trabin.ca

There will be a a lot of blogging to catch up with all of the things that I have done in San Francisco and area to date. I figure since I

A: have a lot of time on my hands when I am in San Francisco

B: love challenging myself to find new things to do

C: would like to have a log of things I have done in San Francisco

D: would love to have a reference for people I know heading to San Francisco

I will say that although I am not new to blogging, I am new to writing a Blog for others to visualize what I am seeing through words, not always pictures. Oh do not fret I will always try to add pictures whenever necessary.

San Francisco, California, City by the Bay, home of the immense and awe inspiring Golden Gate Bridge, the fearful Alcatraz and the well know Rice A Roni Cable cars! San Francisco is a extraordinary tourist destination, however there is so much about San Francisco that most people do not know. San Francisco is a giant city but it is contained in 7 square miles. San Francisco is eclectic, historic and picturesque. I find that on all of my adventures I marvel in the diversity of San Francisco. You can be standing on a corner in Union Square with thousands of other people bustling or you can be sitting on a park bench by AT&T park overlooking McCovey Cove in the off season listening to the sounds of the Bay. Both are equally amazing.

For all the rest of the blog followers, I will still be doing my normal blogs as well, but this will give us some more content for the down “winter” months!

Mike is on his way home now, should be pulling into the driveway any minute, so I am going to go.

The new San Francisco blogger!

Catherine

Which frankly never happens in San Francisco.

I may have even got a sunburn today.

Mike and I had a great walk in the sunshine today. It was absolutely excellent.

We went out in search of a new monitor, since ours got “lost” in the move. Or we forgot it in the rental car!

WE went out for dinner to a  French restaurant with Bill and Elizabeth last night. The company was amazing as always, the food was nice and only a block from the apartment. I even wore a dress with my cute new shoes I caved and bought yesterday.

Super cute

This was the view from where I had lunch yesterday. I ate right outside the gates of Chinatown. My only criteria was that I found a table on a patio in the sun.

I sat in Union square for a while watching all of the crazies skate on the ice rink in +20 degree weather.

It was kind of cool though

Here is a view of the Bay Bridge when I went to walk and meet Mike the other night.

It looks nice all lit up

On Wednesday I had the privilege of going to Napa for the day. Our friend works out in Napa proper, so I grabbed a ride with her in the morning, and borrowed her car for the day. It was so great. I hit Beringer.

someone was nice enough to take a picture of me

The Beringer House

Grapevines in "winter" here!

This is the beautiful fountain at the Franciscan winery

amazing countryside

These are the barrels at Caymus... One of MIke's favorite wines!

I do know that going to Napa alone, driving is a very bad idea! You “want” to have a bit of everything.

This pinot is amazing!

mmmm

Then it was off to Joseph Phelps just before lunch. I must say that the view is spectacular, but it was the only place I didn’t but because they were too snooty! I didn’t have an “appointment” so no tasting there.

The barrels are amazing

THe housing in Napa is incredible

Street art

Some great stores

On the way back into San Fran we stopped at Domaine Carneros. So nice to know people in the industry.

Earlier in the week I was wandering around and I got to see a different drawbridge. It was cool.

This is a picture JUST FOR DEREK! It is the soupman!

THis is a picture for Will. One of the piers...

Our friend Will from the coffee shop asked me to check on a old cafe that he used to frequent here. It is still here and they still are serving the Irish coffees like they used to. The people show up in masses to drink them.

They are fairly strong...

Here is a cool fence we saw on our walks...

Alright, that is enough blogging for now, I am going to enjoy my last evening her with my boy!

Big hugs to all

Cat

I flew down to SFO on Thursday. Mike had to move apartments yet again. And no the answer to your questions, is no he is not moving back home permanently. We managed to rent a place last January that was not rent controlled.  So alas when the lease came up they wanted to raise your rent astronomically. So we are moving yet again. Now the good news is that the new apartment is awesome, minus a few small things like the daily varying temperature. Really warm during the day and silly cold at night.

The new apartment has an amazing view. It is in Potrero hill. It is a really nice very trendy area. Lots of great restaurants and some really great friendly people. Here are some pics.

This is the view from the Kitchen.

The building

We have already had a chance  to eat in some great new restaurants. Thursday night we went to Aperto. Great little Italian restaurant in the area. We both had risotto. I had their Lentil and chickpea soup. Mike had their braised Broccolini. It was all excellent.

http://www.apertosf.com/

Friday after the big move – which really was not so big. It took about 4 hours total. That includes all boxes unpacked. We headed out the The Parkside dive bar. Had awesome dive bar food and we met a bunch of people that work with Mike. It was a really nice treat for me to put some names to some faces. We had a great time.

http://www.theeparkside.com/

We didn’t really eat dinner, we did have fabulous snackie food, so since after  drinking beer we were hungry we headed to the local pizza place, Goat Hill Pizza. It was awesome. They were closing so we just grabbed some Za to go and headed back here.

Saturday morning we got up and rented a zip car to do some final moving errands. We did a grocery run, a Bed bath and beyond run for a shower curtain and what not. Gawd I love Whole foods for grocery, I could just walk around in there for hours.

We came back and unpacked everything after finishing cleaning the old apartment. Then we returned our Zip Car. We headed downtown for lunch at Bangkok Thai Noodle house. This place is sooooo great and so affordable. I like to eat here at LEAST once while I am in SFO.

Number 6 and 7 ROCK!

http://www.bangkoknoodles.com/BKK_Noodles/Home.html

We of course hit the apple store for a new Iphone case for me and then hit up the mall for a massage and then hightailed it back here for our cable appointment at 4. Yes my technowizard could not sort out the cable issues, so we requested some assistance. We did find out that the problem is not Mike, but the fact the lines had been physically disconnected.

After all the cable was set up we headed out to meet Bill and Elizabeth at Leopold’s for a beer. This is a little European Gasthaus, with “Alpine” cooking. This little restaurant was absolutely packed. You have to squish in just to get a beer. When you walk through the door the smell of the food is to die for. Now the plan for the evening was to go for Sushi, but that was quickly quashed. We stayed and it was SO MUCH FUN>

http://www.leopoldssf.com/about-us.html

We drank several beer out of boots! The rule of the boot is the boot can not touch a counter or table. A boot is 2 LITRES of beer!

mmmm beer

Double fisting! You go girl!

THis was appies!

WienerSchnitzel

It was all so good.

So this fine sunny morning in San Francisco, we had big plans on going to this place called Plow. A very busy restaurant up our block. It was lined up down the street though, so we choose to just go and walk in the sunshine until we found a different place to eat!

We ended up at Serpentine. It was also great. I had dungeness crab benedict and Mike had Chicken Fried Steak and eggs. Mike’s was awesome and Mike was good minus the fact the eggs were still clear on one of my bennies. So I skipped that one. But as you can ready there had been no lack of food, do I will live. We walked back through the dogpatch and up this crazy hill!

The rest of the day has been hanging out watching movies with wine and cheese! Such a great way to end the weekend!

I will blog more later this week.

May even venture out for Carnival food!

I have recently realized that I blog backwards. I am just simply admitting it, but I am not likely to change it. It just seems like I should start where I left off, not vice versa.

So over Christmas which was quiet for us in Creston, we spent a lot of time playing with the commander with the tracks. It was an absolulte blast.

Us having a blast

Paul and Mike went up Mt Thompson on a boy run. IT was a bit chilly, but they had fun by the looks of things.

The abominable Paulman!

I told him to wear waterproof clothing! He now knows why!

We spent Christmas with Betty and Paul who were in Creston. We had a great day of games and food. Here is a picture of the mini desserts that I made for Christmas dinner.

Zeta was unfortunately sick over Christmas so our sleep was limited, but we forgave her since she is SO DAMN CUTE!

This is also the first picture I took with my new Iphone! Pretty nice!

Mike had to work while he was at home over Christmas but we did manage to get in some fun riding time. We also managed to fit in a LOT of hockey watching. Team Canada did fairly well until their ugly demise at the end. I guess we will just have to accept Bronze. If only the boys would have plyaed all 60 minutes of the game it would have been much better.

Here are some pictures of Mike and I on one of our Mountain trips.

Our tracks!

SO wintery

Not according to plan!

Not only was blowing a track not according to plan, breaking the shovel on the first dig into the snow was also not planned. Made things a bit trickier, but fun nonetheless.

I enjoyed a snow cold Rolling rock while Mike fixed the problem!  

The views are amazing up there

We had a lot of Garage time over Christmas. It was great just to spend time together. Here was Z’s hangout spot.

Over the Holidays Betty introduced us to a crazy new painting method. It is called Ebru. It is a old painting style where you paint on a liquid surface, the liquid is thickened with carageenan. You then paint on the surface and then set the paper on the surface and all the paint gets lifted off of the surface by the paper.

It is very cool.

It is so great…

I can not wait to do more. Just have to convince Betty to give me her secret supplies.

Ok Mike really wants to read part of this blog, so I will post this half. The CA portion is to follow!

Cath

Here was the start to the weekend fun

Installing power steering!

This bad boy is going to rock!

First tour!

It is so much fun, he has a chance to test it out today!

Mike in action

It can climb anything!

YAHOO!

SO needless to say we had a good weekend. We had our quota of garage time and had some great food and a nice relax this evening. I will keep you posted on the next few days progress. We are now hoping for SNOW! So our tracked crusader can keep us afloat!

Big hugs, Kietzmans out…

With the help of so many amazing people we finished our shed the American Thanksgiving weekend. For all those in Canada, that was November 26th weekend.

It was a big and elaborate project that would never have been finished without some unbelievable people. It was one of those epic adventures for us.

Our neighbor Ray showed up as we were putting the knee braces on the shed to see what we were up to.

Knee braces up!

We let him know that we were finishing up the knee braces and then going to figure out a way to set the trusses up on top of our 12 ft tall building. He was very interested, in fact he said that he had a “farmer style” contraption that he could bring over that attached to his bobcat that we could “try” if we wanted. We were all ears as this task was going to be interesting for two people no matter what.

So off Ray went for lunch and when he returned, he had a few things to do but told us he had called a few friends that owed him some favors to come and just get it done. So Mike and Ray went and got the contraption which may have been made from the Ark, but it WORKED! In just over three hours we had all of our trusses up. Mike and I just about cried. I believe that there was someone on our side that day. What Ray did for us was the ONLY reason that we got the shed done before Mike went back.

The contraption!

We were so tired at the end of the day but so amazed that their is that kind of neighborly kindness. Thanks to the strangers who volunteered their time!

The week after the trusses went up Jim and Marnie volunteered some time. Then on the Wednesday Joel and Heidi came to help us finish the rest! Our peeps are so freaking great…

Heidi hanging out in the trusses

Who had any idea that we lost the muscles we used in the playgrounds to climb the monkey bars when we were kids!

The almost finished product! But no more is happening this year!

Joel and Heidi were such troopers we appreciated them so much!

me cooking of course

Well, Mikey went back to CA at the end of that weekend. We were more than happy with the trips accomplishments. It took several days for our bodies to feel normal again.

I have been busy with my BeautiControl sales. Please contact me if you need any beauty or skincare needs.

I started back into my running routine when Mike went back to CA. It was going well, however I have been experiencing this weird pain in my foot when I do certain exercises for the last few months. So last week, it was bothering me so much that I was almost not able to walk. Well, I have Plantar Faciitis. So now I am off exercise, am getting ultrasound on my foot and have these fancy inserts for my shoes. Apparently my arch is collapsing and these new inserts are supposed to rebuild the arch muscles. So although my foot is not BETTER, it is better than it was.

Mike has been super busy in CA. Work is busy, finding a new apartment took some time, but that task is done. He managed to find something a little more affordable and the apartment is nicer and in an area that is a bit more fun.

The view from the new apartment

We have not had any snow since Mike left. So no plowing for me, YIPPEE!

We are getting excited for Holiday time. Unfortunate that we are not taking any time off, but it will all work out. It is a bit more leisurely time at home for Mike since not as much happens.

I made cookies today for the holidays.

These are my thumbprint cookies next to my super cute Christmas mugs...

I am hoping to get some Christmas decorating done this week. But we will see, I may just MAKE Michael do it with me.

Well, I thought it was about time I give everyone an update. Pics are few and far between this time of year as not much happens here.

Big hugs to all!

Catherine

Here is the latest picture of the pole barn…

Looks pretty good!

It was a gorgeous day in Creston yet again today. We had an absolute blast with Halloween at work today. We even made Pumpkin Whoopie pies! I love it when we get smiles from our loyal customers when we are giggling away.

After work I picked up the car with my winter tires installed. Getting all geared up for the snow.

Here are some pics from my walk.

our beautiful road...

amazing color of the Larches in fall...

Me on our walk

a different view!

Here is my days update, hugs to all!

Cath

However we had a great time. Well not exactly great, the poor guy was sick for almost the entire time he was home and is still under the weather. We were really glad that he was sick at home though so that we could take care of him and feed him chicken soup!

We got a lot of things done while he was home, fixed the wood boiler, did all of the things to get ready for the winter, went for a few tame commander rides. Out biggest event was the start of our new building. This is a building that we in fact “TRIED” to hire someone to build. At 12 weeks in and only sono tubes to show for it, we decide to relieve our contractors of their duties and Paul, Mike and I went at it!

11 hours of work and here is what we have to show for it!

This was the glorious Creston Fall start to our day!

Paul working hard!

Catherine walking in the beautiful sunshine

Paul at work with my camera

This week will be a busy one for me. Of course Halloween is tomorrow and we are going to have a bit of fun at the coffee shop dressing up!

I have my first BeautiControl spa on Tuesday night! I am really excited and a little nervous, but I know it will be just fine and a ton of fun! I have a few more of them this week too. I am hoping that my first host will be gracious enough to let me take a picture of my display!

I have big plans to start my Chirstmas crafts to sell at the coffee shop as well. I will be selling bags, wine glasses and maybe a few small quilts!!

Alright, well those are my big pieces of information. I hope everyone has a phenominal Halloween! Oh yeah and a big THANKS PAUL for helping us with the pole barn. We were glad you and Murphy just so happened to be in our neck of the woods…  :)

Hugs to all C and Z out!

We just came in from some great outside time and garage time.

Painted all of the connector plates for the pole barn. Erected one of the posts just to see it today. They sure do not look NEAR as large when they are laying on the ground!

Ok so I ended off last nights blog with a few pictures of my latest quilt, here are a few more of them.

Here was the cool stitching I used for this one.

waves!

We had fun adding some additions to Bumble bee, AKA El Commander.

before

after

I finally had a chance to have dinner with Crystal and Amanda and the girls and Zeta got to meet the new edition Zak!

Here he is.

He is so little!

I also had a fabulous Thanksgiving with Betty, Paul and I got the privilege of spending a weekend with my best bud Jen!

We had a bit of a girls night. It was so much fun.

Jen, Brittini and Stacey... We had WAY TOO MUCH FUN!

Well that is pretty much what is going on here. We had some snow this morning. We will be heavy working on the pole barn for the next while.

I will take pics as we go.

Hugs to all!

Cath, Mike and Z

Where to start really?

Well I have started a new little business venture. I am now officially selling BeautiControl! If anyone is interested in hosting a spa and getting a amazing spa night out of it and a free beautiful neck wrap, let me know.

We are building a new building here at home, we are building a pole barn, well technically we hired contractors to build the pole barn, but we are 12 weeks into the project and we still have no pole barn, and now we have no contractors either. Lack of well much of anything, has made us FIRE THEM!

Here is what the pole barn looks like today!

Yes this is my excellent leveling skills!

It will be beefy!

I have had an abundance of harvest things to do such as salsa, apple pie filling and sauce, spaghetti sauce, etc. I love this time of year. Not to mention this time of year just has the most amazing colors as the larches change!

I have been working on a quilt for some very nice people here in Creston. They just had a baby boy and this is the quilt that he has just gotten!

It is so cute

Clearly I am sleepy right now, so I am going to finish this blog tomorrow! I promise it will not take another month to update!

Hugs Mike, Cath and Z!