Restaurant: Scratch

Lobster, oysters, shrimp go in my belly!

A couple of weeks ago I was reading the paper and pretending to be a hipster by suggesting to my friends we all go try a new restaurant.  Ok, not hipster, but pretensions to foodieness.  Everyone else in the world has a point about South Bay being the absolutely worst place in the Bay Area for non-chain food, low-brow, restaurants, because everyone here thinks Cheesecake Factory is the height of gourmet dining.  Still, not all souls have given up opening restaurants NEAR South Bay - there was an interesting bit about a newly opened place in Mountain View.  Which is technically Peninsula, I think.  Maybe the edge of South Bay.  It counts!

Sort of.  

A long week deserves a drink in each hand.

Scratch specializes in upscale American - the comforts food kicked up a notch.  I felt so hip(ster), emailing my friends to try out a new place I'd read about, but at least it wasn't from an iPad and I didn't get there on my fixie bike.  We picked a Friday that was the tail end of a looooooooooooooong week for happy hour drinks and happy hour drinks could not be more needed.  Wei-ling and I had been planning to leave work early, but were foiled by meetings that ran way over.  After such a long week, we didn't care about missing the happy hour deals that much in our desperate grab for alcoholic relief.

It was a LONG week.

Wei-ling, Ben, Cari, Matt, Cyrus, Yuki and I decided to stay for dinner.  Next time, I'm going to bail out of work for sure to make it for the Happy hour specials.  We all agreed the food was a little overpriced, but good; nothing WOW, but tasty and solid.  The appetizers were the most intruiging (bacon wrapped figs, goat cheese souffle, salad Nicoise) so my plan is to go back for wine and to order three 1/2 price dishes for an early dinner and stuff my face.

I can almost never say no to a some rare tuna.

Scratch seems made for the happy hour crowd, next time I'll have to get a shot of its circular bar.  It's in a cursed location that changes hands very frequently, so by the time I managed to get myself and friends together for another happy hour it might be gone...but hopefully not, so I can go back!

Cardigan refashion

A few months ago I stumbled across this fun tutorial on Ruffles and Stuff, my new favorite crafty inspiration blog.  This project looked pretty easy, and I’ve been dying to try it for awhile now.  

I used a chiffon shirt I never wear (a Forever21 purchase that I never liked the color of) for the trim and embellishment.  Originally I used the shirt to make a pleated edge and flowers around a different cardigan only to discover to my chagrin the colors clashed badly with each other and everything else in my wardrobe. Luckily I had an old shapeless tunic/shift/jumper thing that WAS the perfect color.  These shift things were all the rage a few years ago, but really…no one looks good in something shapeless unless you have a supermodel body.  I tried repurposing this thing as a dance cover up and then shoved it to the bottom of my drawer. 

I made a cut up the middle to transform it into a jacket and added a few chiffon flowers.  So simple!  I was going to go further and add the pleats along the neckline as well, but now I’m not sure.  It might get a little busy.

I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I figured that if I sacrifice two items I never wear anymore, and wear the result at least once, it’s worth it!  I got a few (unsolicited, I swear!) compliments on the end outfit, so I’ll be wearing it again for sure.  Here I’m wearing it with a pink shirt that perfectly matches in color (sniff…that shirt is basically falling apart but I love it so, and I’ll never find another shirt that matches so well), and a $3 Daiso scarf.  Woo!  It felt good to change up the jeans and t-shirt look, although next time I'll wait for a warmer day to wear the light spring layers.

The master plan of a super comfortable, yet nice looking Friday outfit: yes!

Up and Atom!

After a serious case of the Mondays, preceded by a rather frustrating week, I decided to get into work an extra hour early to try and get a few things accomplished.  I'm a terrible morning person but I have a reliable wake up call to get me going, a big mug of coffee, and anyhow, an hour of commuting to wake up so by the time I do get to work I'm actually somewhat awake, even if it's a bit earlier than normal.

(For the purposes of this blog entry I'm going to ignore the opposing negative of having to go to bed earlier to get up earlier, except to say; this would be fine, aside from the fact that I'm usually busy in the evenings doing stuff so this doesn't work out for me.  And it's not always just websurfing and watching tv!  Productive stuff.)

Since I was feeling so dejected and unmotivated at the end of yesterday, I really needed a kick start to the day.  So I thought of the words of the great Tami ("Dress up for your day, and it will dress up for you!") and decided what my day really did need was a little dressing up.  Er.  *I* needed some dressing up, to feel ready to take on the day.  I'm still in a serious jeans and t shirt phase to work, but this is where the 27 minutes of train commute time come in handy!  AND....drumroll please...a portable curling iron.

I'd bought this thing about two months ago from Target; a small portable curling iron powered by a gas cartridge.  It heats up in about 2 minutes and disassembles into an extremely portable (in a backpack or midsized and up purse) little unit. The barrel is small, at 3/4" (I think), and about 5" long.  Still, it works on my hair, and I have a LOT of hair.  It just takes like 2-3 times around the wand for each curl....but it curls your hair really fast.  I get a lot of odd looks on the train, in that, OMG is that girl really curling her hair on the train?! kind of way.  Well.  Yes.  I also apply my makeup on the train too.  Hey, it's 27 mins more time of sleep in the morning. :)  Hopefully no one is too offended by this type personal grooming in a public area, no doubt I'm breaking a ton of Miss Manners rules.

 I've only used this thing two or three times since I got it to do the train-hair-curling.  Today I didn't put any product in my hair before I left so it'll probably be all straight by lunch...but I don't care!  Curly hair = a more cheerful me = more productive and energetic.  And that's a win win win!

P.S. Since it took like 20 attempts to get a self portrait I liked, I really only got to work an hour early instead of the potentially 1 hour and 15 minutes.  But that's ok.  Curly!