California Weekend
Hey there, poor disused LJ!
So I just took a long weekend off to go to San Francisco to visit anacoluthon and a lot of other friends, and it was pretty great! There were many things, let's see if I can remember them all.
Flew out Thursday at the tail end of having a cold and got in horribly jet-lagged, so Mo and Enne took me out to Pi Bar for pizza, as their preferred "too much airplane" comfort food. It was quite tasty, and I thankfully managed to miss the waitress by six inches when I knocked my beer clean over.
Friday... amazing donuts for breakfast (one with delightfully restrained bacon topping, and another with apricot and cardamom, so good), then off walking to some hills behind the city. Mo took me to one he'd been at before that's a good hike with lots of cool trees and stuff, and I spotted another nearby which he hadn't been to that offered a fantastic panoramic view of the city. That night (I think it was that night?) we went with Enne to this adorable little Japanese restaurant run by a mother/daughter pair where they make sure you eat your vegetables. And then Mo took me to Smuggler's Cove, where many tasty drinks were had by me, including the Pupule (allspice, cinnamon, vanilla, lime, orange, aged Virgin Islands rum), the Dead Reckoning (Private Reserve rum, pineapple, lemon, vanilla liqueur, maple, tawny port, Angostura bitters), and the Port Light (bourbon, lemon, honey, passion fruit, egg white). (Yes, I registered for the SC website to look those up just for my adoring audience, you're welcome.)
Saturday, hmm, I think we walked to a leisurely brunch at a nice diner-type place. (So much walking all weekend, but it was pretty great. I am slowly becoming more and more sold on city living.) In the afternoon we headed down to South SF for Talcon, a birthday party for a member of the GameSpite forums I hang out on that's morphed into this huge meet-up with like 30 or 40 people. Got to meet several dozen friends I've known only online for years, played some Gundam Extreme Vs and an epic Rockband session of Bohemian Rhapsody, got some 3DS tags, and generally hung out, while Mo got sucked into a huge game of Settlers of Catan with extra German expansions.
Sunday was delicious bakery food breakfast and sharing some cajun plates for lunch (except the bit with prawn etouffee, which was all mine, yum), and then over to Oakland to meet up with corpsefairy, madmanatw, leora, darch, V, Starchy, and Lisa, for lots of hanging out and also tasty burgers and ice cream. Haven't had a chance to geek out about this and that with those folks for a long time, so that was fun.
Monday was breakfast at a slightly ridiculous but tasty single-cup-at-a-time coffee brewery, and then Mo had scheduled a tour at Anchor Steam Brewery, which was great. The very enthusiastic guide gave a quite interesting history of the company (it was one of the first local brewers to really rebound after the advent of national brands, and re-introduced several styles that had all but disappeared) before showing off the equipment, and then heading to the bar for samples - you got up to 4oz *each* of the six kinds they had on tap (Steam, Liberty Ale, Brekle's Brown, Bock, Porter, and Old Foghorn Barleywine) - all for free; thumbs up Anchor. Even the styles that aren't my thing were pretty good, and I quite liked all the dark ones. The long-ish walk back plus some nachos took off most of the tipsy after that. In the evening we went with Enne to Thirsty Bear, a tapas type place that also brews there own beer, where I had the delicious Seventh Stave, a seasonal bourbon barrel aged dark ale with figs.
Then I took a red-eye home because I'm dumb, but fortunately managed to get some sleep on the plane. Almost caught up by now...
This post is like 70% food and alcohol by volume, isn't it? Not complaining.
So I just took a long weekend off to go to San Francisco to visit anacoluthon and a lot of other friends, and it was pretty great! There were many things, let's see if I can remember them all.
Flew out Thursday at the tail end of having a cold and got in horribly jet-lagged, so Mo and Enne took me out to Pi Bar for pizza, as their preferred "too much airplane" comfort food. It was quite tasty, and I thankfully managed to miss the waitress by six inches when I knocked my beer clean over.
Friday... amazing donuts for breakfast (one with delightfully restrained bacon topping, and another with apricot and cardamom, so good), then off walking to some hills behind the city. Mo took me to one he'd been at before that's a good hike with lots of cool trees and stuff, and I spotted another nearby which he hadn't been to that offered a fantastic panoramic view of the city. That night (I think it was that night?) we went with Enne to this adorable little Japanese restaurant run by a mother/daughter pair where they make sure you eat your vegetables. And then Mo took me to Smuggler's Cove, where many tasty drinks were had by me, including the Pupule (allspice, cinnamon, vanilla, lime, orange, aged Virgin Islands rum), the Dead Reckoning (Private Reserve rum, pineapple, lemon, vanilla liqueur, maple, tawny port, Angostura bitters), and the Port Light (bourbon, lemon, honey, passion fruit, egg white). (Yes, I registered for the SC website to look those up just for my adoring audience, you're welcome.)
Saturday, hmm, I think we walked to a leisurely brunch at a nice diner-type place. (So much walking all weekend, but it was pretty great. I am slowly becoming more and more sold on city living.) In the afternoon we headed down to South SF for Talcon, a birthday party for a member of the GameSpite forums I hang out on that's morphed into this huge meet-up with like 30 or 40 people. Got to meet several dozen friends I've known only online for years, played some Gundam Extreme Vs and an epic Rockband session of Bohemian Rhapsody, got some 3DS tags, and generally hung out, while Mo got sucked into a huge game of Settlers of Catan with extra German expansions.
Sunday was delicious bakery food breakfast and sharing some cajun plates for lunch (except the bit with prawn etouffee, which was all mine, yum), and then over to Oakland to meet up with corpsefairy, madmanatw, leora, darch, V, Starchy, and Lisa, for lots of hanging out and also tasty burgers and ice cream. Haven't had a chance to geek out about this and that with those folks for a long time, so that was fun.
Monday was breakfast at a slightly ridiculous but tasty single-cup-at-a-time coffee brewery, and then Mo had scheduled a tour at Anchor Steam Brewery, which was great. The very enthusiastic guide gave a quite interesting history of the company (it was one of the first local brewers to really rebound after the advent of national brands, and re-introduced several styles that had all but disappeared) before showing off the equipment, and then heading to the bar for samples - you got up to 4oz *each* of the six kinds they had on tap (Steam, Liberty Ale, Brekle's Brown, Bock, Porter, and Old Foghorn Barleywine) - all for free; thumbs up Anchor. Even the styles that aren't my thing were pretty good, and I quite liked all the dark ones. The long-ish walk back plus some nachos took off most of the tipsy after that. In the evening we went with Enne to Thirsty Bear, a tapas type place that also brews there own beer, where I had the delicious Seventh Stave, a seasonal bourbon barrel aged dark ale with figs.
Then I took a red-eye home because I'm dumb, but fortunately managed to get some sleep on the plane. Almost caught up by now...
This post is like 70% food and alcohol by volume, isn't it? Not complaining.