Spena... the volvo...

I haven't written in a while. I do apologize. Is it possible to say that a lot and not a lot has happened in the week since I've last blogged?!?! Because that's how it pretty much feels! I mean, I guess it was Thanksgiving week so granted it was meant to be a slow one. But I do feel like I missed out on some hilarious blog-worthy moments in the meantime! :-)
There is one big thing that I feel should note right now. We got a Wii!! Yes, it is simply amazing! Ok, ok errrrrr-rrrrrrrrr (tires screeching noise) so yesterday, Kevin and I are like alright, alright let's do this. We're going to get a dog and we're just going to go to the shelter and see if there are any little boo's we connect with right away, etc. So we take the zipcar out (Spena, the volvo... again!) and after I almost vomit (yes, Kev was driving again... this always happens when I have to ride with him behind the wheel!! :-)) we get to the pet shelter. It was SO sad. Those of you that know me, know that I am not the whole animals rights/yay yay to animals type of person. No, I wish that I were genetically this sweet and maternalistic but truth be told, I am not. SO knowing that I am not a sweet sappy little girl, I was seriously almost in tears after seeing these little doggies all locked up and alone in the shelter. There was this german shepherd that I SWEAR winked at me. Kevin said I was crazy (negotiable comment) but I am not even joking this dog looked at me and winked! It was so sad though bc I wanted to take all of them home and care for them. However, sadly enough there were no dogs that currently fit Kevin and I's lifestyle needs. (We have a small apartment and we are gone for about 8 hours out of the day so it would just not be nice to bring a big dog or a dog that needs a lot of attention into our little world!)
We decided to head over and check out Best Buy which is directly across the street from the shelter. Shopping (FOR anything) always seems to help me forget about any sadness or problems in general. :-) So I buy Kevo a Wii and he buys me a new camera. We call them early X-mas presents for each other. (We like to live in the moment! :-)) Anyhoo, after getting home, we indulged in about 10+ hours of Wii play. It was great. I am seeking game suggestions so if you have any, please pass them on our way. Currently we only have the game that came with the console and a bonus Sports game that we got with the bundle package. And frankly, I'm not exactly smitten with either of them! What's a girl to do, though, right?!?! Right-O now, off to do some bowling... and I must say I'm a much better bowler in the virtual world!

Weekends Rule... Mondays Drool!

Oh my, how fast the weekend seems to fly by! I typically wake up very grumpy on Monday mornings but seeing as this week is a short week with the Thanksgiving holiday, it's SORTA like tommorrow is Wed and we all know that Wed is my favorite day of the week so I have a feeling I am not going to be Miss McGrumplegus tomm. Yay, cause I actually hate being in a grumpy mood! :-)
My Saturday turned out to be pretty much worthless considering I was so hungover. I had fully intended on heading to this bar out in the Marina to watch the IU/Purdue game with my friend Courtney. However, neither of us was feeling up to full form so we decided to flake. I took this opportunity to catch up on some ridic tv shows and snooze on the couch for the remainder of the afternoon. Kevin had gone to some networking/panel shindig so we decided to have a little dinner date when he got home. I love doing date nights every once in a while. Especially since it seems like we hardly ever get to see each other between our work schedules and whatnot. We tried this cute lil Italian joint not to far from our place. It was yummy! And we actually had quite a bit to chat about since we hadn't been around each other much lately. (What?! You know how sometimes when your together all the time, you run out of things to talk about! :-)) Anyhoo, we decided to come home after dinner and I zonked out on the couch. A wild couple, yes, that we are!
Anyhoo we had plans this morning to meet Kevin's old professor and mentor from college who was in town for some business. It's funny, we've met up with him in every city we've lived in. Kevin was in the NSMH Society in college which I think stands for national society of minorities in hospitality and he's somehow managed to remain in close contact with him for quite a few years now. He brought his 6 year old son with him who is this absolutely adorable little boy and he is sooo smart. Seriously, the kid can do multiplication and he's in the 1st grade. THE. FIRST. GRADE! I'm impressed. We met up with the two of them and this other girl that was in the same society as Kevin and we went to this delicious (actually delicious is an understatement!!) place for brunch. It's called Mama's and I had heard many good things about it before. Oh. my. gosh. The food was unbelievable. I had this apple yogurt and cinnamon french toast. So darn good. It was well worth the 2 hour wait. (I know. Insane!)
I really wanted to purchase a bike this weekend so KS and I decided to zipcar it out to Wal-Mart in Oakland. Ok, have you ever heard that Oakland is really ghetto??? Well. It is! Hella ghetto. I am so thankful that Louis and I came out alive. It was quite an effing process too getting this bike home by the way. We purchase one of the bikes already put together but we couldn't seem to get it into 'Spena' so I had to return it and get one in a box. Awesome. Now I need to figure out how to put together a bike! Aye aye aye! PS, In case you were wondering Spena is a volvo. I still like Carlye the best. She's a toyota corolla but you have to walk quite a few blocks to pick up Carlye and Spena lives in the garage in our building so convenience was the deciding factor. Sorry Carlye! I also enjoyed my first In'n'Out experience out in Oakland. It was good. We got a strawberry milkshake to share for our ride back into the city and listen to this... the amount of calories in a small little milkshake is like more than the cheeseburger/ff combined. So after seeing that, I decided to take only two sips of said milkshake. Sorry inner fat kid but your ass will thank you in the morning.
Ahh, a good relaxing weekend full of drinks, food and fun. Cheers for now and see you again in only 3 days, YAY! :-)

'cuz I should been a bar ten derrrr

In my head, I am trying to sing this to the tune of Kid Rock's "Shoulda been a cowboy baby..." I don't know if it looks the same as the way it sounds when I'm trying to spell it out. Hahaha, sometimes I have entirely too much time on my hands!!!

So I'm just hanging out on a lazy Saturday morning. Woke up uber hungover. Again. Yeah I don't know what it is with me and why I can't handle my booze ever since I moved back to the United States. Ok in all fairness, a good amount of booze was put away last night! And I was probably the culprit of it. I was busy tending bar! Holla! So as there was another strike on another of our hotels this week, I was busy busting my ass doing manual labor. Now I don't mind doing manual labor but I'm sorry I busted my arse getting 2 degrees so that I DON'T have to do it. We all have a choice so seriously quit biatching, get back in here and do your job! (Now, why don't I tell you how I really feel! :-)) Anyhoo, its actually a lot of fun when we get to go taskforce at other properties. My friend Carla from my property got to be a barista in the lobby for 3 days, I was so jealous!! I, on the other hand, was a restaurant server. Granted it could have been worse. And ok, maybe I'm being a teensy bit drama-queen by saying it was total manual labor. (Maybe...) Oh but I did manage to break a whole crate full of glasses. Woops. Sorry! And you get to meet tons of other people from all of our hotels throughout the city so it's a good networking experience too. Oh and did I mention we usually get multiple parties and celebrations afterwards! :-) I guess that doesn't hurt too much either! Yesterday all of the early crew working around the hotel finished around 2.45 and we convinced them to open up the hospitality suite a little early (there was a thank-you celebration scheduled for 6.) So I come up with the great idea of whipping up some bloody mary's. (Shocking, I know...) They were amazing. We were taking it easy and not really drinking too much, just hanging out and waiting for everyone else to get up there. It was fun though, they hooked us up with all kinds of alcohol. It's fun working in F&B!! So I somehow became the infamous bloody mary girl and all kinds of people are like ooh I hear you make a mean bloody mary. I was pretty happy with myself at this point. After all the bigwigs leave, it's pretty much all the cool managers hanging out and I was whipping up drinks alllll night long. And I was making them pretty frickin strong too! My specialty was called an 'Hola Delight'! It consisted of rum, sierra mist, cranberry juice and a splash of grapefruit juice. Actually that was HD #2... The REAL 'Hola Delight' consisted of vodka, cointreau, orange juice and a splash of grapefruit and cran juice. (My mixers were slightly limited!!) I tried to spice it up once and made it with a dash of spicy bloody mary seasoning. However it completely ruined it and I highly do not recommend this! :-) But I do recommend trying my other 2 concoctions. They're very refreshing!

OH MY GOSH. I am watching this show on tv and its called "I Didn't Even Know I Was Pregnant" and this woman literally had a baby on the floor of her house. Seriously. How do you not know???? I just don't get it. I mean really?!?!? Weird.

Anyways I think I am off to attempt to be somewhat productive on my Saturday. I am a little bit bored though. Kevin is working and he is ignoring my texts/phone calls. Lame. Ohhh we found a dog that we are trying to adopt too... I am in love with him. His name is Benji but I am going to just call him 'B'. He's a shih tzu/terrier mix and is adorable! Hopefully we will get approved as parents for B and he can be my new little buddy when Kevo is not around! :-) I hope I do not jinx myself but I have to show you a picture of my potential new child...

Saturday, Schmaturday!

I am in serious need of a detox. Oy. Since it's been such a hectic week I've hardly had time to go to the gym. And you know how hard it is to get back into the swing of things after taking a week off!! I've also been eating horribly this week. And drinking. Like a fish. Last night I accidentally got a little too tipsy. Woooops! Anyhoo, what can ya do I guess. Ones gotta enojoy life, right?! :-)
I don't really have anything too interesting to blog about really. Today I opened a savings account (and that is ONE giant step for mankind my friends!) I always spend all my $$$. I like to buy frivolous things and moolah always seems to burn holes in my pocket. So I guess I am finally turning into a semi-responsible adult. And it's about damn time too! I'm 28 years old. I gotta get my act together. (hahaha... I accidentally wrote cat there instead of act) It's awesome too, my banker is this really funny gay guy and so he was like oh you can add nicknames to your accts too so I'm like ok, sweet! So we're coming up with all these corny names for my accts. I bet you can't guess what I named it either. ;-) I also bought my parents X-mas present today. It's a set of plane tickets to come visit me... Welcome to San Fran, Don & Faye!! I am so excited that they have agreed to come for a visit. (This is also one big giant step for mankind!) So it's been a big stepping day apparently. Now I've convinced Kevin to go shopping with me. I have to bribe him with food though and tell him we can stop for lunch somewhere. Honestly though I think I probably do better shopping alone. I like to putz around and take my time. I'm looking for a new cute pair of flats. Oh and I found this AWE-some eye cream at Sephora last weekend so I am going to go back and get that I think. Seriously it's called per-fekt and it is amazing. Whenever I am tired, you can read it all over my face. But this stuff is like a miracle cream. Sold!
So that's my Saturday in a nutshell. It's only 2pm too so the day's still young. Who knows what else will day will hold for me?! :-)
Toodles Magoo!

My life is like a made for tv drama...

The past few days have been a whirlwind. I don't even know where to begin. For the past few days, I have been working 10.5 hour days as a banquet server. In a hotel. You know, like the people who you see working like a horse refreshing your beverages/food for you when you have a meeting in a hotel... yes that's what all buckten of me has been doing the past two days.
I don't know if you are familiar with unions and union workers, me I was only vaguely familiar before moving to San Francisco. However, this city seems to be a very union city. I don't really get them to be honest with you. I think union people are just lazy people who are very greedy. Not all union workers. I must clarify that but you will see why I have this conception after you read this blog. Anyhoo, so when union workers want more $$$ and they don't get it, they go on strike. Well in the hotel world, when the union decides to strike against a hotel all of the union workers have to get up and walk out. If you are in the union and you decide to go to work, you are therefore forced to resign from the union, blah blah blah. What does this mean for hoteliers that are not fortunate enough to be in the greedy ass union??? Well this means, we have to go do their jobs bc they are too busy out picketing and making a HUUUUGE scene in front of the hotel. Well we all knew there was a possibility of a strike happening with one of our hotels in the city this week and we knew there was the "potential" of having to get vaccuumed into a different dept at any moment and were on call 24/7 this week. I didn't really think that this would affect me though to be honest with you.
OH NO. At 6.11am on Tuesday morning (and after I accidentally consumed an entire bottle of white wine the night before... I was thirsty) I get a phone call saying there is a strike going on at one of our sister properties and I have been deployed as a banquet server. Ok and what do I wear? I say still half asleep. Yeah, good to know my priorities are straight. So my boss is like uhh, I don't know what they wear, wear what you want (basically) and tells me that I need to be there oh pretty much now. Awesome. So I was still half schwasted I think and I don't even bother to shower, wash my face, throw on some clothes and hop in a cab to get to work. (Ok, I think I went a little overboard bc I prooooobably could have taken a shower and then taken a cab to work, whatever!) I stop by work to pick up the only pair of flat shoes I own besides tennies and I go see our HR Director to see if there is anything I need to do in particular. She's like you're going to have to cross the picket line, are you okay with this? I don't mind. To me, I don't even know what this means. Then she says well they may shout at you. Profanities. Bring it bitches (that's what I say in my head! :-))
After getting thru the chaotic marching going on in front of the hotel that I'm going to work at I finally find my way into the banquet dept and get some direction. It was really funny bc there were a lot of people from my property working there and I would get really excited every time I'd see someone I know. Yes, I am aware of how unbelievable cool I am. The entire process was kind of fun and exciting because well a) it's all brand new to me and b) I mean comeon, it's like being indirectly in the middle of some juicy gossip story! Well it was fun the first day. I got to work with other fun people. I would tell you stories but they are too long and probably just wouldn't be that entertaining to you. But don't you worry, they were entertaining to me!! :-) The second day was not as fun. The tools in the shed I was working with were not that sharp. Really. I thought I was a bit dense at times. I am a mother f*'ing genius compared to these fools.
It's kind of like boot camp for the hotel industry. If you can survive task-forcing during a strike, you can handle anything. Overall it is a good learning experience (erm, that must be my wine talking) BUT I am seriously ready for it to be over with. 24 hour strike, fine. 48 hours, really? quit yer bitchin', 72 hours??? Somebody call KitKat cause I need someone to give me an effing break!!
And that's my life these days......

Sangria Makes Me Sexy

Or the complete opposite... In my head I think the first though! I went back for more. Sangria, that is. If you've followed my blog, you'll remember me blogging about the lethal sangria I drank in the very beginning of my San Franciscan journeys. The name of this place that serves said Sangria is ChaChaCha. They have 2 locations here in the Bay area and now I can say I've been to both. The first, serves up a WAY more lethal sangria (or else last night I just had more help downing the large pitchers of the stuff! :-))

You may be wondering why I'm up blogging about it at 6am on a Saturday? In case you didn't read what time this was posted, yes, it's 6.42am right now. Well after we came home from the sangria shop, Kevin went out with our neighbor Mike (it's his long-time friend) and I decided to stay in cause my eyes were already crossing from the sangria (sometimes I do make smart choices.... I said sometimes! :-)) Well so apparently they went out and went back to Mike's place to play wii and Kevin passed out on the couch. (Is wii the new code word for strip joint?!?! Hehehe, just kidding!) Anyhoo, so I wake up at 3.30 all nervous bc Kevin is not home. I mean this is not Dublin and I know that he can't still be at some bar. (They all close at 2am here.) Plus we also have the bicycle thieves in our neighborhood and I was worried they got Kev. (I know, I'm a super worrywart... I think I get this from my Dad's side of the family. My g-ma is like this too!) So I go in and out of a restless sleep since he is not answering his phone and/or my texts and neither is Mike. Finally, I get a text back from Mike at 6am who is heading out to play golf letting me know Kevin passed out on his couch. Phew! The bicycle thieves did not get him!! A short bit later, Drunky McDrunkard comes rolling in and I put him to bed. But now I can't fall back asleep so I'm telling the whole world about it, lol!! Oh and bc my stomach hurts! It musta been the sangria... which brings me to my next point.

My next point is about my stomach. So I have this belt that I wear when my stomach hurts. (Which usually occurs when I eat too much!) Alissa, you know about this belt... I wore it once when I stayed over at your house not too long ago. It's just a big tight belt but I've found if you eat too much when you put the tight belt on it makes your stomach feel better. KS tells me I am crazy. I guess it does sound a little crazy but it works. I'm telling ya. I once watched some special on tv and it was talking about the woman with the tiniest waist in the world and everyday she would wear this tight corset to shrink her waistline. Apparently, it worked. So I guess my weird belt thing sort of has the same effect. Except for I don't think it shrinks my stomach... Darnit!

I don't know what to do with myself all day. I have to cut back on my shopping cause I got lots o bills to pay right now. I will prolly go to the gym or go running at some point. Oh and I really want to try a cap'n crunch drink from Starbucks. I think I read about it on one of those (many) daily newsletters I get about restaurants/things to do in the city. And I really think I will be a fan of this concoction. Apparently its like a strawberry frappucino (which I've never had) with a shot of hazelnut syrup and some other kind of syrup. I'm going to have to look it up again so I can ask my nice neighborhood barista to whip it up for me. Ohhhh the luxuries of living in the US. I have missed you! :-)

Happy Saturday!!

What's up, what's up blog followers?!?! So since it is my favorite day of the week again (yay!) I decided to do my favorite thing... blog about it! I contemplated cool things that I could blog about all the way home from the gym today. And I got nothing. Sorry boutcha, looks like you just in for one random a$$ blog ride! :-)

Here are some other random thoughts I had today:

• I wonder what winter is going to be like in San Francisco? Will it ever be cold enough that I need to wear my winter coats (not at the same time, silly!) or will I only get to save those for my midwest vacays?
• [Thinking about the teeny tiny instructor from my class at the gym] I wonder what she eats in a typical day. Well, I do. Seriously this chick teaches a lot of classes at the gym and is so energetic (no joke, sometimes I almost puke!) Anyways so I'm sure she has to eat a balanced diet to be this energetic but is the teeniest little thing ever. I'm a wee bit jealous!
• What can you substitute shortening or cooking spray for when baking in a pan?
• Is she cross-eyed [pondered while watching Dubya Bush's daughter on Jay Leno] She has the potential to be cute but she is the spawn of George. Wonh Wohhhh....
• Who do I know that has a birthday coming up so I can make them cupcakes? (Yes, I am still not over my cupcake infatuation.)

Yes, so these are just a few of the random thoughts that have crossed thru my mind today. Usually I think they are much more random and funnier thoughts but right now I am just tired and can't remember of any other ones that are revolutionary. (Overstatement? Maybe. But MAYBE they are revolutionary! :-))

G'night bloggies... I promise to make my life more interesting in the next few days.

Who Wants to be a Blogganaire???

I do, I do!! Ahhh, another glorious weekend winds down and is coming to an end. I say post-Halloween BOO to that! Halloween in San Francisco was not AS crazy as I thought it would be. I mean, come on, this city is kinda like freak capital of the US. Ok, maybe a bit of an overstatement but I'm no longer surprised by what I see/hear in this city of anything goes! (Probably the actual freak capital of the US is somewhere in Virginia/West Virginia. That is backwards land over dere in dem parts, mmm hmm!)

Can I just sidebar here for a sec... (Of course I can, this is my flippin' blog I can do what I wanna do! :-)) So I'm watching Monk right now. If you have never watched this show, I highly recommend for your viewing pleasure. It is HI-LAR-ious! I initially got hooked on Monk when we were in Ireland. It was one of the few things that kept me sane in my state of 'moving to a different country' depression. Kevin would download seasons of tv shows on the computer and we would snuggle together watching episode after episode of good ole Mr. Monk. Hmm, maybe subconciously that is why we decided to move to SF. We're stalking Mr. Monk!

Back to the discussion at hand now. So yes, "Howl"-o-ween (as I like to call it) was not as wild as I was expecting it to be. We had a huge party at the hotel and I was working. And by working I mean putzing around, ogling at all the funny and ridiculous costumes. (I dressed up as a cowgirl by the way. I think I did this just so I could bust out that denim mini one more time before retiring it for life. Wellll, maybe I'll keep it locked up in my costume box. Ya just never know really now, do you!!) Anyhoo with approximately 1400 people, I did get the chance to witness some interesting get-ups. I saw Jesus, Lady Gaga, Betty Crocker, breathalyzers, Eva Longoria & Tony Parker, sheiks, Samantha Ronson, and many many more. And there was some guy there dressed up as a teletubby. Seriously, are you 12 dude? I have to say it was extremely fun being sober and watching people get completely ridic!

I left work around midnight and met up with some peeps over at Ambassador. This bar is located in the Tenderloin area which is like the crack (and no, I'm not talking about the good ole Irish kinda craic either!)neighborhood. There are actually quite a lot of good bars/restaurants in the Tenderloin. (PS- I'm not sure who decided to name it the Tenderloin??? but that's kind of an atrocious name for a neighborhood!) So I get to this bar and by this point, its pretty sweaty and smelly all around. We go to the bar to order a drink and after being peer-pressured into getting a mixed drink rather than a beer (I'm much more a beer/wine kinda gal!) I ordered a Malibu rum and pineapple (Reason #67 Why I am a Weirdo! - why can't I just be normal and order a gin & tonic???) So I think the bartender must've been crushing on me just a lil based on the qunituple pour he gave me, thanks Chuck Norris! And no, this is not one of those times where I randomly give people nicknames... dude was dressed like Chuck Norris for Halloween. He was really funny looking though and I couldn't quit staring at him. It may have been the lighting too. So we take our drinks and make our way downstairs where we were enveloped like s'mores by total douchies. Seriously, this one guy was wearing dumbo ears... and that's my cue to go home!!!

Welp, another Halloween down in the books anyway! I'm guessing I probably only have about 2 more of these holidays left in me to celebrate the adult way. After that, I'm gonna start handing candy to all the adorable lil trick-or-treaters! I hope I don't eat all of the Snickers first!!! :-)