2 . 0 . 1 . 2

new year's eve was a beautiful day.  so we decided to take my new bike out for a ride.  aud had the day off so we stole alex's bike and headed for the golden gate bridge.

as we made our way over, will spotted some dolphins havin a good time.  we then made a stop at cafe avellino for some breakfast pizza and bottomless mimosas.  

then it was time to get ready for the nye party - we returned home so that i could finish making cheesy jalapeno cornbread & potato/bacon torte, while the other two...

will and i then loaded up the mini for our night in bernal heights.  the crafty gift exchange was a success and at midnight, we walked out to the top of the hill to watch fireworks over the city.


this morning i woke up in immense discomfort.  we walked over to philz coffee and had some amazing arabic coffee.  we then paired it up with yummy donuts from dynamo (monte cristo and maple glazed apple bacon were the best).

then we headed over to the richmond for a lovely new year's day brunch.  but had to leave early because i was hurting too much for pho - so we walked over to pho clement where i was officially revived.


all in all, a fantastic new year's weekend!

treasure island

 adorable!

she's no emily, but anthem of a 17 yr old girl always gets me

although the weather was practically amsterdam, the treasure island music festival was everything i wanted it to be.  i've been waiting to go to this damn thing for years (the year it started, we moved to amsterdam) and although previous line-ups have been better, i finally got to see broken social scene - and that makes for one happy em.  the workshop put on some craft booth and the boys made themselves some koozies.  us girls helped oursleves to some free tote bags from toyota and an unhealthy amount of fair food.

cam's really good at drunk driving ladies

freakiest. picture. ever.

birthday

maria, gina, katie, jenny, sons, me, erica & jen

in the midst of relis wedding activites and fleet week, william was able to surprise me with a birthday bbq on saturday morning.  friday night we got home (a lil tipsy) from jen & adam's rehearsal dinner, and of course...went straight to fridge.  to my delight, i found a stocked fridge full of beverages, meat and one pumpkin pie!  katie thought that the ridiculous amount of meat in the fridge would've tipped me off...but it didn't.  she told will i figured it out and the surprise was revealed a few hours early. still did not take away from the awesomeness of having so many friends in one place.  thanks guys!

william captured this sweet moment.
it looks like sf is in danger.  but we're not.  

seattle's best

kate's bachelorette....wine and sphistication in the morning with the moms, then a night out on the town with the girls.  most photos are for attendees only, but for those unfamiliar with the penis cake....

fake picture.  note man in booty shorts in the background.
he later did high kicks on the dance floor.
awesome

folsom

god i missed sf.

opera in the ballpark

it was a hot night in sf, perfect for opera at the ballpark!  we joined petey and maria for a free live simulcast of aida, which was being performed a couple miles away at the opera center.  we enjoyed the warm summer night with ball park food and subtitled opera.  so much fun!  but then will & petey wanted to leave early because they missed the first few scenes standing in line for beers...so they had no idea what was going on.

raiders game

thanks to rodman, i got to go to my first live raiders game.  it was AWESOME!!  i've never been so scared and so excited as i was walking into the stadium.  luckily, rodman has fancy schmancy club access and we weren't outside for too long.  the sun was shining, the blue angels made an appearance and the raiders killed the rams.  ideal.

on the way back home

ross & sasch

union square

fisherman's wharf

napa

on their way to melbourne from amsterdam, ross and sasch make a much anticipated pit stop in sf.  although we tried to tempt them with napa, tourist club and salt water taffy, we were unsuccessful in convincing them to stay.  

the golden gate bridge peeps out to greet our visitors

ross hearts tourist club

i heart sascha 

outlands

we went to the 2nd day of the the outlands music festival in golden gate park.  favorites included phoenix, temper trap, and janelle monae - who we've never seen before.  i passed out and we had to go home before empire of the sun....i was very very bummed about that.  but "the important thing is that i'm ok"  yeah yeah. 

napping boys present a perfect opportunity for traci to teabag

meet allister

for william's birthday, i bought myself a car, Allister.  he's horizon blue cooper s w/ 17" rims. 172 horsepower + those annoying xenon lights = get the hell outta my way!

new home

view from the "dining" room

south to the southwest

may 11th

on our last day of the ring road, we checked out some waterfalls - Barnafoss and Hraunfossar - the former meaning "children's waterfall" because two kids died there (made it a lil scarier to walk around and take photos....) and the latter meaning "lava falls" as the glacier water melter from Langjökull flows under the surrounding lava field and forces its way out between rocks and plants into the river below.

we also went to the Deildartunguhver, Europe's largest hot springs, where we thought we could take a dip until we got there and read a sign realizing that the water is 100°C - that's 212°F!  oh and it stunk like rotten eggs too.

Hvalfjörður was our last hurrah...and by hurrah i mean fjord.  we drove around the whole thing which woulda been much more cool had i not needed to go to the bathroom half the time.  some fun facts about this fjord (which i read while trying to get my mind off the aforementioned pain) - it was a naval base for the allied forces in WWII; it means "whale fjord" because there was a lot of whaling here back in the day; and this is where the black plague entered iceland and from there spread across the island.

 

we're now back in reykjavik - the big city where 2/3 of the country's population lives and where i finally have internet connection to upload all these photos.  the airport is back open but the flights to seattle were cancelled yesterday and today.  hopefully not tomorrow.  damn volcano. 

oh another fun fact - the volcano that has been shutting down all flight activity here, Eyjafjallajökull (btw - per wiki is pronounced ɛɪjaˌfjatlaˌjœkʏtl - say wha??), is supposed to be a prelude to Katla, the big volcano.  apparently this volcano erupted in the 1700s and all the crap messed up things back then too - including French farming...which led starving people...who got pissed at the aristocrats and monarchy and so came the French Revolution.   true story. 

snæfellsjökull

may 10th

the Snæfellsjökull is a glacier that is on a peninsula, which is also a national park.  the glacier is the gateway to the center of the earth, per some book by that name - or something like it.  you can see the glacier behind me from the pebble beach, Djúpalónssandur:

this is a black volcanic beach with debris all over the place from some british shipwreck from like the 40s.  i wondered why someone didn't come around and clean the crap up, but there's actually a sign to leave it all alone.  i don't understand... 

also at this beach, there are lifting stones that fishermen were once tested with.  there are four of them:  Fullsterkur ("full strength") that's 155kg, Hálfsterkur ("half strength") 140 kg, Hálfdrættingur ("Weakling") at 49kg and Amlóði ("Useless") 23kg - you had to at get Weakling up to your hip to be fit to go out to see.  i would not have qualified...this was me with Useless:

will got a bad feeling when we were at this beach and so we got outta there - and good thing we did, i read about the beach after we visited it and apparently it's haunted by ghosts and trolls...who knew

another abandoned farmhouse on the way home

also on the way home, we spotted a new friend...

the north

may 9th

we visited Goðafoss - the waterfall of the Gods, named so because when iceland switched over to christianity, some important dude threw his statues of norse gods into the waterfall. very dramatic.

then we saw more turf churches and beautiful landscape before we went for a two-hour horseback ride.  it was awesome.  icelandic (aka hipster) horses are super easy to ride because they're short and fat.  in equestrian speak, they're special because they have some special or extra gait.  they're also special because they're late bloomers apparently - they roam around wild for four years and don't reach their full size until they're seven.  this also makes them very stubborn and independent.