Best of 2011

I thought I'd bring back the traditional of the Best of posts this year. I managed to accidentally skip last year, but here's the one from 2009.

2011 has really been a truly crazy year. I feel like I've turned life upside down and things are just starting to finally settle in a good place. The upside of this is that there are a lot of great things that have happened during this crazy year for me to reflect upon. Here's an assortment in no particular order.

1. Travel: Italy & Australia - I doubled the number of times that I've been out of the country in my whole life this year and added a new continent.
2. Graduating from Haas - How did the 2 years of b-school fly by already? I'm glad to be done, but do find myself missing the community, growing opportunities, and fun of Haas.
3. Starting my post-Haas career at eBay - So far so good on my re-entry into the real world. It has been a bit of an adjustment, but I'm getting to hang of it again.
4. Moving out of Berkeley - I have looked forward to moving out of Berkeley pretty much ever since I moved there. I loved my classmates, but am so glad to be done with all of the Berzerkeley crazies.
5. Surviving another Nike Half Marathon - ChuThis and I survived another Nike Half. Not our best race, but we made it and had a good time in the process. It's apparently becoming an annual tradition.
6. Winning the most team steps in a day prize in the office turkey challenge - this was both a great way to help me meet new people in the office as well as get off the couch and back into running shape. Hopefully, I can keep this up with my 2012 fitness goals.
7. Seeing the successes and life changes of my classmates and friends (weddings, babies, successful startups) - 8 weddings, at least as many babies, friends with newspaper articles, NPR interviews, successful startups (go Modify!), and so many others. It was great to share in all of your successes this year.
8. Making some really good life decisions for me - while never a fun thing to do, I'm really proud of how I have taken charge of my life this year and really worked to shape its direction instead of just riding with the tides. I'm on a much better course now and can't wait to see where I end up next.
9. Keeping in touch with old friends (no matter the distance) and making new ones - as we move and grow in life, it's really great to keep connecting with friends from the past in addition to meeting new people as you go.
10. More painting & creative pursuits- see my previous post...

All in all, it was definitely a very challenging year, but I have come out on the other side a better and stronger person. Here's to the new challenges and adventures that 2012 brings!

Sunnyside Up's Best of 2008

Since everyone else has been doing a best of 2008 blog post, I thought I should join in and pull one together as well. I'm borrowing the format that JulyDream used in her best of 2008 post to use in mine. I aimed to come up with the best 25 things of 2008 because I turned a quarter century in 2008, but I was only able to get to 17, so here goes the best 17 of 2008! (Note: these are in no particular order)

1. the beginning of dessert night
2. starting the business school application process
3. taking the GMAT finally
4. the Valentine's Day pillow fight (well the whole valentine's day experience)
5. the beginning of Sunnyside Up!
6. switching to a new job that didn't require traveling
7. leaving that new job and moving to one that required my brain
8. Spinsters' Annual Ball
9. J's Hanukkah adventure
10. MixMatch's trip to Baltimore
11. discovering Lululemon & Bar Method
12. Elizabeth's wedding trip to Longmont, CO
13. getting my dream Kitchen Aid mixer
14. the puppy cam
15. the Fois Gras appetizer at Ecco (technically discovered in 2007, but so tasty that it carried over)
16. finally getting decent knives
17. learning to wakeboard and ski

All in all, 2008 was a great year. I can't wait to see what 2009 has in store.

Wakeboarding and Courtney's Wedding

This Labor Day weekend was a busy one. Not unusual for me lately, but definitely even busier than planned. I had planned to split time between Courtney's wedding in Monterey/Carmel and wakeboarding with J and his friend's grandma's house in Rio Vista.

I headed down to Monterey bright and early on Friday morning to take my car in for service and go to my annual dermatologist appointment. Then after some family drama, I got into the wedding spirit and went to Courtney's bridal shower. It was a really fun event and it was great to see a bunch of the girls that I hadn't seen since Courtney's 21st birthday three years ago and meet some new girls as well.

After the bridal shower and some hanging out, I headed up to Rio Vista to meet up with J and our friends up there. Sunday was the day of wakeboarding that was totally awesome. I actually got to stand up for a good bit which was definitely fun. I can't wait to start again next summer.

The fun in the sun time was officially over and J and I headed back to Monterey to get ready for Courtney's wedding. The wedding was held at the Church in the Forest at Robert Louis Stevenson School. It was a relatively simple affair with lots of small children participating in the wedding ceremony. After the ceremony, J remembered that he had a friend from high school who worked at RLS so we headed down to their new student center to see if we could find her. We did find her as all of the faculty and staff were at an event for the new freshman and their families that had just moved in the day before.

The reception was at Mission Ranch in Carmel. It was a beautiful day, 70 degrees with no fog in sight which makes every Carmel venue just a bit more beautiful. We enjoyed champagne on the terrace watching the sheep wander through the fields out back and enjoying the view of the beach. Dinner was pretty tasty and our table mates were a fun assortment of friends from golf and the DJ. It was funny hearing their stories of getting into trouble with the nuns at my high school. Next came the dancing and more champagne and cake. It was great fun dancing with J as usual.

After the bride and groom headed off to their honeymoon suite, the rest of us headed to the after party at one of the groomsman's apartments in Monterey. By that time, we were tired, hungry and tipsy so we didn't stay long, but it was a wonderful end to the evening.

All in all, it was a busy but mostly good long weekend. Check out the pictures on Facebook!

Happy Quarter Century to Me!

I know it's been a while since all of this insanity has happened, but life's been crazy so I've been a bit too busy to blog about it. But here it goes.

First off, I want to say thank you to everyone for their birthday wishes!!! I really enjoyed hearing from all of you and hanging out with those of you who were able to make it out to either checking out cars in Carmel, Vfest in Baltimore or my birthday night out at Medjool. It has been quite the birthday month!!! Ok and now all of the details....

First, there was dinner with my parents and a trip to Pebble to hang out with them. It was a great and totally relaxing 24 hours and the first overnight visit for J to my parent's house. Actually, it was the first visit of any boy to my parent's house overnight. But it went well. My parents are helping me beef up on my sweater collection since most of my sweaters from college had to go to the Goodwill. They've been keeping me toasty so far.

Second, J's parents decided to take me out to dinner for my birthday because my parents coincidently took him out to dinner on his birthday last year. We tried Spiedo in San Mateo where I enjoyed a very yummy duck that was much coveted by J. His parents added to my gourmet tea collection with a Earl Grey White Tea that I've been waiting to try as well as a beautiful tea pot with pretty leaves on it.

Next, there was my actual birthday in Baltimore, MD at the Virgin Mobile Music Festival with the MixMatchers who had their own tent at the festival. It was a great fun adventure. We had some time on Friday to hang out in downtown Baltimore and enjoy the crab that they're so famous for and walk along the Chesapeak Bay. At the festival, we saw some awesome bands. Some of my favorite were Foo Fighters, Offspring, Nine Inch Nails and Gogol Bordello. I was disappointed by the showing of Taking Back Sunday. I love their music on Pandora but they didn't sound great live. My birthday was on the first day of the show, so we were all focused on getting the tent set up. That night was also the VIP after party with all of the artists. Our friend Lisa was in charge of planning this great soiree so we got to check it out as well. It was great fun with an open bar and fantastic DJs. It was a little bit too fun later in the evening but still a great time. We had lots of fun dancing and hanging out all weekend. Then on Monday, Lisa took us to Baltimore's Inner Harbor where we got to see the hill where Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner, enjoy more crab and go on a nice walk before a long flight home. All in all, a great way to spend my birthday.

Then, there was my birthday night out at Medjool. Dinner was great. It was 4 courses of tons and tons of food. It was a bit expensive but it was all good. The music was a little random and difficult to dance to, but it was still fun. Also, the roof deck is awesome. It was a bit chilly in the San Francisco summer weather, but luckily they had heaters. Thanks so much to everyone who came out.

The next day, a group of us made the trek to check out the cars in Carmel on the day before the Concours D'Elegance. It was good fun to check out a bunch of beautiful auction cars. We also saw Jay Leno and Patricia Arquette wandering around the auction cars. We also wandered down and checked out the new cars and the concept cars on display. J almost got to drive one of the new Spykers but he was wearing flipflops so they wouldn't let him. After check out the cars, we wandered into Carmel and met my parents at Il Fornaio for some coffee and then wandered to the ever famous Cheese Shop. We got some totally awesome cheese and then split up to secure the spot for the bonfire on the beach and to get food. The Safeway in Carmel was absolutly gorgeous and we got all of the supplies that we needed. We enjoyed a lovely bonfire on the beach. It was a bit misty but it's was all good. We roasted hot dogs and marshmellows and played the usual game of 10 fingers.

All in all, it's been a really fun birthday month. Thanks again to everyone who's helped me celebrate it. I can only hope that the next quarter century is as fun as this one has been.

I Can't Believe It's Already August?!?!?

It's just SOOO insane that it's already August. Were did all of the time go? It feels like it should be the beginning of July or even earlier! I was just starting to stop wearing sweaters to work (ok, maybe not since it's freezing in my office) and all of the summer fun was ahead of us.

Perhaps it's because I use the impending date of my birthday to judge how much summer is left and since it's already this weekend, I'm feeling like this summer is already over. It has been a busy summer. I've been home to Monterey probably about 4 times, maybe more, been to Colorado with J, been to concerts, birthday nights out, eaten tons of crepes at the best crepe stand in the city (thanks Alan for introducing us to it), and we're getting ready to go to Baltimore for the Virgin Mobile Music Festival this coming weekend. All in all, despite the speed at which life is flying at me, it's really good. I really like my new job a lot. I have a great set of friends that I've done all sorts of fun stuff with this summer.

In spite of all of the good things, it is a harsh reminder that I'm rather behind on a lot of the things that I wanted to do this summer. It's good for me to see my friends head off to their new adventures for the school yeah and either start business school, head back to law school or finally join the real world after finishing some sort of post-grad work. I see that perhaps that's something that still might be interesting for me despite the fact that I really have no reason why I want to go to business school anymore and this might not be the right time in my life for what I thought I wanted out of business school (but I'm not going into a philosophical discussion in this post, I promise).

I'm just shocked at how fast this summer's gone! I guess it's time to buckle down and start really making a dent in all of those things that I wanted to accomplish before the summer's officially over.

Elizabeth's Wedding and a Weekend in Boulder

J's friend from high school, Elizabeth, got married on Monday in beautiful Lyons, Colorado, which is about 40 mins outside of Boulder. It was a great excuse to spend 4 days in Colorado, though who gets married on a Monday night. I did spend two months working in Denver, but I was excited about the opportunity to actually get out and see some of the state besides the airport and 2 blocks of downtown.

For those of you who are wondering, yes this was my first trip with J that involved a plane, but it wasn't nearly as big of a deal as some people have made it out to be recently. There were 6 of us total who traveled there from SF and then we met up with probably another 5 or 6 of Elizabeth and Tara's friends from college. Luckily, a couple of them just moved back here, so I now have new friends to hang out with here!

We did a fair amount of eating, relaxing, swimming in the hot tub, hanging out, and driving around in a giant Armada that seats 8. It was awesome. I haven't been at my new job long enough to accrue too much vacation time yet, so I worked two half days while in Colorado. That was interesting. I felt like I was constantly missing out on things both with work and fun stuff that was going on and I spent the entire day glued to my BlackBerry which is something that I don't like to do.

There are a number of fabulous stories from the weekend and lots of funny things to laugh at from David requiring ear plugs and an eye mask for a 2 hour flight to the great picture riddles that Theresa drew on both flights ("you make my heart tsunami" was my personal fav). David drank out of a fountain and didn't at all remember the next morning. But perhaps the funniest thing of the weekend was that after drinking out of the fountain, David yells, in front of everyone, to "throw that shit" to Elizabeth because she was holding a bouquet. Little did David know that about 3 hours earlier, Elizabeth tossed her bouquet and her sister-in-law's sister (not sure what that makes her), Anna, caught the bouquet.

All in all, it was a really great weekend. There was a good amount of fun, enough work to get by and a good amount of relaxation too (and LOTS of reading for J...I still can't believe that he finished 4 books in 4 days). You should definitely check out the plethora of pictures on Facebook if you haven't already seen them. I just included a few at the beginning of this post that shows some of the highlights from the main events. Now it's back to the usual...well, until the next weekend of insanity.

Up next, river rafting...

Fourth of July Weekend Wakeboarding

J invited me to go to Ryan's Grandma's house in Rio Vista (just past Antioch, CA) to hang out on the delta and go wakeboarding. As PJ put it, it was a weekend of sunning and boozing, oh and don't forget playing with dogs.

This past weekend, I wakeboarded for the second time ever. Despite the consistent faceplanting and dislike of murky water (the fishies might get my toes!!), I decided that I should try wakeboarding again. The murky water is still yucky, but I will admit that wakeboarding was more fun this time. After a couple of tries (luckily no faceplanting), I managed to get up on the board but was so shocked that water didn't come rushing into my nose, that I happened to let go of the line and discovered "oh yeah!" the water's still there. I don't know that there is photographic evidence of this, but I'm sure there will be more opportunities for it.

All in all, it was a great fun weekend of sunning, boozing, hanging out with good people, and relaxing.

Fresh Berry Tart

Since I was on vacation, I decided to undertake a slightly more challenging dessert this week. I wanted something that was light and summery with how hot it has been. When I was catching up on my Google Reader reading, I found a recipe for a fresh berry tart that sounded particularly yummy. I'd get to use the great summer berries which are generally my favorite on fruit tarts anyway.

I found red raspberries, blackberries and golden raspberries (yes, there are yellow raspberries and they're not a mythical fruit!). I also got blueberries, but decided to be selfish and keep them all for me. (If you ever really want to make me very happy, get one of those gigantic containers of blueberries from Costco. I will love you forever.)

This recipe is actually quite easy to make. It just has several steps. The cream is quite quick on the stove. Just make sure to keep whisking. As for the crust, it didn't turn out like I thought it would. It was very crumbly and tasted like shortbread. I think that next time I will either add a bit more water to the dough or wait a bit after taking it out of the fridge so it can defrost a bit.

All in all, it was really yummy. Please drool over the pics...




I had to take them quickly before people munched!

To make your own, go here.

It's Been a While

So, it's been quite a while since my last blog and since I haven't been working I really have no excuse for not blogging. Lots of things have happened...

My last day at Genentech was 5/30. I'm very excited to be done and moving on to newer and better things. Really the only things that I miss are several of my co-workers and most of all my MacBookPro. But my own MacBookPro is in the mail, so I will have my own soon!

Immediately after ending my adventures at Genentech, I started to move into my new apartment and that's where the drama started. My new landlord was relatively unreasonable about getting things fixed and refused to clean the apartment. She kept claiming that she was used to dealing with "adults" who were more mature. Luckily, I was able to sign a new lease for my old apartment and get out of my lease with her so I didn't have to deal with that drama for a whole year.

While some of that apartment drama was getting fixed, I hung out at home in Pebble Beach with my parents and chilled, went to yoga and generally hung out. That was a very nice change of pace and good that I was totally away from everything that was happening here so I couldn't worry about it as much. Sadly, my great Aunt passed away at the beginning of my vacation, so the second half of the week was spent traveling to and attending her funeral. It was definitely sad, but she'd been rather lost since her husband passed away 4 years ago and it was a good opportunity to reconnect with some family that we hadn't seen in a while.

J and I went to Live 105's BFD on Saturday and got to hang out and hear some great tunes and chill amidst dealing with some of the challenges of the venue like ATMs without cash and the lack of a lawn for relaxing. It was definitely a good day, but a tiring one.

The last three days of my vacation have been probably the best because I really got to exist in a relaxed state. I spent the first week getting to that state and then have gotten to enjoy it. I got to do some things around my apartment, besides unpacking, that I've wanted to do for a while and got to catch up on my movies and tv too.

Somewhere in the vacation mix was a chill dessert night of ice cream sundaes (thanks to L1 for all of the supplies). There are no pictures unfortunately, but I promise I will get back into formal blogging mode for tonight's dessert night.

All in all, it's been a really great and relaxing vacation. I'm very excited to start at E2Open tomorrow and it's been really really good for me to get a lot of that tension out of my system so I can start my new adventures totally relaxed.

New Skier Gets Schooled by 5 Year Olds with Snowballs

I don't know what I expected when I decided to learn how to ski a month or so ago, but I guess I thought I'd pick it up faster. It's not that I can't ski. I can. I just happen to think about all of those terrible things that could happen to you when you're skiing like skiing into a tree, getting run over by another snowboarder or skier who's speeding through the slow zone, that you can't stop, or something else equally bad.

Ok, so like every other sport it's a mental game. Skiing gets really fun when I can convince myself that the slopes in front of me really aren't that steep and that I can just blast down them and turn a bit to slow down. It's just that sometimes that slope looks a bit to scary and the people are whizzing by just too fast.

Getting schooled by small children on the slopes is something that I've come to accept since I saw a bunch of 8-10 year olds bomb down the green that I was wishing I could inch down on my first try. But this ski trip had perhaps the funniest memory of how badly they can still school me. A ski school class of 4-6 year olds stopped in the same area that I was resting in and their ski instructor started to give them feedback, "you know, guys, you'd fall over a lot less if you would stop spending so much time trying to pick up snowballs to throw at each other while skiing." At that exact moment, about 5 of the 12 kids were bending down to grab more snow to throw at the rest of them that already had snow in their gloves.

All in all it was a great weekend, but perhaps next time I need to be more focused on throwing snowballs at people while skiing instead of the possibility of skiing into a tree.