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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

 

 

 

Friday, April 1, 2011

Time Flies When We're Having Fun

After recovering from whatever that nastiness was that Bob gave me, I'm happy to report I've been running around like a crazy lady and enjoying all types of things.  I was able to go home to Salt Lake City/Ogden Utah and visit the family for a week and a half which was like going to the fair- awesome but exhausting.  We hit up all my favorite eateries and I was home to celebrate my youngest sister's (Melinda) 21st birthday.  The family also used my being home as an excuse to celebrate my birthday early, which I will never complain about because it meant I got to keep celebrating for longer than usual.  Most of the home stories involve food, so check those stories out on the BiCoastalBites Blog, we did some serious eating.  (And here I thought moving back to SF would help make me skinny!)

My BFF Rachel, took Melinda and me to Drag Queen Bingo for Melinda's birthday.  It's just what the name suggests, but it's part of a fundraising program.  The guys who run the show are these big burly dudes with mustaches and go-tees wearing bright colored wigs in beehives or the 60's bouffant, in really colorful dresses.  We went to Drag Queen Bingo with some of Rachel's friends who are now our friends too.  :)  It was a fun night, and I'm sorry I'm going to miss the next one because it's super hero themed and everyone is encouraged to dress up, I've been promised pictures.

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While I was partying it up with the family, Bob was in Atlanta at the annual Python Conference, software/code stuff - not snakes.  :)  I think he was also partying like a rockstar, but a different kind of rockstar.  I'm like an old retired rockstar who parties hard early in the night and then goes to bed at 11:30pm, whereas Bob is more like a peppy current rockstar who doesn't even start to party until after 10pm.  We both returned home on St. Patrick's Day because.....

On March 18th, we had a walk through inspection of the condo we're buying that's currently in escrow!  We're both sooooo excited about the place.  We seriously lucked out with all the features and the location.  We had had a list of things we knew we absolutely must have in a place, as well as another list of things we would like but weren't deal breakers and I'm happy to report that we got everything we must have and wanted!  It's an awesome three bedroom, three bathroom condo with a backyard/patio, open kitchen, lots of storage and it's less than two blocks away from Dolores Park!  If you haven't seen the listing pictures you can see them here.We couldn't be luckier!   And it looks like things are on schedule and we will most likely move in the end of April.  Keep your eyes peeled for house parties!

Okay, back to my birthday, which was awesome.  Bob's mom is super amazing, she sent me oreos dipped in frosting with really cool sprinkle designs.  They tasted the way I'd image the offspring of Oreos and Circus Animal cookies would taste if they mated.  So good!  I shared, but kind of grudgingly.  The tin the cookies came in was pretty cute, it looks like a wrapped gift, and then you open it and it's like a beacon of light shines out a beacon of light signaling delicious delicious sugary treats.  And then Mama and Daddy Ipp sent me a giant faux cupcake filled with candy!!!!  They know me so well!  There was also a funny card with monkeys all over it and they had included a picture of me covered in monkeys from my trip to Thailand, it's going on the fridge at work.  I have to apologize because I forgot to take a picture of the cupcake for the blog, and am currently writing this up on a plane.....(we're going to NYC).

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<-- The awesome tin that looks like a present.  It came in a box

with an ice pack so I knew it was going to be something I'd love.

The delicious sugary goodness -->

 

 

At work we celebrated with ice cream cake from Bi-Rite Creamy, which is also near our new condo.  I'm just going to get fatter and fatter, I can already tell.  We had a carmel ice cream cake with a gingerbread base, and vanilla cream frosting, it was melt in your mouth (hehe) delectable.  We also had a toasted coconut ice cream cake with a chocolate fudge base and chocolate frosting, not as good as the carmel cake but still very good.  Besides who doesn't like ice cream cake?  (Don't answer that, I want to believe everyone loves ice cream cake.)

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And Bob was the best ever on my birthday, he bought me flowers!  Yes, I like flowers.  Yes, I know they die and don't last forever, but you know what...they are beautiful and they smell wonderful and I love getting flowers.   He picked them all out by himself, and they're so perfect.  You can't tell from the picture very well but they're a deep purple-ish red color and they smell terrific.  I've had my nose buried in them for the last couple of days.  For dinner Bob made reservations at this little restaurant I keep trying to go to in the Castro called Starbelly.  (There's a review on BiCoastalBites.)  We had a really great night, and ate some very good food, to tease you over to the food blog, let me just say....hominy carnitas soup.  We split a bottle of wine and shared a dessert at the end of the meal and it was just a really nice relaxing day.  (Did I mention he got up early and got me a birthday bagel?  Well he did, and it was also great.)  Happy 28th Birthday to me!  (In case you haven't noticed, I love my birthday, I think birthdays are better than Christmas because it's your own special day, and everyone has different one so there's always a party going on somewhere.)

Oh yes, and I dyed my hair purple.  No, I'm not crazy, I just thought it would be something fun to do, and I have loved the purple so far.  It's been fading nicely into a lilac white, so I look like a super-hero cartoon.  It's pretty rad.  I'm going to let it all fade out to white and then it's going to be time for fire engine red!  That's right, this is the year of color and fun and new things in the city.

Speaking of this year, I was thinking about what I was doing around this time last year and how fast plans change.  Last March, I was getting ready to pack up and move to Uzbekistan, and then Bob came out for my birthday, asked me to marry him and everything changed, which was great!  In the span of four months, I turned 27, got engaged, quit my job, moved across the US back to San Francisco, took a great job back at Mochi Media, got married and then moved to Shanghai.  It was an amazing experience and I would do it all over again!

Now back to what we're currently up to.  Bob and I got on a plane this morning, March 26th 2011, and we're going to New York City for a week.  There's a conference we're going to called Geeky By Nature which is a mish mash of multimedia arts people, with techie geeks and lots of people who are involved in the tech industry in less obvious ways than coding or engineering.  I'm excited about it because I really like what I do at Mochi, but I don't actually do any of the coding or building of our products but I do participate in how things are made because most complaints, feedback, or suggestions come from users who contact me.  We're also extending my birthday fun in NYC by going to see two musicals.  Yup, Bob is going to two musicals with me.  We're going to see "Avenue Q," http://www.avenueq.com/and the new musical, by the creators of South Park, "The Book of Mormon." http://www.bookofmormonbroadway.com/We're  also going to be meeting up with Bob's friends Rich and Viv who I really like.  We were able to go to Napa last summer with Rich and Viv and they're awesome.  I'm sure we'll be doing lots of other fun things in NYC but those are our currently set plans.  And there will of course be lots of eating and running around for all hours of the night.

I'm trying to set a day and time for blog updates to be better about my posting.  I was inspired by Katelynin the Mochi office to be better about posting things on a more regular basis.

Loves and kisses,

Margaret and Bob