"Just" a housewife

And Hawaii here we come...

And yesterday we booked 7 days in Hawaii. We go to Vancover on Sept. 2 for Labor Day weekend, then return home on Monday night. We fly out to Kauai on Tuesday morning!

I did it!

Well, as you know, the marathon was out of my reach way back in June, but today despite not having an ideal preparation in the last two weeks, I completed the half marathon. My second one ever and in 2 hours 24 minutes. Just one minute longer than the last one. As I said not bad for someone who's only run 14 miles in the last 14 days!

I ran it with Matt Morgan and Jill Warner. Jill is a great running partner and always spurs you on. Not to say Matt isn't!

Mile 9 was great over the Golden Gate Bridge, I felt good and I thought we were running at a great pace.

However, just like last time, a 'stitch' kicked in at mile 10 and I had to concentrate on my breathing and stretch my arm above my head to get rid of the pain. Mile 11 was hard going, (I just hadn't trained enough in the last few weeks) and the only thing that kept me going in mile 12 was knowing I could stop soon!

I lost Matt and Jill at mile 11, but they were going on to do 26 anyway! Oh and did I tell you I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. and we started running in the dark at 5:30 a.m.!

Friendships all over the world!

I'm lucky as I have friends all over the world. One of my best friends from childhood lives in Hong Kong. One of my friends just visited me last week from Australia. 3 or 4 awesome friends live in England and I have many very close friends that I made when I first moved to California more than 7 years ago. But how do they compare?

Truth is you can't compare loyal, wonderful friends.

However, there are some 'friends' that are really are just acquaintances. How do you know they aren't going to be long term, loyal friends? Some times you don't know until time passes. I think as I get older I don't become wiser in knowing who to trust and who not to. Why don't I learn that lesson? One thing I know for sure is that I treat my close friends how I would want to be treated...with love, support and kindness.

The first step to citizenship!

Today I took the first step to citizenship.

With David still in London I've had a weekend alone and yesterday I went for a 90 minute run around the Marina and the Presidio (in 70-80 degree heat!) and then went to hang out at James' pool party.

Today, my sole priority was filling in the N-400 form that is the first step in what could be a 6-month process of becoming an American Citizen! I've paid out $390 for the privelege and spent hours today retracing every time I've entered the US and how many days I've spent outside the US. Apparently in the last 5 years, I've spent 251 days outside the US - that's 24 trips!

Soon I'll have to start cramming for the America history test!

Tomorrow I will mail it off and keep my fingers crossed. Now who was the first president of the US?

Addicted To Travel - Hawaii here we come!

David and I love San Francisco. Especially now that we've had a chance to be away for a while and come back and appreciate it more. However, we love to travel. We hadn't been back in San Fran longer than 7 days and we'd already made reservations for our next trip - to Vancouver on Labor Day weekend.

In addition, we're already researching Thailand and Laos in November around Thanksgiving. We've looked into flights, picked out a trip itinerary, and confirmed dates off work.

But that's not enough. David said last night that we should also plan a vacation where we can snorkel. So no sooner than he said that, and I pulled out the Hawaii book and began looking for the best island to suit us for our trip. We wanted a good beach, a place to snorkel, some adventure, maybe whale watching, and even golf. Apparently Kauai has all that. It even has a helicopter tour over an amazing waterfall and we can even do a day trip to Oahu and visit Pearl Harbour.

So guess where we're going next April?

A good Monday!

Despite David flying back to England today for a 12 day stay, I had a good day! Basically the reason was because tonight I spent the evening with 11 of Silicon Valley's top business journalists at one of the best restaurants in San Francisco - Boulevard. It was for our client and through hard work from the whole team we scheduled 12 press to attend, and with one cancellation earlier in the day, all 11 expected, turned up.

It was good fun to be involved in something like that. It was a roundtable event with conversations with executives and journalists. One of the nicest journalists writing about technology; Don Clark was there. He's someone who I've worked with a bit and once again I was reminded of my early years in the Bay Area. I moved here in 1998 and I remember working at Edelman and seeing his name on target lists and thinking he was some uber-god-like person that I could only dream of speaking to. Now years on I speak to him often and he's just a regular nice guy.

The night ended with a glass of champagne in the bar next door with Nancy and Adolph and we disected every conversation we heard. A great night...I wonder how David's doing on the plane.

Memories...

Today I went down to my client in San Jose. It meant a 90 minute commute down the Peninsula past Palo Alto where I used to work, along Montague Expressway and to the heart of Silicon Valley.

This evening I stopped in Palo Alto for dinner with an old friend from my Niku days and drove round the neighborhood that I used to frequent in my Edelman days - my first job in the US. It was strange for me. I think I've changed a lot in 7.5 years and it brought back memories of that time.

David was out too at Stem Cell Research event. We're both back to living the Silicon Valley life!

Now I'm off to bed before my run in the morning!

San Francisco Taxi Drivers are INSANE!

David and I take the bus to work, or we cycle or we walk. Coming home, however it's a different matter. We often take taxis!

So yesterday I thought David and I were unlucky and happened to get into the fastest, most dangerous taxi driver ever! He drove so crazy, weaving in and out of traffic, trying to beat the lights and doing emergency stops at every turn. It got so bad I had to ask him to slow down!

Tonight surely would be different. Nope, no such luck. David and I got in another taxi and had the same experience. Not only that, but another taxi ran a red light (EXTREMELY common in San Francisco) and we had to do an emergency stop to avoid a crash - although we would still have hit the other taxi so we swerved around it! Crazy SF taxi drivers.

I'm sorry London...

As you can imagine, I'm glad to be home in San Francisco and even more so this week given the horrible terrorist attacks on the London subway system. David and I probably wouldn't have been anywhere near the location of the bombs anyway, but its scary all the same.

One of David's friends was on one of the trains, but he's ok. All my friends and family are ok. No one was effected. Thank God. Maybe everyone is effected in some way. Maybe I'm just a big softy and very emotional, but just like Sept. 11, I could barely stop crying for the first few hours of the day. I was happy when I'd contacted all my friends and also made sure all my new friends in the London office were ok.

When Jen came to visit me in London just a few weeks ago, she'd commented on the lack of trash cans in the Tube and I'd said that it was because they're great place to plant bombs, so they don't have them. It seems that they (who ever they are) didn't need them - they bombed London anyway.

As I type this I've just heard they've evacuated Birmingham City Center...

Honesty!

My mum once said I was too honest for my own good. At the age of 17 she asked me a question and I told her the truth. She didn't like the truth. Many people would have lied, but I just have a belief that you should be honest.

Take my blog. I often question whether I should state exactly how I feel and what I'm thinking. But unless this is an honest, up front, set of mumblings then to me there's not much point in doing it. David and I (both sat here blogging - aren't we sad?) just had this very conversation. You know I might be putting myself out there for ridicule, I might upset a few people (sorry Beth, Gill and Haran!) but I'm honest and that's what you get...