photo adventure.

my poor blog has been severely neglected lately. i am almost always short on time thanks to school, and when i do have time to relax, blogging is just not high on my list.

but in an attempt to fix that, i decided to post some photos i took the other day while walking helix. i'll work on updating from the past month and a half soon.

my school is on an old naval base, and while some people find it unappealing... i love old buildings [even abandoned ones... which there are no shortage of around here] and places that you can just tell have a solid history behind them.

i have no idea what either of these buildings are or if they are in use today... but they just seem like they were probably important at one point. ha.
i walk through the same park area a few times a week, and i had never noticed these flowers before... they are actually covering a wooden arch in an out of sight corner of the park. it's so beautiful.

there are plenty of gigantic eucalyptus trees all over the island... and can you see some of the cement bunker things? i totally thought this park was a graveyard for quite a while after first seeing those because they reminded me of the punch bowl in hawaii. i would never walk near this area, and would rarely even drive by it! and then one day i said something to james about how i was too scared to walk over there, and he told me they are just bunkers or something like that... now it's one of our favorite places to walk. :]
these old mansions were the officers' quarters back in the day. the original ones were damaged in an earthquake or something, and these were rebuilt around 1898. the architecture is stunning. we've peeked inside one, and the insides seem to be just as impressive. [there are better photos of the houses coming...]
i love the variety of trees and shrubs that grow here too. i recently read that this area was used by the department of agriculture as an arboretum in the early 1900s, and they introduced a lot of rare plant species to the island. so while i don't get to visit the arboretum at the bellagio very often anymore... i guess i can think about that to get me by.
here's another picture of one of the officers' quarters. not too shabby, right?
many of the trees have these old plaques in them that tell when they were brought to the island. apparently the navy captains were encouraged to bring different trees back from their travels to plant here. amazing!

and one more photo of a different mansion. they are all so pretty and each one is a little bit unique.

that's all for now. i plan to take more photos of the other areas... eventually. :]

weekend visitors + ventures.

james played in a softball tournament this past weekend, and at the last minute his friend howie decided to come play too. so sarah and i got to do a little exploring and hanging out while the boys did their activities. on saturday, we wandered up to yountville and st. helena. i've been wanting to stop by bouchon bakery to see what all of the hype is about. while we were waiting in line, a lady was talking it up and saying how there is always a line and whatnot. but really, i think it's just that the place is teeny tiny. i mean there are probably only four or five customers in there at one time. the line moves pretty quickly though. we each got some bread and treats. i loved my banana nut muffin... perfect breakfast. :]
one day i would like to try the restaurant... but i doubt it will happen any time soon.
we stopped in downtown st. helena to go to one of sarah's favorite consignment stores, then we made our way to her favorite winery, seen below. it different than any of the wineries i've been too... it was much more cozy and less commercialized. i liked it. i even sampled the wine and found it almost tolerable. i still don't think i'll be a wine drinker any time soon. ha!
on the way back home, we decided to stop into dean & deluca, another place i've been wanting to visit just to evaluate all the hype.
it's actually pretty cute inside, but my oh my... the prices are outrageous. they do sell acme bread [the same bread place that is in the ferry building] and pretty much the only other thing i found that i felt was priced reasonably enough to consider buying was their cheese selection. but now that i type that... i'm realizing that since moving here, i have probably become a bit skewed in what i view as reasonably priced cheese. but since i don't drink wine, and thus don't spend money on it... i feel like it's ok to splurge on this. :] [and yes. i think i have used that same rationale for cupcakes... so i'll probably need to think of something else soon... ha!]
that evening, we met up with the boys for korean bbq in oakland again. howie and sarah had never been, and i'm pretty sure they loved it. we decided to get a different combination with more meats this time, but i still stuck to my usual bulgogi for the most part. i did try the korean bacon [i prefer calling it that instead of pork belly. ew. ha!] and the chicken, which were actually pretty good too.

we topped the night off with boba tea from sweetheart, which i am already craving again.

on sunday we made a big breakfast... i nearly went into a food coma from it! the boys went golfing in napa, so sarah and i ventured to berkeley for a little window shopping. after walking around for a while, we grabbed a slice of pizza to share when we saw people eating it on the sidewalk, and it was sooo good. i need to find out the name of the place to see if they have more locations because i definitely want to go back for more. :] [and when i do, i'll actually remember to take a picture!]

i also had to find some time to write and submit my candidate statement for an office i am running for next year. i gave my candidate speech on monday, and i was sooo nervous. usually i can sort of calm down after 30 seconds or so, but i could not manage to calm down this time. ahh. i will find out the results on thursday, and i can barely wait. i am still super nervous when i think about it. ack.

ok. we have a quiz tomorrow, so i better get back to my notes! i hope everyone had a great weekend!

&& happy march! i'm sad that february is over, but that's the way it goes... all in all, it was a pretty good month. :]

scraps.

i have been challenging myself occasionally to find time to scrapbook. usually what this means is that i try to make a page in under 30 minutes [generally while i watch a tv show as a little mental break. haha.] so here are a few pages that have resulted so far:

my instax camera batteries died, but i thought maybe it was just out of film... so i opened the film door, thereby exposing five films to light. i thought i'd ruined them, so i just shot random photos to use up the film. well. apparently i only ruined the top film, so i had four random [bad] photos. this photo was my favorite though, and i just like how i happened to capture the pretty blue sky that has finally appeared around here after so many rainy & overcast days.
i guess i will also mention that it's made with the studio calico summer camp kit. this is the same kit i used for the last page i posted a couple weeks ago, so it will still spread out on the floor. gasp. i wanted to get two more layouts to meet my three layout/kit quota, but i haven't made a third just yet.
i'm thinking about just using photographs like the one below to show my layouts because the square ones [like the top photo] just get kind of weird sometimes... but i can't decide, so i'll post both kinds for now. haha.

the next two layouts are a few months old by now, but i never remembered to photograph them to post.
this photo is from a little while ago... i think over the summer? and i can't imagine how much bigger she will be by the time i see her for her birthday. eek!
this layout and the next one were made with the on the easel main kit and en plein air add-on from studio calico. i wasn't so sure about the chipboard window frames that came in the kit... but i deconstructed one to house the title above, and i'm happy with how it turned out.
i loved these papers from sassafras for this type of quick layout challenge because they have already done so much of the work for you... i just added a few accents here and there to have a little dimension on the page.

the photo in the next one is from erin's wedding. i love it, and james really dislikes it. but i have it in a frame in the living room too... so he can't escape it. ha.
the title is indeed inspired by a song, but probably not the one you're thinking. towards the beginning of our relationship, i was super into jenny lewis [well. i still am, i just haven't been keeping up with music as much lately.] and she did a cover of "handle me with care" with ben gibbard and conor oberst that both james and i really like. so yeah. the title was inspired by that song.
again... a really simple and fast layout because i let the paper do most of the work for me and just added a few stickers and things here and there.

hopefully i'll have more soon. and if you're short on time these days, i would challenge you to take 15-30 minutes and see what you can come up with in that amount of time... let me just say that it has really helped me overcome my old habit of pushing the paper and photos around the page for days. :]

day trip.

i remember being so excited to move so close to san francisco, but now that i'm here i rarely have time to actually go to the city. james was going regularly to play softball each week, but i never managed to go along with him because of school stuff. since we decided to stay here for the long weekend instead of going home, we made plans to go for the day. initially, i thought we might check out a museum or something, but i had some gift cards and coupons, so james agreed to just go to union square. i feel kind of silly for always going there, but it's one of the parts of the city that i'm most comfortable with aside from north beach and the embarcadero. hopefully over the summer i will have more time to explore different neighborhoods. :]

anyway. we started out with lunch at this little place my sister actually showed me. it's a little bit hard to find, but the tri-tip sandwiches are amazing... so it just stuck in my mind. i didn't even know the same of it, but i managed to find it without attempting to look it up. ha! yum! they pour some of the juice over everything, and it soaks into the bread... nom.nom.nom. it's so good. i didn't eat the tomatoes, but james said even they were delicious.

after a trip to lush [i'm going to do another review post soon.] and an unsuccessful trip to anthro, i met james back at macy's so that we could look for the finishing pieces for our bedding. not only did they have what we wanted, but it was on big time sale! all the way home james kept remarking that he couldn't believe the deal we got. haha. i've always felt like our bed looks very comfy because it's just nice and big and we have a down comforter, but now it looks cute too. :] after that little shopping victory, we decided to get some cheesecake and eat it out in union square. i always get adam's peanut buttercup fudge ripple, and i feel like you really can't go wrong with that choice. but james usually gets something more classic like white chocolate raspberry [which is also always good.] or strawberry. my favorite tip for people heading to union square is to do this as a snack. getting it to go and eating it outside is definitely the way to go. that restaurant is always so busy no matter what time of day, but you can usually get cheesecake to go within five minutes... and let's be honest... that's really the only reason to eat there anyway, so why wait over an hour for a table?

i loved that it was such a pretty day. i mean... i guess it was a little chilly, but i was just so happy to see the sun and a clear blue sky after so many days of rain! we tried to take a photo by one of the hearts, but it didn't quite work. oh well.

after a few more stops into little shops like cb2, which is slowly becoming a favorite of mine, we decided to go to the ferry building to get some bread and cheese. but. when we got there... everything was closing down already. :[ so we just got dinner at gott's. it's one of my favorite places to go in napa [possibly because it's right next door to kara's cupcakes. ha!] and i heard there was one in s.f. too, so i'm glad we found it.
i got my usual chicken caesar, and james got a texas burger plus some sweet potato fries.

i love the presentation on trays. and their branding line is "tray gourmet"... so clever. :]

that was about it for our day in the city. it was simple, but it was fun to get out of the house for a bit.

james had to work today, but i spent my day off getting things organized and cleaning... and contemplating paint colors. recently, i decided that i really want to paint the office/work room. actually. i want to paint the whole condo, but that's not really possible right now. haha. so i decided to focus on this room first, and see how it goes. i know i want a very light blue-ish teal color, but i'm having such a hard time narrowing it down. james and i picked up paint swatches at lowe's on saturday, and i felt like the adopting mom in juno when she has three similar shades of yellow and says, "they're all so different." it really is hard to decide though! james wants something more bright and bold, but i think i might be winning him over... if only i could make up my mind on the color. any recommendations are welcome. :]

oh and one more bit of excitement... yesterday i booked a flight to vegas for victoria's birthday weekend. i figure since i couldn't go for mine, i can make up for it by going for hers. i'm beyond excited. i miss las vegas so much. i can hardly wait.

i'll be back soon with the lush post and some layouts. i hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend!

february = food.

february is flying by as fast as ever it seems... and it's well past time for an update here. yikes.

this is random, but it seems like this month has meant a lot of asian food... haha. for some reason, i can't get enough! we had korean bbq the other night to celebrate my birthday [again. hehe.] with some friends, and it was amazing. plus, anita and i introduced greta to pho during block exams, and she's been wanting to eat it all the time now. haha. i'm not a big fan, but i'm slowly starting to like it more. we've also found a new chinese place not too far away that's super yummy. our other favorite local restaurant is also asian, and we've been there a few times recently too. here are some photos from our dinner at sura korean bbq, which is in oakland.those little dishes are filled with all kinds of sides [called banchan] ranging from the typical spicy pickled cabbage to yummy fried potatoes and all kinds of other stuff. most places bring around six or eight different dishes, but this place brought a ton!
mmmm... meat. you get to grill it at the table, which is lots of fun. my favorite is always the beef, but we had pork and chicken too. we decided to go for all you can eat, and i think we did pretty well because we had like three more servings. haha.
from left to right: james [i don't know what that face is about], amy, brandon, denton, & anita.
and a group shot from the other direction. it has been raining so much here that i'm having to embrace my curly hair more than ever... sometimes i don't mind it, but sometimes it just gets so frizzy! haha. oh well.

keeping with the food trend, for valentine's day, we kept it low key and went to pizza with a few other couples from my class at a place called the fix. the restaurant was having a special where you got a heart-shaped pizza, two drinks, cheese sticks, and four scoops of gelato for $20. such a good deal considering the gelato is usually $2.50 per scoop. [i hate this photo because the flash is so harsh, but it's the only one i have... so here it is. also... we did not plan to match. i didn't even notice it until i was looking at this photo. haha.] we decided to try a bbq bacon pizza that was delicious. it was actually kind of funny because when we were deciding what kind to get, i asked james what he wanted and he claimed that it didn't matter because i'm the picky one... he said, "if i pick something i want like that bbq bacon one, you'll just say no." and i was like "actually. that sounds good. let's get it." HA. i think i totally shocked him. :]

we were able to go home the weekend after my block exams and had an amazing dinner at the atlantis steakhouse with my parents. since it was the weekend before valentine's day, they were really busy and my dad almost couldn't get a reservation. but we know the sommelier/manager there, so we were able to get on the list. at the last minute, i decided to see if howie and sarah could come along, and i'm so glad it all worked out because they put us in a private room, and it was just insanely amazing. haha. yum! i changed my order at the last minute, just so i could watch this. haha.
another photo that's not a favorite... maybe i'm just feeling old now that i'm 25. ack!

my dad was in a really good mood, which was nice. he's a lot more fun when he's happy and joking then when he's stressed out about work or whatever else. after dinner, james and i went downtown with howie and sarah for a little bit, and they kept commenting on how funny my dad was at dinner. :]

since i'm basically working backwards & according to meals, i guess the next highlight is dinner on my actual birthday. we went to an italian place in berkeley that one of james' co-workers recommended.

it was so cute inside! and the food was pretty good, but i'm not dying to go back anytime soon.
they brought tiramisu as a birthday treat, and it was soaked with so much rum that even after passing it around the table of six people, i think there was still about half of it left on the plate. too bad because i typically love tiramisu.

after dinner, we went to sweetheart cafe for boba drinks. sweatheart became my new favorite drink place when i visited it with my preceptor after volunteering at a clinic in berkeley a few days before my birthday. the boba/pearls/whatever you call them are so far superior to any other place i've tried... they are super soft and a little sweeter and all around amazing. not to mention their pineapple snow drink makes me feel like i'm back in hawaii eating fresh pineapple. :]

that's all i can think of as far as food... but i think i have more to talk about. i mentioned that i volunteered in the berkeley clinic. those experiences are always eye-opening for me, and this time was no exception. i'm amazed at how honest the patients are with us... for some reason i thought they might try to hide alcohol or drug use, but i guess they come to the clinic for help and they know that the best way to get help is to tell us what's really happening. it's kind of hard trying to counsel on things that you know might be out of their control though... for example telling a homeless person to watch their salt intake just doesn't seem too realistic. but i do learn so much from clinics that it keeps me coming back.

i also survived another round of block exams. yuck. physically and emotionally i made it through pretty well. i feel like each time gets a little better and wears my body down a little less. for the first time i can remember, i was actually able to eat breakfast on the morning before my last exam. i think my body must be learning how to deal with the anxiety a little better. as far as my academic outcomes, i did fine. there is room for improvement, but considering how much [or how little?] i studied, i can't really complain.

i'm going to head to bed now, but i have more updates to come... hopefully tomorrow i will find some time for another post. :]

february = fabulous.

looking at my calendar, it doesn't look like it will be too fabulous with block exams in less than a week + ippe on my birthday + no annual trip to vegas for the superbowl/my birthday... but... i am still determined to make february feel fabulous. after all, it all starts with determination, right? but it's my favorite month. i'm turning 25! and while i still don't know what i've gotten myself into with my decision to go to pharmacy school, i do know that i'm on a path to a career, which is reassuring after struggling with a period of feeling stagnant and not knowing what path was ahead for me.

here's a photo of some pre-birthday cupcakes that i picked up in napa over the weekend. james went golfing with his new bestie, bryan, who is the boyfriend of my fellow nevadan classmate, greta. so she and i met for dinner, which just so happened to be near the cupcake place. obviously i had to treat myself before heading home. :]

and here is a peek at a layout that i made over the weekend for a challenge at studio calico. it was a "style swap" challenge, so i went for a minimalist look. i love making these pages. they come together so fast, and generally i am happy with how they turn out. maybe with my limited time for scrapbooking, i should consider a more permanent style swap and stick with the simple lines and a minimalist look? hmm... something to consider. i mean... it's definitely better than the alternative, which is not scrapping at all.

p.s. i'm blogging during class, and my friend yenh just walked through on a tour after her residency interview. i really hope she gets the residency here because it will be nice to have more friends from home nearby!

p.s.s. i broke down and joined twitter today too. i'm @amybythebay. i still have very little idea of what half of the stuff means... there are so many abbreviations! i need to look for a short tutorial or something. ha.

keeping my head up.

i haven't gotten any official word, but i'm pretty sure that i did not get the internship because two of my friends have found out that they got it, and there were only four spots available.

i'm not going to lie... i am frustrated. i went into the interview with low expectations and tried not to get my hopes up too high. but at the end of the interview, the two ladies who were my interviewers said i did well and passed onto the next round. they said there would be another round of interviews and this was just an initial screening interview. so i was really hoping to hear something... i mean, at least for a follow up interview. i wasn't expecting to hear people talking about how they got the positions!

it's not just this though... my classmates are so competitive, and it's just wearing me out so quickly. it's to the point where i suspect some people are looking out for themselves to the point where they don't want the rest of us to succeed. i really dislike being in an environment like this. there is no point! hurting other people to improve your own chances at success is just so sad.

anyway. i'm trying to remind myself that all i can do is my try my best and work my hardest. hopefully, eventually, something good will happen. i can't lose too much more sleep over this anyway because block exams are quickly approaching!

here's a silly song to tie in with this theme. i watched the movie "easy a" last night with some girl friends while james had poker night for the boys. this song is from that movie, and it's pretty funny.

music for monday

i have been relying on james for new music these days. it's just so convenient. but today, i thought i would share my own pick here. there's no video to go along with it, but i just think it's a really pretty song.

i have been home for the long weekend, which was nice. i rested and tried to get back in good health... i'm not sure that i'm completely healthy, but i do feel a little better. i tried to meet with a few people to catch up, but the only plan that panned out was breakfast with yenh at the old granite st. eatery, which is delicious by the way. i'm really glad that i got to see her. she's in her last year of pharmacy school... so we were able to talk about doubt, frustrations, fears, etc. that come along with this path. and yeah... there weren't many positive things said about it. ha! oh well.

today i have to head back to the bay. i'm excited to see james and helix because they stayed there this weekend... but i'm not excited to get back to reality. i looked over my calendar last night and nearly had a panic attack. two quizzes this week, mtm training, volunteering at the student run health clinic, internship interview... suffice to say i can't wait for next weekend! i pretty much live for the weekends, which is bad because i tend to take mini vacations during the weekend when i should be staying focused on school. ack.

speaking of reality... it's time to pack up my stuff. ugh.