days like diamonds

March 18th, 2009

[for convenience i'm now using lightboxes on photos here- if you want the originals, go to my flickr]

just a few observations before we begin:

it’s impossible to get a drink at club mercury, due to either server indifference or ineptitude. don’t go there.
the best tie-in souvenir at the winchester mystery house is the shotgun shell shot glass. only trouble is it’s plastic. and nine dollars.
i finally made it to palace barbecue on time. it’s very much worth it.
cafe mason is great at 3am. i’ll have to thank some random girl on friendster for recommending it to me about 7 years ago.
it’s hard to find people who like coffee as much as i do. or even exponentially so.

in college i came to the untrue conclusion that you shouldn’t worry that you’re not spending the perfect day in pursuit of X or Y. good days will come again, and you shouldn’t really force it. but it’s all about context. i came to this newer, more accurate conclusion this week. timing is everything, and location, location, location.

and sometimes that’s exactly what you get, so you should take it when you can. let’s get to it.

so i started going back to trivia night at the bitter end again, kinda/sorta the same crowd, same great bartender, same vibe. pascal continues to make the drinks good and strong, and the two hours just go right by.

a few other nights in the richmond were involved as well, some with the surprisingly-well-intentioned suicide girls, punctuated with slices from nizario’s and awkward closings at video cafe.

i spent the better part of a weekend in berkeley, somehow procuring a parking space before catching up with some homies over a football-size calzone and having a disturbingly sugary mocha bianca coffee thingy at strada.

that sunday the family and i celebrated our niece’s 8th month with a cake that she still can’t eat. i headed to the dragon boat team’s fundraiser at the old sports basement in the presidio [which still has the signs from the grocery store whose space it now occupies- it's the first time i was ever told to look for watersports gear in the "Dairy" section]. i headed back to continue Claire’s celebration with some brand new warriors gear.

the next weekend, the dragon boat team had their first practice of the season. i found out what it’s like to run again after 5 months of lethargy [it's not fun] and might’ve tweaked something when we were out on the water, but i had no regrets. fuddrucker’s followed, and that was that.

a few days later i found myself in hayward [yes, that hayward] having fijian food which i originally thought was indian food. but it worked, and it was… potent. who knew that a forkful of pickled carrots could knock you flat on your ass?

thursday night was the gala for the san francisco international asian american film festival [i swear they could've cut at least 3 or 4 words from that title]. we lined up early and got first dibs on all the food and free alcohol. and i ran into people from the dragon boat team because, well, “we so asian.”

friday started brian’s birthday weekend, beginning with a trip to palace barbecue and the winchester mystery house. the entire place was very unsettling, but the noisy high school kids kept me grounded in reality.

saturday i had to forgo practice to participate in ‘ning’s amazing day’ [meant to play on that 'amazing race' show], her birthday celebration involving scavenger hunts, costumes, cooking contests, and, surprisingly, very little alcohol.

the family celebration in half moon bay followed, and for a few brief moments i stopped in to club mercury but couldn’t get a drink. don’t go there.

my st. patrick’s day celebration this past wednesday was interesting enough, meeting with soriano and the rest of the stanford intermediate ICU at the irish bank [which was turned into a block party] before going to north star in north beach where i ran into the queen of happy hour, as i usually do in her native habitat.