Labor Day has been over for a million years

We celebrated our Labor Day with old friends that had experienced a different kind of labor in recent months. We had Lindsay, Patrick and introducing Cooper! over for lunch along with our good friends/neighbors Andy, Emily and introducing Sadie!




And it wouldn't be a Santos party without puzzling! (d*** this 'Vegas Baby' puzzle and it's 2000 pieces that are still all over the dining room table) Turns out Pat and his family are serious puzzlers. Every Christmas they have competitive family puzzling tournaments!


Cooper even wore a special shirt just for Uncle Steve.

WAMU

Today the mortgage crisis became personal. Our bank was bought by JP Morgan Chase. The current price for wamu's stock is $0.16. Holy crap. My bank is dead. I have been a member of Washington Mutual since 1999 when I opened an account in college.

I love this bank. Before opening an account here I used to bank at Wells Fargo. It sucks to bank with them. There were tons of hidden fees and I felt it was costing me money to bank there. That sucks. I believe you should not have to pay to keep your money in a bank, you might as well keep it in your mattress.
This was why WAMU was so awesome. There are no fees. For anyone. Ever. It never cost you to keep your money there.
The merger basically threatens all of this. I am sure the free checking, checks, money orders, and 1 free overdraft charge per year will end. I am not sure what will happen with the merger but I feel JP Morgan will nickel and dime us in order to make money and pass the cost of the merger on us, the consumers.
I know this it kind of silly to complain. We still have our bank account and our money and we didn't loose our house. This whole housing crisis is crap. No-one will go to jail, but we have to pay for the bad decisions of others. The whole situation is horrible.

The Sentinel

I finally tried out The Sentinel for myself! It's sort-of a newish legendary lunch spot here in SOMA...only a block and a half from my work. It was amazing. I love the idea of a chef opening a tiny place that serves only a few, ever-changing menu items for lunch and once the food is gone, he closes for the day. It's a tiny space, a small kitchen and a counter basically but it's full of style. His unique and interesting lunch options and delicious chocolate chip cookies make me understand why the line regularly wraps around the block.

He updates his menu daily here so you can keep track of when he's serving your favorites!

sometimes my wife does stuff without asking me.

This is what I came home to tonight! Betsy is crazy! She's been known to do things like this.
I love it.

oh my gosh!!!

is that Lantana camera??? could it be? By golly I think it is! Notice the opposite leaves without stipules and the distinct salverform corolla.

Steve has a plant blog

If you know my husband you know that his true blog love is not Santos the Family but rather Plant Pollination. That's where he blogs about plants that he finds in the field and keys out in his books. Some people collect stamps, some people like cars...my husband loves plants and he loves Mother Earth. When we were at his parents the other weekend we found a cool flower that he has yet to key out on his blog so I'll do it here. Here is what you do to "key out" a plant.

First you observe the plant and scrutinize it's characteristics and then maybe even form a hypothesis in your big science brain about what family or genus it's from.
Then you take a picture with your camera on the plant setting so you can catch all the details.

Then you take a picture with a body part included for scaling purposes.Then you take pictures of an ordinary person interacting with the plant.

I kid...it's much more serious than my description. Stay tuned to Plant Pollination to see how it's really done.

A visit w/my sis

A couple (few) weekends ago my sister Suzy came to town for a few days with her friend Ryan. We were able to spend Saturday with them and had a great time doing touristy things with them! Activities included:

Paddle-boating at Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park:

The boat technically holds four adults but I felt like there were moments were were almost capsizing. It was also really hard work paddling four adults! We figured it out eventually...slow and steady wins the race.


Dinner at the Cheesecake Factory on top of Macy's in Union Square:

Suzy and Ryan were so excited to eat here.

I heart my sister. Come back soon!

No, thank YOU!

A couple months back Steve and I did a bit of regular babysitting for our friends Michelle & Jared. Twist our arm...Annabelle is just about the cutest girl in town (and she goes to bed early to boot so it barely even qualifies as babysitting). Even though we volunteered and were more than happy to do it, Michelle insists on making it it extra fun by cooking us delicious dinner (or chocolate pot de creme) to eat after they head out for the evening and after Annabelle is asleep. As if that wasn't enough, the last time we sat for them they gave us a gift certificate to Town Hall as a thank you and we finally used it last weekend. Our meal was amazing! All we did was hang out with an adorable baby at our cool friends stylish apartment. Somehow we made out like bandits. Thanks you guys! We had a great time! Can this be our regular job?

Question for the Mad Men fans...

Steve and I devoured Season 1 of Mad Men and absolutely love it. When Emily was in town the other weekend she made a comment about "Betsy Draper," Donald Draper's wife. I said "no...her name is Betty...not Betsy" but Em was pretty sure it was Betsy because she remembered Don also called her "Bets" for short (I get Bets all the time too).



So Monday night Steve and I sit down on the couch to dive into season two and in the first episode, sure enough, Don calls her Betsy and Bets! No Betty. What gives? I'm almost positive she's never referred to as Betsy or Bets in Season 1 because I think I'd have noticed. There are not too many Betsy's out there so when it happens, it strikes a chord.

Technically they are both nicknames for Elizabeth but it's just weird that the show made the switch like that. Maybe I totally missed something. Can anyone help me solve this mystery?

Sidenote: When I was searching for names and nicknames I found this fun site that lets you type in a year and see the most popular baby names for that year.

leftover madness

I'm trying to be more creative with leftovers these days and I think I hit a home-run with this one. With our leftover rotisserie chicken we made BBQ Pulled Chicken Sammies and oven fries!


All we did was shred enough chicken for two sandwhiches and put it in a small saucepan w/our favorite bottled BBQ sauce. Once warmed, put a pile of the chicken on a toasted bun and top with a scoop of cole slaw. We halved the recipe and we didn't have celery seed so we just left it out. I also went a little shy on the sugar and light mayonnaise but bumped the vinegar a bit.

Almost my favorite part of the meal was the dipping sauce we made. We stole the recipe from Liz & Jeremy. It's basically 1/3 C ketchup, 1-2 T sriracha hot sauce and a teaspoon of sugar. Mix it up in a bowl and you're all set! Adjust sriracha and sugar based on your own tastes and enjoy!

puzzles aren't just for grandparents and holidays anymore

The weekend before last Emily came to visit and we managed to squeeze a dinner in w/her while she was here! Here's Kai, Emily & Brant.


Bonus: Reunion w/my old roommate Rebecca!


After dinner we walked back to Casa de Santos for funfetti cake and puzzling.



After everyone left Steve expressed his concerns that we've become boring married people who do puzzles (translation: we're lame). I tried to reassure him that no, puzzles are cool. They may not be Guitar Hero cool, but they're cool.