Friday, November 24, 2006
Slept in. Made cookies to send to Jeanne who says she can't get them in Malawi. Took a nap. Went to the Macy's Treelighting Ceremony in Union Square. We took MUNI in (it stalled at Castro Station so we got out and took the F-line the rest of the way) and met Mom Ryan, Danny, Drew, Phil, Quyen, and Jeff downtown and walked over. The square was completely overflowing with people. The southwest entrance was impenetrable, so we walked up to the west entrance where at least the taller people in our group could peek in a bit if they stood on their tiptoes. A woman sang Joy to the World, then the Jersey Boys sang Oh, What a Night! and Here Comes Santa Claus. People where I stood complained that they couldn't hear and that the speaker system was awful, but hey this isn't a Disney production (yet). Santa appeared (I never did see him) and the lights on the tree were turned on. The actual lighting was rather anticlimactic—about 2 seconds afterwards I was thinking, Okay, how do I get out of here and find some food? We followed the event with dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant at Jones and (Eddy?) where we were amused by the manager who rushed us and other parties through our dinners because the restaurant was closing in 35 minutes. The food was just okay—my beef stew with rice had a lot of tendon that I did not enjoy, and Danny said the pork in his dish was flavorless. I noticed this morning that macys.com was completely unavailable, most likely due to poorly predicted server loads for holiday shopping.