Fait Accompli

This is what I accomplished today:



It feels fulfilling, until I pull back my view a little

and realize I've only just begun the horror.

I promise I didn't mean to neglect the blog this month. It's shocking just how popular one becomes just by planning to leave. I steal nights to myself here and there, but for the most part I've become a ... well, not a party animal. I guess a social butterfly.

Also, who really wants to hear about a happy Sarah?  Oh, you do? Huh.

Sorry.

Angela was in town for a week near the start of the month, just after the previous entry. We hardly saw each other during the working portion of the week — she was doing the graveyard shift, and I was having my usual evening thingies after work. However, she did school me in the fact that there are some amazing mural alleys down in the Mission that I had no idea existed. I feel chagrin at having walked by them a million times and never thinking to go take a look. I didn't even have a real camera, just my cell phone, but I still tried to take a few shots to remember with.








On the one full day we had together, she wanted to go take photos of the Golden Gate Bridge, eat at Avatar's, and see an exhibit at SFMoMA. Since the whole week up to that point had been wonderful, I figured it shouldn't be too hard to pull off, and I knew exactly where to take her for that Golden Gate Bridge shot: the Marin Headlands.

So of course, that was the day San Francisco decided to bring its summer.



That was pretty much the best shot we could get.  Hooray.

Still, Avatar's was good, and the Cindy Sherman exhibit at MoMA was completely worth the foggy, cold day. I don't know many photographers, and actually never thought I'd be into photography exhibits at all (that was always the section I skipped at the Met when I went), but every time I am dragged to MoMA, it's for a photography exhibit, and every time I am impressed beyond (1,000) words.  Perhaps it's time to rethink that prejudice.

The rest of my month was filled with ceramics, Krav, family, friends. One Sunday I spent an early afternoon at Lovejoy's Tea Room with Lila and a couple of her friends.



Lots of fun, and the food was great. (So was the tea: I ended up buying a tin at the Attic across the street.) I wish I had time to go back again and try the non-tea food — they had a pretty good-looking menu of British pub fare that smelled amazing whenever it passed by our table.


There's also been bowling with coworkers, drinking and Pictionary at Maria's house in Oakland, a wine and cheese gathering at Dorian's, Korean BBQ with Stephan ... and things that came up that I never wrote into my Google Calendar. It's to the point I'm almost regretting that I'm going to leave. (Though again: I probably wouldn't be doing most of this if I weren't leaving. That's the catch.)

But the move is set into motion for reals now. Notice has been given to my building manager. Boxes and packing supplies have been purchased (including a plan for safely packing most of my monsters). The House Cooling Party has been planned and scheduled and invites have been sent.

And soon, between the phone calls to friends along the route (to make sure I have a couch to crash on), and the money shuffling, and the frantic boxing of my goods, I'll have to face the piece of my soul that is dying, and decide what to do about it. Whether it's a good thing to let it die, or try to revive it, or just let it linger and see what it does.

All right. I'm going to try to pack one more box. Just to feel like I've truly done something productive with this day.

Bzy

Last night, I was at one of my local bars, having a post-game (hockey) (Sharks won, btw) (and yeah, I was shocked, too) drink with some friends from work, when the guy next to me started talking to me, asking me to help him get a glass of water from the too-busy-to-be-attentive bartends. I thought he was flirting with me, and my friends thought he was flirting with me, and he was kind of cute, and I didn't mind so much the interruption. So I figure whatever and we converse for a bit, and then suddenly he throws out the curve ball: his friend actually is the one who thinks I'm cute, and wants flirting guy to introduce me to him.

Guys, this is how to be a bad wingman. Instead of smoothly saying something that gets your friend interested in the conversation, then introducing, and then slowly slipping back as the two winged people engage in chat, you've suddenly turned it all into a scene straight out of high school. "Do U Like My Friend? Circle 1: Y or N"

By the way, does this tactic ever work? Me, I like my guys a little cocky and aggressive, which means if they're not going to chat me up themselves, then I'm likely not going to be interested. I mean, I know what it's like to be shy, and afraid of rejection, but that's what alcohol was invented for in the first place, right?

(Also, whenever my friends did this for me in high school, it never got me anything other than more ridicule and shame and feelings of being a failure at life. Maybe my friends were clumsy wingwomen, too. Maybe we all just needed a straight drink.)

Perhaps I'm just picky.

I got the latest Legend of Zelda game for my birthday, which means I've spent most nights of the last week fighting giant spiders and red monsters, and collecting fairies and bugs. I'd say it was time well spent, though my flabbifying muscles might claim otherwise. (So yeah, I may have skipped Krav in order to play a video game ...)

Speaking of: why am I here talking with all of you, when I have a princess to find and a Hyrule to save?

I'm Not Dead ... Yet

It's been a couple of weeks, but I haven't been idle, I promise you.

First, a gratuitous picture of my nephew at the Oakland Zoo, a month ago:


Now allow me to yarnily digress.

I was keeping my fingers busy knitting a sweater to have it done in time for Stitches West ... except it wasn't. All the pieces were there, but then I had to seam them together. And it was 10 pieces that needed seaming. Ten. Those of you who don't knit won't quite understand this, but it's a lot of putting-together. Like, normally you put together Erector sets, but this time someone gave you the pieces to put together a Ford Focus. (That might be an exaggeration there. Maybe.) So I was seaming like crazy the night before and morning of, only to have something that looked like crap. I gave up on it, took out all the seams, and started over when the weekend was done. I've got most of the bits done now, and it looks infinitely better than it did before:



Trust me here. This is nicer than it looked on Saturday.

The weekend was not a complete bust. I had a sweater from last year to wear and collect compliments upon (there were few to be had), and bought enough yarn to make three more sweaters. (This brings my total number of sweaters-in-skeins to 14, for those who care. Holy crap, I can knit 14 sweaters, and still have yarn for a ton of other projects. Fuck, maybe I should actually get knitting instead of writing here.)

Between the knitting, and work, and seeing the Favorite Nephew, I've actually been keeping social. And when I'm not being social, I've been keeping ... happy. At least, I think it's happy. It's not sad, that's for sure. I'm almost afraid of it, not sure what to make of it. The beginning of the year was just so frighteningly low and lonely, I keep thinking I'm either going to wake up to find out this is all a dream, or wake up and find out that I've just made myself completely numb so I won't feel it anymore.

Hoping it's neither of those things.

There have been other things. Like the Saturday that Michelle, Tamica and I did a morning at the Ferry Building to help me bump a few things off my Big Eat list, and then dinner at Little Star to bump off another. And the Thursday evening dates, and the occasional bouts of Krav, and and and.

In a couple weeks I'm going to Disneyland for my birthday, the hotel is booked, Emily is joining me, I hope to rope Billy in, too, and I plan to take Mindy (my new car) on her first big road trip to get me there. Another big quick road trip is planned for April, when I'm heading up to Seattle to work and stay with the peeps and stop in Portland on the way up to see Steph.

I am keeping busy, and keeping happy, but who wants to hear about all of that? Blogs are for angst and introversion and pictures and social commentary, aren't they? I'll try to get more of some of that in soon. I don't promise.

The Niners Flubbed It, and I Cocked Up My Beaver

I just spent about five hours standing in a bar, and now my feet and legs hurt like hell. I wouldn't mind it so much if there was a victory at the end of it all, but as luck would have it the San Francisco 49ers proved they still can't win an NFC Championship, so the pain is all for naught.

At least I can go back to not giving a shit about football again. I only gave a shit in the first place because my coworker James wanted to see the game with someone and asked me to join him. Otherwise I would have been "cleaning my apartment" (hahahah, that joke never gets old) and running errands like grocery shopping and maybe even a Goodwill run.

Day was not a complete loss: we did chilaquiles for brunch at SanJalisco (go there: hardly any wait on food and the place was packed with Mexicans, which says something about the quality and authenticity of the food), and really the first three quarters of the game were pretty good. Until the fuck ups started adding up and we had to face the fact that the Giants would be going to the Superbowl instead of us.

Assholes.

Last night, however, I did something at a bar on the other end of the spectrum: attended the annual Burns Night at the Edinburgh Castle.



My ex actually suggested the event — we were both lame and had no plans for a Saturday evening — and it turned out to be a bit more surreal and entertaining than we had been hoping for.



The featured celebrity was the guy who played bagpipes in So I Married an Axe Murderer (which I haven't seen, admittedly). Various special guests got up to read some of Burn's poetry to us, tell us fart jokes, and recite somewhat inaccurate history at us. (The problem with being a nerd, especially a British history nerd, is that I actually got bothered when someone was going on about how the Church of England was founded by Edward VIII, and how Mary Queen of Scots was under arrest and eventually executed by Elizabeth I because she refused to convert from Catholicism. Sorry, not quite true.) I even tried haggis, and while I won't say it won me over as my new favorite dish, it wasn't nearly as offal-awful as I had been led to believe. One more tick to my Belt of Adventurousness.

Tomorrow in San Francisco: getting my first facial. As an overly-generous Christmas present I got a gift card for a local day spa, and my company gave me a free day off for Chinese New Year (hooray for dragons!), so I'm using the combination of the two windfalls to see what this whole pampering thing is all about.

Dripping Down Your Face Again

Ah, laundry! Finally, I get to do you after two weeks of waiting for the machines to be free, waiting for the right number of quarters, waiting for an evening where I wasn't occupied. If I admit that I love having freshly-cleaned clothes, does that make me old and boring?

Probably.

I think, I hope, I've finally broken the streak of bad that attacked me the first two weeks of the year. The gums are mostly healed, the heartwound closing up into just another scar, the pride picked up and put back together in a semblance of a whole. The string of bad has died down, the tears have dried and I don't feel like I'm drowning in them anymore. All that's left is a lingering cough (which has moved up from the lungs into my sinuses, so now I'm coughing and have ear pressure problems, hooray), a hole in my mouth that catches stray lentils, and a messy apartment to cleanse of the stench of sorrow and dead 2011.

Last Saturday I hung out with old friends, some of whom I've known since 2000 (when we met in person - 1999 if you count when we met online). It was a mellow night of light drinking and little debauchery, and I pointed out that if the ghosts of our turn-of-the-millenium selves could see us now they might be a bit disappointed. Ten, 12 years ago there would have been a line of open liquor bottles in the room, and more laughing and nakedness and goofiness.

Despite the tameness, though, it was a good and cathartic evening. The next day I did brunch at Foreign Cinema for the birthday of Michelle, a friend from high school, hung over and tired but more at peace than I'd been since the year started. (That's not necessarily saying much, sure ...)



I miss my out-of-town friends. I especially miss having a best friend.

It started raining tonight, supposedly the beginning of a week of rain. This is SF: I'll only believe that when I see it. I miss a good, drenching rain.



On Monday I went and saw a short piece that my friend Jeremy had written for San Francisco Theater Pub. (By the way, this is a great, practically-free way to get some more theater in your life without all the muss and fuss of a formal theater house. Plus, you can drink beer. Or wine. Your choice.) It's the second time I've been to an SFTP event, and both times I've really enjoyed myself. Not a bad thing to do on a Monday night. I might even hit up the Valentine's Day event, to help me forget that I won't be getting laid that night.

Busy Week, Lazy Sunday

The apartment currently smells like stuffed peppers, the scent lingering in the air even though the peppers themselves are carefully wrapped up and placed in the fridge in preparation for the work week of lunches. I made a fresh batch of ketchup, have a bunch of radishes sliced up and pickling, most of my dishes are cleaned, and I'm about two-fifths done with the Christmas present I'm knitting my nephew.

It certainly sounds like I've been productive today, doesn't it? Now I will confess to you that I actually spent over half the day in bed, unable to wrest myself from the clutches of Nap. Seriously, aside from the shower at 11, I didn't actually start doing anything with my day until 3:30 p.m. (Thankfully, Daylight Savings ended last night, else it would have been 4:30.)

I will blame the last week or so for wearing me out. I did a little, a lot, traveled, stayed home, forced myself to go out, forbade myself to stay in.

A week ago yesterday (so, two Saturdays past), I went on a day trip with my Bus Buddy Karin to Carmel-by-the-Sea, ostensibly to show off the yet-unnamed New Car to Karin, but really just to get out of San Francisco while the weather was still fantastic. I think this is the day it started snowing on the East Coast. In Carmel, it was a "sweltering" 78 degrees, and somehow we survived walking around town in it, doing a little window shopping and basically just sampling the local flavor. It was a very Grown Up type of trip, my own foray into Life After 29. (Or is it Life After 39, now? Are we still allowed to party it hardy into our late 30s? Can we refrain from growing up another decade, now?)

I also did two nights of museum drinking. I checked out Night Life at the California Academy of Sciences, on Thursday night. It was actually pretty awesome, drinking and looking at the fish and reptiles. I kind of wish I'd seen more, but I was there with friend Claire and some of her French Posse, so it would have been rude to wander too far off on my own. Perhaps next time I'll go by myself or just with one friend.

Friday night, Karin seemingly-spontaneously suggested that we hit up Friday Nights at the De Young when I mentioned that I was going to be lame and had absolutely no plans for that evening. I didn't realize that there was a Meet-Up group planned for that event that she had signed up for, so I was initially surprised when during an intermission of the music she suddenly was able to find someone she recognized and walked up to him. It actually ended up being kind of fun — I'd forgotten what it's like joining a bunch of people who all know each other only from the internet — and I got to feel a little like I was cool and mingle-y for a couple of hours. The experience actually got me to sign up for Meetup, though I haven't joined any groups yet. Who knows, maybe I'll add that to my list of ways-to-not-be-lonely.

After the De Young, Karin took me to a little hole-in-the-wall Burmese place in the Mission, which I will not name here in the hopes that it stays relatively unknown, because it was frickin' awesome and worth the 30 minutes we stood on the sidewalk in line waiting for one of the 10 stools on the inside. It's tiny, the food was greasy, it was cheap and it was delicious. I'm still surprised at how many great restaurants there are in the city, at so many different price levels, that I have never heard of.

Yesterday, Claire and I braved the rain to go to The Pelican Inn's Guy Fawkes Day celebration. I would like to point out that it was very English weather (cold, rainy, overcast, windy), which I guess felt natural, but made one very sad when one remembered that just four days previous it was sunny and 74 degrees. I had considered not going, but I wanted to hang out with Claire at least once more — she's going back to France on Tuesday, for an undetermined length of time — and I was the one who had offered to drive. Very glad I went. Rain makes a good pub seem even better, the beer was not bad, and there was a real sense of community amongst the three dozen-or-so nutters that actually braved it out to the beach and the raging bonfire. (How they got that fire actually started is beyond me, but I'm sure wind and rain are things the British have long since gotten used to dealing with in cases like this.)


I'm wearing a knit toque, a knit scarf, and a knit neck warmer. All really just to keep the driving rain off.

When we went back to the pub for beer and food, we found the electricity out and only cold food and beer available for ordering. That coupled with the complete and utter lack of cell phone coverage, we were forced to actually speak to each other, and joked that we'd been transported back to James I's era and the first Guy Fawkes Day. Around this time, more of the French Posse actually started arriving, so we drank down a beer by candlelight while they also braved the rain, and then discussed heading back into the city for some real sustenance. The final consensus landed on Sheba Piano Lounge, in the Fillmore District. I'd been there once before (Josh lives right around the corner), and it was still as good this time around as I remembered. The French Posse had made reservations for the seats by the fire, so we dried off while sipping good drinks and eating with our hands. It's a great place, and their live music is loudish but not unbearable — some decent jazz to set the mood and steal your mind.

This coming week promises to be almost as exciting. I plan on striking two things off The Bucket List, and then on Saturday I'll be doing karaoke with a group from work. I'm going to say I deserve my Sunday of Sleep.

Right now I should be reading through my voter information packet, since Tuesday is Election Day and sometimes I like to be a good citizen. Not that I'm encouraged to be so when I'm barraged every morning for the month of October by volunteers handing out flyers or candidates wanting to shake my hand in front of the Castro MUNI station. Why do they do this stuff in the morning, when all we want to do is just get to work with a minimum of hassle and an extra cup of coffee? A smart campaign would put its people out there during evening rush hour, when we're stuck at that bus stop waiting for the final ride home. Captive audience, people. I guess they just don't learn.

Baked Bleu

Rugby, I have found, is a very esoteric sport. Not so esoteric as, say, Australian Rules Football, which I watched for an entire hour once and still had no idea what anyone was doing.

The Rugby World Cup was this Saturday night/Sunday morning, and it was New Zealand v. France, and of course since I have one amie française and (through her) a ton of French acquaintances, I had to join them in the completely packed Kezar Pub to watch the game until three in the morning. The bar was full to capacity by about midnight, and the game didn't start until 1 a.m., so there was a lot of jostling and me making conversation by trying to find out the rules of the game. (Though I wish I'd had someone explain the scrum to me, which mostly seemed like the ultimate in grunting male display and sporty battle. Now I know: it's just like a hockey face-off. Because I can't watch any sport anymore without comparing it to hockey.)

Spoiler alert: the French lost. But only by one point, which even I can tell was pretty good considering everyone was expecting the frogs — sorry, Les Bleus — to have their asses handed to them. Though I could also tell that New Zealand — the "All Blacks". See? I'm getting okay at this understanding of other cultures/sports — was a better team, seeing as they had control of the ball most of the time.

At any rate, the lesson here is that best way to watch a sport you're unfamiliar with is to watch the World Cup version of it, if possible, in a bar packed with absolute fans of it. It was hard not to get caught up in the excitement, even for something I had absolutely no investment in. Heck, you could even have caught me chanting "Allez les Bleus!" with the best of them.

So that's the sports portion of my weekend. There was also a lot of culture, honest.

Friday evening after work I headed to the EXIT Theatre to see a play written by my friend Jeremy. I didn't tell him at the time, but I have to admit to you, Imaginary Internet Friends, that I almost cried at the end of his piece. It was witty and fun and poignant and sad. I'm reminded yet again that I have a profoundly talented friend, which both humbles me and makes me proud at the same time.

On Saturday, Jenny and I went to Treasure Island to participate in The Winery SF's Grape Stomping Event. There was less stomping of grapes than I'd expected, but lots more tasting of wine than expected, so it balanced out.





Surprisingly (to me), The Winery SF is not the only winery actually on Treasure Island. We decided to drive around the island a bit, since Jenny had never been there and I hardly have been, and we stumbled on a couple more wineries, one of which offered a free tasting. We actually bought bottles there, since we liked their wines better than The Winery's. Who knew?

And right now, my crockpot is stocked and starting up a batch of Baked Beans to cook all day while I'm at work. I've been craving these for a long time, looking forward to coming home to the smell tonight. And it's time now for me to go catch that bus to the office. Oh, Mondays ... why are you so Mondane? Hahaha, I crack myself up.

Four Seeing

The week's been rather surreal, and I feel like it's just beginning. It makes up for last weekend's canceled plans and bad cold.

Yesterday, I got a shot of adrenaline at work by some big news, and followed it up by managing to snag a pass to the Oracle OpenWorld 2011 Customer Appreciation Event. I had hesitated a moment when the offer was up in the air — I've been sick after all, and the event was supposed to last until 1 a.m., on a tiny windswept island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay — but Elsie gave me a look like I was being stupid at giving up the chance, so I went for it.

Because really, how often do you get to see Sting, Tom Petty and The English Beat for free? (Well, free except for the cost of working for a corporation.)

Elsie already had her ticket, and we found out Kasey was also going with another friend, so we joined up and headed over to Treasure Island together.

You could have called the event a bit decadent. Free beer, wine and soda were available all over the grounds, and the selection of free food was crazy. I would have been happy with the free hot dogs we saw near the entrance, but we never got to try them because of all the other stuff. I mean, there was a pig roasting on a spit, for heaven's sake.



It probably wasn't kosher. Oh, well.



The live shows were all amazing, and you could hear the music from anywhere within the designated event area. So we spent a lot of time running around, picking up free drinks between playing carnival games (again, for free), trying to dragon-jack innocent passersby, and generally having a blast.

The view from the top of the Ferris Wheel:


Bonus: crossing Treasure Island off the Bucket List.

This coming weekend is almost as booked as the last one was supposed to be. I have tomorrow off, and plan on doing a Big Grown-Up Thing: buying myself a new car. It's actually kind of traumatic for me to do this — I'm seriously attached to my current car (hey, if I can't have a boyfriend, kid, or pet, I have to have a car to love), and really hate to let her go. But it's time. She can't be trusted to go on road trips any longer, and that's really my favorite part about having a car in the first place, what makes the cost all worth it. A new car is also part of my tentative Master Plan, and I think I'm finally ready to do this, make a commitment. Practice for other Grown Up decisions to come down the road. We'll see how it goes.

Also lined up for the weekend is a sisterly birthday party, another family event, and possibly seeing some more live music at Yoshi's.

Morton Saltesque

I want a torrential rain. The kind that explodes out of an oppressively hot humid day, that soaks you within five minutes, and then is gone in 30. I want to walk in that rain, be cloaked in it, breathe it in.

Really, that's the big thing I want out of this upcoming trip to New York. I'm going for a friend's birthday, and I'm giving my weekend to her (gladly: it'll be fun and great and hopefully cathartic), but I want a piece of the rest of the trip just for me.

I want my rain.

---

Tonight my date and I were sitting in Hecho at the bar, and suddenly found a giant entire tuna carcass (the wet bartender thought it was mackerel, but I think he was mistaken) in the hands of the sushi chef in front of us. The evening had already been a little surreal, what with the pairing of tequila with sashimi, and an uni-squid combination of which my mouth wasn't sure what to make. I was already two margaritas and a bellyful of raw fish in when the chef raised his knife and started (skillfully) hacking at the gills and slicing away at the scales. It was fascinating and strange and probably a little disturbing to anyone who isn't a kitchen science geek like myself. I can see now why most sushi restaurants keep this part of the process hidden in the back kitchen. But I'm glad this one didn't.

The food and drink here was pretty good, pretty expensive. If you want to go, I would recommend it, but if you're squeamish I would say you should avoid sitting at the sushi bar. Just saying. You never know when the next fish show will happen.

And now, Jeff Buckley, covering the Smiths:

Urban Daring

I'm somewhat drunk, I'm happy, and I walked the last two blocks home barefoot. Oooh, yeah, I'm an exciting woman, am I.

Money Under the Bridge

I go into intervals of being frugal and then suddenly spending money like it's going out of style. The last two weekends have been in the latter vein. For instance:



This is Emily's Fault. And possibly also Elsie's, who told me I need to "advertise more". But Emily is more directly responsible, since she came into town, visiting from Seattle, and we ended up heading to Nordstrom Rack in Colma, what with us both needing new clothes. We didn't end up actually buying any clothes, unless you count $200 (each) in shoes as clothing. Though I really was in need of some new shoes for the office. Some day I'll get around to actually buying new pants.

And FYI: the above are definitely not for the office. They are most definitely for Other Purposes. Trust me, they look innocent in that photo compared to how they look actually on my feet. Mmm ... almost can't wait to try them out.

Mmm. Anyway.

Last weekend was a bit more practical in the spending arena. I'd been using a $30 AT&T Nokia Go Phone for three years. I liked to call it my StupidPhone, and was more or less happy: I could make and receive calls, I could text, I could (very slowly) make a quick Gmail check if I really had to. It was all I needed. I don't like changing much: I'd been with AT&T since they were WorldCom, and was kind of reluctant to try something new.

However, after months of being mildly mocked for my not-quite-Luddite tendencies, and after getting an email about a sweet company discount on signing a new contract with Sprint (the prospect of playing Words with Friends may also have had something to do with it), I finally bit the bullet. Ported my number to a new account, signed a contract, and got a shiny new SmartPhone:



It's a Samsung Replenish, which sort of was my original first choice, anyway, and ended up being the best deal overall. I even bought the solar panel battery cover, despite the fact that I live in foggy San Francisco and, as I've mentioned before, only see the sun maybe 10 days a year. Hopefully it will come in handy if/when I take another road trip. Or if I get stranded in the middle of the desert.

The ensuing week, up to and including the shoe shopping extravaganza, was far less sensible. There were a couple nights of drinking, the latter of which (Friday) involved me losing a tote bag containing my hard copy calendar — so I haven't switched to a digital calendar yet, so sue me — a couple of glassware leftovers containers, and, really critically, my current knitting project and all my knitting notions. It was a fun night, I got far too drunk, but now I'm kind of missing that sack. The bar says they don't have it, the guy who drove us home said it's not in his car ... and it's definitely not in my apartment. I may have to give it all up to the universe as a lost cause, but I'm still kind of sad.

Though I guess there are other things I should be knitting, anyway. Curse you, universe.

Teal and Black and Teal and Black

It comes in cycles. Right now: down cycle. I'm getting that restless, get-me-the-fuck-out-of-here feeling again, the frustration with the general blandness of things around me, flavored with the worry that I'm not doing enough to make myself interesting and that's making me lose the ability to draw interesting people to me. I think I used to have that power: I have a lot of interesting friends. I just need to remember how I did that.

But things will come back up soon — are already starting to. And I'm not nearly as low as I was a year ago.

Good things that have happened this week (because I need to remind myself on a regular basis):

• Sharks are up 3-1 against the Red Wings in the Western Conference Semifinals.
  
• Watching game 3, I got into a good conversation with a lawyer visiting from Chicago, and it reaffirmed my faith in talking to people at bars. I hope he is reading this because hey, you reaffirmed my faith. Give yourself a pat on the back for that one, Sir.
  
• I was dismissed from jury duty, so I no longer need to fret about working weekends so I don't use up all my PTO.
  
• I discovered that Netflix now has Cheers, The Twilight Zone, and (just for Geof) Twin Peaks, in addition to a whole slew of James Bond films. I have a lot of watching to do, coming up.
  

Good lord, when did I become one of those "re-affirming" people? Somebody hit me upside of the head with a Nerf bat and let's drink some bourbon.

A Salty Motto

I know I've done a great workout this week because my arms are sore with bruising, and there were two or three days where I couldn't cross my legs without pain.

I also recently got more evidence that I'm becoming entrenched in this city. And a reminder that it's really a small, small town. On Tuesday evening, I met up for a drink with a guy who, it turns out, works with my good friend Jeremy. Completely random. This sort of thing happens to me with greater and greater frequency these days.

That last week was a blur — Wednesday was the only day I actually had the evening to myself (aside from Krav); there was a lot of wine poured down my throat, come to think of it. My usual Clay and Wine class on Monday, wine at my local on Tuesday, a Castro wine bar on Wednesday, and last night had friend Claire down for a bottle of Mourvèdre and half a bottle of the only port wine I've ever really enjoyed. And I think I'm going out for brunch with mimosas this morning. Making up for last week's home-sickness? I certainly hope so.