Sam vs. pig

July 26, 2010 - 4:19 pm 1 Comment

I still need to finish writing about my trip last month!  LOL!

Last week, a friend of my parents came over to visit from Alaska.  She was in town visiting her daughter.  She brought over some lechon (bbq pig) for my mom to cook into another filipino dish, paksil (sp??).

I thought it would be funny to show Sam the pig’s head:

Sam vs pig

He was all “HUH???” while sniffing it! Then he tried to lick it repeatedly! Hahahaha! Smells good!

Lechon!

I was trying to take this picture but Sam kept coming up to the table and trying to have a lick at it. He distracted me so much I forgot to shoot in aperture priority, hence the larger aperture in this pic instead. Grrrrr.

San Francisco: Day 2

July 18, 2010 - 2:05 am No Comments

Day 2 proved to be a busy and tiring day!  After a good night sleep, I woke up early in the morning so we could check out the Farmer’s Market at Civic Center.  Cat would meet up with us there to walk around before heading off to work after lunch.

Heart of the City Farmer’s Market happens on Wednesdays and Sundays in the United Nations Plaza from 7am to 5pm.  You find a lot of local produce from the Bay Area and beyond, plus some cool food carts/trucks.

Farmer's Market @ Civic Center

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My mom ended up buying 4 plants from a vendor there. Yup, plants! One was a pomegrante, stevia, lemon verbena and…I can’t remember the last one. Some of them are kinda pricey here in Memphis already grown so she wanted to buy them there since they looked to be really good quality. Ugh, I’ll tell you the story of how we “smuggled” those back to Memphis in my luggage later.

After we saw Cat off to work, the next place my mom wanted to go to was Japantown. Now, before our trip to SF, I had told her about the “100yen” stores from Japan. Japantown has 2 of them: Ichiban Kan and Daiso.  My mom has this thing for dollar stores so I knew she would have a blast shopping at both.  She was eager to check out both stores.

We caught the #2 Clement bus instead of taking the #38 Geary as when we saw Cat off to work, we had headed towards the Financial District.  We got off at Japantown and went right into Ichiban Kan.  I didn’t take any pictures as I just wanted to spend the time browsing around.  My mom had a field day in that store!  She probably spent around $25 or so on various things from silk pillow covers to these cute cosmetic containers.  Will post pics of those later.

Directly across from Ichiban Kan in the Japantown Mall is a small Daiso!

Daiso in Japantown

I did find some cool things I wanted to get from this store but they were out of stock. They were these little flags you hang on the wall. The sample ones had a cat and fish that were so cute and just $1.50 each! Again, my mom bought more stuff (lots of wind chimes for our backyard) from this store but I told her that we would be going to the larger Daiso store near Serramonte in Daly City soon.

We walked around Japantown and looked at a lot of stuff. I wanted to see more stores in the area, namely the New People building across the street.  It was still under construction when I visited San Francisco last year in June.  Unfortunately, my mom wanted to go to Clement Street right away.  UGGGH!

We hopped back on the #2 bus.  I warned my mom that it was a much longer ride this time to Clement.  I also said we definitely had to get some lunch once we got to Clement as I was getting hungry and it was almost 2pm!

For those that don’t know, Clement Street is where the locals go for chinese stuff.  Chinatown is for the tourist and the chinese that live in that area.  Clement Street is more for actual locals that don’t want to deal with the craziness in Chinatown (the traffic and crowds).  It’s a stretch of 5-7 blocks of chinese businesses mixed with non-chinese restaurants (some rated very highly) and businesses.  There are 2 japanese grocery stores located on Clement also.

When I need to buy souvenirs, I sometimes buy them at Clement because they will always be cheaper than buying in Chinatown.  We just walked up and down the street, going into the Kamei store.  There’s another store similar to this across the street and further up that we checked out.  I used to go to these stores when I lived in SF as I liked collecting small japanese bowls with cute designs.  They always sold them for cheaper than what I could find in Japantown.

All that walking made me sooo hungry that we stopped at Wing Lee to eat.  Now, I only get the fried chicken from this place.  I have a thing for chinese fried chicken.  This place makes the best!  They have a 2 item special for $4.88!

Wing Lee 2 item special for $4.88

I got the fried chicken, some stir fried greens and fried rice.  My mom chose something with tripe.  I can’t remember the other item she got.  After lunch, we walked into a couple more stores and found a vest my dad had been wanting to get since his Mediterranean cruise last fall. He’d seen a lot of men using a vest like this and didn’t have to carry a “murse” to hold his camera and stuff.

Vest for dad

Initially, he was going to buy it from Lands End but $60 for a vest seemed too steep to him. This was just $25. I took a pic of it and sent it to my sister Charlie to show to him to make sure this is what he wanted. He said YESSSS so my mom got it for him for Father’s Day.

After finding this, my mom wanted to buy some dim sum to bring back to the hotel.  She purchased just a few pieces to snack on and we headed back to the hotel.  Mom wanted to rest for a bit so we just watched tv in our room.   When my mom woke up from her short nap, we headed out again to Union Square one block away.  Funny thing, we went into Forever 21.  It’s massive with 40,000 sq. feet and 3 floors.  I wanted to check out the jewelry as I knew they would have a larger selection than our local store in Memphis.  My mom, who has never ventured into the local store back home, had a blast looking at all the jewelry!  I think she was too overwhelmed to pick something out to buy that she didn’t get anything that night.

We headed over to the thai restaurant Cat took me to the previous night.  Bangkok Noodles is a thai restaurant just a block over.  I was a little hungry but my mom said she would just snack on her dim sum as she wasn’t that hungry.  I ordered this to go:

Guay Teaw Pad Se-Ew @ Bangkok Noodles in Union Square

It’s Guay Teaw Pad Se-Ew which is stir fried flat noodles, chinese broccoli, egg, black bean sauce with chicken. Priced at $7.25. It was SO DELICOUS!!!! Seriously, big portion for the price! My mom couldn’t resist eating it with me! I actually ate only a little as I knew Cat was going to call me after she got off work.

When Cat did call me, she said that I was going with her and her friends (Rolly and Joe) to my old neighborhood, North Beach, to eat. GAH! They picked me up and we went to Tony’s Pizzeria Napoletano.

They ordered 2 pizzas and truffle fries! I was actually more excited about eating truffle fries than pizza! OMG, TASTES SOOO GOOD! My first time actually tasting something coated with truffles!

OMG, TRUFFLE FRIES!!!

Pizza at Tony's Pizza Napoletana

Pizza at Tony's Pizza Napoletana

The pizzas were excellent as everything was fresh and the dough was handmade! I was sooo stuffed that evening! After we ate, they took me back to the hotel and I promptly fell asleep!

Sam seizures?

July 13, 2010 - 5:25 pm 4 Comments

I was upstairs in the balcony when my dad called me downstairs in a really loud and worried voice. He said to come quick as something was wrong with Sam. I rushed down and found Sam lying on the rug in front of the back door.

He was panting heavily with drool dripping from his mouth and a large turd of poop coming out of his butt. His tail was down, as if trying to keep it from coming out. My dad pointed to Sam’s bed where I saw that Sam must have been lying down when he lost all control of his bowel movements so he peed and pooped all at the same time there.

The only time this has happened was last year when he had what we think must have been a grand mal seizure. Today, no one was around to see if he actually did have a seizure (the kicking around and sort). We only saw afterwards. If he did have a seizure, it must have been a small one because the poop wasn’t all over the place and his bed was pretty much in the same spot where it usually is.

I tried to comfort Sam as much as I could so he wouldn’t freak out even more while my dad got the poop and cleaned up the area. As soon as the poop was cleared, I took Sam outside. He wouldn’t drink any fresh water I gave him but only wanted to stick by my side. After 10 minutes of being out in the hot and humid weather, we came back in. He went directly for his usual spot between the kitchen and dining room where he is now sleeping once again. He’s calmed down now but I worry that he might start running a slight fever, like the last time.

*sigh* I wish we knew why dogs have moments like this!

San Francisco - Day 1

July 9, 2010 - 5:43 pm 1 Comment

I FINALLY finished my San Francisco pictures! Gods, I get slower with age when it comes to editing pics on Photoshop. I really need to get a book on Lightroom since it’s supposed to be faster than using Photoshop.

A couple of months ago, my mom was surfing the web and found an incredible deal on Yahoo Travel for 7 days in San Francisco. The deal was airfare + hotel for a mere $560 each. Considering that the deal would be in June, that’s a pretty cheap deal since it’s tourist time on the days the deal was good for! She had been wanting to go back to visit San Francisco as the only times she had been was while I was still living in SF (she stayed for only 3 days) and our first trip to the West Coast back in the late 80s. Since I had lived in the City before and knew my way around, I got drafted into going with her. Heh, I wasn’t complaining as I would get to see my friends again after being there a year ago for Roberto’s birthday.

We flew out on June 8 on Air Tran. Here’s the thing I don’t like about using Air Tran: When you fly out of Memphis to the West Coast, you HAVE TO fly to Atlanta to catch the connecting flight. It’s a fucking waste of time as it adds almost 2 hours to your travel time to do that! So, what is normally 4 hour flight from Memphis to SFO is now almost 6 hours. We didn’t have a choice in the airline with this package. Other than that, Air Tran was actually quite nice, clean and on time going to SF.

I had pre booked us to use Super Shuttle from SFO as I had found a $3 off coupon to use. So, 2 people were $27 (first person: $17, second person $10) minus coupon $3 turned out to $24. I had always used Super Shuttle when I was still living in SF and needed an airport shuttle so that’s why I chose to use them. Service was prompt and courteous. They dropped us right off at our hotel.

We stayed at Hotel Metropolis at the corner of Mason & Turk St. Now, if you’re familiar with SF, this is the outskirts of the Tenderloin District. It’s STILL safe to be around this location at night as long as you aren’t looking like you’re plastered with money. I chose this hotel because it’s almost directly on Market Street. The BART/MUNI station is one block from this hotel. All the major bus lines stop one block from this hotel. Hell, the Westfield Mall, cable car turnaround, shopping at Union Square start one block from this hotel. It’s pretty much the ideal location without spending the $$$$!

The hotel itself is quite nice! Just 10 floors with a modern twist. The rooms were small but the beds were EXCELLENT! Housekeeping did a superb job each morning! When we had a problem with the mini fridge in our room, the replaced it right away.

Hotel Metropolis

My mom on her bed in the room. Damn, she claimed the window bed yet she complained about the noise from the street every night!

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Finished!

July 3, 2010 - 3:15 am No Comments

I swear, Photoshopping pics bores me so much these days that I think it’s the reason I don’t take as many pics on a daily or weekly basis. The thought of editing gets me all “UGH”.

I FINALLY FINISHED all the pictures I took while in San Francisco for 7 days last month! It was just my mom and me as she found this sweet ass deal online that was airfare + hotel from Memphis for an incredible price that couldn’t be turned down!

During this trip, I took a lot more pictures than I’ve ever taken on all my trips back to San Francisco. Funny, when you live in a place…you tend to take for granted of all the sites around you so you just don’t take pictures of them. Last year when I went to SF for Roberto’s birthday, I hardly took any pictures. This time, I had to take them because my mom wanted me to even though she was taking pictures with her own camera.

I will upload them to Flickr as soon as I get done titling and tagging them with the Flickr Uploader. *sigh* More work!