Cupcakes, quilting and ten foot unicycles.

This past week, Thom and I held our first ever hosting.  Four girls from Rochester came up for a conference in the city.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it could have been, especially knowing that there were six people sharing one bathroom.  Eeek.

But we were troopers, they were troopers and I had a great time exploring more of the city with them and discovering new go-to places to eat and see, like this cupcake shop on O'Farrell St by Union Square called Cako.  They had delicious cupcakes in all kinds of amazing and yummy flavors.  I ended up buying some and eating them later that night with wine and season 3 of Dexter.  Probably a top 10 best night here in San Francisco.

O, and you might be wondering, how the hell did you host four girls in a two bedroom/one bathroom apartment?!  Answer:  We bought a queen sized mattress for the guest room that could sleep two, blew up an air mattress for one and offered up our full length couch for the last.  And, Voilà, instant hotel!

While the girls were here, I joined them on their last day sight seeing and touring Fisherman's Wharf.  Thom and I took them all to Buena Vista, our go-to brunch/Irish Coffee spot.  Later, we watched a few acrobats do some pretty nifty and dangerous tricks on the street.  I got scared by the infamous Bushman, for real.  [Sorry, no picture of me screaming hysterically]  We visited the sea lions on Pier 39 and then grabbed some o-so-delicious sour dough bread bowl crab chowder at one of the street vendors on Jefferson and Taylor.  YUM.

On the sewing side note, I finally finished cutting out my queen sized quilt and yesterday, I laid out the pieces to [hopefully] get the final pieced-together result.  Progress will be posted soon.

And finally, restaurant-wise, Thom and I headed to the Castro neighborhood and ate at The Woodhouse Co. on Market St.  Great place to go for seafood in the heart of the city rather than any of the acclaimed restaurants near Fisherman's Wharf.  (Which is quite a long journey for us, living out in Sunset.  Castro was our "meet in the middle" compromise.)  I ordered the famous Dungeness crab in a garlic butter sauce, Thom ordered the standard fish and chips, we both greedily ate some fried Calamari and washed it all down with some awesome Arnold Palmers.

Confession: I'm a sucker for any food were there is customer interaction, so when we received our Arnold Palmers, my mind was blown.  There was a glass full of chipped ice and lemon sour concentrate followed by two carafes of iced tea and liquid sugar.  By doing that, I was able to make my Arnold Palmer as sweet or as tart as I so pleased.  And for me, it was tart-perfection because I cannot stand the overtly sweetened Arizona's Iced Tea Arnold Palmers.


All in all, a great week with old friends, new places and a whole-heck-of-a-lot of food!