The Brow Affair

What was I thinking? Why did it never occur to me to do this ages ago? It is not the cost that was prohibiting me...what else could it have been? Surely it was not the pain factor, when in fact plucking my eyebrows at least 5-10 minutes a day for the past 14 years has accounted for 3,664 minutes of my life. That is over 61 hours of my life that are lost forever. That is almost 3 days that I will never get back. Those 3 days could have been the best 3 days of my life, you never know! Those could have been the days that I bought the winning lottery ticket, or the day John Mayer happened to breeze through the small town of Brentwood looking for a new girlfriend! Or the day they were giving out free liposuction at the local surgeon and I could have had thinner thighs by summertime! YOU NEVER KNOW! Why did 25 minutes and $18.00 give me such pleasure? Let me explain:

At the urging of a brilliant coworker, I made an appointment to have my eyebrows waxed in two weeks time. I put away the tweezers and vowed to leave my eyebrows alone no matter how bad I looked! And believe me... for an Italian/Portugeuse girl, not plucking her bushy eyebrows for two whole weeks was a challenge. I felt like no matter who I talked to they were staring at my brows thinking "Is she just lazy or does she think that looks good? Is there something wrong with her, or is that how her hair naturally grows?" It was not pretty....

So finally yesterday rolls around and I go in to the salon and prepare myself for the results. In a matter of a moment I sat up and looked at my face in the mirror...Oh my goodness...was that MY face? My gosh... my eyes looked different, I even looked happier! WOW! What a difference $18.00 makes. Think of all the extra time I will save, the minutes per day I can save, I can even get to work earlier because of my eyebrows! Lola at the Oasis Spa, I thank you so much! I thank you for not only making my face look better but giving me back precious time! Giving me back my freedom....maybe you can even make George Clooney come to town looking for his next leading lady! Geez...has anyone seen his eyebrows lately?

The Death of Happy Dog....

My dog Maggie is quite the connoisseur of toys. She has her favorites of course, one of which we have dubbed "Happy Dog" due to his enormous smile and bright shiny teeth. When I got home from work tonight, I was wet from the rain, a little hungry and a lot sleepy. But none of those things mattered when I saw my baby Maggie. She was so adorable on the couch with her sick daddy that I had to go over and shower her with kisses. Kisses led to scratches ad scratches led to her jumping off and engaging us in a game of "tug the baby out of my mouth". That is Maggie's favorite game. Pair that with Happy Dog and Maggie is in fact a very Happy Dog.

Well tonight marked the demise of Happy Dog as he was thrashed and bit and ripped and all around molested and ravaged. Poor Happy Dog...he met his untimely death at the mere age of 2 months. You see...this is the second reincarnation of Happy Dog since Happy Dog 1 met the same fate. Nick and I slyly tried to fool her by buying Happy Dog 2 and rubbing it with Happy Dog 1's spit and scent and then quickly throwing out the carnage. Maggie is a smart dog and of course she did not fall for such a blatant ruse. Luckily for us, #2 was just as loved and adored. I guess I was a little too rough when playing tug, because before I knew it, Happy has busted a gut and was spewing cotton puffs of guts! As you can see in the pictures I posted, Maggie lies happily among the result of her kill.

So proudly she feasts on tufts of cotton before tiring of the flavor and moving on to her daddies hand. So I bid thee farewell Happy Dog 2, you were a favored and skillful play partner. You will be sorely missed by all...until the arrival of Happy Dog #3!

The Mission

Nothing like a nice relaxing Saturday! I spent most of the day working like a dog in the backyard. Went to the nursery ad bought some plants for my pots and some more filler for the flower beds. After about 6 hours I decided to stop since I had a hot date to get ready for. Nick and I were going to have a nice romantic dinner at the Foreign Cinema in San Francisco. It is right in the heart of the Mission district. Being that we got there an hour before our reservation, we decided to drive around a bit. I was not going to park and hoof it in 3 inch Anne Kleins! I love the Mission, it is such a funky, lively area that you almost don't notice the vagrants or any garbage, all you see is little outdoor vendors and corner produce markets and wall murals and jazz clubs. We even saw a Greek Import store that made Nick perk up. We drove all the way down to 30th and oh the sights we saw! Of course just driving down 10 blocks took about a half hour but it was fun sightseeing. The Foreign Cinema is an incredible little hole in the wall restaurant that you would not even look twice at passing it by. It is between 21st and 22nd and has a weird industrial looking door that leads to a long concrete hallway. Last night the hallway was lined with votive candles and cherry blossoms in big vases. You come to the end of this dark hallway and it opens up to a tiny bar and the most beautiful outdoor patio where they show movies on the brick wall at the end of it. Last nights movie was Breakfast at Tiffanys, but of course I already knew that and that is why I made these reservations a month ago! Our dinner was fabulous. Now...I am not an adventurous eater by any means but I always try something different when I go there and have yet to be diappointed. In fact, I even ate the vegetables that graced my plate! Yum! So un-Erin. The movie was a little hard to pay attention to since the speakers were not at our table and there was alot of chatter. Fabulous none the less. But the reason you go there is for the ambiance and that we were overwhelmed with. I love going to San Francisco. It is a place were you can get lost and end up finding the most incredible little gems and treasures. Nick finds it hard to get past the homeless issue and says that I romanticize the city but I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing. We are so lucky to have such beautiful and historical playground right in our own backyard. If anyone has any other "gems" please let me know...I am always up for a hunt!

www.foreigncinema.com