hexagons

In the 1930's, Frank Lloyd Wright built a home for a Stanford professor and his wife.  The Hanna House is notable for many reasons, the most obvious of which is that it is built on a hexagonal grid (like a honeycomb).  I have visited the house twice - once as a part of the class "Discovering Stanford's Treasures" and once as part of a tour I organized for other students.  It is really quite an unusual space. 

Hanna House - Notable Info

Every year, a Stanford student is chosen to be the caretaker and live in a room in an adjacent guest house.  It just so happens that the student caretaker this year is a good friend!  Therefore, on Sunday night my husband and I went to the Hanna House to hang out.  We brought Chipotle burritos and played Catan - a game built around the hexagon!  It was amazing to play a hexagonal game in a hexagonal house!  

Hexagon Overload!

The pictures I took don't do it justice.  It was quite dark when we got there, but there are some better pictures on the house website.

A view from the dining area into the living area

the long hexagonal dining room table where we played Catan

I don't think I have ever been in such a consciously and consistently designed space before.  The house is full of little nooks and crannies created by the fact that everything is 120 deg (rather than the standard 90 deg).  Apparently when they were building the house, they churned through a lot of frustrated carpenters.  In the end, it was mostly built by cabinet makers, as they were used to very detailed work with odd angles. Case in point - check out this drawer below.  Instead of opening towards you like most drawers, it opens at an angle.  I love the creativity and consistency of execution.  Very interesting.

a drawer in the kitchen that opens at an angle

Thanks again to our friend for the opportunity to share in this unique living situation!  

Hope for Haiti

A few weeks ago there was a celebrity telethon for Haiti.  My fiance and I watched and we kept calling hoping to get through - eventually we just donated via web (so no celebrity took my call).  Anyway, just realized that Google has put together a bunch of cool tools to help us help Haiti.  Check it out.

flu shot finder

Google created a widget to help find both H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines near you. I recently used it to find H1N1 vaccines in Santa Clara County and it worked like a charm.

Check it out at www.flu.gov or www.google.com/flushot - no excuses!

Yosemite Valley

This year, my fiance and I spent New Year's Eve in Yosemite. I had never been before and it was one of my 2009 goals to get there. We drove up on Thursday morning and were back in the Bay Area on Friday night. We stayed in Curry Village in a tent cabin (with heat) and it was awesome. Here are some of my favorite pictures.

Half Dome

Upper Yosemite Fall (as viewed from our hike)

The trail we hiked (60 switchbacks!)

View of the falls from the valley floor

Tunnel View of Yosemite Valley

El Capitan on the left, Half Dome in the middle, Bridal Veil falls on the right

It was beautiful! I highly recommend Yosemite in the winter.

awesome oil change

Last night my check engine light came on. I was overdue by about a hundred miles (or about 2 months) for an oil change, so I thought it was time to go in and address both. I usually go to Midas in Palo Alto for my oil change, really for no other reason than habit. I had gone to Jiffy Lube until they had stripped my star shaped bolt on my old Cadillac - and had gone to Midas ever since.

Well when I looked up Midas on yelp to get the phone number, the reviews were horrible. Thinking about my check engine light - I thought that I should look for a place with better reviews (I know very little about cars and wanted someplace more reputable). Enter 9 Minute Oil & Lube. They have AMAZING yelp and google reviews, so I thought I would check it out this morning.

The staff was amazing, the service was quick (~10 minutes), and they checked my check engine light for free! The culprit? A loose gas cap. If you live in the Bay Area, I HIGHLY recommend this place. Don't just take it from me, I am not sure I have ever seen a place on yelp with a 5 star review average based on 172 reviews...

Happy New Year!

9.11.01

Last Friday was the 8th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. It is one of those events that is indelibly marked in my mind. On Friday I got to thinking about where I was when I learned of the events unfolding.

September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday morning and I was a sophomore at University of Maryland sharing a room with Megan (the only class I had on Tuesdays that semester was 2 hours of step aerobics). It was around 9am when Megan woke me up to ask if I minded if she turned on our 13" tv - that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in NYC. Remembering the story of a plane hitting the Empire State Building in the fog, I figured it was some wayward private pilot lost or in trouble. We quickly realized that this wasn't the case. As we watched, a second plane hit a building, and then news of a plane hitting the Pentagon soon followed.

The University of Maryland is only miles outside DC, and many of its students were from MD, DE, NJ, and NY - so many students were immediately effected. Maryland canceled classes for Wednesday and later held a memorial service. At this service, they encouraged students to pick up a rock with 9/11 written in gold marker. I keep this rock on my desk at home, and over the weekend took its photo.

I have been to NYC many times since then (my sister lives there now), but my first ever trip to NYC was actually after 9.11. I went to see Conan O'Brian with a friend in April of 2002 and while we were there we made a visit to the World Trade Center site viewing platform. The entire event had a surreal quality to it - seeing the ashes of such a tragic event. My heart goes out to the families.

the world through a lens

This photo was taken of the President and First Lady at the Youth Inaugural Ball in January. When I happened upon this photo recently, and I thought what an interesting reflection of culture and technology. Everyone is watching with two sets of eyes. I wonder which set is paying more attention? Which set will define their memory of the event? I am genuinely curious as someone who takes a lot of photographs and is always hungry for more.

I love lakes

Last weekend I spent a few days in Lake Almanor and it was sooo relaxing. My shoes were off for most of the 4 days I was there.

anthropologie windows

We live only a few blocks from an Anthropologie store. I was amazed when I saw them creating this store front display last week. Today after work, while walking to the hardware store, I snapped a few pictures. The orange wood strips flow in and out of the store and it looks really cool in person.




I happen to read the blog of an Anthropologie store designer from Southern California, Ruthi Auda. Check out these photos of the Newport Beach store from her blog! The blue wood appears to flow in and out of the windows. I love how it looks like a blue tsunami pulling the blue bench apart. So creative. I like how the two stores are similar, but different. I wonder if other Anthropologie designers have blogs? I would probably read them.

photo from Ruthi Auda

photo from Ruthi Auda

photo from Ruthi Auda

SF family vacation

My parents came in town last Wednesday and left this morning. We had them over for dinner on Thursday night - guacamole and chips, turkey burgers, and corn with oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for dessert. My brother Patrick and his friend Aidan spent the night with us.

On Saturday, my mom and I had a girls day. We went to three wedding dress shops, a stationary store, and the Ferry building farmer's market in San Francisco. For lunch we looked out over the bay and ate maple, chicken, turkey, sweet potato, and bacon sausage sandwiches from the farmer's market. So good!


The best part? I found my wedding dress and bought it with my mom!! It was a dress I tried on with my sister a few months ago, and bought with my mom yesterday - I was so happy that they could both be involved!

queenstown!

We just booked our honeymoon flights! One week in Fiji, and one week in Queenstown, New Zealand. I am SO EXCITED! As soon as I realized we were heading to New Zealand, I emailed my friend Kenny who had lived there for a period of time asking for recommendations. He sent back this photo (stunning!) as well as the recommendations below (in case you ever want to go).

"That’s fantastic you are going to Queenstown! I most definitely have been there. I love that area – been there several times. Here’s a picture I took from that area. You should go to Glenorchy, hike part of the Routeburn Track, go to Milford Sound (the sound is touristy, but spectacular enough that it’s worth it). I loved a hike I took right out of town up to the top of Ben Lomond (bring water and a hat though – it’s in the sun!). Going to Arrowtown is also really nice – it’s a cool little town. Whitewater rafting, bungee jumping, etc are all really big in Queenstown. If you’re looking for a similar place to Queenstown that is a little quieter, about an hour away is Wanaka, which is where all the kiwis go since it’s a bit quieter."

Thanks for the recommendations Kenny!

portland

I just returned from a few days in the Portland, OR area and it was absolutely beautiful. I already want to make plans to go back for a long weekend sometime soon.

memphis + chocolate oatmeal cookies

Tonight I am in Memphis, TN. Although this is the second time I have been to this city, I always seem to be passing through and don't get to fully appreciate the sites. I still have to make it to Graceland and try some official Memphis BBQ. My hotel is right on the Mississippi river and I went up to the roof deck to snap these photos this evening.

Check out how many air conditioning units there are on this nearby building.

The night before we left for Maui, my fiance and I celebrated our departure with champagne and chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. The champagne was a gift from his sister (thanks Annie!) and the cookies were a recipe shared by Philip (our house guest last weekend). Since these cookies are now my new favorite thing, my fiance made a batch last night and packed them for my trip to TN - I am enjoying one right now! I am trying to make my little bundle of cookies last the entire trip. Thanks!!

Pacific sunset

The sunset between Molokai and Lanai on our last night in paradise. No photo could really do it justice... although I tried by taking about 50 photos.

sweet treats

New Orleans is a city brimming with incredible food. I wish that I could promise that this was my last post about the meals I ate over Memorial day weekend - but I am not quite there yet.

In college, this email went around (several times) - "you know you're from New Orleans if..." For a bit of insight into my personality, the one that I related to the most was something like "the major topics of conversation when you go out to eat are restaurant meals that you have had in the past and restaurant meals that you plan to have in the future."

For a city known for food, beignets are probably one of the favorite desserts. In fact, my fiance's maternal grandparents came to New Orleans on their honeymoon and ate beignets. I always thought this was a nice coincidence, as my parents who took their honeymoon in San Francisco (its like they traded). While beignets are good at any time of the day, my favorite time to eat them is late at night after leaving the bars.

At our engagement party, we had cake from the Swiss Confectionery, along with 5 dozen petit fours. Petit fours from McKenzies were the best, but they went out of business long ago...

I ordered this cake because I wanted to have a wedding cake at the party for dessert (do a little taste testing). Here is a slice of almond flavored cake with white royal icing served on my parents (and grandparents) wedding china (they had the same pattern).

the wild west

Last Saturday, one of my former professors Jane Woodward hosted a reunion at her gorgeous beach house in Pescadero. Pescadero is a town on the Pacific Coast, just over the Santa Cruz Mountains from Palo Alto. The reunion was to celebrate the anniversary of a class trip to China. Jane and her company MAP were extremely generous and subsidized the cost of a two week educational trip to China for more than 25 students. The trip had an energy focus and we visited the 3 Gorges Dam, a CFL light bulb factory, a coal plant, a solar PV plant, a wind farm - to name just a few of the sites we saw. Over the two weeks we visited 6 cities all across China and it was an incredible experience.

I took these photos at Jane's beach house last Saturday. According to John TH (aka the weatherman), Pescadero is usually socked in with clouds at this time of year. As you can see - it was absolutely gorgeous. At only ~50 minutes from the Palo Alto area, it is an escape that is close enough to feel convenient, and far enough to feel remote - the perfect combination.

Thanks again to Jane for hosting us! I had a wonderful time.