i might be an overly paranoid person, but i think when your spidey senses are going off you've got to listen. this evening, after I left 826 valencia (great session btw, i traded in the troublemakers for a kid who wants to write about pottermore), i walked to 18th street to wait for the every so untrustworthy 33. the bus stop was sort of creep.
there was a dude there talking about how the bus would only be there a few more minutes. he was about 5 feet away and we made idle chitchat (the kind you make when the bus says it's 2 minutes away and another 2 minutes pass but it still says 2 minutes). I turned to see if i could see the bus for about 3 seconds and when i turned back dude had creeped up to about 2 feet away. He asked my name, i lied and hoped 2 minutes would go by faster. he then asked a million things, said he moved here from texas 4 months ago, mentioned he was going to golden gate park (who, btw goes to golden gate park at 8:30 at night just to walk around?), and then asked what my status was. (yes status, like it's a facebook update or something.) i told him i was married and then thank god the bus arrived.
my new unwanted creepy pal joe (his name, which i thought was a lie, but couldn't judge since i was also lying) got on the bus before me. I sort of made sure it went that way. he walked to the back where everyone could hear the music coming out of his pocket (did i mention his pocket was playing shitty music, like he had some sort of computer speaker from 1995 jammed in there?), and i made sure i stayed in the front.
i kept getting the feeling that he was watching, but couldn't tell if i was just paranoid or not. but since the spidey senses were going off, and my particular stop is a little dark, i decided to get off at castro instead. the bus was at the red light about to pull into the stop, and i stood up to get off (along with about 5 other people). at this point my creepy pal walked past the back door (where everyone is sort of lined up to get off) and sits near the front. that weirded me out so i spied his picture just because. when the doors opened, i was last to get off bus and a bunch of people started to get on. I turned back to look and saw that creepy joe was trying to push his way out of the front door.
hello creepy joe. i don't care if you are new to town. the castro is NOT golden gate park. and your actions were really fucking weird. he was still on the bus working his way off when i bolted around the corner and darted into walgreens. i kept thinking he was waiting outside, so i sent out his photo to every social network i'm on, called up randall to find out when he was coming home and then chilled for about 30 minutes.
my purgatory:
i told randall i didn't need rescuing, but i wasn't walking home by myself. i wasn't so much scared as creeped out. i felt like if i walked home, i would've turned around every 3 seconds to see if he was there. i told randall i was fine, and said i'd wait down in the vibrant and heavily populated castro until he showed up. i wasn't sure where i was going to go or what i was going to do, but then i walked past blush where the sweetest live music was streaming out. people were laughing and clapping and having an all around great time and i decided that was where i needed to be. i got a glass of bubbles and a cheese and meat plate and chatted with the band. everyone there was so nice, it was exactly where i needed to be. and apparently my new friends are there every thursday night.
so thanks creepy freaking texas joe, i've got a new favorite place thanks to you.
my oasis:
the office today was a literal sweatshop. we're on the 15th floor and have direct sun shining on us all day. it's normally not an issue, but on hot days like today, it's misery. we all wilt and sweat and melt to our seats. because of this, i left early. at 5:15 i couldn't take it anymore and headed home. with the extra bit of time (for comparison sake, i left the office after 7 yesterday), i decided to cook dinner. i picked up a bunch of great veggies at the farmer's market and decided to roast them, puree them and turn them into a delicious soup. yes, i know, soup on a hot day is stupid. but it's so delicious and besides fresh chicken tortilla soup is really a summer soup. if the veggies aren't delicious and ripe, then the soup is bland. lucky for me, the veggies were great. and lucky for samshrew and chris, i knew there'd be extra, so i invited them over. they're our go-to meat-eater pals, and i don't feel the need to clean for them, so they luck out on the nomminess.
today was an action-packed, not to mention snack-packed, day full of samshrew birthday fun. first off samshrew, chris, and sushi dog picked randall and i up for a jaunt across the bay. the east bay spca is putting on these special events all summer long, and today was a free kayaking with your puppins day. randall and i sadly don't have a puppins, so we paid our dues and rented a kayak.
afterwards (and before) we gorged on tasty treats from the jack london farmer's market (the fish tacos there = awesome). and then we headed back to the city where chris picked up a cake from his pals at Sugar Beat Sweets. we got stuck in a little bit of pride traffic (fun fact, i witnessed a cop break up a fight, and then take down a dude who wouldn't cooperate -- come on, he took a swing at the cop!), but eventually ended up at samshrew & chris's house.
we had many hours to kill (dinner reservations weren't until 8), so we snacked, played a round of life -- randall won, also it's pretty different to the version i had when i was growing up -- drank wine, and ate birthday cake. for the record, it was a vegan cake, was vanilla with strawberry, and even randall -- who is skeptical of anything vegan and normally only eats chocolate cake -- asked for a full slice. translation: it was tasty.
finally, after goofing about for a while more, we hopped into the car, miraculously found parking in the castro on pride weekend, and headed to frances for dinner. folks, i made these reservations weeks (maybe months) ago. it is the hot new must-eat at place in the city and after eating there, i can totally see why. the food was delicious, the service friendly and on top of it, and they even seated us 15 minutes early. plus, they knew it was samshrew's birthday, so they brought us out the most fantastic housemade salted chocolate cookies with humphry slocombe ice cream sandwiches in the end. oh and did i mention? they serve the house wine by the ounce. they bring a small pitcher that has ounce markings on the side, and they only charge you for what you drink. simply amazing. i can't wait to go back.
happy birthday samshrew!
And by horse I mean elliptical machine.
I thank (maybe blame is the word I really want to use here) lauren for this one. I’ve had my gym stuff at work for ages (seriously I had a birthday even thus ages) and keep telling myself I’m going to go tomorrow. Well yesterday I didn’t even think it, but today lauren made it happen. anyone wanna guess how long til i go back again?
as you can see in these photos, i am exhausted (just look at those pandas). which is sort of crazy considering i've done a lot of nothing over the last few days. this morning we woke up to discover it was snowing. we threw a few scoops around, but it was too powdery and dry to even make a proper snowball, let alone a snowpig. that was probably the disappointment of the trip, but what are you gonna do?
in the afternoon we drove around and then went back to my grandma's nursing home. today was bingo day and she had made us promise to play. bao ended up winning twice and i won once. grandma didn't win at all. as you can see, she didn't appreciate that fact. let's just say that she's a bit competitive.
as an aside, why didn't anyone tell me that snowflakes actually look like those kind you make in school? you know, the kind where you take paper and fold it and make random cuts? i just assumed that was some sort of romanticized version of snowflakes.
icymi, i'm not a native californian. i was actually born in havre, a town in northern montana. my dad was stationed at the air force station near there and it was actually my mom's first home in the us. it was small and probably a bit of a culture shock -- there were about 200 people there and you know, all that snow.
this morning bao and i decided to venture to the upstairs area of my grandma's house (it's unheated and sealed off, and no one's been up there for a while - but most of the cool stuff has already been taken out) and i saw this picture hanging up in my dad's old room. it's a picture of the air force station where i lived (that's right station, it wasn't even big enough to be a base). i spent the first year of my life here before moving to california. my dad says that the radar stuff and everything but the housing is still there. it would be neat to see it, but it's not like i have any memories of it. only pictures.
speaking of pictures, i also found some funny old pictures in my grandma's house. this one was my fave. it's my mom in her early 20s in taiwan. i think bao, samshrew and i all have this default fake smile.
this afternoon randall and i finally succumbed to the fact that our house is downright chilly. it was 2:30 in the afternoon and i was sitting in the living room with the blankets on. that's when we realized it was time to turn the heater on. the problem with our heater is that the first time you turn it on each season, the house is filled with the horrible smell of burning dust. so we cranked the heat and decided to run some errands.
that was a huge mistake. i needed to go to target, and it was a frigging zoo. we were there for an hour and a half and i didn't even look at the shoes or the clothes. it was just a drain. afterwards we stopped by the new whole foods in noe valley in order to pick up some stuff for dinner. randall had promised to make his infamous chicken tortilla soup, but we needed some tortillas. whole foods was a freaking mess. the line literally went all the way down the aisle. we got our goods but the place was bananas. my pal alan told me that sundays between 4:30 and 7:30 are always that way.
moral of the story: don't be domestic. especially not on sundays.
