Too Much Eating Out!

By Monday of last week, Sumie and I had to put a moratorium on eating out.  Even Mimi agreed.  She wanted to make sure she could still fit into her new Beatles shirt (it's her favorite).

We've been pretty good since arriving in San Francisco.  Back in NYC, we'd eat out or order-in at least 2-3 times a week, but here in SF we decided to cut back (the selection of restaurants in the Richmond district made this a bit easier).  This past week, however, we completely fell of the wagon.  Well, more like fell off the wagon and down a cliff.  Was it worth it?  Take a look.

About 10 days ago we hit Oyaji with my friend John and his girlfriend Jen.  They were down from Washington and we wanted to share a good meal with them.  We also wanted to eat at Oyaji's (it's rather amazing just how easily we find excuses for eating there).  We don't have any pictures because we were so transfixed by the food.

That wasn't the end of our Japanese food adventures, though.  On Saturday, Michelle, another friend of mine, this time from college, came down from Sacramento with her husband Paul, her son Owen, and Rin, a Japanese exchange student visiting the US for two weeks.  We decided to try a new ramen shop on Geary.  All ramen was half price, so why not?

I'm afraid I can't quite remember the name of the place (it's on Geary between 16th and 17th avenues).  It was their first day and the food was a bit hit or miss.  The ramen, while quite tasty, wasn't really traditional.  I didn't mind so much but Sumie pronounced, "Too much garlic!"  I definitely want to go back, though.  There's some real promise there and a few weeks may make a big difference.

The best part of the day, though, was catching up with an old friend and getting to know her family.  Rin, who is a freshman in highschool, was particularly outgoing for a Japanese boy and fell in well with both the kids and the adults.  Mimi and Owen hit is off almost instantly.

I don't know what it is about my little girl, but she loves playing with older kids, and, for some odd reason, older kids don't seem to mind her following about.  It's really cute now, but I worry what this is going to mean when she gets into high school.  Hmm.  Maybe it means she'll be going to an all-girls school. 

Here's the full group, sans Sumie and Michelle, who were busily taking pictures.  

Having had our fill of Japanese food, but not of eating out, we decided to go for brunch on Sunday morning.  We left the house early (for San Francisco) and arrived at Ella's shortly before 10:00.  It was already pretty packed, but we secured a seat within about 15 minutes.

We'd been trying to work our way into Ella's for the past month or two and it was definitely worth the wait.  Safe to say it was the best breakfast I've had in San Francisco so far.  The ambiance, noise, food, and price (unfortunately) reminded me of the nicer diners we'd frequent back in NYC.  As we finished off our massive plates of chicken-hash and omelets, savoring a meal in which Mimi was sufficiently distracted by all the commotion for us to eat, San Francisco began to feel just a bit more like home.  

We were fit to burst, we figured out eating out days were over, but then we received a call Monday night from Kae and family.  Could we meet them for Chinese in the Sunset district?  Sure, go ahead, twist our arm.  We were there even before Kae, Ed, and the rest of the family.  

We met at an old favorite of Ed's family's: Ming's Diner.  It was fantastic.  And reasonable!  If only they delivered.  The thinly sliced pork chops were, quite simply, a revelation.

But the best part of the dinner was the spontaneous train Nana, Lilly, and Mimi decided to make halfway through the meal.

It was a rather gluttonous long weekend, I have to admit.  Sumie, as a result, has been on a bit of a vegetable kick this week.  We're learning that this city, once you really start digging into it, can be a pretty dangerous place when it comes to food.  One thing is for sure: Mimi loves eating out.  She'll eat twice as much in a restaurant than she does at home.  I'm not sure if that's an indication of how much fun it is to eat out, or just how bad our cooking is.  I'm hoping it's the former. 

A Weekend Away

Yes, friends, it's been a while.  Two weeks, I believe.  And a lot has happened, so much that we hardly had time to take pictures. 

Let's start with the home front.  Mimi still demands a book at bedtime, but for the first time she's found an every-night favorite.  Sure, there have been other books that she's liked in the rotation (books by Taro Gomi, in particular), but nothing has held her attention like Mike Mulligan and his dear steam shovel Mary Anne. 

For at least the last ten days Mimi has pulled this monumentally heavy book off the shelf and toddled it over to me just before bedtime.  I don't mind.  It's kind of endearing, actually, as it was one of my favorite books as a kid, too.   I also think it's helping Mimi develop the idea of story.  Because the pictures are so familiar now, she's starting to focus more on the words I'm saying and the words on the page.  Her attention span is growing, too.  I've a feeling that in a few months Mimi will start insisting that she read some of her books to me and, just like she does now with the alphabet, she'll start yelling "No Papa!" when I try to chime in. 

Though we've been doing a lot of book reading, that's not what kept me from posting.  This past weekend I left the family behind and joined four friends from college at a campground in Salt Point, about 150 miles north of San Francisco on the amazingly blue Pacific Ocean. 

It was a fantastic boys-only weekend, which means that 98% of what occurred and was discussed cannot be relayed on this family blog.  I can, however, share one of the highlights of the trip.  It was, I have to admit, a little bit of a dream come true.

Readers of this blog know I'm a car nut and that I love driving.  Having Highway 1 basically in our backyard has been a tremendous tease.  I've been out on it a few times, but never have I been able to fully exploit it.  Invariably I'd be with the family, and toddlers (their moms too, if I'm honest) don't like driving fast on twisty roads.  This past weekend, however, the stars aligned for some serious fun on that most famous of coastal roads.  On Friday morning, the day I was to go up to Salt Point, I purchased a brand new and very sticky set of Sumitomo tires.  With new rubber correctly balance and aligned all the way around, the BMW Wagon was feeling frisky.  It was just me and that white, unassuming 325 Wagon heading up a very dry Highway 1, under unseasonably blue skies, at speeds that were - hmm, how shall I put this - invigorating.  I can honestly say that it wasn't crazy or dangerous (I'm no longer 18 years old), but it was the first time I really experienced what that little wagon can do.  Let's just say it completely reaffirmed my conviction to never buy a minivan. 

While I was off tearing up the coast, Sumie and Mimi made the most of my absence by spending the weekend with family in the East Bay.  Nana, Lilly, and Mimi hit Super Franks, a kid-friendly theme restaurant with endless amounts of plastic food stuffs that Mimi insisted on putting in her mouth.

There were also plenty of rides.  Here's Mimi in a Jeep with a chimpanzee (nothing odd about that).  Sumie, of course, didn't put any money into the ride.  Why?  Well, our brave little girl tends to scream bloody murder whenever one of these wild rides starts gently undulating.  I'm really worried about her first roller coaster ride.  

After the excitement of Super Franks, Mimi relaxed with her baby cousin Harukun.  I think she wants a little brother or sister.  

Of course, the past two weeks have been filled with work for both Sumie and me.  This has given me the opportunity to catalog a few more SF Muni bus fails.  They're really not all that hard to come by.  The other day, while heading to lunch with a co-worker, we came across the following abandoned Muni bus straddling one of the busiest intersections in the city.  

As we walked by we passed a Muni official walking toward the bus - confidently, I might add - with a big orange cone.  That was the Muni solution.  Cone that bus.

My friend and I figured that the bus would still be stuck in the intersection 20 minutes later as we headed back with our burgers,  but we were wrong.  We'd underestimated the genius of SF Muni.  Apparently unsatisfied with the coning, Muni officials had moved the bus out of the intersection.  But clearing streets is not the Muni way.  No.  They moved the misplaced bus several hundred yards down Mission street and then parked 5 more abandoned buses directly behind it, completely shutting down the traffic flow on Mission.  And what about the intersection?  Well, that was still partially blocked because the Muni official directing the complete and utter shutdown of Mission had decided to park his Ford Focus in the middle of the intersection rather than on the side of the road.  That, my friends, is the SF Muni way.

Will do my best to share more pictures, and more often, in the future.  Hope all the Papa in SF readers out there are doing well!