hands up and touch the sky

See you next year, summer. I'm a little sad to see you go, but I'll be glad to see 90+ degree days leave us. It's been pretty laid back, but a lot of stuff snuck in there -- the best kind of summer I think.

Summer 2012 tally:
- 2 weddings (with #3 coming up in a few weeks!)
- 4 Lou Malnati's pizza parties
- 5 concerts in Prospect Park (Laura Marling; Ghostface Killah; Childish Gambino/Danny Brown/SchoolboyQ; Wilco; Wild Flag)
- many first times including a trip to LA, hanging out in Jersey City, standing up in a friend's wedding, swimming at a NYC beach (the Rockaways!), and going to a bachelorette party (this is that scary part of our 20's where there's some kind of snowball and everyone gets married, isn't it?)
- a visit from two of my favvvvvorite people ever
- plus, 12 weeks of fresh summer vegetables (CSA!) and subsequent super delicious stuff being made
- this also just might be known as the summer of the frozen zombie fishbowl...we had a few too many.

I have no way to quantify the number of times I actually listened to Starships, but it's way more than what I recorded on last.fm. It definitely wound up being my song of the summer. I tried my hardest to avoid Call Me Maybe, but it was totally inescapable, particularly watching any sort of Olympics swimming coverage. yikes.

bring on it on, fall -- I have a sweater and some new shoes I'd love to wear. thanks. ::cue exit music::

we wake up with the sun in our eyes

Photo diary of my first trip to LA this past weekend, for my friends' wedding in Long Beach. Lots of beautiful weather and touristy fun. Back in New York now, it's been raining/misting for two days, which is making me super miss California!

let's get together, yeah yeah yeah

Freshmen year! Wow.

Midnight before Ali and I left California, we (along with Kait) sang Happy Birthday to Maddie and made her open the presents from her family (we gave her ours on Thursday because we're impatient people).  I love birthdays, and I was so happy to be there for Maddie's 24th!!  Friends and birthdays are the best!

NY is great and all, but the best best BEST part of this weekend was that I was with so many of my friends!  And so many of them don't live in NY.  We're all spread out across the country now (literally, west coast, midwest, east coast) which makes getting together difficult (and expensive).  Maybe some day all of our interests will align somehow and we can live near each other again...? 

See you soon, California! (er...I hope.)  For now it's back to regular life/posting.

eat your way through the Bay

I'm fairly certain we ate our way through the weekend.  Here's a play-by-play

Thursday
Gracias Madre - organic, vegan Mexican food.  Way more delicious than it should have been (considering I'm not into vegan food normally).  I had tacos that were filled with asparagus and butternut squash.  mm.  Their salsa and guacamole were also really good.

In-N-Out Burger - there are about 18 photos that Maddie took chronicling my first trip to In-N-Out.  It was everything I dreamt of and more ;-)

Friday
La Note - we had breakfast/brunch at this cute French restaurant in Berkeley.  On Maddie's recommendation I had a lemon-gingerbread pancake with poached pears and blueberries, and it was AMAZING.  I love gingerbread!  Everything was great, I was stuffed to the max.

Cheeseboard - It was an excellent day to go to this Berkeley staple, because the pizza of the day was tomato, onion, mozzarella, pesto and pine nuts.  So so good.  We ate 2 pies.

Saturday
On Saturday we drove out to Davis for some pre-St. Patty's Day fun, including this feast-like lunch made by our friend Kait.  She made 4(!) loaves of Irish soda bread, and a lot of corned beef and cabbage.  It was all really good, and prepared us well for our evening in Sacramento on a St. Patrick's Day bar crawl.  We eventually came back to Davis for a late dinner and grabbed whatever we could (which wound up being sandwiches at Beach Hut, and pizza and Uncle Vito's).

Sunday
Bakesale Betty - Online it said that they close at 3, and according to the clock in Maddie's room it was almost 2.  So we hopped in the car and half way there we realized that it had been Daylight Savings, and was by then after 3.  But we went anyway, and thank god, because it was still open and we ate the best food of the entire weekend.

They have really amazing fried chicken sandwiches, overflowing with a slaw made with some sort of vinaigrette.  I also bought a ginger cookie, that had actual pieces of ginger in it (sooo good), and a lemonade.  We sat outside at one of their ironing board tables and ate and ate and ate.  The longer we sat there, the more food we got.  Why? Because they were closing and were giving away the excess desserts that they had inside, so we wound up with 2 extra slices of pumpkin pie, 2 extra strawberry shortcakes, and a lemon bar.  The pumpkin pie was delicious and the crust is really quite good.  Ali was in love with the strawberry shortcake and says that it's the best she's ever had.  That's quite the recommendation.

I left my heart in (the) San Francisco(-ish area)

I'm back from a great 4-day stay in the Bay area visiting some of my college friends (notably Maddie whose birthday was yesterday!).  There are a bunch of them out there, but they're mostly spread out, which meant that we spent time in San Francisco, Berkeley, Davis, Sacramento, and Santa Cruz.  It was a lot of driving around, but also SO much fun. 

I have so many things to say and chronicle about what we did, but for now, these are some of my favorite non-people/non-food shots of the weekend:

Golden Gate bridge, and a boat with fun colors

 

Way up on top of a hill stood a white sofa, and an amazing view of SF

I liked how this tree matched the house behind it

My favorite house that we passed in Santa Cruz

Gorgeous calla lilies across from the Seabright Beach in Santa Cruz