• was psyched for my friend and running cohort Steve when he finished his first (of many) ultramarathons
• spent a week in Mississippi learning and enjoyin the blues
• threw a “leaving Manhattan” party with some of our closest friends at Bemelmans Bar in the Carlyle Hotel
• checked off numbers 17, 27, 28, 30, 42, 45, 51, 52, 53, 58, 61, 73, 86, 92, 95, 100
• took a day trip to Plattekill and loved it!  Skied with some of my very best East Coast friends.
• hucked my first cliff, at Plattekill to the witness of Earl and Matt.  I did not stick it
• Lived with my Aunt and Uncle in Pleasanton CA for a month while we looked for an apartment.  Got my first taste of suburbia in a long time.  Endured lot of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in their kitchen.
• Amused myself teasing Earl because he was enjoying the hospitality of dyed in the cloth conservatives.
• Overheard my Aunt telling her walking friend that Earl is “suprisingly responsible, for a liberal.” 
• reconnected with my wonderful family out west (father’s sister and two cousins now both married with kids)
• got a crock pot!  And started using it for all kinds of yummy stuff
• Made progress learning how to cook.  Started cooking more frequently.
• won two awards at my old tri-club gala- the Ironman Award and the stand alone Persistence Award
• met Floyd Landis and bonded with him over heinekins
• tried not to be too sad during the first holiday season away from my parents and sisters… EVER
• found a wonderful apartment above the Haight Ashbury with views that overlook the city and a Buena Vista park
• didn’t finish as many races as I would have liked
• spent my birthday week in Jackson Hole
• skied a day with Bob Peters and got a few great photos
• Earl met my ENTIRE FAMILY all in one weekend at my sister’s ski house in Queechie, VT.
• we spent four, or five, or eight lazy Sundays drinking wine and playing chess at Otto
• I took Earl to the Robot Store as a surprise date
• threw a lot of dinner parties and grilled a bunch
• we carved pumpkins with our friend Terri and her super-cool son Ziggy
• we threw a raging house-warming party at our NYC apartment and got in deep trouble by the co-op board
• threw Earl a surprise birthday party at the Russian Vodka Room in NYC and got him a MATH CAKE
• we attended a city planning meeting in NYC to protest the horrible cafe below our apartment getting a sidewalk permit… and WON!
• spent a night being doofuses
• we decorated our christmas tree

Tomorrow Earl and I will be at the 49′ers game all day, thanks to one of my Lake Tahoe skiing friends who so awesomely gave me his tickets as a Christmas present! They’re great seats and even though the game is going to be a wash, I am psyched to go. Neither Earl nor myself are crazy football fans, however we plan to get drunk and have fun cheering on the home team.

Two things I am stressing out about:

1. Because we are going to be at the game for a really long time (9 hours?  I have no idea- kickoff is at 1:00, and we are getting there at 10:00 to start tailgating and then who knows how long with traffic it will take us to get home), I booked a new dogwalker for Linus.  I tried to book Andy from Dogs in the Fog, who had good recommendations and reviews on Yelp.  DitF was on vacation these two weeks, so he recommended this woman Robin, who he knew was available and worked in our neighborhood.   Robin sounded nice on the phone, however when she came to meet us today to meet Linus and get our keys…. she was…. erm, interesting.  First of all, she lives on the corner of Haight and Central and is a total old school hippie.  She told us how she moved to the city 30 years ago to “be in the scene.”  Upon meeting Linus, she raved about his “gentle spirit” and how they have a “great connection.”  She then asked us if we would cool if she “brought Linus to hang out at her house, in case he didn’t want to walk up the hill.”  WTF?!?!?!? At this point I am making google-y eyes at Earl, like, erm, how do we get out of this and get this crazy woman out of our house and not offend her, but he shot me a look like he was fine with it.  Sooo… at his discretion we are letting this burnt out long-haired hippie womyn take our dog on a TWO AND A HALF HOUR WALK tomorrow and then afterwards she is probably going to take him back to her house to do bong hits.  Earl and I were joking about how she is going to smoke him up and they will eat junk food.  She also mentioned that she walks a Dr.’s sheltie who works at the UCSF med center, and how she takes naps with his dog.  Oh.  My.  You know, as long as Linus is not dead or tortured and actually gets taken out so that he hasn’t gone the bathroom in his crate, I really don’t mind if she takes him to her house… and she did seem very nice and “into” the dog…. so I am hoping she is just a mellow, nice soul.  I have some reservations and am going to be a bit nervous about it but hopefully all will be fine.  **clenches teeth and bites nails***
2. Tailgating!!  We made chili tonight and I really, really, REALLY hope it come out well!  I tried using my late, beloved Uncle Bob’s Famous Chili recipe and I want to do him justice.  Uncle Bob loooved to make chili and would bring it to all of our family parties.  It was always a highlight, and I hope that the chili we prepared in his honor serves his memory well. We will certainly have some beers tomorrow and wish he could be there with us!

Here is how I made the chili:
STEP 1:

STEP 2:

STEP 3:

STEP 4:

STEP 5:

STEP 6:

STEP 7:

I’ve already had a few spoonfuls to “test” and it’s great. Spice-wise, I prefer things to be on the medium to mild side, whereas Earl loves things crazy insano hot, so I think this is somewhere in between… probably more how Earl likes it, however if I am imbibed with lots and lots of beer I can tolerate the pendulum more his way.

Soooo…. here’s hoping that things will work out with the dog walker tomorrow and Linus has fun.  And also that the chili goes well tomorrow!  We’ve also prepared some brats and buns and bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches to make while tailgating, as well as ton of beer.  Oh- one other quick note- we unwittingly went grocery shopping tonight at a very hippy grocery store WHICH DOESNT SELL MEAT! AGHHH.  We had to go to Trader Joe’s afterwards for the brats and bacon.  Too bad, too, because it was actually a nice grocery store and sold some very cool stuff like dried persimmons and dried mulberrys.  But no meat?!? They also had an entire “meat alternatives” aisle, although at the time I didn’t realize that was IN PLACE OF REGULAR MEAT!!

Enjoy your Sunday… and go 49ers!

presented without further comment:

and the best for last:

To think, I felt bad for making Linus wear a holiday sweater on Christmas!

Today in addition to cooking the most disgusting dinner ever, we also enjoyed a scrumptious breakfast and leisurely two hour stroll around our new neighborhood.  We took the dog, which was good because hopefully it helped get him in shape for his two hour fitness marathon coming up on Sunday (we will be at the 49′ers game all day, so are trying a new dogwalker, who quoted me that her minimum walk was TWO HOURS- …. hahaha, Linus is going to be in serious pain).

In addition to finding some super cute houses (including my fantasy house) , we also found Corona Heights Park, which is right off the back of Buena Vista Park, which we live on.  The view was fabulous!

You could also see Twin Peaks, which was the park we hiked up to the top of last weekend:

I wish I had brought my regular camera instead of cell phone, because the view was so wonderful… but since it is right around the corner I can easily go take some shots another time.

When we moved to San Francisco, on encouragement from one of my skiing friends, Earl and I signed up for Farm Fresh to You, a bi-weekly service that delivers a heaping box of fresh organic fruits and veggies to your door, for the reasonable price of $30. It is super exciting to get the box and see what we’ve gotten, and also it’s helping FORCE us to 1.) cook for ourselves more often instead of going out and 2.) eat more healthy stuff.

We love the service (and really recommend them if you are in the Bay area), however, oftentimes we receive some random freaky vegetables which we have no clue how to cook. Okay- guilty admission- we don’t really know how to cook ANY of them, heh heh, but some of them are even MORE oddball than others. For example, radicchio. What the heck is radicchio? It looks like a red lettuce, erm, but what do you do with it?

So the first week we got the FFTY box, I let all the strange vegetables that I didn’t know how to cook rot in the back of our fridge. Not good, and it has the added insult of forcing you to clean out all these moldy vegetables from the back of the fridge two weeks later, and reminding you that you suck and let all these wonderful veggies you paid good money for go bad in the back of your fridge and now you probably have toxic poisoning from rotting vegetable mold which has subsequently infected all the other contents of your fridge.

With the most recent box we received, I vowed to cook ! them! all!  Even that enormous 4lb kochiabaaosfhasdf squash.  So what I did last week was sit down and go through Every. Single. Cookbook. We. Owned. and marked out a recipe for every vegetable in the box. Then, when we went grocery shopping I made sure we grabbed all the other stuff we needed for the recipes, like saffron, which was is $15 for a stupid little packet.  I thought cooking for yourself was supposed to be *cheaper* than going out?! agh.  Talk about a pain. Cooking, and planning what to cook, is hard work.  No wonder our lazy butts used to eat out all the time.

Tonight we made, from my New York City Cookbook, Linguine with Leeks, Radicchio and Pine Nuts, which you can find a similar- but not exactly the same (thank god)- recipe here.

Now, I don’t know if I cooked this incorrectly, because I don’t really know what I am doing yet in the kitchen, or we burned the radicchio, or we had a bad batch of radicchio, or Earl and I simply hate the taste of radicchio, but man oh man whatever the heck happened… this thing turned out DISGUSTING!!! Neither on of us finished it, it was that bad.  And even after we picked out all the bits of radicchio, the rest of the meal still tasted poisoned. Blegh blegh blegh, gak gak gak, hurl, dryheave, blegh.  It was horrendously bitter and just plain nasty.  Even thinking about it now, three hours later, I kind of dry heave in my mouth a little bit.

EPIC DINNER FAIL.

Man, that was the nastiest thing I have ever cooked.
Here is the carnage:
-boiling pasta, toasting pine nuts, and sauteing leeks, garlic, onion and radicchio

end result- everything *looks* normal

When we finished putting the entire dinner down the disposal, we seriously contemplated ordering a pizza but instead binged on Christmas cookies which my cousin-in-law Denise so kindly baked us for Christmas. All Hail baker extraordinaire Denise, who singlehandedly saved the evening!

Tonight we also trimmed Linus’ nails

and later snuggled up and snoozed with ze ani-mules. Don’t they look cute?? Former arch-enemies now curl up together in the corner. Aww.

Despite being sad to be away from my parents, sisters, bro-in-laws and nieces and nephews for the first time EVER on Christmas, we did have a very nice time with our family out here on the West Coast.

Now, let me tell you something about my Aunt. She knows how to throw a party!! There were lots of people at her house- 20 adults and about 10 kids, and everyone had ample food and a gorgeous place setting.

Some photos:

My place setting. She bought these napkin holders from the local Girl Scouts. They are made out of three pieces of felt- what a simple yet cute design!

The roast!! It was so good you didn’t have to put any gravy on it (although there was gravy available). We saw this thing in the fridge last week before Christmas, and it was GIGANTIC.

Christmas Dogsters
Linus is sporting his Christmas sweater which we picked up for him in Park City when we drove cross country. Shamrock has on what I believe to be a a Christmas “scarf.” Sham-sham is a very silly dog; she is a “failed out” guide-dog for the blind, who was kicked out because she would always eat table scraps. Just recently she got ahold of and helped herself to an entire box of chocolates. Thankfully she was okay!

The youngest of our clan… Dane. He looooves dogs and gives Linus lots of hugs. Isn’t he cute in his sweater?

My lovely Aunt (father’s sister) and beautiful cousin-in-law Regan in the kitchen. Check out the two “vacuum cleaners” hiding in the shadows:

My Aunt’s grandkids are all boys (which is funny, because my father’s side is mostly girls!), yet nevertheless she has some very girl-y Christmas ornaments. I also spotted a few Barbie ornaments on her tree

James and Alex patiently await dinner… and later opening presents. Earl and I gave all of the kids marshmellow shooters, which was funny because they also got marshmellow shooters from their other aunt and uncle, so there were LOTS of marshmellow artillery around the house last night!

Trey helps himself to the mashed potatoes. I have never heard a child be sooo excited for mashed potatoes. He was raving about them before dinner, and I have to admit, they lived up to his high praise!

After dinner, we went to the movies with my cousin and his wife. We saw Frost/Nixon, which was very good! Even though it’s a historical documentary, so you know the outcome, it had me on the edge of my seat.

Here are some of the christmas lights in my Aunt and Uncle’s neighborhood. The people on their street went all out! This wasn’t even the “best” house, by far, but gives you an idea of some of the people’s yards. How refreshing to see that, even though we are in balmy Northern California and it is 60* and no snow, people still get into the holiday spirit:

We put in an emergency call to my brother-in-law Steve to get the recipe for spiked eggnog. Eggnog, brandy and nutmeg.

Dear Family, why do you put me through this? Love Linus.

He is *so* over it.

We turn our amusements to the cat, who is equally thrilled to be wearing a giant bow on her head.

Linus knows how to open presents! We let him open this one again and again. I would re-wrap it each time because watching him tear it open was so darn cute.


Earl unwrapped a present from my parents. Linus stuck his head in the wrapping paper and we sat there laughing at him when he couldn’t get it off. We are such evil dog owners.

Linus gets another present

It’s Kitty poops! His favorite! Which I bought off Etsy.

In Earl’s stocking he found a swim cap, sent to us by the wonderful Jenny , as Earl and I missed the Cayman Island Sea Swim this year because we were driving cross country to move to SF. THANK YOU!! Next year we hope to meet you, Brent and Wendy out there for some sun and swimming. We loved our caps, and they will get good use in the upcoming months!

Time for Christmas cookies!! He cooks; I drink. The key to any great relationship is finding this balance.

I also taste test. Drinking and taste testing are the two most crucial jobs of the cookie-making process, really.

The ingredients to these peanut butter cookies are:
- 2 sticks of butter
- 2 hershey chocolate bars
- powdered sugar
- peanut butter

Healthy AND nutritious!

Merry merry everyone!!!
<3
Ceej

I saw a video like this over on Corgi Butts, and I couldn’t resist making one of our little clan.

Sooooo stupid, yet funny. I have to say, Earl’s moves in this video are better than his normal moves

So far, Earl has given me two hints.

1. “Argentina”
2. “corgis”

Naturally, these hints lead me to believe that my present is my lifelong dream of a farm in Argentina, with a bunch of corgis living there to herd the alpacas.  Yes, seriously this is my retirement dream.  A cherry farm near Bariloche (near my friends Jaime and Shanie) which has a few alpacas and a bunch of corgis (four?  five? six?) and of course lots of hiking and skiing.

But, seeing as that dream is a bunch of years off, I don’t think that’s my present… yet… especially since we just moved our lives out here to San Francisco.  Although I have to say, I wouldn’t complain if that was indeed what it was!!  Don’t those hints lead you to believe that?!?!

What is it, what is it, what is it?  Agggh the anticipation is killing me.

Two weekends ago, on our first “free” weekend of living here in San Francisco, Earl and I woke up on a rainy-ish Saturday morning and decided to risk the weather holding off and head out for a hike.

We found the Matt Davis trail, which, because one of my very good friends in NYC is also named Matt Davis, we decided to go check out.

It was only 30 minutes from our apartment, however those were some REALLY windy roads to get there!  I wouldn’t want to be doing them at night, or in a car chase.

The hike was a nice little trail.  Basically, it was straight up the side of a mountain, with a lot of stairs and switchbacks. A lot of the trail at the beginning followed a little stream.

Linus won’t really swim unless we throw him in (which Earl does quite often, with gusto), however he does love to wade.

Not something you are used to seeing on the East Coast:

I have to learn the names of some of the foliage out here. We saw so many cool looking plants. I think for my birthday I am going to ask for some west-coast naturalist books.

About 1/3 of the way up there is this overlook where we stopped for some water.

When you get high enough, you leave the trees and into the dry grasslands

In the headlands part there was a LOT of (coyote? other dog? wild cat?) poop on the trail, and SOMEONE kept trying to eat it all, so SOMEONE had to be leashed and yelled at.

The view from the top. You can’t really tell from this picture, but way off in the distance there you could see the Golden Gate Bridge and also San Francisco. Earl and I wondered if we could see our apartment (you can kind of see Buena Vista hill sometimes from far away), however we couldn’t really pick it out.

We made it to the top!

Here we stopped and sat on a log overlooking the pacific for a really disgusting lunch of these HORRIBLE egg salad sandwiches which Earl picked up from the deli that morning. Man, those sandwiches really sucked. Talk about gross… I thought you were supposed to have a yummy lunch at the top of a mountain to celebrate your hike?! I ended up giving the majority of my sandwich to the dog. We used to love egg salad sandwiches from Lennys in NYC, which we would always get for the car ride before weekend trips. Man, these things were a far cry. First of all, they had lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, relish, mustard AND mayo on them!! WTF!??!?? aGGGH who puts all that crap on an egg salad sandwich??? Egg salad is supposed to be eggs, mayo, seasoning, salt, pepper and bread. Keep the other stuff off. Blegh. Second of all, they didn’t have enough eggs and had way too many veggies. Overall, just gross. San Francisco needs more Jews.

With the sun getting low in the sky, we decided to hike down.  I was hoping we’d have enough time to go run around Stinson Beach after our hike.

Which we did!

I really don’t know how, after a huge hike up and down a mountain, Linus had enough energy to run around the beach, but he did.

He loooooves the beach. When we take him to the beach he sprints around and around and around in ever-widening circles, comes over, howls at us, sprints away, rolls over on his back in the sand, wiggles around, sprints some more and runs back and forth between us. He is pure joy at the beach.

The waves were pretty big, but there weren’t any surfers. I think this was because they were crashing too close to shore.

There were some wind-surfers. I really liked the town of Stinson Beach, it was really cute and kind of mellow. Everyone there was walking dogs and just hanging out. I’d love to go back in the summer and maybe get a beach cottage there or something.

Upon leaving the beach, Linus experienced probably the funnest thing he has ever gotten to do.

We stopped at a nice grocery store in Muir Beach and picked up supplies for dinner, which was an easy-peasy meal of pasta, meatballs and spicy sauteed kale. At this point we still hadn’t picked up our kitchen table so here we are eating dining casual style on the living room floor
We also enjoyed probably the best bottle of wine in our meager “collection.” We’re running low on wine, guess it’s time to throw another housewarming party soon!

Not a bad way to end what was the most fun day we’ve had since arriving in San Francisco!