E & G's house

It's too perfect!  I get hired at Whole Foods, meaning I can splurge on produce now at a cool 20% discount, and my beloved VitaMix blender craps out on me.  WTF?  The engine is fine, I think, but the jar seems to have a hole in the bottom.  I noticed it the other day when I was making green juice and realized there was a greenish puddle forming on the blender base.  Sigh.  I can buy a new jar separately, but I think it's still like $100 or so.  Or more.  Sheesh.  I've been neglecting to make green juice regularly, and was hoping with the new job and renewed sense of purpose to get back on top of it.  I mean, I still have the Juice Man blender, but I pretty much used it to death before I got the VitaMix.  So, yeah.  Damn.

So last night Ginger and I were sitting on my bed, playing Bubble Spinner.  All of a sudden she perked up and streaked into the kitchen, where she took up a stalking position.  She was focused on the corner behind the trash can where I keep all my paper bags.  I went in and turned on the light, and moved the trash can out of the way.  Gin's eyes were as big as cannonballs, and she hadn't moved an inch.  I moved a few more things, and she crept closer to the wall but I still couldn't see anything back there.  I pulled out about half of the paper bags, and still nothing.  Then I shoved the rest of them to the side and stepped back.  Gin cocked her head, then darted forward and re-emerged with a FUCKING MOUSE IN HER MOUTH.  It was tiny and gray, and its little arms and legs were all splayed out frozen.  I don't think Gin really knew what to do with it, after all she's been a house cat for the last eight years.  She carried the mouse into the living room and sat in the middle of the carpet with it in her mouth.  I probably should have been finding a box or something to trap it in, but I was too busy scrambling to get my camera to take a photo of my little girl's big day.  She actually caught a mouse!  This from a cat who once lost a moth in her own whiskers!  I celebrated too soon, though, as Gin then set the mouse down, and it ran into the closet.  WTF?  I mean I've heard about cats liking to play with their food before they eat it, but they're not supposed to actually lose it! 
So anyway, we spent the next half hour or so pulling things out of the closet, hoping to give Gin another chance.  But honestly, there's just too much damn crap in that closet.  I opted instead to close the door, stuff a towel under it, and give myself some time to decide what to do.  I am currently reading a number of websites that promise me I can build my own humane mouse trap out of household items.  We'll see how that goes.  Or maybe I'll just open the door and see if Gin can fulfill her cat destiny.

Hm, she looks none too happy up here. 

I don't really know what it is, but there I am anyway.  They found a photo I'd taken of the Cafe Gratitude Cocina Central on Flickr and now are using it for the CG entry.  I'm slightly concerned because the Cocina Central isn't actually a dining location, but oh well.  Close enough. 
See:
That's my teeny photo up in the right corner.

I spent some time wandering around Telegraph Hill today, as I was determined not to spend the entire day inside.  Well, first I walked downtown from my apartment, then down to the Embarcadero and walked along there until I came to the Filbert St. steps by Levi's Plaza (across the street from Pier 23).  I was going pretty aimlessly, but I knew I definitely didn't want to end up by Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf, so I just started up the steps.
So this is from halfway up the hill on Filbert:

Since I was there I thought I'd look in on the Tatiana sculpture, so once I reached Coit Tower at the top it was back down again, this time on Greenwich.  Not surprisingly, it is much easier to find the statue in the daylight!  You can even see it from the steps, see:
I sat there for a few minutes watching people walk by on the path, and none of them seemed interested in checking out what I was photographing!  I guess most of them were just determined to get the hell to the top of the hill.  So I continued down to the bottom again, and started in the direction of home.  But when I got to Vallejo St. I decided on a whim to go back up and take a look around to see if the Telegraph Hill parrots were around.  I found my way back to Union and Montgomery where we saw them the last time, but there were only one or two flying around, instead of the whole flock.
So I finally headed home, through North Beach and Chinatown, spotting this guy on the way:
  Hell yes!

Thinking about it, I realized that I probably had photos of myself at Fairyland back in the day buried in a closet somewhere.  And, magically, I unearthed these:

Obviously these aren't from that Halloween pumpkin-balloon incident.  There may be photos of that floating around somewhere, but my mom probably has them.
While I was excavating, I came across some other interesting photos:
I can't find any evidence on the internet to back me up here, but I'm pretty sure this bubble play structure was in Douglass Park in Noe Valley.  It was a huge plastic bubble-like climbing structure, which was later demolished.  Here's  a photo of something similar in Japan.
Then there's these:
My TV debut on Romper Room!  I don't think this airs at all anymore, but I remember one morning a while back catching it early on a Saturday morning and there I was!  Ha.
Btw, sorry for the lightbulb glare on the photos, turns out the scanner I found in my building's hallway isn't compatible with Mac OSX.  Pfft.

On Wednesday Andrew and I tooled around in Oakland, which I hadn't been to in YEARS.  I needed to go there for job-hunting reasons... meaning that I've reached the point of needing a job so bad I'd be willing to work in Oakland, yikes!  Anyway, we walked by Lake Merritt and spotted Fairyland, which I used to visit quite frequently as a child.  One year I went there for their Halloween Jack-O-Lantern Jamboree, which was a kind of trick-or-treating alternative in a controlled environment.  Anyway, I was dressed as a pumpkin, my costume stuffed with balloons to make me suitably rotund.  Everything was going fine until I got stuck in the train doorway!  I can't remember if I was just shoved through, or if some of my balloons had to be popped to get me in, but it was quite the scene. 

Across the street from the lake is the new Catholic cathedral, which is very impressive looking inside:
...even if parts of it are a little, um, suggestive looking.... just sayin'!
After the cathedral we wandered over to the Kaiser building to look for the rumored rooftop garden.

Well it seems the avocado tree outside my window is dropping avocados again, which I haven't seen it do since I moved into my apartment way back in 2004.  Back then I was super excited to have a fruit-producing avocado tree hovering over my fire escape... just think of all the free avocados I'll be eating!!!  But, as I discovered upon picking one and cutting it open, the Tendernob is not really a great avocado-growing environment.  The inside was green, but had a lot of black splotches and thick yucky looking fibers running through it.  Oh well, turns out I still have to buy my avocados at the store like a sucker after all.  So it wasn't with much enthusiasm that I noticed these guys the other day:

Still, I was curious to see how the insides looked on the newest crop:
Well that's that.  But hey, they're free, whaddya expect?

Let's ask my cat:

I guess the space heater and hot pad aren't cutting it, hmm?