Sunday, July 11, 2004
Nectarine and plums and hash browns for breakfast. Patrick also had cereal. The plums were from Melissa's parents' yard—yummy! Today I took Patrick to a surprise event: Bay to Barkers—which is like Bay to Breakers except people walk with their dogs. The event took place at Cesar Chavez Park next to Berkeley Marina. They walk a little over 1 mile, then do games and contests. There are vendor booths with lots of doggy goods and services. It was fun except for the free soy milk ice cream sandwich which Patrick tried for free. (I refused.) Afterwards we looked on 4th Street for pint glasses but couldn't find the right ones for the right price. We went to downtown Berkeley and ate at a brand new restaurant called Thai Garlic (510-665-6005, 2042 University Av, Berkeley). They had opened for business yesterday, and the waiter offered each of us a free drink. (I presume this offer was limited to non-alcoholic beverages.) We both got Thai iced teas, which hit the sweet spot after watching doggies play in the warm summer sun with cool bay breezes. Patrick ordered pad see yew with chicken, I ordered fried shrimp with vegetables and steamed rice. We were a little dismayed that our order took a long time to arrive. It had even arrived after the orders of other tables near us who placed their orders after us. At the end of the meal, one of the restaurant people gave us a 10% off coupon which he said was good for 5 years. The food and the iced teas were all delicious. After the meal, Patrick and I stopped in to Eastwind, a bookstore specializing in Chinese books. I found a really fun book called Making Out in Chinese by Ray Daniels. It's a basic phrasebook, but it also tells you how to hit on or insult someone using Chinese. For example: "If you have free time, let's get together" is "Yo kong jien" and "Shut up!" is "Ju ko!" We drove back to SF, hitting 30 minutes' worth of traffic at the bridge. When we got back to the Sunset, our home was enshrouded in fog and cold—hard to believe we'd just come from such nice weather in the East Bay. I archived Christmas cards from 2003 and other memorabilia, started production on Patrick's Madonna remix CD. Weeded old files. Read news. Dinner at home with Patrick: fried salmon, mac and cheese with zucchini and red bell pepper, corn on the cob, country bread and butter. Finished burning remix CDs. Scanned in some souvenirs from Patrick's China trip.