This was just a moment in the woods…

Our moment.

Shimmering and lovely and sad.

Leave the moment, just be glad

For the moment that we had.

Every moment is of moment

When you’re in the woods.

- from “Any Moment,” Into the Woods

This afternoon I’m headed to Hidden Villa in Los Altos Hill for a night away with 30 people I used to work with in various capacities at Hidden Villa summer camp, 10+ years ago. 

In many ways Hidden Villa was an incredibly unique place to spend the summer. It’s an organic CSA farm, a working farm, a nature preserve, a youth hostel, an advocate for social justice, and education center.

In other ways, Hidden Villa was exactly like I’ve heard every other camp is… full of first loves, broken hearts, experiments, elicit meetings of counselors after the kids have gone to bed, rapid fire trips into town (Wet Hot American Summer style) and long-lasting friendships.

I worked there for three summers after attending the camp for five. The summers I spent there were transformative. They were the first place I ever felt at all cool, at all valued for being anything other than smart, the first place someone ever told me they had a crush on me (shout-out to Javi, wherever you are), first kiss (not with Javi, sadly), first time I ever tried smoking, and first place I ever really believed in myself.

After I graduated from high school, I went to college and never looked back. Hidden Villa was for then, and now I was in college — someone who had internships and planned ahead, not someone who looked back to what they’d done in high school. Friendships I’d made became more distant, emails and phone calls become less frequent until Hidden Villa was less a part of me and more something I “did” in the past.

I’m excited to head back there this afternoon and remember why this place was so important to me. The people, the smells, the songs straight out of the 1960s… even if that memory fades as I drive back to San Francisco on Sunday morning. 

Dan reached out to a well-known caterer in San Francisco to inquire about catering our wedding. The initial email was around Thanksgiving, and they let us know they were busy and it would take a little time to put together a proposal. Their guess was that it would be three weeks.

Six weeks came and went without a word. 

Last night we emailed them to ask them if there was an update. Today, two months later, we got our initial proposal back. The proposal is $7K more than the one we’re considering. 

I understand that weddings are expensive, that food is expensive, that eating local and sustainable is expensive, and that the place we’re looking at is something of a San Francisco name brand.

But if you’re going to charge luxury prices… you should probably back that up with luxury service. That means being prompt with email. That means following up with me, so I don’t need to follow up with you. And it means making me feel like I’m valued as a client, not just some random person you need to deal with when it’s convenient for you. 

In general we’ve been lucky to deal with great vendors who are not only prompt with email, but awesome independent small businesses or non-profits. And if choosing someone else means supporting someone else, a small business, who maybe doesn’t have locally grown endive on the menu, that’s ok with me. 

Inspired by Mormon style bloggers, I DIYed some new years glitter candles (Taken with instagram)

1. Kummerspeck (German): Excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, grief bacon.

(via Mental Floss)

Great advice here. People frequently ask me about breaking into the start-up scene with non-technical skills. The two pieces of advice I always offer are:

1. Get to know someone 

2. Start at the bottom 

For my friends, start at the bottom usually means support/office manager/community work, but it can mean entry level sales or being the admin for a higher up as well. 

Hubris is the enemy here. 

I met a friend at The Melt today for lunch. Started by the guy who invented the Flip camera, The Melt is a high-concept grilled cheese fast food restaurant. Here’s how it works.

1. You go online and pick out what you’d like to eat. 

2. You customize your order (bacon and tomato are free!) and pay for it online.

3. Your emailed receipt has a QR code on it, which you scan once you arrive at the restaurant.

4. At this point, they make your food, and it’s ready in about 5 minutes.

5. If you are smug like me, you then look at folks waiting in line and wonder why they didn’t pre-order online.

The process worked really well, despite it seeming somewhat strange to order food online but then have to scan a QR code to get them to actually start making it. I got a cheddar on whole wheat grilled cheese (with tomato!), with a cup of black bean soup. The soup was thin and watering, and the grilled cheese was fine — it reminded me of college and cooking on my Forman Grill. 

The whole experience felt curious to me. The process, the price ($10 for the soup and sandwich) and the feeling that I was part of something that was entirely manufactured to be one-day spread across the country… it felt odd. 

If you didn’t Facebook or tweet from Occupy SF, would anyone know you were really there?

One step closer to being totally done with wedding planning.

I would like this for my own, please.

(via Eastward Dress Coat - Anthropologie.com)