I'm almost too tired to blog, which is a shame; for the first time in days, something has happened beyond going to the gym, reading, and thinking about zee romance novel, and you should benefit from my temporarily expanded horizons. However, in deference to the fact that my twelve-hour absence from my house made me incredibly tired, I'm going to try to keep this brief...
I managed to get out of bed by 7:30 -- too late to allow for hair washing and drying, but early enough to get to the monthly meeting of the San Francisco area romance writers in Berkeley without missing the beginning (or, more importantly, the breakfast waiting in the back). They were v. kind about acknowledging my recent award finaling, which was nice, and the discussion today was quite lively. The guest speaker hailed from Ottumwa; no one from outside of Iowa would know where that is, but since half my readership is from Iowa, it's perhaps worth mentioning. She talked about the differences between men and women when it comes to communication and body language so that writers can try to write believable characters of both genders. It was quite informative, although a lot of it was stuff I already realized for myself (particularly in the context of realizing that I have some "masculine" traits, like not wanting to talk about my feelings until I have them mostly sorted out; thinking that someone venting to me wants solutions, not just a shoulder to cry on; and avoiding eye contact when in the throes of some deep emotion or difficult conversation). But, it's all handy as I'm thinking about character development for my next book, so it was worth it.
After leaving Berkeley, I took the bridge (which was annoyingly crowded) to the city of sin, where I went out for lunch with the gracious and lovely Chandlord. We walked down to Arlequin in Hayes Valley, which is a wine bar with some passable foodstuffs; Chandlord only had a glass of wine, while I had a grilled ham and cheese (or a 'croque monsieur', since Arlequin tries to be all fancy) and a glass of Chardonnay (uncharacteristically, since I prefer reds, but it was quite nice). We sat on the back patio, which felt more like a lovely garden, and it was awesome despite the chilly San Francisco weather. Then, we walked up to Nob Hill -- and the walk, while not totally ridiculous, reinforced the fact that Hayes Valley and Nob Hill are named rather appropriately, since the walk was steep (and made worse by a wind rushing down the traffic corridors that made walking difficult). We met up with Tom (aka Tom Foolery) at a cafe called Contraband, which served a delicious latte that I enjoyed while catching up with him about writing and life. He self-published a memoir a few months ago and is working on something new, but he's basically about three years behind me in terms of general life path (he's interested in writing full time, but he's doing really well in a sales job that pays him plenty of money, so he's not ready to leave). It was great to see him, and we have high hopes of getting together to do some writing soon.
After parting ways with Tom and Chandlord, I rushed over to Beretta -- or rather, virtually crawled over, since traffic was terrible. I was twenty minutes late by the time I got there, but luckily I arrived before the guest of honor -- my friend Natasha's birthday is tomorrow, and her husband Chris planned a surprise birthday party for her. It was great to see her and Chris, particularly since I hadn't seen them in awhile; it was also great to eat some of Beretta's totally delicious flatbread pizza with burrata mozzarella. After an hour, I debated heading back down to the south bay, but then Kevin and Ashley showed up; they're getting married in July, and they both worked at my former place of employment for ages. Kevin actually trained me on how to do email support way back in the day, and we also overlapped for some amount of time in India, which shows how long he's been there. Anyway, I ended up staying until 7:45 catching up with them, and with Natasha when she escaped from her other guests.
All in all, it was a lovely party, and a great end to a lovely day. I felt vague, fleeting regret about moving out of the city and into the suburbs, but by the time I came back to my log cabin, changed into my pajamas, and curled up with a book, the regret flared out. And now that I'm done with my book, I have turned my ringer off and am going to go to bed sans alarm, hoping to get a decent sleep for the first time in days. Goodnight!
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