Weekend!

I'm sorry I haven't been posting much other than my weekend reports- I guess you can see just how busy I am! But I have some Pretty Things lined up for this week, so stay tuned.


This weekend was all about hanging out with my girlfriends, and I guess it technically started on Wednesday night, when my friend Layla and I went to a Mission Gastroclub dinner. The food was tasty and insanely filling (the hosts, who brew their own beer to accompany the courses, served us hush puppies with home-cured ham, smoked beef sliders on deep-fried buns, with homemade pickles, pork chops [I should note that they had butchered a whole pig for this meal], and apple pie with a lard crust), if a little surreal. Sitting in a stranger's basement apartment with a handful of 22 year old Stanford grads was an adventure to say the least!

On Thursday night I accompanied my friend Jessica B. to a "ball" hosted by LitQuake to celebrate the publication of Mark Twain's new biography. If you haven't heard, it's a pretty amazing story: Twain requested that the book be held from publication until 100 years after his death. I am very excited to read it! The ball was held upstairs at the beautiful Herbst Theater, which faces the capitol building, and although nobody was quite as dressed up as us (I wore a Vivienne Westwood gown), we had a great time and ended our night with hot donuts at Bob's.


Friday night, my friend Louisa and I had a night on the town in Downtown Oakland. We are both Oakland natives and it's really exciting to see our hometown finally coming up in the world. I feel extremely proud everytime a new restaurant or club opens, and I like to make sure I patronize them all. We started our evening by attending the Oakland Art Murmur (that's work by Jon Schroeder at Hatch Gallery, at the top, and a sculpture by Misako Inaoka at Johansson Projects, above), which I almost never get to go to anymore, and then we had dinner at MUA, which opened last year, followed by drinks at Bar 355 (which opened just a couple months ago, and is really wonderful), and finally dessert at the highly anticipated Plum (which opened in September). Dessert was, in my opinion, much, much better than dinner, and I can't wait to go back to Plum for a full meal!

On Saturday night, I had a date, and even though I was feeling a bit under the weather, at the last minute I decided to meet up with Jessica B. and Jessica E., who were on a mission to meet boys. We went out to a few bars in the city, including one of my favorites, Rye (they make the best Pimm's Cups!). Finally, we had late night Thai food at Osha before crawling into bed.


Sunday morning I was supposed to go to Alameda Point, but it got rained out, and frankly I was happy to sleep in. Jessica B. and I had a lovely (as always) brunch at Camino (that's my grilled sea bass with shelling beans and chicories, above), and then I went to look at an apartment with Louisa before coming home for a much-needed nap with Seymour.