As promised, I put together a few pics for you to see of my trip to San Francisco. I really enjoyed doing touristy things and getting fat on the amazing food! Gym today! Anyway, enjoy!!
Tag: vacation
Silicon Valley
I just came back from a trip to San Francisco today and it was a mix of business and pleasure but more to spend Memorial day with his college friend/best man. This was my first time there and my husband’s third and I had a wonderful time. Not once did we eat at a food chain and that also enhanced the experience – being able to eat at hidden gems. Just to name a few, we ate at Mission Beach Cafe (brunch – amazing brioche French toast), Cha Cha Cha (dinner – a Cuban fusion also the BEST meal of the trip) and Left Bank Brasserie (dinner – didn’t eat here but had an amazing cocktail).
Over the weekend, our host took us to the waterfront in San Francisco, we drove through Napa Valley, along the coast by Point Reyes (Limatour beach), down to Stinson beach, across the Golden gate bridge and also to have brunch at Fred’s Place in Sausalito. It was a touristy and fun trip. I may have gained a pound or five but it was definitely worth it. Another plus is that we did a lot of walking so I was able to exercise a bit in there.
While there, my husband did his first presentation on behalf of Microsoft (despite everyone thinking he was there for an interview at some company) and we visited other tech companies like Github, Twitter, IMO.Im and EA Games. As I mentioned before, he works for Microsoft, and one thing I found particularly interesting is the female to male ratio in these companies. From what I’ve seen in the last three years, with his team and just waiting around when I pick him up from work, there are way more men than women. I may see a few when I go to pick him up but still not that many.
Twitter was our first stop on our first day and it was a total shock for me to see so many women there. We then went to IMO.im, I saw one woman there. On to Github and out of about 20 people again, only 2 women. That seemed more normal to me. Don’t get me wrong, it was good that so many women are in the Twitter office but I’m sure it can be said that the tech industry is dominated by males and wherever there is an abundance of women, one may be forced to do a double take or just simply be in shock. At the same time, as a woman, it was nice to see.
As much as I enjoyed the trip, I have say that the next time I go back with my husband, he is banned from tweeting, or sharing any status about being there. For those interested in meeting him or showing him around, please consider that his wife is with him and my face hurts after a while of pretending to be interested in any conversation about your projects. This trip was an exception. I encouraged him to see a few places and I wanted to see them as well since I heard so much about them. Sometimes my smile is genuine because I actually do know what is being discussed and I’m assuming you don’t think I do.
I will say I feel more inclined to take a class or two on programming so that I won’t be totally clueless with some jokes also just to get a kick out of seeing the look of shock on my husband’s face when I mention something he thinks I’m clueless about.
To document my visit/tours I got the following shirts and I intend to have some fun wearing them and have people guessing what I do for a living :).
I will have a followup post with pictures coming but I had to get this text part out while it was still fresh in my head :P. Hope you enjoyed this post!
xx
Necessity is the Mother of Invention
Two days ago I wrote about Clean Freak on HGTV, and instead of just letting the days go by and considering ways to improve my overall organisation, I decided to start with some small stuff that would be very impactful for me in trying to create a more organized and clean environment. Today I went to The Container Store (my favourite store) to get lipstick holders originally. I ended up getting a few more things but they turned out to be major in my closet re-organization. I’m going to jump right into it! 🙂 (the first picture is what I bought).
Lipstick
I’m going to start with this because it’s what I went there for in the first place lol. I was eyeing a lipstick holder on Amazon but it was for 60 pieces. I thought no way! I don’t need that many and I went and started counting every single one of my lipsticks/lip glosses/lip balms and sure enough I had over 30 but I still didn’t want to buy the one for 60. So I checked online and The Container Store had one to hold 24 so I bought two after a friend suggested I do that with the possibility of stacking them. I can’t stack now because of the type I bought and the different heights of the products but at least now they’re neatly stored!
Belts/Scarves
As I said before I wanted to move my scarves to the accessory belt and get proper belt hanger for my belts. I bought two belt hangers today – one for my belts and one for my necklaces. I sorted my belts first as there are a few to get rid of that I never wore or liked. I also have a few belts that do not have anything for me to hook them with so I closed them up and put them on one of the rings with the scarves.
Jewellery
The lipstick holders were practically next to the jewellery stuff, and since I’ve been saying for years I need something to store my jewellery properly, I decided to have a little look at what was available. I bought a spinning bracelet holder, an earring rack and as I said before, a hanger for the necklaces. I haven’t transferred all of my necklaces as yet because I have a few that I no longer wear and I really want to sort through them. I still need to find something for my bangles but I just may end up getting one of these considering their shape. I wanted to go to Michaels to see if I could get creative and make up something on my own but laziness may get the better part of me. Below you will see a round mason jar with earrings on it and stuff on the inside. As I was taking pics today, I realised that before Pinterest, I was coming up with my own uses for mason jars outside of the kitchen! (This is what gave me the idea for the title of this post :)) Anyway I needed something else for the earrings as I had more than when i first started doing this and obviously all couldn’t fit. I cleaned out most of my kitchen cupboards Saturday and that’s when I’d placed this lovely vase on the dinning table with some other stuff to go somewhere else. I decided to use it because the earring holder I bought wasn’t able to accommodate all of my long earrings and store all of my costume rings on the inside (2 for 1 ;)). I was about to return it when I realised I still needed something for my studs so I decided to keep it (I know it looks scanty but I prefer long earrings and don’t want my studs laying around anymore).
These strips here are another piece of what this title is all about. I had bought a piece of this plastic (I never remember the name of it) to hook my long earrings on just to keep them together. What I also did was cut smaller pieces to attach all of my earrings to when travelling. This way I know they’re all together and I don’t have to worry about the being scattered all over a bag.
I hope you enjoyed this little post as much as I enjoyed putting it together. 🙂
xx
Just a Dash 