Sincere apologies for not blogging last night; I intended to blog, and then intended to let Vidius Chandicus guest blog, but I threw up as much red wine as I could get out of my stomach and went to bed instead.
So yesterday was quite good, and today would have been lovely if I wasn't in so much pain from yesterday. I managed to go to three Starbucks yesterday -- I had a doctor's appointment in Palo Alto in the morning, so I went to Starbucks near Secret Safeway and wrote for an hour; later, I met up with the owner of the house I'm renting to sign the lease at the Starbucks on Charleston; and I ended the day by having coffee with Natasha (later joined by Kim and Terry) at the Starbucks on Shoreline. It was quite a Starbucks overload, and no doubt contributed to the disaster that was my evening because I drank a lot of caffeine but really didn't eat much of anything throughout the day (always a bad idea when drinking later).
The owner of the house was quite nice; he's a semi-retired real estate agent who has this property as an investment. When I met him at the open house we were both in a rush and I didn't feel like we really clicked, but we had a nice conversation about the tech industry before signing the lease, and so it's nice to feel like I have some sort of tenuous connection with him (and that he seems put together and sane, which is always good in a landlord). I'm likely going to move the 9th or 10th, which means I'm going to have to pack the week after I get back from Cancun -- sooner than I had planned to move, but it will save money in the long run, and I'm also super super psyched about the place. This means that I only have to commute to the peninsula for twelve more work days before I move -- isn't it insane how fast this has moved?
Anyway, you don't care about that -- you likely just want to hear about the alcohol. When I got home, I had a few minutes to change and talk to Adit before Vidya and Peder (aka Timmy Timer) showed up. We opened a bottle of v. nice wine and sat around talking for an hour. When the time came to decide where to eat, Adit suggested the Olive Garden in Stonestown Galleria (inconveniently located on the other side of town, but conveniently located right on a MUNI line that goes past our place). This was clearly a joke, although the seed had been planted awhile ago because I kept saying that Adit and I should have a roommate dinner there -- but we essentially all dared each other into going, and no one backed down. It's funny; I used to like Olive Garden and think it was special (and celebrated my seventeenth birthday there with my high school friends and a waiter we nicknamed Al Fredo), but now that I've been exposed to genuine, delicious food of all varieties, Olive Garden is never high on the list of places to go.
ssssanyway, after deciding to go to the Olive Garden, we decided to go big, and we quickly drank another bottle of (vastly inferior) wine before catching the train. Adit also insisted that we take "roadies", which meant that Adit and Timmy had bottles of beer with them and Vidya and I each had mini bottles of champagne that I had been keeping in the fridge. Unfortunately, Vidya didn't want to finish hers, so I drank all of mine and half of hers, which is where things started to go downhill for me.
By the time we got over to Stonestown (likening it to a trip to Tuscany), we were all quite cheerfully drunk, and the waiter tolerated us quite well even though they sat us in a back corner of the restaurant. Adit promptly ordered two more bottles of wine, which we proceeded to drink while our conversation turned ever more absurd (and I kept dipping my breadsticks in Vidya's soup). One of the best moments was when Adit toasted us with "Prego!", the traditional Italian toast, and Timmy toasted back "Classico!", thinking that we were toasting with pasta sauce names. Ha.
Anyway, I was so focused on drinking wine and talking with my friends that I somehow forgot to eat most of my entree, and so I really didn't have dinner even though I picked at it (helping to ensure that I stayed wildly drunk). Katrina showed up at some point, and since she couldn't drink she offered to drive us home (which was v. much appreciated). Once home, Adit promptly passed out, and the rest of us watched some Craig Ferguson before I decided to throw up the contents of my stomach. Vidya left after that (note, I did make it into the bathroom and aimed properly -- I wasn't super sick, just aware that there was no good reason to leave that much wine sloshing around in my belly), and I somehow managed to inflate the air mattress and find some blankets for Timmy Timer before stumbling off to bed myself.
Needless to say, this morning was quite painful in that dizzy, spinny, dehydrated sort of way that my hangovers often are. I was not sick to my stomach this morning (another trait of my hangovers), but there was a very real risk that I was going to have to cancel my brunch plans. I somehow rallied, though, and cleaned myself up so that I could drive over to Pine and Laguna and meet up with Terry, Fred and Jamie (I just realized that Terry and Jamie are both gender-neutral names -- in this case, they're both women, as I'm sure you know about Terry because she was a regular on the blog before she went off to business school). I haven't seen Fred and Jamie since Terry left for school, but they recently bought a really cute apartment in a Victorian building over near the Fillmore area, which was adorable. We walked over to Fillmore and had brunch at a place that miraculously didn't have a line; I had a Coke and huevos rancheros in an attempt to get sugar and grease into my system to jumpstart my recovery. I was only moderately successful, and still felt like crap when we parted ways (on a high note, after discussing my plans for twin children named Mason and Dixon), but at least I was on the upswing.
After leaving them, I met up with Vidya, and we went a few blocks away from her place to have a latte (for her) and an iced tea (for me) at a place called farm:table. It only has one table inside, a communal affair that can seat 6-8, but we managed to get the corner by the open window, and so we spent some quality time catching up over delicious drinks, with sunshine streaming in through the windows. Eventually, though, we had to part ways, and I came home, talked to Adit, decided to throw in the towel on any attempt to repair the ravages of last night (there are still wineglasses all over the living room and an utter mess in the kitchen), and took a nap instead.
I'll try to be brief and wrap this up -- suffice it to say that after my nap, I freshened myself up, drove down to Palo Alto, and had coffee/dinner/coffee with Terry. I was v. glad that I got to see her by herself; the other two times I saw her this weekend were fun, but it's always nice to get some quality alone-time with friends. We met up at Coupa Cafe, where I had a tiger spice chai and she had a Chardonnay, and then we walked down University to the oddly-named Pasta?, where we had pasta, of course. It's quite funny that I managed to go to Olive Garden and Pasta? in the same weekend -- but the food was good, and of course the company was nice too.
We browsed around Borders for a bit after dinner, then went back to Coupa Cafe, where I attempted to write while Terry worked on a business school assignment. We talked for another hour or so after we both threw in the towel, and then I made the very boring drive back to the evil city.
So, it's been an action-packed couple of days! Tomorrow will be substantially less action packed; other than cleaning the apartment, the only other plan I have is to hide out and do some serious writing. Wish me luck -- and now, it's time for bed.
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