Thanksgiving

I'm sitting alone in my apartment, the TV on for background noise and Fenway rustling a paper bag on the floor. It's Thanksgiving, and Andrew and I are still going out for tacos tonight, and Dan is at work and then on his way to see his family, and I thought I'd take a few minutes out of my day of doing jack shit to remember what I'm thankful for.

I'm thankful for my family. My parents are halfway across the country, but I'm closer to them than perhaps ever before. My sister lives with me, and sometimes she's too close, but she's still one of my best friends, and she's still there for me, just as she has been our whole lives. I'm lumping Dan into this category too, because sooner or later we'll be a legal family full of animals and bicycles, and he pushes me to become a better person and yet is always there to make me feel safe when I fuck up and don't make it.

I'm thankful for my friends, who run the full spectrum--some frustrate me on a regular basis, some always seem to make my day better, some I only see once or twice a year and some I see almost every day. They're all interesting people who keep me intrigued in the wonderful weirdness of life and keep me from turning into a hermit. Topper and Fenway are being classified here too, because I only have control over them when it comes to food, so they're like my friends that way. I have control over almost everyone when I am offering food.

I'm thankful for being in the right place at the right time. I've heard that gratitude is realizing that a lot of what you have you didn't earn and being thankful for it; I realize that my having a job, my having shelter and clean water, my having ample food, my ability to spend money on things like shoes just because I like them, and even having a government that (usually) gives me rights, having an education and having a family that could provide for me, are all things I don't really deserve more than most people.

(I'm really, really thankful for having a job. Especially as a journalist. And especially a journalism job that I like. Whew!)

I'm thankful for my good health and the good health of most of those I know. This marks the fourth year in a row that there was a Summer Health Scare, as I'm now referring to them, and while the scares aren't fun, it's wonderful to come out the other end being healthy. It's also good to be in the position to get health care if I need it, and I hope I never have to test that theory to its limits.

I'm thankful for the intricate, beautiful world I live in. I marvel at the laws governing the visible and dark matter swirling around us, I am in awe of this planet that has held up with so much shit that we throw at it and continues to somehow survive. I realize that while humans may kill themselves all off someday and cripple the earth, the planet and the universe will probably continue to go on peacefully without us. That's remarkable.

I'm also thankful for today, a day I spent with Topper at the barn in the morning and with Fenway this afternoon on the couch. I'm thankful I didn't have to choke down food that I really don't like or really didn't taste good, just to be polite. I'm thankful for no awkward conversations across someone's holiday table. I'm thankful for spending most of today on my own, because I think people need to spend time alone sometimes and be content. And I am. And it's good.

Strangers

I'm taking off Friday, Dec. 5, so my sister and I can drive down to San Antonio to see all the grandparents--my dad's mother and father, and then my mom's father, who lives in New Braunfels. Dan is working on Thanksgiving and Julie is going to Louisiana with her best friend, so I think I'm spending Thanksgiving with Andrew, drinking beer and eating tacos from some little greasy place where everyone speaks Spanish. My parents live halfway across the country, and it's really only feasible to fly there once a year (hello, long Christmas vacation).

It's all got to do with family, and I've been pondering it a lot for the past two weeks or so. It came up because of this trip down south, and I've known this for a long time but it's still bizarre: My extended family is made up of complete strangers.

I guess it's been like this because my dad was being reassigned every two or three years, and so we were moving all over the place. The grandparents would visit once a year, but I rarely saw the aunts and uncles and cousins. Right before fifth grade my family got moved to San Antonio, and then we were surrounded by all the extended family, and we saw them every other month or so, but it was still weird. I hadn't grown up around these people, I didn't really know then, and I was in that awkward pre-teen/early teenage stage when I didn't really want to be around my family.

After seventh grade, my family moved again and we were back to only seeing the extended family occasionally. My freshman year at TCU I took a train down to San Antonio to spend Thanksgiving with my grandparents, and from what I remember it was all slightly awkward. I love my grandparents--they're lovely, loving people, and my grandmother's family moved to Mexico during the Great Depression and she worked as a nurse and has the cutest accent, and my grandfather got himself out of desperate poverty by joining the military and becoming a highly-respected Air Force officer. But they're still strange to me.

My mom's father is even more of a mystery, and I never really got know my grandmother well because she died when I was in seventh grade. Most of what I know about them I've heard from stories from my mother, and they were sometimes stories I'd eavesdropped on--stories tinted with the issues of the past. My grandfather was a Protestant minister, and never had much money and so could rarely afford to travel to see us.

I'm looking forward to the trip, especially since I am going with my sister. It'll be good. We'll miss out on the extended family, which is a whole other level of strangeness--I know more about celebraties than I know about them--but we'll get to see those people who have seen the most and were the ones with whom my immediate family starts. They're also the people with a good perspective, having seen a lot in life, and it should be an enlightening weekend.

That, and it's a Friday off. What's not to love?

Fat Time

Tomorrow at work we're having a potluck lunch, a sort of pre-Thanksgiving community feasting, and everyone's signing up to bring in food. I'm going to bring in a pasta salad with baked tomatoes in it (I was going to grill them until I realized--duh--I don't have a grill), and Leslie signed up to bring pecan pie, which makes me REALLY excited.

After Thanksgiving will start the fat time of the year here at the big BP. Rather, I hope it's the fat time of year. It's the time when PR companies and business owners start sending us food baskets, filled with cans of smoked salmon and bags of fancy-ass crackers and assorted chocolate junk to thank us for any coverage or to try to subtly bribe us for more. Last year was my first holiday season, and there were lots and lots of elaborate gifts (chocolate covered potato chips from Neiman Marcus? check) sent in, so I hope this year will be the same. I'm afraid that since we're no longer really tied to our former owner and publisher, all the long-time friends he had will no longer feel obliged to feed the poor, hungry journalists.

There are a lot of ethical dilemmas that arise when it comes to journalists accepting free stuff--we need to be unbiased and objective and not do anything that may come off as favoring someone too much--but shit, we love free stuff. Love it. Especially when it's food, because then we don't feel as guilty. When you can share it around the whole office, like the food baskets, and when you don't to stories directly because of it, then most of the ethical problems disappear. But I feel like I'm always scoping for the free food at an event I have to cover. Our publication is holding an event tonight that's not mandatory, but I'm going because there's good, free food and good, free drinks. With any luck I'll find a story idea too, but my mind is on the onion rings and big glasses of beer.

Morbid Jewelry

I get this catalog called Signals, which is full of all kinds of random stuff, a lot of which appeals to middle-aged women who like to read and like cats (I'll totally be there in another 30 years). Of the whole catalog, there's usually like 5 things that I would ever get for myself, but it's amusing enough that I go through it every time I get it.

I just thought I would point out that on a page full of items like a bracelet with tiny bells hanging off it and a silver angel ornament is the Ashes Pendant. Yes--a silver heart pendant with a FUNNEL that you can pour art of your cremated dead husband in to.

They also offer the Pet Ashes Pendant. I love Topper a lot, but somehow I don't think I can carry him around with me on my neck when he dies.

Skulls are a big thing in fashion right now, but Signals magazine totally blows away all the hipsters and goth kids when it comes to ridiculous accessories. I'm constantly amazed at the random shit in catalogs.

Get Away

Last night Dan and I went with Jessica, a Dallas Morning News intern, to the good-bye party being held for Chris Buckle, the man who acted as a recruiter for the paper. Buckle was the paper's recruiter, and the last person he hired was Dan, before the paper went on a hiring freeze. (Before Dan, Buckle hired Erik, who was previously at the Star-Telegram as an editor.)

I'd been to one of these good-bye parties before, but it was about two months after Dan started at the DMN and it was incredibly awkward. I didn't know anyone, and then I tried talking with this one young reporter because she looked nice but she conversed like an idiot 12 year old. It was painful. This time, at least I was going knowing a handful of the other younger reporters, and that helped tremendously, but it still got to be a bit painful when everyone gathered to roast Buckle with a mock front page filled with outrageous stories about him.

Any going away party is going to be like this, probably, filled with inside jokes and shared stories. Those of us who were guests tried to move toward the back of the crowd, out of the way of those who were loud and boisterous. After a while the three of us piled into Dan's vehicle, and I took the wheel to get us back home.

We were about a half-mile down the main road when this suburban next to us swerved into us, knocking the driver's side mirror with its passenger mirror and scaring the shit out of me. I leaned on the horn for a few seconds, and then we both got into a turn lane and put our hazards on. I was a bit shaky (car stuff always makes me shaky), and when I got out this guy climbed out of the suburban and I asked quickly if he was ok. He said yeah, were we ok, and I told him we were and our car was ok. Our mirror was intact, and his was one that folds in, and it was easily snapped out.

Jessica came out to join me (I don't know why Dan didn't get out with us, but that may have been too many of us standing in the road), and the man told us he was driving away from a club because some women put something in his drink to try to get with him. He'd just recently moved to the area, he was really concerned about us calling the cops, and we assured him we wouldn't but he just apologized and kept saying these women were trying to drug him and he needed to get home. He appeared to have had a few drinks, and had something else, because he just kept coming back to the getting away from women part of his story. We were going in circles, and Jessica and I offered to call him a cab but he turned us down. We were concerned that if he could glance us, he could run into someone else--especially if he had been drugged--and we finally convinced him to go to a McDonald's a block away, where we would buy him a coffee and talk for a while so he could sober up.

After driving into the McDonald's parking lot, we found it was closed. Bummer. We didn't get the chance to buy him a coffee, and this time all four of us were standing outside and he went into his spiel of getting away from women again. We couldn't convince him to take a nap in his car. He just wanted to get home. We said we'd follow him, and flash our lights if he was driving erratically, and he promised to pull over if we did this.

He pulled out of the McDonald's parking lot first, and we had to wait for some cars to pass. He was driving fast, we got caught behind lights, and it didn't take long for him to disappear. We talked about whether we should have called the cops. We wondered if he'd hurt himself or others, and if he did, would we be responsible. We wondered why women were trying to jump him.

It was a good long weekend, a nice change from the ordinary. I've got another three-day weekend coming up at the beginning of December, and Julie and I are going to drive to San Antonio and New Braunfels to see all the grandparents. Tonight I got some tacos at Fuel City (so glad John introduced me to them) and headed home, and now I'm just wasting time. I enjoy wasting time on Sunday nights; when I was a kid, I always had this vague sense of dread of Sunday nights, when I'd have to do the calculus homework I'd put off or do reading for some European history course. There was no TV on weeknights as a kid, either (Sunday nights through Thursday nights, although we were allowed to watch ER), so I like to binge on really crappy TV. Right now I'm watching some show that's a British woman interviewing all these polygamists, and later I'll probably watch Gray's Anatomy, which has little redeeming value except it's mindless and on at the right time.

Thankfully, tomorrow should be mindless and is also at the right time of the week.

Fan Club Of Eight Years Olds

It was a pretty busy week; I was out half the day on Tuesday, since I was going to see a sleep study that night, and even though I went home and slept for three hours I was still exhausted and booked up on Wednesday. Busy weeks make me always focus on Thursday: If I can live through Thursday at about noon, then I'm set.

Also, I took off Friday this week, so if I could make it through until Thursday afternoon, then I was practically free.

My managing editor volunteers at a local elementary school, and they'd invited her to come present for career day. Since it was Thursday and she's busy putting out the paper, she asked us reporters if any of us wanted to go. I volunteered because it sounded like fun. I can entertain a group of third grade students for a half hour, no problem. There were many years when I was in high school and my entire income came from birthday money and babysitting.

I contacted the school counselors, who asked if I could do two classes instead of just one. I said sure, and my ME gave me little tiny notebooks with the paper's name on them to hand out to the kids, and I got a giant bag of pens from the children's hospital, since I figured a lot of kids had heard of it or been there before.

I showed up about five minutes late, parked across the street and tried to run across the street to the school. I ended up dropping most of the notebooks in the middle of the street, and a kind semi-truck driver stopped so I could pick them up without getting killed. There was a volunteer student aide in the library waiting for me, and she lead me to the first third-grade class.

When I started talking, I found myself getting flushed and my voice quaking a bit. Then I remembered that I could definitely spell better than the kids, and I was good. I talked about what I did, and they asked a lot of questions. I handed out notebooks after explaining that most of my life is spent taking notes, and they all excitedly wanted to write my e-mail address and the paper's website address in there. That took forever. Seriously. I said the website like 10 times and spelled it out and wrote it on the board and they still got it wrong.

Then my aide took me to my next class, and these kids were a little slower to get in to everything, but then they kept me there for an hour, asking question after question. The good news is they were good questions and I had plenty of good reporting stories to entertain them with. I told them about going out with a falconer to scare grackles, Dumpster-diving with anarchist freegans, finding a blind man's dog, trying my hand at being a crane operator, and doing the sleep study. I encouraged them to be nosy, ask questions, and always be curious. One girl in particular seemed to love this, and asked as many questions as she could possibly think of. The teacher finally cut them off, and as I was leaving the students all waved and the one girl wanted to get a hug.

I was smart. I didn't tell them that they won't get paid much and that journalism is changing and freaking out everyone involved in the industry. With any luck, one of those students will become a journalist and get into the business so I can someday retire. My 401k won't exist at that point, but I need some other kid to get suckered into this business so I can die anywhere but at my desk. (Just kidding. I did tell them I usually love my profession.)

So I took off Friday, and so did Dan, but he was invited to come in and speak to a couple of intro journalism classes at SMU so I tagged along. They were hour and a half classes, and Dan's presentation was about online journalism, and it was a really interesting presentation and then Q&A. (I'm not being biased, either. Not too biased. The students got into it and the discussions.) It's always strange to see someone in their professional role when you're used to seeing them elsewhere. It's like going to one of those take your kids to work days and seeing your parent doing something other than getting you snacks or telling you to clean your freaking room.

Naturally, every off day has a result, so Dan's working today. It's Saturday. It's ok, though. We got up and went to a bike race before he had to go in, and he did really well in the race, and then I went back to bed because I was cold and tired. My sister is in town today to see her best friend, so the three of us are on our way out to get lunch. Fooood. Then I'm going shopping. If I were a housewife, I could live every day like this!

The DFW Morning Star

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Dallas Morning News are in talks to combine powers (and coverage) in some areas. Isn't this the kind of nonsense that kids did to join forces and call forth Captain Planet?

I guess it was all announced last week in a news article, and then elaborated on in a column, and was picked up by Editor and Publisher this week in a brief asking if it was all a good idea. Another blog has already dissected the whole thing.

I probably have more to say, but I'm out the door. The most pressing thing is Dan is a jerkface for not remembering to tell me over the weekend. This is the prime sort of stuff to stress out journalists.

Facebook/Election

I like to think Jezebel stole my blog post idea, but I get the idea I'm not the only one who came up with this.

Slow

Last night I did the mystery murder dinner thing with the other young people on the editorial side of the paper. I was a feminist politician running for Senate, and it was good fun to dress up in giant glasses and a big hat.

It was the first time I'd ever done something like this, and the good news is most everyone else was new to it to. The personas were fun, and the time period it was set in was also fun for us. The whole thing was generally absurd, but a good way to spent the evening.

I got home around midnight and thought about going out to the bar but then decided against it. Dan was out with a friend, and when I got home I just couldn't work up the effort to go out again, so I watched two hours of Degrassi online instead. I love Canadian teen shows. They're brilliant. I went to bed around 2:15, and Dan rolled in around 2:45, and we slept until 10. Then we got up, ate breakfast, watched a bit of TV and then promptly fell asleep for another two hours on the couch.

Today was really slow, which is just great by me. I booked a ticket to fly home for Christmas and didn't pay quite as much as I have in years past, so that was a relief. I think I'm the only one at work whose family isn't locally based, so I turned in requests for days off last month, just to make sure I'd get them off. It's a pain, because I spend half a day on a plane either direction, but it beats when my family was in Florida or (horror) Alabama, when finding direct flights was a rarity. I fly back on Dan's birthday, which is something I've done for several years now, and I think I'll be home a total of 10 days. My goals for being home are: eating crab, going to the Newseum, seeing Liz and Pat for cupcakes, possibly going to the National Academy of Sciences, and just spending lots of down time with my parents.

I gotta admit, my parents are pretty awesome. There are things we really disagree on, and there are things about them that drive me up the wall, but all in all, I like spending time with them. I was never one who left home for college and then never wanted to go home. (Part of it is they had custody of Topper still, so if I wanted to see him, I had to see them.) We spend a lot of time on the couch, watching movies and TV, and in the car, driving around shopping or running errands.

It's weird that we're in November. We have a new president, the fall colors of Texas are fading (they're only really bright for about a week and a half), it's dark at 6 p.m. and I'm looking at Christmas plans. Wow. My days might be slow, but the weeks disappear at an alarming speed.

Who Done It?

Tomorrow night I'm going to a murder mystery dinner thingamajig at a fellow reporter's house. Most of us there will be the young staff, and we all have these characters to play, and the whole thing is set on July 20, 1969.

(An aside that proves just how much of a geek I was in middle school . . . remember the movie Apollo 13? My favorite movie in middle school. I had the sound track, which included this recording of Walter Cronkite when they landed on the moon, and and I knew it by heart, and he said "on this July 20, nineteen hundred sixty-nine" and I loved the way he said the date. Then I found out he re-recorded a lot of stuff for the movie, but anyway. I'm totally going to pretend tomorrow night that man just landed on the moon.)

I've never been to one of these things. I did a murder mystery theater thing when I was a freshman in college; it was the summer after, when I was at home, and a friend from TCU came to visit for a few days. We drove down to Florda, fell asleep on the beach, got some horrific sunburns, then went to the theater that night. This was about a month before I shattered my arm and spent all summer longingly gazing at Topper and fantasizing about tying my shoes again.

We were short a person, and I asked Dan if he wanted to go, even though I knew he'd probably say no. He did say no. This is a sticking point in our relationship. Except for modern art and some movies, we have very little in common. I grew up with the arts--going to plays, going to ballets, going to symphonies and all sorts of things. He has little patience for any of it, and it makes me sad. Not that I want him to take me to the opera while he secretly is bored out of his mind and wants to spork his eyes out, but it would be nice if we had more in common in that sense. We try once in a while to do things that we'll both enjoy with the arts. Thankfully, the things we both enjoy most are modern art museums, so at least we're good there.

I'll let everyone know how it goes and if I make a complete fool out of myself.

Photo Links

I may throw some random pictures up here later this evening, but I thought I'd share photo links for everyone who hasn't already seen them on Facebook.

These are some photos of the city and of the California Academy of the Sciences, including the damning photo of a giant puddle in the middle of the floor. I'm hoping that the Academy will pay me an exorbitant amount of money to get me to take them down. I would, and then I'd send the photos out to everyone I knew.

Here are super touristy photos, including lots of scenic views of boats, seals, trees, water, and a giant bridge that kept getting in the way of my view of the sky.

The final album are an assortment of people dressed up for Halloween.

There are cupcakes in every single album. I'm considering seeking professional help for this.

Also, can I sing the praises of film cameras? Digital cameras are good when you need to be assured of a great photo, because you have instant gratification, but film has that element of surprise which makes it fun to work with. I have a bunch of rolls from the cyclocross race on Monday night which I'll probably post this evening, so expect more links tomorrow.

For the past year and a half or so I've been kicking around the idea of starting a science/health blog. I'd post links to breaking news or interesting information, ask a bunch of questions, maybe just spur people to think about the topic for a moment. I do have a day job that dovetails into this, sort of, but I probably wouldn't have the time to post a ton of in-depth analyses. It sounds alluring. It sounds alluring because, frankly, I'd like to morph into Carl Zimmer, and I'd very much like his day job.

The Status

Ok, so my sister is the first one who mentioned this. Last night, after the election, she was telling me about all the people she's friends with on Facebook who have these really negative status reports posted about how Obama is a socialist (my sister got offended because they weren't using the right definition of socialism). She said she thinks a lot less of some people because of their Facebook statuses.

I noticed it again today, when I saw a bunch of comments on Jezebel about women de-friending people on Facebook because of their statuses. Leslie even posted a status saying she's disappointed to find out (via Facebook) what some people really believe.

Personally, I only have an odd one or two friends on Facebook who have posted anti-Obama statuses. Some have graciously avoided it (kudos to them), but most of my friends have political persuasions that reflect mine, so it's generally not an issue. I think a lot of it is an issue for people who A) like my sister, friend or accept friend invitations from anyone they ever meet and B) who are more liberal than most of their families and friends, usually due to culture/geographical things.

Maybe everyone on Facebook with de-friend everyone whose political statuses disagree with their own views. Maybe people on Facebook now will only accept friend invitations from people who are legitimate friends (instead of everyone you ever meet once) or who have views more closely in line with their own.

Probably not.

But wouldn't it be funny if this election changed Facebook forever? I love me some Facebook theories.

The following are comments I pulled off Jezebel, because they're funny/sad/awesome/really amusing:


"Also, reading all my friends' Facebook statuses keeps making me cry, too. It's unbelievable how many of them supported Obama and amazing how it is affecting so many people in such profound ways. "

"Some of my friends' Facebook statuses are making me cry too, but for a different reason - I can't believe people that I used to think were decent and logical have turned into crazy assholes. "

"That sucks. Shockingly, I can only think of 3 or 4 of my hundreds of Facebook friends that were McCain supporters. That makes me happy. But I am in a liberal area, went to school in a liberal city, and am queer. So that might explain that. "

"I live in Middle America (yeah that red strip down the middle) and my Facebook page is oddly silent. heh heh heh. Yesterday I was fighting with self-righteous McCain supports and today I guess they've gone to the ammo store to buy up the guns. "

"I just "de-friended" one of my best friends because he's an unthinking Republican and I cannot having him harshing my mellow right now. I feel sort of bad about it, but I just do not need shit like this in my life: "_____ is a true American because he supports even the lowest of presidents, instead of whining like liberals". God, just STFU, go crawl into a hole and build a goddamn shrine to Sarah Palin's loveliness, fuck twit. "

'MY COUSIN is pulling that shit right now. He congratulated Obama, and when someone commented on his status, he mentioned that it would be nice if the left had been as "magnanimous" about the election results in 2000 and 2004. I just told Facebook to not show me stories of his on my news feed."

Read All About It!

As Gawker puts it, today's a great day to be a newspaper. When I got up this morning, I got up early to try to find a copy of the paper. I got to the Barnes & Noble a mile from my apartment two minutes after they'd opened, and they were already sold out of the New York Times. Same thing at the grocery store. Same thing at the gas station. Same thing at another grocery store, and then I ran out of time and had to go to work.

There are copies of some papers, like the Star-Telegram and the Morning News. But I don't want a copy of those. I want the big one. USA Today? Too much of a paper lite reputation for me to hold on to it until I die and my relatives have to dig it out of my attic.

I love this commenter on the Gawker website:

"Times Editorial: We now support term limits. Short ones. Say, 90 days."

Maybe this will be like the day-after-Thanksgiving sales that push retail stores into the black for the first time during the year (although that's looking doubtful this year). Can one day of fantabulous sales make up for an entire fucked over industry, though?

It'd be nice to think so.

Happy Tears

I nearly cried like eight times listening to Obama's speech on NPR while I was driving home from Dallas, but especially when he told his daughters they had earned that puppy that will move with them all into the White House.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to wake up early and buy a copy of the New York Times at a bookstore on the way to work.

On Edge

On the eastern coast, it's about two minutes from Nov. 4, Election Day.

I'm trying to be optimistic, but I'm still anxious. Something huge is going to happen, and I'm just hoping it's not a disaster.

Dan has a friend who calls us both part of the liberal media. My being in the media has nothing to do with it.

It has a lot to do with health care, women's rights, the wars in the Middle East, the economy. Fuck--I need this economy fixed. I'm going to have to start baking my own cupcakes instead of just buying them at stores if things keep going the same way. I don't have the skillz to keep up with the country if we've stayed on the path we've been on for the past 8 years.

Midnight now in part of the U.S. There will be anxious postings tomorrow, I'm sure. I'm not going to get rid of this nauseous feeling until I'm 100% sure my cupcake consumption is safe.

Next, A Dog

Saturday night was the first wedding of any of us out of our scijo class at BU. Some came into the class already married, like Molly and Andrea, and lots of us were dating people, but Liz and Pat were both students in our class who fell in love over science magazine articles and I am crossing my fingers they will now go on to produce a lovely second-generation of scijo dorkiness, hopefully in the form of a cute dog with an appropriately geeky name.

(I'm not ruling out children in the long-term, but seriously--everyone who starts asking married people when they're going to have kids should STOP. Immediately. The married people will have children when they want to have children. However, they should have pets when I want them to have pets. I like cutesy animal photos.)

The wedding was fantastic. Kirk, Karen, Eric, Dan and I shared a cab from the Union Square area out there, and Kate met us there. It was at the Park Chalet Garden Restauarant, and even though it was raining and blowing like a hurricane, it was very pretty and simple inside, with the giant fireplace decorated. All the friends and family stood around the fireplace as a justice of the peace married them, and then there was lots of drinking of the handcrafted beer and partaking of wines and appetizers. Food was good, later on, and the whole thing was simple and fairly casual, with about 120 people in attendance.

It was good to have most of the scijos from our class there. It made me realize how much I miss them all and that it's already been close to two years since we graduated and left for traveling or jobs or internships. These are people who came from various backgrounds but all came together to spend most classes with each other. Doug and Ellen said more than once that we were the most united class they'd ever had, and I think that's still true. Yeah, I'm shitty at keeping up with people, and I may not talk to someone for months at a time. But this weekend it felt as though when we're all in the same place again, there's that easy familiarity that comes with having seen people at their best and worst, all thrown into a new (and yet the same) situation.

There were toasts later on in the evening, and all these friends of Liz and Pat's stood and talked about hearing about them for the first time, meeting the other and hearing that they were going to be married. In the back corner of the bar, us scijos were talking about how they would come into class at the same time (usually just in the nick of time or a minute or two late) with coffee from the same place. We all knew it was a relationship before they admitted it. Perhaps one of us should have stood up and made some sort of speech, but we didn't. That's ok. Liz and Pat knew we were there; that's why we were all invited as a group.

Also, Liz and Pat (probably more Liz, if I had to guess) opted for cupcakes instead of a big traditional cake. I think I had three of them, and they were fantastic. I have also realized that I don't think I took any photos at the wedding except of the cupcakes. I'm a bad friend like that. I did see a professional photographer wandering everywhere, though, and flashing her camera in our faces, so I am hoping for a link to an online album soon.

Overall, it was a successful and wonderful trip to San Francisco. I ate cheap Asian foot, walked until my legs were going to fall off, went tourist-trap and locals-only, saw rocking Halloween costumes, got two friends married, and ate a ton of cupcakes. I even made it to the airport on time the next morning, despite being near drunk, crippled from high heels and confused by a time change.

Drowned

Saturday Dan and I got up relatively early to find it pouring in San Francisco. Rain everywhere, wind and a real chill, too. We decided it'd be worth the extra money to take a cab to the Academy, and we got there about a half hour after they opened. The building was huge, and I'd built the whole thing up a lot in my head, so I was geeking out when we got there and plopped down our $25 for each ticket.

The first thing we went through was a four-story rain forest, a giant glass dome that was humid and filled with a glass-bottomed waterway with giant fish, fake trees, real orchids, birds, little jewel-colored poisonous frogs and lots of psychedelic butterflies. You went up this spiral walkway around the exhibit, and there were little exhibits with examples of creatures found in rain forests, like really bored looking chameleons and fish. People were going nuts in there, trying to get photos of the butterflies.

Aside from the rain forest, we saw penguins, an albino alligator and the "living roof," which has seven mounds on it (to represent the seven hills of San Francisco) covered with different types of plants growing on it. They weren't in pots or planters; they were rooted into the roof itself. It was pretty, but also cold and rainy sideways, so I took quick photos and then we retreated.

Back inside we cut through the cafe/atrium area to head toward the aquarium, which was in the lowest level, under the rain forest and everything else. Cutting through the cafe I noticed they were blocking off a large section in the middle with those little A-shaped yellow "wet floor" signs, a huge wet spot on the floor, displacing families who had packed little baggies of apple slices to feed their cranky children. There were little puddles spotting the floor too, causing people to scoot their chairs out of the way.

It was brilliant. This awesome piece of architecture, this new building that cost $500 million and was 10 years in the planning, had a living roof that leaked. A lot.

Naturally, I took photos. They'll be posted, of course, as soon as I get them developed. If I'd just used a digital camera, I would have posted it already. I'd be a shitty mobile journalist. Awesomely enough, though, the San Francisco Chronicle didn't seem to do anything about the leak, so they suck too.

Maybe when people google the California Academy of the Sciences this blog post will show up and they will know that the roof leaks and AVOID THE PLACE IF IT'S RAINING. You will get wet and all the children will be in the basement aquarium, trying not to get wet and all screaming.

The aquarium was really neat, from what I could see around the strollers and children. It seemed like every kid under the age of 8 was there. Hundreds of children, running amok, looking at the fish and corals and everything else. I like aquariums, but I could hardly see anything, and I could feel myself getting more and more tense the longer we stayed. I hadn't eaten breakfast, and so was a bit frayed because of that, and then the kids just sent me over the edge. Dan and I cruised through and then went up to the bookstore, where I bought a postcard (a picture of the front of the museum, since I didn't get a good one due to the rain) and a chocolate bar. Then we took a cab back, ate food and spent the afternoon holed up in the hotel room, watching crappy movies. Really crappy movies. Seriously crappy movies.

I'll post about the wedding later, since it deserves a post of its own. I am back home right now, with my poor little neglected cat, who gets sad on his own. I am also all disoriented from the time change issues, but luckily don't have anything really scheduled at work tomorrow.

It's a bummer I've got to go back to work, though.

Halloween

Yesterday Dan rented a bike and took it across the Golden Gate Bridge and up Mt. Tam, a ride that took several hours and gave me lots of time to wander around the north side of San Francisco. It was raining lightly when we headed out to the bike place, out on Fisherman's Wharf, but it was also early, around 9, and the time and weather were keeping most of the tourists at bay.

(At bay. Get it? Ha!)

The bike shop dudes were bored and said no one ever comes in when it's raining. Dan got his carbon road bike and put on his helmet and shoes and headed out, and I had his digital camera, my film camera, and time on my hands.

I thought about going elsewhere, since everything I'd heard about Fisherman's Wharf and that area, including Ghirardelli Square, was fairly negative. Is it a tourist trap? Why yes, yes it is. And did I spend all morning there? Why yes, yes I did.

I didn't go into any of the super touristy shops, the ones that sell stupid Alcatraz items and vaguely dirty, sexual shirts. I wandered along the coast, looking at the boats and the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, taking photos and half reading all the signs. It was overcast, and I saw something flailing out in the bay and realized it was someone out swimming.

Ghirardelli Square is in that area, within walking distance, so I walked through but everything was still closed because it was early. I went back to the shoreline and walked out on some piers and through some Fort Mason park, going up a hill to look out toward the bridge. There were more bike people coming out at this point, and most of them got halfway up the hill, then ran out of steam and had to walk their bikes up the rest of the way, which I thought was hilarious. There was a little park up the hill, and I took photos and watched a huge out-of-control poodle tear around after a ball.

Ghirardelli was open at that point, so I went back to the cupcake shop and bought a few cupcakes. I sat outside and ate one, in front of a wine shop that had just opened, and the guy working there came outside and asked me how I was doing. I ended up going into the store and the guy convinced me to do a wine tasting, five tastes for $10. I think he was bored, though, because I got about 10 or 12 tastes for $10 and talked with him and ended up getting a little tipsy by about 11:30. It was kind of awesome. I bought a bottle of wine to take home and then went to a little woodworking shop, where the owner and artist ended up talking with me for about 45 minutes. He wanted to know what astrological sign I was, and we talked a lot about how he got into woodworking and how he ended up in San Francisco from New York during the Summer of Love. I was still feeling the wine, so everything was groovy, and I bought a bowl he made from heavy rosewood. I dunno what I'm going to do with it, but as Dan helpfully pointed out later on, I could put like one apple in it.

I put my headphones in after that and walked to the other end of Fisherman's Wharf, past the aquarium and people selling clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls. Lots of tourists. Walked by the sealions, who were noisy and surrounded by people taking photos, so naturally I stopped to take a few too. Then I went to Starbucks to sit with a coffee because I had been on my feet for a few hours and was tired, and I read and waited about an hour for Dan.

When Dan got back, we went back to the hotel, showered, got a very late lunch. After that we met up with Eric and went to an Irish bar to have some beer and wait for meeting all the wedding people at the Thirsty Bear. We didn't spent too long at the Thirsty Bear--about an hour and a half, I think, seeing Liz and Pat briefly since they were having to do the rounds talking to everyone who'd come to see them. Brad had awesomely invited us out to join a party in Noe Valley, so we hitched a cab and headed out there.

First of all, let me just say that taking cabs makes me nervous. In a new city you can never tell how much they're racking up the price by driving in roundabout ways, and then the woman who drove was like a bat out of hell last night. She was driving a small SUV-ish vehicle and then yakking on her little earpiece phone in what I think was Filipino, and she was scaring me. But we got there, and Brad was actually waiting outside the house in all his awesome glittery Blades of Gloriousness.

Brad's friend Valerie owned the house, and she was incredibly nice and gracious, bringing us in and giving us beer. The house was really nice and had a fantastic view, and it was good to see Brad, because I think the last time I spent any real time with him was when we were digging through Dumpsters at 3 a.m.

The party migrated to another party, a few blocks away, and I didn't know any of these people but they were all very welcoming and even let me harass them with my camera. (Photos to come later!) Whoever had the apartment also made kick-ass cupcakes. (I have pictures of the cupcakes, too. Because I'm not cool like that.) Stairs and a ladder went up the roof, and again there was a gorgeous view.

The whole night reminded me of a few nights I had in college, in strange cities but out partying with friends that you don't see often. You may not remember the parties you go to with friends you see on a regular basis, but you remember those odd nights. They're the nights where you don't really need a camera, because you'll have snapshots in your head, but I had one and film to use.

It took forever to find a cab back--people were wandering around in costumes all over the streets, drunken and tottering around. We finally flagged one and got home at a fairly decent time, and then naturally crashed.

This morning Dan and I hit up the California Academy of the Sciences. I'll post about it later, because it makes me tired thinking about it. Besides, we have to leave for the wedding in about an hour and ten, and I have to shave my legs. That could take forever.