Exercised

On a sunny and otherwise uneventful Monday morning, a single external withdrawal wiped my bank account clear of more money than Nicolas and I spent on our entire wedding, and certainly more than we have ever saved. And the craziest part: we asked for it. No, I don't mean we did something stupid (though you might argue it was). This was a planned payment, the single largest investment we've ever made, on partially borrowed money, all to dive head in to my start-up and its (God willing) successful future.

When we decided to take our move to the US along the Silicon Valley route, the job offer came with options. What did that even mean? Boy, did we have a lot to learn. In the tech world, especially start-ups, the payoff isn't all in the paycheck. If you want to go big, you have to go all in, and become a literal stakeholder in your company's future. And that is what we just did.

We're all in!

It's starting to weigh heavy on us to have to make so many bets on big decisions, from our finances to my housing (is Nicolas's green card close enough in our future for me to start paying a premium on housing to make space for him?) to travel plans (do we buy Nicolas extra tickets to accompany me from the US for the holidays, now while they're still affordable, in the hope that he'll be here in time to need to fly to Paris?). I know life is uncertain but it would be nice to have something more solid to hold on to. And someone to fall asleep next to.

Happy Memorial Day!

It's weird to be back in the US and once again marking all these holidays I'd grown up celebrating but hadn't thought of for years. But the holiday greetings from outside my bedroom window were just asking to be passed along. Happy Memorial Day from San Francisco!

Plated, week 2

My second box of goodies arrived this Friday (eclipsed by my aforementioned sob-inducing letter), and the novelty hasn't worn off yet. On this week's menu: white pizza with asparagus, gruyère, and ricotta, and roasted zucchini bibimbap with crispy rice and pickled slaw. I love how fun and easy it is to make unusual, healthy, and tasty meals. It makes me feel like I'm really winning at adulting, despite being hardly competent in the kitchen. And of course, another weekend of cooking meant another photo project. Here are the beautiful and delicious results:

In progress: White pizza with asparagus, gruyère, and ricotta

In progress: Roasted zucchini bibimbap with crispy rice and pickled slaw

While the two dishes stacked up side by side much better than last week's, there was still a clear winner: Sunday evening's bibimbap. Yum!

Plated week two: a delicious success!

My Case Was Approved!

!!!

💗😭💝💑💞🎉

Not enough emojis for this, and definitely no words.

As of today, the USCIS website lists the I-130 processing times as follows:

It has not been 7.5 to 9.5 months. In fact, it's only been 3.5. You could say it was about time that we got a stroke of luck, but this certainly came as a surprise. We could not ask for a better start to our weekends.

😭😭😭

Bay to Breakers, almost

Bay to Breakers is an annual party that claims to be a 12k race, but seems to come out more as Halloween in May. I had every intention of going out for the day, but come Sunday morning, my bed just sounded so much more appealing. I did drag myself up somewhere around the break of noon, and managed to rock a costume for the tail end of the party, enough to do a bit of seeing and being seen. And I think it was a statement that not a single passerby seemed thrown off by my wig and tiny skirt as I strolled past on an early Sunday afternoon. Interspersed with the normal folks just out brunching about, there were people rocking animal-themed blow-up floaty tubes, space suits, full Star Wars regalia, cookie monster outfits, cow costumes, and beanie baby suits, just to name a few. I think I didn't do too bad myself. In fact, I mostly wonder why it took me so long, after years of living in such the Alice-enthused town of Brighton, to buy myself such a get up.

Having failed to join in the proper celebration, I swung by my first Dolores Park acroyoga jam instead. However, I wasn't entirely dressed for the occasion, and had to take a rain check after just a few flies. Next weekend I swear I'll finally hit up a jam for real. And maybe next year I'll actually make it to the race/parade/extravaganza that is Bay to Breakers. It's good to have goals.

I may have been Alice but I pulled a White Rabbit and was late for a very important date with Bay to Breakers. Still, I found a slice of Wonderland waiting for me on the streets of San Francisco.

Plated!

When your quintessentially Silicon Valley employer feeds you three meals a day, five days a week, you'll find yourself scrambling come lunch time on a Saturday afternoon. It's hard to do a grocery run when you only need the food to cover four or so meals. For the past few months, I've been scavenging across the restaurants of SOMA and the Mission, with varied degrees of success as far as health and budget are concerned. But beyond that, each new place I discovered twisted the knife of Nicolas's absence a little further. Discovering new cities is one of my favorite couple's activities, so making this new city my home without him just feels like a betrayal.

Solution: a meal subscription service. Healthy eating, reduced weekend food costs, and new recipes to learn and share with my husband, something that might even bring us closer together instead of drawing our lives further apart. A thorough google search taught me one thing: meal subscriptions are not designed for solo eaters. Still, at a minimum sign-up of two 2-serving meals for around $50, the math added up. Choosing the provider was easy enough to. Side-by-side meal service comparison articles consistently scored Plated highest for originality and quality of recipes, and a quick cross check on their and Blue Aprons menu lists confirmed my decision. I'll certainly shell out a few bucks more for a unique home dining experience. Each week I opt in, I choose two of around 10-12 vegetarian or pescatarian dishes. (There's plenty more for the meat-lovers, among whom I don't count myself.) And the first box arrived this weekend!

My first Plated food box!

On the menu: sticky apricot-glazed salmon with garlic rice and kale, and spring vegetable tarts with ricotta, mozarella, and honey-roasted carrots. It was a lot of fun to break in my new kitchen supplies, to get the satisfaction of preparing my own food, and to play food photographer each afternoon. I was patting myself on the back for the artistry of my cooking action shots when Nicolas's unprompted response to my photos pinged my phone: ça fait très chimiste ça. (That's such a chemist move.) It seems I can't escape myself, a scientist through and through. But at least now I'm one who knows a thing or two about cooking.

In action: Sticky apricot-glazed salmon with kale and garlic rice

In action: Spring vegetable tarts with ricotta, mozarella, and honey-roasted carrots

Dinner is served!

Overall takeaway: I'm loving the leap from the click of a mouse to a fully-stocked weekend kitchen. In terms of the quality of the food, I was thrilled by the salmon, and satisfied by the veggie tarts. Other that taking Plated's salt recommendations with a pinch of salt (or rather, with several less!), I couldn't complain about this week's recipes. It was admittedly a bit inconvenient to have to try to get home in time for each meal, and a little awkward to dodge social invitations, knowing I'd already footed the bill for and stocked the fridge with my entire weekend menu. Even after a fair bit of effort, I wound up eating Saturday dinner at a friend's place, though at least this didn't affect my weekend food savings. And with roommates, I had some help with the unexpected leftovers. So with that, bring on week 2, Plated!

¡Feliz 6 de mayo!

Walking around on the evening of Saturday the 5th, I was surprised by the unexpected number of people sporting sombreros. Just how big is this bachelor(ette) party? I thought to myself, until it hit me: Cinco de Mayo is a thing here. A decade abroad clears your memory of such details of your home culture. But this weekend, I was celebrating the 6th: Nicolas's 30th. Living on two different continents, you get stuck missing a lot of the Big Days. With birthdays in March and May, and a wedding anniversary in April, we each had to accept adding on a year on our own. Still, it's a real bummer to miss such a milestone birthday, one we won't get to mark together for another 96 days. So today, in honor of my husband's 30th, I went out to celebrate on my own in the finest fashion, with ice cream and beer.

I'm not sure if it's too early to call it, but I'm pretty sure I've found my top ice cream shop of San Francisco. Salt & Straw takes the best of American traditions, that ability to think outside the box, flaunting the rules, to concoct fantastic flavors that would never dare to brave an ice cream parlor in France, a country where food is a rigid art form and overly creative thinking strongly frowned upon. What draws me in most is their flavors-of-the-month list, which comes with paragraph-long explanations of each concoction's flavor profile. Not only do they offer a titillating selection, but at Salt & Straw, you can taste all the flavors you want before making up your mind. The servers are fantastically accommodating (as they probably should be given the prices they charge). You can even add some sanity to your order by taking "split scoops," basically human-sized scoops instead of typically-American basketball-sized servings that precariously balance atop the cone. This month's flavor theme: May Flowers. And you'd best believe I tried them all, except that vegan nonsense. The rose ice scream streaked with spicy dark chocolate fudge mole was heaven. I can't think of a more delicious way to mark Nicolas's 30th.

Salt & Straw: worth that 20 minute line

As I was busy covering myself in ice cream—the Salt & Straw stuff is so damned good that, cone in hand, I revert to a childlike state—I walked past this piece of eye candy (which I'll admit to having spotted once before but never having properly visited). Well, in the spirit of Nicolas's 30th, I could hardly just walk by, right?

Healthy Spirits: yet another site on the list of SF locales to which Nicolas must be introduced. Seriously, they have so many drinks that they've even got a ladder to access the selection! It's like an old-timey library, but with booze instead of books. Too cool.

After a couple of hours in the office, I came home and beelined to my rooftop to cap off Nicolas's birthday. If only he were able to share the celebration via more than just WhatsApp.

Drinking a Traquair Jacobite Ale (Scottish ale brewed with coriander and fermented in oak barrels) on my rooftop, in Nicolas's honor.

As they say, next year in Jerusalem! And by that I mean San Francisco. 😉🎂🎉