Monday, September 01, 2008

nice shot!

Adit and I just played several rounds of Wii Golf. It's almost like the announcer was programmed especially for me; whenever he said 'nice shot!' about Adit's game, the shot was actually nice, but when the announcer said 'nice shot!' for me, it usually meant that my ball had gone into a bunker or over a cliff into the ocean. Bastard.

Today was excellent and v., v. productive. Terry and I woke up early and attempted to have brunch at Dottie's True Blue Cafe, in the heart of the Tenderloin, but despite its sketchy location, it always has lines out the door, and the line at 9:15am looked to be at least an hour long. Ridiculous. So we did exactly what Vidya and I did when she tried to take me to Dottie's -- we turned around, walked back toward my apartment, and had breakfast at Moulin Rouge instead. It's this cute little diner run by an elderly Asian couple and their son, decorated in a weird, grungy pseudo-french style, with excellent greasy hash browns and great eggs. Adit told me that when I described the 'family' and the 'reasonably priced food' and the 'atmosphere', I sounded just like every other San Franciscan, which is horrifyingly true. Give me two more months, and I'll be a poster child for stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. Ugh.

Terry went home after breakfast, and I decided to venture out in search of a cafe where I could spend the afternoon working on my book. I found the Leland Tea Company a couple of blocks from my apartment, and am thrilled thrilled thrilled -- they have just as wide a variety of teas as Tea Time in Palo Alto or Samovar in SF, but the service is better than Tea Time and the teas and foods are cheaper than Samovar. And, it's a five-minute walk from my place, which is perfect.

I started out with a pot of the Russian Country tea -- smoky, of course, just the way Russian blends are supposed to be. I had been there for about an hour when Adit called; he was in search of a working partner, and he ended up meeting me at the tea place. We sat there for another few hours, doing quite a bit of work and sharing a pot of Irish Breakfast tea. I didn't have as much tea as I could have had, but what I did have made my hands a little twitchy, so I decided to take it easy.

We came back to my place around six and split a container of frozen enchiladas while playing Wii Sports. Then we worked for a little over four hours while watching the US Open match between Djokovic and Cilic (Djokovic reminds me a lot of our Ukrainian friend Vova), followed by an episode of 'Law and Order:SVU'. Then we played more Wii golf before Adit finally decided to call it a night.

I'm glad that Adit and I hung out; I would have likely thrown in the towel much earlier if I hadn't had him around, and so I was v. productive w/the book today as a result. I edited 38 pages, but of that, nine of them were for completely new scenes, which meant that I wrote 2250 words plus the various words that I plucked out and rewrote in the other sections. All in all, a good day's work -- a few more days like this, and I'll feel ready to share it with some trusted feedback providers.

Now, though, I'm exhausted -- time for bed!

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