Category — Linda

For most people, Lombard Street would probably make the #1 spot on their list of  “The Top 5 Streets I love in San Francisco.”  For me, the top spot goes to the Great Highway. It forms the city’s western edge along the Pacific coast.  It was on our way home from our Apple, shopping, and VW repair adventure, just as we were about to get onto the Great Highway, that Connor and I decided to stop for lunch at Java Beach Cafe. And it was here that we spotted this San Francisco landmark.

Do you see it? There is the Java Beach Cafe on the far right. And a green-roofed building in the center (from here on out referred to as the “Evil Nursery”) and there on the left, above the dark SUV – yeah, that is the landmark.  Official Landmark as of 2006, no less, number 254 on THIS LIST.

He stands tall on the median strip, at the corner of Sloat and 45th Avenue. On the opposite side of the street from the Evil Nursery and the Cafe, is the entrance to the San Francisco Zoo.

I’m sure you can easily see what attracted me to him. The toque (chef’s hat). The chef’s coat. And that adorable blue polka dot bow tie! Too darn kitschy and cute!

This final photo is from Flickr and gives you the best view of the handsome fellow. So how on earth did this get to be a beloved landmark?  This first quote is from the Flickr photo site.

“The 700-pound, seven foot fiberglass dachshund head at the median strip on Sloat Boulevard at 45th Avenue has reason to smile. Thanks to Diana Scott and Joel Schechter of Ocean Beach Historical Society and other concerned citizens, the Doggie Diner head, nicknamed DD, is back on its pole after going through repairs and a paint job following a hard fall during an April 2001 storm.

Doggie Diner was a local hamburger and hot dog chain that opened in 1949. To the regret of many locals, the chain closed in 1986, but the legend lived on. Nostalgic San Francisco residents visit DD regularly and tell their children about the good old days at the burger joint, which was originally located at Sloat Boulevard at 46th Avenue.

Illustrator Harold Bachman designed the doggie head in the 1960’s and says he is still surprised that people are enamored with DD. He designed it simply because he thought it would help sell hamburgers. Although DD is officially known to be the last doggie standing, rumor has it that doggie siblings are spotted around the Bay Area from time to time.”

…and from [Tim Timberlake, 07/16/2001]

“The Doggie Diner opposite the San Francisco Zoo on Sloat Avenue has been a favorite eating and Dog Head viewing place for years (since the 1960’s). Recently this last remaining Dog Head has been under threat. The nursery next door bought the site and wanted to remove the Dog Head. Dog Head lovers from all over protested and the Dog Head was saved. Mother Nature then took action and toppled the Dog Head on its fiberglass nose during a windstorm.

The City of San Francisco went to work using other salvaged (saved) Dog Heads, owned by a fellow in Emeryville, as patterns. The Sloat Avenue Dog Head has been restored and placed back on his pedestal across from the zoo and next to the evil nursery.”

You can check out THIS, or THIS, or THIS to learn even more. And there you go, more than you ever wanted or needed to know about The Doggie Diner head. Oh, and by the way, the sandwiches at Java Beach Cafe were excellent.

After lunch, we took the Great Highway back to Marissa’s house and I fixed the toilet and did a few other things around the house. Then we hopped back in the car and drove back to San Mateo to pick her up from work.

How cute is she??!!

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In yesterday’s post, I purposely left out something that we did on our way to Santa Cruz. About halfway between San Mateo and Santa Cruz sits the city of Cupertino. If you have an Apple product, you’ve heard of Cupertino. It is the time zone setting on every Apple device; from the iPhone, and the MacBooks, to the iPad. I know this because I’ve reset it on every Apple item I own.  Let’s see – Marissa and I are both on our second MacBooks, Connor has one, I asked for and received an iPad for Christmas and then didn’t use it much, so it now belongs to Connor, and each of the three of us has an iPhone and we all, of course, (including Dave)  have iPods. Once we get rid of Dave’s stupid Blackberry and his horrid PC and buy him an iPhone and a big old desktop Mac, our transition will be complete to a true Apple-only family!

Yes, I happily guzzle the Kool-Aid, in fact, give me some more! I’m thinking that Apple TV maybe my next move. Besides all of the Apple stuff we have, I’ve been a bit obsessed with the subject because I’ve been reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. It is the authorized biography that was released soon after Jobs’s death in October 2011. What a complicated, brilliant, narcissistic ass he was! I started the book the Tuesday before we left and finished on the plane, on our way home. I highly recommend it if you like biographies, Apple, tech stuff, Steve Jobs, or just want to learn about the impact on our culture and way of life that Jobs most certainly made. Whether you own an Apple product or not!

Cupertino is mentioned on about every page, so a stop there was a must. I had no idea where we were going, so we drove into town and started to look for Apple.  It didn’t take more than a minute before we saw buildings with the Apple logo on the signs.

I knew there had to be a bigger grander place than these little buildings, so I asked Siri (on my iPhone 4s) to direct me to Apple headquarters. She came through with flying colors. I have a love/hate relationship with Siri.

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… in San Francisco. That’s how I always feel when I board the plane and leave my girl behind. It helps to have dates on the calendar marking when I’ll see her again… Labor Day weekend and Thanksgiving, but it still leaves a tiny little hole each time.

Then again, what a joy it is to be able to go to such a great city to visit her. So much better than if she lived in Podunk, Nowhere Special, USA! Plus there is the fact that she is adorable and sent Connor and I an itinerary, ahead of time, filled with fun things she had lined up for us to do. Love her!!!

We arrived at 7:30 PM on Thursday night. When we landed, I sent Marissa a text at work saying, “the eagle has landed,” and she pulled up just as we were walking out the doors from baggage claim, what timing! It helps that Connor and I travel extra-lite and had no baggage to claim, we shared one carry-on. As you’ve seen from my refrigerator, I am a super-duper packer!

We drove toward Marissa’s home and stopped at San Tung Chinese Restaurant, 1031 Irving Street, located in the Inner Sunset neighborhood. We went specifically for their famous dry fried chicken wings. Wow, they did not disappoint!

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Here is soup number two from the big refrigerator clean-out.

Mixed Potato Soup

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and diced
1 large garlic clove, peeled and minced
1 jalapeno pepper, cored, seeded, and diced
3 pounds russet, sweet, and red potatoes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 cups chicken broth
1 cup half-and-half

Add oil to a large pot over medium heat, until melted. Add the onions, garlic, and jalapeno and cook until the onions or soft and translucent, about 10 minutes.

Add the sweet potatoes and stir to combine. Add salt and pepper, to taste, and cover with a lid. Reduce the heat and let cook for 8 minutes without browning.

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The fruit on my fig tree is ripening just in time…. for me to be out of town… and unable to harvest any. No matter, the birds are flocking to the tree by the dozens and feasting on them.

I don’t have a clue what kind of bird this is, but every day, all throughout the day, there are between 10 and 20 of these black birds chowing down on my figs.

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Good Sunday Morning!  Is this image not one of the most beautiful things you have ever seen? I can not begin to tell you what joy it brings to me. Peace, happiness, calm, just joy! Keep reading to learn where it came from…

Yeah, so guess what I just read on, Heather Bullard – Lifestyle Blog, which by the way, is where the gorgeous image came from and is one of my very favorite blogs in the whole wide world?  This is what I read…

“Posting on a Saturday. I’m sure I’m breaking all kinds of professional blog rules.”

What?!? Posting on Saturdays is against “professional blog rules”?  Man, am I ever in deep trouble. Not only have I posted on a Saturday 135 times, but as of today, I’ve put up a new post 141 times on a Sunday in the nearly three years since I created this space. I’m guessing that if posting on Saturday is against the rules, then posting on Sunday is … well, nothing short of sacrilegious!

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After THIS POST from the first week of classes, in which I put up a “before the storm” photo of my kitchen – I had comment from my friend, Sydney, saying, “I’d like to see the “after” photo :)”

Trust me, no one really wants to see the “after” photos!

Let me put it this way, it took me 95 minutes to mop my kitchen and breakfast room floors on Wednesday afternoon. I use a steam mop and I went over the floors 3 times with 3 different double-sided white micro-fiber pads… all six sides were black by the time I was done.  A few minutes later, I accidentally dropped an ice-cube on the floor… it’s so dang hot here that it started to melt on contact.  So after picking it up, I got a paper towel to get the water off the floor. With only one brief wipe, the paper towel was dirty – and this was after three moppings! There is no winning. The only solution is to have my marble floors stripped and polished, once classes are over at the end of the month.  Now those are before-and-after photos I promise to show you!

Not only did I receive Sydney’s comment from that blog post but also an email from another friend who asked how much time it takes me to set up for classes each morning and just what goes into a class day.  I decided to share a sort of “show and tell” with a sample of a day – yesterday to be exact.

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Back when I was a regular on Valley Dish, I would post links to the videos after they aired. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me for quite some time, the links weren’t permanent.  After a specific length of time, they would just disappear.  As a result, I ended up taking them all down. Since I had been on the show about two dozen times, I was pretty bummed about that.

Well, good news! Today, while searching AZCentral.com, I stumbled upon one of the old segments. I searched further and low and behold, I found most all of them, with permanent links! YAY!! The only two I couldn’t find were the final show and the taped segment from when Tram came to our house and filmed the S’mores Party in my backyard.

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Don’t you love it when something you need or want is also perfectly and beautifully packaged?  I confess I’ve purchased things just because of the packaging, bought wine because I liked the label, and been attracted to something just because it was in a gorgeous box, bottle, or jar.  Take the jars above.  I snapped them up at Marshall’s a couple of weeks ago.  I wasn’t looking for Onion Relish, Pepper Relish, Chipotle Mustard, bottled dressing, or olives, but because of the jars, I went home with them all.

I could not resist these condiments in “collectible European drinkware”, so I ended up buying all they had on the shelves… a total of six jars – I mean six collectible European drinkware!

The same company, Braswell’s Select in Georgia, makes this Vidalia Onion & Pepper Dressing, packaged in a lovely little raised emblem cruet. I can just picture a bunch of wildflowers in it after the dressing is long gone.

And my heart nearly skipped a beat when I spotted this wonderful olive jar.  Yeah, it’s a weakness of mine, one of the many!

But all of these are nothing compared to receiving something personal that is unexpectedly packaged to perfection.  That was the case when a student of mine said that if I needed any more eggs this week, I could purchase them from her.  Farm fresh eggs from someone’s backyard chicken coop? YES, please!  I handed over my $4 and the next morning…

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Guess what I got to do on Friday morning?!?  I got to go on a private farm tour! So how did this lucky event come along for me?  As usual, it’s all in who you know. 

I met Jennifer Woods back in October 2011, when Peggy and I attended that super cool dinner at The Accidental Yard – CLICK HERE to read all about it. Jennifer is a full-time mom to Patrick who is 5 and two-year-old Gretchen (pictured above), a contributor to Chow Bella (CLICK HERE to read just one of the nice articles Jennifer has written about me), and the Marketing Manager for Crooked Sky Farms. Yeah, Jennifer has a full plate!

Anyhow, Jennifer emailed me a week or so ago and asked if I’d like to tour the farm. Would I? Heck, YES!!  There was supposed to be a group of us but the others rescheduled (maybe because they looked at the forecast and noticed that Friday’s high was supposed to be 112 degrees!).  So I met Jennifer and her two adorable, outgoing, well-mannered, articulate, farm-enthusiast kids at the farm at 8:00 AM.

We jumped in the Gator, which looked something like this, but without the hay in the back, and headed out into the fields.

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