Orange is not a colour, it's a state of mind

It does look a bit posed but this article about Xero’s growth that appeared on a well known IT website today features yours truly as the headline photo! Feeling quite famous actually

Xero Hits 135,000 Customers, on Track to Double Revenue

A taste of San Francisco home at this fantastically located new Blue Bottle in the bottom of the Rockefeller Center. No longer when shopping on 5th Ave at the Saks end do you have to worry about where your next cup of coffee is going to come from! Located handily between the ice-skating rink and the ladies’ loos it is all the Blue Bottle goodness you’ve come to expect if you’re from San Francisco. Nondescript entrance (in keeping with the concourse), glass cabinet with some snack food, pour over bar and La Marzocco espresso machine. Great find! Oh, if you’re at the other end of the 5th Ave shops, the Apple/Bergdof end, then head along West 58th, almost to Avenue of the Americas to Fika (review of the Park Ave 28th Street cafe).

Blue Bottle Coffee Co, Rockefeller Center Concourse Level, New York

I always feel bad if we’ve finished our coffee in a busy cafe and there’s someone juggling their plate of food and cutlery, wondering how they’re going to pick up their coffee when the barista calls their order, so I usually given them a nod and leave so they can use our table. And of course I hate it when we visit a cafe and want to sit down with our coffee and food and there are no tables free. That’s the main reason that puts me off going out for breakfast here. The people on their own with laptops at other tables don’t seem to feel the same guilt. I’d love to sit in a cafe with my laptop for hours but I never do – I think I’d feel bad the entire time!

After a few days in New York we flew home to San Francisco via Florida to catch up with our friend Kara who lives there. We stayed with her in a small town on the east coast where everyone drives, houses have bug screens on every window, it’s warm in the middle of winter, there’s no decent coffee (lucky we traveled with our own), there sadly weren’t that many oranges (isn’t Florida where oranges come from?), there’s lots and lots of blue sky and green golf courses, everyone is either retired from the space center or currently works there, strip malls are abandoned, churches and gun stores exist on the same block – it was so great to have a couple of lazy days in the sun and catch up with Kara.

We had our first trip back to New York in 8 months and we’ve only visited briefly in the winter before – 2 days after Christmas in 2007 – and it wasn’t as cold as this trip. Things had frozen. The temperature was -11C (12F). I’ve never been so cold before. If we lived there we’d have proper coats and The Mister would have to wear a hat but we piled on layers, decided to only be outside for about 10 minutes max at a time so we just scurried to the places we needed to be on the subway (yes freezing in the stations too!). The fountain in Bryant Park was almost frozen over. Someone spilled coffee outside Culture Espresso and it froze so a guy had to come scrape it off to stop people slipping on it!

Having a couple of Christmases away from my home country of New Zealand has meant a break from tradition and doing our own thing. I was talking to someone from New Zealand recently, trying to answer the ‘how’s it going in San Francisco?’ question and he was surprised when I said we weren’t homesick. I know we’ve left parents, family, friends and colleagues behind in New Zealand but we don’t have heartache and pining for anything – that’s not supposed to sound cruel or selfish, it’s just the way it is. Perhaps I’m at the exact right point in my life to have a break from everything ‘normal’ and everything society expects of me and what I expect of myself that this is somewhat of a fresh start and I’m trying not to constantly compare it to what I’ve always done.

Mother emailed me recently and reported that the Orange Niece had said that Christmas just wasn’t the same without us, and I looked at the family photos of Christmas and summer activities that are so familiar to me. I didn’t feel sad that we weren’t there. I actually really liked the traditions that The Mister and I have started for our own family. Christmas cannot easily be escaped in the States; shops, streets, TV, homes, work places are full of decorations, holiday flavors (oh yeah the Staryucks peppermint candy sprinkle magic mocha holiday ‘coffee’), holiday activities, work parties, cards, trees, music, cooking, holiday orders, gifts – it’s on steroids and we love to bask in all of that but it’s a kind of surreal winter wonderland (even though there’s no snow here) rather than something that makes us homesick for sand and sun burn in the bed on summer nights.

It’s not the time of year here where the office shuts down and everyone goes on holiday but for me, especially this year, it was a liberating time to catch up on some work I was way behind which in turn helped with the sleepless nights and allowed me enjoy some guilt-free couch time and time wandering around in the Christmas wonderland with no strings attached. We had 2 3-day weekends in a row and it was heaven! I don’t know yet if we have a new tradition set in stone and just because it’s just the 2 of us cooking on Christmas Eve and dining with champagne, and going to the movies and having a coffee afternoon tea party and a heat-up dinner on the couch on Christmas Day and just basking in just-the-two of us doesn’t mean it’s any less of a tradition than dinner sets and extended family and too many gifts for the sake of it and church and games and turkey comas and drunken New Year’s Eve parties in tiny dresses.

I did feel a pang of sadness when I realized I didn’t feel in the mood to do Christmas baking, for years and years I’ve made my own Christmas cake or fruit mince for pies because I love having Christmas baking in the house when people come over … then I realized it had actually been years since anyone actually came over … and right on time a box with a lump of Mother’s 2012 Christmas cake arrived, perhaps that can join the tradition. It was a great holiday season and I’m happy to just let Christmas be whatever it is.

Nice to see the New Year’s Eve fireworks off a pier out our window again to see in another year.

Not really a boat person but looking out the window this morning the bay looked like glass and I’ve always wanted to go across to Oakland to where the Blue Bottle roastery is. Oakland does have a bit of a rep for being fairly rough so I was a bit nervous, especially when we were walking around under the freeway looking for Blue Bottle. The roastery was in an industrial area a couple of blocks from the bay with a tiny coffee bar in the corner. After our coffee we got the ferry back to San Francisco.

We went through a long canal out to the Bay passed a couple of the big container ships we always see out our window and got up close to the cranes.

It was pretty chilly on the water but very cool to go under the Bay Bridge and to see the city from the water.

Today we braved the most treacherous weather, taking on high winds and rain that meant terrible visibility on the freeways to go out the East Bay for a bit of a Christmas brunch with Bevan. We saw a car flipped onto it’s roof on the freeway on the way back Slow down people!!

We went to a rather quaint little town called Danville, but didn’t get to look around because it was just a dash from the car in the rain to the cafe and then back out again. The place was really popular, packed and steaming, so we ended up sitting out on the deck, luckily just out of reach of water slicks gushing off the nearby umbrellas every time the wind blew. Heaters and a basket of blankets kept us nice and warm.

It was close enough to lunch by the time we got there that I ordered a poached egg on toast and the boys had French toast and scrambled eggs. I’m pleased to report that I got exactly what the menu said – one piece of toast and one (perfectly) poached egg – a perfect brunch and a perfect size for me – only improvement would’ve been butter but at least there was no salad, salsa, flowers, sauce or runny bits. I had a brief look inside the cafe and there was a cabinet staked with freshly baked scones, cinnamon rolls and other goodies. We’d seen on their website that they served Blue Bottle Coffee so that was a bonus! The coffee looked reasonable when it arrived – the milk wasn’t super-thick and the first mouthful was a little off, tasted a little stale like the machine wasn’t as clean as it could be but after a stir and a couple more mouthfuls it tasted pretty good!

A really nice spot despite the rain.

Sideboard Neighborhood Kitchen & Coffee Bar, 411 Hartz Avenue, Danville, CA

Dear Zipcar,

We just wanted to say Happy Christmas and thanks to Aardvark – we’ve spent quite a bit of this year with you since you came to live in our street and we sure do appreciate you! You’ve driven us all over the place and have always been there when we needed you for an hour or 2 or for a day. (Except for that one time your spot was empty and the nice lady at 0800 zip tried pooping your horn because we thought you were just lost in the car parking building but we couldn’t find you and it turned out you were actually missing and out all night and we still don’t know what happened to you. We had to go to Sacramento that day in a Mini, we would rather have taken you but we didn’t have much choice). You’ve driven us to the airport a few times, the supermarket numerous times, helped us take our visitors out to Napa, out to the East Bay to our friends for barbeques and Thanksgiving, to the hospital on a wet day to get vaccinations and most importantly to get our California driver licenses (the man had lots of questions about buttons and knobs and because we’d gotten to know you so well that part of the test was easy! As well as being comfortable with the width and length of you for turning and backing and going down the little streets he tested us on).

So Happy Christmas and thanks again for always being there when we need you – hope you get the gift of a lovely Zip Spa so you’re all sparkly and clean for the holidays. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you again soon. We always pick you.