All posts filed under: Lifestyle

Lifestyle: Why Do We Really Move From Place to Place

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Strange title or a very long one I suppose. But I wanted to make sure I get my point across in 50 words or less. This topic kept me up the other night because a few of my co-workers have decided to move away from the city.  One person all the way to the UK, the other to Colorado, one to Houston, Texas, another to Pleasant Hill, California and one to  Hawaii. With this new chapter in my life – yes I do take everything personally – I also discovered two blogger I follow also made that move from the bay area all the way to Charleston, South Carolina and the other to Los Angeles. Let’s not even mention my extended family from Sacramento to Omaha, and another from San Jose to Los Angeles. I can’t help but think about how it is someone decides it’s time to make that move. Meaning to say. I moved away to Sacramento for eight years a few years back and then came right back to San Francisco, realizing …

What Is Streaming Through My Head

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At the end of each week, I summarize in my head all the things I managed to accomplish and those items still lingering.  With that list I try to see the good in all that I’ve done, and what I’ve learned from the bad things that happened and try hard not to repeat them.  And then I wonder if I am an oddball in the way I feel or think. That is until I am surrounded by folks in gatherings of sorts, when I realize we are all the same in the ways we think, do, feel, stress and even be happy about. This past week I attended several gatherings.  A farewell dinner for a very close co-worker. The Armenian Food Festival in San Francisco, and an employee appreciation lunch cruise around the bay area, and in those environments I was able to once again confirmed what I’ve known but choose to tune out about how we are all the same no matter the race, and culture and upbringing. To keep this topic very light …

Lifestyle: Type A Personality I Laugh About

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I am a type A in denial. Well mostly to my hubs, when I live by perfection and push him to be the same, and he calls me out on it and I shake my head as if I was being accused of something worse. To my defense, being type A is a means to surviving  the hectic lifestyle that has become the norm now. It is the only way I manage my time effectively. But I did  laugh pretty loud when I saw this article in photos, show telling something that – yes – only we type A folk understand and the rest of the world couldn’t care less. And does my pencil have to be perfectly sharpened – indeed. 🙂  Enjoy your day everyone

Lifestyle: What’s Been Keeping Me…Busy

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I feel like I’ve been away forever, but some things had to fall through the crack, namely my blog, and workout, while I worked through my fullest of plates of late. First and foremost, the living space revamp that’s tortured me to no end,  forcing me to rethink the plan, hence delaying the timeframe – so HGTV like. Here’s how it all went down. I planned to install hardwood floors. I dreamt about it for years, talked about it endlessly, shopped various flooring stores, picked out the best option, signed up for the measure only to find out, the space required too much sub-flooring prep work to consider the hardwood. Back to square one, we went shopping for wall-to-wall carpeting, something I’ve always hated, but apparently have no choice in the particular part of the city I live in, with the damp and mold issues.  I shopped until the cow’s came home online and in the stores, and I have to tell you I have learned enough  carpets and flooring that I could actually become …

Lifestyle: Photography Colors To Set The Mood

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I took the train from Sacramento to San Francisco on Sunday, after I went up to the area for a small break from the freezing cold temps in my neck of the neighborhood – by the ocean, where its been foggy and ugly, and pretty down depressing with all-time grays. I tend to forget how the weather plays on my mood, and during the summer months in the city,  I find myself not at all inspired. So, I escape once in while in search of sun, green, and colorful flowers. In this case  up to the Sacramento-Roseville area, well technically further into the country, for some sun and to hang out with my favorite dogs – dogsitting. Normally I drive up, but this time I shared a ride with someone going up there, and then took the train back.  Along the way,  I snapped a few photographs. which I enhanced to more dramatic hues and sharpness, again craving colors. I figured these photos would keep me going through the foggy nonsense in San Francisco until early …

Lifestyle: Downsizing A Home

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I have to say I live on HGTV, watching every show, even on repeat, about choices of homes and decor options people opt for. Even the ones who ditch their 3-bedroom-2bath lifestyle to ones in tiny places. And don’t get me started on folks interested in buying islands, or moving away to one continent to the other in search for their happy place. Well, I pretty much have found my happy place, in a small studio apartment with views overlooking the ocean in San Francisco. I couldn’t ask for a better lifestyle change from our 5-bedroom, 3-bath sprawl with a pool and all in Sacramento. I do admit at first it was a struggle, with the hubs and I getting in each other’s ways and feeling as if there wasn’t enough room for all of the “stuff” we carefully kept from all the downsizing we did. Actually, one of the exciting things about the move was that we sold everything – in furniture that is, and moved into our space with nothing really. Okay maybe …

Lifestyle: In This Sort of Mood

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San Francisco is pretty dreary in the summer months, and because of it so is my mood. I don’t feel as inspired as I do when I see the sun.  The fact the days are longer, means we see the gloomy  thick layer of fog blanketing the coastline until almost nine at night, the cold forcing us to bundle up, and crave to up the heating system in the house. Oh the irony…or me just being over dramatic. Either way, I am craving for moments like this. which I’ve experienced while on the Island of Capri and Sorrento, or on a beach town somewhere in the French Riviera, simply sitting at a table along some waterfront, eating wonderful food and drinking a bottle of red, and taking it all in. Happy Monday!!!

Lifestyle: For The Love Of Art, French Facade Art That Is…

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As I said before I always end my European vacation in France. Sometimes somewhere in the French Riviera or up north to my most beloved Paris. While in either location,  I’ve often pointed out to my hubs the facade of buildings covered and under renovation, admiring the efforts the French make in keeping the neighborhood aesthetically pleasing no matter all the work involved in their renovation projects or even not so much behind the facade. This sort of art – facade painting –   I adore and certainly felt the need to share. See the before and after pics here. 

Lifestyle: Don’t Let Life Pass You By

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The night before my birthday I tend to stay up. Not because I want to, but it just happens. I suppose to somehow see where I was a year ago and where I am now, and where I plan or see my self being in the next year. At four in the morning I read an article online titled How To Ruin Your Life Without Even Noticing and read it through. I realized that the article was intended for a much younger crowd. Those just starting out their lives, about to embark on their careers, considering getting married, having kids and all things someone under the age of 40 is programmed  to do. The article talks about how we allow the things we do make us very unhappy, whether we aim to do so or it just happens. And although the article is meant for the under 40 really, I realized I can surely remind myself of some of the things I do to create unhappiness. Here are a few of my favorite observations: You …

Lifestyle: To Eat Out or Not, Among Other Things

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I came across this article about Americans eating out more than ever, which then led me to another article about millennial choosing to eat out rather than cook, to something called grocerant. This got me thinking about how we end up reading articles online. I mean I don’t know about you, but I tend to start somewhere, then click on a link embedded within the article and then see a side article and read that one, to another and another, soon obsessing about whatever I wasn’t even thinking about reading in the first place. So you get what I mean – right? Anyway, so this round, I went from the eating out part to the millennials to the idea of grocerants and ended up with the following: See how that happened? Happy Tuesday everyone!!!