Things found this weekend

Hot salty beef!!! (Vegetarians, avert eyes now.)

An Edenic grocery store

A Zagat Award of Distinction bagel shop

And a home! :-)

More details soon. xoxo

Hot time, summer in the city*

How foolish is it to move to a city that you've never really visited in the summer? As a child of parents who could be considered positively British with their constant preoccupation with the weather (do not let that richly caramel colored Filipino skin fool you), this may not be one of my most well-crafted ideas.

In any case, I'll find out tomorrow morning. I'm off for 5 days to hoof it around town in search of a neighborhood, an apartment and possibly, a job to support the whole process. Among other things, I'm equipped with a book that's à propos for a trip to NYC and, er, nylons. (Thanks goodness for East Coast friends to help you stay professionally polished.)

Updates forthcoming. xoxo

*If you can complete that lyric without mumbling or inventing words, I'll bake you a fresh batch of these.

On early retirement

"It is said: San Francisco is where young people go to retire." Or, so says Cal Stephanides.

While I haven't exactly been basking in the glow of my "golden years"* (and the idea of actual retirement in San Francisco is pretty much absurd, unless you are independently wealthy), for some reason, this quote has always rung true to me. San Francisco is an often breathtaking city, bountiful in its opportunities for contented living, play, and mostly organic food. I could happily live here forever, playing the young person's equivalent of shuffle board (whatever that is), but I don't know if I'm ready to be set out to pasture quite yet.

So, in a little over a month, I'll be leaving my hometown and moving to New York City (!). I hear it's where young people go to have their midlife crisis...

Readers, will you welcome me back? (You know who you are!)

*If I were Golden Girl, I think I'd be Sophia. Et toi?