In a Western Place

I’m not a fan of baseball, but the Coliseum (where both the A’s and the Raider’s play) isn’t far from our new home and the weather on Saturday was screaming “go to an A’s game!” I’m still trying to wrap my head around why the Bay Area has two NFL and two MLB teams within a 7 mile radius, but whatever, it was fun.

Fun and cheap! Tickets were only $12 a piece and included a $6 food/drink voucher. While waiting for the game to start I filled out a few surveys and received a ridiculously large A’s shirt, a $5 Starbucks gift card, and I got to pose in this fancy photo with a few inebriated beer clowns. Score!

The weather was beautiful and oh so warm over the weekend! Like, drink coffee on the back deck while wearing flip flops and short sleeves warm! Hooray!

M was recording most of Saturday so I drove up to Sacramento to spend the afternoon with friends. On my way back, I took a detour through a section of Napa. Beautiful.

On Sunday, we stopped by our neighborhood’s annual gig, the Glen Park Festival. Er, festival is misleading, more like a block party with local vendors. We went last year, and like last year, we stayed for a whopping 5 minutes then walked home. More fun for people with kids, I think. Not to disrespect our beloved hood, but Cole Valley does it better.

Because the weather was so unusually warm, we hopped into the car and drove up to Livermore for some minature golf! But first, we stopped by our favorite SF suburb, Pleasanton, for lunch. Despite all the creepy life-like sculptures placed randomly in the downtown area, it’s such a clean, friendly and pretty town. We’d move there in a heartbeat if the weekday commute to SF wasn’t such a drag.

See? Creepy.

See? Pretty.

Aaaaaand here’s Grandpa, playing golf.

On Sunday, M and I drove up to Alameda for the Antiques by the Bay antiques fair. It’s been awhile since our last visit and unfortunately, we left empty handed. Ah well, both the weather and nostalgia was lovely. New advice: bring hand sanitizer!

For me, it’s a toasted poppy seed bagel with cream cheese covered in bits of smoked salmon, a glass of orange juice and a mug of hot black coffee. I stocked up on gluten-free bagels (and a yummy apple cranberry pie) during a recent visit to the Mariposa gluten-free bakery up in Oakland. M and I each sampled a slice of their pizza during our stop which was heavenly. M, who would eat pizza every day if I let him, couldn’t even tell that it was sans gluten. Perfect, we’ll take them all. Snaps for Mariposa.