i'll drink to that

Actually, I won't drink to that; after last weekend's going-out-with-a-bang social activities, I'm attempting to adhere to the no-alcohol rule for the next few weeks. As a result, today was pretty lowkey. I slept somewhat fitfully until ten a.m. -- I had been sleeping wonderfully, until someone started scraping paint off the house behind my apartment promptly at eight a.m. when such noises are permitted in the city. Boo. Of course, he stopped just after I finally got out of bed, although he went back to it for most of the rest of the afternoon; I really hope that he decides to sleep in tomorrow, or else I will be quite annoyed.

The midday continued to be mildly frustrating; Terry had plans to go to lunch with some of her b-school friends, who were 90 minutes late to meet her (who does that?), which unwittingly inconvenienced me as well because I was holding off on showering until after they left because Terry was using their brute labor to bring her desk up two flights of stairs from our storage unit, and I didn't want to shower until I was done helping with that task and unpacking/repacking the storage room. However, I can't really complain (even though I just spent two run-on sentences complaining) -- they got the desk up here with minimal drama, which means the storage room has more usable space that I can promptly fill with the last couple of boxes from my room + Terry's bike. But by the time they left and I showered, made some vague effort to dry my hair, and left the house, I was an hour later than intended to Katrina and Geetika's joint birthday party in Dolores Park.

Dolores Park was the general ridiculousness that it always is, with people openly drinking and smoking pot, some illicit DJ putting on a random dance party, a dude wandering around selling pot-filled caramels, some guy spending an hour shaving intricate patterns into another guy's head (with a sarong as a hair cape), a bunch of frisbee players, Vidya being herself, and some people wearing animal masks. It was a cloudy day in the city, but it was still a nice way to spend a couple of hours, even if I did spend the early portion of my afternoon hating on one of the party guests whom I didn't know -- she was playing croquet badly and too aggressively for her skill level, and hit my foot hard with the ball twice and almost missed me twice more even though I kept trying to move away from her. I bitched about her unwittingly to her boyfriend, but I was annoyed enough that when he said she was his girlfriend, rather than apologizing profusely like I normally would (and like I did to the strangers who were assaulted by a rogue champagne cork from Katrina's first champagne-opening experience), I just told him "good luck with that". Ha.

Anyway, after the croquet set was put away and I felt like I was in a safe zone again (albeit a safe zone surrounded by strange people in animal masks), I had a good time. I hung out with Jess, Chandlord, Katrina, Adit, Raja, and a variety of other guests, including a girl who was John's aunt's friend's daughter and is visiting the city to decide whether she wants to move here. We ended up splitting from the group and discussing writing for awhile, since she's a freelance writer/writing teacher with an MFA and I'm a novelist (if one can call oneself a novelist if one hasn't sold a novel, bleh). sssanyway, the afternoon was lovely, but since I wasn't drinking because of the ulcer friend, I made my farewells, grabbed a sandwich to go from Morning Due Cafe (one of our old haunts from the days Adit and I lived together, which were less 'days of wine and roses' and more 'days of sandwiches and insults' - and wine, I suppose), and came back to the ultraevil Marina. Once here, I ate half my sandwich, and then Terry and I watched half of last week's Project Runway. She had to go out before the show was over, but I finished it like the trooper that I am, and now I'm contemplating going to bed early so that I can get some stuff done tomorrow. We all know how that story will turn out, so I won't leave you in suspense -- I probably won't get anything done, and will beat myself up about it afterward, which is why I have an ulcer. Charming, eh? Goodnight!