Saturday and Sunday: More excitement than a barrel of monkeys on crack

Saturday:

So, as I said, we got up and made some breakfast, called my cousin to confirm plans, and drove back down to the City. For those of you unfamiliar with the west coast, San Francisco is referred to as the City by most people, SF or San Fran by a few, San Francisco if you want to be wordy, but never Frisco (that's a small town in Colorado, actually). If you are in (or near) San Francisco and you call it Frisco, people will secretly think you an idiot.

Anyhow, it was a lovely drive with very little traffic, and then we were across the bridge and driving up 19th Avenue to Geary and then driving much of the way out to the ocean. We met up with my cousin, lucked out on parking, and ate delicious Indian food at a highly-recommended place in the inner Richmond district. After lunch, we went to the ocean and played in the stingy sand. I reveled in the smell of the ocean and put my bare feet in the cold, salty water, and then ran back to where the sand was warm.


Hulk spent some time looking out to sea.


Eventually, it was time to return to real life, so we got back in the car and drove over to where QIR was graduating. We dropped off my cousin and I climbed in the back seat to strip out of my clothes and into other clothes while Dan stood in front of the window so passers-by couldn't see my shameful wickedness. Or my boobs. After a quick change (I'm good at that from years of practice backstage at ballet recitals and plays) I emerged from Moxie all gussied-up and did my makeup quickly in the right side mirror (a first, for me). We hightailed it up a very steep street to the fancy church where the graduation was held, got our tickets from QIR and took her purse to give to Lawboy.

We went into the church to find seats, only to find that this one person was saving an entire pew, and since each graduate only got seven tickets, we couldn't figure out why he felt like he was entitled to all that butt room. Some other nice person scootched over so we had some seats in a part of the church where we couldn't see a thing. Luckily, they had the whole shindig broadcast on big screens so we got to see and hear, and I took some pictures in the church. It was purty. Then, just before the ceremony started (very pomp and circumstance, very liturgical, almost wedding-ish, as only a group of 250 brand new lawyers in black robes can be), a cavalcade of brightly-dressed Nigerians rushed in and hurriedly filled the entire pew the one guy had been saving, and kind of pushed their way in to other rows nearby. The women wore beautiful dresses, some of them with scarves or head wraps, and the men had long robes over long pants and the boys were in bright blue suits, the girls in flowergirl dresses, and the babies were wearing whatever Nigerian babies wear to a graduation ceremony. There had to be at least 30 of them, and we found out later that they were all there to support one of QIR's classmates who had begged extra tickets from everyone so her friends and family could all be there.

The ceremony was actually quite nice, the speeches were interesting (especially the keynote, which was given by a kind of famous person), and then each person got his or her picture taken, crossed the stage, and got a piece of paper that was not actually a diploma. When the whole thing was over, everyone clumped across the street to the law school for the cupcake-and-apple-juice reception. It was quite crowded, as there's really noplace for a thousand people to hang out, so people were on stairways and in hallways and generally trying to stay out of the way of other people. We saw QIR's future nephew, or at least, saw her sister in which he is currently housed, and schmoozed a little, and then we all drove back over to the east bay to relax a bit before dinner.

Dinner was at a schmancy restaurant. I got super schmancy pizza, while most people got steak, and we all schmoozed some more. We hightailed it out after dinner and met Leah and Simon at the pub, had one drink and decided to call it a night since we were meeting the next day in the city. I volunteered to ride bitch in Simon's car, skirt and all, since we really didn't feel like walking back to our car. Photographic evidence can be seen here.

Sunday dawned bright and beautiful, but we dressed warmly because you never know what the weather will be like in the City; ah, microclimates. We BARTed to the city only to find out that we'd chosen wrong and for once, it was warm and beautiful there, too. Leah and Simon were waiting for us pretty close to the start of the Bay to Breakers race, and we spent the morning in the herds, throngs, and crowds of drunken, costumed, and/or naked people, taking pictures, gawking, and scoring free beer (Simon). I didn't actually take many pictures, but these are the ones I took that I liked best.


You can see Dan's and Leah's photos here.

After we'd made it into the park (complete with hilltop pee stop for me), we headed for a much-needed lunch on Haight street. Leah and Simon then took a test drive of an 08 Scion xB and scored some schwag, while Dan and I waited, and then we meandered back through the city to downtown.


We BARTed back across the bay, exhausted, and made it to Berkeley in time to have some gelato and go to Dan's favorite comic book store. I had to beg a Peet's employee to let me use the bathroom because somehow the Public Library locks theirs 15 minutes before closing and I was desparate. We BARTed up to my sister's house and sat on their couch and vegetated for a couple of hours in the warm quiet stillness, with only Elvis's chirping and the movie playing on their awesome huge flatscreen TV making it into our aural conciousnesses. My sister drove us to Trader Joe's to get food for the drive back and dropped us off at QIR's, where we visited with people at her celebratory barbeque, and then packed up and fell asleep since we had (yet another) early morning Monday.