30 August 2006

Exercise

Today a friend and I went biking. To tell you the truth, when she text messaged if I wanted to ride to a nearby town, I thought car, but I'm game for the bike ride too. It was intense and really fun. We must have biked at least 20 miles round trip I think, maybe farther, and even got to see the end of a drug deal. (Kind of crazy.) We passed this guy doing something weird with his hand, and this other guy a little ahead. Next thing I know, my friend is asking if we could speed up a bit to get away from them faster. No worries here. Once we got away, she said it was a drug deal....ah the advantages to having lived in parts of San Francisco, I guess it provides some interesting education when you watch what goes on in the street. (And no, she doesn't do any drugs.)

So, the question is, is my rear end going to be sore tomorrow? It will be interesting to find out.

The Birth of a new saying

Oh yes. We have a winner. We were at work one day, and to those who don't know, the room I work in has a tendency to collect the items other people don't want. This particular day I was in the walk in and my co-worker was facing away from the door, and next thing we know there is half a huge sheet cake in our room. No clue how it got there, but people kept dropping in to snag a peice. By the end of the night, we had moved it to the bottom of a rolling rack to get it out of the way, and one of the guys from banquet kitchen was visiting us. A server wanted a peice and went to get something to cut it with, while our visitor was leaning against the cart. As he was talking, he put his foot up onto the cart, right onto the cake. i can't imagine how that felt as it squished. Well, we all started laughing really hard, and the brave server came back and took her peice out of the non touched by shoe side. Now we have a new saying, instead of putting your foot in your mouth, you put your foot in the cake. I still laugh thinking about it!

The Flea Market

OK, some friends dropped by my house on Sunday and said, come on we're going to go to the flea market in one of the big towns close by. It was so fun! I won't be able to communicate what it was truly like, it is something you must experience for yourself, but I'll try. We pull into the parking lot, and one of my friends says, we are going to stand out as the only white people. She and our other friend can pass for more olive and darker skinned nationalities than I can, which made me laugh, because this white girl would definitely stand out.

Well, we really didn't see any other white people, but it was almost better that way. This market was huge! It had maps, streets with names, an entire produce row that went the length of the whole market (with really fresh and inexpensive fruit), and of course, the all important Mexican food including mango with chili on a stick and cups of fresh sliced fruit and vegetables. It was like being back in Mexico...felt like home. We got to listen to lots of spanish and walked around, I tried this fruit called tuna, which I think is a prickly pear. it was good, but I didn't like the seeds. On the way home, we stopped and got some agua fresca: one was horchata (and the best I've probably ever had) and one made of pinapple (so good!) This market even had a kind of car lot in the middle of nicer used cars. Crazy!! I can't wait to go again and am so glad our one friend picked us up for it.

Something new


I know, for those who know me well, What happened? Ι ακτυαlly went and got a new, used car, and about freaked out from buying something that expensive, but it was time. My little car Princess was ready to retire. Now I have a four door 2002 honda accord. (I like those Hondas!) It is actually forest green, and no I haven't named it yet. I looked at it and suddenly thought that it is a very adult car. My parents were with me and I looked at my mom and asked if that meant I had to start acting more adult. She said yes...sigh. Anyway, it has everything I wanted including a tape deck and CD player, sunroof and four doors! By the way, actually is spelled funny above because I accidentally switched on the Greek keyboard and thought I could finish this entry without changing the text, but there were to many letters not there, so I had to go out and find how to switch it back since I forgot how to do it. Oh well. Maybe one day I'll write something in Greek for you if you want.

What do you think?


All right, now, who can tell me what the names of these two plants are? Hmm..i'll tell you later, and no neither of them have been stolen from my house recently.

At work, we just finished one of our busiest weeks in the year, and it includes hiring a bunch of part timers and culinary students come down to get experience. It is with great embarrassment that I relate an incident from someone who came out of my alma mater for culinary. Granted, she did the baking and pastry, but I know basic foods is involved in that, adn there is a whole test on identifying common herbs laid out on a table. I was only at the tent for two days of the week, but had a few laughs. In one, my supervisor asked a student to go get some basil. About 10 minutes later, the student is standing there with some herbs in her hand behind us, when my supervisor looks around and very politely says that she wanted basil not oregano. I glanced at what the student had, and sure enough, it was oregano. Once she had gone back into the walkin, I traded glances with my supervisor and laughed. If you don't know the difference, I wouldn't laugh at you though, unless of course you had graduated from a culinary program.

Another student story occurred that night after we had finished with the parties we were serving. I came back to the tent and watched as it took 5 students to wrap up a cart with plastic wrap (it normally only takes tw0) and then they started hydraulic lifting it before they were finished. I just kind of shook my head (they were almost done and nothing I could do to help) and I looked at one of my normal coworkers, nodded my head toward them and asked, "how many students does it take to wrap a cart?" He looked and we both kind of laughed. I know, sorry, I can be a bit heartless and i'm sure I've done things lacking in common sense. (Especially since I had taught them earlier how to wrap up a cart.)

Ah...at least it provided some amusing moments in our day, and we really couldn't have done it without the students.

Who are you?

Ah, yes, good question. I actually do write on this site. Obviously not for a while, but work gets in the way sometimes. Wouldn't give it up at all though, so fun, so exciting! And the best part is having friends who understand and never get mad or blame you if you have to work late unexpectedly or get called in. Anyway, hope you have enjoyed the entries, and hopefully the pics show up!

04 August 2006

Apologies

Hi Friends! I am sorry to be such a slacker in writing. Life took over and I don't know that I had time for anything except eating and sleeping. Hopefully, these entries will make up for it.

Adventure Hiking

So this last week has been crazy. The resort I work for had a buy out for the week, 450 people, and banquets served breakfast, lunch and dinner to them most of the days. I think in a five day span, our shortest day was 10 hours and our longest 14. We had a lot of fun and were working at top speed as much as possible. So, today was my day off for the week, and one would think that maybe I would just sit around all day, but instead I went and did what I shall call adventure hiking.

There is alot of hiking around this area, both in the hills and at the beach. So, a friend and I decided to go out and hike the bluffs and end up at a local beach. We had so much fun. Getting to the beach was normal hiking pretty much, except we thought maybe we missed the turn to the beach trail, so we went back to what looked like a trail...that only lasted a bit. By then, it was kind of have to keep going, so we off roaded a bit. (have I mentioned my aversion to ticks?) We got to the last stretch of the downhill, and were at the top of a large sand slope, for lack of a better term. So, what did we do? Oh yes, we "skiied" down... very fun, wish I had a snowboard.

After eating lunch on the beach while watching the seals play in the water, we decided that we should find the trail to go back. I should mention at this point that the tide had started coming in. We saw these ladies go the opposite way down the beach from the trail we knew about, so we figured there must be another way out down the beach. As we passed the ladies, they said that there wasn't another trail, but we kept going anyway, you know, to see for ourselves. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to describe this well. The shoreline was cliffs with some rocks jutting out with some deeper beaches, kind of an in and out shoreline with the rocks. So, I said I thought we could make it to this path like thing half way up one of the rocks a few "beaches" down. So, we took our shoes and socks off, I rolled up my jeans (I would normally wear shorts, but I was told that the ticks were plenty enough to wear pants), and we got ready to run for it on one of the lapses in tide. Umm...I went second and didn't get up on the rocks in time, and got drenched to the waist. Totally laughing of course and giving my friend a hard time. (Not to fret, we were both wet by the end of the adventure.) Then, we rock climbed up some rocks and down and timed our running across other short beaches to try not to be too wet. Well, it kind of worked until we were on one of those rocks where the wave flumes as it hits.....I was again going second, fyi. Well, my friend jumped off the rock just as a wave hit and it flumed completely over my head.. it really would have made a good picture, and it makes me laugh writing this. So, figuring that the second person seemed to always being the one to get wet, at the next spot where we had to time running with the backwash of the waves, I said I got to go first because every time I went second, I got wet. Well, as we were sprinting across, I saw a wave coming, knew there was no way to beat it and scrambled onto a rock, getting only a little wet, but my friend getting kind of wet. Anyway, we ended up walking along the beach to the trail head eventually, but it was such a fun way to spend the day. I'm still trying to figure out how I convinced my friend to go that way, but it was so much more fun than just hiking a trail.

I should probably mention a few more things. First, don't get stuck on shoal on a drop off....it is awkward and can cause a few scrapes. (Actually, I was doing well until my foothold fell off the drop, and not to fret, my friend said, "I told you no falling and getting hurt.) Second, don't walk long distances in wet, sandy jeans. I have a few spots on my inner thighs were I got rubbed. Best of all, ice cream is a great idea after an adventure like this. Can't wait to have another one. I don't think I've had that much fun in a long time, and that shower sure felt good!

Visitors

About a week ago, although it feels longer, I had some guys from Germany come and stay with me for a few days. I actually did not know them, but they were friends of a friend, so why not. have I mentioned I'm shy? Actually, it ended up being kind of fun. I went and picked them up after work one day, and my days off fell pretty much while they were here. I'm going to say that maybe their visit here was their most boring spot, but I think maybe they needed a little break from constant interaction with people, host families and doing things. I can now officially say I have spent a whole day at my apartment, which I'm not sure I could say before this. As they were catching up on emails and post cards, I started going a little stir crazy, so I went running, got groceries for dinner and went out and got a paper. They ended up being encouraging to me as well.

One of the fun things was helping them with their English, one in particular. I forgot how much I enjoy it. I wish I could remember some of the funny things said, but I can't. I was reminded of how different Americans can be. These guys made me laugh. They shared bags, toothpaste, wrote each other's emails at times, shared a journal about the trip....I goes on. For some reason it really tickled me, and we had a lot of jokes about this trip being practice for marriage some day. Really fun, and I actually cooked most of our meals, also fun. I forgot how much guys can eat!