Entries from April 2012 ↓

Sara and Lucy have adopted a lovely furry kitty and keep sending me pictures of her – trying to entice me to go to Australia I think but for now, I’ll just introduce you all to Rosie and make her famous on my blog!

There’s an Urban Meadow on the walk to work – some might say abandoned lot – but it’s fenced off, has a beehive, lots of long flowing grass and other weedy looking things (could be anything, after all this is San Francisco) and today I noticed, lots of orange flowers that have bloomed in the last couple of days in the mini heat wave. Very pretty.

We’ve seen a mechanical juicer in action at Elite Audio Cafe and wondered about getting one. An appliance to just make toast seems acceptable to me but one to just do orange juice seemed a bit of an extravagance. However, when we saw them on sale at the Ferry Building today we decided to get one. And then a $10 bag of oranges which didn’t get me as many oranges as I’d hoped!

We had orange juice for afternoon tea today – fresh orange juice is just so good. We’re amazed how much juice it gets out of an orange, 2 oranges each got us a good glassful. A good buy!

Little Eliza and Olive got big enough just in time to wear their cardigans for winter – aren’t they adorable and rather mischievous looking?!

Saw this article in SF Gate recently – You know you’re a real San Franciscan when … and that made me think of a few things myself.

You know you’re real a San Franciscan when you …

• Have a back door channel for what’s going on in the city via the Bay Bridge twitter account and are on a first name basis with him
• Can walk up 5th Street and avoid an encounter with a homeless and/or crazy person
• Can cross the road without being tooted at
• Don’t walk up Powell Street unless you have to, like if that Walgreens is actually closest
• Don’t ride on the open-sided street cars that have camera laden tourists hanging off the side of them
• Know where the nearest Post Office is
• Know where to buy envelopes and posting material, because you can’t get them from the Post Office
• Don’t stare at same sex couples holding hands
• Don’t take pictures and gasp and point when you see someone with a Twitter, Facebook or Square logo on their laptop sleeve, backpack or t-shirt
• Ignore naked people in the street
• Have a Clipper Card
• Use Luxor or Uber cabs and have an app for that
• Know what holiday ’420′ is in celebration of
• Go to the Ferry Building over Pier 39 or Fisherman’s Wharf
• Know the sweet spot for avoiding long lines at the Ferry Building at various times of the year

I’m sure there are more that I’ll realize as time goes on – perhaps I’ll keep this as an open list.

This video is a bit jerky but I took a bit of a sweep around our end of StartupHQ – the shared warehouse space we’re currently based in.

Wholefoods is an organic supermarket and is often referred to as WholePaycheck – expensive. And they don’t have regular olive oil, only extra and extra extra virgin – obviously I don’t understand organics or olive oil because it’s a mystery to me why they wouldn’t have just olive oil. They have something else I haven’t noticed in other supermarkets – a little table area where you can sit and enjoy a delicious box or plate of food that you’ve dished up from a stainless steel buffet in store. Often with a small oven, microwave or toaster area as well so you can toast up the bagels you just bought.

The other day I waited inside near the exit which was near the cafe area, for The Mister to grab some milk so I got to watch the people who use the cafe for a while. I saw

• a woman who sidled up to the utensils area and liberated several handfuls of straws, at different times, checking her watch or pretend-busying herself with her bag of shopping in between handfuls thinking no-one was watching
• a guy having a piece of toast, talking to himself and occasionally shouting out about the price of stuff these days
• a guy who came in with his own Tupperware (Glad or plastic, for my US readers) container of left-overs for dinner and used the microwave to heat it up and sat down and ate it there
• an old woman stuck in automatic opening door hell – she was hovering inside the door to keep out of the bitter wind (which is why I was inside) but every time she moved the door opened. Eventually I overheard she was waiting for a taxi. She kept going out to see if it was there yet. A couple of times took her shopping cart with her but didn’t go out far enough and the doors closed, jamming her and her shopping on either side. She decided to leave the cart inside and after a while when no-one was coming, thought it safe to leave it there and went out to look by herself. But the doors shut and she couldn’t open them from the outside, had to wait for a shopper on their way out to activate them open, but as they approached the doors she started shouting and gesturing at them to not steal her groceries. It wasn’t funny … but it was …

What a special treat! And on a real 4-group La Marzocco. But that’s all I can say – I’ve deleted everything I was going to write and show because it’s come to my attention that some authorities here might frown upon the fact that I touched a cafe’s coffee machine.

That is all.

This video was just released today – a little promotional piece on the Kiwi Landing Pad where our offices are in San Francisco – taken a little while ago before we moved downstairs. Some bit of footage of The Mister and I being busy and important in the office

Easter in the States comes and goes. There are no public holidays although some observe the Good Friday. We looked around for some Hot x Buns or equivalent. Nothing easy to come by. However we did find a plastic packet of buns labelled Hot Cross Buns in Wholefoods so thought we’d give them a try.

They were some kind of sweet brioche bread with raisins dotted with an iced cross.

They toasted up alright – a bit too sweet – not sure if they were supposed to be toasted because the icing melted off. Hmmmm. Might have to make our own next year.

You can get cinnamon buns here (and our colleague made a brought some into work after I asked about and described Hot x Buns) but they’re not the same either.