Suzy Says

You know your mailman reads your postcards, don’t you? Yet I was surprised to actually catch one in the act yesterday on my way home. This federal employee was not in my own neighborhood, but a neighboring neighborhood, and was leaning casually against the postcard owner’s door, reading it while having a relaxing cigarette. Somehow, it seemed just a little beyond the casual glance while putting the postcard in the destination mailbox, which would be acceptable even to Miss Manners, I think.

It’s like how people seem to feel it’s perfectly acceptable to look at whatever is on your computer screen when they come over to talk to you, either in your office or in your home. Now, if I’m doing anything even remotely personal, such as email, or writing this blog – things I would never do on my employer’s time, just like a mailman would never take a smoke break and read other people’s mail on his employer’s time – I minimize that window and try to look productive (it helps to always have actual work going at the same time so the switch is fast & easy, the way I like nearly everything). Though my observation is that most people don’t, and that they don’t seem to mind other people checking out what’s on their computer screen.

So the question is: where and what are the personal boundaries?

When the phone rings at my house before 7 in the morning, I can be reasonably sure that it’s a member of my family, since they know I am congenitally incapable of sleeping in, even with the best of intentions. Of course, I can’t know if it will be bad news (my younger sister calling me at 6:30 a.m. to tell me that Dad was dead) or good. Wouldn’t it be great if they could make a caller ID that told you it was bad news so you could just ignore it and pretend it isn’t happening? I wish my reality was as stringently edited as “Jaws” playing on the Family Channel. I never want to know the bad news.

Since those in charge of technology development consistently ignore what I want, like the bad news caller ID and teleportation to Europe, I have to just answer the phone and hope for the best. Today, it was my city-hatin’ brother Jonathan, unexpectedly in town and inviting me for breakfast across town with a bunch of people I had never met before.

So I got dressed and took a cab to the Lower Haight. The Haight is not a place I go to very often, so it was fun to hang out in someone else’s neighborhood for a change. It’s a funny thing: although I live in a city, I don’t often venture outside my neighborhood or the Financial District, where I work. Jonathan’s friend C lives in a converted brake shop in a block of lovely Victorian houses. His place has a huge hammock hanging from the industrial-sized skylight in the livingroom, which also features a bar, found art, and a fairly impressive record collection. Definitely a bachelor pad.

A couple of C’s friends, who live around the corner, joined us for breakfast at the euphoniously named Squat & Gobble, where we had fresh OJ and eggs scrambled with chicken apple sausage. We sat outside with Jonathan’s faithful dog Jed at our feet, whose usual patience and good manners were rewarded by her very own plate of sausage, as well as miscellaneous breakfast food items that were surplus to requirements. It was nice to hang out and laugh and talk, especially since I had such an exhausting and horrible week. No-one can be uncheered around Jed. Happiness is, as Charles Schulz so truly observed, a warm puppy. Even when she’s almost 9 years old. Maybe especially.

Dichotomy du jour: the guy running up California Street this morning (and I do mean up – it’s one of the steeper hills in the city) with a cigarette in his mouth Bogart-style. Even though I saw him do it, I can still hardly believe that anyone can run up that vertiginous hill while smoking. I walk up it every day on my way home and by the time I get to the crest of the hill where the Fairmont is, if I had anyone to talk to I’d sound as breathless as Marilyn Monroe.

One of the fun things about working in the Financial District is that it is a favored place for Guide Dogs for the Blind to train guide dogs. This morning, they were unloading the dogs from their van and it was so hard not to pet them, especially the happy little yellow Lab puppies! Can you imagine that being your whole job: training and playing with guide dogs? I’d pay them to be able to do that.

They reminded me of the time I was with my father and we were taking the train to Guildford, Surrey, together (travelling by train is surely the most pleasant possible mode of transport). Dad assisted an elderly blind lady into the train, accompanied by her guide dog. She told us that she was going to visit her former guide dog, who had gotten too old to be her service dog but now lives with an old friend of the lady’s in the country. The lady said she loved her new dog, but was still deeply attached to her old dog, who had served her for almost 15 years!

One of the animal charities John and I support is the wonderful animal sanctuary in Utah, Best Friends. They put out a monthly newsletter that is exceptionally entertaining, informative, and as they put it “all the good news about animals”. We support many animal charities, but I can’t bear to read the tales of cruelty, neglect, and abandonment. So the news from Best Friends is always especially welcome. This month’s issue had an article on a parrot owned by Winston Churchill. Churchill was my father’s hero since he was a a boy, not surprising since Dad grew up in London during WWII (when I visited Dad’s parents in the Silver Jubilee summer of 1977, Dad’s wartime picture of Churchill was still pasted to the wall in their bomb shelter). I wish I could share this story with him:

“The owner of a parrot who was taught to swear by Winston Churchill is claiming that the parrot is the oldest bird in Britain. Charlie, a blue and gold macaw, is reported to be 103.

He seems to be getting a bit cantankerous in his old age, but still manages to whistle away happily. Although he had two owners before Churchill, his colorful use of language is said to spring directly from the late Prime Minister.”

If I live to be 103, I fully expect to be cantankerous and using colorful language!

I will never understand line dynamics. Not the math kind, or the geometry kind, or the late unlamented dance craze now moldering wherever dance crazes du jour go before being recycled into yet another one, but why lines of people are the way they are.

When we were in line to get tickets for “Road to Perdition” on Saturday, there were only 4 or 5 people ahead of us in line, but it took nearly 15 minutes for us to get to the window, where we paid with exact change and were out of there in seconds. Why does it take other people 10 times as long to buy a movie ticket?

I have observed the same thing in post offices, grocery stores, and airports. In the post office, you wait in line while time seems to stop, as the people ahead of you mail large, untidily wrapped packages of what appear to be body parts to countries with unpronounceable names, and without the correct paperwork or actual money.

The use of actual money is so unusual in this country that I wonder if they aren’t going to do away with it altogether and just implant chips in our hands to access our bank accounts and credit cards. A couple of weeks ago, I let a guy go ahead of me in the express line at the grocery store, because he only had one item. He thanked me and said, “And I’m even going to pay cash.” I joked, “Isn’t that positively un-American?” His response: “I’m Canadian, so I think it’s OK.”

Honestly, though, non-Canadians seem to think nothing of writing checks for $5 or using their ATM card for amounts almost as small. And in the express line, too. If you know you’re going grocery shopping – and how many of us do so on an impulse? – get the money first. Or get it at the ATM with which nearly every store is equipped. Your fellow Americans will thank you. Or at least not openly glare at you while cursing you and generations of your family.

As for airports, even if I’m going to Europe for three weeks, I never have more than carry-on. Bring outfits you like, about 5, and mix and match, doing laundry where necessary. Wear the one good outfit, fit for going out to dinner or to the theater. Bonus: airline staff, on the ground and on the plane, tend to be nicer to you if you’re dressed well, even if you’re flying cattle class. By limiting your baggage to carry-on, it’s a faster check-in. I also always book my seat ahead, which not only makes sure I get what I want (my main goal in life), but also makes check-in faster. But even assuming you haven’t done these things, why does it seem to take so long for people to check in? I’m not talking post-9/11 security measures, I’m talking standing at the counter for 15 or 20 minutes before finally finishing the checking in process. What could possibly take so long? Enquiring minds want to know. Well, not really. I just don’t want you ahead of me in line.

When the alarm went off this morning, it was raining so hard that I almost called the whole day off on account of weather. But after a cup of coffee and a couple of chapters of The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, the rain had decided to go and annoy someone else. The sky looked very confused, as if it, like me, was wondering where the hell this rain came from and why it took so long to go somewhere like Seattle, where it belongs. I hope my umbrella stays where it is, gathering dust, until Thanksgiving. After all, it’s practically summer.

Which means that the TV season is ending. Seems like just about every show has its season finale this week or last week, other than Sex & the City, which starts up again in July. It used to start on or near my birthday, but S-J Parker’s unscripted pregnancy seems to have thrown the show’s writers a curve. I wonder how they are going to handle it? They can’t have both Carrie and Miranda with babies. One baby is more than enough, and has often been proved to be too much. Look at Mad About You. Destroyed by Mabel.

I watched the season finale of Dawson’s Creek on Sunday morning. Yes, I realize that I am far too old to be watching the Creek, and that everyone else is over the Creek, but since I have no vices to speak of, I think I can be allowed this one. Anyway, Pacey was trying to talk to Audrey, his justifiably pissed-off girlfriend, before she got on a plane to go home to LA for the summer. So he bribed a security guard to let him use the PA system, and broadcast a heartfelt apology (which of course won her over). He ended his impassioned speech with an equally impassioned “Free the West Memphis Three!”, which I thought was so cool I almost woke John up to tell him about it.

If you aren’t familiar with this case, check out this site and/or watch the two documentary films, Paradise Lost and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations. Truly one of the worst miscarriages of justice in recent years, and especially frightening when you consider that these three young men are facing life in prison in two cases and death in the other simply for daring to be different in their intolerant, Bible-beating home town. So help if you can, and be thankful you don’t live somewhere like West Memphis. If you do, move. Now.

Like Colin, I used Red Envelope for our Mother’s Day present (I am the appointed gift and card buyer for the three of us kids who live in California). I got lilies of the valley, planted in a ceramic pot, which will bloom in the next few weeks. I think blooming plants are less depressing than cut flowers, which have to be thrown out when they’re dead and brown. Blooming plants die a natural death, and some of them even have Jesus-like resurrection abilities.

Lilies of the valley are nostalgic for my mother, as lilacs are for me, and for the same basic reason: they are both associated with my mother’s mother. Nana grew both flowers in her garden, and always wore Muguet des Bois perfume. So Mom was really happy with the present.

But…the card that came with the present was for someone else. Mary Dolson of San Francisco, to be precise. I wonder if Mary Dolson got Mom’s card? If so, she’s probably wondering who the hell all those people are. Somehow, it seems entirely appropriate given the rollercoaster, Fun House quality of my relationship with my mother that my Mother’s Day gift to her got screwed up.

John & I had dinner last night with our friend Paul. Paul is practically one of the family, and a great guy. He recently became a grandfather for the first time (his son-in-law is a drum technician for the Red Hot Chili Peppers). He is a Vietnam vet (his fellow soldiers used to refer to him as “Grandpa” because he was the oldest in his unit at the ripe old age of 21), a professional cook and sailor. In the summers, he caters for the rich and/or (in)famous in the Hamptons, and in the winter, he could be anywhere. Last winter, he sailed the Caribbean. This winter, he’s planning to cook on a boat that takes people diving in the Turks & Caicos. So it was great to catch up with him and hear his latest schemes, including one for spending a month in Kabul to buy rugs to sell to the rich folks in the Hamptons.

We had dinner at Le Petit Robert, the charming restaurant affiliated with the French bakery which is the jewel of the neighborhood. I was the bad one and had a Kir Royale to start (it was perfect, right down to the slender lemon peel in the glass), and also had a wicked glass of Sancerre with dinner. John and Paul stuck to Pellegrino to showcase my vice. John had roast chicken and frites, those perfect, tender-crisp fries rarely, if ever, found outside their native France. Paul and I both had PEI mussels in a gorgeous wine broth as an entr&eacutee, but he had foie gras to start (I didn’t say anything, even though it’s right next door to veal in cruelty food), and I had a roasted beet salad with ch&egravevre and spiced, candied walnuts to start.

Just in case you aren’t already shocked by these culinary excesses, I also had dessert, and so did Paul. He had chocolate fondant with espresso ice cream and a tiny cup of lethal espresso, and I had, at last, cannell&eacutes de Bordeaux with tart cherries, cr&egraveme anglaise, and I might as well admit it, a glass of Sauternes, which was liquid sunshine. Aren’t you positively stuffed just reading this?

So Paul’s on his way back to the Hamptons, and his latest schemes. We should see him again in the fall to hear about his latest adventures. In the meantime, I think I’ll go and try to walk off some of that dinner.

I didn’t get picked for jury duty! Yay! But the system is as mysterious to me as ever. On Friday, there we all were in the waiting pen, and there was an announcement that there was one case scheduled for that day. So they’d let us know as soon as the judge and lawyers were ready for us. Then they warned us that if jury selection could not be completed today, we’d have to come back on Monday to finish it. Two hours later, there was another announcement saying that they wouldn’t be ready to see us that day, so thank you and you’re done for a year.

My question is: what were they doing for those two hours and why weren’t they ready for us? It seems to me that whatever they had to talk about or arrange should have done before coralling us in the pen. Maybe Becky can enlighten us?

At least I’m done for a year or more.

But our iMac is still swooning, so instead of being incommunicado (incommunicada?) during the working day, I’m incommunicado/a after work, when real life begins, which is even more annoying.

And to cap off the annoyance, we haven’t been able to get the repair guys to pick it up and start repairing it. John dropped by their store on Friday with the receipts showing that they had repaired it two months ago to the day, and telling them that it now had the very same problem (black screen, but everything else working fine). They said they’d call about having someone pick it up on Saturday.

John called them three times on Saturday, and nothing. Then we got a call on Sunday afternoon, the purpose of which seemed to be to confirm that there was something wrong with the computer, but not to set up a time to pick it up or anything. So John’s going to call again today.

You would think they’d be kissing our asses and apologizing for doing such a lame job in the first place, but nothing. Unbelievable.

You know how I had the great mail day a couple of weeks ago? Yesterday, I had the hell mail day, brought to me by our friendly government, local and federal: a summons to jury duty for the Superior Court of California, made extra scary by including a form to be filled out and brought with me (suggests to me a case that will go on for months); and an extremely invasive and personal census form which I’m supposed to fill out and return to Big Brother.

I had jury duty 4 or 5 years ago for the first time, and I’m still recovering from the horror of it. In the City and County of San Francisco, you have to serve five days, whether or not you actually sit on a jury. I have heard of people who have been called for JD and only had to call in, but my own experience was quite the opposite.

Report to the waiting room (which I call the pit of despair, because that’s where you sit for hours before possibly being called into a courtroom — or not) at 8:00 and sit around, waiting, waiting, waiting, like the beginning of Casablanca. A couple of times I did get called into courtrooms, where you can’t read or do anything other than participate in a scientific experiment to see whether it is actually possible for a human being to die of boredom. I am extremely boredom-intolerant, and on the third day, after going home in the pouring rain after 8 hours of this, I sat on the floor of my living room and cried from the horror of having to do it again the next day, and the day after that.

I never did get on a jury. Also, that spell of JD coincided with our busy time at work, and so does this one, slated for April 22. I don’t know if I can stand it.

As for the census thing: I can’t believe we have to tell the government what our mortgage payment is, how much our monthly bills are, etc. They probably ask for bra size and frequency of sexual intercourse somewhere in the questionnaire, which is approximately the length of War and Peace, though I didn’t finish reading it. I’m under no illusion that the government doesn’t already know frightening amounts of information about every one of us, personal and otherwise, probably including bra size, but I just can’t make myself complete that document and send it back to make their invasion of what little privacy, or illusion of privacy, I have any easier.

My horoscope for today, from the Chronicle: “You’ve spent too many nights worrying. Let matters run their course.”

Considering I’m writing this at 1:00 a.m., it’s probably good advice.

Reward for walking home on Tuesday: I finally got to see Nicolas Cage! He has a house (one of many, I’m sure) three blocks from our place, and in the 7 years we’ve lived on this street, I have never seen him. But on Tuesday, there he was, chatting to two guys in his garage with the garage door open. He has quite a messy garage. As I passed, I smiled, and he smiled back and said “Hey”. Brush with fame!

This brings me to a grand total of 4 brushes with fame:

1. Driving through Seacliff in my convertible with the top down, passed Robin Williams’ house with a birthday party going on for one of his kids. Balloons and kids everywhere, Robin severely outnumbered but taking it well. Exchanged a smile and wave, my usual MO when encountering famous people.

2. Walking across the Hungerford Bridge in London, saw Elvis Costello shooting a video. I was with my Dad, which really limited the fun, because he had no idea who Elvis Costello was and there was no point in trying to explain it. Usual smile & wave exchange. Elvis was wearing a silly hat.

3. While visiting Althorp, Princess Diana’s childhood home, met her brother and had an actual conversation for a change. He’s really a celebrity by association, so it may not count and might be the reason I was able to exchange words instead of the drive/walk by wave’n’smile.

4. The Nicolas Cage walk by wave’n’smile.

Why is it that I can never come up with a clever and/or witty thing to say when faced with a famous person?

Reward for taking a cab home yesterday:

Cab driver looked very Japanese, much like Pat Morita, but talked like a hick from Arkansas, the total hillbilly accent. The contrast was so delightful that it was hard not to laugh. Cab driver also a conspiracy theory nut who held forth all the way home. He was wasted on me, since he was really John’s dream cab driver. He also reminds me of a story John tells of when he lived in Edinburgh and was going home late one night. The only other person on the bus was a very drunk Indian (as in Indiah) guy, beautifully singing “Danny Boy” with a deep Scottish accent.

OK, so yesterday was a fairly Z grade day as days go: exhausted and cranky with teeny burning holes in my face where my eyes should have been; endless crazed phone calls from my mother; mathy work requiring cognitive thought when sleep-deprived.

Now, bad days are always improved by getting the hell out of work and getting home, and yesterday was no exception. But fun things happened between leaving the office and returning home:

1. Saw a pair of red, high-heeled sandals abandoned outside an elegant building on Nob Hill, facing toward the door as if their owner had vanished before she could go inside.

2. A total stranger sitting at a sidewalk caf? said, “Hey, nice hair!” as I passed. I’m pretty sure he was serious, however strange that may be.

3. I stopped by to see my HBO deprived friend Richard, and his cat, the appropriately named Kitty Kelly, bearing a shopping bag from the Mus?e d’Orsay stuffed with tapes of the Sopranos, Sex & the City, and that 9/11 special (he taped from 8-10 instead of 9-11). I’m beginning to feel like a drug dealer. Lat week, he asked to borrow Six Feet Under, of which he had heard much acclaim, and then when he was hooked on that, I hit him with the other HBO Big S shows. Maybe TV really is the opiate of the masses, and not religion. Anyway, it was fun to see him and have Kitty bite me and play with me. I’m still trying to decide if the bites are a compliment or an insult. She comes out to see me, and rolls around, but then she bites me. Maybe she’s just me in cat form.

When I got home, I discovered that it was an especially good mail day. Since letters have been almost universally replaced by e-mail, mail mostly now is bills and possibly magazines, along with the usual junk mail. But yesterday (it seems to be a list-y sort of day):

1. No bills!

2. A little welcome card from the allergist I first saw a couple of weeks ago, endearingly signed by hand, “Dr. Jeff”.

3. A whole box of the Caffe Trieste Mocha Java coffee of my total addiction, with handwritten thank you note on the equally handwritten packing slip. Also, they have new, cute packaging! I am the packaging fan the packaging designers are inspired by.

4. An original drawing by the tragi-comic genius, Lynda Barry! Dedicated to ME! And with an extra, spring-inspired drawing, too. Oh!My!God! Lynda, you are so Number One!

And just to top it all off, one of my travel diaries was lying open in the hallway, as if one of the cats had been reading it and was interrupted.

We took all four of our cats to the vet today for their annual check-ups. Cleo has to have her teeth cleaned, Hannah has one of her recurring ear infections, and Sophie is on diet food again to lose 2 pounds, but otherwise, they’re all in good health. Jack, who is the naughtiest cat in the entire world, is absoutely perfect. But then, she is the youngest.

I almost had a heart attack when we got the total bill, though. Both Cleo and Sophie are now officially geriatric, so their blood work is a lot more expensive, and the bill was a frightening $750. Eeek!

It seems that we’re the white trash of the vet office, just like we’re the white trash of our apartment building. Dr. M’s patients include one of the best-known newscasters in the Bay Area (who had to give up his cats after his allergies to them caused him to code out not once, but twice, and his wife totally begged him to), and a millionaire who had his dog’s teeth polished so he’d look his best before taking the dog to spend the spring on his yacht in Monaco. I’m not kidding. Whereas we wait until we get our tax return and then take the cats in for their check-ups, and we could only afford to have Sophie’s teeth cleaned last year and Cleo’s this year. But we don’t love our cats any less than the rich folks. In fact, we probably love them more. And they love us back. Check out this picture of Hannah sleeping on my pillow last night.

I was bitten by a parrot yesterday.

This doesn’t happen very often to a city girl like me. I have never once been molested by the wild parrots, whom I often see flying overhead with a clatter of green wings glinting in the sun, calling out with their distinctive, rough voices, “You’ll never get us in a cage!” They are the descendants of a pet parrot who escaped many years ago, according to local legend, and I find them one of the many delightful details of living in San Francisco.

Yesterday, I stopped off at Petco on the way home to get some cat-related supplies. While paying for my purchases, one of the tame parrots who belongs to the owner perched on my hand, happily saying his name. Everything seemed to be going OK, but suddenly, he decided that my hand was a chew toy, and started biting me really hard. If you’ve never been bitten by a parrot, I can tell you: they bite very hard and their beaks are as much like rock as possible without actually being rocks. As John pointed out to me later, they crack nuts with their beaks.

I think I should be commended for keeping my hand still until the parrot could be removed, because it hurt like hell. My hand today is covered with parrot marks. The parrot also has a keen sense of humor, besides being sneaky. He laughed his ass off after being removed from my (bleeding) hand, and the apologetic owner said he always laughs when he’s done something naughty. Who says animals aren’t sentient beings? That bird has a better sense of humor than many people I know.

So I arrived home with my parrot-injured hand to find that our upstairs neighbor is having her bathroom re-re-done. So not only considerable construction noise directly overhead, but the water was brown and not warm enough to have a bath. In fact, it reminded me of the plumbing in Russia, where the water was always brown (I brushed my teeth in mineral water while there) and not very hot, besides smelling quite odd. Also, they don’t seem to understand that the goal of flushing a toilet is to make the contents actually go away, rather than making more farewell appearances than Barbra Streisand. Fortunately, though, it was only the bath water that was Russian-style and nothing else.

However, I have to wonder about the other inhabitants of our small apartment building. There are 6 apartments, all the same size and configuration, two to a floor. The Same Names across the hall paid nearly half a million dollars for their place, and appear to barely be 30 years old. Rich parents? Dot commers who got out in time? Who knows? But the real mystery is Miss Upstairs. She is dumb enough to be a member of the Bush family, with their trademark inability to put a sentence together, yet she paid considerably more for her apartment than we did, and is single. She has also renovated said apartment 3 times in the 7 years we have lived there, which begs the question: how does someone who is so stupid have so much money? Our two favorite theories are porn star and heartless divorc?e who took her very wealthy husband to the cleaners, but we’ll never know for sure. Any other theories?

So that pretty much makes us the white trash of the building, since we aren’t rich and don’t drive a BMW or Land Rover and don’t give a crap, either.

Is there any job, possibly other than Appointed Leader of these great United States, with less accountability than that of weatherman? Our forecast yesterday called for “possibility of light showers in the afternoon and evening.”

When I left work, it was cloudy and misty, but after I had gone a few blocks, it started pouring, with gale force winds. I had to give up completely on my umbrella, because it was either being plastered down around my head by said wind, bending its sad little ribs to the breaking point, or threatening to yank me skyward like a cranky Mary Poppins.

Having given up on the umbrella, my hair became wet, brownish strings, like a very old mop, and my make-up was scoured off before I was even home. Look, Ma! No face!

No matter how wrong weather forecasters are, no-one complains. They don’t have to repay part of their salary or pay a fine for every incorrect forecast. Angry mobs don’t show up at the station, demanding accuracy. The anchors don’t say things like, “He was wrong again, folks!” The weather guy (or girl) just goes on making predictions that are about as accurate as Miss Cleo’s, and they just get away with it. I want a job like that.

So I gave myself a day off today. No particular reason, except it’s a new year, so I have a whole new pool of time off, and things are pretty slow at work, so why not? It’s just like how giving or receiving a spontaneous gift for no reason is often more fun than one for a reason, like birthdays or Christmas.

I decided to go and see “Dinner Rush”, which is playing at the “art” theater in the neighborhood. It’s also conveniently located and the movie was timed so that I could have an early lunch at the nearby and legendary Swan Oyster Depot.

Even though I got there at 11:15, there were only 3 or 4 stools left. For those who have never been there, it’s tiny and has maybe 25 stools lined up along a marble counter. The counter holds bowls of oyster crackers, bottles of hot sauce, napkins, lemons, and other seafood accoutrements, ’cause there’s only seafood on the menu. There were also tiny, living Christmas trees in little pots decorated with plastic snowmen, spaced out along the bar as a reminder of the holidays.

Behind the bar are the five brothers, grandchildren of the original owner, who prepare and serve all the food. Space is very limited, and it’s a pleasure to watch the ballet performed as they shuck oysters, crack crab, answer the phone, assemble shrimp cocktails, and slice up their excEt, crusty sourdough bread, all without knocking into each other or inflicting damage with all those knives. I’m not usually a sourdough fan, although this city is famous for it, but I love theirs.

With the bread, I had a self-indulgent (but it was really small! Honestly!) glass of chilled white chardonnay from Sonoma county and a bowl of their fantastic clam chowder. It’s bliss in a bowl, with its chunks of perfectly cooked potatoes and clams, the broth both creamy and tasting of the sea, speckled with golden butter and black pepper. The brother who was serving me gave me an unsolicited, paper-thin piece of the smoked salmon he was elegantly carving. It was fantastic. I guess it’s just a spontaneous kind of day.

By 11:30, the line was, as usual, out the door. I happily ate my lunch, eavesdropped on my neighbors’ conversations and listened to Frank Sinatra and Johnny Mathis on the battered old radio. I resisted the advances of the guy sitting next to me, always a hazard of a woman travelling or eating alone. Fortunately I have had a fair amount of practice in this area and I can do it pretty nicely and firmly, which is key, especially on 11 hour flights to or from London. This particular guy was from Chicago and had read about the place in Zagat’s restaurant guide (where it is routinely chosen as one of the best restaurants in this foodaholic city). But his homework had not been thorough enough, because he tried to pay with plastic. The Depot is, and has always been, a cash only operation. He got laughed at pretty thoroughly.

“Dinner Rush”, a movie about a popular restaurant in New York and starring Danny Aiello, was the perfect thing to follow my lovely lunch. I love the chaos and energy of the professional kitchen and the melodramas which often take place there. The movie was a satisfying mixture of both. As I passed the Depot on my way home at 2:30, the line was longer than ever. Long may they shuck. And remember: if you go, bring cash. For those of you who insist on writing checks in grocery stores for $5 purchases, or using credit cards for same, it’s that green stuff you get at ATM’s. You can use it to buy things with. Try it sometime. I know just the place to start.

At the risk of turning this blog into Cats’R’Us, here’s a cat news roundup!

Megan’s kittens (seen here at my place in the city) are adjusting well to their new home in the country. Megan has taken them outside a few times, where they zoom around like freaks, climb trees, and terrify the local wildlife. Harriet, the silver kitten, is still using the litter box inside. She hasn’t figured out yet that the woods is not only her playground, it’s her litter box, too. When they are a little bigger and know their names, Megan will start letting them go outside by themselves.

Often on the weekends, Rufus wakes up early — or rather, gets woken up — by the cats and feeds them, then goes back to bed. When he does this, he leaves me note so I don’t feed them again when I get up. Our cats can be very convincing, and when I’m staggering to the kitchen thinking, “Coffee! Coffee!”, they mill around my feet impeding all movement and explaining earnestly that they haven’t been fed yet that day, or possibly that week. Cleo in particular has Sarah Bernhardt-like qualities of projection and histrionics, and accompanies her performance with reaching up and knocking some of the food on the floor as it approaches her dish. You can’t feed her without that part of the game.

Last week’s note was a poem:

The cats have been fed,

So go back to bed

And hopefully their litterpaws

Won’t step on your head.

This reference is to Miss Jackson, who somehow manages to get litter stuck in her fuzzy little paws and then distributes it in unexpected destinations throughout the house, like inside my shoes (one of Cleo’s favored hiding places for toy mice) or between the sheets, where it can really surprise you.

This week’s note was a hilarious drawing of Rufus feeding the cats while they are wahing loudly and he is yelling “Shuuut uuup!” None of this wakes me up, of course, since I can sleep through earthquakes and Jack’s daily attempts to wake us up to give her breakfast. Jack’s methods are usually running across our heads and slamming the blinds against the window.

So although I missed feeding time at the zoo this morning, the artist’s rendering is the next best thing to being there.

I’m against naps as a rule. They mess up your sleeping patterns, and well, they just seem wrong. But I do occasionally indulge. On Friday, I decided to take a nap, so I put on my bunny pajamas and curled up in my featherbed. As soon as I did, Cleo joined me. She curled up against my chest, purring and keeping an eye out for monsters or anything else that might dare to disturb my sleep. When I woke up an hour later, she was still there, warm and purring, on patrol. I felt so happy and safe. She has never, ever done this with me before, though she often does it with Rufus. It was magic.

And finally, Hannah should have been a ship’s cat in the great days of sail. Every night she sleeps on Rufus like he’s her bunk, and no matter how much he tosses or turns or rolls over, she just goes with the flow and rides it out like nothing ever happened. As soon as he settles down, she does, too. I think her secret fantasy is to be alone with him on a desert island. But she’d probably settle for the high seas, as long as she had him all to herself.

Man, it’s hard to go to work in the dark and cold when there are kittens in your house! I spent about 10 minutes playing with the kittens this morning before finally heading out the door. Megan’s husband Rob is coming to pick up all his girls tomorrow, and I’ll miss them.

It was less than 50 degrees this morning, which equals freezing, so I wore my long black coat, and I felt like Angel with it flying out behind me.

It’s surprising how many people in the city either don’t have curtains or blinds, or don’t use them. With the lights on, they are like little stage sets: the guy sitting at his computer, already at work (dang!); the woman feeding a baby; the obviously single guy, walking around his living room in his underwear while eating a bowl of cereal; the elderly woman, already dressed, sitting in a chair by the window. In just a glimpse, you can imagine their lives.

Yesterday, I had lunch with my long-time friend Richard (I am now refusing to say “old friend” because forty is way, way too close* and believe me, “old” takes on a whole new meaning when you get to this stage of the game). We met up at Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store, which is neither a store, nor sells cigars — smoking is illegal in restaurants and bars in California — but is a little sliver of a restaurant in North Beach.

We caught up on each other’s lives while eating delicious focaccia sandwiches (frittata for me; grilled chicken for him, and Orangina for both of us). His romance is going very well and he’s happy, which is great. He asked me for shopping advice for his Mom, who has everything, and his girlfriend. About the only good thing I could come up with for Mama was promising to do something around the house for her, or have dinner with her once a month or something, but she is married and therefore has a live-in handyman. Any suggestions are welcome, just e-mail me!

I’m more confident in my suggestion of elegant/beautiful lingerie for the girlfriend. What girl doesn’t love that? And there are at least two fabulous lingerie boutiques in our neighborhood, so he can get something really special. And after all, it’s a present — or at least wrapping — for him, too!

*Less than 6 shopping months left, kids!

I hadn’t realized how much I enjoyed walking to work with Rufus in the mornings, until now, when I can’t. I guess that’s human nature for you, both in great and small matters. Now that I’m alone and it’s still pretty dark, it’s a combination of boring and slightly creepy, because I feel so conspicuous on my own. Isn’t it unfair that women feel that way, just because they are women?

I have been walking the most direct route the past couple of weeks, and it’s probably almost the hardest possible walk: down Franklin (heading south, but mostly uphill), then east on California. This way consists almost entirely of hills. You know how people say that walking downhill is harder than walking uphill? Well, all I can say is, I’m not breathless once I start downhill on California.

When I first moved here, I remember that my legs hurt from walking up and down the unaccustomed hills. Now streets that I used to struggle up hardly even seem like hills to me. Today, for example, I walked east on Jackson Street instead of California, and it hardly even seemed like a hill at all. We used to live on Jackson, but I hardly ever walk that way now. It was fun to see what had changed and what hadn’t. The guy who has spotlit mannequins in his window still does (today’s theme: somewhat naughty Santa), and when I passed the cable car barn, the cable cars were yawning and stretching, their bells clanging softly as they prepared for another day of going up and down the hills.

The first car of the day was coming out of the barn as I passed, and the brakeman called out, “Need a ride, young lady?” Despite the fact that I was really, really tempted to (I could get to work in half the time! No effort at all! Yesss!), I said, “Not today, thanks”. I love being called “young lady” and “miss”, especially as age advances. Partly because, well, it’s flattering, and partly because I still think of myself as a girl, and feel like one, too. It’s like that episode of “Ab Fab” when Patsy gets called “Madame” on the plane to Paris and she goes crazy, yelling, “‘Selle! MademoiSELLE!” That’s how I feel, too.

As I headed down Jackson and away from the temptation of the cable car, I saw the twinkling lights on the Bay Bridge, reflected in the dark waters of the Bay, and noticed that the sky was changing from a deep midnight blue to that unearthly shade of cerulean favored by medieval artists. The sky was still scattered with stars and the very last crescent moon, and it shaded to pink at the edges of the east, where the sun would soon be making its daily debut. I thought, “What a beautiful city this is.”

It’s been too depressing inside and outside to update this for the past few days. All tragedy and no comedy makes for a boring little blog, n’est-ce pas?

It’s been pouring ever since Friday afternoon. Our (fortunately hilly) street looks like a young river, with the water rushing down it faster than the cars, and the area outside our building’s basement is flooded. The power has been out for two days where my brother and sister live, so everyone’s been congregating chez Jonathan, because he has a generator. I can imagine them all sitting by the fire, playing cards and listening to my old Atwater Kent radio. They could be living 50 years ago.

Here the wind is howling outside, so strong that there are warnings about crossing the bridges. There are high surf advisories, too, and the rain just keeps on coming. It’s dark all day, so we have just curled up with the cats and watched Stephen King miniseries. Yesterday, it was the appropriate Storm of the Century and today, The Stand is our scheduled matin?e. It’s probably an upopular view, but I’d rather have this Charles Addams type of weather (the caption to this cartoon is “Just the kind of day that makes you feel good to be alive”) when it’s the weekend and going out into the elements is optional. I hate being at work all day in storm-tossed attire. Damp nylons are especially unenjoyable. So I hope the storm goes to spread the wealth somewhere else by tomorrow morning. In the meantime, it’s showtime!

Well, things went pretty well yesterday. Number one, the rain that had been forecast with consistent gloom to be here from Wednesday through Sunday has yet to appear. In fact, the sun even peeped out coyly from time to time. Our stove seems to have recovered from its temporary fit of diva-ness, and roasted the turkey to perfection and turned out several batches of Suzy’s famous cheese biscuits (which, if I could figure out a way to market them, is definitely my million dollar idea).

Dinner was fun and stress-free, and no-one cried. I had my brother, sister and brother-in-law here, as well as my brother’s wonder dog Jed and his friend Carrie, who is expecting her first baby on Christmas Eve. I hadn’t met her before, but I really liked her, and it was a happy and relaxed evening.

Of our four cats, only Hannah was brave enough to approach Jed and smell her curiously. Jack, who thinks she’s so tough, barely looked at Jed for a split second before vanishing for the rest of the evening (later, we found her wedged under the couch). However upsetting this may have been to Jack, it did mean that for the first time since Jack entered our lives, we were able to eat a meal in peace, without her whining and demanding food, or possibly even jumping onto the table, which would have been really embarrassing in front of someone I had just met. So that was good, too.

We left the house at about 12:30 this afternoon with the intention of seeing “Harry Potter”, along with most of the city’s population. Insane traffic snarls, parking problems, crowded theater lobbies, and sold out show after show later, we finally bought tickets for the 4:00 p.m. show at 2:00 p.m., went and had a weirdly late lunch (hey, everyone’s eating habits are all screwed up now anyway) and finally got into the movie. By the way, all the shows up to 11:00 p.m. were sold out when we got back to the theater for the 4:00 p.m. show.

I liked the movie, but they fucked with some plot points for no reason (i.e. Norbert the dragon), and I didn’t like Hermione, but other than that, the casting was great. But Harry’s scar was lame (as my sister said, it looks like someone put it on with eyeliner) and I don’t understand why they didn’t give him green contact lenses when the books make such a big deal about his green eyes and this kid has the standard-issue English blue ones. But, having nit-picked and griped (and you just knew I would), it looked absolutely spectacular and the actors were wonderful. I guess with any beloved book, it’s very difficult to translate it to the screen and win everyone’s approval for how you did it. Definitely worth seeing, and worth seeing in the theater.