Saturday, December 21, 2002
Basic 4 and oatmeal for breakfast. We wrap a gift for Patrick's mom. Patrick goes to the Castro to work at Jumpin Java. I mail the package then stay home to work on Lodestar tweaks and Domenica's Web site. Hung out with Brian and Kelly and Jesse. We caught Jesse just before he leaves for Michigan tomorrow to visit his family. Brian talked about the sales downtown he discovered: 30% off everything at French Connection, half off jeans at Levi's. He told Patrick that he saw a pair of jeans that would look good on him, one with small pockets on the front, and Patrick said, "You mean these?" Patrick stands up and the jeans he's wearing are exactly the ones Brian was thinking. Brian also suggested a brown corduroy jacket for Patrick which, turns out, Patrick wasn't already wearing and didn't have at home either. We gave the 3 of them a package of Ho Ho Ho's and Jesse smeared one of them into Brian's face while feeding it to him. Dinner at Four Season Restaurant (415-861-2682, 708-14th St) with Patrick: hot and sour soup, sizzling rice soup, sesame chicken, walnut prawns. Very good Chinese food in the Church Street neighborhood. The sesame chicken was particularly good—crispy on the outside yet tender on the inside. They also have a sesame beef version if you like eating cow. We wouldn't've known about the place if we hadn't asked Brian and Kelly, "Are there any secret restaurant finds nearby that we don't yet know about?" The food we had was very good—don't let the lack of an 's' at the end of the restaurant's name fool you. (Note: Brian warned us to stay away from the appetizers, so we did.) Looked for the first Lord of the Rings film on DVD but couldn't find it anywhere. Instead we rented Jackie Brown on DVD and went home and watched it. Patrick had seen it before, but I hadn't, and I was very impressed with the well-written dialogue and fantastic acting, especially Samuel Jackson. The film was a pleasure to watch, despite the violent situations it depicts.