Areas of Unrest

5 August 2001 - Sex and Baseball

QOTD: "All literary men are Red Sox fans. To be a Yankee fan in literary society is to endanger your life." - John Cheever

Reading: the September / October 2001 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

Listening to: the original cast album of It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman

I had a nice weekend up in San Francisco, filled with the two activities that make me moan involuntarily. I'm not going into any details on my sex life, though I have one sort of odd observation. We were cuddling, fully clothed, and talking and my arm was on Robert's chest. The vibrations of his chest while he talks are a definite turn-on. I'm sure I've had that reaction before, but I never pinned it down quite so precisely.

I took advantage of being up there to go to a game at PacBell Park. The game itself was disappointing, since the Giants lost horribly to the Phillies, largely due to unimpressive pitching. On the plus side, Barry Bonds hit a two-run homer (the only 2 runs the Giants scored, to the 12 that the Phillies did). And I get to check off another ballpark. I did like the stadium, which felt intimate despite its 40,000+ seating capacity. The location is convenient, too. I wasn't so crazy about the concession prices - $6.50 for a beer. And the signage is mediocre, with the result that I circled the entire stadium in order to find the section I was seated in. I later concluded that the sign for that section (101, which is in the right field corner) was actually wrong.

We had our fancy dinner Friday night at the Tadich Grill, allegedly the oldest restaurant in San Francisco. Robert worried about being dressed too casually, which isn't actually possible there. We were wise enough to go early so didn't have to wait for a table, but it filled up quickly. My ahi with mango salsa was good, though a bit more cooked than I'd have preferred. My own fault, as I asked for it to be medium rare, which is always subject to interpretation. Robert seemed to enjoy the fried seafood platter, which makes my arteries cringe just to think of. We finished up with rice pudding (Robert) and mixed berries with rum zabaglione (me).

The other notable meal was this morning, when I went for a dim sum brunch with Mo at Harbor Village. It was decent dim sum, though not up to what happens when you go out with a dozen people, one of whom speaks Cantonese. I enjoyed the conversation, too, and I even got to teach the origami frog yet again. (One must always share one's stupid human tricks.)

I also had time to do minor damage to my budget at Stacey's. Robert had mentioned Amy's Answering Machine by Amy Borkowsky (though he was unaware it was a book as well as a CD) and Mo had mentioned Road Swing (without remembering the title). The former is classic "make fun of Jewish mothers" stuff, allegedly transcribed from real answering machine messages. My mother tells me the same sort of things, with a particular obsession with making sure that I know exactly when to change my clocks between standard time and daylight savings time. At least Mom's stopped offering to send me cans of tunafish, having finally been persuaded that there are stores in California. The latter book has to do with a road trip to visit all the ballparks, plus other important baseball related sights. I also bought Tim Severin's Crusader because I feel obliged to buy any of his books that come back into print.

I should also mention that United treated me well in an unusual way. On the way up, they asked me if I'd mind exchanging my aisle seat in row 4 for an aisle seat in the exit row, since they couldn't give an exit row seat to a woman with a baby. It's no big deal to me, as they don't have Economy Plus on the shuttle flights anyway. But they still gave me a $50 voucher for future travel for agreeing to the switch. On the downside, we ran into my least favorite flight situation. Namely, we landed more or less on time and had to wait over a half hour for another plane to leave our gate. That would have been the same annoyance had I been in my original seat, of course, so it doesn't count against the voucher.