Eating, Drinking and being Mary
Alaska Flight #596
Monday, February 14, 2005
9:33 PM PST
Heading home after a three-day weekend. Just finished the book I was reading (ADD-Friendly Strategies for Organizing Your Life), and I have 55 minutes till the plane is due at the gate at SFO. No time like the present to write.
You may recall (see previous entry) that my Friday flight to Seattle was delayed by a couple of hours-apparently, bad weather Friday morning in Seattle prevented the plane from taking off, thus backing up the schedule for the day. The delay meant that I arrived at SEA with just enough time to tae the little train thing to the north terminal and meet Dan’s flight as it arrived-so, no real harm there.
We stayed at the Grand Hyatt in Seattle-it was very nice, and it hat this really cool motorized blinds system with a switch next to the bed. Definitely a “must have” for those mornings where you need some bright light stimulus to get you up and about.
Friday night, we went out with one of my friends that I’ve known since my days in St. Louis, and who is a grad student at UW. Also with us were one of Dan’s college roommates and his boyfriend. We were treated (unexpectedly) to dinner at an Italian place on Capitol Hill, and then went out Owing to the boyfriend being underage, we went to a 18+ place that has drag shows, where we spent a few hours watching the drag queens perform and having some drinks. The underage boyfriend went off to do his own thing with his friends, and the four of us remaining opted to high-tail it to Manray. I don’t remember much about Manray except that someone grabbed my penis while I was peeing at the urinal (that’s never happened to me before-I thought I’d seen everything, but it appears I was mistaken), and it was very white - the walls, the bar, etc., were all white. At least, that’s how I recall them to have been.
Dan and his college roommate were pretty plastered, and I wasn’t particularly sober myself, but someone we decided that it was a good idea to move on to another bar (Neighbors, I think it’s called). My St. Louis friend isn’t a big fan, but we convinced him with good old-fashioned peer pressure. Apparently, he and I beat Dan and his friend at pool, though I don’t quite remember the victory. We then cabbed it back to the Hyatt and called it a night.
On Saturday, we got a late start (surprise!), having brunch with Dan’s friend, and then starting our drive up the I-5 to Vancouver. We were upgraded by Alamo to a Chrystler Pacifica with leather seats and various other accoutrements, making the ride not at all unpleasant. (Incidentally, traffic in Seattle sucks big time-seems to me that it’s worse even than San Francisco!) Crossing the border took about 10 minutes, and by 4pm we were checked into the Sheraton in Vancouver-20th floor, nice view.
We had dinner reservations for 8:00 but were hungry, so we popped in to a local pub and had some nachos (they were WAY too big) and a Molson Canadian.
Financial District, San Francisco
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
9:41 AM PST
After some shopping and changing and walking around, we ended up at the dinner place we’d been to last year on Valentine’s Day. The food was pretty good, but not as great as I remembered. I think that’s the problem with trying to recreate something that is such a good memory-the reality always falls short. Anyway, we had dinner, then went to meet up with some friends at a club called The Odyssey. I wanted to try this new place called Celebrity’s, but it wasn’t up to me! We had fun there and stayed until about 1 or 2 I think. Then we went over to this guy’s apartment (by prearrangement-not some guy that we met at the bar), and ended up staying until 8 AM. We didn’t go to bed until 11 AM, sleeping for two hours, until 1 PM. That was definitely a drama-filled nine hours!
Sunday was relatively low-key, given that we only had two hours’ sleep. We went up to Mt. Seymore, where we were going to take a skiing lesson, but all the instructors had left for the day, so really we just looked around and then came back down to Vancouver. We had a couple of hamburgers followed by some drinks (diet coke), then went home and lounged around briefly before calling it a night.
Monday, Dan bought a suit at Mexx, which was having a great sale, and we did a bit more window shopping before heading off to Seattle again. In Seattle, we met with the headhunter who got me current job five years ago, which was fun - I hadn’t seen him since. Then we made it to SeaTac, where we ate a light meal and killed some time before my 8:30pm flight and Dan’s 11:30pm flight. (I was back in SF and on BART before he’d even taken off - I felt bad!)
When I got back to SFO, I BARTed downtown, dropped my bags off at my office, and met Bret for dinner around 11:30. By 2 AM, I was asleep.
And that was my weekend.
Monday, February 14, 2005
9:33 PM PST
Heading home after a three-day weekend. Just finished the book I was reading (ADD-Friendly Strategies for Organizing Your Life), and I have 55 minutes till the plane is due at the gate at SFO. No time like the present to write.
You may recall (see previous entry) that my Friday flight to Seattle was delayed by a couple of hours-apparently, bad weather Friday morning in Seattle prevented the plane from taking off, thus backing up the schedule for the day. The delay meant that I arrived at SEA with just enough time to tae the little train thing to the north terminal and meet Dan’s flight as it arrived-so, no real harm there.
We stayed at the Grand Hyatt in Seattle-it was very nice, and it hat this really cool motorized blinds system with a switch next to the bed. Definitely a “must have” for those mornings where you need some bright light stimulus to get you up and about.
Friday night, we went out with one of my friends that I’ve known since my days in St. Louis, and who is a grad student at UW. Also with us were one of Dan’s college roommates and his boyfriend. We were treated (unexpectedly) to dinner at an Italian place on Capitol Hill, and then went out Owing to the boyfriend being underage, we went to a 18+ place that has drag shows, where we spent a few hours watching the drag queens perform and having some drinks. The underage boyfriend went off to do his own thing with his friends, and the four of us remaining opted to high-tail it to Manray. I don’t remember much about Manray except that someone grabbed my penis while I was peeing at the urinal (that’s never happened to me before-I thought I’d seen everything, but it appears I was mistaken), and it was very white - the walls, the bar, etc., were all white. At least, that’s how I recall them to have been.
Dan and his college roommate were pretty plastered, and I wasn’t particularly sober myself, but someone we decided that it was a good idea to move on to another bar (Neighbors, I think it’s called). My St. Louis friend isn’t a big fan, but we convinced him with good old-fashioned peer pressure. Apparently, he and I beat Dan and his friend at pool, though I don’t quite remember the victory. We then cabbed it back to the Hyatt and called it a night.
On Saturday, we got a late start (surprise!), having brunch with Dan’s friend, and then starting our drive up the I-5 to Vancouver. We were upgraded by Alamo to a Chrystler Pacifica with leather seats and various other accoutrements, making the ride not at all unpleasant. (Incidentally, traffic in Seattle sucks big time-seems to me that it’s worse even than San Francisco!) Crossing the border took about 10 minutes, and by 4pm we were checked into the Sheraton in Vancouver-20th floor, nice view.
We had dinner reservations for 8:00 but were hungry, so we popped in to a local pub and had some nachos (they were WAY too big) and a Molson Canadian.
Financial District, San Francisco
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
9:41 AM PST
After some shopping and changing and walking around, we ended up at the dinner place we’d been to last year on Valentine’s Day. The food was pretty good, but not as great as I remembered. I think that’s the problem with trying to recreate something that is such a good memory-the reality always falls short. Anyway, we had dinner, then went to meet up with some friends at a club called The Odyssey. I wanted to try this new place called Celebrity’s, but it wasn’t up to me! We had fun there and stayed until about 1 or 2 I think. Then we went over to this guy’s apartment (by prearrangement-not some guy that we met at the bar), and ended up staying until 8 AM. We didn’t go to bed until 11 AM, sleeping for two hours, until 1 PM. That was definitely a drama-filled nine hours!
Sunday was relatively low-key, given that we only had two hours’ sleep. We went up to Mt. Seymore, where we were going to take a skiing lesson, but all the instructors had left for the day, so really we just looked around and then came back down to Vancouver. We had a couple of hamburgers followed by some drinks (diet coke), then went home and lounged around briefly before calling it a night.
Monday, Dan bought a suit at Mexx, which was having a great sale, and we did a bit more window shopping before heading off to Seattle again. In Seattle, we met with the headhunter who got me current job five years ago, which was fun - I hadn’t seen him since. Then we made it to SeaTac, where we ate a light meal and killed some time before my 8:30pm flight and Dan’s 11:30pm flight. (I was back in SF and on BART before he’d even taken off - I felt bad!)
When I got back to SFO, I BARTed downtown, dropped my bags off at my office, and met Bret for dinner around 11:30. By 2 AM, I was asleep.
And that was my weekend.