rowanf | Dec. 15th, 2002

Friday we took off for the City via the holiday party at my office building (put on by the building management). We ran into lots of my co-workers but Russell felt a bit out-of-place. So, despite the fact that they were pouring Moet & Chandon White Star h e dragged me on up to the City. We had a bit of confusion about what hotel we were at (I thought the Donatello but I was wrong) we wound up at the Serrano. We walked through the pouring rain to Union Square to see the horrible concrete mess they've made of it. Oh dear. Then we went up to Cityscape to look out at the view and Russell bought me a martini to make up for all the champagne he didn' let me drink. ;-) We went back to the hotel for some hot groping and smooching. Did I mention he is the greatest!?

Saturday morning it was grey and cloudy and the wind was so strong it felt like it wouldn't take too much to be able to fly. But it wasn't actually raining so we went over to David's and had breakfast. I think we should have eaten pastries but we had regular food and no room for pastries. What is wrong with that? Then we headed for Union Square again where we went into Borders and I got a boxed set of Onion books for one of my brothers. We went to Macy's Holiday Lane but it wasn't very good this year. The new space they had it in was cramped and the trees didn't seem particularly inspired. Everything seem very much the same as last year. We gave lots of dollar bills to various homesless/panhandlers/street performers. The current Street Sheet is poetry and most of it is quite good.

We headed back to our room and had a bit of a lie down (my body is really aching from the shoulder stuff and my back was bothering me) before heading off to Dickens Fair in the pouring rain. There were some really cool spir al hair ornaments at Singletree which I totally couldn't resist! We wandered, admired the Dark Garden window sitters, listened to musician, chatted with friends and I complained to Native Souls that they still owe me $200 from the debacle of boots I order ed there last year. We bought some wonderful rum cakes and candied ginger from some vendors who have an antique store in Lake Tahoe. I'm really jazzed about the ginger! Yum!

The weather having cleared some we decided to head to Oakland for the Technomania Circus. Our friends Petra & Rebecca were doing a cane dance as one of the acts. It was in a wild loft/garage/apartment/studio space and though the gig was unorganized and suffered too much time between acts the individual acts were wonderful. We stayed for a couple of hours and then headed back to the City.

I slept really poorly because I kept hurting my shoulder. Russell got up early and went and rode the cable cars. The grey weather had kept the tourists away and so he got prime seats both direction s. Russell heaven. *smile* We hit the Cheesecake Factory at 10am for Sunday brunch but didn't eat bruch food. I had pork chops (mashed potatoes, spinach & applesauce) and Russell had potato soup and chocolate cake. We asked about their whole cheesecakes b ut they want $40 for them! Good grief! And they looked really frou-frou with too much whipped cream/frosting/flavorings. I thought they'd be too sweet and they turned out not to have any plain cheesecakes available. We headed out and drove backto San Jose. I picked up my car at Adobe and then headed to the Tribe Badir Bazaar. Miranda has a lovely home on 6th St. that has most of its Victorian-ness intact. It need a lot of work, esp. on the exterior, but is a really beautiful place. When she's had it as lo ng as we've had ours, I'm sure it will be stunning. I bought a practice choli in a busy, colorful Indian print 'cause I just didn't feel like resisting.

jezebeltw & Simon came by whilst I was there. Jenn hasn't seen my house either. It is defi nitely time for a party.

Russell and I met at home and headed over to

ocean_song's party. The company was good and the food bountiful. We only stayed for a couple of hours though before heading off to see Spirited Away which has bee n showing at the Towne but only as afternoon shows that I couldn't get to because of work. It was really good and well worth watching. I liked it almost as well as My Neighbor Totoro and better than Princess Mononoke.

We got home and e ach opened a present. I got a 20gig iPod. Cool. Now if only I had firewire. *LOL* We figured I can take tunes off my backup drive which had firewire as well as USB but we have to upgrade the OS on the desktop to 9.2. Yesterday's present (which Russell let me open a day early) was a gorgeous vest from Gypsy Leather like this one, except my fringe is red. I love it! [He has opened the book I gave him, True Lust and the Diana statue like th e one in Sutro Park that I ordered from Greece.] Okay. I've finished checking my email and now I'm going to head to bed. *yawn**