I'd like to add my thanks to all who helped get Tacogirl out to the left coast - we had a blast!
I picked her up Saturday morning, and she greeted me with gifts from Belize for my family. (Tacogirl, I think the kid now has a crush on you!
) We headed out into one of those rare sunny, warm (no idea what she's talking about - it was 70 degrees for goodness sake!!) San Francisco days, light breeze, minimal annoying tourists, relatively short lines, etc...
We did all things touristy: rode the cable cars from one end to the other, saw Coit Tower, Transamerica Building, Lombard Street. Spent some good time in Chinatown where we had really good dim sum at a tiny little back alley place and successfully located Tacogirl's ginger-honey tea and my shiitake mushrooms. Hit lots of great shopping places where I was privileged to watch Tacogirl exercise remarkable restraint (no, really, Paul - it was quite impressive!
). Introduced her to the Container Store where the motto is "Contain yourself!" checked out all the fancy kitchen stores where we saw a few gadgets we never knew existed! Wound up back down by Fishermans Wharf at Boudin's (
http://www.boudinbakery.com), where we had clam chowder in a sourdough bowl, overlooking the bay. I took the cutest picture of Tacogirl standing in the "breadline" - alas, I am a tech illiterate and it now doesn't show up on my camera.
At 9:30 we decided there was time for one last mad dash to Target. You would be amazed at how much shopping can be accomplished in 10 minutes by two gals on a mission.
Taco grabbed all her last minute items while I went for all of the finest peanutbutter and chocolate candy Target had to offer, 'cause I wanted to make sure Paul got something out of this trip!
We returned home to pack and it was 1:45 am by the time we crawled into bed with alarms set for 4 am. In retrospect I'm not sure why we bothered! We loaded up the car, exchanged gifts to deliver (TQ & KLC, I have things to mail to you - as you know my track record with the post office I will be abdicating those responsibilities to one of the "male" persons in my home - Pedro, wherever you are, hope you enjoy
), and dashed off to the airport. KLC & Gela, just so you know the GPS worked fine!
It really was a very fun day and was great to get to spend such a good chunk of time with Laurie. We had some great conversations and continued to marvel at what a wonderful place this message board is, as how else on this earth would two people so different get the chance to become such good friends! Thanks to all who called and texted - it was great fun delivering those messages and passing the phone off to TG. OH, and as for you mid-coast people - what is with the weekend bedtimes? Good grief, it wasn't even midnight in your part of the world!!!!!
Again, my thanks to all who helped with the flight, the place to stay (and let me just say I am extremely envious of Forrest as he has homes in two of my three favorite places in the world!) and everything else. I was as much a beneficiary of that generosity as anyone!