The Daily Sabs

This evening chuckles surprised me with a last minute invitation to
the ballet. The sf ballet is US premiering the John neumeier version
of the little mermaid, and before you say how quaint let's take the
kids, I should mention that it is really gorgeous, slow, and super
avantgarde. In fact it was more like a modern dance wordless opera
than a ballet. The lead dancer (yuan yuan tan) portrays the mermaid so
amazingly. The angst and frustration at the new legs and lost love
(spoiler alert the ending is not like Disney at all) was totally
inspiring. It's been quite some time since i'd been to the ballet, and
i thoroughly enjoyed myself. If you're open to a nontraditional ballet
experience, you best get yourself to the opera house stat. The last
performance is this weekend.

Sidenote: the gal in the poster behind us is mascha, one of chuckles'
friends. I swear, this guy knows everyone.

this is le chuck. he and i spent the morning chatting about all sorts of things, and then spent the afternoon making crackers and red pepper/walnut spread. it was delicious, i didn't think we'd eat it all, but who am i kidding, we pigged it. every last cracker crumb.

afterwards i spent the early evening nerding it with randall. we hit up some lego video game action, and then we met up with jacek, mimi, mimi's sister and her fiance for some absolute delicious nopalito dining. folks, if you are a carnivore, i highly recommend going to nopalito. it is so tasty -- everything i ate was lipsmacking -- and bonus they have parking and will call you when your table is ready (and you can call ahead to put your name on the list). did i mention they actually have parking??

on our way home from the restaurant i got a text from le chuck. he, britches, blair and the visiting j are headed to encore for karaoke. and well folks, we all know i can't turn down an opportunity for some karaoke. it's a shame though, they don't have my song there. i'm sure i'll find something though. oh, and if you're reading this now (saturday night 10pm pt), head on down, we'll duet, okay?

this evening randall and i met up with april, dan (thanks for getting us in to the show!), and chuckles for a bit of the ol' live entertainment. while at the rickshaw stop, we also bumped into margaret and blake (i had a feeling they would be there -- okay maybe that was because i saw blake's comment on sonic living and so i was pretty sure they would be). i wasn't sure what i thought of the show, it was part of the sfpopfest, and it was a lot of fun. However i didn't love any particular band, the first guy (pelle carlberg) was pretty good, but we missed a good chunk of the set; the second band (oh no oh my) made me think of death cab (mostly because of their nasally voices) and while i did like some of the songs, i couldn't get past that ben gibbard problem and therefore couldn't enjoy it fully; the third band (still flyin' the one that juju said i had to go see as soon as i got a chance) was a lot of fun, but to be honest i didn't get it. i had a good time, but juju i think i'm with wes on this one. i don't understand how you enjoy it. how chuckles enjoyed it i see, but you, i don't see, please to explain?; and the fourth band well, we left before they went on. even though margaret convinced me to stay, she could not work her magic on my chauffeur (aka randall).

so margaret you are going to have to tell me how they were. and randall if it turns out that surburban kids with bibilical names is my new favorite band, i will be sad.

ps. i love randall's weird preppy look here. so funny to me.

this morning i made randall teach me a few things on the bass. we have known each other for over ten years, and yet i've never really heard him play. although he was a bit rusty he still has skillz. afterwards i took my new tricks and headed over to anneh's house where we were having lazy band practice. i say lazy because we are living up to our name (the monarchs of laze) by only praticing once every 2 months or so. however this time we invited chuckles along. he actually has a gold record, and plays the ukulele, so it should be a good.

when anneh's roomie meg got home, we decided to call it quits and all of us headed over to little star where we met up with randall (btw, he's not joining our band because he is a funhater x10). we devoured some delicious pizzas, and then hustled on home. it was brisk out and i didn't have a coats.

ps. it took forever to get our table. this was because the people who were sitting at the table did not leave after paying their bill. they sat there for at least 10 minutes even though the restaurant was packed and the wait time ridiculous. why do people do things like this?

the weather has been wonderfully amazing these last few days, anneh even said that it "smelled like summer." since this does not happen often in san francisco (when the weather is good, it seems like the weekdays are great, but the weekends miserable), i decided to make the most of it. first i headed down to dosa to meet chuckles for brunch. we pigged out on spicy deliciousness, including their version of a bloody mary and a scrumptious egg dosa. afterwards we hiked up to the seward slides, but beforehand we made anneh leave her house and join us.

naturally we walked up the steepest hill in san francisco for absolutely no reason, but the end result was worth it. i'd been hearing about these mysterious seward slides for years, but kept forgetting to go (despite the fact that they're pretty close to my house). they're two really steep curvy slides made of concrete, and i don't understand how they haven't been torn out. they're definitely an accident waiting to happen. in fact, we all endured some scrapes and bruises - that bandana on chuckle's arm isn't because he's sporting his gang colors, it's to cover up his slide wounds.

ps. somehow the slides didn't wear me out and i managed to go home and rip out the rest of the front yard. i am now the proud owner of several tomato and pepper plants. i am pretty sure my neighbors think i'm nuts.