WordPress app for android :)

Just noticed that there’s a wp app so I figured I’d give it a spin while waiting for my “gilbraltar” at blue bottle. If only it didn’t take 20 mins to get through the line zzzz

morning coffee routine

being a new parent means losing sleep. getting less sleep means you gotta have a morning coffee routine to get things going!

even though there’s a bunch of coffee places within a 5 minute walk of where we live, it’s not super convenient to get some first thing in the morning (hitting the starbucks next door to our house in PJs might be a bit odd). there’s also the cost factor of course. recently, my favorite coffee has been philz, just down 4th at Berry St. – but it’s too far to make the trek in the morning and they do charge $3 for a small cup of single-drip coffee. ($1.50 for the next few weeks as I use up the $20 GC I got through groupon 🙂 )

anyhoo, looking for a home option, my criteria were:

• high quality taste
• single serving
• quick/easy to make and cleanup

at first, i tried using a french press with pre-ground coffee. we registered for a bodum chambord double wall coffee press in our wedding registry and i had gotten a bag of starbucks grounds on clearance at target.

i tried using this setup a few times after we had first gotten married 2 years ago, but with these tools a few major problems were evident:

1. the pre-ground coffee was the wrong coarseness, which meant that the french press was unable to filter cleanly and there were small grounds in the produced coffee
2. the double wall feature was nice in that it kept the coffee hot longer, but it only comes in a rather large size, which wasn’t conducive to a single serving. i’d usually end up with multiple cups, which is way too much normally
3. cleanup was a nightmare. the french press has a ton of pieces and the cleaning the plunger/filter is too much work for daily use

paired with my inexperience at getting the right final mix (coffee/sugar/milk), the coffee was horrible and a ton of work.

fortunately, we got the coffee press at bbb which has an awesome return policy (better than REI and Nordstrom!). so, in addressing the serving size problem, i exchanged it for a smaller french press: a 17-ounce bodum shin bistro

excited, i brought it home eager to give it a go the next morning. however, results were really disappointing. the serving size problem was solved, but the single wall construction meant the coffee was lukewarm after brewing (you have to let it steep in the press for a few minutes before plunging). the cleanup was still terrible and the finished product was still subpar compared to my local coffee joints.

the french press goes into the cupboard, months go by and riley join us… and the need for coffee increases dramatically 🙂

i do some online research and find this brilliant contraption:

swissgold® KF 300 One-Cup Coffee Filter

it solves the serving size problem, is much easier to clean, has no moving/complicated parts, and produces nice drip coffee just like you find at blue bottle, cento, and philz without having to get paper filters.

now i was getting really close, but my bag of pre-ground coffee had pretty much lost all its flavor. i knew i wasn’t going to be able to use up bags of pre-ground coffee fast enough for it to stay fresh so, using some bbb store credit, i bought a breville conical burr grinder and some peet’s whole coffee beans.

in the weeks that followed, i made the final few adjustments:

• the swissgold filters coffee best if it’s ground at the “fine” setting, which is used for filtered coffee (it’s in between the setting for plunger and espresso)
• i switched to using organic turbinado raw cane sugar
• i now use heavy cream – which i’ve discovered is a must have in the kitchen! you can also add it to eggs for scrambled eggs and curry yum!
• to heat the water, i use filtered water from our fridge and nuke 8 oz. for 2.5 minutes in the microwave
• cleaning the swissgold just takes a quick wash with our oxo soap brush

end result: coffee as good as philz in 5 minutes every morning. cost? hmmm… $16 for the swiss gold + $100 for the coffee grinder + $8 for bags of beans (25 servings) + $3 for a pint of cream (10 servings) + $3 bag of sugar (~100 servings). doing a little calculus, limit as n approaches infinity of ($16 + $100)/n is 0, so the cost per cup is something like $0.32 + $0.30 + $0.03 = $0.65 / cup!

preggo things that keep me up at night

5. anticipation/anxiousness
4. baby kicking my ribs & lungs
3. something wrong with baby
2. going into labor at work
but the thing that worries me to no end is…

1. getting stretch marks

top 3 funniest things by mark jen in his sleep

1. sleep stomping
2. sleeping cross-armed with a giant pout
3. drops his own pillow, proceeds to yank my pillow and claim as his own

oh wait, was that last one actually my brother…?

documented, so if baby jen ever does this in her sleep, i cannot be blamed 😛

progress

had a typical doctor’s visit today. read: short & quick

belly’s measuring 29cm. heart beat rate 140. dr has no idea why i failed the 1st glucose test miserably. i’m approaching 130 lbs fast.

love being able to blame weight gain on a growth spurt 🙂

10 weeks to go! time flies!

2008 recap

season’s greetings!

i cant believe 2008 is coming to an end soon…and this is only like the 5th entry all year.  it’s been so long since i last updated that errol is probably right, there’s cobwebs all over.  so let’s recap:

mark and i got married in may! even though it was just a mere months away, that seems so long ago already.  guess we are really enjoying married life 😉

after the wedding, we traveled to greece (santorini and athens) & london for a lovely honeymoon.  mark and i still reminisce about the awesome food we had on the trip…only in greece, not london 😛

we stayed low key throughout the summer, just recovering from a hectic wedding planning period.  we snuck in a couple of weddings, including a weekend trip to pismo beach.

summer decided to extend its stay in san fran this year.  we have had really nice weather (unseasonally warm and sunny) even as we speak, and it’s already december!  mark and i have been taking advantage of it and spend a lot of our weekends out biking, rollerblading (mark only) along the waterfront, to the farmers market, to chinatown, even to the “ghettos” once.

another really cool thing that happened this year was our good friends jon & frank from seattle/detroit also moving to sf.  since then, we’ve visit jtown on average of 3 times a week 😛  they only live a couple blocks away from us so that also means many many late nights of poker, big 2, mah jong, settlers, rock band 2…etc etc.  it’d be even more fun if the 2 of them started dating so i dont have to hang out with all boys 😛

fall came even us even noticing.  we went on a fall wedding galore that took us to houston, san jose & nyc. we got to hang out with family, yvonne, judy, bonnie & vincent, erin, todd & kelly!  the houston trip was good timing because my parents had just moved so we were able to help them a little.  mark got a glimpse of all the crazy stuff from my childhood (school papers from elementary school my mom has been keeping, study materials, toys, pictures, clothes…talk about being packrats!) in new york, we got some awesome food like cheap japanese food, delish brunches, all-you-can-eat indian food, cupcakes and pinkberry!  overrated in my opinion, but it’s 1 thing off my to-do list.  another amazing sight was fall foliage in central park.  purrrty 🙂

this year wasn’t just about us visiting places, we got a lot of visitors in sf as well.  earlier this year, emmy dropped by during an interview stop in oakland.  yvonne came by to interview as well…and she’ll be back for good next year!  woohoo 🙂  mark’s friend jimmy was also in town for a school trip, so that meant breaking out settlers.  and that’s not even mentioning all the friends and family who came from all over for our wedding!

this holiday season, mark and i stuck around in sf and got to catch up with many old friends over thanksgiving break.  we have so much to be thankful for this year and being able to share those blessings with friends is really special.  we’ll be splitting our time between sf and houston (12/25-31) over christmas so hopefully we’ll be able to catch up with you in person soon! 🙂

I hate the sf muni

Now I remember why I hate the sf muni system. I’m standing at the corner of 4th and Bryant St., where there is clearly a bus stop for the 9AX and I watch and the empty bus drives by on the far lane of Bryant St. to get ready to turn on 3rd. The bus driver didn’t even slow down. How is anyone supposed to use this system?

Not to mention the fact that even if I catch the bus, it takes 30+ minutes to get to work; which takes 15 minutes to bike or drive.

I called sfmuni to complain but they just put me on hold.. not surprising I guess.

For any SFers that are against increasing the amount of parking in the city, try using the public transit system sometime >:o

Posting from my iphone

On the bus ride home from work. Tappin out a blog entry on my new iPhone 3g using the wordpress app. Pretty cool except it’s so hard to type compared to my old devices with a physical keypad. They shoulda made a wordpress app for blackberry 🙂

a rosy update!

goodness, it’s been a while since we last blogged. lots have happened in the past 2 months. here’s what rose and snail have been up to…

after a busy traveling season which took us to vegas, salt lake city, tahoe (and whistler too for mark) we are back to planning in full force. we spent a few weeks getting paper supplies and designing the invitations. after 2 straights days of staying up printing, slicing paper, punching circles and envelope licking (j/k we used moist cotton balls) we finally sent out invitations this past week! *huge pat on back* well, at least for those people who actually responded to our emails and gave us addresses. shame on you if you kept ignoring our spam 😛

while mark was at his bachelor party in whistler, we received our first wedding present. not knowing what to do with it, it sat in the corner for a couple weeks. we got our 2nd wedding present last night.  after also realizing we could not possibly store all these giant boxes in our tiny condo, we decided to open them! 🙂 i confirmed with friends that this was acceptable, as long as we didn’t use the items in case they needed to be returned if the wedding was called off 😛 opening presents were fun. we are going to need a bigger condo soon.

we also looked into floral stuff. i’m excited that we’ll be able to do all things flowery on a small budget. score! 🙂

we’re now planning to get our marriage license. i’m glad that at least the government doesn’t try to rip you off when you are getting married.

oooh, i also got a headstart making presents for my bridal party and house party. what am i making? hehe, that’s my little secret. i may post some sneak peek pictures…

speaking of pictures, i’m sad that i forgot to document a lot of the stuff i was writing about. like, i didn’t take any pictures of our invitations before we sent them out…i didn’t take a picture of the wedding present (before it got tore up by mark :P) i gotta remember to do a better job so i can scrapbook like crazy after the wedding…hehe

k, off to planning! oh yeah, remember to buy your plane tickets and book your hotels if you haven’t already!! 🙂

i gotta blog this…

that’s what I said earlier today as we were leaving Williams-Sonoma in Union Square, so here we go!

So, this morning we headed to Crate and Barrel bright and early to hit up a wedding registry event; however, it’s actually tomorrow morning :O Since we were already around Union Square, we hit up Dottie’s True Blue Cafe for breakfast (it was good, but we’d give it 3 out of 5 stars – 4 stars at best…) and then went shopping before the Macy’s Wedding Registry event today at 1PM.

We strolled into Williams-Sonoma, and since we had just finished eating a greasy breakfast, it was time for a typical bathroom run.

Williams-Sonoma in Union Square has a pretty nice bathroom, so I ran up to the 3rd floor and started umm… doing the business when someone starts knocking on the bathroom door. The bathroom is one of those single units where it’s a small room with a toilet & sink and you lock the whole room. I clear my throat loudly to signal that “hey, there’s someone in here” and figure whoever it is will wait patiently until the business is finished being done. However, this guy is really impatient and keeps knocking and starts yelling something or other, which I can’t really understand since the door is pretty thick and well… I’m in the middle of some business. I thought, man this guy is rude! So I made sure to take care of a little extra business and get the room nice and ripe for the next customer.

As I’m washing my hands and getting ready to leave the restroom, I get a call from Rose on my cell:

Rose: Are you still in the bathroom? Guess who’s here on the 3rd floor

Me: Huh? Yeah, I’m just finishing up. What are you talking about?

Rose: George from Grey’s Anatomy is here on the 3rd floor, I just saw him walk up there!

The impatient bathroom user? Yup, that’s right, T.R. Knight (George O’Malley on Grey’s Anatomy). As I exited the bathroom, he was standing there in the hallway waiting to go. I barely even recognized him since he’s currently got a pretty short haircut and he’s wearing regular street clothes (not hospital scrubs).

Needless to say, I had to blog this 😛

Other quick thoughts (mostly rants!):

• Got Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac and was really hoping Entourage would be good. No such luck; still running Outlook 2007 in Parallels.
• What’s up with the movie No Country for Old Men? How is it not obvious to everyone that it sucks?
• Firefox on Mac is totally suck these days. It’s always crashing. Flock is too slow. Safari sucks. Argh!
• Registering for a wedding is crazy! Bed, Bath and Beyond is the best place to register though. 1. everything is returnable for cash, 2. they actually have stores everywhere, 3. 20% off coupons everywhere, and 4. our registry consultant comped us a free $30 meal when we were looking dead tired & hungry!
• Jorge Perez. omg. his presentation during the Macy’s Wedding Registry event might’ve been the worst 30 minutes of my life.
• The Hollywood writer’s strike sucks. Hey guys, don’t screw yourselves like the NHL did eh? You’re just asking for people to forget about your junk and do other stuff.
• I want to buy a Nintendo Wii and the game Rock Band for xbox 360. However, it’s sold out everywhere around here. Hey Nintendo and Harmonix: let me give you my money!
• Rain in SF sucks when you have to bike to work and by the time you get there, your pants are completely drenched.
• I would’ve twittered all this stuff, but twitter sucks. I get a ton of junk tweets and none of my friends are on it anyways.

Can’t believe you read all that yo. zzzzzzzzz 🙂