Mike's eye view

The scene from the bow of the Esperanza.

Bow Shot from Mike G on Vimeo.

Tour de Fat

For those of you who did not attend the Tour de Fat last weekend, you should have. It was 80+ degrees and sunny in the park, the beer was good, and there were tons of crazy bikes. And costumes! Why do I never remember that San Franciscans need only the slightest excuse to wear a costume? It was actually pretty steampunkesque, with a bit of marching band thrown in.

The above was taken during the funeral procession for the automobile. There were four large horse puppets (the Four Horsemen of the Carpocalypse) and a model of an El Dorado was "burned" in effigy. Then they raffled off a cruiser. It was pretty delightful.

On my ride home through the Panhandle, I saw a man facing directly into a tree trunk and playing the saxophone. This was also delightful. I know that saxophonists gather in the tunnel by the Conservatory of Flowers for the acoustics, and I was tickled by the dude using a huge eucalyptus for the same purpose. He looked a little nutty, honking soulfully into a tree.

Things that are amazing

Chris Partlow from The Wire writing an article about the Annapurna Circuit for the NYT. Now all I need is for CJ Cregg to do a photoessay on Patagonia and I am SET.

And yes, I can distinguish between fiction and reality, sometimes.

Hash hash hash

Last night I finally went for a run with the San Francisco Hash House Harriers! It's been two years since my last hash, in Boston. I used to go every week, and I've missed it.

For those unfamiliar with hashing, here are the basics:

1. It's not the drug, it's a running club that does a lot of drinking.
2. There are over 250 weekly (or biweekly) hashes around the world.
3. Two or three people serve as the hares each week - they lay a trail with chalk and flour.
4. The pack tries to follow the trail, running up and down streets, in parks, through buildings and construction sites - wherever the trail goes.
5. At the end of the trail (or during, if it's a long trail), everyone drinks beer and sings dirty songs.

There's a lot more to it than that (lots of lingo and tradition), but you can probably guess why I think it's fun - you get to run around chasing someone like a little kid, there's beer, and you get to wallow in crude humor.

It also allows you to get to know a city like you wouldn't otherwise. The trail last night went through West Portal, which I've been to twice at the most. We ran through a hilly neighborhood with beautiful houses, and then up a huge sand hill that gave us this view of the sunset:

It sure was something. I got home around 10:30, sweaty and happy and full of beer, and I got up again at 5:30 this morning for my first day of fake boot camp.

Fake boot camp was actually fun, once I was up and had some food in my belleh. We ran around the Exploratorium in the dark, and over to the Presidio, where we commenced doing variations on pushups and crunches for an hour. It was tough, but I've done worse, and it felt awesome to be outside while the sun was rising. Two classes a week will probably be my max, but given how amazing I feel right now (if it ain't sore you ain't working hard enough), I'm tempted to consider going for the four-a-week full-on schedule.

Ok, not really. But it was great, especially coming on the heels of a yoga class on Sunday night that made me feel totally nuts, in a good way. Right now I am like Gumby, if Gumby also had very tight hamstrings. Maybe Gumby and Pokey together? That seems about right.

See Mikey on a boat

Mike's blogging from a boat! Sorry, a ship. The Esperanza, to be exact. You can keep track of him

• on his personal blog, Look at the Wee Beasties
• on his work blog
• or on the official Esperanza ship tour blog.

My favorite dispatch so far is this photo of Mike with a shit-eating grin, a helicopter casually perched in the background. No biggie.

Banned books

Trying to ban a book pretty much means you're telling everyone that book is awesome, so I'm baffled as to why people keep trying to ban books. But they do.

Check out some of the big bad books here.

Next June, ladies

Miss Manners on her 50th Wellesley reunion. Almost time for our 5 year, holy crap.

This weekend

I am starting off this weekend with margaritas in the Mission. Oh yes, oh yes I am. Then I am going to Tour de Fat in Golden Gate Park tomorrow (bikes and beer! bikes and beer!).

And on Sunday, oh my lordy on Sunday: there is an apple pie contest at the Divis Farmer's Market. I am sooooo going to hover for samples.

I'm ok, guys

I am, really. Thus far this week I have

• cuddled with my cat, who is still pissed that I am not Mike
• let my apartment get really messy
• gone to two spin classes
• flown to LA for the day

Also, in what I acknowledge to be an overshare, I peed on a stick because I felt weird and bloated. And you know what? I'm not pregnant, I'm just straight-up bloated. And weird. The sad thing is, it was a lose-lose: either holy shnikeys I'm pregnant, or else I suddenly have a gut that I hadn't noticed before. Cheers to the latter!

But I did get to go to LA yesterday, and that was pretty cool. I had a good publisher meeting, and I got to see Lianna, who is all MBA'd up in that shit down there. She needed to shop for an 80's party (sponsored by her school - is that really what grad school is about? recreations of middle school dances?) so we went to American Apparel. Because that is what American Apparel has become: a costume shop for all but the most unfortunate of the hipsterati. Oh, and 13 year old girls and boys. And me, apparently, because I bought two skirts, though I went easy on the spandex.

(Side story: Mike was very disturbed by the amount of spandex worn by the pasty and often doughy Irish men and women during our trip. Occasionally it would get to be too much for him and he would shout, "People of Ireland! Please! I beg you! Look in the mirror before you leave the house!" Then he would grumble about whatever particular kind of spandexicated unfortunateness that individual was embracing - metallics, dots, plaid, etc.)

LA was actually quite lovely (though the traffic blew), and I had a nice dinner by myself on a pier in Long Beach. One irritant associated with eating alone: the waitstaff either doesn't make eye contact with you, or they are really really nice. Four different servers asked if I wanted more beer when my glass was empty. Since I doubt that I had somehow landed on the magic table that was in every one of their sections, I guess they were assuming that I must be drinking heavily because I was forsaken.

But not too shabby, right?

Information is beautiful

Seriously. Check out the Billion Dollar Gram, which visualizes how much money is (or could be) spent on various things - the Iraq War vs Walmart revenues vs the Global pharmaceutical market.

Via Information is Beautiful.

Boo

Mike is gone, and I am blue. After dropping him off at the airport last night, I stopped at McDonald's and got a McFlurry, because gnarly chemical-filled junk food seems like it is the right response to impending loneliness. I got it not because I was so sad, but because I anticipated being sad. After half a McFlurry I started to feel sick, and my premonition came true. It was a real low point.

And now I have all this TIME! We spent the weekend running errands and seeing people before Mike headed off, and now I am in a weird state in between the craziness of getting him ready and the craziness I intend to indulge in while he is gone. I have a feeling that tonight I will go home, do a yoga routine from YouTube, watch some Hulu, and nurture the introverterted part of me that has been locked in my creepy Austrian basement dungeon for many years.

Or I might just beg people to hang out with me.

I totally know models

Look, it's Alia!

Now if only I had kept the issue of the Advocate from when my friend was featured on the subscription cards. Because that is just the best gayest thing ever.

I feel like ASS

That is all.

Repeal DOMA

The Defense of Marriage Act blows. Help repeal it here.

The New York Times needs to not do this to me

Heart attack.

I keep forgetting Obama is a lefty

Here's a cool video on the 10 letters that Obama reads every day.

Hell yeah we are

San Francisco is Named One of the "World's Happiest Cities"

Separation anxiety transmogrified into fun

Mike is in Austin this weekend and then starting the 20th he is gone for a whole month, sailing the South Pacific. I have made a list of the many things I will do while he is gone, so that I stay busy and don't wind up drinking wine alone in my pajamas all the time.

Many of these things are embarassingly girly, and I blame them on my addiction to Groupon.com (I have already booked both a cheapo facial and a manicure/pedicure) and on needing to squeeze these things in while not having a dude around.

• Ambiance is having a sale, and there are things that I need. Just NEED, ok?
• The Brewer's Guild is having a boating and beer-ing event this weekend, and I want to go.
• Also, Power to the Peaceful is on Saturday in the park. It looks...hippie.
• SFMoma and the DeYoung both have exhibitions I want to see,
• and I haven't been to the Cal Academy yet.
• Maia is here now
• and Leslie is visiting in the middle October.
• My dad is visiting in the beginning of October, and we're going out to Katie and Larry's farm.
• And to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, of course.
• Tour de Fat is on the 26th,
• which is also the day of the Sierra Tahoe Century ride, for which I have paid two entry fees already.
• I kind of want to see The September Issue. I go to the movies only a few times a year, and I can't explain why this is something I feel motivated to watch. But I do.
• Tour the Anchor Brewery.
• Eat at Bar Crudo, which opened on Divis a few months ago and looks to be all seafood deliciousness.
• Get the roast chicken at Zuni Cafe, because people rave and rave about it.
• Try kitesurfing. Or hang-gliding. Something exciting but overpriced.
• Take some yoga classes. I'm going to assume I've stopped growing now, and it is safe to once again aim for some flexibility. (The story behind this has to do with freakishly tall adolescent me and a mean gymnastics instructor, and is not really worth telling unless you are really good at expressing sympathy while being bored.)

So, ready, set, go!

Galway Girl

We heard a ton of music while we were in Ireland - everywhere we went there was live music, much of it traditional Irish tunes. The one song we listened to the most was Galway Girl, and it became the soundtrack of our trip.

Our best Galway Girl moment came at about 3:30 in the morning at my great aunt's house. My cousin had thrown a party in our honor, and he was in the living room with the glass doors shut, falling asleep over a glass of whiskey with some of his farmer friends. We opened the doors, put on Galway Girl, and he instantly woke up and started doing this:

Aside from the fact that I am unfortunate, I don't know that I've seen anything better.

Home

We're home! I kind of can't believe it. After 3 weeks of spending almost every night in a different place, it feels so completely good to be back in San Francisco. My apartment is lovely, the city was warm and sunny this morning, I'm back in my office with my big extended desktop computer screen...

It feels good. I just uploaded my photos to my computer, and I'll go through them tonight. NYC bar antics, Ireland pub antics, more NYC bar antics, Mike's family antics, my family antics...that's a lot of antics to comb through. I am looking forward to it.

But most importantly: did everyone get their postcards???

Lucky lucky

We are back in New York after a week in Ireland, and last night we went on a happy hour bar crawl on the Lower East Side. After 3 bars and 3 hours, I realized my camera was missing. My new camera, which has 400 photos from Ireland on it, including a family party full of Irish dancing and shots of my 94 year old great aunt.

I totally freaked out, and we retraced our steps for an hour. I tried not to hyperventilate. At the last bar we checked, the bartender said no one had turned anything in. We looked around our table: no dice. Then we asked the people at the next table over, and a guy (joking, I thought) reached behind his back. And produced my camera!

It was a freaking miracle. I gave him a hug, then bought him a beer. And did a victory dance.

So that was good. Ireland was very good, and I will talk about it soon, I swear. But first: yay for averted disasters.

Poor doggies

As if poodles weren't already ridiculous enough. This is straight-up abuse. Hilarious abuse.