San Francisco Views

Today Javier and Micah and I went to Coyte Tower to see some more awesome San Franciscan views. They chilled while I wrestled with my camera to try to get it to work for me. It took some coddling, but I got some nice shots. I don't know what is up with my bladder but I've had to pee more since I got to the U.S. than I can remember in recent history!

I handed my camera/bag to Javier and I was like, "Okay, boys, I'm going in!" I was nodding at the automatic public toilets. This would be my first time. There was a line for the toilets of course. I got out my quarters and waited. I look up to see a sheepish looking couple come out of the toilets together. Everyone around me gave each other an "mmm-hmmm, we know what you've been doing in there!" look. I was really busting at this point. So the next lady goes in and starts throwing up anad retching with the gusto of a drunk frat boy at Homecoming. Good lord! After several minutes of this, I realised there was no amount of automatic cleaning that was going to make this toilet "ok" so I got out of line and decided to "hold it."

Javier had to go too, so we left Micah in hopes of finding a place to pee. We found this bar and was like, "Can we please use your bathrooms?" The lady behind the bar held up her thumb and index finger and made like a "2 inches" or "a little" sign. We were perplexed. Did she mean we could only pee a little bit? Was she making some rude reference to Javier's private bits? We were like, "huh?" and she goes, "I just need to see some ID." hahahahahahaha! So we got IDd and then we peed. Sounds fair to me!!!

After all that Jav and I drove to Twin Peaks for more beautiful views, but I thought I was going to pull a Mary Poppins and fly off one of those peaks, it was so windy! I took my picures and was like, "okay, back in the car, it is cold!"

We went and got a snack at Sparky's Diner. I got cheese fries this time (nothing but healthy eating since I got home!) but I got much less cheese on me than yesterday. Then we met up with Karen and her fiance for a drink at Mecca. My raspberry mojito was fab, but next time i'm gettitng the bloody bellini that Javier got! Karen looked just the same! She has not aged in 6 years! She said the same about me ;-) It was so great to see her!

Then me, Javier, Karen and Bill went to Indian Oven for dinner where we met up with Micah, David (I was in Barcelona with him and Jav in 2002), and Linda (a friend of Karen's whom has pictures of me and her and Karen from Senior Week at Boston Uni in 1999 on her wall!) Dinner was delicious and it was great to see everyone!

After that, just had a quick drink at a club with Jav, Micah, and David. The boy who was working the door at this club was super cute! The bathrooms were hilarious - the soap was in squeezeable ketchup containers and there was a little TV playing "Pretty in Pink". I'm sure Molly Ringwald would love to know that people were watching her while they were in the can!

We went back to Jav's place and I showered and packed my stuff so I'd be ready to go at 7.45am to head back to the East Coast.....bye San Fran, you've been a great place! Thank you heaps to Javier for being an awesome and super generous host! :-)

Beautiful views from Marin County

I was feeling way too overly confident last night. I went to bed around 11.30pm thinking, "Pffffft, jet lag, we'll see about that." I woke around 9am feeling vaguely good and refreshed. I was pleased. But for some reason I thought I'd just stay in bed until 9.30am. Oh, if only I'd gotten up at 9am! I don't know what happened in that hour and a half, but good lord, next thing I know, it is 11am and I feel like I've just been hit by a truck. Or that I've taken an entire bottle of Nyquil. Damn jetlag! So Javier made me breakfast and this Vitamin C energy drink + I took a shower, and we were off!

Today Javier drove me to see some gorgeous million dollar views from the Marin County area. We did an hour and a half walk through Muir Woods, which was lovely. Oh, if only my parents could have gone on this type of walk through the woods, as opposed to the 'roughin' it' hike through the Daintree Rainforest in Queensland ;-) It was an easy walk with awesome surroundings. And we overhood this important fact we shall never forget. A Redwood is a Sequoia and a Sequoia is a Redwood! So remember that for your next trivia night! ;-)

After Muir Woods, we drove up to Muir Overlook and it was AMAZING! On one side was rolling green hills tapering off into a lovely coastline and the other side had some huge hill action with trees on top that made me think it looked like a big ol' dinosaur hanging out in the ocean (the trees being the spikes on its back). My digital camera is dying a slow + painful death and it took me like a half hour to get my first picture, but I am persistent! So I did manage to get some nice shots, even if they took forever!

We stopped for a snack on the way to the beach and we could hear this buzzing/flapping sound so we knew there was a bug in the car, but we didn't know what it was. Thank god I did not know what it was before we got out of the car. It was this enormous dragonfly. It was actually very beautiful - blue and black, but it was so huge, it probably would have felt like a small bat flying in your hair if it had flown to your head. We tried to flick it out of the car, but it was not having any of it! So we left it in the car while we got somem food. I got cheese nachos and probably got more cheese ON me than in my mouth, but I like to get into my food, what can I say? ;-)

We tried to get the dragonfly out of the car again, to no avail. Okay, when I say "we" I mean Javier. I couldn't look as he tried to get the dragonfly out with his sleeve. Then I hear him say, "Um, I think it might be dead!" and I was like, "Really? Why do you think th---OH. OH" When I turned to look at the dragonfly, I saw what he meant. Either that sucker was dead or it was practicing some Yoga, perhaps an advanced goddess pose or something. Ooooops. Poor thing.

That night Javier took me to a yummy Thai place in Berkley and I had a very nice chicken yellow curry and a fantabulous Thai iced tea. MMMMM. I love me some Thai iced tea!

I need an ass transplant

Okay, so guess who did not get an aisle seat? That would be me! Instead, I got REALLY lucky and got to sit in the MIDDLE OF THE MIDDLE! I got to share arm rests and foot space with strangers! Man, I was bummed. When I checked in I was all, "So, I have an aisle seat, right?" and the agent was all, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." Whatever! I bet that lady didn't even hear what I said. She did not ask me if I had packed my bags myself, if the bags had been unsupervised at any point, if I had any sharp objects in my carry-on luggage, etc, so I don't think she was all that concerned about anything.

Once on the plane, the woman to my left helped me look for alternate seats and there were a couple empty aisles but when I tried to go move to them, the people in the seats next to them snarled at me and were like, "NO! I am moving here when the plane takes off!" Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. So, back to the middle for me. At least the lady to my left was really nice. I'd say she was in her 50s, a graphic arts teacher from the University of North Dakota, and she'd just taken some Advanced Photography students up and down the east coast of Oz and New Zealand to take some lovely photos - how cool is that? She was a hip and funny lady - I'd like to have her for a teacher! We got to talking about how her parents never took any photos of her when she was growing up. She says she has like 3 pictures of her as a kid and that was it. I asked her if she thought that is why she takes so many pictures of her kids and why she has taught everyone in her family how to take photos of them and their kids etc, so try to make sure what happened to her does not happen to them. She smiled and was like, "Yeah, probably!" :-)

The girl on my right did not say a single word to me until like 10hours into the flight, when she wanted to borrow my Rolling Stone magazine. We talked during the last hour of the flight and she was nice too. She was an architecture student who'd just spent 2 weeks in Oz. She wants to come back to Australia too. I was all, "Yeah, I hear ya!" ;-)

Anyhoo, I want an ass transplant! It felt SO good to just stand up every chance I could on that flight. I would have happily stood for several hours. I think for the flight back to Sydney I need to get one of those doughnut things people sit on after they've been shot in the ass. It would serve dual purposes. 1) It would be nicer on my ass than the airplane seat 2) It would give me a much needed height boost and a chance in hell of being able to watch a movie on the flight. My plane headphones were broken, but I couldn't be bothered to ask the flight attendant for another set as I realised I couldn't see the screen anyway without straining my neck, and even then, it was like 1/3 of the screen. So I missed Be Cool + Million Dollar Baby. (I had really wanted to see MDB, as I missed that in theatres.) Then I thought to try my new headphones, only I could not get them out of the "special" carrying case. Oh, the case was "special" alright, as in you need some sort of special training to remove the headphones from the damn case. If you turned the case one way, the ear pieces would come out, but the plug would go back in and if you turned it the other way, the ear pieces went in while the plug came out. I tried to rip the thing apart, but I was afraid of elbowing my neighbours accidentally. I gave up, but when Hitch came on, I was like, "I need to watch a movie! I can't listen to my CD player without headphones anyway, I am not in the mood to read right now, and I cannot sleep!" So a half hour later...i ripped that sucker up! The headphones worked in the plane arm rest and i folded up my pillow and blanket and sat on them for extra height. I slowly sunk down after a while, but it helped a lot!

So, enough about the plane! I am in San Francisco!!! The time difference never fails to amuse me even though I've taken this trip plenty of times. But yes, it is always weird to arrive in the U.S. three hours BEFORE you left Sydney.

Javier picked me up at the airport (bless him!) and it was so good to see him. The little sweetie had decided to rent a car for the weekend so he could drive me around, so that was very very cool of him! As I had not slept longer than about 10 minutes at any point during the flight, i worked out that I had probably slept a total of 4.5 hours over the last 2 days. So I was tired. But i would not wuss out!

I stayed up all day without a nap! I was very impressed with myself! Javier took me around his Berkley campus, which was very beautiful. I loved Boston Uni (BU) but it sure would have been nice to have a lush green campus like this one!

We had lunch at this tiny little Brazilian stand with the most delicious steak sandwich ever! MMMMMMMM. I am salivating just thinking about it now. I wish I had the recipe for that guacamole-like sauce that was on the sandwich. To die for!

We also drove to Javier's old neighbourhood to check out this lovely lake he used to run around. Unfortunately I suck and cannot remember the names of either at the moment...

Javier cooked dinner for myself and the adorable Micah (yummy salmon and yummy rice) and we just ate and chatted, so we did my two favourite things!

Officially Insane/U.S.A. or Bust!

I think I am officially insane because I have to leave for the airport in about an hour and I'm still not quite done packing and here I am checking my email and blogging. I am even thinking of dashing over to Broadway to pick up some new headphones since my old crappy pair just broke as I was packing.

I won't feel relaxed until I'm on the plane. I only slept for about 3 hours cause I was busy packing, procrastinating from packing, sending last minute emails/notes to work about stuff that needs to get done while I'm away, etc. etc.

So, first stop in the U.S. will be San Francisco, to see Javier (yay!) and hopefully Karen (woo-hoo!)too, even though I just realised this week I don't have her phone # so I've emailed her to get it and hopefully her hotmail won't fail me now!

After San Fran, it's off to Springfield, then Boston, then Richmond Virginia, then back to Springfield, then New York, and back to Springfield again before heading back to Sydney.

This will be the first time I've celebrated my birthday in the Northern Hemisphere in like 6 years - I want a warm birthday!!! :-)

Okay, I really am going back to packing now, for real. So I will have to shut down the computer. :-( I haven't done one of these 14 hour flights in over a year and a half, but as long as I get an aisle seat, I will be a happy gal. I begged my awesome travel agent to get me one and she said to just double check with the airline agent as I check in that I do have an aisle seat. I need to be able to walk around regularly on these flights and I don't mind if people climb over me but I hate climbing over people. My ass really killed me on my last flight to/from the States, so an aisle seat would really help so I can stand up and walk whenever I want.

See ya later, taters! Next stop, San Fran! :-)