karaokegal hies off to yon Oakland so that her hair artiste and karaoke guru, Sebastian can attend to her tresses. It was a seriously CRAP week at work, despite having the lovely Lucy filling in for Tobie on two days, so I'm definitely lookng forward to having myself made beautiful. Then we go to brunch, followed by the Mint. I'm going to try Sunset Boulevard again, this time raised two tones. We'll see how that works.
Yesterday Hubby and I went on a little adventure to the East Bay. The last couple of weeks have mostly been like this: Wake up. Run. Eat Brunch. Glue self to the couch to watch DVDs and try to write. Nothing wrong with that, but with RPS mostly done and
betteronvicodin at least under way, it was time to break the entropy and do something different. I did my run/walk/run from the apartment, over Potrero, to the ballpark where there were massive crowds and lots of dogs. I assume everyone was trying to get tickets to see Barry, but not sure what was up wtih the dogs. I really like dogs so that was ok. Then I jogged/walked/jogged the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building and crossed Market before giving up the ghost at about 3rd street amd taking BART home.
Hubby as I may have mentioned has many, many instruments including multiple mandolins and he wanted a new gig bag for one of them. THE BAG was only to be had at The Fifth String in Berkeley, so after brunch at Maverick (home of "what kind of water can I start you with," we got on BART and went to the East Bay, where it was a truly gorgeous, sunny, WARM day. (It was sunny in San Francisco, but not particularly warm.)
The Fifth String is near Ashby Station, but my mission was to go to Ameoba in Berkeley and see if they could do better on the Barrow-mania front than Ameoba in SF. (Never mind that I'm already bugging my buddy at Virgin to order the stuff for me anyway.) I needed change for another BART ticket so I bought a coke, which was a big mistake. OK, buying the coke wasn't a mistake; drinking it was.
I actually love Berkeley. I worked on the campus for a year. Aside from the commute, it was great. I love the 60's hippies, 80's goths, 90's whatever. Green hills, bubbling brooks. It was great to walk around and just be somewhere out of our home neighborhood for a change.
Ameoba didn't have individual JB disks but I did score a used copy of the De-Lovely soundtrack and a Tom Jones CD that I didn't have (and if you've seen my CD rack, you know that actually is unusual.)
So we wandered Telegraph Avenue and the campus, enjoying the day and the sun etc etc. By this time, I needed to get rid of some soda if you know what I mean and that's when we discovered something alarming. YOU CAN'T PEE IN BERKELEY. Every single Starbucks, Tully's etc etc had a sign on the door saying "Public restrooms are not available to customers. Sorry for the inconvenience." EXCUSE ME!!!!????? WTF????!!!!!
My only theory is that it's too easy for the homeless population to scrape together the price of a cup of coffee and then do unspeakable things in the bathrooms and therefore they must all be off-limits, but this really, really (you should pardon the expression) PISSED ME OFF. Cos, people, I was getting desperate.
I finally spotted a Ross For Less store and figured a place where women take their children HAD to be able to accomodate. It took some doing and line waiting, but I got in. WHEW!!!
This has definitely put a damper on my opinion of Berkeley, let me tall ya.
Anyway, we got home and hunkered down to watch the Commentary on The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances and then some more Carnivale. Hello...and OH MY GOD...it's John Hannah. At first I wasn't sure, but the accent was a give-a-away and IMDB confirmed. You gotta love a guy who turns up on Alias & Carnivale (as does Patrick Bachau, also Chase's dad.) We also watched some Sopranos. We're on Season 5 and hubby is kind of losing interest. The fact that the Netflix disks keep being fucked up doesn't help.
OK, off to Oakland in a bit.
See you later when I post the RPS.