Sunday, April 8, 2007

Carcinogenic clothing and too much cake

We had cake for dinner -- a brick of carrot cake for me and a doorstop of chocolate for Tim -- and now we're sitting in front of the telly clutching our tums and complaining about feeling sick. It's been that kind of weekend -- self indulgent and spur-of-the-moment, the way you imagine you'll run your adult life when you're about nine years old.
Yesterday we poked around downtown and picked up some bargains (a new work-appropriate top and jacket for me, a couple of t-shirts for Tim; oddly there was a countertop sign at the shop warning that the State of California felt it important that we know cancer-causing substances were present...), ate Thai noodles for lunch, walked through Chinatown (where I insisted on stopping at the pet shop where we got Vodka and Lime, so I could observe the behavior of the other Dwarf hamsters and therefore deduce what in tarnation is wrong with our moody little boogers) and ended up in North Beach, the Italian part of SF, where we ate blood orange and mojito flavored gelato in the sun. As far as the hams were concerned, there was nothing to see. An exhausted mummy ham lay on her side, shielding a cluster of adorable babies the size of lima beans. Too young for behavioral issues.
Then we caught a bus home and blobbed in front of a Doris Day film in which she traveled to the Bahamas with Cary Grant, which should have been just dreamy, except they weren't married. Not very Doris Day of her.
Today we returned to North Beach to eat toasted focaccia sandwiches at a cigar shop/cafe that no longer sells cigars, walked and walked and walked, and saw the fabled parrots of Telegraph Hill, squabbling as we nosed around other people's gardens and sat for a while on a parrot-watching bench just off a path leading to Coit Tower. It was so appealingly bohemian. Someone's dragged a parking meter up there.
Then to top it off, we celebrated Tim's Washington Post piece by eating appalling quantities of cake at the top of the Macy's building at Union Square. My nine-year-old self would be have been delighted.

I read it in the Washington Post

Tim was published in the Washington Post today! Check out his searing analysis of The Secret, a vicious little self-help book that blames life's losers -- including the victims of natural disaster and war -- for not thinking positively enough. Cos if they did, they'd all be healthy, wealthy and wise, apparently.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040601819.html