The Everywhereist

The last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. I haven’t had much time to think, very little time to post, and hardly any time to look around and appreciate the world around me.

Which is a shame, because it is quite a delightful world. So while I take a minute to enjoy it, why don’t you take a minute to appreciate these links. Because they, too, are pretty delightful.

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In the words of the brilliant @marikamalaea, if you don’t like tiny animals holding tiny umbrellas, then you’re not an American.

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I’m not what you would call a religious gal, but this has me hoping there’s an afterlife: Heaven’s Welcome Basket. Though I probably wouldn’t make the cut.

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If my last voyage out to New York was the trip of cupcakes, then my most recent trip to San Francisco was the jaunt of ice cream.

Because in the few days that I spent there, I ate a lot of it. I can process dairy far better than the next gal (particularly if the next gal is, say, my friend Giselle, who’s entirely allergic to the stuff) but by the end of my trip I was a farty, bloated mess.

I mean, more so.

Of course, the ice cream was not entirely to blame. There was also pizza, and pasta, and copious quantities of cheese. But mostly, it was the frozen confection that did me in.

In spite of all of that, I regret absolutely nothing. It was a moral act, gobbling up all that ice cream. I sacrificed myself so that others might live without crippling gastrointestinal pain as a result of downing a gallon or so of frozen, churned milk. My work is still not finished, but I will share my findings with you, with the caveat that these results are not entirely conclusive. There are more sprinkles to pile on, more scoops to lick, more cones to gobble.

That sounded dirty. I did not mean for it to.

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A totally random note from Geraldine: This is the 500th post to appear on my blog. Holy cats. There are few things I’ve done 500 times, folks. I won’t exactly go into WHAT, but there are few things – let’s just leave it at that. Thank you to everyone who helped me get to this milestone – whether through guest posts, comments, words of encouragement, or just by occasionally reading the nonsense that I post day in and day out … You are all wonderful, and I want to hug you each 500 times. Though that would probably get weird after the third hug or so. 

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My last post was intended to be about a pleasant day at the beach, and instead it devolved into gratuitous photos of me and my husband making out.

Sorry about that. I promise, there will be absolutely NO NONSENSE LIKE THAT TODAY. All my pictures will be chaste and sexless, and there definitely won’t be adorable self-portraits of me and my husband.

Like this one, for example.

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GAH! What is wrong with me? Sorry. Seriously, that will be the last bit of ooey-gooey sweetness for the day. It’s getting to the point that my own marriage might cause me to become diabetic.

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Dear InterContinental Hotel,

I get the feeling you are trying to tell me something. I just can’t figure out what it is …

If you provide less than three warning labels, a kitten will die.

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Perhaps it will come to me after I’ve finished blow-drying my hair in the bathtub.*

Sincerely,

The Everywhereist

*Oh, calm down. I used a sealant to protect my roots. AND ALSO I DID NOT USE A HAIR DRYER IN THE BATHTUB. Electrocution is not funny. Three warning labels on a single hairdryer kind of is, though.

I’ve often said that the greatest trick San Francisco ever pulled was convincing the world it was part of California.

The city by the bay isn’t terribly sunny or warm. A chilly wind barrels down its streets, and as you clutch your coat tightly to you IN THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST, you contemplate moving someplace warmer. Like Portland. The beaches near San Francisco aren’t much better: cold, rocky, and inhospitable.

In both cases, I blame the Pacific ocean. It is deep and dark and vast, and unforgivably cold. I’ve never swam in it – I refuse to do so until I have a full body wet-suit that makes me look skinny and has a special apparatus to keep my cupcake dry (that is not a euphemism).

So when Rand suggested we visited Muir Beach – roughly 20 miles and 40 minutes away from San Francisco, I was hesitant. I grew up near a real beach – on the Atlantic Ocean – where the water was warm and the sand would scorch your feet. Where you could run around in a bathing suit in the middle of December (wearing a bikini in the holiday season is not something I have attempted since childhood. Now, I suspect large parts of me would jiggle like a bowl full of jelly). But I was curious to see what the Pacific had to offer in way of beaches, and despite the weather, the Bay Area is beautiful. So on a grey morning, Rand and I headed out.

It was hazy, but not terribly bad. We could still see the top of the pillars of the Golden Gate.

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It looks science-y.

The Blue Bottle Cafe in San Francisco, California, is what happens when you combine a coffee shop with a science experiment. Coffee is served in beakers; the metal stools that line one edge of the bar are identical to the ones in my seventh grade biology class (I may have started having flashbacks of my middle school awkwardness), and the pastry shelf is … inventive. The staff might as well be wearing white lab coats (which, incidentally, will probably be the next fashion wave to hit the hipsters of San Francisco: dressing up as the professions you forsook in order to be a musician).

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For the first time in a decade (yes, ten whole friggin years) my brother and sister-in-law are in town. I realize that many of my readers will be saddened to discover that my bro is, in fact, married. On the plus side, I promise to post plenty of photos of him in the coming weeks. Which many of you will enjoy, but as his little sister, know how horrified I am at that concept.

So while I’m off trying to entertain them, here are a few links to entertain you this Friday:

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Simple, wonderful, and slightly reminiscent of the brilliant Edward Gorey: John Kenn’s monsters on Post-it notes.

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Vegetarians will be horrified, but I personally could not look away: check out Scanwiches, a site that features scan after scan of – you guessed it – sandwiches.

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Riots, it would seem, are the theme of this week.

It seemed rather apt, then, that I share with you some photos of Vancouver taken several long weeks ago, just days before Vancouver dealt with its own batch of civil unrest. I had headed up to Canada for a conference specifically geared towards travel bloggers, and dragged my dear sweet husband with me. We roamed the city together, something we hadn’t done in ages. In fact, this was the last time I was in Vancouver with Rand:

I vaguely remember these people. (circa 2002)

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On a sunny Sunday we returned home, and the very next day the city was ravaged by riots following the Vancouver Canucks loss of the Stanley Cup. Fortunately, Canadians are a polite and noble sort, and in the aftermath they took to the streets with brooms and dustpans, picking up the mess that had been made.

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