re: Asking for References

I saw this car that looks like someone is living in it the other day:

The funny thing was the sign in the window. Like, after you see the way that they keep their car so clean you are going to call them and have them do the same for your house?

Those had better be some really good references.

re: Coming to Visit

San Francisco has had some really great visitors in the last week.


Emily the Cliff! (I think she must have come with Radiohead, because they showed up on the same night)


Drew and Lynette and Drew's new EP!



Summer! (finally)



If you don't see your name on the above list and are reading this, maybe you should do something about that.

re: Dressing Appropriately for the Situation

Sure, there were a lot of more hardcore fans than me there, but I think it is safe to say that I was the only person at the Radiohead show wearing a Radio on my Head.

re: Santa Cruz Boardwalk

Pure terror on the faces of the people I went to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk with after braving the Giant Dipper:


People I wish I had come with:

re: Getting All Hippie and Stuff

This last weekend we left the comfort of our own beds to go sleep in a hostel about an hour south of San Francisco located at the old historic lighthouse at Pigeon Point. I really like hostels and try to stay at them when I travel, but there is always something sort of hippieish about them. Maybe it is because it seems that most of the people that flock to them hold their pants up with a piece of rope, wear sensible shoes and eat granola every morning?

But this hostel was so pretty!

and how many hostels do you know that have their own hottub? their own hottub (wait for it ... ) OVERLOOKING THE OCEAN!?! (sorry for the bathing suit shot, girls. if i don't watch it, no one is going to invite me anywhere anymore)

a potentially dangerous hottub! (this generally adds to the excitement)

We also got all hippie by touring a little self-sustainable goat cheese farm. I love the whole slow food movement these days, and it was fun to check out one of these farms that takes care of everything right there, nice and fresh.



Always good to know that my fresh, sustainable cheese comes from this cute little free range goat that is free to eat all the paint chips that he wants!



We kind of devoured all the free samples that they had sitting out. My stomach is still a little mad about all that cheese.


So, yeah. pretty fresh cheeses and picturesque weekends on the Point? i dunno, ya'll. hippie has gotten a little high class these days.

re: Uniforms

A few months ago I bought this white and gray striped shirt from American Apparel without realizing that it was part of an unoffical hipster uniform that I apparently was the last person to purchase. It must be a little like buying a new Honda in Golden Brown and only after driving it off the lot do you realize that everyone has the exact same car, and somehow you never noticed until you owned one. Anyway, as soon as I bought it, I started seeing The Shirt everywhere. At an outdoor concert I saw It at least 15 times in Its many different forms: the v-neck version, the tank top version, the paired-with-neon-80s-sunglasses-and-a-cute-neckercheif version, etc. It is sort of ironic, because everything American Apparel makes is so plain and simple that it shouldn't be such a fashion statement, yet I can pick an AA shirt out of a crowd now, no problem. I have taken to only wearing The Shirt when I go to visit my grandmother in her retirement home because it is the only place I can be 95% sure that someone else won't be wearing the same thing.

On the Longest Yard Sale trip, I packed one of my other favorite AA shirts - my soft gray v-neck - only to find that both Stephen and Kristin had both packed the exact same item.

I guess that is okay, because sometimes when people dress alike, that is how you know that they are good friends. And when paired with some cutoff denim shorts? Official Road Trip Uniform!

I wore the Uniform the first day:

Then on Day 2, Stephen rocked the look (along with hat-with-built-in-radio, not officially part of the Uniform).

And on Day 3, Kristin donned the outfit and made us all proud.

On the fourth day there wasn't much to do other than all put on the uniform together and take photos of ourselves with our cutest pieces of luggage.

We never actually made it out in public all wearing the uniform simultaneously, but maybe we can take a cue from this couple next year as we wander the sale. I think it would do a lot for group morale.

re: World's (and probably the Universe's) Longest Yardsale

What I didn't tell you about being in Ohio is that I planned that little trip so as to coincide with the World's Longest Yardsale. If you aren't an Antiques Roadshow aficionado or addicted to purchasing other people's old things, you might not know that every year for four days in August, Route 127 (stretching all the way from Defiance, Ohio to Gadsen, Alabama- four states long!) fills with Antique dealers and garagesalers set up along the side of the road, and thousands of people come out to root around in the junk. I have a weakness for old stuff and an even bigger one for bargains, and since my tolerance level for dirt and sorting through piles of junk seems to be exceptionally high, this weekend was really a dream come true.

I have shared a few of my favorite garage sale purchasing techniques before, an important rule being to bring small change. I brought all my money in ones, because everyone knows that only douchebags haggle over a dress until they get the seller down to a quarter and then hand them a $20 bill to make change.

Luckily I am not the only one that loves sorting through junk. Stephen and Kristin can stop at yard sales for four days in a row too.

One of the things that I like best about garage sales is that unlike thrift stores, a) you can haggle and b) you know exactly who it is that used to own the thing you are haggling over rather than going home with a faceless object that only has an implied former life. You always know you are buying used stuff, but usually you don't have a clear picture of who exactly used it and where they lived. At a garage sale, you get to actually meet the person that purchased and poured over all of these romance novels, highlighting their favorite parts.

Or that wore this old underwear.

Or that actually needed pants this size.

(You can't be that surprised. I think the midwest is where deep-fried everything came from. We can't really get mad at them for being the geniuses to recognize that everything tastes better with a layer of deep-fry around it.)

I wish I had been able to meet Joey, the receiver of this valentine from his friend Darrell encouraging him to keep it in the closet?

There were some educational portions of the trip as well. Do you know how many different kinds of fun there are? At least 3: Family Fun. Fun of the Party. Clean Fun.

Oh man. There were just so many treasures to look at and buy. My heart starts beating faster even just thinking of them all now.











Needless to say, by the end of the trip our car was a little full of treasures. We would have bought twice that if we didn't have to all fly home.

My favorite find of the trip might be this little red guy. It appears to just be a mostly-normal-extra-cute suitcase ...

But then it gets all Clark Kent on you and turns into a table! Oh, the miracle of it all.

Maybe you are doing the math in your head and are going to want to roast on us, since if you tallied the cost of getting out to the Sale in the first place, gas and car rental, hotels and food along the way, and the $50 the airlines wanted for checking several pieces of overweight luggage...that $.25 we paid for a vase might not have been such a bargain in the long run. But then I would tell you about the icecream we bought from a Mennonite horse that churned the cream without the aid of electricity and you will feel foolish as you realize that the 127 was mostly about the experience.


(lots more photos too)

re: Re-living the Dream

Okay. So I am in Ohio right now reliving the best reunion trip of 2006 where I got to spend time with my BFFs from grade school Quinn and Danielle.

So as to not break from tradition...
1990:

2006:

2008:

A reunion tour again, so soon? We are as bad as the Rolling Stones. (Also, why haven't I done a better job of making my bangs less stringy in the last 2 years?)

This time, though, there were two babies, Amelia and Abbey. This would make a great movie plot, don't you think? "Three (wo)men and two babies." Has anyone thought of that yet? Imagine the hijinks that would ensue!

(I would tell you about some of the hijinks if I hadn't pulled a michael jackson with amelia and got all my baby holding privileges revoked.)

Mostly, Amelia ate a lot of food, but was really cute and happy while doing it.

And Abbey sometimes pretended she didn't speak English when I told her to do things that she didn't want to do. Which is a pretty good trick that I might be adopting.

Anyway, I really love Columbus and the Midwest and keep discovering new reasons why. For one - this brilliant larger than life topiary recreation of Georges Seurat's impressionist painting, A Sunday Afternoon On The Island of La Grande Jatte, located behind the lovely Columbus downtown library.


Even more amazing was this guy at the topiary painting a painting of a garden based on a painting. Did I just blow your mind? Sorry about that.

I have a few days left here, and though it seems like after the topiary garden things couldn't get any better, there is always the World's Largest Apple Basket a few miles from here. . .