You made my birthday wish come true! That’s one of the best presents I’ve had in a long time. I think you made the right choice, and you won’t regret it!

I managed to find a new logo for November. And for those of you addicted to the contest, I apologize for not putting up a logo last month. I know it must have been a difficult October without it… :-p

Dear America,
Every so often the Presidential Election falls on my birthday, November 4th, and this happens to be one of those years. What I would like more than anything this year is for you to make Barack Obama our new President. That would be the bestest present ever. Can you do that for me pretty please?

Thanks!
Nicole

Entire Photo Set

After an extremely wonderful wedding on October 5th, Steve and I headed off to Thailand for two weeks. We treated ourselves to business class tickets, and boy was that worth it. The seats were extra comfortable with lots of controls; they went to a nearly flat position for sleeping. Our travel time to Thailand was about 21 hours and the trip back was 24 hours (with an 8 hour layover in Seoul). Aside from great chairs, we also got five course meals, and the food was delicious! All the hostesses looked the same - young cute Asian women with their hair in a bun.

2 days in Bangkok

We didn’t like Bangkok very much. Its busy, dirty and full of car exhaust. So we spent most of the two days in our hotel room adjusting to the time difference (off by 14 hours) and just resting. I managed to catch a cold on the flight, so I wasn’t feeling up to site seeing anyway.

4 days in Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai was so much nicer than Bangkok. We both felt like we could easily breath the air without choking or shortening the length of our lives. The people were overly hospitable. One man stopped us and talked to us for a while. He gave us a whole afternoon’s worth of activities. He told us to rent a tuk-tuk driver for 50 baht an hour (about $1.44). He told the driver where to take us for lunch, then suggested a bunch of shops to check out.

The shops included a tailor, umbrella making shop, leather shop (not interested in that one), and jewelry store. At the tailor we decided to have a suit and five shirts made for Steve and two dresses for me. One of the dresses is a red Asian dress, which I’ve always wanted. Everything was so cheap, so it was hard not to buy things; and its why we couldn’t resist the tailor.

Lunch was finally a true Thai restaurant. Until this point every suggestion lead us to restaurants full of tourists. We weren’t interested in that, we wanted the real deal. This place was full of flavor and really cheap, located on a lake.

Elephant Training

While we were in Chiang Mai we took one day out to do some elephant training at the Elephant Conservation Center. We learned how to be mahouts (elephant handlers). Steve ended up with the fat male elephant who loved to eat (I often heard Steve yelling “Bai! Bai!”, which means “go forward”) and I got the slow female elephant. We were never alone with the elephants, their mahouts were always present to make sure things went well.

The day began with learning how to get on and off, how to go and stop and how to steer - all with words and our feet. After we were steering fairly well we took the elephants through the forest to the other end of the center where we watched an elephant show. Following the show we bathed the elephants, which consisted of going in the water and telling them to “lay down”.

The first time I mounted my elephant I was pretty nervous, but it wasn’t that bad. As I sat on top the mahout would hand me a few pieces of sugar cane. She would reach her trunk back and ask for the treats. i could feel her hot breath sniffing for more. She moved so slowly and deliberately, and she had a very bristly head.

We also had the chance to feed a baby elephant and her mom. She was so cute and nimbly. She kept trying to escape over the pen. And she was so strong, you really don’t want to let her wrap her trunk around your wrist - bad idea, lesson learned!

5 days in Koh Samui

The best part of the trip, save the elephants, was sitting on the beach and doing absolutely nothing. Our cabana was in the front row, right on the beach. We were about 30 feet from the water, the Gulf of Thailand.

We lounged around and read books or played cards all day. For the first four nights we would hang out with our cabana neighbors, Monika and Tim. They were from Trier, Germany. We would sit on their porch drinking Singha, getting to know one another and exchanging cultural knowledge. We had a blast laughing and talking.

One of the nights we went to dinner we ended up at a Pad Thai place. We sat down and they just served us noodles, no choices. The bill for the four of us was 180 baht, $5.18!

One of the striking things about Thailand is all the stray or wild dogs. Our resort had a chow mix that they seemed to be taking care of, but she had not tags and obviously hadn’t been to a vet. We named her Lanna. She had three puppies that were also running around, playing and yelping.

My only small complaints about the resort would be the hard bed and showering in brackish water, though the shower was outdoors, which was awesome.

1 more day in Bangkok

Our original plan was two last days in Bangkok, but since we didn’t like it, we exchanged that extra day for Koh Samui. So our last day was a bit odd. We flew there in the morning, checked into our hotel, then had to check out that same night at 11pm to fly home. Strange, but it was nice to shower in regular water before we left.

Our journey home was long; a 6 hour flight to Seoul, an 8 hour layover, then 10 hours back to San Francisco. The layover wasn’t that bad though. Because we had business class tickets we had access to a very nice lounge. It had massage chairs, food, drinks, TV, magazines. Couldn’t complain too much. If you get the chance to fly business, I highly recommend it.

All in all it was a great honeymoon

I obviously never got around to posting a new logo - we’ll just have to skip October due to big life changes (I got married ). But I can tell you that Sam won the contest last month. Look forward to a new logo in November.

My dear readers, I apologize for the contest delay. The winner from last month is Becky J! She was one of 20/21 who correctly guessed Subway. And the new logo is up for your guessing pleasures.

I just saw Joe’s identical [thinner] twin! Her name is Lady and her owner wrote me to say that they look almost exactly alike! The only difference is that Lady actually has the beagle saddle, and she’s much thinner than Joe. Pretty neat

I believe we left off with “Bob” trying to evict us. Steve wrote him an email that basically said: you can take us to court, you don’t own the place, you’re going to lose and you’re going to pay our court fees. We haven’t heard from him since then. (If you are not familiar with this story, you may want to start from the beginning - all related posts found here)

As for the condo, the funding company that bought it (RFC) originally hired a realtor to sell it (”Jim” from the first post). That realtor didn’t really do much, so in June they hired a new realtor, Jeff. Jeff is not the type to sit on his ass, he gets things done. He got our lock changed, got our names in the keypad, and finally listed the place for sale.

Also around this time we discovered that RFC hadn’t been cashing our rent checks. Steve had them on an automatic bill payment through his bank and after three months, the funds would pop back into his account if they weren’t cashed. This kind of shocked and worried us. For one, why weren’t they cashing them? Two, are they going to try at some point? Three, what if we get out of this rent free!?!?

Anyway, listing the condo prompted us to get our act together and figure out whether or not we really wanted to buy our current home. After much thought we decided that if it were the right price, we could happily purchase and live in it for several (if not more) years.

We then began the rigorous home buying process and made an offer that the RFC gladly accepted. Which then took us through 30 days of title clearing, appraisals, check writing and such.

At some point during the lending process we had to tackle the rent check problem. Steve finally spoke to someone at RFC who claimed that only two checks had arrived, which was clearly a lie. The woman did more poking around and discovered the other checks. It was an aggravating conversation for Steve, but it all worked out.

Last night our broker came over and we signed 10 million pieces of paper, making us the official owners! …In San Francisco, I never would have thought! All I have to say at this point is, IN YOUR FACE, JERKFACE “BOB”!

Oh, and we get to keep the rent checks! Woo hoo!

This past weekend we went to the SF Outside Lands Festival. It was a three day show featuring about 75 bands on 6 different stages. We bought our tickets months ago when they were only selling them for the whole event. In retrospect, we wish we had waited for the single day tickets, because we would have only gone on Friday to see Radiohead. They are my favorite band (Steve loves them too) and they gave a phenomenal performance, despite the fact that the sound cut out twice!

The festival was pretty nice overall. We got to see some other bands we like such as Primus, Cake, and Wilco. And we found some new bands that we like: Kaki King, The Walkmen, Grace Potter and Sharon Jones.

We rode our bicycles there, which was fairly tiring - especially by the third day. The ride was mostly flat (4.5 miles), but when you add walking around and standing to the mix, that equals one pooped out Nicole. The other benefit to riding though, is that we didn’t have to wait in long lines for cabs or buses. So it was a good choice.

The weather wasn’t that great. When we left our house in the Mission it was nice and sunny. By the time we got to the park it was cold and foggy. We needed several layers to keep warm! Sunday was a little sunny and warmer though.

Usually I have pictures to go with my events, but I didn’t take many. I was hardly ever close enough to the stage for good ones. And they didn’t allow any cameras with detachable lenses, so they wouldn’t have turned out that great anyway. It kinda pissed me off.

I really enjoyed Radiohead, and I can’t wait to see them live again!

I’m a little behind on the blogging… Two weekends ago (Aug 15-17) Steve and I went on the annual Sonoma Wine Vacation that our friends set up. This time there were 14 of us.

We all headed down on Friday. That night we hung out by the pool and hot tub, drank wine and made our own pizzas. It was a relaxing evening, full of catching up and what not.

Saturday the limo picked us up and took us to four wineries. Ridge Lytton Springs, Michel-Schlumberger, Sbragia Family Vinyards, David Coffaro and Locals Tasting Room. I liked Sbragia the best. Unfortunately Steve and I split all our tastings, so we didn’t actually get drunk, which defeats the purpose of having a limo! We drank tons of wine that night though, and ate delicious burgers and sausages from the grill.

Sunday was a very relaxing day. Everyone sort of did their own thing until lunch time. Erica made the prettiest salad I’ve ever seen (pictured above). After lunch we played this game called Caption.

I’ll attempt to explain it. You need at least 5 people. Each person gets a stack of 5 index cards (of however many people are playing - 9 people, 9 cards). Everyone writes a caption on the top card. Then you pass the stack to the left. That person reads the card (to themselves), puts it at the bottom of the stack, and then illustrates the caption. This gets passed to the left. The person looks at the image, puts the card in the back and writes a caption. You go around until the stack gets back to the original person. Then each person gets to read their stack to the group, showing everyone the pictures. It gets quite crazy! We played that game about 6 or 7 times, it was that funny.

We had a really good time, with some excellent food, tons of wine and wonderful friends