SwimFinsSF

SUCH A nice day … AGAIN

Oh my LORD – we’re having on of those indian summer october days here… Woke up this morning to the most BEAUTIFUL blue skies… After dragging my lazy butt out of bed and showering kevin and I walked down the street for breakfast. Had breakfast at a table on the street at Blue in the Castro and spent an hour or so chatting and watching the boys go by… Couple of friends wandered by and ended up joining us for breakfast… Was REALLY nice…

Now i’m waiting for Matt to come by so we can go to the gym.. After that we may head down to the water to check out the Red Bull Flügtag and, as my friend Okko puts it, watch them chuck things into the bay…

Then, at some point, we need to put together a Halloween costume for Hell Ball tonight… I have NO IDEA what we’re going to go to wear – YIKES..

Anyway – just checkin in.. been a crazy week so I didn’t get much time to write – work is makin me crazy.. Although – on the upside – they got me one of these for work.. I’m LOVIN IT! 🙂 (I got a 12″ to start which was super nice but the screen on that one isn’t so hot if you need to run FCP so I swapped it for the big daddy! 🙂

(Oh yea – and comment spammers can kiss my ass :\ )

Picture Walk

I spent my afternoon today on a picture walk with a bunch of friends and had a really good time. My friend Randy set up the gig and plotted a map through the city and a fun little assignment for us to try to do. We started in Washington Square Park, walked up to and around Coit Tower, down the hill to Levi Plaza, along the embarcaderro and past the piers, in front of the Gap Building, and ended with dinner at Gordon Biersch.

Was a lot of fun… If you wanna see the all the pictures I took here they are:

Picture Walk – October 19, 2003

( By the way – I also added the ability to view comments and extended entries in here inline thanks to this – let me know if something doesn’t work for you. MAN I’m a geek some times! 😉 )

My ‘hood

I’m lovin living in Duboce Triangle. The people that live on my street in particular spend a LOT of time and money making the common areas really beautiful. There are pots with trees, flowers, bushes, and succulents all up and down the street – not the stock kind the city puts in – the kind that have been put in by individuals with a lot of attention to detail. Corner of Noe and Henry has little sitting areas on 3 of the 4 corners with little benches, trees, and other pretties..

So it really bummed me out this morning to see that some fool driver had hit one of the pots parking their car and then left and another palm tree had been broken off at the trunk by what I would presume to be a drunken fool coming back from the bars. I can only imagine what will happen halloween night when when the hoards descend.. Although looking out my window at the damaged pot – it looks like the neighbors have already replaced it with a brand new one (and moved it back from the curb)

Love the neighborhood but he visitors that it tends to attract aren’t always the most dignified.

Note to self – figure out who is writing the checks for these plants and pots and volunteer to help out…

On Joy and Trauma

This morning while I was waiting for my shower water water to heat up I was leafing through a book I just bought called “A Patriot’s Handbook”. The book was put together by Caroline Kenedy and is an interesting collection of speeches, poems, and songs that represent interesting and important points in American History – everything from Dr. Martin Luthor King’s “I have a Dream” speech to excerpts from “The Grapes of Wrath” to the words to “Brother Can you Spare a Dime”. Leafing through this sparked my mind wandering to some of the important and memorable things that have happened in my life and the vivid memory I have of where I was and what I was doing when important things happened to me and around me.

(read on if you care/dare)
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A weekend away

I’m VERY inclined to fill my weekends with random chores and other silly stuff if i’m not careful but this weekend Kevin conned me into escaping the city and it was SO NICE. Saturday morning we got up and went to Golden Gate Park to buy some succulents from the botanical gardens ( If you’ve never been you NEED to go – I always forget how beautiful those gardens are – its AMAZING ). After that we grabbed brunch at Tin Pan, threw some clothes in a bag, and piled in the car.. We really didn’t have any destination – just wanted to get out of town.

We started out by driving over the Golden Gate Bridge and off toward Napa. Skipped Napa to avoid the tourists and headed through Glenn Ellen and past the Gaige House Inn (didn’t stay there this time but if you’ve got a chance check it out – we stayed there a while back and LOVED it)… Then we headed out toward and through Santa Rosa ( Kevin had never seen it and seemed to want to for some reason 😉 ) and out toward the Russian River. We drove from Santa Rosa, through Sebastapol, Guerneville, and out to the ocean at Jener.

At that point we decided we should find a place to relax for the night – unfortunately we also discovered that reservations on a sunny weekend in the bay area are usually a pretty good thing. So we headed back toward Guerneville (which, for those who have never been, is the closest thing SF has to Fire Island – kind of a strange small town that the gay boys take over on a regular basis – always funny to watch the small town locals react to the gay city boys )… Kevin wasn’t much for a ‘gay scene’ for a hotel so we steered clear of Fifes and, after a little exploring around we endid up staying at a place called Retreat Resort and Spa. Was still a gay place but little more upscale and not quite the ‘scene’ that Fifes can be.

This morning we woke up, had some coffee and a danish, then headed out toward the coast. Decided to head back toward the coast and drive down highway 1 to the city. Drove back to Jenner, through Bodega Bay, Point Reyes, Stinson Beach, and then back into the city.

Overall a great weekend. I HIGHLY recommend piling in the car and going on a road trip – with our without a destination in mind. Very nice… And my favorite pictures? These:

The rest of ’em are here:

Northern California Coast

This is a test people…

Even if you really think Grey Davis is a jack ass and should be thrown out of office do you REALLY think Arnold going to do a better job? Or is this just about being angry? ( in case you couldn’t tell I’m neither a fan of the recall NOR a fan of having the terminator as Governor )

Regardless of what you vote for – GO VOTE.. PLEASE. (or if you’re not in CA or not 18 then tell someone in CA that is 18 to vote… :):) )

( Sorry… Just couldn’t stay quiet about this today… I wanted to – I really did… but I couldn’t… )