Two weeks ago, I walked down the aisle at St. Ignatius church in San Francisco in a black cap and gown to finally receive my graduate degree. It happened all so quickly. The process of getting dressed, walking up to the podium, listening to those speeches. In the grand scheme of things, the actual celebration felt like it happened with a snap of my fingers. Like I could hold that moment on the tip of my finger and just blow it away. It felt that tiny. I’m not really into ceremonies like that. They make me feel nervous and socially awkward. I was also feeling so disconnected from it, because I felt like my actual graduation had been that late summer day I dropped my thesis off (an hour shy of the deadline), rubberbanded together, in a recycled box. That felt like my realgraduation. The culmination of 2.5 years of a personal writing journey, all held together in a box I had so frantically searched for (Thank you man at the Art Store). 

But the minute I walked across the podium and they announced my name, everything changed. Everything suddenly felt official. It wrapped everything up, all those classes, the reading, the writing—it put a bow on it all, made me feel like, Ok, this is it. It’s time now to do something. Something fantastic and brilliant and extraordinary. Something to make my family proud. And in that moment when we, graduates, began to stream outside, I saw my parents in the crowd for the first time, waving, smiling, so big and so proud, and it was the only moment in all of that time that I also felt proud of me. I had realized this dream. And it was their dream too.

After all the cheers, the hugs, the photos, my family (minus one sister) tailgated through a rainy San Francisco, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, through the rainbow tunnel and into Marin where we indulged in a four-course fondue meal and toasted to great things and family. My familia. Because I couldn’t ever really have done this without them.

Take 1

Take 2

I’m home all week! YAY! It kind of feels like back in the day when I’d actually have a winter break. Only then it was like 6 weeks long. So I’m hoping this one week goes by pretty slow. I need all the time I can get to sleep in, watch movies, do whatever I want when I feel like it. But the best thing about staying home has to be hanging out with Milli moo. This little one is such a sweetie. I mean, seriously, look at those eyeballs! I don’t even want to think about what it’s going to feel like going back to work and leaving her. Boo.

-quote via Destined to Design

It was gloomy on Sunday. And when plans fell through to have brunch with friends, Mark and I decided to head out for brunch on our own (this plan came only after a failed attempt to make breakfast, as the one and only egg we had rolled off the counter and cracked, ever so elegantly, onto the floor —  i saw it as a sign). A friend of mine raved about Plow in Potrero, so we made our way over to the hills.

Plow is tiny and always packed (so i’ve heard), so we took a walk up and down 18th while we waited, walking in and out of shops we’d never been to. It was a nice, quiet way to spend a Sunday and we were rewarded promptly with hot coffee and thee most amazing fried egg sandwiches. EVER. The timing couldn’t have been more serendipitous, as it began to pour the minute we stepped in. I gotta say, it was beautiful watching that rain fall from those tall, tall windows.

So the food…The menu and vibe of the place reminded me a lot of Peels in New York, but there were seriously a million other things we both wanted to try on the menu, and I don’t remember feeling that excited about Peels. Savory bread pudding, their signature “Plow,” the lemon pancakes. Too much. We did manage to squeeze in a pumpkin pancake on the side, though. Which left us so happy, belly’s full and all. 

My Milli girl, aka Monkey, Monks, Monkey butt, Piggy. She’s the sweetest, funniest doggy that ever lived.

I was at Barneys yesterday and though I’ve been in and out of the fitting rooms so many times before, it wasn’t until yesterday evening, sitting in the men’s fitting room waiting for my boyfriend, that I really looked at the walls. Every inch covered in painted silhouettes of men, all with wildly diverse names and equally wild descriptions scrawled underneath them. I found out later that night that they have them in the women’s fitting rooms as well, but they’re lime green and just not as fun. Here are some of my favorites from the men’s walls.