Retail Therapy Solves Everything

Note to self: NEVER attempt to drive in San Francisco again.

I set up a meeting with one of the owners of Green11 in Noe Valley. Bettina and I have talked a few times and she is one of the people in Noe Valley that I feel comfortable talking to. I thought that her store Green11 would be a great subject for my profile piece.

Saturday afternoon I got into my 2002 purple Honda Civic with my roommate Megan, we were ready for an adventure and that's exactly what we got. She typed in the address and we made our way to the 280 North towards Civic Center/Bay Bridge. We then exited Cesar Chavez St./Potero Ave. We realized by all the murals that we were in the Mission. Finally! I have never been to the Mission before and even though I didn't get out, I loved passing through the district. The colors and the happy people dancing to Mexican music made me smile. THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN I get cut off by a huge MUNI bus. A-W-E-S-O-M-E only not, this preceded to happen for the next few streets, getting cut off by cars, people not turning on their blinkers and not stopping at stop signs.

Megan and I were screaming and cursing every few minutes. Then we realized we were going the wrong way, the little red pin on my iPhone map showed Green 11 was in the opposite direction of where we were headed...cool! We then turned around on another street and went back towards the Mission, and then she said we're going the wrong way again. We stop at a stop sign, no one was behind us and we look at the phone. It seems someone put in the wrong address; we were headed to 3098 24th Street instead of 3980 24th Street. Ugh okay so we just headed toward the part of the map that showed where Noe Valley was, easy enough right?

We were driving and all of a sudden we see this huge hill that my little purple car was expected to go up. I screamed, "Meg, I can’t do this. I have this fear that my car will roll down the hill like in The Princess Diaries!” She told me to floor it and I screamed all the way until we got to the top. Then to my surprise another HUGE hill! Seriously what the hell. I floored it again and we made it.

I finally see MUNI tracks and recognized the place where we were, thank goodness. We pulled in front of Bernie's coffee shop and realize we have a 30 minute maximum for the spot. This is ridiculous, it was 4:45 and my interview was at 5. We decided to wait in the car for 15 minutes and when we get out fill the meter so we can start at 30 minutes.

We waited and put more money in at 5. It turned to 5 and I check in at Green 11 on my Facebook and walk in. A man with an accent was helping some customers so I waited quietly at the entrance of the tiny shop. He asks if I need help and I tell him I am waiting for Bettina, he then informs me she isn't there. UGH!!! He gives me her number and I call her. She said she didn't come into work that day and said she didn't have access to a computer so she couldn't email me.

This was the icing on my amazing day cake. Megan and I headed back home and stopped at Forever 21 for a little retail therapy.

What have I learned: never drive into the city and when you're sad just go to Forever 21 and buy a $15 high wasted blue skirt.

I Stumbled Upon Stumbleupon.com

How it happened: my roommate Megan was telling me about all these cool things she found on a website called Stumbleupon.com. She had been making these different types of dinners and snacks for the past few days. There was the...interesting cream cheese chicken (well I found it interesting, she liked it) and there was the chocolate cake made out of a hot chocolate package.

It was weird all these things she was finding. As some may know, I am intrigued by anything weird. I watched her look things up on Stumbleupon.com and found some intersting pictures, exercised, recipes and quotes. I WAS HOOKED!

I downloaded the free Stumbleupon app on my iPhone and created an account. The first thing I did was pick the topics I wanted to stumble upon. My list: celebrities, clothing, environment, fashion, fitness, food/cooking, health, humor, movies, music, nature, photography, quotes and relationships. What can I say, I like a wide range of things.


< This is a screen shot from my iPhone of a hourglass, the lower level has writing in it that says "act now before its too late".

As I "Stumbled" I could either like or dislike with the thumbs up and thumbs down symbols at the top of my app. After I'm done with each page I Stumbleupon I click the green and blue sphere on the upper right hand corner of the screen with Stumbleupon's signature SU symbol.

I found myself "stumbling" for hours and hours, I even posted the ones I found most interesting on my Facebook wall.

I have found my newest obsession...I hope I can focus on other stuff from time to time or I'll be stumbling into being anti-social. Everyone should checkout Stumbleupon.com and see what kinds of intriguing things fall into your lap.


< This one is my favorite so far! It says "LOVE take as much as you need"

Learning How to Make Maps

During my second semester at San Francisco State University I have taken my next class in order for me to complete my core for my journalism classes. I am enrolled in Digital News Gathering, JOUR 226.

In this class I am learning about social media sites and how to use them to my advantage. We have posted articles on Facebook and Twitter. Its been amazing learning how to use these sites and recieving feedback from other journalists.

We learned how to create maps for stories using Google Maps. This help the reader see a visual of what's going on in the story; I was actually surprised that not all stories have these maps because they help so much.


View Dig. News Gath. Snow Map in a larger map

Understanding Government Jargon

The assignment to write a story about on a meeting sounded simple enough. Although I found it hard to find a meeting in my neighborhood. Bummer. Then I found a meeting that I could do for the assignment.

The Board of Supervisor's Budget and Finance meeting was last Wednesday and I would be covering it with a few of my class mates. Doesn't this meeting sound like fun? Yeah right, maybe if you lived for political jargon and feeling completely lost when the item numbers come up. Yep that was my situation but as a journalist there are things that you will have to report on and you'll have to do your best to get the interviews and understand what reserve funds and add-backs are.

Overall the meeting was only an hour, thank goodness. Luckily I had a partner in crime when it came to writing this story; his name is Nick Moone. Nick knew ever item number, all the jargon and what add-ons meant. This blew my mind. He tried to walk me through everything and although still confused we managed to do everything we could to get this story out.

With a few corrections from Professor Daley we realized the legal jargon was confusing the reader. We set up a game plan in class and will begin to rewrite the paper on Thursday. Yay for rewrites and Nick's background in student government. Lets see how round two will go when we write this paper.