so you grab a piece of something that you think is gonna last

I definitely did not feel good when I woke up this morning - last night's decision to embrace gluten was, perhaps, a mistake, even though it tasted fantastic. Of course, I also spent the night in a new-to-me hotel room, and the first night is often rough. So, I'm hopeful that tonight's sleep will be better.

But despite my middle-aged stomach issues, today was lovely. I got up, did some stretching, showered, etc., and drove down to Palo Alto to have lunch with Shedletsky and his wife and their younger child. I was essentially crashing a birthday celebration, since they had planned to have lunch before I told them I was coming to SF - but they added me to the reservation, and it was a delight to see them. We went to Nobu, which moved into Palo Alto sometime after I stopped spending time in the area - and twenty years ago, I never would have guessed that such an absurdly fancy place would go in next to the Peninsula Creamery. But the food was tasty, and the company was delightful, and so it was a nice way to spend a few hours near my old haunts.

After lunch, I went to three Starbucks looking for the new Stanford Starbucks mug that Anne had told me about, and I was unsuccessful. At the third Starbucks (my old haunt on Stanford Ave), I gave up the search temporarily, got a venti cold brew, and wrote for a couple of hours. Then I tried another Starbucks on El Camino, where I finally found the mug. Thus victorious, I went back to California Ave to Imperial Treasure, which is a new Chinese restaurant near the Caltrain station. California Ave has also upgraded itself substantially in the past couple of decades, which I have mixed feelings about.

But Imperial Treasure is a welcome addition. The friendship renewal crew met there for dinner, and Jane preordered a Peking duck for us, which they brought out basically as soon as Joann and I arrived (and a few minutes before Jane and Jen did). The duck was v. tasty, even though I avoided the gluten pancake that it's traditionally wrapped in. We also had some eggplant, some pea shoots, a scallop dish that was surprisingly heavy on garlic, and some soup that they made for us out of the duck carcass, and it was all pretty tasty. We also caught up with each other, of course, which was the real treasure.

Then I drove back to the city of sin and may have gone out tonight, but was feeling far too tired to rally. So I came back to my room around 9:15, crawled into my pajamas, and unwound for awhile. And now, it's time for bed so that I can do more fun tings tomorrow - goodnight!