So the day is drawing closed here in this beautiful yet totally inconsequential town of San Francisco. Highlights of this day are muted:
1. Arrived at the office to a series of technological difficulties. ITS man installed SF printer drivers on my laptop, which was good, except it had the effect of making all of the deposition transcripts in our case unavailable to me. Spent some moments on the phone with an exasperated ITS man in DC who was apparently dealing with far more cataclysmic troubles in the DC office, where from what I could tell, no-one had a working computer at all.
2. I realized I had left my black suit coat in DC. So, once ITS man had departed, I got on the Internet and went to the Ann Taylor web site store locator. I located a store in the Embarcadero Center, which is mid-way between my office and my hotel room. For of those who don't know, Embarcadero is Spanish for embarcader. I went there, stood in front of the rows of black suit coast, and realized I had four black suit coats at home and did I really need five? So instead I bought a ludicrously expensive charcoal pant suit. Much better.
3. Returned to my office in the sky to learn that the smudge on the horizon that my colleague and I had thought was an aircraft carrier was actually a collection of islands that now function as a bird sanctuary. The Farallons. It was an unusually clear day. So much for the protection of the U.S. Navy.
4. Gazed at the islands until sun shone directly into eyes, burning retinas. Turned away from view and staggered towards desk, turned burned out eyes to white papers, which reflected the sun and burned retinas further.
5. Meanwhile, the partner in charge of the little San Francisco office came around and asked me if I had "completed all possible work." She was oddly dressed.
6. Later I learned that tomorrow I am to learn how to take BART to some god forsaken town, practically in the desert, where "someone" will pick me up and drive me to the location where our Bulgarian biochemist will sit and talk to me about proteins. Should be a great day. Plan to wear ludicrously expensive charcoal grey pantsuit.
7. After learning that, I went and had a beer with my old friend and former high school and college flame -- many of you know him. He is now an architect for a juice company called Jamba Juice. He speaks so low only dogs can hear him. I sat at the bar thinking, "how did I spend so many years of my life with this fella?" (it was 5 years). My friend Becky came and rescued me.
8. Becky and her hysterically funny fiance (many of you will remember the "free range arugula" and "tuna cappucino" converesation of last time?), and I wandered around trying to get into various posh restauarants. We were rebuffed. We saw the famous SF twins, these two ancient midgets who dress identically. Today they were in faux mink and were coming out of the Tadich Grill, the oldest continuously operating restaurant in SF.
9. We ate instead at my hotel restaurant. We spent most of the meal trying to conduct a converstion composed entirely of questions. "How are you?" "Oh -- well, haven't I told you what has happened since I last saw you?" "Has something happened?" "I don't know, you tell me, do you think something happened?" "You're kidding?!"" "Would I kid you?!" "Are you gonna tell me what happened?" Etc.
10. Now I'm sitting in my room looking at the Coit Tower and the Transamerica building. The hotel maids have apparently decided that I didn't do very well with the bed they turned down for me last night, so tonight they have turned down the other bed. We'll see.
posted by Anonymous @ 4:27 PM
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