Movie Review: Just Go With It

On Saturday, we watched Just Go With It with Adam Sandler & Jennifer Aniston. I expected it to be predictable and corny but was pleasantly surprised! This was was predictable but it was really funny!

In typical Adam Sandler fashion, he played himself and of course, found a way for the film to be set in Hawaii. Remember 50 First Dates?? Anyway, I thought that Aniston & Sandler had some good chemistry and were funny together. Jennifer Aniston is so pretty but she is also pretty funny!

The unexpected best actress was Bailee Madison, who played Aniston's daughter.

This girl is 10 and already has an impressive film resume. She was very charming & natural. I'm sure we'll see a lot of her in the future. If you want a cute, lighthearted, funny film - check this movie out!

Fun Saturday!

On Saturday AM, Erik and I went to brunch at Radish. This is the place that Amy & I went to a few weeks ago for lunch. Brunch was equally as delicious!

I had an egg sandwich which was scrambled eggs with cheese on a homemade biscuit.


Erik had cornmeal pancakes with a side of eggs. They were also delish!

After brunch, we walked around Valencia Street. We cut through a small side street and saw all of these cool murals.













On the way back to the car, we found these murals painted on the side of a house...




After brunch, we did some chores & gave Evie a long walk. We just relaxed & watched a movie before heading out for Saturday night. We went out to Walnut Creek to see our friends Tiffany & Brett. We went to this awesome restaurant called Sasa for Asian Fusion.


We shared a bunch of plates including:

• Ginger-Chicken Meatballs
• Pan Roasted Spicy Romano Beans
• Tempura Prawns Lettuce Wraps
• Steamed Edamame
• Sweet Corn & Shrimp Kaki-age
• The Walnut Creek Roll: soft shell crab, salmon, tuna, tobiko

Everything was delicious & it was fun to share plates to taste a lot of different menu items. After dinner, we went to a fun wine bar!


At Residual Sugar, we each had a glass of wine. Then, we headed back so that we could drive home. It's about a 40 min ride back to SF and we were pretty tired. It was fun to see Walnut Creek and try some new restaurants!

An Interesting Day at the Pool

Well, Amy & I took a tip from a friend on a pool "resort" in wine country on Sunday. We realized we should not have listened to said friend because he has two children. There is no way that two 30-something women without kids would want to be in the same place children enjoy. Except maybe Disney World.

Anyway, we drove up to Sonoma to the Morton Warm Springs. I was so confused on what this would be like. I thought the pools you swim in were warm spring water. Turns out the Warm Spring is a brook-like thing that ran behind the "resort". Notice I use quotes when saying "resort" because this was really like an old school, low budget public pool.

There were three pools in this area, a large grassy picnic area, and a club house type thing with changing rooms & a snack bar. It was FILLED with kids and they were going crazy. Screaming & Splashing themselves like they were on fire. Well, we decided that since we drove the hour up there, we would take advantage of the weather. We were able to get out of the fog and lay in the sun for a few hours. Despite our lowered expectations, it was nice to sit there in the sun!

After sitting by the pool for a few hours, we made the trek home. We stopped at Jacuzzi Family Vineyards for a free wine tasting before we got on our way!


Overall, it was a fun afternoon! We were able to get out of the foggy weather and enjoy some sun & wine.

Foggy Saturday

On Saturday AM, we all woke up super late - even Evie. We never sleep until 10am but we did and it was great. After breakfast, Evie and I drove Erik up to Aquatic Park in Fisherman's Wharf so he could take a swim. He has been swimming in the bay a few times per week! While he swam, we dropped some stuff off at our storage unit. The traffic was insane in the city yesterday but we made it back in about 40 min to pick Erik up. Mind you that is 40 min to go about 3 miles! Anyway....

After having lunch at home, we got in the car and took Evie to Lake Merced for a walk.

Lake Merced is down near Ocean Beach and next to Harding Golf Course. There were some walkways to go into the lake so Evie was able to wade in the water.





On Saturday night, we went to Mission Beach Cafe for dinner. I just found this other new, awesome site called Blackboard Eats. You click the daily offer, receive a code, and bring it with you to the restaurant for 30% off. Nothing to purchase, like Groupon. It's great. We've been wanting to go to this restaurant for awhile so we decided this would be our 'new restaurant of the month' to try! We used the 30% off coupon from Blackboard Eats and everyone near us was using their code too!


This restaurant is small and LOUD. You are sitting very close to other people and it's hard to hear the person you are with.


The food was delicious!! I had the eggplant & ravioli which was three big ravioli with a lot of veggies like mushrooms, tomatoes, & corn on top. The sauce that accompanied it was amazing.


Erik had the salmon which was ok but I didn't love it.

The staff was really busy. It took a few minutes to get water then another 5 min for the server to come and say hello/get our drink order. We ordered an appetizer however, either the server or the kitchen forgot to bring out our appetizer so we went right to eating our entree.

The server apologized and brought us some Truffle Fries, on the house, to make up for it - which was awesome!

We also finished our dinner with dessert - I had the peach pie and Erik had the chocolate pie. Both were delish!! We walked out of there very full.

I would probably come back here for dinner but probably not on a Saturday night. It was way too crowded & loud to fully enjoy our meal.

Fun Fact about Mission Beach Cafe is that Top Chef contestant, Ryan Scott, used to be the Executive Chef there!


After dinner, we went to the Monk's Kettle for a drink. They have over 150 beers available from all over the world.


They had a ton of beers on tap and in bottles. We were surprised that some of the beers were SO expensive - some were near $30 for a 12oz beer! It's nice to drink imports but not at that price! So, we each had one drink & went home since we were so full.

Fun day & night together!!

Evie's Big Day at the Office

Our office is dog friendly and for three months now, my co-workers have been telling me to bring Evie in. Of course, I have said "Absolutely Not" but this week, I thought, why not try it? I was inspired by this quote:

Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.
--Bill Cosby

I am still nervous to bring Evie around new people because I know how she MAY act. However, I would love it if she could come to work with me and so I decided to not be afraid of how she MIGHT act and just do it.

I brought her in on Friday, since we get out at 2pm for Summer Fridays. Also, three people were out of the office so the less people for her to meet, the better. We drove into work and took the elevator up to the office. Riding the elevator was a first for Evie and it was hilarious! She crouched on the ground & was scared. hah

We came into the office & she was amped up. I got her excited to see everyone so we went around to see everyone. She loved it! She was letting everyone pet her and said hello to everybody!


We went into my office & put up the baby gate for her. What she did NOT like was my co-worker coming over and saying Hi over the fence. She barked at him but as soon as I brought her outside of the office to say hi, she was fine. So, I'm sure it was something to do with him coming into her space or something. BUT, then we had a meeting and she came, and she barked at my other coworker for no reason. So, we had to keep my office door closed all day.

Everyone was really great about her being there. We came out a few times to see everyone and she was licking my boss' face which was hilarious. They know she is a rescue & in a new place. They were all asking for her to come back. However, I think she was bored, on alert all day, and more of a pain for me to have to watch her every move than a nice addition to the day. She is probably going to be much happier at camp than with me. But, we tried it! And, it wasn't a total disaster!!

We took a nice walk during lunch. Oops - it says no pets allowed in the park! It's Ok. we strolled through on our way to Levi Plaza.

Walton Square is in the Financial District/Jackson Square area of SF. It is a cute, little park nestled in between some corporate buildings.

There are some fun sculptures in the park, too!





Giant Cacti?

I love the walkways and water in Levi Plaza park! It's so quiet, too.


There is a great brook that runs through the park. Evie wanted to go in the water but was too chicken.

Great view of Coit Tower from Levi Plaza

After our stroll, it was almost time to leave work. Evie was anxious to get going & probably tired of laying in the office. We headed home where she promptly got on the couch & passed out.



Later in the afternoon, we did some errands to the grocery store, dry cleaner, bank, and Office Depot. I am finally going to get the Save the Date cards out this weekend, hopefully!

When Erik came home, we went to the Bean Bag Cafe for a beer and then came home to eat pizza we ordered. Great start to the weekend!

Vinyl Wine Bar

On Thursday night, Betsy & I went to Vinyl Wine Bar. It is in the neighborhood and we had never been there before. They have beer and wine available. They have also been having some food trucks parked outside on different nights. Casey's Pizza has been a regular there on Thursday nights but unfortunately, they weren't there on the night we went.

(Photo from Yelp)

We each had some red wine & the bartender was nice enough to give us a little extra, on the house. It was a cute little place, good company & I would definitely go back! Love having little spots like this in our neighborhood!

Santa Cruz & Bingo

Erik was off from work yesterday (he has the best schedule of every other Monday off!!) so he spent the day in Santa Cruz.

He surfed basically alllll day which was fun for him! He said it was nice & warm down there as opposed to our weather of fog & 60 degrees.

I had Bingo last night and guess what - I won $2! Although I call Bingo for the ladies, they always give me a few cards so that I can play along. Well, I was getting Bingo for a few months and not saying anything because I didn't think I could win. Then one time, a winner came up and saw I had Bingo. She said, You have to tell us you won & take your prize!

So, last night, I won & said something. It was so funny - they clapped for me and I won $2. :-)

Last night for dinner, I made onion, spinach & mushroom quesadillas. They came out pretty good. I think I need a bigger pan to make them though - it was really hard to flip the quesadilla!

Casino Jack

Last week, Erik and I watched two interesting movies. First up, a documentary titled Casino Jack and then a movie with the same title.

The movies tell the story of lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Abramoff basically scammed the crap out of people & charged exhorbitant fees which pocketed. With the money, he opened restaurants, bought a casino boat, wanted to open a school, and the list goes on. What is awful is that he was charging American Indian tribes MILLIONS of dollars to get them on the agenda in Congress or promised them a meeting with President Bush.

The scam finally came crashing down and Abramoff was sentenced to jail for six years. The men he was in cahoots with also either served time or are still 'cooperating with Officials'. Some Republican representatives also resigned over this. Remember Tom DeLay on Dancing With the Stars? Yeah, he was on DWTS because he doesn't work for the government anymore!


Both movies were really interesting & it was helpful to see the documentary first - it explained everything in a clear way which doesn't always come through in a film. If you want to see how corrupt the lobbyists can be, check these films out!

Radish

Today, Amy & I went to lunch a relatively new placed called "Radish". It is in the Mission on 19th St and it is described as casual, American fare. The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, & dinner. There were so many great items on the menu! Many people were eating breakfast/brunch but we opted for lunch.



I chose the Turkey BBQ sandwich which was delicious!


Amy had the BLT with heirloom tomatoes, which she said was was awesome. I can't wait to go back and try something else. I hardly feel this way about a restaurant. With so many good restaurants here, it's hard to want to go back somewhere rather than try another new place. But, I would go back to Radish!

After lunch, I headed home and got on the couch. I watched Father of the Bride(which is free on Demand) and also very funny to watch. That movie came out in 1991 which now 20 years old. I can't even believe it. The outfits in the movie are hilarious!

Evie joined me on the couch, too....



Ahhh back to work tomorrow. Last week, I was on vacation & out sick so I was only in work for 1/2 a day. I'm sure I will be tired come 3pm!

Craft Fair & Sushi

On Saturday, Erik and I did some chores around the house. Here is Evie helping with the laundry aka jumping on the bed into the clothes while I folded them!





Then, I went down to the mall to return something and stop at Target. Once I got home, we went to the Renegade Craft Fair. Can you believe this is our 4th year going to this fair? The first year we went, was the first year it started coming to SF. We went in 2008, 2009, and 2010.

This year, there were some vendors we have seen in the past. There were a lot of people selling cute note cards, posters, and t-shirts. There were some jewelry and clothing vendors, as well. Erik purchased a t-shirt that we saw four years ago & finally bought it this year.


After the craft fair, we decided to get dinner and went to Domo for sushi.

We started with these awesome fish tacos & edamame. We shared sashimi, salmon & avocado roll, and a california roll. Afterwards, we headed home and put a movie on. It was good to get out of the house after being home sick. I'm starting to feel a little better....

Evie was exhausted on Tuesday night. She passed out IN the car on the ride home. She had a quick bath and went to sleep when she got home. On Wednesday AM, she refused to get out of bed.


On Wed Am, I was not feeling well either. The day before we left for WI, I had a sore throat. I woke up the day we left with a stuffy nose & sore throat. This led to me blowing my nose the entire trip. By Sunday/Monday, I still wasn't feeling well. On Wed AM, I decided to go to the Walk-In where they gave me some meds for a sinus infection. I also have a cough :-( I haven't been sick like that in so long. Glad I have the pills now to feel better.

I stayed home from work on Wed and Thursday. I watched Season 3 of the Little Couple and Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield. Remember that movie? The Triple Lindy!!



I am feeling better & back to work today. Thank Goodness we have a summer friday end time of 2pm today. Im so tired!