Sunday, October 3, 2004
Breakfast: pastries from Le Bon Gateau. We had originally planned to go to the Castro Street Fair, but this morning Patrick's hip was feeling a little weird so we decided to stay home. I installed Windows XP SP2 on our computers—no problems so far. Experimented with Adobe Audition 1.0. Did some digital housekeeping and disk defragmentation. Did linkchecking for non-work websites. Upgraded anti-virus on 3 computers. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers. Returned a movie to Superstar. Dessert with Patrick at Le Bon Gateau. I had a lemon ginger tea and a tiramisu cake, Patrick had a Schwarzkopf chocolate cake (chocolate cake, praline something, and nougatine) and decaf coffee. Each cake was about 3 inches in diameter and about 2.5 inches tall. Patrick's Schwarzkopf was so rich he couldn't eat it all and even refused to finish it! Mine seemed just as rich. The cakes were $5 each. The bill came to around $14 (no tip since there was no table service). We arrived at around 7:30 PM. The Castro Street Fair had just ended. Loads of trash were being swept up by street cleaning trucks going back and forth repeatedly through the streets. Drunk people were oozing in and out of bar entrances. The cafe's doorway looks right onto the window display at Cliff's, which is currently showing a giant clock made out black numbers for 12, 3, 6, and 9 and other Umbra clocks in place of the rest of the numbers. The clock did not have the correct time, which we thought was not a very good reflection on the accuracy of Umbra timepieces. It was a little surreal to watch the giant clock framed by the the new cafe's rich red walls and doorway, the second hand of the clock revolving smoothly and silently while huge machinating bugs crept noisily left and right spraying water and swirling their yellow emergency lights as warning beacons to all items of refuse: Prepare to be sucked up!