Bridging 2008/2009

As usual around this time of year, it's been a busy few weeks in our little home on Liberty Hill. As we say goodbye to 2008 and welcome in 2009 (albeit a little late), we wanted to send out an update to let you all know what we've been up to.

The busy season began for us on Christmas Eve when Pia and Dave arrived from New York. We spent the day and night shopping for food and wine shopping, preparing for Christmas dinner, and getting to know Dave.

Early the next morning Lily and Sascha came over for brunch, after which we all went for a city hike up to Corona Heights which offers glorious views of the city in all directions.

At 6:30pm sharp, we commenced our 7-course extravaganza and didn't finish eating until well past midnight!

We spent much of the following day digesting all of the food and drink from the evening prior. In the afternoon we explored North Beach, visiting City Lights bookstore, and walked around Chinatown.

A few days later, we made our way onto the back of a mechanical bull, because...well, we're still working on the why of it, but it was fun nonetheless. It was also much more slippery than we had anticipated!

To celebrate the new year, we invited Lily, Jason and Sascha to a Turkish Delight themed gathering, complete with belly dancers (Pia and Pearl took online classes from youtube that morning) and a Turkish meal prepared by all and eaten communally on the floor with our fingers.

Before midnight all six of us changed into our onesie pajamas to ring in the new year in style.

And 2009 has started off with wonderful news: we received news that my cousin Zandy and his wife Denise welcomed a healthy baby boy named Collin Andrew on January 1st...

...and my brother Pablo and his wife Karen welcomed a healthy baby girl named Marion Eugenie on January 2nd.

We were also able to spread some cheer to the owner of Ocean Front Walkers on 24th Street by presenting her with the photo of the six of us in the onesies that we bought from her store.

We also made a care basket for the owner of Love of Ganesha on Haight Street: Noot is so giving that we thought it was time for us to give back to her.

The Friday after New Year's Day we continued our international theme when Jason and Lily invited us to a Swedish night in Oakland. They cooked a wonderful meal complete with Swedish music (yes, there is more to Swedish music than ABBA), Swedish meatballs, Swedish liquor, and a Swedish dessert. After checking out the Art Murmur (http://www.oaklandartmurmur.com/pages/Jmap/Jmap.php), we returned to Jason's for a tea ceremony where Lily got to show off the new gai-wans and teas she purchased at the Red Blossom Tea Company in Chinatown.

In other news, the potted garden is also coming along nicely. The winter has been mild (70 degrees in San Francisco all this week!) and it looks like all of the plants will survive until Spring. At some point, we will have to get an expert in so we can figure out what is it that we've been planting. Once the plants start to flower and show a little color, we'll post some photographs.

And we are happy to report that our shitake mushroom farm recently gave off its first harvest. The mushrooms are buttery and delicious, great in soups and salads. Today we put some in our vegan eggplant parmesean.

Yesterday we took our first neighborhood exploration of 2009 and discovered one of San Francisco's hidden treasures, the Seward Street Slides. Tucked away off a little side street, the cement slides were a fun diversion during our walk. In fact, when we were there we saw more adults sliding down than kids! We hope to start blogging our neighborhood explorations soon but wanted to share this brief one with you now.

And finally, last week Michael found a photograph in the SF Historical Photograph collection taken of our street in 1956. Our house is hidden just over the crest of the hill on the right side.

Be well until our next posts!