It's a small world

Had I been a boy, my name would have been Jacob Wayne. For purposes of this particular story, the Wayne part is of interest. You see, the day I was born, as my parents were rushing to the "hospital" (another story for another time), they decided that they would give me their good friend Wayne Schwandt's name as a middle name since it was his birthday that same day.

Of course my name is not Jacob Wayne. However, Wayne Schwandt and his wife at the time, Ann Schwandt, remained friends with my parents and even visited us in Germany in the early '80s.

When I was telling my dad a few weeks ago that I was going to a wedding in Bellingham, Washington, he brought up my almost-namesake and remembered that Wayne Schwandt once lived in Bellingham, Washington, he even made it big, got himself elected to the City's Development Council or some such thing.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. I was in Bellingham over the weekend for my good friend Mike's wedding. His bride and her family are from Bellingham and I must say, it is a really nice little town. Very pretty. Especially when the rain stops and the sun comes out.

The wedding was lovely. The ceremony, although a bit long, was very enjoyable and entertaining. After the ceremony the bridal party (of which I was a member) went around Bellingham and found really beautiful locations to take photos. One such location was an old run-down Boilermaker's building. The bride used to work for the Boilermaker's Union. That's how she met my friend Mike during the 2008 presidential campaign. The building was really neat, old wood, rusty siding, big metal doors in a green that matched our dresses perfectly. And, even though it was supposed to storm and rain all day long, the sun came out for the pictures and it was simply beautiful.

The reception was at the Ferry Terminal. It's a fairly standard ferry terminal but there is a room upstairs with windows overlooking the water and the view of the sun setting was breath taking.

When I walked into the reception area, I stopped to get my name card of the name card table and the ends of my pashmina caught a line of name cards and, like dominoes, a whole row of name cards fell flat. Oops! I hurried to pick them all up and put them back in order.

As I was setting down name cards, I saw that I held in my hand name cards for "Wayne Schwandt" and "Ann Schwandt" and I thought, "impossible!"

So I finished putting all the toppled name cards back in place and went to find the bride's father, Dean. Dean and I hit it off immediately when I had arrived the day before. He's a retired federal judge and was delighted to meet the "lawyer that Mike lived with" who drove all the way from Oakland. (He also kept taking pictures of me saying, "give me that smile again!") So, I said to Dean, "Dean, tell me about Wayne Schwandt."

He as a little perplexed but humored me, giving me Wayne's basic resume: served on the City's Economic Development Council, elected to several public positions, long time friend of the family, the bride went to school with Wayne's daughter. I asked if he was from Oregon. Yes, indeed. Then, as I was about to explain, Dean turned around and gestured to the man coming up the stairs saying, "Wayne, I'd like to introduce you to Katy McKenzie" not knowing exactly why he was doing it.

Wayne had a quizzical look on his face and so I said, "Kirk McKenzie's daughter" and his face lit up in a mixture of shock, surprise, and elation. "Holy Cow!"

Anyway, the rest of the evening was a blast. I got reacquainted with Wayne, met his new wife, also got to spend some time with Ann and their daughter Mullane. Mullane told me that just last week she had found the journal she kept before their trip to visit us in Germany when her mother made her learn a new German word every day.

The bride, by the way, was very confused as to why I was hugging and talking to her best friend from high school and also that friend's parents. When we all explained there were laughs all around. All of my table mates at the reception were old friends from Columbus and when they heard the story, they did two things: 1. They all agreed "Leave it to Katy McKenzie to know someone at a wedding in Bellingham, Washington!" and 2. they all called me Wayne for the rest of the night.

And fun was had by all.

Pictures of me and Wayne and me and Ann & Mullane.

I don't like mornings like this...

Generally, I've never been much of a morning person but I've gotten used to the fact that I do, in fact, have to get up every morning and so I do. I have my morning ritual which includes the usual, shower, brush teeth, put on make-up, get dressed, etc. but it's mornings like today that make me realize that I really like my morning ritual. More importantly, I like my morning ritual to be quiet.

I guess that's no surprise for someone who has apparently become very sensitive to noise in adulthood. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for complete silence here. I've gotten used to the sounds of the neighborhood, the kids getting to the school across the street, the (very) frequent trash pick-ups, neighbors yelling for their kids to get in the car to go to school, etc.

But every once in a while, my neighbor's landscaping team shows up at 8:30am. This is right when I'm sitting down at my desk with my first cup of coffee of the day and start reading through the news, emails that came in over night, etc. It's supposed to be a pleasant time of day.

Here's what it means for the landscaping crew to be next door:
1. chatting & laughing among the crew while they wait for their boss to arrive (totally ok with me and not that unpleasant of a sound. Only problem is that it is happening directly under the window I am sitting next to!)
2. revving of some motor-powered thing, apparently to make sure it works at full power and at low. I can't figure out what it is, either a leaf blower or a wood chipper or something in between but it's very loud and annoying
3. my neighbor's valiant efforts at Spanish as she tries to communicate with the crew who only speak and understand Tagalog and some English, which means she just keeps getting louder and louder, especially over the noise of the motorized thing
4. one of the crew's hacking cough and the accompanying intermittent hawking of phlegm and spitting, which is just kind of disgusting.

Finally, at 9am they begin their work, which brings with it a whole other slew of sounds which I am mostly fine with other than the continuous revving of the motorized thing and, with it, the smell of exhaust that fills my apartment.

My conference call this morning is going to be simply delightful.

Brazilian Carnaval (it's not a typo!)

Through a friend of a friend, I learned about the Brazilian Carnaval in San Francisco this weekend. There were events on Saturday to which I was invited but it was cold and rainy and my pj's and couch was really comfortable so that didn't happen.

Then yesterday turned out to be a gorgeous day and so I decided to get out of the house and travel to "the City" to see what this festival was all about. My friend Chokri and I decided to take purely public transportation for the day.

We started with the bus right outside my apartment. That took us to downtown Oakland where we were going to get on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport - a subway). Instead though, since it was such a beautiful day, we decided to opt for the ferry instead. So, we crossed the bay on the ferry, and then transferred to BART once we got to San Francisco. A couple of blocks of walking later we were in the middle of a huge festival of fantastic costumes, delicious food, soul-moving music, and tons and tons of people.

It was a blast. Here are some pictures of the journey and the festival.


on the bus...


the ferry...


we made it to the City!


dancers at the festival


There was this wall of bougainvillea that was just screaming for attention!


there were so many pretty murals on walls...

more fun in the kitchen...breakfast

Today I woke up and decided I wanted something fun for breakfast. My usual is almond butter with some type of jam and fresh strawberries on WASA crackers and while I love it, I wanted something else today.

So, I looked in my fridge, had a cup of coffee, and thought about it for a while. I didn't really feel like having pancakes but that seemed to be the obvious choice. Hm. What to do? Well, consulting the "Joy of Cooking" is always a good start.

The results are below. I stuck with my usual almond butter, added the organic rhubarb jam (with ginger and plum brandy) I found at the farmer's market last week, plus my trusty mango butter from Trader Joe's and I made a Crepe Cake.

As many of you know, I see recipes as a starting point/suggestion so I did not follow it precisely but the result is still quite yummy: I didn't have milk so I substituted soy milk, I didn't double the recipe since I don't have 8 people to feed this morning, I made tiny crepes instead of 8" ones, and I topped it with powdered sugar instead of regular sugar. I used the almond butter as a base layer and then alternated between the rhubarb jam and the mango butter. It's really tasty. :)

Next time, maybe I'll make a savory one with cheese, leeks, and spinach. That sounds delicious too!

Adventures in cooking/getting creative with left-overs

There's a new Cuban restaurant in my neighborhood and I recently tried one of their empanadas. It was delicious. So then I was craving empanadas...

Late last week, I decided I wanted to at least try to have something that was similar in flavor so I made a concoction out of ground beef, some left-over olive tapenade, raisins, peas, and all kinds of spices (I read through some recipes and, as I believe recipes are merely suggestions and/or starting points, I picked and chose which spices sounded good: cinnamon, cloves, cumin, etc.). I added that mixture to some rice pilaf and had a good dinner but there was A LOT left over. Tupperware...

Last night for Sunday dinner/game night, I made artichokes with a Hollandaise sauce for dipping. Also quite good but after lots of games and laughter, there was still lots of Hollandaise sauce left over. Hmm...

What do you do with left-over faux-empanada filling and a bunch of Hollandaise sauce? Well, you improvise and you make actual empanadas. If you are me, that is.

So here's what I did: I found a simple empanada dough recipe (for baking since I don't have a fryer) and I substituted buttery eggy Hollandaise sauce for the lard and an egg yolk the recipe called for. Then I used the rest of sauce beaten with an egg to brush the empanadas before I baked them (instead of just egg).

The results are actually quite delicious. I am very happy with them. Now I just need to find enough people to eat all of them!

Empanadas anyone?

Busy weekend

It was a busy weekend but it was fun! First, on Friday, my friend Genevieve played at an open mic show at a place called Mama Buzz Cafe. It was great to hear some good local live music.



Saturday was the Great Strides Cystic Fibrosis Walk. My friend Sarah (see earlier post "Sarah's Project") has CF and this is the largest annual fundraising walk for CF. It was a beautiful day in San Francisco and it was a lot of fun. We walked as Team Incredible and we had the best t-shirts out of all the walkers! There were about 500 walkers and we raised about $100,000 by Saturday. (Donations are welcome year-round if you're interested. Check out www.cff.org to donate or find out more.)

Below are Sarah (you can see the awesome t-shirt), Team Incredible getting ready to walk, and the view from the Presidio. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning!

home

I have made major locational changes in my life. Germany to Boston for college, Boston to Ohio for law school, Ohio to Northern California a couple of years ago for work. These big moves are always exciting, always challenging, and never easy.

The first couple of moves were such that I had immediate, built-in friends (college and law school will do that for you) but the last one was a little different. Granted I had built-in, immediate connections with people at work since that's why I moved out here in the first place, but I'm the kind of person who likes to have my work life and my personal life be a little separate. (I have to add here that some of my closest friends in California are from work - were from work since I no longer work with them. So I guess now they're friends, not work-friends. Yay!)

It also always takes me a little while to settle into feeling like I actually live in a new place. I always forget how long it takes to feel that way. Typically, I feel like a stranger in a place until I can confidently give directions when asked, run into people I know on the street, and feel like a regular fixture in my neighborhood.

After 2 years of living in California, I realized just the other day that I have achieved this settled feeling. I feel like I actually live here now, not like I'm pretending to live here.

You see, recently, as I was walking the 5 or 6 blocks home from what I am calling my local "Biergarten" (outdoor patio, beer, casual, fun atmosphere, lots of regulars and locals), I was stopped 3 times by different people along the way who all either live or work in my neighborhood, know me, wanted to say hi and chat for a moment. (One called to me from across the street, ran over and hugged me. Another came out of the restaurant when I walked by to say hi.)

It made me really really happy. It also made for a very pleasant walk home, stopping to chat, feeling like I really do live here in this neighborhood. Realizing that people here know me and are genuinely happy to see me when I happen to pass by. I feel like I'm home now.