Monday, December 05, 2011

don't you leave him, samwise gamgee

What shall I say about today? What can I say that will keep you from skimming this, looking for your own name before moving on to other internet pursuits? Probably nothing, I realize, so I'll just write what I normally write, and you can go about your merry way. Today was lovely in a quiet sort of way; I woke up close to noon, after my time out and about last night, and discovered that I'm probably getting sick -- the vague sore throat, the early stages of a cough, and the sinus problems gave it away. I didn't mope around feeling sorry for myself, though; I took a quick shower, and then Terry and I went to Morning Due and ate/worked for a couple of hours. I wrote four pages of a v. intense post-coital scene with Malcolm and Amelia, which I felt v. good about. Then I came home and talked to my parents for awhile; nothing's changed since I was home four days ago, although my father now has a herd of cattle, so I suppose that's a change worth noting (miniature cattle, which is even more worth noting).

Post parental call, I sat around for a bit and got annoyed over the BCS championship, since I would have liked to have seen Oklahoma St play LSU (and felt slightly bad for OSU that the game that kept them out of the championship was their loss to Iowa State, but c'est la vie). However, the Stanford/Oklahoma St matchup in the Fiesta Bowl should be a great game, particularly since [censored] went to Oklahoma St for grad school, and this is one of those rare times when our college teams will play each other. I v. nearly succumbed to temptation and got tickets for the Fiesta Bowl, since Chris Boyd is going and we had discussed it last night; however, upon further reflection, I would rather spend several hundred dollars on airfare to London/Paris (or, equally likely, alcohol) than on a two-day trip to Arizona. I may regret this if we never go to a bowl again in my lifetime, but I live in hope.

I was supposed to have family dinner with Chandlord and Katrina at 7:30, but at 6:15 (just as I was about to write for an hour, I swear), Chandlord called and asked if I wanted to have a drink with her first. That was a temptation I couldn't resist, so I picked her up and we went to Nopa, a bar/restaurant conveniently close to Katrina's place. Katrina joined us there v. shortly thereafter, and we all enjoyed a nice hipster cocktail (I had a Hemingway daiquiri to replace the one that I spilled at Adit's Christmas party several weeks ago; Chandlord had a cocktail involving amontillado (not an entire cask of it, just a shot) sherry and champagne; and Katrina had a v. lovely hot toddy). I must say that pretentious hipster cocktails are right up my alley. This bar even had a bottle of Templeton Rye prominently displayed, which will mean nothing to anyone who lives outside of Iowa or isn't a rye fanatic, but nearly made me abandon my hatred of whisky long enough to have a drink made out of it. I would like to get really good at making hipster cocktails, but living in a city like San Francisco, it's easier to just go out and get one or five whenever you feel like it.

After our drink, we nearly had another drink, but instead made a prudent decision to continue on to dinner at Enjoy Vegetarian in the Inner Sunset. They are, as you guessed, vegetarian, although they perform some sort of weird alchemy on things like seitan and tofu to make them taste like meat. In fact, I was a little weirded/grossed out by how much the fake stuff actually tasted like sea bass in the "eggplant sea bass" dish -- half the things on their menu look like meat dishes because they're called things like "sea bass" and "beef" (those sound like meat, right? am I crazy?), but they're actually weird soy/gluten products. However, everything was really tasty, and I did enjoy it. We also ran into Adit and Priyanka, who were there with Adit's brother-in-law and the BIL's brother, although we all pretended that we didn't know each other, which was the highlight of my evening.

We all decided after dinner that another drink was foolish, so I dropped them both off and came home. Then I proceeded to forget my decision of twenty minutes earlier and had a drink with Terry, although I didn't have to leave my house for it, since she made us cosmos so that we could drink while watching some tv. She went to bed, and I should have written, but instead I booked a round-trip-in-a-day flight to a secret location in a few days -- you'll have to read the blog to see where I go. I checked my United status and realized that I hadn't hit premier with my last trip -- I thought I would, and so I used miles to book my ticket home for Christmas rather than buying the ticket. But I'm 450 miles short, so I found a $100 roundtrip ticket for next Tuesday, leaving here at 7am and getting back around 2pm. If I had more time and wasn't trying to write a book, I would have gone overnight and seen Walter or Lizzie or someone else in the general vicinity, but time is of the essence, so instead of going to a cafe and writing next Tuesday, I'll just do my writing on an airplane. It feels a little ridic to do this, but given that $100 covers the cost of my bag check fees for two trips home next year that would be waived if I had premier status, I think it's worth it, particularly since I usually go home 3-4 times and also intend to go to London/Paris, New York, and possibly Dallas/Chicago/New Orleans (romance conferences - tbd).

But now, I really need to sleep; I have to train tomorrow, and I hope my illness doesn't take over before then. Goodnight!

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