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.

Pants on Fire

San Francisco is trying to make me out to be a liar.

In the seven years I've lived in this city, I've had two big complaints (let's pretend it was only two big and a lot of little ones): 1) it's always fucking 60 degrees and foggy here, except for two weeks a year in the spring and fall; and 2) there are no single straight men that aren't slimy douchebags.

I've got a lot of other reasons for wanting to move cross-country, but those are the two big ones. Fog is nice for a few days, depressing for an entire summer. Being single was fun ... for the first three years.  After that, it was just lonely, and again: depressing.

So, now that my departure date is set, what happens?

1a: We keep having warm spells — heat waves, if you can call 79 degrees a heat wave — with clear skies. I have a tan, people. I'd forgotten how pretty I look with some color in my face. It's shocking. I might actually start shaving my legs regularly if this keeps up.

2a: Single, straight men that I would actually be interested in dating are starting to pop up out of the woodwork. What's more, some of them even aren't slimy douchebags. It's not like I'm frequenting any different places, or doing any different things. They're on OkCupid, and at Krav, and downtown, where I've always been, and I'm wondering where the hell were you guys a year ago? Argh.

Granted, for both those points above, maybe I am doing things a little differently.

My tan is as much from a sunny San Francisco as it is from the day trip to Great America I took with Elsie a couple weekends ago, and attending the U.S. Golf Open with my dad last Friday, and the weekends spent in the South Bay playing golf with my dad or at the beach with my nephew.  (Did I mention, by the way, that I'm still learning to play golf? And actually liking it? It's a very strange thing indeed.)

And as for the men ... well, I guess it's easy to find someone when you really aren't looking or interested in looking (gah! "they" were all right, again!). And it's also easy to see who is right in front of you when you aren't obsessing over or distracted by some unworthy one else that doesn't want you or treats you like shit.


At any rate: San Francisco, if you'd been this much fun the last seven years, I wouldn't be leaving you. Or maybe it's because I am leaving that I'm taking advantage of all the fun you always had. I dunno what it is.

The last month or so I've been revisiting old stomping grounds, and hanging out and doing and rediscovering all the things I liked about California and the West Coast in general. Maybe it's living in a place makes you (or just me?) blind to what it has. Maybe it's feeling like this is your last chance, and taking it, that makes a place come alive.  (Is that a lesson on how we should live our lives?)

But then again, San Francisco isn't New York. Not by a long shot. So still no regrets.

75 days left. Reality is starting to set in.

Woodwork

My new favorite funny animal video.



O Nature, how you can be cruel.

A few weeks ago, I went out on a date with a guy who was looking for a casual sex kind of thing. Since I have a deadline for relationship lengths here in the city, and I'm not looking for anything serious anyway, I was intrigued and met up with him for a drink.

It was only a short date, over chocolate milk and a shared donut, nothing happened that would prove too scandalous for my ceramics friends to hear about, and we both came away from it agreeing, the next day, that there was a lot more of a friend vibe than a rip-each-others'-clothes-off chemistry.

The question was: what did I want to do? He was willing to try for a casual sex thing for the few months I'm still here, to see if the chemistry would work out. Me, I was more inclined to try for friends first, and maybe see about the sex later. I like making new friends, and I especially like the men I sleep with to be a friend (the best kind of lover is the one you can talk to before and after the sex), so I don't mind going in that order.

I don't think he was big on that, since I haven't heard from him since. Too bad, because he was a pretty good kisser.

Is it wrong to want more friends in your life, even if you will see so little of them?

As my countdown clock counts downward, as my last few months in San Francisco flit by, I'm finding old friends — ones that I lost or stopped seeing years ago — start to cycle back into my life. Peripherally or otherwise.

At Maker Faire two weekends ago, I ran into someone I've known for almost twelve years, but whom I haven't seen in probably three. It was one of those moments where I wasn't sure I recognized him, but he looked up when I said his name, and we ended up making my other friends wait a good ten minutes while we caught up on life. We made sure we still had each others' numbers. I was amused that the note he has about me in his digital address book said something along the lines of "cute girl, probably married by now". We made vague promises to do dinner again some time. Those might actually happen, because he actually seems determined that they do and followed up. It's flattering.

Not so flattering: on Friday I was at Off the Grid (finally made it) with my date, and a few people back in line I realized was another old friend unfriended acquaintance that I haven't seen in four years. I've also known him a long time, probably since 2004. We used to do dinner once a week, back when I worked graveyard, but then we got into a fight, I left exasperated, and even with a couple emails back and forth, it never got resolved. I'm not mad at him (though I still think he was in the wrong, sort of), but I knew it would take a lot more effort than I really felt was worth it just to appease his sense of justice/pride/forgiveness. So I let it drop. I do regret the lost friendship, but not necessarily the decision to let it go. Does that make sense? At any rate, I saw him, but tried to wait to catch his eye before making an approach, just in case. I never caught his eye, despite our standing within six people of each other. I think he was actually avoiding me, and that made me really sad. Was I the asshole? Or was he?

There are other friends that I've let drift that I've been starting to think about again. The two friends that got married this weekend, but I had to miss out because of work and finances and other things that came up. The friend who moved to L.A. a couple of years ago, but I completely forgot she was there until she texted me on my birthday just as I was driving back from Disneyland.  The friend whom I'm always reminded of when I eat pork belly (it's a flattering reminder, trust me!) or walk by Golden Gate University, where he goes/went to law school. The crew from Whiskey Thieves. Two or three nuts from high school that I haven't seen since our ten-year reunion. My ex-roommate. My college ex-roommate.

I need to make the effort to reach out to these friends, to all of these friends. And to the ones that are starting to drift into the months-of-not-seeing. A text just seems inadequate, but the problem with our modern method of having multiple ways to communicate means that the really meaningful way, the phone call, is too scary and too hard. Too much effort.

But I want to try. Because I feel, sometimes, that every friend — that is, everyone who is more than just an acquaintance — is a piece of me. And when I lose them, it leaves a hole. Some are bigger than others, of course. The biggest ones of all still pain me, months or years later; I've got a couple of those, one of which includes the guy from Friday. I thought that one was healed, and I guess it still is, but I still feel kind of empty. Well, emptier than I already had been feeling, sir.

Thousand Island

Downtown, this morning.



Pretty much no one stopped to blink at this, by the way. C'est la vie, San Francisco. C'est la vie.

Shy Camera, Lifeless Night

March is supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb. Not true in San Francisco, apparently. Well, I guess it did rain on the 1st. Just a little. Hardly even worth mentioning. Today was in the high 60s or low 70s, and the natives were out in tank tops, shorts, skirts. I left Krav wishing I'd brought a skirt to change into for my walk through the city, wishing that I didn't have to lug my suddenly-unnecessary leather jacket around town.

Meanwhile, of course, there are tornadoes ravaging the Midwest. I know SF will get its comeuppance soon enough, the depression that comes with a sunless summer, but for now here is paradise. Tomorrow is expected to be much the same. I'm looking forward to soaking up as much of it as possible.

Right now, I had fully intended to be at the Red Devil Lounge to see some live music, have a drink, maybe even be social with some strangers. But then I got home from my walk around the city to find that season six of Doctor Who had been added to Netflix. And I looked at the new sweater I had started to cast on for, and thought about the money I could save by staying in and drinking some of the wine I already have, and then I realized that the washing machine was actually free and I had laundry to do ... and so here I am, in a pair of pajama pants, one load in the wash and one in the dryer, eating leftovers for dinner. Hooray my exciting weekend.

But that's okay, I have more to look forward to: Emily called this afternoon to discuss our impending trip to Disneyland, and pointed out that it is taking place in a week. Seven days. I had hardly realized it — I can scare believe that March has already begun, seriously, much less that it actually involves my going someplace further away than San Jose — and now the excitement is bubbling up.

ValentWine

Elements for a good Valentine's Day, when you are single:

1. Texts from male friends wishing me a Happy one (even if they are gay and/or bi).
   
2. Date with my favorite Jeremy.
   
3. Good ramen.
   
4. Wine: three glasses full.
   
5. Greek drama.
   
6. Free creme brulée from my Creme Brulée Cart "boyfriend". (Courtesy of frequent-buyer card — boyfriend does not know of our "relationship" ... yet?)
   
7. Coming home to a package from a good friend living 3,000 miles away.

I hope everyone had a V-Day at least half as happy as mine. Now let's move on and get on with our single lives, dammit.

I Always Know My [Krav] Is Near

Wow. I've felt pretty lately.

Thank you to my friend Nick for making sure I was able to share in the glory of this video:



I can't even begin to say what is my favorite part of this. It's just one whole piece of ... awesome?

On a related note, I was dragged out to a Saturday morning Krav class last weekend by Claire — a sort of bittersweet last chance to use each other as punching bags before she officially moved back to France. I never do Krav on the weekends, in part because I generally don't have a reason to be out that way on a non-work day, and mostly because I'm lazy and like to sleep in on the days I can. Like, sleep in until noon. And the classes are at 10, 11, 12 and it takes an hour to get there from my tiny apartment via MUNI. Incompatible with my personal sleeping goals.

However, I think that I will be going again tomorrow morning. And why? Because after Krav I have a whole range of possible options to cross off my Big Eat checklist.

Is it a bad thing to use food as an incentive to work out? Wait, isn't that what half of us work out for in the first place?

Good. At least I'm on par with everyone else.

It's Complex

Yesterday I went to Krav for the first time in two months. Alone in the locker room, I stepped on the scale, almost afraid of what it would say. Except it read about six pounds lighter than the weight I'd been at my last physical, 30 days ago. Woo hoo! I thought. I must be doing something right! Then I looked down at my flabby belly, bulging out over the top of my workout pants, and realized that I'd only lost what muscle weight was hiding underneath the blubber, not the blubber itself.

Le sigh.

There was a moment tonight when I almost forgot I was in San Francisco and not New York. My not-a-date date and I were wandering around after dinner, trying to find a secluded spot (there aren't many in FiDi SF, and what ones there are have security cameras) and ended up in a public space with benches and weird art, surrounded by skyscrapers. I looked straight up. The sky was clear, framed by the buildings, and the moon shone its waxing gibbous face down on us, and the illusion was almost complete. I am there, this is happening.



Maybe the weight I lost was wallowing self-pity, not muscle.

On a nerdier note, as part of my goal to do as much of the 7x7 Magazine 2012 Big Eat Challenge, I actually spent some time mapping out the locations of all the restaurants.

View 2012 Big Eat Map in a larger map

Sure, maybe someone else is or was going to do the work on this so I didn't have to, but this way I can keep track of the ones I've actually tried. Go me. And go ahead: let me know if you want to join me for any of it. Some of those places are definitely best with a partner in crime.

On Location, San Francisco

I'm trying.

Today is beautiful, and I woke up to find out that my plans for the day were later than expected, meaning that I was conscious early. (Only the French would start a garage sale at 2 in the afternoon on a Saturday.) Faced with the choice between wallowing in my stuffy dirty apartment, attempting to clean said apartment, and dragging myself out of the apartment early to enjoy the sunshine, I chose to throw some things into my long-neglected Google messenger bag (including the tablet PC I am currently typing this on) and leave.

Now I'm sitting in Ritual Coffee on Mission Street, surrounded by San Francisco. Surrounded by about ten iMacs, a scattering of eyebrow-pierced lesbians, and a lot of hipster guys wearing glasses and t-shirt hoodies.

This is the normal. I'm trying to take a picture of it, but it's not working out for me quite. Bad angle. As you can see.

The sky rained down on us last week, and this week it rained in a different sort of way. I'm definitely back on the uptick of this roller coaster.

It's funny. Now that I've kind of stopped caring about this town, and stopped trying to get something out of it, it's finally stopped kicking me in the ribs and started to provide a little. Perhaps that's the way to live in any city, in any town: don't try to grab onto what you can get from it. Let it all come to you. Or maybe just don't have expectations. (I think RuPaul said something like that on Season 2 of Drag Race.) (And yeah, I just admitted I watched a season of that show. Hey, it was on Netflix.)

Okay, time for me to go pick up a bun at King's Bakery -- I'm actually going to try to tackle the 7x7 Big Eat this year, as much as I can afford -- and head over to that garage sale. I'll be late at this point, but for the French I'll still be early.

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.

Cold. Dark.

I know it is Winter Season here in SF because I am knitting. Like a crazy woman, I am knitting. I cannot get enough of it — plugging away at a pair of socks at work; a project next to the beanbag chair where I sit when I watch my Netflix each night; skeins are strewn around the apartment waiting their turn to be next on my needles. I try to motivate myself through the cold, damp Bay summer, when sticks and string would be warming and comforting and chase away the depression, but it's the clean crisp air that brings it out in me.

That and, of course, the looming threat of Christmas on the horizon. But that's another story.

Really, San Francisco has two seasons, and three types of weather. Chilly, damp, clouded summer; brisk, nippy, bright winter. Cool and wet; cold and dry; week of warm in-between. It's that last one that catches you by surprise.

At any rate, I like best the winters here in San Francisco. The warm days are nice (the cold summers are horrible and depressing and will be the personal hell I'm sent to when I die), but I love stepping outside into the sun and feeling the bite on my nose. I get to wrap myself up in one of my hand-knit scarves, put on a wool hat, pull on my fingerless gloves, and just moving feels wonderful and warming. The chill is only skin-deep, and flushes your cheeks. Your breath steams up just a bit from your mouth and disappears.

(On a side note, the wonder of seeing my own breath is probably half the reason I like to smoke now-and-again: it's being able to do that any time I want to, no matter the weather.)

I even love the early darkness, now that we're post-Daylight Savings. It makes the city that much more magical, especially as we enter the holiday season and stores stay open longer, people start stringing little lights on their houses and in the trees along the street. We get to watch the sunset from my office window — we're in a high-rise and can see the ocean from our desks on a particularly clear day — and then I bundle up and head out into the crowds, on the MUNI underground to my bus, packed in with other people only too glad for the warmth afforded by an overcrowded train.

My only regret is that there isn't a light dusting of snow, but I'm obviously on the wrong coast, in the wrong town for that. And the fact that I wish for it probably means I haven't lived in it enough to hate it. Soon enough.

Things are moving and shaking. Weekends filling up, and I'm already starting to think ahead to next year. What I want to do, what I need to shed, what I need to build up. How I'm going to be able to afford it all. Somewhere back there, in September, was a pivot in my life, and I think think think I'm trying hard to stay on the new path and not swing a full 360 back onto the old.

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.

Soup, Tea and DayQuil

This weekend just past was supposed to be Busiest Weekend Evar. There was triple-booking both Saturday and Sunday. There were events all over the city (and out of it) to participate in. There was sun. There was Lambtown.

Instead, I spent all of Saturday in bed, except for the few times I got up to make soup or Cream of Wheat. In fact, Cream of Wheat has been the staple of my diet for the past 56 hours.

I did make an attempt to go out yesterday — the cabin fever was killing me, I caught myself sobbing for no reason on the kitchen floor at 1 in the morning. So I (deliriously) walked through the Castro Street Fair, and then probably did the stupid thing and walked from there to the N Train in Cole Valley (stupid because there's a HUGE F*CKING HILL in between), taking it to the Outer Sunset for some pho' before heading into the park for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. I had a date with my friend Claire, and my ex. I didn't make it to see either of them.

It's the Jewish New Year this week (started Wednesday night/Thursday), so it's as good a time as any for this bacon-eating Jew to make a new resolution: For 5772, I will resolve to not get sick so often. Because damn. Nothing so sad as missing out on eating lamb and listening to live music.

Since I've already started out the year wrong (though to be honest, this illness is lingering remnants from last year, so it doesn't count, right?), it's going to be soup, tea and DayQuil for me the next few days. Hooray, hot liquids.

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.

Like Tears in the Rain

The hormones are hitting me hard this month. It's been a roller coaster of a day, emotionally.



Protestors ruined my evening commute. (I hope every one of those fucknuts gets testicular cancer.) I couldn't even get home without either making the 50-minute walk to Castro station or crowd onto the F train with all the other people trying to get home, so I hopped on the 3 Jackson bus instead and went straight to my ceramics class in my work clothes (I fucking wanted to knife the guy sitting next to me, who obviously had testicles the size of a football seeing how wide he needed to keep his legs spread into my seat). I hate having to wear my work clothes to ceramics, and I hate even more not having my car with me to get me home afterwards on a convenient schedule, since we pretty much always go out to eat after class.

Bad enough that I agreed to work a later shift (by an hour) for the rest of the year's Mondays, so my entire eating and functioning schedule was throw off.

So I was feeling a little bit of anger today. There might have been some over-enthusiastic venting on my part about dickheads who think they're making a statement by ruining other people's routines. Eventually I calmed down enough to finish my latest monster (not sure on a name for him yet) and hold a normal, less angry conversation. I will say, though, it felt really good to hit up Roadside afterwards and tear my fangs into a few ribs. Really good.

Even the ride home wasn't as bad as I had expected. I made my transfer by two minutes, meaning I got home 20 minutes sooner than expected. Things were looking up.

Now I've got some important decisions coming up:

Do I want to spend the money to make a weekend trip to NYC next month, for Benny's birthday?

Do I want to spend a couple days working out of my company's NY office while I'm there?

What do I want to buy my nephew for his birthday?

And, more immediately, how do I want to reply to the message I just found in my inbox from my ex?

Auntie: Up

I was thirsty.

So, off a comment on a picture friend Buhler posted to Google Plus, I inspired myself into yanking some of my parents' backyard produce, and being productive with it.



I have a lot of zucchini bread now. Most of it is in muffin format, bagged and tossed into the freezer for at least a month of future breakfasts. One giant zucchini produced two dozen muffins and a loaf. Not bad for elephantitis of summer squash.

Also gathered from Suburban Eden were some tomatoes

and some peppers, which I combined with some thai peppers I'd bought from the Farmer's Market to make into "napalm" jam.


Haven't figured out yet what to do with the eggplant. Maybe baba ganoush?

On top of all this kitcheny productivity, I also spent pretty much the entire weekend in the presence of small children. Yesterday I was Favorite Auntie Sarah to the World's Cutest Nephew, and together we learned how to lick Play-Doh and steal chocolate.

No, you cannot resist his cuteness. Don't even try to.

Today I was Favorite Auntie Eapa to my friend's son. The family invited me to join them at the Exploratorium. I haven't been there in probably fifteen years. And just goes to show how much of a geek I am in that I completely had a blast. And got a little thirsty, as you can tell from the picture up top.

Hadn't really thought about this until I was actually walking down the hill from where the 24 dumped me off, but it has been years and years since I was last in that part of town. I'd forgotten how beautiful the Palace of Fine Arts is.







I'll have to revisit on a nicer day, such as when it isn't summer here in SF.

Loco-Motion

My upper arms are driving me nuts with the itching. I have an allergy to sunblock, or the sun, or both. I'm not completely sure which, but it pretty much is guaranteed to occur when I try wearing sunblock and spend the day in the sun. Usually I don't bother with the sunblock — seriously, I live in San Francisco, and see the sun 10 days a year — but this last weekend I took the chance on a spray-on made for sensitive skin, and now I'm paying the price for it.

Itch. Itch itch. It doesn't even hurt. I think I would rather it did.

Aside from the itchy torment, it was an altogether too fun long Fourth-of-July weekend.

I visited the family in the South Bay and then went sailing with my Dad on Friday (which is when I did the sunblock thing - foolish me).

Fillmore Jazz Festival on Saturday, walking around and having good light conversations. Also having my usual "luck" with men, of course.

Sunday I drove up to the North Bay to meet my friend Elka's son and teach him to love his Auntie Eapa. (My sister's son is still cuter ... but this one is acceptably adorable.) I also strapped on roller skates for the first time in probably a decade, and have a bruise on my butt to show for it.

And to complete my weekend around the Bay, I headed over to Oakland for a mellow barbecue at Leonie and Gabe's house on the Fourth, and drove back into the city with Josh (who was also there) in time to see a few fireworks from the highway.

So the weekend was great, and busy.

Back into the work week ...

Today I feel like I'm just going through the motions. Doing things because I "ought" to, because I need something to take me away from other things.

Maybe I should just keep moving. I don't want to run away, but sometimes that just seems like the safest thing, the action that will keep me sane.