San Francisco

Over the weekend John and I went to San Francisco to surprise our friend Jason for his birthday!  We left San Diego bright and early and arrived in San Fran by 8:30am!  When we got to San Fran, John and I met up with two of our other friends, Jake and Leah, who had flown in from Phoenix on Friday.  We grabbed a quick bite to eat and then headed over to Jason and Shannon’s house for the surprise!

Shannon had coordinated with John and Jake, and was expecting us around 10:30am to surprise Jason.  Knowing it was us, Shannon told Jason to answer the door, and he was very surprised!  After our initial “Surprise!” we met up with a bunch of Shannon and Jason’s friends that live in San Francisco, and took a ferry to Sam’s Café for brunch in Tiburon.  Although it took a while to be seated, we passed the time with some beverages and good company! Brunch was delicious, and we all had an amazing time.

 

Such cuties, Jake and Leah 

  

  

The six of us!

Sam's was packed!

After brunch we parted ways with Jason and Shannon’s San Fran friends, and the six of us headed back to their apartment where we relaxed for a while.  Shannon had a fun evening planned for us, so we rested up, had an afternoon snack of pizza and wings, and rallied ourselves for a second round of parting.  Shannon reserved a room at a great whiskey bar (I forgot the name of it), and we all had a great time sipping whiskey.  We all felt so mature :-P  It was a great night!  Unfortunately, Jason got sick from some “creamy” oysters he had eaten for lunch (great birthday surprise, right?), so the night ended early, but John, Jake, Leah and I were happy to head back, as we were exhausted from drinking and sitting in the sun earlier that day.

On Sunday morning, Leah and Jake had to catch an early flight, but mine and John’s flight wasn’t until the afternoon, so we ate at this amazing place called Sweet Maple, where they have the most amazing “Millionaires Bacon” which has even been featured on the Discovery Channel.  The Millionaire’s bacon was about ¼ inch thick, cage-free bacon, baked with brown sugar for over four hours, and sprinkled with red and black pepper.  Oh. My!  This bacon was on a whole other level – it didn’t even taste like bacon.  It was like the most delicious, crispy, fatty piece of candy you’ve ever had.

We spent some time exploring San Francisco after breakfast, walking around areas like the Haight-Ashbury.   At around 4pm, we headed back to Jason and Shannon’s to grab our stuff, and were off to the airport.  It was a short weekend, but SO fun!  And it was great to be able to celebrate together for Jason’s birthday.  I love hanging out with Jason, Shannon, Jake, and Leah.  They are really fun couples and we all get along so well.  We discussed the possibility of all taking a trip to Vegas or New Orleans together, which would be fun, and we are definitely hoping to have a mini-reunion in San Diego once we move into the Penthouse Penthouse.  All in all, we had an amazing time, thanks to Jason and Shannon for their hospitality, and Happy Birthday to Jason!

I love the San Francisco style

hahaha love this picture!

Anniversary Dinner

John and I had a bomb dinner tonight at Searsucker.  It was unbelievably good.  I got an amazing apple pear martini, John and I split clams as an appetizer, and for our entrees I got an artichoke heart dish, while John got scallops.  Thought I'd post some pics real quick before bed!

In you I've found the Love of My Life, and My Closest Truest Friend

Happy 3 years to the love of my life.  I have enjoyed every minute of our journey together and I hope we have a long road of adventure ahead of us to continue exploring together <3

Big Things Happening!

This week has been exciting and eventful to say the least, and just a wee bit stressful.  John and I made some big moves in regards to our housing!  We have been keeping our eye on an apartment called AVA Cortez Hill in downtown San Diego.  Check out the website, the complex is super sweet - AMAZING gym, gorgeous pool, hangout areas, young crowd, balconies in every apartment, etc. We've been waiting for an apartment to come up that was within our price range, but as time elapsed, we realized that our price range was pretty unrealistic for living in downtown San Diego.  Soooo, when a penthouse studio became available for a bit more than our comfortable price range, we decided to just go for it!  We put down our deposit yesterday and are moving in on August 10!  We are going to be living on the 15th floor - TOP FLOOR PENTHOUSE STUDIO!!  YES!  The above pic is supposedly our future view!  We are soooo excited!  As soon as we stopped debating about whether or not it was too expensive and just went for it and put down the deposit, our attitudes went from stressed to PUMPED!  We figured everything's been falling right into place for us so far, so why not go with our gut for this, too.  We'll see what happens, but starting August 10, John and I will be living large for a year in our newly named "Penthouse Penthouse" apartment (those of you who watch Workaholics will know the reference).

In other news, I had my first two events at DT this week on Tuesday and Wednesday.  It was super stressful to have two events back to back, but everything worked out and the events were a smashing success!  Tuesday's event was a part of San Diego tech week, called "Tech Crawl" where two groups of thirty people walked from tech office to tech office in downtown San Diego, and at each stop they were given a short talk, tour, and a taster of a San Diego Micro brew.  At DT though, we like to do things differently.  Go above and beyond so people remember us.  People are definitely going to remember us from our event!  Upon entering our building, the crawlers were given small little sombreros, offered a full beer, and tequila shots with limes and salt.  Oh, and to top it all off, we even had a Mariachi band!  The event was amazing, everyone had such a great time, and I heard "this is the best stop on the crawl!!" dozens of times!  Huge success and so much fun!

Part of the DT team with the Mariachis

DT Ladies with the Mariachis.  Ooolala

Wednesday's event was a bit more low-key, but still fun and a lot of prep work.  As another one of San Diego Tech Week's events, about one-hundred people joined us at our office for something called Ignite.  A forum where speakers talk for only five minutes, and have to cater their talk to coincide with a slideshow of 20 slides that transition every 15 seconds.  It's quite a challenge for speakers and interesting to watch for the audience.  There were some really great talks, and Wednesday was another great success.  

Today at work I've been loving every minute, as it's like a breath of fresh area after scrambling like a crazy woman for these events the first half of the week.  Can't wait to be home from work before 10pm tonight, too! :-)  Oh, and on a side note, tomorrow is John and my three year anniversary.  Awwwww

4th of July & The Rest of the Week

This was John’s second week of work, and so far he really likes it.  He’s getting the hang of what he’ll be doing, learning a lot, and settling in.  Aside from being another busy week at work, John and I did several fun things to keep us busy outside of work. 

On Tuesday, it was a bit cloudy all day, and around sunset we happened to take a walk at the perfect time.  The sun was just setting over the city, and the sun was peaking out of the clouds in all the right spots.  It was so colorful and a gorgeous sunset.

  

On Wednesday night, John and I met Jed and Jamile for dinner.  We ate at one of my favorite San Diego restaurants, Sushi Deli.  It had been a couple weeks since we’d seen them, so we had a blast catching up and enjoying each other’s company.  After dinner, John and I met up with his friends John and Alec, who both went to high school with John.  We hung out for a bit and ended up playing John’s favorite game, Cards Against Humanity.  

Thursday we both had off for 4^th of July, and spent the day relaxing in the San Diego sunshine.  We heard the traffic for the fireworks is always insane, so John and I decided to walk from our apartment to the bay to watch the fireworks.  It wasn’t too far of a walk (a little over five miles round trip), so we figured it’d be better than driving in gridlocked traffic.  The fireworks in the bay were so amazing, they don’t call it the “Big Bay Boom” for nothing.  Fireworks are launched off of four different barges around the bay, so you can easily see the fireworks from pretty much anywhere along the shoreline.  We camped out in a park right along the bay, and had a great view of one of the barges that was just offshore from the park.  The video below shows all four barges of fireworks going off at the finale.  They were such amazing fireworks; we had a blast!

Yesterday we just hung out after work; we didn’t do anything too major.  But now we have the whole weekend ahead of us!  I’m sure we’ll end up doing lots of fun things!