Sunday, March 30, 2003
Breakfast at home with Patrick: Grape Nuts Flakes for him, oatmeal for me. The weather was spectacularly fine today: warm and sunny, sometimes hot even. We bought shoes and Superfeet for me at the Sports Basement, a great place to find discounted athletic and outdoor gear, similar to REI but not as comfortable inside. (The lighting is not only fluorescent but also inadequate, and the couch I sat on to try on shoes looked like it came from a dumpster.) Still, the employees were very friendly and helpful, especially our blond hunky cashier, "kstarrett," according to the receipt. Patrick got a sportyish black zip-up vest. After that we went to Hamburger Mary's at Folsom and 12th, which had changed owners and is now known as Harvey's Soma (415-626-5767, 1582 Folsom at 12th). I hadn't been here in years. There's now wood siding on the exterior, but the inside looks the same. Patrick had a burger with grilled onions, swiss cheese, mushrooms, and a side of curly fries. I had a turkey burger with a side of onion rings. We had iced teas. The order took longer than we expected to arrive, but all the food was delicious. We were surprised that the turkey burger I got was boob meat—not ground turkey—nice! Both burgers came on sesame buns—another nice touch. The onion rings were essentially *perfect*: big cuts of onions, crispy crunchy, not too hot or cold. So good we would go back just for the onion rings. Service was just okay. Our server ("75 HUSSEIN") made a bunch of small mistakes, like: bringing iced tea that wasn't cold and then later bringing us two glasses of ice, not bringing napkins until after we got drinks, not taking our menus after taking our order, bringing condiments after (rather than before) the burgers. Not a big deal overall since we were so pleased with the food. After lunch, we went to the End Up. The place was not very crowded. The music was good to listen to, but not too great for dancing. We stayed a few hours then got bored and drove to the Castro, walked around enjoying the warm weather. Had coffee and chai tea at Peet's on Market. Patrick wore his new Camper shoes today. He likes them very much. Back at home in the early afternoon, Patrick reviewed new music for making a new mix while I worked on entering journal entries for May 2000 and put books for sale on Amazon. Our Internet connection stopped working at around 8:06 PM. After about 30 minutes it still wasn't back up (unusual for sonic.net) and we couldn't think of anything to do so we went to bed. I had a stomachache anyhow. Patrick had made chicken cordon bleu, which he ate by himself since I was feeling ill.