yet to ride a streetcar

adam made me oatmeal for the second morning in a row. i'm talking from scratch with oats in a pot and fixin's like walnuts and raisins and freshly ground flax. as someone who's had a very hard time adopting a breakfast regimen, this is an important, if not decadent, practice.

san francisco smells good. just generally a nice scent. the population seems super ecclectic. yesterday, i wandered around the downtown and financial districts for something like 5 hours. there is definately a coolness that hangs over the place like the famed fog, but it's not inaccessible. everyone seems purposeful, but not in that crazed aggressive new york kinda way. i amused myself by walking amongst them in their local habitat as if i, too, am rushing off to a meeting. i gawked at all those hoity toity department stores that occupy entire city blocks: neiman marcus, saks fifth avenue, macy's. i wandered up (and i do mean UP) to china town and back down again. i took a well-deserved rest break in border's, where i finally flipped through the acclaimed bestseller by john stewart, america: the book, which frankly, isn't all that funny. picked up a couple of magazines cuz i'm a big spender.

prepared butternut squash and pear soup for adam and his friend wolfgang, west coast editor for food and wine magazine who resembles elton john, circa 1976.

am still working on that whole "on vacation" concept - trying not to stress about the lack of progress made on that dreaded report or about my disconnect from the crazy goings-on in the qc ndp. am trying to love the leisure, the lazying. i am getting a kick out of being utterly tv-free. i am almost done the sting book. i am daydreaming about writing projects i might have the audacity to pursue this year. adam has turned me onto strangers with candy.

i can see the sky from the couch on which i work - it is a strange ashen colour and the air has a damp chill. it is very likely to rain today. i plan to meander over to the castro district where i might purchase some naughty/silly xxx items, then perhaps on to a highly-recommended stretch of beach for a long walk. this all seems a bit less compelling with the rain factor, but out i must go. i'm in san fran-fucking-cisco, for chrissakes. later, jill intends to take me to burma superstar, a bizarrely-named restaurant that is supposedly fantastic.