First exploration of San Francisco

On Saturday, Andrew and his friend Rick who's over here for a week went to a SysAdmin "camp" that was on in San Francisco for the day and I went exploring. Above are just a couple of images from the day, the rest of the photos can be found on the America page of our photo website.

So we all caught the train into San Francisco, they went off and did their thing, and I went for my first real trip around the city. It was a wet and windy day and I hate carrying stuff so had left the umbrella at home, which meant for a cold and not quite so pleasant morning. I ended up having to buy a touristy nylon jacket which was fleecy inside and very cozy! It's actually a pretty nice jacket, and was only $20, so I can't complain.

Anyway, so we got to San Fran about 10:45, and I wandered around a bit. After an hour of walking around aimlessly in the rain, I finally decided to go to a book shop and buy a San Fran specific cheapie guidebook so I could figure out how the city worked and what I could do (I had about 4 hours before Andrew would be done). So I did that, and sat down at a sourdough bread bakery, and enjoyed a feast of clam chowder served in a bread bowl made of the much talked about San Francisco sourdough bread, while figuring out what to do.

Turned out there was heaps of things close by to do on a rainy day, so I started with buying a day pass for the cable cars to go exploring the city. I'd heard a lot about the hilly streets of San Fran, but it was great fun to really SEE them on a cable car to get a real perspective of what they're like. You get to hang out the side of a cable car (quite precariously...), and look right down the street and wonder how good the brakes are! To get an idea of how it looks, here's a map of the cable car routes which includes contour lines of the city.

I also went down to the Embarcadero where the Port of San Francisco is, had a wander around there, and then back to the cable car, and changed over to head down towards Fisherman's Wharf. It was a fairly long trip though timewise as the cable car stops at each street corner, and the amount of Saturday traffic makes things a bit slower. So by the time I got down to Fisherman's Wharf (where I had just enough time to buy my jacket), it was time to head back again to meet Andrew and Rick.

All in all it was a pretty good day, and now that I have a rain jacket, I'll be better prepared for future adventures :)

Bunny video

It's so funny watching Maybelline (the bunny we're fostering) playing. We put some basil in a toilet roll, close the ends and let her throw it around until she gets the basil out.

The other day she got so excited by it all that she actually fell over backwards while throwing the toilet roll in the air.

So today I used the camera to video her playing with the toilet roll.

DHL express pick up

Wow. I'm taking part in some aortic aneurysm research through the University of Texas, and got sent a saliva DNA collection kit to spit into and send back to them.

There was a DHL Express bag included in the pack with all the paperwork ready to go and a note saying to just call DHL to arrange a pick up time from my home.

So I just called them, and I kid you not, and I know I am prone to exaggeration, but DHL was at my door within 5 minutes of hanging up the phone.

Did I mention wow??

What's so good about The Gimp?

I've installed The Gimp onto my Mac for editing photos and doing cool stuff as I hear it's the open source Photoshop equivalent.

I just need to figure out how to use it! Can anyone tell me what useful features it has that I would want to use to edit photos, and if they know of any useful online tutorials?

I've gone through The Gimp's tutorials, but I've found them confusing. It tells you to do things, but doesn't give instructions on how to do it. It seems to assume you know where all the buttons are and how they work!

Maybe I just need to go through each tutorial thoroughly?? I guess my main question is - is it worth it??

I've got Nikon software called Picture Project that came with our camera that allows me to get rid of red eye, sharpen images, lighten dark spots in images etc. If anyone can tell me some useful features of the gimp, I'd love to hear about it!

Mmmmm shopping!!

Thanks Chris for the recommendation to check out Whole Foods Market which is an organic and natural foods supermarket.

It was a really cool shop! They had an awesome meat section with lots of fresh, tasty looking hams, legs of lamb, chicken, marinated meats, lunch meats and other exciting things that I haven't seen in Safeway. The fruit and vegies were all fresh, and the general range of food was fantastic and had a very similar range of foods that I'd expect to find in Australia, and much healthier than what I've seen in Safeway so far. They also have a great website with heaps of recipes on them which I'd like to try out.

I actually had a lot of fun exploring the shop! :-)

I daresay it's more expensive than Safeway, but I certainly wasn't looking at prices of things and being shocked at the price, I thought everything was fairly reasonable still.

We've been getting dinners delivered by Diet to Go over the last week or so in an attempt to eat healthy meals, and they aren't too bad, but there isn't as many vegies as I'd like in them.

So I think I'll go back to cooking and visit Whole Foods Market fairly regularly!

My blog colour!

Your Blog Should Be Blue

Your blog is a peaceful, calming force in the blogosphere. You tend to avoid conflict - you're more likely to share than rant. From your social causes to cute pet photos, your life is a (mostly) open book.

What Color Should Your Blog or Journal Be?

Cute pet photos?? I have no idea what they're talking about...

Bunny foster mum

There was a message at the animal shelter on Wednesday asking if anyone could take a young bunny home for a few weeks as it was too young and shy to go to a new home at the moment. So I took the bunny with me. My job is to help socialise her, and keep her happy while she grows a bit and can be adopted out.

Her cage is in the dining room which we can block off with boxes from the rest of the house, so we can open her cage door when we're home, and that becomes her playroom.

At first she wouldn't come out of her cage on her own, hid whenever she heard us, and if I was near her she wouldn't come near me unless I had some basil - her favourite treat.

She now runs in and out of her cage as she pleases when the cage door is open, loves to race around the dining room, usually kicking her legs out when she gets excited. She'll come up to us when we call to her, she tolerates being patted, but doesn't seem to get any enjoyment out of it, and still often runs away if we try to pat her. She no longer hides in her hidey box in her cage if she hears us coming unless we do something quite noisy.

Her favourite game is when I crush some fresh basil and put it in an empty toilet roll, and close the ends. She throws it around, rolls it, chases it, and chews it until she gets her bit of basil out, and really seems to enjoy that game!

She's also toilet trained which is good, she's only been to the toilet on the carpet once, when she was first out, and it was only "number 2's", which are hard little balls and easy to clean up. I think that was just to mark her territory as she hasn't done it since. I also got her a little litter tray which she's exclusively peeing in now which is also good!

Anyway, so her photo is below, so if anyone in the Bay Area is after a cute rabbit, let me know! We've called her Maybelline, due to the amount of "eye makeup" she has on. :)