I just liked the title - it has actually been a pretty good Monday. I got a good night sleep last night and woke fairly crisp. The morning went smooth, traffic was good, the weather was crisp and covered in early morning fog.
I spent the first five hours of the working day in meetings and then went to lunch. Lunch was so-so. It was a tomato bisque that was a little granular (I would have preferred a more creamy bisque) and a tomato and mozzarella salad with cherry tomatoes that we just not quite ripe. A disappointing lunch all in all.
Somewhere either yesterday while doing laundry and house cleaning or last night while sleeping I strained my left wrist. I am fine with vertical movement of the wrist but have a limited range of motion when it comes to any horizontal movement. I have a nice little bruise underneath the skin on the outer side of the wrist, as if I hit something with it, but I can't recall any specific blow. I suspect I somehow got it twisted and slept on it.
I had a good weekend all in all. Friday night I went down to the local sports bar and had a beer and a shot of Jim Beam (I don't drink much) and sat and watched the Sharks playing hockey for a while. I left earlier then intended because the noise was getting to me. I have a weird sensitivity to noise - I do not mind loud noises (as in music, etc.) but chaotic noises as in twenty excited drunk people talking at once just irritates me. I am much more a lover of quiet places I guess.
Saturday, I met friends for an early breakfast and then…watched plans disintegrate. Originally, there were five of us planning to go up to SF and one by one through the week everyone cancelled - but me! So, around about ten AM I started out for SF. I took my time driving up, just wandering, stopping at various places, parks and overlooks, to just - enjoy the day, and it was a beautiful one.
My "more or less" goal was the DeYoung Museum. Traffic was stop and go on 19th, as it always is, and the area around the DeYoung was packed. There was some sort of festival going on at the Concourse, so there were a few thousand extra people in the area. I ended up parking across 19th and walking over.
Since the Botanical Gardens were on the way, I stopped and spent about two hours just wandering around the gardens, sitting on various benches, soaking up the sun and the beauty of the gardens.
Then, I went across the street to the DeYoung (cringing as I passed the concert that was mostly…distortion…there should be a law that requires all free concerts to have an actual sound engineer). It was my first visit to the new DeYoung and I must say, architecturally speaking, I was very impressed - it is a visually powerful building.
My first stop inside was…lunch. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, yogurt, and a brownie, washed down with organic lemonade. It was actually fairly good for museum cafeteria food. Then, I spent the next several hours wandering the galleries and exhibits and the building itself. A good museum (and the DeYoung is one) has a timeless quality about it, so I wandered and I looked and I sat and I explored. My favorite exhibit was an exhibit of Mesoamerican artifacts. Some pretty astounding stuff.
Sated, artifact wise, I wandered out onto the Concourse and checked out the free concert for a while. Not my genre of music, but the crowd seemed to be having a good time. From there, I walked back to my car and came home. I must have walked eight or nine miles, most of it in broad looping circles. I got home that evening, goofed around for a while, watched some television, ate some dinner and fell into bed and asleep about eleven PM.
I slept straight through the night, waking crisply at sunrise (just a little after 7:00 AM). I wake at sunrise pretty much regardless of when I go to sleep, so with the sliding approach of fall, I tend to sleep a little later - at least until we fall back with Daylight Savings Time (November 2nd this year, mark your calendar).
Sunday was a sedate day, lingered in the morning watching football and reading, then spent the afternoon doing laundry, and Sunday evening went to dinner with my friend Tony at Flames on Winchester (where I discovered that every Sunday the owner makes his mothers Greek chicken, rice and lemon soup - outstanding!), and saw the movie Max Payne. Do not rush out to see the movie. It was enjoyable, visually impressive, but also an entirely predictable movie based on a video game, so be forewarned. It's an action/popcorn movie - brain optional for attendance.
Then, I can home, wrote the previous entry, chatted with a friend online, chatted on the telephone and called it an early night to read and drift off to sleep.
Let me share a pair of links to the DeYoung and the Botanical Gardens.
The DeYoung:
http://www.famsf.org/deyoung/
(Oh, and the website shows the Maya Lin sculpture - that is pretty dang cool - you would not think so just reading about it - but it has presence. Technically the exhibit doesn't open until the 25th, but they were in the process of assembling it and it is mostly done.)
The San Francisco Botanical Gardens
http://www.sfbotanicalgarden.org/
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