oh. my. god.

It was the right plan for a birthday surprise for Meredith, but i'm not certain i can do this again any time soon.

See, Meredith only rarely drinks ethanol-based beverages; and her poison of choice is root beer. Not too many places in our 'hood carry root beer on tap, but there are an awful lot of good dessert locations. So. A dessert crawl seemed in order.

We started with dinner at Bruno's, and encountered dessert number one:

A martini glass full of (reportedly) excellent chocolate pudding, with what i think was creme anglaise on top, and shards of chocolate.

Then on to Ti Couz. A shared simple berry crepe, and a lemon sugar. And a friendly bartender.

A stop at Luna Park to make reservations, and on to Timos. A cute bartender who talked flirtatiously of pain, a crepe suzette & a lemon tartlette, and mint tea.

Then back to Luna Park, for a few orders of 'Build your own S'mores'. Mere sereneded us with a re-rendering of Jay & Silent Bob's 'And then i ate S'mores'.

And then it was both closing time for restaurants, and a conquered foursome, full of sugar. Tomorrow i'll add links and make Mike report on whether or not Mere slept at all tonight.

(Oh yes. A sucess, definitely.)

(Wednesday note: somehow, between the coffee and the sugar, i didn't get to sleep until 6am. Go figure.)

Ahhhh - a tiny vacation.

A late lunch at Papa Toby's with our books, and then out to downtown with us. Picked up some tickets to see Signs, and then walked to the Embarcadero to spend a few gift certificates at Williams-Sonoma. Crepe pans, tart pans, and butane, oh my! I see desserts in our future, for better or worse! Back to the Metreon, took in our movie (in digital format, which i think i'll skip going forward, as it makes me feel too much like i'm at work), and then meandered to Ponzu, where we had a series of appetizers and drinks for our supper. As we traveled home, we had a great discussion about my job, which leaves me a little more at peace with the craziness i know is going to continue in the near future. (Let's hope i can keep that feeling in sight when i return to work on Wednesday!!) And tomorrow, tomorrow is Russell's 33rd birthday!

My reading page's makeover is complete. And even more-or-less up-to-date... though if i remember more of what i read over the last four months as i clean up the house, i'll definitely add them in. For bonus points, i set up the movie review page the same way for Russell - now he just has to get back to writing, and import his old entries!

That, a sucessfull book shopping trip down Valencia, and a lovely late lunch at Ti Couz with friends made for a lovely day. Now i just have to hang on to that feeling until Wednesday night....

I have a confession. It doesn't matter if the speaker is old or young, male or female, cute or less cute, but a bartender saying 'the guinness is cookin', darlin'' in a good, strong, true Irish accent brings me great joy.

And really, just the 'darlin'' in the accent is enough.

[written offline at The Liberties.]

Oof. Returnign to work after a week off, to the results of a reorg and double-job-duty can be rough. The good part was seeing everyone - after so many years and so much time together, some of these people are really important to me. It was nice to chat with folks for a few minutes here and there. The rest of it? Completely crazy. We'll see how the rest of the week goes. And in addition to the lovely marmelade anne & dave brough us, an Amazon shipment arrived with treats i had forgotten i had ordered. Score.

Lovely things we did in the last week or so:
--Walked a fair amount.
--Drank more than a fair amount.
--Finally saw The Minority Report and Episode II, in the theatre.
--Took in La Femme Nikita on the wall at the Foreign Cinema, slightly out of order.
--Ate a lovely dinner at the bar at Paul K. (See above, item 2.)
--Read.
--Worked on my reading pages. [see the work-in-progress]
--Drove to Pajaro Dunes, and enjoyed BornschlegelFest 2002.
--Engaged in my first geocache adventure.
--Not only cooked dinner for Clan Bornschlegel on Sunday night, but baked (!) two desserts. Reports on this dinner to come later.
--Bought yet more books in Santa Cruz while hiding from an accident on 17 on our return to SF.

A pleasantly full week, all told.

Yes, as meriko notes, I went to see China Miéville read at Stacey's about two weeks ago. I meant to write it up that week, really I did.

I'd never been to the SF Stacey's before. It seems to have many many floors. I BARTed over a little bit early, sat and scribbled in a notebook while waiting for things to get started.

Mister Miéville looks pretty much like he does on the jacket of Perdido Street Station — shaved, pierced, young, hip — but substantially less cranky. He stood next to the podium, looking a little uncomfortable, as the Stacey's M.C. introduced him, reciting a litany of awards and such.

He was reading from his new book, The Scar, which I've not yet read. His stuff tends to be sort of grim, gritty, horrific fantasy — more surreal and lyrical than, say, Clive Barker or Stephen King, more tendency to linger on the gore than Neil Gaiman, more imagination than most swords-n-sorcery authors. He gave us fair warning: "I'm reading by far the grossest part of the book, so if you like this, the rest should be easy going." Actually, he read two bits, one of which was lush descriptive scene-setting, and the other of which was, yes, pretty gross.

I haven't been to that many author readings in stores. Unlike the Neil Gaiman events, where everyone in the building has paid good money, and is there for the express purpose of listening to the reader, at a store reading there are people in the next aisle over, clunking around, talking to one another, etc., and in this particular venue, there was Market Street financial district lunchtime traffic outside the window to boot, so it wasn't easy to get into listening to the reading. Also, the combination of Miéville's rich, lyrical prose style and his somewhat lilting reading style added up to a sort of hypnotic effect; I found myself enjoying the texture of the noises washing over me without paying close attention to the meaning of the words. In contrast, at Gaiman's readings, the semantics have stayed at the forefront, and for the most part his prose stays relatively simple despite the fact that both writers have access to an impressive vocabulary. No criticism of Miéville is intended by this — in a similar venue and given an opportunity to read entire stories (or novellas!) I'm sure he would be just as captivating.

After the reading proper, Miéville did a little Q&A. He talked a little bit about his issues with Tolkien and about his incorporation of his political views into his writing (he tries not to let his politics get in the way of the writing, and I think he succeeds in that). When asked about how he develops his characters, he digressed a little: "I start with atmosphere... the next stage is creating monsters, which is why I got into this business; [audience laughs] no, really!"

Someone said "tell us about your name." He replied: "My parents were hippies. [laughter] That's all." It's his real name. He went on to explain that it was also an instance of Cockney rhyming slang: "china plate" → "mate" [i.e. friend], thus one might say "hello, me old China" to greet a longtime friend.

I didn't really take very good notes on the rest of the Q&A. He talked a little bit about author influences (Philip K. Dick, Mervyn Peake, among others less familiar who I didn't write down because I have trouble hearing unfamiliar spoken names) and about music (he writes with music playing, so sometimes he has a soundtrack in mind for a chapter; obviously most of King Rat calls for drum'n'bass) and about filmmakers (he mentioned Czech animator Jan Švankmajer, who I'd never heard of).

Wow. It's been a while, and not for lack of interesting things to write about. Russell went to a China Mieville reading, we went to the annual night zoo event at the San Francisco Zoo with Beca, we attended and bartended a lovely o-bon party, and we visited the skull exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences, my department re-orged at work and i am now doing two jobs. I even have some pictures to share from some of those events. And yet, that's not what i'm finally breaking silence to discuss today. Today i want to regale you with the tales of a lovely dinner we had with the Dodds last night. Such good food (if i do say so myself), and such a good evening with some of our favorite folks.

Mere arrived around 3:45 from her workshop in Berkeley - we slowly hung out in the kitchen and did all the prepwork for dinner. In between we talked about all manner of things, including the benefit for 826 Valencia that it turns out Meredith is attending this evening.

Around six, all the prepwork was done, and we snacked on some sliced apple, paranno cheese, and a few slices of baguette, with italian sodas for Russell and Mere, and a small gin and tonic with lots and lots of lime for me.

Russell drove out to fetch Mike from the train station, and Mere and i set the table. When they arrived, i poured first glasses of Kaz '98 Squeeze, and served the saffron-garlic soup (From The Secrets of Success Cookbook, Fleur-de-Lys). The soup was a vivid yellow colour, and tasted divine. Mike and i switched to a small glass each of a Wellington '99 Zin; the soup paired better with the spicy red. [Ok, so the soup was tasty, but at least several members experienced some GI distress later in the evening, and we pegged the large amounts of garlic in the soup. Be wary.]

Our main course was great, except that i flambed the fish. And, uh, i wasn't supposed to. Another recipe from the Secrets of Success book (but this time from Masa's), we made "Black bass with pine nut gratinee'. We stayed pretty close to the dish as described, but i added a bit of simple mashed potatoes to give the dish a little binding. I sautee'd baby spinach and pine nuts and golden raisins in browned butter; plated this on top of the mashed potatoes, offset on the plate. The fish was seared off in a pan, and then crusted in a coat of toasted, chopped pine nuts, butter, and breadcrumbs, and broiled. (The broiling step was where i noticed the black smoke, and had to blow out the 6-inch flames that were merrily carbonising my crusts. Luckily, the fish didn't overcook, and i had a little extra crust left over, so that was recoverable.) The fish leaned up against the potatoes, and i surrounded the plate with a circle of bright saffron buerre blanc, and drizzled the fish with a pumpkinseed/olive oil/balsamic vinaigrette. Quite tasty, and i think the potatoes were a good addition. The plating was picture-worthy on the black china, but we were busy being sociable and eating, rather than posing our food for posterity. [My only note on the recipe is that i followed the recipe for buerre blanc, despite it having a fair amount of cream in it to stabalize the sauce. I think it made it prettier, but i like my buerre blancs sans cream, and will probably make it that way in the future.] Mike and i drank the '98 Squeeze, which i think paired perfectly with this course.

We followed with a salad of baby greens with a citrus-balsamic vinaigrette, dried cherries, pistachios, and Point Reyes blue. Mike and i each had a glass of '89 Navarro Cabernet Sauvignon, which was fantastic paired with the cheese.

Finally, we made and devoured an apricot tarte tatin, with ice cream, coffee and water and a rousing round of Give me the Brain!. Everyone should know that Mere makes a great pie crust - this one was exquisite.

We sent the Dodds home, finished cleaning the kitchen, and retired full and happy. A very, very good night.