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Saturday, December 24, 2011

Maui! Day 3 and 4 (The Road to Hana, AKA how we tried to fall off a mountain)

We were feeling extra adventurous on Saturday morning.  We got up early again, and decided that our time would be best spent driving the circumference of Maui.  As I said, we were feeling extra adventurous.  As neither of us really had a guide book, or the inclination to look anything up, we simply picked up a map and decided the following:  We would drive clockwise from Lahaina around the island and then go to Haha which we had heard had amazing pools that must be seen.  We though, "yes, this is what we will do today, we will see ALL of Maui."  And so began a very interesting day.

I should go ahead and mention that Bob just got his new driver's license after having gone without one for the past 9 years.  (He turned 21 in NYC and hasn't really needed a car since.)  Anyway, Bob has a new license so he wanted to drive and I was more than happy to let him because that meant I could enjoy the scenery and take lots of pictures of the things we passed.  Perhaps I was naive because in my mind I imagined that all the islands of Hawaii were surrounded by beach land, this is not the case.

Our journey started easily enough, we were on a main highway and passing through residential areas and could still see the ocean and the awesome beaches.  The beaches turned into rocky cliffs and we drove through some lovely wilderness.  Then as if out of nowhere it was as if we were transported to what looked like the coast of Ireland before anyone lived there.  We were seriously driving on a one lane road, that was supposedly going to accommodate two lanes of traffic, AND this road was on the side of a cliff.  Needless to say, we were a little stressed out.   We were quite pleased to make it back to civilization after our journey.  As an example of how the driving went, we drove 18 miles of crazy one lane road, and it took us over 2 hours.

The views were of course beautiful, and when we were not driving along cliffs, we saw a lot of lovely green rolling hills.

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There were plenty of signs like the one below.  According to Bob, there are approximately 51 one lane bridges on the Hana Highway, which is the road we took on our excursion out.

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We found the Garden of Eden!

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Our awesome Jeep.  We got it dirty driving all over the island in the dirt.

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We left our hotel at about 9am and returned shortly after 7pm.  It was a long day.  And we were really really lucky because after we had gotten back to civilization and were no longer on a one lane road we stopped to get a soda and a gentleman asked if we were driving the white Jeep because the back passenger tire was losing air.  We ran outside and could actually hear the air leaving the tire.  We ended up calling Hertz and they sent a nice guy from AAA out to help us.  (It only took an hour, nice!)  And then we headed on our way back to the hotel.

After our exciting day of driving, we were exhausted and had dinner at the Westin.  It was only okay, i don't think I'll do a write up about it.

The next day we woke up and leisurely got our things together, and discovered our flight had been delayed which turned out to be amazing because we were able to check out Mama's Fish House for lunch, and it amazingly delicious.  There will most definitely be a write up about the food.

I had a great time in Maui, and can't wait to go back and add even more fun and adventure to my life.  I think we'll skip the Hana highway in the future.

:)Margaret

Maui, we went to Maui! Day 1 and 2 (Lahiana and Kiehie)

So, in an effort to become "Starwood Gold" members (because we traveled so much last year and the beginning of this year) Bob and I decided we should go to Hawaii.  That and because, why not?  Anyway, Bob previously lived on Maui for a short while when he and Jameson were putting together what would one day be MochiMedia, so we returned to his island paradise to stay at the Westin in Lahiana.

We arrived in the early afternoon, and picked up our lovely white four door Jeep Wrangler for our island getaway and were shortly on the road.  As a side note, I once considered purchasing a Jeep because I thought I was cool, after having driven one for the last four days I'm happy I didn't get one, at least not a four door, as it was massive.  The Jeep was very comfy, and turned out to be great in Maui - more on that later.

The Westin was pretty swanky, and we had an awesome view of the ocean.  Nice pools outside with a dedicated "adults only" pool, which I always appreciate - because I want to be the only person doing canon balls into the pool. They also had a Luau every few nights, so we signed up for the Luau that night so we could immediately get immersed in *cough* culture *cough*. But lets not get ahead of ourselves, first we went for food!

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We ended up wandering over to Whaler's Village where there's a small shopping complex and a few different places to eat.  We checked out "Cane and Taro" for lunch, and were pretty satisfied with our choice.  If you'd like to read more about what we ate at "Cane and Taro"  you can check out my food blog.  After lunch, and a nice helping of Maitais, we wandered over the local convenience store to pick up sun screen.  No Lobster Girl for me on this vacation!  We then promptly took a nap, well Bob napped, I worked.  We still needed to get some things done before the partying could commence.  (And we only had 2 hours between lunch and the start of dinner at the Luau.)

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We promptly got in line for the Wailiee Luaua at 5:15pm and were given fairly strong maitais to get us going.  We sat with Maria and Frank, from I can't remember where, and two nice Australian peeps.  We did't talk with the Australian couple much, so I've forgotten their names, but they were nice.  The show was pretty much what I expected, there was hula, and some fun tribal chanting and at the end there were people throwing fire crazily into the air like madmen!  I had a wonderful time!  As a back story, I had previously been to Hawaii when I was much younger and had attended a Luau with my family, unfortunately I had strep throat at the time so I look miserable in all the pictures.  I don't look miserable in these pictures!

We were so wiped out from the Luau and all the drinks they kept giving us that we called it a night at 10:30pm - in our defense it was after midnight in San Francisco.  The good news is that we did wake up early the next morning and took advantage of the breakfast buffet at the hotel.

After our nice breakfast buffet, which was okay, we decided we'd drive over to see where Bob previously lived in Kihei and then continue along the road to the most southern point of Maui where there's a Lava Beach.  Despite Maui being a relatively small island it takes a long time to get from one place to another because the speed limit is typically 35MPH, sometimes slower.  It was a nice drive, we got to see a lot of little residential areas along the coast.  Sadly we were unable to see Bob's old house because it's in a gated community - he failed to mention this to me prior to our departure.

We drove out way along the coast until the road ends where the Lava Beach begins.  I'm sorry I didn't take my tennis shoes with me, and a change of clothes because I really wanted to do some more exploring on the rocks and in the little tide pools, but my sandals were not the best for wandering around on rocks.  We'll have to go back.

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We stopped in Kihei on our way back for lunch.  Bob had remembered there being a place that had the most amazing calamari, we were sad to find it was no longer there.  Instead we had fish tacos at "Life's A Beach."  It was a fun little hangout/bar and it looked like it would be hopping at night.  I didn't do a post on the fish tacos, but they were good.  I'd never had fish tacos before and I feel like these were a nice way to ease me into them.  They were battered and then in soft taco shells with delish salsa and some guacamole.  We split the fish tacos because we planned on eating an early dinner at a restaurant near our hotel that had excellent reviews....and we both wanted to drink at dinner.

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While in Kihei we checked out a small open air market and I ended up buying some excellently ugly convertible dresses/skirts.  I figured we were in Hawaii so I should have some Hawaii fashion, which is to say, I should look like a tourist trying to fit in with the locals.  We also stopped and had Shave Ice!  OMG delicious!  We stopped at Local Boys Snack Bar and had the "Patriot" which was strawberry, blueberry and coconut shave ice on top of ice cream and with sweet cream on top.  It was sooooo good, we practically licked the bottom of the bowl when we were done.

We decided to head back to the hotel after our shopping excursion so we could play in the ocean.  There are no pictures of us playing in the ocean as our camera is not equipped to handle that.  Oh well.  We played in the ocean for a while and then hosed off and lounged in the "adults only" pool and had pina coladas.  It was a really nice lazy afternoon.  We then prepped ourselves for an amazing dinner.  We had made reservations at Son'z Maui at the Hyatt hotel.  Yes, this is a hotel restaurant, but you're going to want to go here because it was amazingly delicious!  You can read all about our wonderful dinner on the food blog.

After our gigantic dinner, we moseyed along the beach back to the Westin.  Because of our heavy intake of maitais, it was again an early night for us, and we were sound asleep by 9:30pm.  What can I say, having fun in sun makes us sleepy face when mixed with booze.

Stay tuned for days 3 and 4, you're not going to want to miss this!

:)Margaret

 

 

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Halloween!! (Mochi and at Home)

I love Halloween, I think I might like it more than any other holiday.  I made sure to get the most out of October this year by wearing a little bit of a costume pretty much every day.  With the amazing assistance of Suzanne, from Mochi, I had a great collection of Halloween headbands to use for my every day awesomeness.  I had two Halloween costumes this year, one for the office and one for our Halloween party.

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Dressing up was mandatory to participate in the office party.  I really wasn't going to let anyone have any of our treats/drinks if they didn't at least have a Halloween headband or mask on.  We had yummy snacks and ice cream sammichs along with more booze than we could consume.  I think it went quite well, take a look for yourself:

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We also decorated pumpkins at the office, and got to see a little bit of everyone's creative side:

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Overall I think the office liked Suzanne's and my crazy love for Halloween.

I really wanted to post pictures of all the awesome decorations we put up at the house for our Under Water Themed Halloween Party, but it was just too dark to take good pictures.  We hung navy blue fabric all over the walls, and then created waves with blue tulle and put fish up everywhere!  We inserted blue gel lights in all the ceiling lights, and in our tv room we had 8 black licks, with white fish all over the wall and a bubble machine that created uv/glowing bubbles.  I was quite pleased.

We made two different kinds of punch for the party that were a huge hit.  We had "Blood in the Water" - hawaiian punch, 7up and rum, "Electric Eel Lemonade" - lemonade, blueberries and vodka and then a bunch of beer.  (And water so people could hydrate.)  It was a great night and we had people relaxing outside on the back patio until almost 11:30pm.  We used our heat lamp and it was soooo comfortable outside.

I only have a couple of pictures from the party, again, because it was so dark:

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Thank you so much to Adam and Eric for throwing such an awesome party.  It was amazing, I can hardly wait for next year!

:)M

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Party like you're on the East Coast! (Cause we are.)

Bobicito and I are currently visiting our friend Casey in Portsmouth New Hampshire to celebrate her getting married and having a lovely little baby girl, Ruby.  We're staying at the Sheraton in town which is perfect because we can walk all around town very easily and visit all the fun little shops and cafes.  We flew into the Boston airport on Thursday night and then drove up to Portsmouth.  We rented a cute little Versa Nissan, just as an aside.

On our first morning we got up and worked a little bit then headed into town to find some coffee.  Casey told us to save room for doughnuts, so we made sure to stick with coffee to tide us over.  So there we are, walking into town to get coffee when we see a dude who looks just like my dad!  The guy was really nice and let me have my picture taken with him.  Check it out:

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We also visited the house of William Whipple, who was apparently one of the signers of the Declaration of independence.  Nice.  As you can see I'm pretty pumped about being there:

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Anyway, we met up with Casey and some of her friends and headed up to Kittery, Maine where we had a late breakfast/lunch at Congdon's.  I had a pretty delicious maple doughnut, and a rueben omelet.  Yes, you read that right, a rueben omelet.  It was good, although I which the omelet had been a little fluffier.  Bob had a lobster omelet which was also good.  The place is supposedly well known for all their doughnuts.  I liked mine but it was full of creme and not the yummy whipped kind.  It was the most sugary creme I've ever had, I had to push most of the creme out of the doughnut to really enjoy it.

After our breakfast we headed to Ogunquit to visit the Marginal Way.  Isn't that the most ridiculous name you've ever heard?  The Marginal Way is a walk way along the cliffs that's really scenic and nice.  The day was pretty windy but we went most of the way and checked out all the rocks and birds hanging out and having a good time.

Bob and I had a fun photo shoot as you can see:

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On the walk back I got a picture of Bob with all the ladies:

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We evening that night Bob and I headed into the town to enjoy some delish seafood at a place called "Surf."  You can read about the food and what we though on the BiCoastalBites Blog.

It was a great first day, and we've so far had a wonderful time.

Love and kisses,

Margaret and Bob

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Exercising Like Fools and Other Misadventures

I am the proud owner of the cutest bike in the world.  Bob bought me an awesome black cruiser that I have been riding to and from work every day for the last month.  (We got the bikes on April 13th.)  My bike has a sexy basket on the front, and I have pink lights for when I'm riding at night.  My helmet is also really cute because it's skateboarder style, and has the GitHub Octocat on the back.  There is also a little bell that will sometimes ring on it's own if I go over a particularly bumpy road.  As someone who has never really ridden a bike on a regular basis, and has never ridden a bike on the street with cars, I have to say it's much easier than I ever would have thought, especially in San Francisco.  I'm actually less afraid of being hit by a car than I am of a pedestrian walking out in front of me.  For some reason pedestrians look right through bikers and insist on crossing the street at weird and inopportune times.  So far I have managed to not hit any pedestrians.  (knock on wood)  Bob also got a new bike because his other two bikes are in storage, and well, he likes bikes.  I'm investigating getting cute little furry cat ears with LED lights in them for the top of my helmet.  :)

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For other fun news, Bob and I are now taking Krav Maga and it's pretty rad.  Amanda, from Mochi, found a place in SF that offered a free three day trial, so Amanda, Emma, Bob and I went to check it out and immediately fell in love with attacking each other.  It's so much fun, and such a great work out.  We've only been going for two weeks but we really like it and got memberships to continue learning to defend ourselves against each other.   We both have sustained war wounds from the classes, which are actually results of holding the pads for people to hit, and not from actual combat.  I managed to split two of my fingernails from clenching my fists and hitting the pads so much.  I immediately went and had the nails removed so I could continue having fun.  (Below you can see Bob's injury, my arm injury and my split nails.)

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I've also changed my crazy hair color.  It has now seen the following progression:

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I actually really liked the way the purple faded out to white, it was pretty rockin'.  The fire look has since faded and I'm now sporting a kind of peachy orange color, it's cute and will look really cute with the new summer dress I just bought for a wedding.

***UPDATE***

The wedding we went to was EPIC.  Mr. Shen (Alexander) married his lovely gal Josie, and it was one of the best wedding I've ever attended.  The bride and groom put so much work into this wedding to add little pieces of themselves to every aspect of the day.  Josie made all the party favors, lovely little yellow ceramic vases, each one unique because she actually made them.  Just as an example, of how much thought and time they put into this wedding, you can check out Alexander's website for the wedding.

As something extra fun, a bunch of us from the Mochi office got together and got a limo.  We were able to have fun the whole night and no one had to be the designated driver, we showed up in style.

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And the cute party favors - guess which table we sat at.  And the back of the cute table cards.

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In other big and exciting news, we finally moved into our condo!  Hooray, the wait is over!  We've gone from boxes everywhere, to looking like our storage unit exploded, and now we're in the, "why are there piles of things in all the rooms," phase.  The most important thing to keep in mind is that I now have a place for all my lovely shoes.

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We did have a minor incident in the condo the other evening, that you've likely already heard/read about, but just in case, you can read about how I started a kitchen fire in my prior blog post.  Sadly there are no pictures of the actual fire, but there is a picture of the after math.  (No one was injured, and nothing was lost in the great kitchen fire of 2011.)

And as a final note for this post, I made pancakes for dinner tonight, they weren't great, but they were decent.  Next time I won't make them with bisquick, I'll make them from scratch.  There will be a BiCoastalBites post about the pancakes shortly.

Loves and kisses,

Margaret

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

I started a kitchen fire....

We've moved into our new home, mostly.  There are still boxes all over the place half unpacked and random items strewn about the floor in just about every room.  The office actually looks pretty nice, but it's all the way in the back of the house so no one really sees that upon first entering.  I've managed to wash all the bedding and towels from our storage boxes, yes they were clean when we packed them but they smell of storage unit now so they need to be washed.  I'll move onto washing all the clothes next.   All the dishes have been washed though and that's amazing as far as I'm concerned, we've also opened my flatware!  I originally bought a 12 person flatware set when I was getting ready to go to Uzbekistan, because I was anticipating being the one person party committee, but I never got a chance to use my awesome flatware because I moved home to SF to be with Bobicito (hoorays).  We didn't bother to unpack the flatware because we figured everything was going to go into storage and his Dollar Store silverware was fine for us.

Well not anymore, we are now real grown ups with pretty silverware that matches. I'm quite pleased.  Now if I could just get my mom to give us her blue and white porcelain cantonese dishes we'd be all set....

But let's get to the exciting part of the post, I started a kitchen fire last night.  Okay, back to the beginning....  I decided that it was time for us to actually cook in our home so I went to the grocery store and picked up food and snacks for us.  I decided that spicy italian chili would be our first home cooked meal, so I picked up all the ingredients, along with salad fixins and garlic bread.  I prepped the chili early in the day and let it simmer on low for the rest of the day so all the yummy flavors would mix together.  Now jump ahead to about 5:30pm, Bob is on his way home with our friend Jay, and I'm getting the noodles started, and prepping the garlic bread.  Suddenly the fire alarms go off, ALL of them.  So I'm frantically running around the house with our step ladder trying to turn them off while at the same time opening all our windows and doors to get a breeze in the house.  Keep in mind that at this point nothing is on fire.  It was during this running about that I also discovered that even standing on our step ladder I'm slightly too short to reach our fire alarms to do any good.  By the time Bob and Jay get home I've managed to knock the batteries out of the fire alarms and am back to getting dinner ready.  I put the yummy garlic butter on the bread and sprinkle some parmesan cheese on the slices of french bread and then pop them under the broiler.  Jay is standing near the kitchen, Bob is fixing the alarms and I'm stirring the chili.  I notice that it smells like something is burning so I lean into the chili pot thinking something is burning on the bottom of the pan, hmmm, no that's not it.  "Crap!"  I open the oven and all the little pieces of garlic bread are on fire - Jay can see this over my shoulder.  I close the oven door, turn off the oven and just look at Jay with a "is the garlic bread really on fire" look in my eye.  Sadly yes, the garlic bread is on fire.  Bob comes back to the kitchen, we hand him an oven mit, and wet a dish towel and put out the mini fire in the oven.  Needless to say, there was no garlic bread with dinner last night.

 

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Good news though, I made a cajun turkey sammich for lunch today and managed to not set off our fire alarms.

Loves and kisses,

Margaret

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Apparently I'm terrible at keeping an online journal.

Holy Peeps and Chocolate Bunnies Batman!  It's been forever since the blog has been updated and there's so much to share!

Last time on Margaret On The Go, Bob and Margaret were heading to magnificent NYC to party hardy and geek it up.  It was a really great time.  We split half the time in a super swanky hotel, Andaz, and an Air BNB studio apartment in the East Village.  Bob knows the most super cool Spa Manager at Andaz so we got the royal treatment, if you've never had a bath in a square bathtub you are truly missing out, it's amazing.  The night we arrived we ate at the hotel restaurant Wall & Water (also the name of the cross streets) and we had the Chef's tasting menu with wine.  We had the most amazing duck salami ever, it was truly succulent and delicious.  The entire meal was very good, and the wines really did go great with each course, we were completely stuffed at the end.  I don't have pictures because it was a really dark restaurant.  Cool fact about the restaurant.... the ceiling is a giant $100 dollar bill.

I'm going to try to update the BiCoastalBites blog with more food information otherwise this post will be ridiculously long.  But just as a little run through, we had: Tiny's Giant Sandwiches, Rice, Berekat, Keen's Steak House, Inotecca, Lazaro's Pizza, Peri Wine Bar, Cien Fuegos, Crif Dog and various other delicious things.  One of the other places that stands out in my mind was a place called The Fish Market, this place stands out in my mind because Bob and I had dinner there with Holly, and I had my first experience pulling apart a lobster to eat it!

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As you can see from the photos above, I like lobster, it was awesome!

We also managed to make it over to Brooklyn to visit one of Bob's friends, Amit.  We went to the Williamsburg area and had lunch, and walked about.

 

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I was pleasantly surprised by how nice and sunny it was in Brooklyn.  I could hang out there more often.

One of the best parts of the trip though was going to see "The Book of Mormon" The Musical, it was truly fantastic.  Bob laughed the whole way through, and the songs and the dancing were just wonderful.  We went to the show with Rich and Vivianna, and got to see their beautiful apartment afterwards, that's some stylish living right there.  But back to the musical, you should see it, it was amazing, buy the music as soon as a recording is made.

We went to a bunch of really cool little bars and speakeasies, most notably one called "Please Don't Tell."  So it worked like this, you walk into a hotdog cafe, and on the left there is an old phone booth.  You step inside the phone booth, and use the old rotary dial telephone to dial one number, and then a woman opens the wall on the other side of you!  I felt like I was in the Untouchables, it was awesome!  They had some really good cocktails.  We went there with some of Bob's other friends, Jon and Evan, and then picked up Geoff at Ace Bar after our secret cocktails.

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Bob has some excellent taste in friends, the guys were all super cool, and I was blown away by all their amazing job stories.  Seriously, these guys are rockstars.

I'm going to be putting all my pictures from NYC up on my Flickr account, and will make sure to have an update with a link in the next post.

This is going to be an abrupt ending to this blog post because well I need to actually catch up with what's going on.  I'm in the process of organizing all my photos and getting my timelines correct.

Stay tuned,

Margaret