Friday, August 9, 2002
Today is my telecommute day, but I came in to work anyhow because Melissa's computer was not all set up from yesterday—the updates took longer than expected. I did Microsoft Office updates for James. The Dean came in to the office today because she had lost a file that Cindy had sent her by e-mail and she desperately needed to retrieve it. It took only a few minutes, and she said some very nice things about the Web site and how well it was working and how she thinks I'm doing great work and she went on her way. Helped James import settings from last year's PharmAdMIT application into this year's. After work, I met Patrick at the Beanery. We walked to Golden Gate Park and picked up drinks at the corner sandwich shop on 9th and Lincoln. A sign pointing the way to Shakespeare Garden intrigued us, and after a few steps we discovered it: a cozy-sized garden with over 200 flowers and plants mentioned in Shakespeare's sonnets and plays and bronze plaques engraved with floral quotations. After checking out the sundial (which seemed to be an hour off because of daylight savings time) and resting a bit in the serenity, we headed to the Castro for dinner. We ate at Blue: Patrick had grilled salmon, garlic mashed potatoes, and green beans. (The salmon was too salty, the potatoes not salty enough.) I had veggie lasagna, which was delicious. Patrick couldn't place the face of our waiter, whom he knew he'd seen before. I eventually asked, and he turned out to be a waiter at a Japanese restaurant on Castro. We stopped in at A Different Light bookstore, which was not notable except for a moderately good-looking male customer dressed in jeans with the buttcheek panels ripped open from the top leaving a thong-like thread of jeans in between his butt cheeks holding up the rest of the pants below. The weather sure was hot outside today, but I'm guessing this guy had prepared these jeans well in advance of the current heatwave. The great thing was that the guy at the counter saw the guy's ass hanging out and didn't say a thing, didn't even smile. And no one complained. We stopped in on Brian and Kelly, who were both recovering from a cold Brian says they picked up from Jesse. Brian told us a funny story about Jesse vomiting. We all talked about Brian's journal, Brian and Kelly being sick with colds, Jesse and where he was at tonight (at a gay Christian party), how Jesse is sick all the time, Second Island. I learned more new things from Brian: what a bullet was, why San Francisco sewers are so stinky, especially on hot days (the waste sewage and the storm sewage both feed into the street sewer system), and how porn dubbing works. Brian is the Old Faithful geyser of knowledge.