Apartments on the peninsula really run the gamut.

I have been apartment-hunting this week and have seen everything from super tidy crate-and-barrel square-box apartments in Foster City to cramped but warm/friendly communal spaces in Bernal Heights.  

One house I saw near downtown San Mateo really took the cake when it comes to oddball yet strangely fascinating.  It was a 5-room house with a huge backyard that included a number of fruit trees (avocado, fig, apricot, fuji apple, lemon, orange) and other fruit-bearing plants (10 different kinds of tomatoes, a blackberry bush), a full garden with corn, squash and the like, and a fire pit around which they "conduct Buddhist ceremonies." They plucked a ripe fig off their tree for me to take home.

The house is populated by "hippies who shower," though I had to raise my eyebrow a bit at that claim.  Here's an excerpt from the intro e-mail one of the girls wrote to me (yes, she included the scrolly header up top)...
_________________________

 
Hi Stephanie,

We met briefly last evening when you came over to see the house, and I regret not being able to talk to you a bit, and get to know you.  

A little about us:  M****** and I are both healers and we work day jobs, M****** builds magical healing tools, and I do intuitive readings.  M****** works at a coffee shop, and I work at a local furniture store.  We are both masseuses and energy healers as well, and we are pretty free about offering help to people in our lives if they need it.  I love nature, painting, dancing, and singing, and M****** plays guitar.  M****** teaches [Renaissance] swordfighting in the backyard, and I teach channeling classes out of the house sometimes.  Generally, authentic, deeply compassionate, honest people are a match for us.  Creative, nature loving, spiritually interested people are especially welcome.

Warnings: Sometimes the house gets messy, and stays that way for a week until someone has the energy to clean it.  A couple of our housemates smoke, but they do it outside.  And, there is cat litter.  'nuf said.

A****

I'm sure Posterous users are all in the 8% of people who know what a browser is...

I know that ignorance is actually great for online business (especially in my specialty, internet marketing...because it means more people will click on ads thinking they are search results).  

But for some reason this video depresses me to no end.  Maybe because at the end of the day, an ignorant public is actually terrible for everyone.  For me it really hits home just how uninformed the general public is and how much harder it is to get people to respond to your products in the way you intended.

Buffy + Taylor Swift's "Love Story" mashup

Let me let you in on a little secret.  Directly following that week and a half I was completely consumed with Twilight, I decided I had not had quite enough of teen vampire melodrama, and I went straight to the library to check out seasons five and six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I hadn't really watched it at the time that it aired, so I totally missed out on all the cheeky monster-bashing.  

And why seasons five and six?  Because, of course, I prefer Spuffy over Bangel any day--I realize somewhere in season four, after Angel left, it became a totally different show.  Really, I just love Spike.  I'm a lover of anti-heroes, remember?  I can't get enough of his sly wit.  And the chemistry was scorching hot.

At any rate, I watched some fan-made videos on YouTube (there are SO MANY!) around the Buffy saga.  One of the best ones, alas, is a tribute to Bangel, but the girl who put it together (a Spike fan) proves herself to be an enormously talented editor.  She strung together a whole story based on the song, not based on the show.  Too bad it didn't turn out with such a happy ending for Bangel.

Strawberry surplus + hot summer days = homemade popsicles!

I bought a flat of strawberries from Costco - four pounds for $4.50.  Amazing right?  And they were deliciously sweet too.  But then a week later I realized I had been too ambitious, because they were starting to look kind of frail and I still had about half the box left, even after gorging on berry parfaits for breakfast all week.

So I stuck them all in my food processor (I'm sure a blender works too) with a bit of sugar...reserved a few chopped strawberries to mix in whole...and dropped the mixture into popsicle molds that I bought from Kamei for $1.29.  Yes people, a delicious and healthy snack.

Another shameless plug for my other blog, Wearability.us

I finally created a separate group profile for the fashion blog because it is, after all, a group effort (there you can find all my old archived fashion/style posts, because I keep it much better tagged and organized than my main posterous blog).  Now we have seven active contributors, including a guy who covers men's style.

Can't wait until Garry designs a theme just for this one!  Check it out at http://wearability.posterous.com.