From the first moment we stepped inside to look at it, we knew this was THE place we wanted. While this house wasn’t a “fixer-up”, we did have to do quite a bit work, even now. Home ownership certainly brings a lot of expenses. So far, we’ve: built a fence in our front yard, put in a automatic garage door, replaced one of the bathroom’s ceiling fan, repainted all the rooms including the living room, replaced the garbage disposal, bought a new stove (as the old owner took his fancy Thermador), fixed a water leak, and fixed the damper so we can use the fireplace. Sounds like we haven’t done much, but it adds up quite quickly.

For this year, with a child, we’ll be child-proofing our home as well as making other repairs and changes around here. Well, here’s to the American Dream.

So Why Kaiser? The reason we chose Kaiser is simple, as an employee of the City and County of San Francisco, I selected Kaiser Permanente as my health provider. I’ve always had Kaiser so it just made sense to select them when I started working for San Francisco. We specifically chose Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center because there are only two main hospitals that has a Labor & Delivery Department: San Francisco or Redwood City. It’s important to note that if you are under 36-weeks, they strongly recommend for you to go directly to San Francisco as they are better equipped to deal with pre-term birth and labor. We had plans to tour both, but promptly cancelled our tour for Redwood City Kaiser after an Emergency Room visit to their Labor & Delivery Department because Andrea was having strong pains on one side of her stomach. The on-call OB/GYN that treated Andrea was rude, needlessly cruel, and unprofessional. Andrea has had an unusually difficult pregnancy and one would expect an OB/GYN doctor would be more sympathetic, but she was dismissive and not reassuring and made us feel like something is wrong with us. Redwood City Kaiser’s Labor & Delivery Department felt old and run-down, and we ultimately didn’t get a good feel for it and with the doctor’s treatment of us, that put us over the top.

So how does San Francisco Kaiser compare to Redwood City Kaiser? It’s like day-and-night difference. San Francisco Kaiser is huge and is separated into multiple high-rise buildings across from each other on Geary. The Labor & Delivery Department is in the same campus as the Emergency Room (which is convenient, I guess) which is actually the main campus at 2425 Geary Blvd. There is a Kaiser 24-hour parking garage nearby at O’Farrell and Broderick Street, which they recommend that you park in rather than trying to find street parking as cars have been broken into and DPT does ticket there religiously. The parking garage is small and you do have to pay to park in there. The 2-hour San Francisco Labor & Delivery Hospital Group Tour begins on the Mezzanine Level in one of their meeting rooms. The tour is led by an actual Labor & Delivery Department RN, which in our case was Nurse Ann Borja, a very friendly and fun RN who answered everyone’s questions and made the tour fun and exciting. Once we got a chance to meet her and go over some basic information such as emergency contact numbers, where to park, when you need to use the Emergency Department entrance, and etc., we all took the elevator to the 3rd Floor where the Labor & Delivery Department is. Compared to Redwood City Kaiser, San Francisco Kaiser is much more secure with a constant security guard watching the secured entrance to the Labor & Delivery Department. At Redwood City, it was a door where you pressed a button and they would buzz you in.

RN Ann Borja took us all around the Labor & Delivery Department showing us as much as she could. Unfortunately the day of our tour happened to be one of the rarest days in which ALL the birthing rooms unavailable and due to privacy issues, they can’t show us any rooms occupied by a patient. When in the event a situation like this arises, they may end up transporting mom and baby to another Kaiser facility with a Labor & Delivery Department. One of the best features of San Francisco Kaiser is that all eight of their birthing rooms are private, so one family per room, complete with a private shower, TV, and DVD player. And barring any major birth complications, from the moment the baby is born, he or she stays with you the entire time in the room! They do all the weighing, preping, monitoring, and etc. all right in front of you. Discharging takes place at 11 A.M. There is also a decent cafe on the first floor that has fresh made hamburgers and sandwiches but unfortunately it closes by 7 PM Monday-to-Friday. Fortunately there are a number of other restaurants that deliver nearby.

© bitzi/Flickr.com

We bought a beautiful house in the Peninsula/San Francisco Bay Area. I celebrated my second anniversary at work. Andrea got hit with furloughs. We brought Stripes to come live with us and celebrated her first birthday at her new home. Then we adopted the cutest little black Bombay from the SPCA so that Stripes would have someone to play with. I got hit with furloughs. God blessed us with a child. We celebrated our two-year wedding anniversary. Panther celebrated his very first birthday with us getting a cat condo, he dearly loves. We had a lovely dinner for Andrea’s birthday. We hosted our very first Thanksgiving at our house. Had Christmas at my aunt’s house. And here we are.

So what’s next for 2010? I can’t forsee the future, but the highlights of 2010 will be: our one-year home owners anniversary, Stripes turning seven, our baby being born, our third anniversary, Andrea’s birthday, Panther’s birthday, and our baby’s very first Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I am certainly very excited for the future. Happy New Year and God bless.

Enjoy.

San Francisco Shopping Center

We decided to do some window shopping to look at some cute baby clothes for our future child and decided what better place than Westfield’s San Francisco Shopping Center. Our first stop was the ritzy Bloomingdale’s. Let me tell you, there are certainly a lot of really cute outfits for toddlers from various brands such as Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Diesel, True Religion, Seven for all Mankind, and more. Very cute and very expensive.

From there we walked around the Shopping Center, stopping in to check out stores such as Zara and True Religion.

After spending some time walking around San Francisco Shopping Center, we decided to head to the Metreon to catch Saw VI. Originally I had planned that we would watch Michael Jackson’s This Is It, but the Metreon wasn’t showing This Is It and Andrea wasn’t in the mood to walk across the street to the Century at San Francisco Shopping Center, so we ended up watching Saw VI.

Saw VI

We’ve been watching Saw, since the very first movie for it’s interesting plot twists. It’s actually amazing how many Saw movies have been made, but given the box office success in the tune of $711 million worldwide and with a budget of $47 million TOTAL for all 6 films, it’s hard not to see why they continue making them. Also it turns out, there will be a SAW VII, but in 3D.

Saw VI was definitely good and entertaining, but one thing we’ve been noticing with subsequent Saw movies is that they have increased the gore factor exponentially. The first couple of Saw movies, were quite tame compared to the the last four, but I think it’s time to retire the franchise after Saw VII. There have been so many plot twists that it’s now expected. The one thing I like about the Saw franchise is how each movie introduces more background information on the characters and their connections to each other, that almost certainly always brings us back for more.

Acquerello

For dinner, I had chosen this nice and fancy Italian restaurant, Acquerello, based on research and reading online reviews, which turned out a to a very good choice. I should also note that Acquerello has a single Michelin star. This was our first time here and we were certainly impressed with their huge wine list selection and their three 3 wine cellars. The place is nicely designed with two dining areas, there might actually be three as there was a closed door labeled VIP Room so I couldn’t see in. The reason I chose an Italian place was because Andrea had commented that we don’t go to Italian restaurants very often.

The place is nicely decorated and the staff are extremely friendly and helpful. It also helps having a parking garage ($10 dinner specials, unfortunately no parking validation available at Acquerello) across the street so no hunting for parking.

We opted for the three/four course menu. We were surprised to receive a special chef’s special surprise of some kind of fried truffle cheese thing, which I can’t remember the name, it was a delicious hors d’oeuvre. For our first course, Andrea had the salad of wild arugula with hidden celery root and shaved apple in a candied vinaigrette (which looked and tasted nothing special) and I had the poached ranch egg nested over creamy leeks with whole-wheat butter crumbs (which was delicious, definitely recommend it!). From there we waited a bit until we were served our second course: Rabbit filled agnolotti with Taggiasca olives and prosciutto for Andrea and Ridged pasta with foie gras, scented with black truffles and Marsala for myself. Andrea’s rabbit filled agnolotti was good. It was our first time having rabbit and it certainly has a distinctive taste. My ridged pasta with the foie gras was excellent, although Andrea thought it was too rich, I found it quite delicious and creamy. For our third course, Andrea enjoyed the Veal loin over creamy polenta, chanterelles and veal sweetbreads and I had the American Kobe beef with Piemontese ‘Dragon beans,’ pancetta and tomato soffritto with basil. It was our first time having American Kobe and it is certainly an interesting cut of beef, can’t wait to try the real Japanese Kobe beef. Our neighbor had ordered the cheese tasting and it certainly looked so appetizing that we ended up sharing it.

Because it was Andrea’s birthday, her “birthday cake” was a stack of biscotti arranged much like fire log with “Happy Birthday” spelled out in cursive on the plate with a single candle. I actually found that to be quite unusual and was not very happy with that. Most other places either give you a piece of cake, sherbet or something more than just a stack of biscotti. Otherwise, it was a nice place.

Pics

Happy Birthday, I love you.

As tradition with Stripes, we brought lots of cat toys and sashimi from our local sushi house (aptly named Sushi House; imagine their reaction if they knew some of the sashimi was for our cats). We got an extra special present for Panther this year: a cat furniture that is a two story condo. Turns out he very much likes it as he spent all night yesterday sleeping on the top floor curled up. Stripes explored it a little bit by going in some of the openings and so has Panther, but they both seem more interested in the open top floor. We put it next to our large windows in the living room so they can look out to the backyard.