I haven’t written in just over a week, so here’s a recap of what I’ve been up to.

I finally got my hands on Leven Thumps and the Eyes of the Want, and OMG. It’s the best one in the series!!! I am so going to renew it when it comes time for it to be due—I can’t wait to reread it!

Seriously, I recommend these books to everyone because they’re so good. You have to be able to make that leap into the imaginary. It’s a huge leap. It’s like the deal with reading Madeleine L’Engle. You have be able to visualize—and the author does a great job of describing things in a unique but clear way—but it can be challenging because things in Foo are VERY different from Reality.

Go to Amazon, and you’ll see solid 5-star ratings for this one, and high ratings for the others. This one is Book 3, and there will be a total of five in the series. I’m already freaking out that I have to wait at least six months for the next one! I wonder if the publisher will put out a boxed set when they’re all done?

– I read Fast Food Nation. Um… Wow. That’s about all I can say about it. As hard as it will be, I am going to try not to support the fast food industry anymore, unless I am near an In-An-Out Burger or Carl’s Jr. The other places… sigh. Knowing that people work so hard in those meat packing plants with almost nothing to show for it. Those dangerous jobs. Those scary jobs. No benefits. Little pay. It’s like a sweatshop or something. 🙁 And the stuff in the meat. The things they feed to the cattle. Cattle is supposed to eat grass, not the remnants of other animals, or poop, or whatever the hell they feed them. The two restaurants I mentioned don’t use those awful meat-packing places. Unfortunately, those places are not in the midwest (not that I know of). That’s okay though, because fast food is not that good for me. And it’ll be great for me to stop eating it.

– I also read The Golden Compass. I started on the new A-List book, and I also have Kite Runner. Oh, and I’m in the middle of the second Daughters of Isis book. The 3rd one is in my queue.

– I apparently won one of the many book contests I enter, because I randomly got a copy of Stephanie Hale’s Revenge of the Homecoming Queen in the mail one day. Awesome, right? When I met Stephanie, it was at the Chicago Spring Fling conference in April of 2006. She hadn’t even had an agent yet. And now she’s all published and stuff.

– I became addicted to Earl Grey tea. Mmmmm. I take it with four sugars. Rosa and Richard tell me that I drink syrup, not tea. At any rate, I’m becoming a tea drinker. Digging out all the boxes of tea I’ve had in my cupboard, and they supply free tea at work. This is a good thing!

– I watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and watched my favorite line over and over:
He don’t eat no meat? What do you mean he DON’T EAT NO MEAT????

– I made it through 2/3rds of Rent without getting interrupted. One of these days, I’m going to get to watch the whole thing in one sitting.

– I got the original Broadway recording of Rent out of the library and have been listening to it like crazy for the past several days. I love Light My Candle, One Song Glory, Contact (my favorite!), Will I?, and Life Support. Every time I listen (which is a LOT!), I hear more and more that I really like. Someday I’d LOVE to see the actual show. Yes, I do realize that I’m ten years behind everyone in loving this musical, but hey, better late than never, right? 🙂

five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes….

But the big thing is that thanks to my rad friend (and bridesmaid) Rosa (meimeigui), and her cool hubby Richard, I got to spend the weekend in San Francisco!! Lots and lots and lots of sightseeing went down, as well as picture taking. I had a blast.

!!!^-^!!!

I flew in Friday, on Skybus. Skybus is a very inexpensive carrier, and if you’re lucky, you can get seats for as little as $10! The reason they can charge so little is because they use smaller airports (for example, I flew into Oakland instead of the big San Francisco airport), they charge for things such as beverages, meals (you can get real food!), and checking baggage. They also bring this little cart down the aisle with products one can buy—things such as perfume and jewelry and gourmet chocolate! I thought that was the funniest thing. There were people buying stuff up like crazy. Basically, they don’t want to charge everyone for what only a few people will take. Not everyone gets a beverage or checks a bag on flights. It was nonstop, and that was very nice. I had the His Dark Materials trilogy with me and that’s when I made a decent dent in The Golden Compass. I’m finding it easier to get into The Subtle Knife, now. My problem is that with these big books, I want to hurry and race to the end so I can see what happens. I have to FORCE myself to slow down and actually ingest the words as I am reading them.

Anyway, I got to the city, and Rosa got me and took me to the headquarters of imeem.com. What a SUPER DUPER cool place to work, let me tell you. When the drudgery of the work day gets too much, the office is equipped with a foosball table, a Playstation 2, a Nintendo Wii, guitars, a drum set, a kitchen stocked with snacks like whoa, a fridge stocked with Red Bull, just to name a few. OK. How awesome, right? Yeah, that would NEVER happen at ZB. Never, never. Ever. But can you imagine working in such a cool place? A place where the boss lets one of the workers bring in her puppy on Fridays?

Friday was pretty low key. Hanging out with Rosa and Richard, drinking tea, and hanging out with their cool friends, one of whom was out of town as well. Played Scattergories, drank lots of tea, and watched the “wild ass.”

Saturday was super duper busy, and it started with a trip to the Farmer’s Market.

Me and Rosa!

Gorgeous Organic Flowers

Pumpkins! Pretty!

Chicken feet. Eeek!

Then we had tea service at Samovar in Yerba Buena. Yummy.

We popped into SF SOMA for a bit and drooled and dreamed over the cool stuff in the museum shop, then we hopped on the trolley (streetcar?) to head to all the touristy stuff. You know the things they had in the Rice-A-Roni commercials? Yeah, I got to ride two. Sweet, right? I also got to take this random picture of a steep street in the city, and also one of Coit Tower:

We hit the top of Lombard Street, and Rosa and I ran down with our arms out. When we got to the bottom, a hippie drove by and yelled “THAT IS FUCKING TWISTED!!!” Rosa and I cracked up because well, Lombard is twisted. And steep. And pretty.

From Lombard, we walked to Fisherman’s Wharf, which is TOURIST CENTRAL. OMG so many people. Lots and lots of people. Didn’t help that the Blue Angels were in town, being all cool and loud and stuff.

One can see lots of cool stuff at Fisherman’s Wharf, like Alcatraz. And sea lions.

Alcatraz

Sea Lions

Sunday morning, I got to meet and hang out with Katy (drkangelmommy)!!

Isn’t she so cute??? 😀

Of course, no trip to SF is complete without going to The Golden Gate Bridge. Rosa took me there early Sunday morning. It was a perfect day. Cloudless blue skies, no fog. Beautiful.

So YAY! Thanks a million to Rosa for making this happen. She’s an awesome gal and I had a blast with her. 🙂

I was in a cranky mood at the grocery store today because 1) it was crowded, and 2) they jacked the prices WAY up since I’ve been there last. An 8 oz. can of Hunt’s tomato sauce used to cost about 35 cents, now it’s 40 cents. Lord knows that the organic stuff is priced sky high. No wonder people love Aldi and Marc’s! I usually go to Marc’s anyway, because it’s closer to me than Aldi is. And sometimes Marc’s has obscure stuff one can’t find in a regular grocery store.

I’m heading toward crankiness again because there is one of those little flitty bugs flitting around and being annoying, and it’s already after 7pm (naturally the work day crawled by), and I’ll have to go to bed soon.

OH! I was on the Apostrophe Abuse blog today, and click to see what the cat dragged in: http://www.apostropheabuse.com/2007/09/thank-yous-note-cards.html. Yes, the same issue from Target that I emailed them about two years ago.

I got good mail today! A gift card, a letter, and a coupon for a free chicken sandwich and medium Coke from Chick-fil-A. You too, can have one. Just go to http://freechickenandcoke.com. If it’s still up and running, you can have free Chick-fil-A too! 🙂 Ka-CHOW!

mandibaby just got married! Congrats to her! She looked beautiful! 😀

All right. I need to get going. Time to make dinner. Tilapia, mashed potatoes, and spinach is on the menu for tonight. Yummy. 🙂

Cheers!