I left my heart in Pittsburgh.....

....but went to San Francisco. How have I not blogged about this yet?? *tsk, tsk* Pardon my slacking.



I went to San Francisco for a work conference & had a wonderful time! It was great exploring a new city and even better that I had some fun co-workers to keep me company :) Ok, first things first....the city surprised me in a few ways.

• There were a lot of homeless people....to be expected in a bigger city, but I'm talking in-your-face and tripping-over-on-sidewalks. Call me a crazy bleeding heart, but I was sad to see the state of a lot of people there, especially the teenagers roaming the streets.

• Apparently, you can take dogs on the buses there. I learned this when a Pit Bull was sitting next to me on the bus ride back from the Golden Gate Park. Later in the week, I saw a little Maltese perched in a woman's lap (side note-can you picture Gracie riding shotgun with me during my morning commute??)
• It was COLD. Cold as in, I had on a tshirt, a sweater and a coat and was still chilly walking around and could have used another layer.
• Those trolley streetcar things are fun, but they go very slooooowly. :) The novelty of them had worn off by our 3rd day there....but of course, it was fun to hang onto the outside of it the first few times!
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Weeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Overall, we hit most of the "tourist-y" spots that we wanted to see...the Golden Gate Park, the Haight-Ashbury district and Fisherman's Wharf (including the sea lions at Pier 39!).



The highlight of the trip for me was probably heading outside of the city a bit to the Mission District for dinner at Emmy's Spaghetti Shack. Yep, you read that name right....you have no idea how excited I was. As I said, it was a bit out of the city and fortunately, my coworkers were good sports about making the trek with me...and it was worth it! The food was awesome AND I got to meet THE Emmy...it was like a celebrity sighting for me!! Who knew the owner would be there on a Saturday night, bussing our table?? I bought my very own Emmy's Spaghetti Shack wife beater as a souvenir and she was nice enough to get a picture with me:



We had a great time and I'm happy to report that I did very well being away from home for those few days and the boys had a great time during their Man Weekend. By the end of the week, Jake had learned how to say "Mama in Sam Fram-a-e-co". And even now, if I'm not around, he tells Brian that that's where I am, haha :)