A Visit Home

Last weekend (or two weekends ago..I'm a little delayed) I was able to spend a total of 36 hours in Michigan before working for the week on the east coast. I took the red eye on Friday night and landed at 6:30am on Saturday morning. After a nice little nap on the couch, we spent almost the whole day at Brian and Jill's, and guess who's cute face I got to see?

Isn't she precious? I missed her! And she's gotten so big since I last saw her in North Carolina! It was super fun to play with her all day. We were hoping to see a UofM victory, but it didn't go our way..bah. I didn't necessarily think we'd stay undefeated the whole season, but it always hurts a little more when we lose to a rival. I'm hoping for a win this weekend!

Brian and Jill live in Oakland Township in a heavily wooded area, so they get a lot of visitors themselves - in the animal form. The deer were out in full force while I was there and came right up to their basement windows. Here's a mama and her babies:

Speaking of animals, I was excited to see Reba last weekend as well. She can't Skype very well, so it's hard to keep up with her. Claire seems to be excited to see Reba too! My two favorite little girls..

And since I won't be home until Christmas, I got a little sneak peak of what's to come Halloween weekend. Have you ever seen a more adorable pumpkin?

So after hanging out with Claire all day, I met up with my friend Janelle who also just started work at PwC in Detroit to catch up about our lives! The one hard thing about being on the west coast is that it's hard to make time for phone calls when people on the east coast are awake, so it was nice to finally talk to her without time limits :)

On Sunday, my parents and I went to Toledo to see my grandma and grandpa before rushing off to the airport. It was a quick trip but wonderful! Then I spent the next four days busy at work commuting between Maryland and Virginia. By Thursday when I headed home, I was exhausted. Finally I had my first free weekend in San Francisco - more on that to come!

Rubbing Elbows with Wine Critics

Last Wednesday evening, I spent a few hours hobnobbing with the best of the best in the wine industry. My friend Jordan's dad bought her two tickets to the Wine & Spirits Magazine Top 100 Tasting event, and she asked me to go with her! The event is a classy affair that showcases wines from the top 100 wineries in the world every year.

Let's just say, we did not exactly fit in. We were definitely the youngest people there and considering I hadn't heard of 96% of the wineries represented, probably the least educated in wine too. There were some serious wine critics there. Like, walking around to all 100 booths, introducing themselves and then spitting into a bucket after just a little taste. I, on the other hand, didn't want to waste anything! But don't worry, I didn't make it to all 100 booths either :)

To be honest I couldn't tell you everything I tried and have no idea what my favorite was. It was all so good! If I'm happy with 2 buck chuck from Trader Joe's, I think I'd be satisfied with any of the top 100 wines in the world, right? There were a few that stood out...oddly enough they were all ones I tasted towards the end of the night, after a fewww glasses of wine. Coincidence? Oh well. And if I'm being really honest, my preferences probably don't have much to do with the taste of the wine, but more with the interaction with the wine maker. At the beginning, we tried acting like we knew what we were doing and people seemed a little snobby. After awhile, we just admitted that we didn't know anything and a few of them were nice about it!

So without further ado, the ones I liked were:

Penfolds (Australia)

Mark Ryan Winery (Washington)

Bodega Catena Zapata (Don't remember but I liked the name!)

And last but not least, good old Chateau St. Michelle, which was already one of my favorites because it's where I spent my 21st birthday outside of Seattle with Katie!

But aside from all the wine I drank and the meatballs and deviled eggs I devoured, it was so much fun to be there and just take it all in. I hadn't seen Jordan since the Notre Dame game, a result of my lack of life in September, so we probably spent more time catching up than we did drinking wine! I'm sure this event was just a once in a lifetime opportunity, but it made me really excited that I'll finally have free time to get out and do things in San Francisco, hang out with friends, and meet new people. There's a lot to see and do and I already feel like Jordan (my Jordan, the boy) and I have missed out on two months of fun because of my studies and tests and work.

So here's to new adventures! But starting next week cause I'm in Michigan this weekend and DC for work next week. Ha :)

My friend Jordan!

Highway to the Danger Zone

Cue the Top Gun soundtrack...

For your viewing pleasure:

Blue Angels Fly-By from Kristen R on Vimeo.

Blue Angels - Fleet Week 2011 from Kristen R on Vimeo.

Oh my, where did September go?

Suddenly it's mid-October! Time flies when you're working 60+ hour weeks and studying for CPA exams. I won't dwell too much on what I did or did not do in the past month. The short story is that I was very busy with work, and in the free time I did have I was studying for what will hopefully be my last exam (I passed the one I took in August!!) BUT, I took the test last Thursday and thought it went fine, so it was time to finally relax and celebrate. In the world's most perfect timing, Katie and Matt came to visit for the weekend and arrived late Thursday night.

They took off to the north on Friday for a little coastal driving and wine country meandering, but unfortunately I couldn't join them because I had an important day at work...

An afternoon boat cruise!

Somehow our organized work events always happen when I have visitors. But yes, my group at work had an afternoon boat cruise to watch the Fleet Week air show practice. We saw lots of cool planes that flew right over our boat, over Alcatraz, and over the Golden Gate Bridge. We spent a good 3 hours out on the water and had beautiful weather! After we got back to shore a bunch of us went to a nearby bar for happy hour and then I made my way back to the Marina to meet up with Katie and Matt.

More boat cruise pictures..

That night we had a fabulous dinner at Green's, a vegetarian restaurant in Fort Mason, which is just a few minutes from our apartment. After our feast and a bottle of wine, we headed to a wine bar on Chestnut St, where we shared a couple more bottles! All in all, a very good day :)

We woke up on Saturday and headed to the farmer's market at the Ferry Building. There, we picked up cheese and crackers, heirloom tomatoes, squash, and pears for the night's dinner. We had invited Katie's friend Nick and his girlfriend over for dinner and Lauren and Lance happened to be in the city then too so we ended up having a nice little dinner party! But before that

happened..it was lunch time. We took Katie and Matt to Tacolicious on Chestnut St and snagged a table outside. Tacolicious, as you can guess from the name, has pretty awesome tacos. It started as a food tent at the Ferry Building farmer's market and got so popular they opened a restaurant. While we were there we chatted with the guy sitting next to us who happened to be from Oklahoma, near where Matt grew up. More on that later..

So after lunch we walked down to the waterfront to take in the highlight of Fleet Week, the Blue Angels. It was actually pretty awesome. Then we headed back to the apartment (a long, 3 block walk from the apartment) and discovered a bunch of people heading up to the roof top at our place for a party. Now..when we moved in we specifically asked if there was roof access and were told that there wasn't..lies! Turns out there is roof access, it's BEAUTIFUL, and there was quite a party going on up there. Who did we run into but our Tacolicious buddy from Oklahoma, who seemed to be the life of the party. Here's what it looks like up there!

So after partying on the roof for a little bit (Jordan and Matt took off to the bar to watch the Michigan game), it was time to run to the store to get the rest of dinner ingredients and start cooking! Katie and Matt took the lead in the kitchen and we put together a pretty delicious meal. Our first time entertaining was a success :)

On Sunday we headed over to the Haight St. area for some wandering and had tapas and sangria for lunch. We had a little time before Katie and Matt had to leave for the airport so we finished off a movie we had all fallen asleep during the night before. It was awesome having them here for the weekend and I can't wait to see them again!

This next weekend I'll have another dose of family, since I'll be stopping in Michigan for a quick 36 hours before heading to DC for work. I should be a little more regular with my blog posts now and hopefully will actually have exciting things to talk about!