pamiam’s blog

I feel like a crab sandwich.

Ken took me out for my birthday last month to Le Commis in Piedmont, it was an amazing meal, with all the elements of symphonic taste/texture.  The only thing was the portions seemed rather small, and while I agree that the cost of the meal was to pay for the experience, and while I was just sated enough, I worried about ken who can eat like a whole large pizza by himself in 1 sitting if he wanted to.  It was an excellent meal though, and happy birthday to me... another year, gasp!

attack of the september babies--kerry, chuck, jon, chris, kevin, donald, kelcy, ken's aunt, ken's grandpa.

Ken's family also took me out to a Korean restaurant, and it was soooo good, i loooove all those side dishes.  Kyle and J9 also treated us to pizza, 50% off Tuesdays hahaha.

We went canoeing at Lake Del Valle, and of course the dog came too :) it was a beautiful hot day but it was cool on the lake.  We brought vietnamese sandwiches for lunch, which we ate after finding a quiet spot on the lake shore, where nikki almost gave me a heart attack when she climbed atop this steep hill top and decided to take a crap on the ledge, she's such a strange but extremely flexible and acrobatic dog.

Hawaii here we come, yayyy!  Ken found some kick@ss deals on Hawaiian Air, $300 flight to Oahu from San Jose, and add in a $100 loyalty discount HA was giving.  we'll be celebrating our 2 year anniversary there too, sweet!  Now if only I can make sure I don't work on my vacation, that will be perfect.

I'm nearing my 10 year mark since moving to the Bay Area.  It amazes me how quickly 10 years has gone by, and that I'm still here!

In 10 years...

1999--moved to the Bay Area

2000-started working

2001-broke up with DC, moved in with Kyle, landlord of the Hawaii house, met Ken

2004-bought my condo, promoted to manager, adopted a dog with ken

2007-got married

2008-bought a house, promoted to sr manager

after nearly 10 years, I'm still working at the same place!  isn't that crazy? but ken's been working at the same place for nearly 10 years too.

but 2009 has been a brutal year for me at a work level.  2007 was busy, as we had the wedding and all the preparations for it.  2008 was busy with buying a house and moving and making it our home.  i thought 2009 I could get back to normalcy, but 2009 has been such a tough year.  work has been extremely hard, with clients cutting back and expecting same service while partners expect higher profitability, and high expectations, it's been a tough environment to work under.  I've never seen it so out of control, but then again I've never seen so much strife in the economy.

I've certainly reached a point in my career where I need to make a decision.  Once I got promoted to manager the money's been good, I can see how big 4 won't pay that great until you're in management, as the point is once you're in management, they want to groom you to be a director or a partner.  but i can't say i'm partner type material, and i'm evaluating the next step to take.

work is ridiculously busy.  and it's easy to get caught up in the strife and get down, but I'm certainly grateful for the things that I have in my life.  ken and i were just driving one day going back home, after eating dinner, and it was quiet in the car, but quiet in a comfortable way, and at one point we were stopped at a traffic light, we looked at each other and he smiled and just said, you know we have so much to be grateful for.  getting married to ken has been a wonderful blessing, and I feel extremely fortunate to have found someone that I'm nuts about and that has reciprocated equally to me and more.  But he can still be a brat, man we can argue about stupid stuff sometimes.

will be taking a trip with ken back home to hawaii soon, it'll be good of course to visit mom/dad, the friends, and all the yummy hawaii food!!!  my mom has her list of things she wants me to bring her from sf, my dad is looking forward to ken helping him with things around the house, it'll be great to see them--hopefully my mom will stop treating me like i'm 10, but highly unlikely.  lately my uncle has been throwing these family luaus at his house in the front of the house since he had his own private lane, which is pretty cool, because he used to do this back when I was growing up, but stopped for whatever reason when I started going to college.  but they've been started up again and I love how it's sort of reuniting the whole family again.  seeing my dad, and his 3 remaining siblings party together is the most hilarious thing, i love seeing them all together. 

A good way to use up onions is to make French Onion Soup!  Of course choosing like the weekend where we have a heatwave to cook soup might not have been the smartest, but I had onions and I had bread getting old, so that's what we had.  Very easy to make, just took some time.  SO good!  Plus it gave me an excuse to finally use these soup bowls that we received as a wedding gift nearly 2 years ago.  3 T Butter, 2 onions, red wine, beef broth, french bread, provolone cheese.  next time will remember to add in garlic and parmesan.  but still super good, easy to make but it takes like 90 minutes.  2 whole onions for 2 bowls of soup, pretty unreal how much onion is used.

IMG_4596

It's 1 am, and so much still to do. 

This past weekend we took a trip to Mendocino, a 3 hour drive up along the northern California coast.  Nikki had won us a stay at the Schoolhouse Creek Inn, a pet friendly bed and breakfast in Mendocino. 

Friday I had to participate in a corporate sporting event in San Jose, which basically had us split into teams competing in various obstacle courses.  It was totally fun, but very hot, and free stadium type food galore, but I had so much work to do since I was taking the weekend and Monday off, that I really wished I could have just worked on Friday.  And when I got home, I was exhausted and had to take a 2 hour nap.  Afterwards, I worked for 2 more hours on some projects I had to get in, and this was on top of working Thursday night til' 2 am.  I also ended up working about an hour on Saturday and on Sunday to complete my remaining projects due.  Dammit, if only I didn't have to attend the sporting even on Friday, I could have wrapped it all up then.

Mendocino is a very quiet and quaint coastal town, very similar to Carmel but quieter and quainter even.  After feasting on super yummy home made pastrami sandwiches from Patterson's pub in Windsor, and an hour later, we arrived and got to check in an hour earlier.  They presented us with a goodie reusable tote bag for Nikki with treats, a doggie mag, frisbee and tennis ball.  In the room they also provide stuff for Nikki: blankets, doggie bags, towels, food bowls and a mat.  So cool, I loved how dog friendly the place was.  The room was a studio with a private bath and a deck with a view of the coast.  The king bed was suuuuper comfy and both of us felt like there was so much bed real estate we could sprawl out.  The property was large with cottages and rooms spread out over the property.  There were even 2 mini donkeys hanging out--what a sweet life for those 2.  There was a meadow for dogs to be unleashed and play with each other, and a doggie bathing area for post-romps at the beach.  The beach was ... feh...I really hate being snobby but it's so hard to appreciate northern cali's beaches after growing up in hawaii where even the worst beach in hawaii is nicer looking than the best northern cali beach.  But Nikki didn't care, she loved it and explored and ran in the water.

Our canoe ride on the 2nd day through Big River estuary was beautiful--the water was extremely glassy looking and it was soooooo quiet... almost eerily quiet, that I felt we were going to get attacked--ken said i watch too many lame movies hahaha.  The paddling on the way back was craaaaazy though as we were fighting tough winds, it was a super good workout for sure. 

While the stay at Mendocino was totally relaxing and fun and easy going, the drive back for another 4+ hours in traffic was excruciating and sort of ruined any relaxation I had achieved during the trip.  It was good to be back home.