I'm BACK!!!!....

Yea, I know. I am grounded. I neglected my blog and I have heard about it from the only 3 people that actually read it. But I had an idea/wanted to vent so I thought this was an appropriate forum.

We only signed a 6-month lease with our apartment and it was up in February so we are now officially month-to-month on our lease... though we already paid our last months rent and believe me when I say with the amount of rent we pay you better dang well believe I will be in this place until 11:59 pm on the last day of the month we live here.

Anyways... we've been thinking about what we want to do. Stay here till we leave SF? Move to the East Bay, Move to the North Bay, move somewhere cheaper/bigger/with a garage. We're kind of waiting on the Coast Guard (as always) to give Scott new orders. They are restructuring and he'll get a new assignment sometime between now and July (lovely timeframe, right!). Chances are it'll be in SF still BUT we can't know that for sure until they are in our hot little hands so we don't want to make any decisions before that. It also kind of depends if his rotation date starts all the way over (what year we move will have some say in what we decide to do).

So I thought I would amuse myself and you with some aspects of "city living" that we have learned the first 6 months we've been here and positive/negatives of it all.

GOOD
- Walk to cafes, movies, grocery store, post office, pretty much anything
- Big park overlooking Golden Gate bridge is 3 blocks away
- Bus stop is across the street that will take you downtown (other buses nearby)
- I belong to a gym that has 3 locations within a mile of our house
- There is a cafe one block away that serves diner breakfasts should you find yourself hung over and unable to trek the 10 minutes to the other cafes
- Gorgeous weather... the perfect weather for an Alaskan (sunny but not obnoxious and just enough rain to keep you honest)
- cool shows, music, plays (though we haven't taken advantage of this as much as we should)
- yadda yadda

ANNOYING/BAD
So this is the heart of what I was thinking about today. I just foreshadowed it with some positives to put a positive spin on things.
- No washer/dryer!!! We have to drag our laundry a block away to the laundromat.
- No garage/parking. We've gotten use to this and tend not to use the car very often so we don't have to find parking when we get home (plus it's not like you can park wherever you go either).
- Live in the "Marina district" populated with activewear Barbies, drunk frat guys, and rich stay-at-home moms that parade their babies around in $1000 strollers during the day drinking lattes.
- Where has nature gone? I went for a bike ride the other day and saw actual trees and could hear the sound of stream and it made me sad because I realized that I missed it. You can take a gal out of Alaska but you can't take the Alaska out of the gal.
- "Dateway" - so yea, there is a grocery store nearby. It's a Safeway but it's actually known as "Dateway" because everyone goes there looking all fabulous (usually in their gym clothes though), I haven't seen a whole lot of singles scene action there but I am out of the mix. You must go to Dateway to buy your tofu, organic milk, grapes, and whole grains. Don't attempt to actually go "grocery shopping" here unless it's a very off hour - only hand baskets are trendy here.
- picking up your doggies doodies (need I say more!)
- Our rent is more than my parent's mortgage (sad, sad, sad)

So there ya go. These are the thoughts I think about. Some days I focus on the good and some day the bad - depends on what's going on and my mood of course. Well - gotta run. I have to take movies back to "Dateway" and go pick up some doggie doodie.

ahhh... the glamorous life I live.

Health before Wealth

I have been thinking a lot lately about health and it's implications on our life and happiness. Healthy people, having a healthy baby, healthy fun, yadda yadda - you get the picture. It's so true that like many things we take it for granted until it is threatened or taken away from us.

What's even more frightening is a lot of people do everything right and still get sick or battle their weight. We eat our veggies, exercise, and maintain a healthy lifestyle (or we really try to!) but nonetheless we go up a pants size and dwell on it every waking hour of the day.

I went for a quick run today (I'm still training... slowly but surely!) - I was a bit sore from the day before so it was kind of a struggle and I had to stop a bit early. But I got to thinking about the many people in the world that want nothing more than to go for a run.

Yea - I know we can't spend every minute of our waking life being so insightful but maybe it's enough just for it to cross our mind every now and then and have it be a conscious thought. We're not perfect but every day we get up in the morning and eat a healthy breakfast and exercise our bodies we are if nothing else - respecting ourselves. If we exercise our hearts and our minds everyone around us benefits.

Oh and p.s. - I am well aware of the irony of this post following a recap of a weekend of debauchery in Vegas. But that's just the point - rock out, have fun, enjoy life and be thankful for the time and happiness spent with those you love : )

This is how we "roll"!

Scott and I just got back from a quick trip to Vegas for Karla's 40th birthday party. We stayed Saturday and Sunday night at TheHotel at the Mandalay Bay. This is a picture of the suite that we had a party in Sunday night. We had tons of fun - Scott did pretty good at the blackjack tables - I did pretty bad at everything else. I played the slot machine that I won $500 at last time and didn't fare as well this time around.

Saturday night we visited with some friends that live in Vegas and then had a relatively mellow night at the casino - we wanted to be rested up for the party on Sunday. Of course we were woken up at 4:30 am by the people next door who decided to rage on until about 6:00 am. In our geriatric age - we called the front desk to complain and they sent security up to quiet them down. We could hear this girl screaming "BUT IT"S VEGAS!!!". Which Scott and I discussed and decided that though she was right - it was Vegas and partying is fair game - we drew the line at 4:30 and a rager in the hotel room. The casinos and clubs are open all night so we didn't feel bad trying to get them to shut up so we could sleep. Guess we're getting old : )

I hope I can do it!!!

Today was the first day of training for the Carlsbad Half Marathon. Race day is January 25th - so I have a bit over 3 months to train... which is good because I haven't been running much lately so it's going to be slow and steady to get ready for the 13.1 mile race.

The furthest I have ever ran is 7 miles - so according to my training schedule Dec. 21st I'll pass the 7 mile mark - which is exciting.

My goal is actually to run a marathon but I am shooting for the half first and see how that goes. If all goes well, I am hoping to run my first marathon this year. It's a pretty big differnce between 13.1 miles and 26.2 miles so that'll be quite an undertaking. I have heard horror stories of people getting sick, toenails falling off and all sorts of nastiness that occurs when running a marathon BUT if Oprah can do it - I can do it!

Scott has started riding his bike to the BART station and to work and seems to be enjoying it. It beats cramming in on the Dirty 30 bus and the Coast Guard shuttle to get to work. He's all geared up with headlights, a tail light and reflective tape on his bike and helmet - very Rico Suave. : )

Yea, I cheated and posted a picture from the Gold Nugget Triathlon this year - but what can I say, I like this picture!

The Voting Conundrum

So I have decided that this is the perfect solution to our political dilemna. What do you think?

8 Months Already!

So I have been reminiscing our wedding lately. I am tackling the wedding photo project so I have been sorting through photos. We've already been married 8 months so it seems a shame that it's taken this long to do the wedding photos and get our album ordered but then again we've had a few things going on!

So I plan to have some of our professional wedding photos printed and sent to family by Christmas time. There are so many great pictures and it gave me butterflies in my stomach to look through them all again. I was also reflecting on the story of our wedding and wondering how I made it through all that alive!

Looking at my pictures also made me miss everybody!!! I wish that everyone could live their life and follow their dreams and all that good stuff but we could also live close enough to meet up for lunch or visit on every holiday. It seems strange that we only get to see the ones we love most a few times a year but we are stuck with the creepy guy at work every day. (that is if you have a job of course!) But the beautiful thing about it is that with your true friends and family distance doesn't matter and you pick up right where you left off.

We had a great visit with Nancy. She was our first visitor and had a great time so we're ready for the next batch! Let us know if you want to come check out San Francisco - we have an extra room and there are plenty of things to do and see. We're a bit homesick so bring some Alaska with you when you come! : )

Stompin' Grapes!!!

Scott's mom Nancy got into town on Thursday and we have been doing a lot of exploring and hanging out.

We went to a museum on Friday (De Young) which was having an exhibit "The Art of Americas" so it was art spanning a variety of mediums, time periods, styles, etc. All I can say is "Wow - you better eat your Wheaties before you hit up a museum in San Francisco!" We were there for 3.5 hours and we still only saw half of it! I saw ancient Mesotopian sculptures all the way to abstract metal sculptures with a spray painted Mickey Mouse doll. It was very cool but I got burnt out before we got to the second floor.

We went to Sonoma yesterday to the Harvest Fair (imagine the Alaska Fair only it's smaller and the focus is wine). Scott and I entered a grape stomping contest that was a lot of fun. I got to stand in a wooden barrel in my bare feet and try to squash grapes for 3 minutes while Scott tried to get as much grape juice into our jug. I have always wanted to stomp grapes and we came in third place in our heat - not bad for first timers. Nancy has some great pictures but her camera won't connect to our computer so that'll have to wait a bit.

The Harvest Fair had people from all walks of life. You could eat a sausage, milk a cow, drink wine in a very sophisticated manner, or dance a jig. We met up with some of Nancy's cousins and went to a big family gathering in Sonoma. I felt a bit like I was crashing their party but we're family (in some distant way!) so it was the more the merrier. Next year we're going to enter the costume contest and rock those grape stomps like they've never been rocked before!

Looks like we're heading to Vegas in November for Karla's (my sister-in-law) 40th birthday party. You know, we are just doing our part to be good family members and make sure we're there for big occasions so we'll take one for the team and stay at the Mandalay Bay. I won $500 last year on the nickel slot machine so that means I'll probably lose half of that trying to recreate my winning scene.

I hear that its beginning to snow in Alaska. I equally miss it and am thrilled to still be having sunshine (it depends on what day you talk to me). I love this time of year in the AK so I think about home often.

I turned down the PR job last week so I am still out there job hunting. Every day could be a wild card day so we'll see what the week has in store for us!