Christmas Latkes!

Christmas Day we bundled up (not enough if you ask me!) and headed up to Saul's for Christmas Latkes! Yes, you heard that right.. So what else do you do when two holidays collide?? (sorry I couldn't help it!)




the Soufganiyot was ready to go.. but the Latkes were high in demand and hot & fresh, so we had to wait..


Live Band! Lovely music.. people danced (trust me, people were dancing!)


hot & delicious..

Walk "Fail" =)

Walked up Cedar thinking: "..Yeah! today's a great day to go up into the hills!" My calves had other plans.. so I turned around and walked back down..

Oh! but it was worth the short walk uphill..


Golden Gate view..


not so much a 'fail' as a long walk postponed.. the view was still great!

Rainy Day on Vine Street

Brisk rain all afternoon.. soaking everything on my walk today.

Sunny Summer In Berkeley

On my walk back from a meeting early afternoon in North Berkeley.. I spotted this lovely sight:


Vine Street, West towards the Bay.. Beautiful Berkeley.

Firkin Fest

Saturday April 25th at Triple Rock was the annual Firkin Fest.. Me, I like the barrel aged stuff, and it comes in small glasses which makes drinking (for me) more tolerable.. While I ended up having some Two Rivers Cider, the spousal unit opted to try his luck at the various beers..

The tables were all removed to make room for all the attendees.. You could still order food, though! Here he is sporting his ticket number..


"Your table is your head..that way they find you.."


The "Triple Rocks"..balls of mac n cheese hot & tasty.. ties with their mac n cheese as my favorite thing to order there.. (2nd is the pear salad in case you were curious.)

It was $30 and you got the small glass for sampling and 7 tickets to try different beers.. you could do a half ticket for half sample if you wanted. This year the proceeds benefited the Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation..

I left the spouse to finish off his tickets after I finished my pint.. I headed to a nearby cafe as I had a paper to write and I'm a light-weight when it comes to drinking. I usually quit after a pint.. as I become chatty but still coherent.. ;)

Henry Street

As seen on Monday.. the view walking South on Henry Street..

What remains.. Chalk (minus the chocolate)

Unable to attend the North Berkeley Annual Chocolate and Chalk Art Festival on Saturday the 31st of May (as we're in the process of moving into our new Berkeley flat/condo and the day got the best of us getting things organized/installed.) We had attended in 2012 so I was really bummed to have missed it yet again this year, (I think we were out of town last year??) I was in for a bit of a surprise today!

On my afternoon walk I found that many of the chalk art drawings were still on the sidewalk, and in pretty good condition.. I took some iphone pix of some of the better ones..


Rather faded, but hey.. Star Wars!(I'm assuming that's dark chocolate that Darth is holding out to Luke):


Maurice Sendak is always a winner with me.. still lovely 5 days later!


remnants of a mad tea party:


dragon (I kind of cheated on this one and did autofix.. but it was so nice!)


There were many others still out there but they are slowly fading and smudging from the trodding of many feet. A few are deftly hidden beneath sidewalk benches, (and despite being still nice, are difficult if not pointless to take photos.)

I'm glad I got the treat of seeing what remained.. As for the chocolate, a lemon square did the trick just as well. ;)