you're under the gun, so you take it on the run

This would be a four-minute post if I didn't feel so gosh darn good about today; the need to make sure I hit all the highlights outweighs the need to go to bed. As I've complained about bitterly in the past, I've started getting up earlier of my own accord. Today was no exception, and I was out of bed around eight a.m., giving me plenty of time to do stuff around the house before meeting John and Adit for our afternoon festivities.

Today was the Red Bull Soapbox Derby, held in Mission Dolores Park. It was definitely worthy of the city of sin -- waves of humanity packed into a park to watch crazy people careen down a hilly street in self-built contraptions. In order to prepare for the experience, we had to eat lunch first. We went to Ike's Place, which I blogged about in February -- it's the sandwich place where Ike used to make sandwiches by appointment only. He's apparently decided to capitalize on his fame, since he now takes orders over the phone and no longer requires an appointment. I'm glad we called in our order, though, since the line to order a sandwich and the wait to receive it was long. But Ike no longer runs the place alone with his mother; he's hired several kids to help him out, including the one who inexplicably checked the garbage first when we said we were there to pick up our sandwiches.

The sandwiches were absolutely delicious. I had the [name of the girl you're dating], which consists of chicken, pepperjack, avocado, and honey mustard on dutch crunch bread. Perhaps you can tell that my favorite sandwiches involve poultry, pepperjack, and avocado, but this one was particularly good, even if I chose not to get Ike's special dirty sauce because I didn't want to destroy my new sweater. We ate them on the steps of the Mission Dolores church, a slightly sacrilegious venue that was nevertheless perfect because of the bright sunshine and ample people-watching opportunities.

The derby itself was quite entertaining, although perhaps not as entertaining as my viewing companions. Adit seemed to be overly entertained by the fact that one of the announcers claimed that his name was Sheboy (not sure if that's how he spelled it, but it was pronounced sha'BOY, which I loved). People clearly put a lot of effort into their derby cars; I don't know who won, but winning involved a combination of pure speed in getting down the hill, style of the car, and strength of your pre-race skit (?!). Every team had a driver plus 3-4 pit members, and they would do a skit at the starting line before pushing the car to get it started. It was all totally ridiculously amazing, and there was a huge crowd; the weather has been gorgeous here, and people were clearly excited to hang out in the sunshine, drink, and smoke pot. Ah, San Francisco, how I love you.

After the derby, we hung out at a cafe for awhile, and marveled at how all the kids had the same overly-large, sad-looking eyes as their father, who appeared to own the store. John and I spent a significant amount of time trying to explain to Adit that you indeed would not want to buy the cow when you can get the milk for free because the cow is only good for milk -- you would typically not want to eat the cow, since you just want to keep it around for milk production, and dairy cows are not as delicious as beef cows. Adit tried to counter by saying that if we were stuck in the wilderness, one of us would of course eat the other one to survive, which devolved into debating whether John or I would die sooner, given that we are both totally allergic to the wild. On that cheerful note, we parted ways, but I'm hopeful that we'll get together again in the future.

I took a nap when I got home, and then drove down to the south bay to hang out with Chandlord. Chandlord is perhaps the only person I would have driven to Mountain View for today, given that I spend too much time in my car as it is, and seem to be developing back problems as a result. But, she's in town for just a couple of days for a wedding, and I wanted to make sure that I saw her before she took off again. We had dinner at a Thai place in Mountain View, followed by lattes at a nearby cafe, which was v. nice. I'm glad we got to hang out; while she can keep up to date on my life via the blog, I don't know what's going on with her unless we talk online, and I'm rarely online due to my constant attempts to be efficient with both work and the book. Chandlord is quite winning, and I'm glad that she's settling into her routine in Boston, even if I don't want her to get *too* settled because I want her to move back. Then again, if she moves back, I'm homeless, but I'm willing to pack up my eighty boxes of stuff and move again if it means Vidius Chandicus is back in the area.

Now that this has gone well beyond a four-minute post, I think I should go to bed. I'm really happy that I took a day off from both work and the book, but the deadline for the romance contest that I entered -- and my own personal deadline for finding an agent -- is rapidly approaching. So even if all I want to do tomorrow is hang out, I'm going to spend most of it working on the book instead. Goodnight!