Happy Turkey Day

Today was my first "American Thanksgiving" - it sounds like it should come with a Christmas ornament for the tree. Fortunately, one of the young women that I work with invited me for dinner at her cousin's house along with her immediate family from Louisiana. It was, well, very "American". 90% of the conversation was on hunting as her 21 yr old brother is an avid hunter of all animals - squirrels, pigs, deer - you name it, he's shot it (and ate it). Before class, he apparently, wanders around the bush looking for animals to kill and then drives back and wears his fatigues to class. In addition to receiving a new education on hunting, we watched 2 football games! It was funny how hard they tried not to talk about politics and their love for Republicans and disapproval of illegal immigration but a few times it slipped. All in all, it was very sweet of them for having me over and for sharing their food! It's just funny how families are... I can only imagine what an outsider would say about mine!!!

Last week, I received quite a shock at work as my boss was fired. Next to the owner (who hardly makes an appearance) she was "it". Now there's basically 3 of us directors running the show until they find someone new. For anyone who has been following my work situation outside of this blog, this is clearly a positive change for my work with the parents and kids. However, I am continually blown away with how fragile jobs are here. I've watched at least a dozen people be fired already. I really do feel like I always need to be on edge... although, I've heard (and I know) my work is very solid.. it's just that being fired for me is an entirely different world than for most people, since it means immediate deportation back to Canada.

Paul and I (finally!!!) drove up to Berkeley last weekend! (GPS, I CAN NEVER LIVE WITHOUT YOU!) We met up with one of Paul's friends from Calgary, a mathematician working on his PhD at 18 yrs old! I cannot even try to compare Berkeley to Stanford, there is no comparison in my mind.. Stanford is amazing! We later ran into some friends of ours from Stanford and went out for a night in SF to sing karoke and visit some lesbian bars (get the full SF experience). The city is just incredible, something for everyone!

Pictures (I have many more but I didn't know people's "threshold" for viewing)
1. Psychology Building at Berkeley
2. Sather Tower
3/4/5. View from Sather Tower
6. Paul & Alex Fink
7. Me & Alex Fink

I'm blogging this...

If anybody still reads this, you should check out: http://preview.local.live.com/ - and choose San Francisco from the menu.. Sadly, I drove all the way to Lombard street and saw it blanked out. It is from Microsoft so there seem to be many bugs still.. but hopefully it has potential.

I wish I could communiate how amazing this area is into blog format. On Saturday, a coworker and I grabbed a chai from a local coffee shop (oh, you have to be anti-Starbucks here .. actually you really need to find a lot of things to be anti about here of course, anti- W. Bush is a given). All of a sudden I turned around and these 2 guys are chatting up about YouTube and Google and TiVo philosophy. Maybe it's more like a religion here.. a religion with really cool tshirts (seriously, I have a collection of tech shirts now (scroll down and see me sleeping in the Google shirt)). Anyway, I thought they were some "famous" people from a tech company but now I don't really think they were. I guess this story is pretty lame but seriously they could have been! That's how cool this area is. While everyone else sips their Chai and goes on pretending like they've never heard of them.

I'm not sure I've communicated my passion for produce in this blog yet. But since I've been down here, I've been religiously going to Farmer's Markets all around the area (every little city has one, rather every 20 blocks you can find a new one). The past few weeks I've been slipping; I've started getting frustrated paying $3.00 for a lb for green beans or $3.50 for a lb of peaches, etc. I Yelped! (another great website and another web success that I know the people who started it) and found The Milk Pail.. a crazy, random, extremely small, overcrowded produce store that sells extremely cheap (with respect to California prices) produce and cheese... every kind of cheese imaginable. Yes folks, this is my passion - getting good quality produce at reasonable prices.. is that kind of pathetic?

Not much to report with teaching... not much to report with exploring the Bay (next weekend, I'm hopefully going to see Berkeley) ... not much to report with the weather (other than the fact that I'm still comfortably wearing skirts and sandles)...

Enjoy your week!

Happy November

Halloween was a huge deal here, at least bigger than I expected. I ended up going to 2 Halloween parties.. the first being at a mausoleum (grave site) of the Stanford family.. it was wild!! I heard a few thousand Stanford students showed up. A lot of amazing creative costumes!! One group went as dominos, with Asian countries painted on the back of their outfits.. At first I didn't get it but they explained to me that they were "The Domino Effect". Another guy went as a christmas tree, wrapped in garland and lights. The only problem was, he had to stand next to an electrical outlet all night. I also saw snakes on a plane - a guy with a zillion rubber snakes plastered to a board with x, y coordinates on it (get it, plane). There was also the imaginary man, he wore a shirt painted with the negative root of square one. His girlfriend went as infinity. There were tons of sexy, risky, pornstar costumes too.. tons of fun. I was going to go to Castro in SF (the craziest, wildest Halloween party of all) but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't since 10 people were shot and many more stabbed.

It's going to be a great next 5 days :) My boss is out of town!! Everyone at work is estatic.. seriously, I've never met someone who's work was SO much of their life. It's almost sad. But the tone at work is now sooooooooooo much more relaxed. People are ACTUALLY smiling! I could really write a GOOD book based on this work experience.. I have heard some very crazy things and seen some even crazier stuff. I had to go to a big meeting thing today with the boss of the company to plan next year with the other directors.. It was a little frustrating but I probably shouldn't get into it on the internet.

Yesterday it rained a bit, the first REAL rain in at least 6 months. It's strange watching when the sun goes away how depressed people quickly get (I guess the time change doesn't help either). But the drivers are the funniest to watch - it's like when it snowed back home. Everyone forgets how to drive again and there were a zillion accidents.

Just one picture of some friends on our way to the Mausoleum party:
Anders, Me, Ben, Marius, and Paul (I was a fairy, although you can't see my wings)