Thankful Thursday

I feel a little bit like the walking dead right now. I haven't been any sort of sick (not really) in literally years, and here I am with a nasty sore throat and feeling like I have a cloud settled on my  head. I was driving to work this morning and realizing that I barely knew where I was or how I got there. Scary. Then I was wandering down Market street to get my coffee, and feeling like lifting my feet to take steps was the most wearisome thing. So I'm thinking about heading home early to rest - depending on how the day goes. Anyway, let's focus on the positives, shall we?

1. I'm thankful for good friends. I've had a lot of good quality time with dear friends lately, and I feel full to the brim. 

2. I'm thankful for general good health. Once that is threatened, you realize just how fortunate you are to not be worse off.

3. I'm thankful for vacation in 1.5 weeks! Woohoo!!! We're down to the wire with planning and booking things, and I am so excited to have concentrated non-working, adventuring time with my best friend and lover.

4. I'm thankful for fun events! We've been busy lately checking off things from our bucket list, and it's been awesome. This Saturday is the SF Streetfood Festival (and then an ice-cream cookie sandwich and game night with friends!), Sunday is Alcatraz for the boys while us girls have a nice long walk along the Bay, and then a picnic in Stern Grove for all of us while checking out the SF Symphony. Yay!

5. I'm thankful for challenging, engaging work. I've been really stretched in my new role, and while it's tiring and tough, it's good for me, and really exciting. I'm loving the growth!

What are you thankful for?

Ode to Sa-Su

Weekends are my fave.

More sleep, cuddling, fun with friends.

Waffles make my day.

Like that? A little haiku action to start us off right. This weekend was awesome. Again. I feel like I might max out my awesome weekend experiences, but we've got another one coming up in a few days. Friday night we had sushi at a new place (meh), and then saw "Elysium" at the theater in Mountain View, which we never do - I forgot movies are so fun! Saturday we slept until 8 (glory hallelujah that we both stayed asleep that long!), ate our zucchini bread oatmeal, and then headed out for some mountain biking up at Russian Ridge with a couple friends. We stopped at Robert's Market for lunch afterwards and noshed on our weird deli lunches while getting our energy back. I pretty much spent the rest of the day doing chores and baking an Oreo cookie pie (healthy, duh!) and making Sangria, and then we hosted a bunch of friends for a ferocious game night. 

We also checked more items off of our bucket list this weekend - fun! On Sunday, we drove up to Berkeley for lunch at Wat Mongkolratanaram - the Thai Temple (Buddhist) located there. The temple monks and volunteers host a traditional Thai lunch there every Sunday until 1pm. So you show up, swap your money for tokens, and then use the tokens to buy however much food they'll cover. We decided to just try a bunch of things! 

Oooh, fake money.

It was outside of the temple with a bunch of tents and booths set up. We waited in line forever...but it was worth it!

Tasty, tasty, cheap curries. We sampled some from each plate - delicious!

This is what the temple looked like from the street - basically a house with fancy trimmings. But there was a fantastic ceremony and dancing (and children singing, which was NOT fantastic) around one side, so that was cool.

On that note, I can officially say that we're going to Thailand!...in 2 weeks from today. Hah. We bought our tickets just a tad last-minute, and now I've been using every spare minute to plan an itinerary, book other travel, research, and get Visas to the other countries we plan to visit (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar if we can swing it). WOOHOO!

Another item on our bucket list: Stern Grove Festival. I CANNOT BELIEVE we lived so close to this (really, walking distance) for 4 years and never went. I mean:
- it's a concert with great artists
- it's free
- it's in the middle of a random forest in San Francisco

We dawdled in the sunset for awhile before battling horrific parking and walking through the whole park to get here, but we really wanted to see Pink Martini. We were totally amazed by the "venue", if you can call it that, when we arrived, and literally hiked up the side of the canyon to perch on some dirt to listen. This was our view of Pink Martini. Sigh. What I CAN tell you is that they were FANTASTIC live, and that those trees smelled awesome.

Our "seats"! Nothing beats a natural theater. We are totally going back next weekend. And this time we're bringing wine, cheese, fruit, other yuppie delectables. You know, for the full experience. We were the only ones there without at least a bottle of wine to pass around, and very sad about that fact.

On the walk back, I caught Jacob doing some urban foraging for some blackberries. Very San Francisco. Bonus hipster points for the Laotian beer hoodie. I may have eaten some myself if I was 50% sure that they may have been peed on at some point.

On bucket lists and low-hanging fruit

Have you ever heard that term, "low-hanging fruit"? In my work world of strategy and analytics, it gets thrown around A LOT. Usually through a haze of coffee-induced enthusiasm in planning meetings. All it means is "something that is easy to achieve in a short time". Recently I made a life bucket list. Aside from Nolan's criticisms ("you can't put 'daily quiet times' on a bucket list! It has to be stuff you cross off!"), I feel rather pleased with it so far. It gives me a sense of purpose for my time on earth. Anyway, I also have this little list of things in my head that I want to do, and consider as my personal low-hanging fruit. One of them was making as many things as possible from scratch, or being semi self-sufficient. Making cheese was a subgroup of this. So this weekend I made mozzarella. It was FASCINATING. And easy. And oh, so tasty.

I also made Ricotta from the leftover whey, but although it tasted good (Nolan had it on some crepes with berries!), it wasn't pretty to look at. So no picture this time. Though...speaking of breakfast, this waffle-maker has turned out to be an obsession. You guys, I eat waffles WAY too often now. Granted, I make my protein waffles, so they're full of good stuff...but...WAFFFFFLES.

Anyway: N requested chocolate waffles with strawberry compote, whipped topping and whatever else. Just to test out my new request that he start telling me what he wants to eat instead of saying "surprise me!". So I made him this beauty:

I start feeling the waffle cravings just looking at the picture.

Another bucket list item (this time from our Bay Area bucket list!) was learning to windsurf. So we took our friends, John and Julie, and the 4 of us got certified on Sunday and spent a few hours exhausting ourselves on surfboards with giant masts attached. It was so much fun! However, when I dragged myself out of the water after a few hours, I was hungry enough to kill something and too tired to even stay on the board upright. 

I know, I know - wetsuits are unbearably sexy.

Yay! Now that we're certified, we can go whenever we want for a piddly $20/day. Smokin' deal!

And now for yet another small goal achieved last night: make yogurt. When I was growing up, my mom used to make EVERYTHING from scratch. Including delicious, fresh yogurt. So since I had some fancy milk still sitting in my fridge, I decided to give it a whirl:

Nolan was skeptical when he saw the finished product, but it was delicious! Especially with my 5-minute stovetop granola that I was craving on top. Mmm, homemade organic whole milk yogurt. Note to self: eat in moderation!

Today is rest day from CrossFit, and since I ended up going for a 6.2 mile run on my last rest day (whoops), I am focusing on doing NOTHING today. I was going to get up early and do some yoga, but since I had a weird night of non-sleep, I let myself do nothing this morning, too. Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night, positive your alarm just went off, and started to go about your day when you realize it's like...11:30pm or something? Yeah, I did that. And then was basically awake the rest of the night. Hello, dark roast Peet's coffee.

Thankful Thursday

Here we are again at Thursday. I love these days. I didn't get in my yoga today, but I did get a fantastic WOD in this morning that involved me throwing big weights over my head. Hah - maybe not as relaxing as yoga.

Tomorrow's rest day, though, which means a nice long run in the morning, MAYBE some yoga at lunch if it's not too hot in here...and since I work from home Fridays, it also means I get to sleep until glorious 6am, and I get my protein waffles for breakfast. I love life.

Tonight N and I biked to our favourite Thai place for dinner, I ate copious amounts of steamed veggies, and we planned out our trip in a few weeks. Lest I jinx the trip, I won't say where until we've actually bought tickets. Yeah. This is probably the latest we've ever waited to buy international tickets and plan a trip, because of just plain indecisiveness. It's maddening.

But I digress: it's Thursday, and there's an awful lot to be thankful for this week:

1. I'm thankful for a full social calendar. I kind of fell off the face of the earth for awhile, and it's good to be back in the swing of things. Not many free nights in the next month, and I kind of like it that way!
2. I'm thankful for the opportunity and means to take a fun trip with mi amor. We made a deal years ago to take full advantage of our youth and free time before kids, mortgages, all that jazz...and we're sticking to it. We fully realize how fortunate we are!
3. I'm thankful for my new job. I have been so mentally tired (Nolan laughs at this one, because okay - I can't really say I'm tired as compared to him) from trying to learn the ropes and step into a much more challenging role than I've been in before. I feel a little bit like the grinch, except instead of my heart growing three sizes (that day), it's my head and it feels like it's going to explode! In a sort of good way, though.
4. I'm thankful for a few days of extra sleep coming up. I've had way too many early days in a row lately, and it'll be nice to be at home eating breakfast and starting work at 7:30am instead of sitting at my desk in the city and already have been answering emails for an hour, worked out, showered, eaten, and commuted to SF by that time. Do I sound like a whiner yet?
5. I'm thankful for God's little mercies. Like a song I need to absorb on the radio, or a blissful run without knee pain, or a great conversation, or a little bit of dessert still waiting for me in the fridge at home :) These things remind me that I'm cherished to the nth degree.


What are you thankful for?