12/20/00

Right now, I'm alone for the first time in days. I'm at work, and it's nearly 9 a.m., but nobody else is here yet. A lot of people have already left town for Christmas. Others are just busy getting ready for the holidays, I guess. Or maybe everyone just felt like sleeping in this morning on account of the return of the fog after a few rare days of sunshine this week.

I'm going home for Christmas, too, but not until Saturday, and then I'll be back on Thursday. I decided yesterday that I'm having a New Year's party. I'm not sure that anyone will show up. I didn't invite that many people, and most of my friends will still be out of town then. But I suppose it's just as well, because my apartment isn't really big enough to host a real party in anyway.

Last week, I went through and did some work updating some of the other parts of this website. I finally updated my links page for the first time in about 3 years. There'll be a few more superficial changes to the site coming in 2001, which I've also been working on.

So, as I mentioned at the beginning of this entry, I haven't had much time to myself lately. My one free evening this week was Saturday night, when I decided to stay in and rent "Magnolia," which I'd never seen. It was amazing. I was kicking myself for not seeing it sooner. Sadly, though, every year I have less and less time to see movies, so I probably end up missing a lot of good ones. I still haven't had a chance to see "Dancer in the Dark." I'll probably end up renting it two years from now and then I'll wonder why I never saw it sooner.

Sunday was Lucy's big party in honor of Kymm's brief visit to the Bay Area. Michael Rawdon already wrote up an account of the gathering here. Eleanor generously agreed to give me a ride down to the party, even though she could only stay for an hour. We had anticipated more traffic than there actually was, and so we arrived 15 minutes early. But we weren't the first to arrive--as we drove past Lucy's house looking for a spot to park, we saw a woman with long dark hair walking up the steps to the house. "Is that Mo?" Eleanor asked. "It looks like her." I hadn't met Mo, but I'd seen her picture and it looked to me, too, like it might be her, at least from the back, which was all we could see of her.

So, we parked and headed into the house, greeting Lucy's husband John, who was putting up Christmas lights on the front of the house. We walked in and the woman we'd just seen was sitting on the couch. Eleanor, who I knew had met Mo before, greeted her warmly, and I, who hadn't met her, stuck out my hand and introduced myself. "We've met," she said, smiling. "I came to your birthday party, remember? I gave you the necklace?"

I was confused. I didn't think that Mo was even living on this coast when I had my birthday party. Of course, a second later, I realized that it wasn't Mo at all, but rather Trish Homis, whom I'd talked to for some time at my party, and who indeed had given me a very beautiful necklace for my birthday. I felt like a complete jerk, of course, and started babbling apologies.

Lucy and Kymm were, of course, already there, as well. The party ended up having quite a good turnout, and it went quite late--it started at 2 p.m., and it went late enough that at around 7:30 we all decided to go out to dinner at an Italian place two blocks from Lucy's house. I was starving, despite the fact that I'd been gorging myself on cookies all afternoon in the Christmas tradition.

Actually this year hasn't been too bad for me in terms of holiday pigging-out. I was pretty gluttonous when I went home for Thanksgiving, but I've actually managed to lose a couple of pounds since then thanks to all the running I've been doing in preparation for my upcoming race.

After dinner, I got a ride back to the city with Sei, who I hadn't seen in a long time, so the ride back was a nice opportunity to catch up with her. I do feel bad always having to bum rides off of people whenever I go anywhere out of the city, but not bad enough that I'd actually be motivated to get a car. There are too many cars in this city as it is, and it's a rare event that I actually go anywhere that's not within walking distance anyway. But when I do need a car, it's a pain not having one. And then there's the fact that having a car of your own is kind of a rite of passage, one which I seem not to have passed yet. I did have a car for a while when I was living in Cambridge, but it was inherited from my family, so it doesn't really count. Being 28 and not having a car is sort of like being 28 and still living with your parents, or being 28 and never having had a real job, or being 28 and never having lived anywhere except the place you grew up. These things certainly happen to people, but they're all sort of pathetic. I don't want to be pathetic, but I also don't really want to deal with parking and insurance and all that crap for a car I'll hardly ever use.

Anyway, while I was at the party on Sunday, I asked Kymm how long she'd be in the area and learned that she was leaving Monday night, and that she didn't have any plans during the day on Monday. Lucy would be at work, so Kymm was on her own, so I suggested that she head up to the city so we could have lunch and she could get to see exciting San Francisco.

I sent out some e-mails when I got home, and we arranged that Kymm, Joy Rothke and I would all meet in the food court of the San Francisco Center (a shopping mall) downtown. I had never met Joy before, although I certainly knew of her through e-mail and through her often caustic posts to diary-L and Threeway Action. I showed up at the appointed time, and Joy arrived a couple of minutes later. She recognized me from the pictures on my site and from my e-mail description of my outfit that day, which is good, because I had no idea what she looked like.

So, Joy and I commenced waiting for Kymm, who showed up 40 minutes late. I was a bit worried that Kymm wouldn't show up at all, because she didn't know the city at all, and she had no way to get in touch with me if something went wrong with her complicated plan for getting to the city. But I got to know Joy a bit while we were waiting. She's not exactly like her suffer-no-fools online persona, although the sharp wit seen in many of her posts is also apparent in real life--a quality for which I have a great appreciation.

Anyway, eventually Kymm did show up and we took a bus over to Haight Street, because I thought it might be fun for Kymm to see something other than downtown, and we ate in a cafe there and shared diary gossip. Unfortunately, I had a bunch of stuff to do in the lab that day, so I had to head back to work after we finished eating, but Kymm and Joy went off to wander around the Haight, and I entrusted Joy with the responsibility of making sure that Kymm would be able to find her way back to the airport in time for her flight.

That evening, I had another out-of-town visitor. My friend Katie is going to be moving to the city from Boston next month, so she was here for a few days, first visiting Sacramento where she had to go to take the state veterinary board exam (she's a veterinarian) and then heading down to SF to hang out and think about looking for a place to live. She's got a couple of strikes against her in the battle to find Bay Area housing. For one thing, she has pets--a cat and a dog. Very few buildings in this city will accept pets. She also doesn't have a job at the moment, which would make some landlords reluctant to rent to her. Of course, the flip side of not having a job is the fact that she'll have plenty of time to devote to apartment hunting when she arrives here for real in January. Anyway, Katie stayed with me for the last few days, sleeping on my trusty air mattress on the floor.

But by the time I get home today she'll be back in Sacramento waiting to fly home. On that flight, she changes planes in San Francisco, so she called the airline to see if she could just pick the flight up here instead of taking the bus from San Francisco to Sacramento and then flying back here. They told her they'd have to charge her $1100 if she wanted to do that. Airfares are so weird.

So, anyway, last night we went out for a couple of drinks with some school friends. The bar was actually kind of crowded when we got there, so Alvin went to go grab a table for us. We bought drinks and then went to find him, and he was sitting at a large round table which was also occupied by a very demonstrative goth couple. We sat down and started chatting, but the couple just kept making out, oblivious to the rest of the world, even as more people from our group showed up and joined us. Eventually, the guy went to the bathroom and left his girlfriend behind, and she started talking to us. She was a photo stylist for fashion magazines, so Alvin asked her which of us was worst-dressed. She was politely evasive, saying that we were all dressed appropriately. Anyway, when her boyfriend got back to the table, they finally left, so we had the table to ourselves.

A bit later, I went to use the bathroom, and found the ladies' room door slightly ajar, so I pushed it open only to find a man urinating in there. I don't know if he was drunk or he just didn't care or what. He did apologize to me on the way out, and I suggested that he lock the door in the future, or at the very least close it.

The forum: What are you doing for New Year's?