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Category Archives: Life
Pace Gallery – Menlo Park
This past spring, a few friends and I decided to check out the Pace Gallery in Menlo Park and we’re now sharing a couple of photos from the exhibit. For a couple months before that, I had seen tons of photos from people that were visiting and I just couldn’t wait any longer to see it in person. Let me just say that Menlo Park is not an exciting city. It’s the home to Facebook, sure, but it’s mostly just families residing here and stuff, but this is THE coolest thing in this city and it makes a ton of people flock to it so that they can all get cool Instagram photos.
I swear to you – when I arrived – everyone was dressed like a fashion blogger and that’s not something you usually see in Menlo Park. All that aside, the gallery is pretty cool. It was fun to stop by and it felt like it was right in my neighborhood since I didn’t have to drive all the way up to the city for it. It probably takes about an hour to go through it all, which is a comfortable amount of time. There’s also a separate building for a kids’ exhibit, but most of the adults enjoy going there too.
300 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, CA 94025
We’re Playing Hookie!
We decided to give ourselves a 4-day weekend! I’m excited about it, but the adult side of me is feeling very responsible and completely clueless about what I should do on my free day off. Since my partner and I will be heading out on our “college tour” next week, we wanted to take one day to ourselves before things get hectic. Tomorrow will be a completely “non-working day” or at least we’ll attempt to do that. And by we – I really mean just me because it’s the hardest thing for me to disconnect entirely.
I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do tomorrow for the last couple of hours and have felt a little anxiety about it. Should I be doing what I can’t normally do during the week? And what is that, exactly? Also, isn’t that kind of like when I have an entire weekend day to myself? What’s the difference?
For now, I’ve decided, I’m going to go up to San Mateo to get my favorite meal. I’ll run a couple of errands… but I’m also thinking about heading to a certain destination nearby that I’ve always wanted to go to that I’ve never had a chance to do. I also would like to spend some time at a coffee shop blogging because there’s something really exciting about leaving my day job behind for an entire day. If anyone has any recommendations for how I can further take advantage of the day, I would be happy to hear them. :)
Is It Time to Make a Move?
When we first created Yow Yow! back in very late 2008, I didn’t have a lot of options for platforms at the time. There was Blogger and then there was WordPress. I had a 50/50 chance of hating or loving whatever I chose so with Kevin’s recommendation, I picked WordPress. Not many people know this about me, but I grew up using technology at a very young age and was very heavily influenced by my family. I wasn’t coding by any means (I’m still not to this day if you’re wondering), but I dabbled in some very light html and was creating some pretty janky starter websites while I was still in elementary school using Expage and Geocities (RIP) I never could figure out CSS though and just gave up.
When Xanga and MySpace came around – oh man… the pressure was on to always have the best looking layout out of all of my friends and peers. I was constantly updating things to make sure that I was still on point with the trends and using things that were relevant. So when people tell me that they were very surprised to learn that I made the jump from music to tech in my professional career – well… it’s actually not that much of a surprise because before music, there was only tech for me.
I’ve spent a lot of time this year reflecting on 7 years of Yow Yow! We’ve definitely written way too many posts to give up now so that’s not even an option for me. I really love this blog though. It’s not my life – which we’re okay with, but it’s such a genuine extension of myself and who I am and have grown up to be. I know not everyone agrees with me. Some people have strong feelings towards Yow Yow! and not always positively, but I can respect the opinions of those close to me even if we will disagree.
WordPress has been good to me for so long and I am very grateful to the platform for allowing me to write with ease since I was 19 out of my dorm room, in my university’s library, in Seattle coffee shops, in my studio, and all my various homes. Recently, I had a conversation with my friend Pat about moving away from WordPress and exploring Squarespace.
“Katie, as you grow up – Yow Yow! needs to grow up with you too!”
I mean he’s not wrong… did we really think we could continue using one of WordPress’s free templates forever? It’s time that we make something that is a little bit more us and a little bit more representative of the person I am now instead of the girl I was in college.
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So, what does that mean for us? Yow Yow! will be on hiatus soon – within the next month for a little over a month so that I can focus on my other work – you know, the one in which I get paid for ;) – After this time period, we will begin to migrate things over and we’ll start fresh. By fresh, I mean a new look; the intent is to still keep all of the content in one place. In the meantime, I’ll be spending my extra free time pushing as much content as I can before I’m on the road. It’s not going to be the easiest thing in the world, but I’m looking forward to starting something new with Yow Yow! Ultimately, I think it’s a good move for us.
Wedding Wednesdays – We Can Have Our Cake and Eat It Too!
I consider myself a better than average baker. I sincerely enjoy baking and one time I thought I enjoyed baking so much that I baked 110 pies over the course of a three month fundraiser. If I could have any job in the world, it would probably be to open my own bakery. With all that being said, choosing wedding desserts was both fun and one wedding task I may have had the highest expectations for. If you’re going to charge me $7/slice (and that’s cheap by San Francisco standards), then it better be the best damn cake I’ve ever tasted. Not to mention the unfortunate fact that throughout cake tasting, if I thought to myself “I could make better frosting/cake” then it was automatically vetoed.
Thus, our hunt for the most delicious wedding cake in the world, began. Let me also preface this post with the fact that I am one of those weirdos who enjoys a slice of cake as much as a slice of pie so not having a wedding cake as some people do, was not for me. I’ve never hopped on the fancy cupcake train, except for the occasional red velvet Sprinkles cupcake because who wouldn’t jump on that train? Cupcakes were out. Eric and I tasted several cakes before having what is quite possibly the most delicious, mouthwatering, and moist carrot cake in the history of the universe, which is obviously what we eventually settled on. Seriously, the bakery we settled on delivered a slice of carrot cake to our door after being out of it during our officially scheduled tasting and it took me one bite to know I was in love, with a cake. Carrot cake? You might ask yourself. Yes indeed, my absolute favorite cake flavor because really it’s all about the cream cheese frosting. Obviously we are not so crazy to believe everyone will enjoy carrot cake as much as my fiance and I do, therefore choosing our second flavor of classic vanilla bean. One of the best parts of cake tasting besides the obvious, eating a lot of cake? Getting to enjoy a cake tasting with my mom when she was visiting. Involving family or members of the wedding party in cake tasting is a great way to include them in wedding planning while also enjoying a delicious treat.
After finding my soulmate in a cake, I turned to the next item on the dessert ticket: can we have cake AND pie? I first learned to bake a pie because my fiance’s favorite dessert is apple pie. On his birthday every year, I bake him a homemade apple pie and over the last seven years, I’ve had plenty of time to perfect my pie crust; not to mention the aforementioned pie fundraiser. It was obvious to me that we should have both cake and pies if only to personalize the wedding to our tastes and what people know about us. Most of my friends have had a pie or two or four that I’ve baked over the years so getting to showcase our love of pies on a dessert table as an alternative to cake (if God forbid you’re a cake hater), seemed like the perfect compliment to our heavenly carrot and vanilla bean cake.
Mixing up your dessert at the wedding is a major trend these days. Some people are living out the cupcake dream while others are focused on pies, s’mores, doughnuts, ice cream sandwiches, or a candy bar among other creative ideas. Stay true to who you are as a couple and what desserts you enjoys on your average Friday or Saturday night. If cake isn’t your thing, you’re honestly better off because you’ll save a ton of money and there are still plenty of desserts to carry out the traditional “cake” cutting if that’s what you’re worried about. Eric and I have major sweet tooths so for us, the more dessert the merrier. Did I find a way to incorporate whipped cream at my wedding? Absolutely. Because who said we can’t have our cake and eat some pie too?
Wedding Mondays
We are so SO excited to be sharing this very special wedding video today – we’re just sorry we had to wait so late to post it! Sepideh (Sep for short!) is my coworker and married her husband Kenny earlier this summer in Mountain View at the charming Rengstorff House. We share a lot of wedding videos on Yow Yow! – we’ve done so for years now, but it’s always 10x more exciting when I get to share one that features someone that I know.
Sep and I have been working together for a year now and it’s sometimes hard to imagine what my work life would be like without her. We’re so thrilled that she has decided to share her wedding video with us. I’m loving all of these shots from a drone (can you believe how good they look?!) her walking down the aisle towards Kenny and that unforgettable traditional knife dance. It has definitely never been included in any other wedding video we have featured in the past.
We cannot lie; seeing Sep tear up made us kind of tear up too – and when I say us – I mean the 7 other coworkers we had around us when we watched this video for the first time on my monitor at work. We <3 you Sep!
10 Things We Said We Were Gonna Do
- daily crunches – 60 of them…and then the rest of our routine workout
- Log into Credit Karma
- Check my mail (not email)
- Set up the new laptop
- Clean out the vacuum bag
- Take pieces to the dry cleaners
- Do laps in the pool (hah! – but for real tho)
- Pay attention when watching Mr. Robot
- Finish Stranger Things
- Get ahead on Sunday planning
This is what it’s like to adult, I guess.
Fish in Jellyfish
Can we just take a second to gawk at this?! This is a fish swimming inside of a jellyfish. There’s something that’s actually really strange about it, but the warm and fuzzy part of me is like “Awww!!” It wasn’t too long ago that we said we like to reserve some of our Sunday posts from something educational and while that is kind of true, I don’t want to limit it to that – I still want to just include things that I find really interesting and fascinating. However… as I’m writing this, I realize that I try and do this for everyday, but the reason why I’ve probably designated it to Sundays is because it is the day in which I have the most time to blog.
Anyways, this photograph was captured by photographer Tim Samuel while diving in Byron Bay.
Sideview, man.
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Aging and Alone in Manhattan’s Chinatown
I had been hoarding this video/article in my tabs for exactly a month now and only this week was I able to finally watch it. After watching it, I asked myself a few questions, why did I keep it here for so long? Shouldn’t I have just watched it and either a) posted about it or b) moved on from it? The other option that also seems pretty likely is c) that I was scared of it. All I knew about it was the title and a screenshot of an elderly Asian woman walking through Chinatown – actually that same one above.
Growing up, my family and I went to Chinatown nearly every weekend in Seattle. To be politically correct, we call it the “International District” because it’s not just targeted towards Chinese people – it’s all Asian cultures. I remember when walking around wondering where their families were – where were their sons and daughters and grandchildren the way that my grandparents had me? Where did they live and did they have family gatherings the way we did? Today, I only have one Grandma left. I was recently told by someone at a funeral that I needed to get married soon so that she could be present at my wedding. Talk about the pressure! Well, if my Grandmother didn’t live 15 minutes away from my childhood home, could this woman in the video easily be her? Yes, probably. And it’s not the life that I would hope for her, but this is the reality for so many elderly people in International Districts all over the country. I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone because the woman’s story profiled in the video is worth watching. What I love about this video is that it gives me a sliver of the answers that I was always looking for, but I’m curious to know more. I want to dig deeper into the stories of those living in Chinatown and hustling every day like this woman. Maybe someday, we’ll be able to do that…
Just a warning, the video doesn’t have a happy ending, but DoobyBrain informed their readers that actually the woman is alive and still in Chinatown so hopefully that puts you at ease.
The video profile was created by Mantai Chow and you can watch it here.
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Seth Rogan Helps A Vanity Fair Producer Use Tinder
I don’t normally feel this way about Mondays, but today I really needed a laugh. I couldn’t wait to get home this evening, kick up my feet, and for a few hours just try not to think about work. I remembered seeing this video over the weekend and I honestly wasn’t going to watch it because I imagined that it wouldn’t be that funny. However, given the day I had, I was willing to give it a second chance and I’m glad I did because it actually is pretty funny. Seth doesn’t use Tinder I don’t think, but he has a lot of the same thoughts that my friends and I have about dating apps and sometimes it’s funny when you can relate to someone that you didn’t think you would. Or… you’re just Seth Rogan and you’re funny anyways and you have the worst laugh.
