Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Stitch like I'm running out of time

Like anyone with two ears and a heart, I am completely in love with Hamilton. Ever since I first heard the soundtrack there has been a Hamilton song in my head every moment I am awake, and I've been studying the annotated lyrics like a Talmudic scholar. I've also been releasing my excessive Hamilton energy in cross stitch form, stitching friends' favorite lines for them while listening to the relevant song on repeat:
Wait For It
Cabinet Battle #2
I also gave money a while ago to The Hispanic Federation as part of a fundraiser Lin-Manuel Miranda ran for them. A few randomly selected donors got tickets to see the show - I wasn't one of them, but I did get this in the mail recently, which is still pretty dang cool:
Hamilton is coming to SF in March 2017, so hopefully I can exchange one of my kidneys for enough cash to buy a ticket by then.

Sunday, August 21, 2016

Magic orchid paradise

Ben and I rented a car to go to a friend's engagement party way out in the East Bay yesterday, but the car rental place is closed on Sundays so we got to keep it today too. We decided to take advantage of it and drive over to Pacifica, which is a really pretty little town on the ocean that's not accessible by public transit, so we can't usually go there. At the outskirts of the town we noticed a sign for Shelldance Orchid Gardens, which we followed because it seemed interesting and we didn't really have anything else to do. It took us along a narrow, winding path up the side of a steep hill, and at the top there were what looked like a bunch of decrepit warehouses attached to each other. We were feeling pretty skeptical but followed signs to the entrance, and holy crap those ancient warehouses are actually 70 year old greenhouses housing a magical fairyland of orchids and many other exotic flowers.
Seriously, I felt like I was in the Hogwarts greenhouse.
They had orchids of all sizes:
As big as Ben's face!
Much smaller than Ben's face!
They had orchids of all shapes:
Only three petals!
Starfish wearing a bib!
Payot!
Cluster!
They had all kinds of plants that weren't even orchids:
Translucent petal cactus thing!
Flower with more flowers inside!
Giant leaves with intentional holes!
Flower playing the trumpet!
Purple spikes!
Upside-down Rapunzel cactus!
????
Pitcher Plant! (I actually knew this one!)
We ended up buying a cool little succulent that looks like boxes stacked on top of each other, because it was the only thing we thought there were somewhat decent odds we wouldn't kill:
Neither words nor pictures can convey how cool this place was. If you ever are anywhere near Pacifica, you have to go!

(Also, we did eventually leave the greenhouses and go over to the beach, although it ended up being more of an afterthought than the main show.)

Thursday, August 11, 2016

New advances in gluttony

When we first spent time in California in 2013, my second favorite gluttonous indulgence (after Sushirrito) was Cookies Rule Everything Around Me, source of warm cookie ice cream sandwiches. I haven't been there again since moving here last year, so when my parents came to visit this week I thought it would be a fun treat to get with them. It turns out ice cream sandwich science has really advanced in the three years I was away, because now they have the option to get your ice cream sandwiched between two halves of a warm cronut:
Needless to say, it was amazing. I can't even fathom what the next leap forward will be - a sandwich in which both halves are a full cronut??