I was reading that for some people, today is the luckiest day in this century -- 7/7/07. Apparently weddings today spiked over 30% from the average last year in July. I didn't necessarily feel it myself, although Walt's sister and her kids are visiting and they're babysitting Devon tonight, so we'll be going out to dinner for the first time in months. And then we got even luckier and one of the hot, hipster restaurants had a cancellation tonight at 7:30, so that is something of a lucky break for us.
Devon has been having a ball with Laura's kids, Zane and Alexa. They're both quite a bit older than her, but just having other kids in the house has been really exciting. She took quite a liking to Zane -- although I'm not sure it's reciprocated at the same level (her idea of being attentive is pretty pesty) -- and spent a lot of time this week following him around the apartment and "playing" with him. It's also given her an opporutnity to get LOADS of attention, far more than we normally give her, and what child doesn't like to be the center of attention at all times? It will be hard for her to adjust when they leave tomorrow.
When they arrived on Monday, Walt took them around town a bit - and he made a detour to pick up our truckload of beef (more on that shortly) - and Devon didn't really get much of an introduction until Walt picked her up from my mom. Then on Tuesday they all tooled around town together, went up to the Marin headlands, visited the Haight (one of the truly overrated neighborhoods) and hit some standard tourist spots. Walt said that Devon had a great time in the headlands especially; there are a lot of old WWII bunkers up there and some tunnels, and Hawk Hill has a tunnel that apparently was a magnet for her -- big echoes, lots of space to run, etc. She's also had a lot of interaction with them in the morning and evening before she goes to Elaine's, which has been really fun for her. Walt has some pictures from the tour on Tuesday, so I'll try to have him email some to me that I'll post here.
A momentary detour about the beef... I was surfing the internet not too long ago and ran into the Community Supported Agriculture site (CSA), that lists all sorts of farmer's markets and such; and one of the listings was for Morris Grassfed Beef, a ranch down in San Luis Obispo. It's a family-run ranch that sells shares to individuals - and luckily enough, a couple of weeks ago they had just completed their slaughter and were making a delivery to San Francisco. Walt was a bit skeptical, but we decided to buy a "split-half," which is really 1/4 of a cow. Luckily the freezer in the basement still works (althought it's quite skanky), and it turned out to be just enough space for the whole order. I'm really excited about it -- I love the idea that we're supporting a family farm and also have a ready-made source of tasty beef for the year. I think when Walt saw the order -- or picked it up, really, since he had to hie down to some parking lot near Lake Merced -- he decided it was a good purchase, too. I'll update when I actually cook some of the stuff (we're still finishing off the last of our trip to the Freedom Meat Lockers near Pajaro Dunes). I'll let you know how it compares to the Freedom meat (we just had an absolutely fabulous rib eye steak from that place a couple of weeks ago and a t-bone this week -- I'm not deep into steak, but I've decided based on that informal test that the rib eye is a tastier cut of meat. I'll be choosing that from now on when I have a choice).
We really didn't have any plans for the 4th, and since Laura and co. were here, we didn't go to Rich and Olgica's (Keri and Arne had passed on the invitation from them) in San Leandro. The 4th was smack in the middle of the week, and I only got Wednesday off, so it didn't feel that holiday-like. I also had an idea that we'd be able to go up on the roof and see the fireworks, but it turned out that we were much too low -- the Presidio rises up and pretty much blocked everything. A shame, too, since this was the only 4th of July I can remember in years where it wasn't totally socked in with fog. It made me wish, for a moment, for our old place where we could walk up a couple of blocks and have a sweeping view of the Bay and all of the fireworks (although when we lived there we usually just saw colors reflecting off the fog bank and few, if any, fireworks).
One of the things I realized with Laura and her family visiting is that I'm living in a total bubble here in SF. I knew that theoretically, but it's been brought home to me very practically during their visit. A lot of the families in this city (at least the ones we know) are focused on organic food (to the point of paranoia sometimes), composting, blah blah. It would be mild for me to say that I'm suffering from culture shock -- I really don't have any regular or prolonged interaction with anyone who fits the more standard American family profile -- and this week has made me realize that we're living on the far end of the bell curve. I guess it's always good to get a reminder of what's happening in the real US and not in the bluest of the blue points on the coasts.
Devon has been having a ball with Laura's kids, Zane and Alexa. They're both quite a bit older than her, but just having other kids in the house has been really exciting. She took quite a liking to Zane -- although I'm not sure it's reciprocated at the same level (her idea of being attentive is pretty pesty) -- and spent a lot of time this week following him around the apartment and "playing" with him. It's also given her an opporutnity to get LOADS of attention, far more than we normally give her, and what child doesn't like to be the center of attention at all times? It will be hard for her to adjust when they leave tomorrow.
When they arrived on Monday, Walt took them around town a bit - and he made a detour to pick up our truckload of beef (more on that shortly) - and Devon didn't really get much of an introduction until Walt picked her up from my mom. Then on Tuesday they all tooled around town together, went up to the Marin headlands, visited the Haight (one of the truly overrated neighborhoods) and hit some standard tourist spots. Walt said that Devon had a great time in the headlands especially; there are a lot of old WWII bunkers up there and some tunnels, and Hawk Hill has a tunnel that apparently was a magnet for her -- big echoes, lots of space to run, etc. She's also had a lot of interaction with them in the morning and evening before she goes to Elaine's, which has been really fun for her. Walt has some pictures from the tour on Tuesday, so I'll try to have him email some to me that I'll post here.
A momentary detour about the beef... I was surfing the internet not too long ago and ran into the Community Supported Agriculture site (CSA), that lists all sorts of farmer's markets and such; and one of the listings was for Morris Grassfed Beef, a ranch down in San Luis Obispo. It's a family-run ranch that sells shares to individuals - and luckily enough, a couple of weeks ago they had just completed their slaughter and were making a delivery to San Francisco. Walt was a bit skeptical, but we decided to buy a "split-half," which is really 1/4 of a cow. Luckily the freezer in the basement still works (althought it's quite skanky), and it turned out to be just enough space for the whole order. I'm really excited about it -- I love the idea that we're supporting a family farm and also have a ready-made source of tasty beef for the year. I think when Walt saw the order -- or picked it up, really, since he had to hie down to some parking lot near Lake Merced -- he decided it was a good purchase, too. I'll update when I actually cook some of the stuff (we're still finishing off the last of our trip to the Freedom Meat Lockers near Pajaro Dunes). I'll let you know how it compares to the Freedom meat (we just had an absolutely fabulous rib eye steak from that place a couple of weeks ago and a t-bone this week -- I'm not deep into steak, but I've decided based on that informal test that the rib eye is a tastier cut of meat. I'll be choosing that from now on when I have a choice).
We really didn't have any plans for the 4th, and since Laura and co. were here, we didn't go to Rich and Olgica's (Keri and Arne had passed on the invitation from them) in San Leandro. The 4th was smack in the middle of the week, and I only got Wednesday off, so it didn't feel that holiday-like. I also had an idea that we'd be able to go up on the roof and see the fireworks, but it turned out that we were much too low -- the Presidio rises up and pretty much blocked everything. A shame, too, since this was the only 4th of July I can remember in years where it wasn't totally socked in with fog. It made me wish, for a moment, for our old place where we could walk up a couple of blocks and have a sweeping view of the Bay and all of the fireworks (although when we lived there we usually just saw colors reflecting off the fog bank and few, if any, fireworks).
One of the things I realized with Laura and her family visiting is that I'm living in a total bubble here in SF. I knew that theoretically, but it's been brought home to me very practically during their visit. A lot of the families in this city (at least the ones we know) are focused on organic food (to the point of paranoia sometimes), composting, blah blah. It would be mild for me to say that I'm suffering from culture shock -- I really don't have any regular or prolonged interaction with anyone who fits the more standard American family profile -- and this week has made me realize that we're living on the far end of the bell curve. I guess it's always good to get a reminder of what's happening in the real US and not in the bluest of the blue points on the coasts.
posted by Devon Szalva at
5:46 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home