The Grateful Life

Guest post by Snydes (Sara)

Hello, world! I'm backkkkkk! Thanks to Pats-a-licious for letting me hijack the blog again.  

I'm so grateful-ish for all of the love, responses, and kind notes that you have given to me via the greatly gratefully and gracious blog on which Patsy inspires us all.  I won't make this long and overdrawn, I'll keep it simple and to the point.

Summer is filled with many a thing: BBQ's, flowery dresses (see picture to your right), and most importantly, family vacations.  As Tom and Katie Holmes' marriage comes to an end, it's important to reflect on the meaning of family...we all know that Suri Cruise, despite the dysfunction her parents must inflict on her, will likely turn out semi-normal, much like myself.  

But anyway, back to family vacations.

I just returned home from an amazing 12 day trip to Israel with 13 members of my family.  In addition to the Snyder gang, we also were traveling with 275 of our nearest and dearest fellow Pittsburghers on an organized trip that toured us day and night all throughout Israel.  Essentially, imagine your favorite National Lampoons' movie family, the Griswolds, and multiply the insanity by 1000, and BAM, there you've got it - that's my family vacation in a nutshell.

Being that I'm still completely jet-lagged and haven't had the proper amount of time/sleep to comprehend all of the amazing things that I felt & saw & heard on this trip, I'll take you all on a photo safari (or whatever the equivalent Israeli version of such a thing is) of our family vacation. Hopefully, if this blog does nothing else, it helps make you all salivate in jealousy that I ate hummus for 3 meals each day for 12 days and you didn't. The End.

A guest post by Snydes

"Ay yo, Patsy!" is how I typically shout to my girl Tricia, the most gratefully grateful great & gracious person I know.   So "ay yo, grateful readers!" Namaste. Ohm Shanti Shanti. Peace. L'chaim!  

Before you're let down and choose to continue reading this because you think that I'm going to come up with some witty one liners, let's be frank: I'm no Carrie Bradshaw.  I am in no way going to talk about my love affair with Mr. Big, New York City, and my best girlfriends.  I'll do that when Tricia goes to an Ashram in India.  For now, whilst she's in Costa Rica, I'll do my best to indulge you (even further than Patsy does) as to why you should leave wherever you are right now and move west, to a land called San Francisco.

Today was a big day in SF -- it was the annual Bay To Breakers run which is one of the most talked about days of the year here in the foggy city.  B2B's (not Backstreet Boys, that's Bay 2 Breakers fo' short) official website states that it's "a San Francisco tradition for nearly 100 years; a 12k footrace held every third Sunday in May with serious runners and costumed participants alike."  In my world & the kewl circles I run in [hahahahaha], B2B involves little running & a lot of drinking, usually kicking off before the hours of 8:30a on a Sunday. 

Bay to Breakers is historically known to attract more "costumed participants alike" than serious runners.  Minus me of course, a recently-accomplished-5+ hour-marathon-finisher, who completed about 2 miles of the race 'dressed up' as Cher from the 80's.

It was my first time participating in B2B even though I've lived in the city for about 2 years.  Last year I haphazardly (read: purposefully) slept through the event because I thought it would rain on the parade. This year, the weather called for 100% chance of sunshine, light winds, and a whole lotta tushies + semi-nudity.  I said, "put me in coach" to that.

A group of friends and I organized around 8a in downtown SF for some brekkie and bubbles before heading out to the mean streets of San Francisco.  We opted for a PG-13 group costume of 80's rockstars, it was all the glitz and glam I had dreamt it being these years.  

Ladies and gents, B2B did not let this sister down.  No, if anything, it let me up and took me completely by surprise at the sheer OMG-ness of the day.  Not only were there tons of naked/nearly-naked/barely naked/sort of naked/naked-costume-wearing-naked people, but today was (and is every year) the day that SF'ers declared, "I will let my freak flag fly!!!"  

The weather was gorgeous, the sun was out in full-force and I have seldom been as proud & grateful to live in this amazing city as I was today.  I wish Patsy had been there to experience the insanity with me in-person.  As an homage to her, and the cult-following-that-is-this-blog, I have shared with you some of my gal pal Kate's best shots of the day from B2B. 

Yours, in gratitude with an attitude,
-s.