Got back from vacation yesterday. Today is my "buffer day", and then I go back to work tomorrow. I work from home on Fridays, and then (of course) I get weekends off, so I get four straight buffer days, if you want to look at it that way. Although, Lil' S is with me today (S is back at work), so it's not a very good buffer day. I thought about taking him to daycare, but I feel bad about not spending the day with him if I'm free. Although he's been such a pill today, I'm now kinda wishing I would have. But he was excellent on all our flights -- which was pleasantly surprising, to say the least -- so I can't complain too much. I'd much rather have him act up in our 1,500 square-foot house than in a two square-foot airplane seat we're sharing.
Anyway ... Our vacation was great -- so great I'm bummed out to be back home. It's a weird feeling. On the one hand, it always feels comforting to be back in your own house; on the other, it feels like the party is over and now you have to deal with the hangover (in this case the hangover is unpacking, catching up on work, restocking your fridge, getting the kid back on a schedule, etc.). It began in San Francisco -- and not in stellar fashion, I might add. On the night of our arrival, I lost my wedding ring somewhere between the airplane and the hotel. I won't go into the details of how this happened. But it was a combination of tiredness, distraction, and fluke bad luck. /When I realized I had lost I thought to myself, "Well, this really sucks, but I can brood over it and ruin my vacation. Or I can try to forget about it and enjoy myself." I went with the latter, and it mostly worked. It's shitty, but my ring was just that -- a ring -- something we bought off the shelf from a chain jewelry store. It is an easily replaceable material object. If I lost my wife or child I would be much more bummed out.
We woke up very early the next day -- the day before my cousin's wedding -- and we set out to explore ol' San Fran. (I've heard locals get irritated when you call it "San Fran", which is a perfect reason to do it ... Go 'Hawks!) We were staying near Union Square, and we walked the few miles to Fisherman's Wharf. It would have been a nice walk but for two things: 1) we had to push a stroller up a few massive, steep hills; 2) it was foggy and nippy. I was actually okay with the weather -- the fog provided an eerie backdrop to the iconic sights that I thought was cool -- but S was very cold, so when we saw a hop on-hop off tour bus we decided to hop on and stay on. Although, it was funny; we booked the tickets while looking at this cozy double-decker bus, and then the ticket guy said, "Oh, here comes your bus now", and this old bus pulls up with a tiny roof and 90% of the seats uncovered. Fortunately, we got one of the few covered seats. Up front it was just us and some blue-hairs with whom we (mainly S) made small talk. The driver/guide was cool but way too verbose and loud. He was constantly "on", which over the course of a two-hour tour started to grate. One thing I did enjoy is that he made a ton of movie references, which seemingly I was the only one to get ("Help me help you!"). Lil' S slept the whole time, which meant he was fully awake when we got back to the hotel and wanted to take some quick naps ourselves -- just the way we didn't want it.
Almost all my extended family who came to the wedding were staying in the same hotel as us (the St. Francis Westin at Union Square), so we started to see them trickle in throughout the day. The accommodations were quite plush -- small, but nice, and not too expensive (I think we got reduced rates, as part of the wedding package). We were on the seventh floor, and you could open the window all the way, and I kept having awful images in my head of Lil' S climbing out and plunging to his demise. This despite the fact we kept the window closed, and Lil' S couldn't have climbed out the window without moving something underneath it to stand on, which we wouldn't allow him to do, even if he tried, which of course he didn't. Hey, we all have our irrational fears and mine isn't unprecedented; it's how Eric Clapton's kid died -- kind of. And if it happened to Lil S', I wouldn't be able to write a hit song about it. So, you know, doubly bad.
Sorry ... a bit of a morbid digression there.
That night everybody went to a Middle Eastern restaurant for the "rehearsal" dinner; I use quotes because the rehearsal was actually done in the afternoon, and it was for the wedding party only; the dinner was at night for everybody. It was basically just a party -- and a good one at that. I got stuffed to the gills with lamb and chicken and hummus and roasted eggplant and all other sorts of Mideastern fare. There was belly dancing for entertainment, which was nice. For one, it's belly dancing; for two, it was funny to see a particular half-drunk attendee (not me) absolutely spellbound by the beautiful, exotic dancer. Belly dancing is a funny thing; it's supposed to be a cultural, aesthetic thing, not a sexual thing, but it's like, "uh ... tell that to my loins". You've got a half-naked, usually very attractive young woman rhythmically gyrating her midsection. You can say it's supposed to be anything you want, but I know where the blood is flowing for most of the men (and some of the women) in attendance.
The next day was the ceremony, and it was a typical Catholic ceremony in that it was long and formal, but it was atypical in that it was Coptic. The Copts, according to Wikipedia, are the largest Christian group in Egypt, the homeland of the bride's mom. As best I can tell, Coptic is a word like Jewish in that it describes a religion and an ethnicity together. It was a fine ceremony, not really my bag -- too much religious nonsense, but I can't really talk given that I had a Hindu wedding full of religious nonsense. The good thing about my wedding, however, is that it was in a language I didn't understand, so at least I couldn't process the nonsense. In my cousin's ceremony they had a whole bit about how the bride was now the property of the groom and had to completely "submit" to him. This caused more than a few smirks and raised eyebrows in the church, and it also provided a funny comment from my dad at the reception that utterly confused the deejay -- but that's another story.
Speaking of the reception, it was spectacular. The venue was excellent (the top story of the hotel), everybody was really cool, and the food was the best I've ever had at a wedding. Rumor has it the bride's father laid down a pretty penny for everything (like 100K pretty), but rumor also has it he can afford it, so why not? The economy needs more spending right now, anyway. The only bad part was that I had to cut out early because I knew the little man would be waking us up before the crack of dawn (his average wake up time in San Fran was about 4:30 a.m.), and we had to drive to Los Gatos the next day. Now that I think about it, I had a great time, and I didn't feel like shit in the morning. Huh. Maybe leaving early is actually a good thing.
The purpose of going to Los Gatos was to visit my old college friends T & St. (and their adorably five-year-old son O) who live in the mountains outside the city proper. We got there a bit earlier than we thought, and they weren't there yet, so we killed some time by going to this kinda sketchy convenience store/coffee shop. The first sign of sketchiness was that it's connected to a marijuana dispensary, and when we pulled up the only other people in the parking lot looked like extras from a scene in Breaking Bad when Jesse turns his house into a hangout for wasteoids. Then there was nobody actually in the store when we went in -- it was seemingly completely deserted -- which even casual watchers of horror movies know is not a good thing. But the staff was friendly when they finally did appear, S ate a grilled cheese sandwich that didn't kill her, and I took a piss I had been holding for like an hour, so ... no harm, no foul.
T & St. live in the mountains, but it's not like the mountains mountains. They have a garden and a bunch of animals (including chickens), but they also have Internet and you can drive to a supermarket in like 15 minutes. It's for people who want some wilderness in the their lives, but don't want to live like Survivorman. It seems to suit T & St., but it's definitely not for S and I. We're city folk. We were driving up the winding roads thinking, "Why would anybody want to live way up here?" I don't want to own any pets -- not even one outdoor cat -- let alone a mini-farm. One thing I will say is that it seems like their mountain neighborhood is cool. T and I had to run an errand at one point, and as we were coming back he stopped his truck twice to talk to his neighbors (one of whom was a New Age-y old woman who told us about her free-spirited, runaway cat that "gave [her] the finger" the final time it went out the door), which is about as much talking to our neighbors as I've done the entire time we've been here.
And of course visiting was terrific. Lil' S had a blast with all the animals (although he's still a bit scared of dogs), and St. did up some excellent vegan pizza cooked in their homemade brick oven. I wish we had more time or could have at least made it over on a weekend night (they had to work the next day), but we were on a tight schedule. At least we got to see them at all. We left really early the next morning to make our flight to Sea-Tac.
And you will read all about that leg of the trip in my next entry...
Anyway ... Our vacation was great -- so great I'm bummed out to be back home. It's a weird feeling. On the one hand, it always feels comforting to be back in your own house; on the other, it feels like the party is over and now you have to deal with the hangover (in this case the hangover is unpacking, catching up on work, restocking your fridge, getting the kid back on a schedule, etc.). It began in San Francisco -- and not in stellar fashion, I might add. On the night of our arrival, I lost my wedding ring somewhere between the airplane and the hotel. I won't go into the details of how this happened. But it was a combination of tiredness, distraction, and fluke bad luck. /When I realized I had lost I thought to myself, "Well, this really sucks, but I can brood over it and ruin my vacation. Or I can try to forget about it and enjoy myself." I went with the latter, and it mostly worked. It's shitty, but my ring was just that -- a ring -- something we bought off the shelf from a chain jewelry store. It is an easily replaceable material object. If I lost my wife or child I would be much more bummed out.
[Alcatraz, from Fisherman's Wharf]
We woke up very early the next day -- the day before my cousin's wedding -- and we set out to explore ol' San Fran. (I've heard locals get irritated when you call it "San Fran", which is a perfect reason to do it ... Go 'Hawks!) We were staying near Union Square, and we walked the few miles to Fisherman's Wharf. It would have been a nice walk but for two things: 1) we had to push a stroller up a few massive, steep hills; 2) it was foggy and nippy. I was actually okay with the weather -- the fog provided an eerie backdrop to the iconic sights that I thought was cool -- but S was very cold, so when we saw a hop on-hop off tour bus we decided to hop on and stay on. Although, it was funny; we booked the tickets while looking at this cozy double-decker bus, and then the ticket guy said, "Oh, here comes your bus now", and this old bus pulls up with a tiny roof and 90% of the seats uncovered. Fortunately, we got one of the few covered seats. Up front it was just us and some blue-hairs with whom we (mainly S) made small talk. The driver/guide was cool but way too verbose and loud. He was constantly "on", which over the course of a two-hour tour started to grate. One thing I did enjoy is that he made a ton of movie references, which seemingly I was the only one to get ("Help me help you!"). Lil' S slept the whole time, which meant he was fully awake when we got back to the hotel and wanted to take some quick naps ourselves -- just the way we didn't want it.
Almost all my extended family who came to the wedding were staying in the same hotel as us (the St. Francis Westin at Union Square), so we started to see them trickle in throughout the day. The accommodations were quite plush -- small, but nice, and not too expensive (I think we got reduced rates, as part of the wedding package). We were on the seventh floor, and you could open the window all the way, and I kept having awful images in my head of Lil' S climbing out and plunging to his demise. This despite the fact we kept the window closed, and Lil' S couldn't have climbed out the window without moving something underneath it to stand on, which we wouldn't allow him to do, even if he tried, which of course he didn't. Hey, we all have our irrational fears and mine isn't unprecedented; it's how Eric Clapton's kid died -- kind of. And if it happened to Lil S', I wouldn't be able to write a hit song about it. So, you know, doubly bad.
Sorry ... a bit of a morbid digression there.
[Union Square from the Seventh Floor of the St. Francis Westin]
That night everybody went to a Middle Eastern restaurant for the "rehearsal" dinner; I use quotes because the rehearsal was actually done in the afternoon, and it was for the wedding party only; the dinner was at night for everybody. It was basically just a party -- and a good one at that. I got stuffed to the gills with lamb and chicken and hummus and roasted eggplant and all other sorts of Mideastern fare. There was belly dancing for entertainment, which was nice. For one, it's belly dancing; for two, it was funny to see a particular half-drunk attendee (not me) absolutely spellbound by the beautiful, exotic dancer. Belly dancing is a funny thing; it's supposed to be a cultural, aesthetic thing, not a sexual thing, but it's like, "uh ... tell that to my loins". You've got a half-naked, usually very attractive young woman rhythmically gyrating her midsection. You can say it's supposed to be anything you want, but I know where the blood is flowing for most of the men (and some of the women) in attendance.
[This is how the maids made our bed with Lil S's stuffed panda. I thought it was super cute.]
The next day was the ceremony, and it was a typical Catholic ceremony in that it was long and formal, but it was atypical in that it was Coptic. The Copts, according to Wikipedia, are the largest Christian group in Egypt, the homeland of the bride's mom. As best I can tell, Coptic is a word like Jewish in that it describes a religion and an ethnicity together. It was a fine ceremony, not really my bag -- too much religious nonsense, but I can't really talk given that I had a Hindu wedding full of religious nonsense. The good thing about my wedding, however, is that it was in a language I didn't understand, so at least I couldn't process the nonsense. In my cousin's ceremony they had a whole bit about how the bride was now the property of the groom and had to completely "submit" to him. This caused more than a few smirks and raised eyebrows in the church, and it also provided a funny comment from my dad at the reception that utterly confused the deejay -- but that's another story.
Speaking of the reception, it was spectacular. The venue was excellent (the top story of the hotel), everybody was really cool, and the food was the best I've ever had at a wedding. Rumor has it the bride's father laid down a pretty penny for everything (like 100K pretty), but rumor also has it he can afford it, so why not? The economy needs more spending right now, anyway. The only bad part was that I had to cut out early because I knew the little man would be waking us up before the crack of dawn (his average wake up time in San Fran was about 4:30 a.m.), and we had to drive to Los Gatos the next day. Now that I think about it, I had a great time, and I didn't feel like shit in the morning. Huh. Maybe leaving early is actually a good thing.
[A very foggy Golden Gate Bridge]
The purpose of going to Los Gatos was to visit my old college friends T & St. (and their adorably five-year-old son O) who live in the mountains outside the city proper. We got there a bit earlier than we thought, and they weren't there yet, so we killed some time by going to this kinda sketchy convenience store/coffee shop. The first sign of sketchiness was that it's connected to a marijuana dispensary, and when we pulled up the only other people in the parking lot looked like extras from a scene in Breaking Bad when Jesse turns his house into a hangout for wasteoids. Then there was nobody actually in the store when we went in -- it was seemingly completely deserted -- which even casual watchers of horror movies know is not a good thing. But the staff was friendly when they finally did appear, S ate a grilled cheese sandwich that didn't kill her, and I took a piss I had been holding for like an hour, so ... no harm, no foul.
[Something in San Francisco]
T & St. live in the mountains, but it's not like the mountains mountains. They have a garden and a bunch of animals (including chickens), but they also have Internet and you can drive to a supermarket in like 15 minutes. It's for people who want some wilderness in the their lives, but don't want to live like Survivorman. It seems to suit T & St., but it's definitely not for S and I. We're city folk. We were driving up the winding roads thinking, "Why would anybody want to live way up here?" I don't want to own any pets -- not even one outdoor cat -- let alone a mini-farm. One thing I will say is that it seems like their mountain neighborhood is cool. T and I had to run an errand at one point, and as we were coming back he stopped his truck twice to talk to his neighbors (one of whom was a New Age-y old woman who told us about her free-spirited, runaway cat that "gave [her] the finger" the final time it went out the door), which is about as much talking to our neighbors as I've done the entire time we've been here.
[Scene from a Trolley Car in San Fran]
And of course visiting was terrific. Lil' S had a blast with all the animals (although he's still a bit scared of dogs), and St. did up some excellent vegan pizza cooked in their homemade brick oven. I wish we had more time or could have at least made it over on a weekend night (they had to work the next day), but we were on a tight schedule. At least we got to see them at all. We left really early the next morning to make our flight to Sea-Tac.
And you will read all about that leg of the trip in my next entry...
Good to read about your great trip to San Fran! I take it you liked your hotel? I'm in the middle of looking for a hotel for our first trip to SF and am looking for recommendations. The St. Francis Westin isn't the same as the Westin hotel though, is it? (http://san-francisco.hotelscheap.org/The-Westin-San-Francisco-Market-Street-114219)
ReplyDeleteNo. They aren't the same. And I thought the hotel was fine -- very hotel-y :)
ReplyDelete