and we would scream together songs unsung

I had a surprisingly good weekend, mostly free of slogging (although it perhaps should not have been--this coming week will be busier as a result). Friday night, Claude came over to have a tea party; we ordered desserts from Mike's Cafe Etc., and I picked up some salmon and an avocado so that we could have tasty sammiches, dessert, and tea while watching 'Little Miss Sunshine'. I had watched the movie when it came out in theatres, and Oniel and I had given it two enthusiastic thumbs up, but Claude had missed that showing. Since I got the movie for Christmas, we made up for it on Friday, and she loved it (as I suspected she would).

Saturday, Claude came to my place around noon and we left for San Francisco (aka the city of sin) to meet up with Vidya, Adit, and Peder (aka Timmy). We were supposed to have brunch, but we didn't get there until one, and then it took awhile to decide where to go. Adit proposed taking the ferry to Tiburon, which was accepted; but, after circling and looking for parking for twenty minutes, we missed the ferry, and so went to a cafe, where we discovered that we had missed brunch by about five minutes. Granted, since it was 2pm, it was perhaps unreasonable of us to demand (or want) brunch anyway, so we had lunch instead. Then, we were going to go to Coit Tower, but we couldn't find parking there either. I made them take me down the crookedest street in the world, which I had somehow never seen even though I've lived here for over seven years, and then Adit showed us the most beautiful basketball courts in the city before we parked at near Fort Mason and wandered around the piers for awhile. We saw some sketchy stuff there--disconcertingly-well-fed seagulls, people engaged in nefarious organ-selling (or, alternatively, picnicking--it's hard to tell what's in an Igloo cooler these days), and people catching crabs that were either fine or illegal depending on whether they were of the dungeness variety.

Anyway, we topped off our stroll with some delicious artisan chocolate drinks (I had a Mexican mocha and need to remind myself to stay away from Mexican-style chocolate drinks in the future; I keep trying them at different places in the mistaken belief that I just haven't found one that I like yet, but I think that I am anti the combination of chocolate and cinnamon. This may explain why I am always disappointed by mole poblano sauce at Mexican restaurants as well). Then, we went back to Adit's place and watched the Tivo'd Stanford-Oregon St. game; I took a nap, and it's clear how out of it I was that I thought that we lost the game, only to be told by my mother that we won by eleven points.

To shorten up this interminable blog post, we went to dinner, waited an hour for a table, and were rewarded w/some delicious pizza. Then, Claude and I escaped the dreadful city, and I slept for ten or eleven hours. Today, I was going to work on my romance novel in my favorite tea place, but was kicked out ten minutes after I sat down because they suddenly needed to prepare the place for a big group. Since I had barely made headway into my mini pot of tea, I was pissed, and they lost out on my patronage because I hadn't gotten around yet to buying the loose-leaf tea that I had intended to purchase. So, I came home and worked on my novel here instead, and was surprisingly productive; even with a healthy bit of procrastination, some stuff to send out for work, and a 45-minute conversation with my parents, I still managed to turn out ~2500 words today. That's 10 pages, and it catapulted me over the 30,000 word mark for the whole novel.

You won't find it online, though; I blocked access to the site. I don't want to share any more of it until I have a full rough draft, although I may look for volunteer editors at that time. I also shouldn't have kept writing tonight; I got back into it after working from 8:30-9:30, and unfortunately it's now 11:30--and I have to be at work at 7am for a conference call. Ugh. So, now it's time for bed, and hopefully I'll do some more writing this week!