Pack it up, pack it in...

The BF and I have been busy little bees. We've been trolling Craig's List for boxes and packing supplies. We could have easily gotten new boxes, but really felt that we should be reusing this stuff. And can I tell you, living in a green-minded city like SF, everyone else and their mother thinks the same way. I never would have guessed what a hot commodity moving boxes were! That is, until I got horn-swaggled like three times! Seriously, someone posts that they've got some boxes, I charge down there with my empty car like 30 minutes after they've posted, only to get there and see someone else carting away the boxes. You've gotta act fast!

We've managed to get enough packing supplies and are making good progress. Our apt. is getting less recognizable, little by little. Two weeks til the movers get here! The piggies enjoy checking out our progress. The boxes create a nice little maze for them to explore. Here, Oliver either does not want us to move, or finds cardboard very tasty indeed!

Next stop: homeownership

Here she is, folks. She's a centenarian, but she's new to us!

The past two weeks have been a blur. Like a rollercoaster, it's been up and down, but through it all there's been the feeling of exhilaration. Just to give you a taste of our first four days: We saw the place for the first time on a Sunday, took a second look on Tuesday, placed an offer on Wednesday, and by Thursday we were in escrow! Since then it's been rapid-fire phone calls back and forth with our realtor (who is awesome btw), a slew of inspections, much faxing of paperwork, and then of course the inevitable signing away of lives and life savings. Ramen, anyone? (Actually, on top of all this, both of us were doing the cleanse! Not the best timing on our part.)

Seriously tho, this thing called homeownership has been a long time in the making. A dream realized. The BF and I have been working toward this moment for YEARS. (Ok maybe not all our 13 years together, but a good portion of it!) It's funny, sometimes the rollcoaster will come to a sudden stop, and we'll look at each other and say, "Can you believe we're actually doing this?!?" (followed by screams). We get the keys next week! GAHH!

Ketchup is not part of the cleanse

For the past 9 days I've been on the Blessed Herb cleanse. I'm going to spare you the gross details. If you want gross, go to the web site and check out the photo testimonials.

What is it? The cleanse starts with a 3-day pre-cleanse where you slowly cut down portion size all while taking the powder and pills. Then comes the 5-day liquids-only fast where you consume only the powder mixed with apple juice (gritty, bloaty), the pills, water, and some vegetable broth. This is then followed by the 1-day post-cleanse to slowly introduce normal food back into your system.

So what's it feel like? I wasn't too hungry (surprisingly), got headaches the first few days (normal), felt bloated and slightly nauseated (also normal), but for the most part could go about my day as usual minus exercise (but I didn't do much of that before the cleanse). There was a pretty constant feeling of bloat and nausea, which is probably why you don't feel hungry--you are too disgusted to eat. I've done a couple of other cleanses in the past (read: I've had lots of disgusting powder drinks) and this drink isn't so bad at first. By Day 7, it made me gag. I'm on my last day of the cleanse and have thankfully returned to the world of chewing. In retrospect, I'm sure that the cleanse was good for overall digestive health, expelling toxins, out with the old, and so forth. But I've done other cleanses and have felt better both during and after. I think it's good to do a cleanse every now and again. We eat so much crap (and by "we" I mean ME), like junk food, trans fats, processed white flour, on and on, that it is a good idea to give your body a little refresh.

So why'd I do this one in particular? Partly to see if I could. Partly to see what would happen, to see if my "results" would be as ... uhhh, "impressive?" "disturbing?"... as the photo testimonials. Partly to simply clear out the ol' GI because, honestly, no one wants a John Wayne colon (supposedly it weighed 30 lbs when he died) and no one wants to go out like Elvis (which my brother lovingly calls the Dump of Death). And Elvis's was reportedly 60 lbs!! [Insert your own King/Throne joke here.] OK, this entry is getting a little TMI. I know blogging is a somewhat anonymous, removed way of communicating, but all my readers (all 4 of you) know who I am!! Plus, describing my BMs in detail, by any means, is overshare. I just can't do it. What I can say is that I've never thought so much about poop! I'm glad it is over and I can return to normal life! Now someone please pass me the take-out menu.

Ketchup and wine

A lot has happened in the last month. I'm going to try and re-create it for you here in these next entries. Oh the joys of ketchup.

We gave ourselves a week to recover from Oliver's ragin' bday celebration. (Right.) So the BF, John, Kev, and I declared it Friday Ditch Day and went to Napa/Sonoma. Actually it was my last Summer Friday (and, sadly, those of you in the corporate world know how dearly we hold on to those--ugh, kill me). It was a good day and a good haul--way better than sitting in a lightless suckhole aka. my desk. We had the carefully planned out route of let's-stop-at-the-next-one-on-the-right. Cline, Trefethin (they had dogs roaming the grounds so of course that was my favorite), Miner, Ballentine, and... at least two more... I can't remember. And no, I wasn't looped. I was the DD. And I still managed to enjoy myself. Shocking, yes I know.

More ketchup (and ice cream)

The following weekend, I volunteered to scoop ice cream at the Slow Food festival. Slow Food and the ideas behind slow food are pretty cool. There was an interesting article in San Francisco Magazine about how SF completely missed the boat on the purpose of slow food, making it elitist, yuppie and inaccessible. I dunno about all that. I'm not really into food. I mean, I like to eat, but I'm no foodie. That's more the BF's arena.


Ok, so back to volunteering. Here's the thing. It was fun and all, but the next time I'm anywhere where VOLUNTEERS are handing out food, I'm really going to think twice about eating it. Don't get me wrong. Volunteers are lovely people, yes, yes. And I try to volunteer at least once a month. It's awesome, can't say enough good things about volunteering (except that I don't do it often enough). Not only am I "doing good" (and contributing to something bigger), I meet tons of great people and I have fun in the process. THAT being said... at this event, some volunteers were simply lazy. Others were just plain gross. I could kinda handle the gross ones if they were earnestly trying. I get it: things can get a little hectic if there's a long line of people and ice cream is in demand. So they're slobs and have a messy workstation, so what--at least they have a good heart. Licking your fingers or the scoopers and then handing the ice cream over to a customer all while sweating profusely... now that's just straight up sick. Gross, right? Wait. It gets worse. So the booth had those typical ice cream freezers, the kind where you've gotta lean over a little ledge in order to reach the containers? One lady (a fellow scooper) was reaching into the freezer to scoop, and there were some already-scooped dishes of ice cream sitting on the ledge that she had to reach over. I swear her pits touched the top of the ice cream in those dishes. And she was wearing a tank top! Honest to god. You'd think I'd lose my appetite after that, but I still somehow scarfed down at least eight scoops (which I scooped myself thankyouverymuch!!)



1. Fort Mason, all prettied up. 2. The booth. 3. MMM pre-pit ice cream! 4. My blister from scooping.