Herbie Hancock at the GMC

Tonight I had a front row box seat to see Herbie Hancock in concert.  Thanks to Jason who gave me a ticket to catch the show.  The Green Music Center is a state of the art performance venue right on Sonoma State's campus.  To be able to hear such talented performers such as Herbie Hancock as he stepped through an on-the-fly performance mixing music and making it up as he was was an absolute treat!  Glad we have this amazing venue so close to home.

The Affordable Care Act

This year has been marked by political disagreement and a plethora of misinformation.  Today I posted this video on YouTube in an effort to help educate others on the facts of the Affordable Care Act.  Some dissenters as well as promoters of the bill often refer to it as "Obama Care".  The misinformation that has been promoted by the right wing conservatives in this country has been nauseating.  Of course there are extreme examples, of course there are exceptions to the rule.  Overall, this is a good first step in the right direction at getting our nation's out of control health system some simple guidance.  I, along with millions of other Americans believe there is still much more to be done.  In the meantime, we can rest assured that for now the Affordable Care Act will be bringing some much needed reform in this area.  For more information on the law and the changes in place and coming in 2014 read up at www.healthcare.gov.

Season 2 of Zombies, Run!

Zombies, Run! has really gotten me motivated for my running.  I've had several solo runs this September and nothing pushes me to go another few miles like Zombies, Run! does.  Just over the last three days I've ran all of these missions:

S2-M12/Hounds Of Love
S2-S7/Times New Roaming
S2-M13/Electric Dreams
S2-M14/The Object Is A Hungry Wolf
S2-M15/Dark And Long
S2-S8/Top 40
S2-M16/Dare

Season 2 has a total of 64 missions (40 standard missions and 24 side missions) I'm going to be busy for a while!

Capture: The Peanut Butter Pact

On Monday of this week I had the day off to spend it with Jake since he flew back to Boise that night.  We spent the day in the Castro for some shopping and shenanigans.  Jake picked out a ring at the HRC store for his friend Nic.  I sent a picture of a nail saloon to Emma because it had a humorous name "Hand Job Nail Saloon".  We infiltrated the Sausage Factory to use their restroom and before we knew it I was dropping him off for his flight back home.

Tonight I opened a bottle of Francis Ford Coppola's Merlot and enjoyed it while watching my favorite TV show Capture.  Last week the Black Team was sent home in "The Call of the Wild" (Ep 107).  Tonight's episode was called "The Peanut Butter Pact" (Ep 108).  I held my glass up in cheers to the Black Team during the recap that they were sent home since they were the lushes of the group.

In this episode all teams start out with their vests going off due to a "virus" and the only way to disengage it is to meet up at the looking glass with all other prey teams.  White caught the pink team and Teal sabotaged the green team with a gas mask.  The second hunt Green, Red and Teal make it to the supply station (turkey dinner!) while the White team looked on from the brush. Unfortunately the Teal team got caught.  When elimination came up here's how the teams voted:
White - Voted Teal
Red - Voted Pink
Green - Voted Pink

Go Red Team!!  Go Teal Team!!  YAY!

Petaluma Clo Cow Half Marathon

This morning Jake and I met up with Amanda for the third annual Clo Cow Half Marathon.  Amanda and I were both registered for the half marathon and Jake for the 5k.  It was wonderful to have Amanda back out on a half marathon race after her summer injury.  We were set to take it slow and walk as needed.  About halfway through the race Amanda was adamant that I continue on at normal speed so off I went.  You can see my run posted on my Runkeeper.  

That afternoon Jake and I went wine tasting.  We visited Bella Vinyards and Wine Caves, Chateau Diana and of course our favorite; Thumbprint!  It's harvest season so we got to see the wineries in full swing as they were processing grapes from the field.  Fun time of year to be here in Sonoma County!

Armstrong Woods

Last night Jake flew into the Oakland airport and I joyously picked him up!  I made plans for our afternoon today; to head to Armstrong woods with a picnic from my favorite sandwich shop, Marc Mezzettas, in Rohnert Park.  After getting our lunch we drove up to Guerneville and then to Armstrong woods.  We hiked quite a ways, even got so hot out that we took of our shirts for the climb!

Then after our exploring Armstrong woods Jake had a dinner surprise location picked out for us.  Jake looked online before his visit and found a vegetarian/vegan restaurant I haven't been to.  We got ready and then headed out downtown Santa Rosa to Gaia's Garden for dinner!  It was buffet style which was interesting, and the food was very good.  They had an open mic night event starting around 9:00pm so we headed out before that got going.  What an adventurous day!

Capture: Reversal of Fortune

Capture, a tv series on the CW was by far my favorite show for 2013.  Every night Jake and I would FaceTime and watch it together.  The show reminded me of what the Hunger Games would be like if it were a reality TV show.  There are 12 teams of two people and each is assigned a color.  Of course they have fun back stories on each team.

Black Team:  Sabrina & Noelle (Friends, Brooklyn, NY)
Blue Team:  Eric & Shane (Blue Devils, Palm Beach, FL)
Gold Team:  Chris & Nick (Brothers, Cornelius, OR)
Green Team:  Antoine & Kareem (College Buddies, Pittsburgh, PA)
Grey Team:  Tremana & Jerick (Friends, Boston, MA)
Lime Team:  James & Rebecca (Siblings, Grand Rapids, MI)
Pink Team:  Arlynn & Kristen (Best friends, Boulder, CO)
Purple Team:  Erica & Ryan (Couple, Boulder CO)
Red Team:  Rob & Jacob (Gay Friends, Brick, NJ)
Teal Team:  Nikita & Jade (Identical Twins, Bournemouth, England)
White Team:  Kaliesha & Matt (Dating, Loma Linda, CA)
Yellow Team:  Kellee & Marlina (Friends, San Bernardino, CA)

Each episode a hunt team is selected at random and then all the other teams are prey and must run and hide for the duration of the episode (two days real time).  Each day the hunt lasts for 4 hours and the hunt team must capture 2 teams over the course of the 2 days and one of the teams is eliminated by votes of all teams.  If the hunt team fails to capture someone they are up for elimination with the one team they catch or are auto-eliminated if they catch no one.

In this weeks episode "Reversal of Fortune" the Gold team was selected as the hunt team.  There was a game changing award won during the first hunt in which Gold captured Red and Teal won the award.  They switched the Hunt team with the captured team.  I was in stitches laughing at Gold and elated that Red was saved.  Here's the picture of the Gold team upon hearing the news of their fortune reversal.

I've been enthralled with this show all season, can't wait for the rest of it!  Most exciting thing for me is the idea of participating myself!  I think me and Katelynn would make for a competitive team.

Charles M. Schulz Museum

Today I met Anita at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, CA.  All this time there's been this gem of a museum right in my backyard and I didn't even know it!  There's a huge museum full of the history of Charles' work, an office replica of his workspace, educational movies, comic strips everywhere and even a massive mural of Charlie Brown and Lucy made up of individual comic strips - fascinating!  Next door is a shop full of Peanuts items you can purchase and then next to that is a full on ice skating rink!  

Probably the most impressive of everything to me was the large mural on one three story wall of Charlie Brown and Lucy.

Very cool, enjoy!

Dinner and Drinks after Work

With yesterday being the first day of harvest for Katlynn's winery and all the crazy fun I always have at work we both needed drinks after work tonight, STAT!  We met at my favorite Mexican restaurant in Rohnert Park, Mi Pueblo and had the carnito drinks (top shelf vodka with mix and spicy/salty rim in a clay pot).  The picture has some edits/symbols on it because it was taken via SnapChat.  I wanted to keep it but couldn't because it was in the SnapChat program- I was sending it to Jake :)

The New Bay Bridge

Today the new section of the Bay Bridge that connects Oakland to San Francisco opened up to traffic.  Last Wednesday, the last car rolled across the old section of the bridge and the span was closed for five days as final opening changes were made.

It's interesting to see both the old and the new bridges spanning the bay to Treasure Island.  On the left you can see the new bridge with traffic flowing across it and the old bridge on the right.

On the Bay Bridge website they have a time lapse video you can watch to see the construction of the new section of the bridge which connects the eastern section of the bridge from Oakland to Yerba Buena Island.
Here's a picture I took on my last flight into Oakland coming back from Boise.

Everyone in the bay area is excited to have the new bridge here and in use, since the older one was literally falling apart.  It's now on a path to be deconstructed over the course of 2014.

Melting Pot Date Night

Tonight I made reservations for me and Jake at The Melting Pot.  I was surprised by the very private corner room we had (previously some type of closet, I suppose?).  It did make for a nice, private area to enjoy our fondue dinner!  We had the full experience starting with Cheese fondue, then the meats we had to cook in the boiling water and finishing up with the delicious chocolate fondue.  There wasn't a bite left over, what a lovely evening!