Sock Francisco - Episode Six:
Wednesday was a melange of moderately sedentary activities set on the heels of our icy excursions at Tahoe. The highlight of the morning was seeing my friend Dan and his partner Rin. Andrew had initially suggested we met up at a place called - to Dan's sheer unadulterated horror - The Crepevine. Dan insisted that to eat there, he would have to come dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and bow tie, although I am told Rin refused to let him leave the house in such. Fortunately for all involved, I discovered in advance that the Crepevine was an untolerably loud and crowded place and we retreated to a cafe down the street, which also sold crepes. None of us consumed crepes, but we did discuss our future "Crepe" restaurant title: I suggested Crepe Expectations. Dan went with Statutory Crepe, which would be kind of a creperie/bar... see it would be a crepe place subject to many "statutory" regulations due to our serving liquor... It would have a large statue of a crepe in the middle of the room, and several drinks named after various offenses in the penal code. After our future careers as restarateurs was established, we went on a quick amble up and down Irving while I spent some attention to discouraging him from attending our wedding... he alternated between insisting that he thought he should come and saying things like "see this is what is so stupid about weddings and all that unnecessary crap" when I mentioned going to a lesson for the mother-son dance later in the day.The issue of his attendance remains undecided.
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| Of course I had to document the mother-son dance progress for my report back to my dad on "the competition" Will have to break out the spirit fingers if they keep us this level of cute! |
I had (superfluously) pledged not to be one of those snotty pretentious "well my dance teacher Nathan SIIIIMLEEEEER ... maybe you've heard of him" or "well, I know when I competed, rated me particularly well for me " folks. Fortunately I never had a moment's impulse to do so.
After some attempts to practice over a Zumba class (note to everyone: Zumba always wins), we went to a chic little Vietnamese/French place called Le Colonial. They had a little jazz band with a great vibe upstairs, and Andrew and I danced a bit before our food arrived and before the dance crowd flooded the intimate bar space. The singer had this honeysuckle alto that reminded us all so much of ... somebody but we still cannot ascertain whom. Delegates from the SF swing scene were there with their charlestons and vintage outfits. It was a far cry from the mountains, but a lovely way to end the trip.
Sock Francisco - The Departure:
And on the seventh day, Sock Francisco rested. Our flight was five minutes shy of 10:00 a.m. Lisa had a meeting that morning with clients who were building a board room that would not be out of place in your favorite teenage comic book (I know my favorite comic book just started driving - oh they grow up so fast). Its main feature is a brobdignagian table for twenty. Each seat is pre-ordained for a given member and fully equipped with individual web cams and computer feeds. These all feed back to one large composite screen... somewhere. So, you know, they can have teleconferences and/or sing The Brady Bunch together and see it all come alive on the big screen! I know far too little about architecture or tech support to really understand, but the project sounds marginally impossible and morbidly fascinating. It's opened all kinds of interesting doors - for instance, the "every one looks really weird with this up-facing cameras, we'll need to uplight them to fix the weirdness... how do we do that??" And, lest we forget, where will the giant lava lamp fit into all of this? Last we'd heard there was some plan to actually build the table, to get some specs for fit in the room and how to do wiring, then destroy that table to continue building infrastructure. Lisa suggested maybe a template of the table would be more cost and time efficient... Whatever happens, I know this: I want that table. But that was an aside to say that Lisa had a meeting and so she offered to take us to the airport early. Since I'm chronicly early to everything, "early" turned out to be "about just a great amount of time" for me. I'd been up since five and packed since seven, so by eight, I was really ready for anything. Anything would turn out to be "wait in a series of lines and areas," and I'd give myself a 9.8 for my waiting efforts (always room to improve).
Andrew and I spent most of the morning reading out respective books. He had been reading my copy of Quiet (see, see, this is why I'm the way I am honey... ok, now see that here on page 98, I speak quietly because I *that's how I'd like others to speak to me!!!* I'm not just a "mutterer").
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| Lisa and Tom, who look so perfect together it always makes me smile. |
Sock Francisco - The Departure:
And on the seventh day, Sock Francisco rested. Our flight was five minutes shy of 10:00 a.m. Lisa had a meeting that morning with clients who were building a board room that would not be out of place in your favorite teenage comic book (I know my favorite comic book just started driving - oh they grow up so fast). Its main feature is a brobdignagian table for twenty. Each seat is pre-ordained for a given member and fully equipped with individual web cams and computer feeds. These all feed back to one large composite screen... somewhere. So, you know, they can have teleconferences and/or sing The Brady Bunch together and see it all come alive on the big screen! I know far too little about architecture or tech support to really understand, but the project sounds marginally impossible and morbidly fascinating. It's opened all kinds of interesting doors - for instance, the "every one looks really weird with this up-facing cameras, we'll need to uplight them to fix the weirdness... how do we do that??" And, lest we forget, where will the giant lava lamp fit into all of this? Last we'd heard there was some plan to actually build the table, to get some specs for fit in the room and how to do wiring, then destroy that table to continue building infrastructure. Lisa suggested maybe a template of the table would be more cost and time efficient... Whatever happens, I know this: I want that table. But that was an aside to say that Lisa had a meeting and so she offered to take us to the airport early. Since I'm chronicly early to everything, "early" turned out to be "about just a great amount of time" for me. I'd been up since five and packed since seven, so by eight, I was really ready for anything. Anything would turn out to be "wait in a series of lines and areas," and I'd give myself a 9.8 for my waiting efforts (always room to improve).
Andrew and I spent most of the morning reading out respective books. He had been reading my copy of Quiet (see, see, this is why I'm the way I am honey... ok, now see that here on page 98, I speak quietly because I *that's how I'd like others to speak to me!!!* I'm not just a "mutterer").
However, being an introverted book, it needed some recharge time and apparently opted to stay at the ski cabin in Tahoe. So, instead he read some sci-fi book, which will not help him understand me, unless i become a robot. I started Wind Up Bird Chronicle - you know, the Murakami with a male protagonist going through kind of an existential life crisis, surrounded by an insightful but kind of distant young girl, some prostitutes, a couple of folks with special visions, and then he kind of crosses over some symbolic traverse into the other world, and maybe there's a cat or two and some references to the war... as Zach (my brother in law elect) says, Murakami may always write the same book, but it's a damned good book, so I'm not complaining. This one is a particularly enjoyable manifestation, but then I say that about all of them.
While the plane dithered and waivered on the tarmac, we eventually took off, with Andrew generously switching seats so I could sit in the aisle and not climb over him fifty times to get to the bathroom (it's kind of our pact based on mutual interests - he will let me sit on the outside of everything, and I won't constantly pester him with my insatiable restlessness). It was kind of a mom-to-mom relay pass that went off smoothly. My mom met us at the gate and helped us escape the madness. She also came bearing goodies. My new hat is from our local Spark Museum of Electricity. She and David, and Andrew and I went there over Christmas to watch the electricity demo with Tesla machines and mad scientists and so on. She also brought Andrew's last present from me: new business cards for his current status as Calculus Cowboy. I'm kind of proud of them, and kind of jealous because now I wish my cards were more fun. I hid those in his luggage while dropping him off. And with that we parted ways and returned to our bi-townal relationship. The great holiday experiment concluded well: we can apparently share the same living space for about three weeks.I'm sure this bodes well for that marriage thing!
Sock Francisco Epilogue: Back to the Shire
Reading a Murakami novel seems to be my emerging New Year's tradition. This began on the cusp of 2011, when I read the entirety of Kafka on the Shore in a 24 hour period while convalescing with some odious ague. And some people need drugs to get to that mental state. To them, I say HA. This year, it's the aforementioned Wind Up Bird Chronicle. It seems only appropriate to include my kitty in the reading. A cat, naturally, features in the novel that is as much about the aftermath of marital strife as a Murakami novel can be concisely summarized as about anything. The cat has vanished at the beginning of the book, but returns after some major transformational weirdness that I will not attempt to describe. The protagonist realizes then that although they have referred to the cat with his brother-in-law's name as a joke, the cat never had an actual name. Since the prodigal cat happens to be repasting on mackerel, he names him as such. While enjoying the book with my kitty, I have refrained from renaming Karl Mackerel, so far. Although given his food preferences seem to run a little more towards human food, I'd probably have to rename him something like pilfered almond butter or tiny lethal nibbles at the cereal box.
I decided not to return to work for the inevitable triage, and considering that Leslie was violently ill most of the day I think this was a good call. Instead, I read ,did laundry, organized all my holiday pelf, and otherwise reset my life into some sort of acceptable order. And in the ultimate game of catching up, my dad and I had a lesson with Nate to recrystallize our progress in the father-daughter dance. Naturally, I brought in my 30 hours of documentary footage (from every angle and filled with pages and pages of stats) on our competition in Andrew and Lisa's mother-son dance. They were good. Too, too good. We agreed that pulling a Tanya Harding moment would both be bad sportsmanship and possibly undermine my other goals for this wedding, so it was back to work! It might just be time, I suggested, to bring spirit fingers into the mix. For the time being, we settled with running through the music in front of - brace yourself for true horror - mirrors!!! This may have been more an incidental effect of being consigned to the brumal basement, an atmosphere which instantly returned my toes and finger tips to the peaks of Sugar Bowl, albeit in slightly lighter foot wear. We must suffer for excellence! Once the pyrotechnics are incorporated into the dance, I'm sure we'll win perfect scores from the judg-... er... wedding guests.
While the plane dithered and waivered on the tarmac, we eventually took off, with Andrew generously switching seats so I could sit in the aisle and not climb over him fifty times to get to the bathroom (it's kind of our pact based on mutual interests - he will let me sit on the outside of everything, and I won't constantly pester him with my insatiable restlessness). It was kind of a mom-to-mom relay pass that went off smoothly. My mom met us at the gate and helped us escape the madness. She also came bearing goodies. My new hat is from our local Spark Museum of Electricity. She and David, and Andrew and I went there over Christmas to watch the electricity demo with Tesla machines and mad scientists and so on. She also brought Andrew's last present from me: new business cards for his current status as Calculus Cowboy. I'm kind of proud of them, and kind of jealous because now I wish my cards were more fun. I hid those in his luggage while dropping him off. And with that we parted ways and returned to our bi-townal relationship. The great holiday experiment concluded well: we can apparently share the same living space for about three weeks.I'm sure this bodes well for that marriage thing!
Sock Francisco Epilogue: Back to the Shire
Reading a Murakami novel seems to be my emerging New Year's tradition. This began on the cusp of 2011, when I read the entirety of Kafka on the Shore in a 24 hour period while convalescing with some odious ague. And some people need drugs to get to that mental state. To them, I say HA. This year, it's the aforementioned Wind Up Bird Chronicle. It seems only appropriate to include my kitty in the reading. A cat, naturally, features in the novel that is as much about the aftermath of marital strife as a Murakami novel can be concisely summarized as about anything. The cat has vanished at the beginning of the book, but returns after some major transformational weirdness that I will not attempt to describe. The protagonist realizes then that although they have referred to the cat with his brother-in-law's name as a joke, the cat never had an actual name. Since the prodigal cat happens to be repasting on mackerel, he names him as such. While enjoying the book with my kitty, I have refrained from renaming Karl Mackerel, so far. Although given his food preferences seem to run a little more towards human food, I'd probably have to rename him something like pilfered almond butter or tiny lethal nibbles at the cereal box.
I decided not to return to work for the inevitable triage, and considering that Leslie was violently ill most of the day I think this was a good call. Instead, I read ,did laundry, organized all my holiday pelf, and otherwise reset my life into some sort of acceptable order. And in the ultimate game of catching up, my dad and I had a lesson with Nate to recrystallize our progress in the father-daughter dance. Naturally, I brought in my 30 hours of documentary footage (from every angle and filled with pages and pages of stats) on our competition in Andrew and Lisa's mother-son dance. They were good. Too, too good. We agreed that pulling a Tanya Harding moment would both be bad sportsmanship and possibly undermine my other goals for this wedding, so it was back to work! It might just be time, I suggested, to bring spirit fingers into the mix. For the time being, we settled with running through the music in front of - brace yourself for true horror - mirrors!!! This may have been more an incidental effect of being consigned to the brumal basement, an atmosphere which instantly returned my toes and finger tips to the peaks of Sugar Bowl, albeit in slightly lighter foot wear. We must suffer for excellence! Once the pyrotechnics are incorporated into the dance, I'm sure we'll win perfect scores from the judg-... er... wedding guests.
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