i actually sort of got up on time this morning for my lesson. yeah, i should be at it right now, but jim just called and said he was in the city and could just come by my house if i wanted. very cool. hopefully my neighbors won't think it's too early to hear my screaching.

jim and i went to get some coffee and a muffin at thinker's cafe. since the lesson was at my house, we had a few minutes to sit outside and have our coffee and food. he's an interesting guy. in some ways i think he's a bit of a lost soul, but aren't we all.

the lesson was pretty good, actually. i was surprised. it was also cool to get a little further in the bruch. he told me that he spent a year on the first movement. i've gotten through about half of it, sort of.

i went to box afterwards. the traffic was horrendous. i think that something was going on by civic center. anyway, the class was good and nan and i had a chance to catch up over brunch at polkers.

it's a beautiful day outside today, and i feel like i should go out. the northbeach festival is this weekend, but i hesitate going there cuz there i'm sure there will be a huge crowd cuz the weather is so nice.

so, a little bit about last night ....

i went out with peter, dennis, lola (a friend of peter's who used to live upstairs), kat, kai (another friend of peter and dennis'), and john (yet another friend of p and d's). we went down to the diesel store off of union square for the surface party. apparently diesel has just redesigned the store and this was the housewarming. there was plenty of turi vodka and snacks galore. they had a couple of models handing out candy, four cheerleaders with silver pompoms, and a poor guy who was probably dripping in sweat inside a panda bear getup. i haven't been in the *scene* in a while. funny how ugly is beautiful, but i guess this is diesel's mo. the fashion is returning back to the 80's. think legwarmers and off the shoulder tops. anyway, there was an afterparty at ozumo that started around 11. we had some time to kill. we stopped by the tunnel top for a drink. apparently, they have great mojitos. i didn't have one. stuck to my kettle one martini up with olives. the place reminded me of laszlo, the bar adjacent to foreign cinema. it turns out they are run by the same people.

a little after 11, we headed down to ozumo. it was the same scene, but more crowded. i followed kat's lead and had an unfiltered sake. it was after 12.30 when kat and i shared a cab back to the mission. i was done. it was actually a nice night, and i'm glad we went out after the party at diesel. i was feeling antisocial, but i rallied. i'm glad.

again, at some point in the evening at diesel, kat and i started talking about the *future* and what we would do if we didn't have to work and we had the resources to do whatever we wanted. i still dunno what that would be. she is the second person who had suggested something art related to me. john entered the conversation and we asked him the same thing. he was quick to answer -- surf. we talked a bit about that. yeah, it would be great to surf more regularly. i definitely enjoy it. i also hope that i got into the ceramics class for the summer. i'd like to do that again. i also did really like jewelry making, but i realize that creativity is something that i have to work at. it doesn't come spontaneously to me. i'd also like to continue rock climbing. that reminds me. i should order a chalk bag. anyway, i'm getting side tracked.

tonight i went to clementine in the richmond. they don't seem to have a site of their own, but there is a listing in citysearch.

anuja's going be gone all summer and she wanted to try this place with a bunch of us. so, joanne, mel, tina, laura, anuja, and i had dinner there.

i was totally running late cuz yoga let out late. i was thinking about leaving about half way through the class, cuz i was feeling lightheaded and nauseous. and i wasn't sure that i could watch this instructor talk without moving his lips for an hour and a half. anyway, it was fine that i was late, cuz it turned out that the restaurant had screwed up the reservations. instead of confirming it, they thought anuja was cancelling it. see, 5 min doesn't really make a difference in the larger scheme of things.

we ended up waiting for another twenty minutes or so before we were seated. i have to say, though, that it was worth the wait. the service was great. we had probably four different people attending to us. i couldn't tell if their accents were legit, but i think they were really french. i had the seared day boat scallops with risotto. me, tina, and i shared the escargot appetizer. gotta get the escargot. i never pass it up.

it was nice to catch up with everyone. dinner conversation invariably turned to 'the future'. it's funny cuz lately it seems like every conversation i have has to do with 'the big picture'. what am i doing with my life? what's my next goal? what's next in general. it's weird, cuz these conversations are totally unsolicited. maybe people can just sense it?

i don't know what's next. i don't know what i'd do. i know that i think a lot about taking time off, but i'm not sure what i'd do with that time exactly.

i mean, i have a list of places i'd like to visit. i have a list of things i tell myself i don't have time to do. i dunno. but if i had the time, and i had the resources.... what would i do?

i think the answer to this will be in flux for my entire life. what i want today may not be what i want tomorrow or next week. that's probably obvious. and the other big thing to remember is that things rarely go as planned. i'm usually ok with that. i would have liked to meet up with peter to go to the erotic show at the shooting gallery, but that didn't happen. we may meet up tomorrow, though. i may crash his date with kat. i guess it's not an official crash, as he invited me. we'll see. it's a surface party downtown, at the diesel store. i dunno. i may not be up for it.

tomorrow i have to fax in my reg and hope that i get into the ceramics class this summer. i should go back to it. it would be good to work with mud again. ugh. that means i have to be in the office early. sleep now.

so i have been having some odd dreams lately. i understand them, i think, but they're still strange.

the first one was on sunday night. i dreamt that i spent $5k all at once. it was something frivolous like a meal or something. i don't remember what it was exactly in the dream. i know i had the dream cuz i was feeling guilty about spending $200 on the wine that todd got for me.

the next one was last night/this morning. i dreamt that this guy from work told me that he loved me. yikes. i think it was cuz i ran into him yesterday and i hadn't seen him in a while. i woke up to those words, and i sprung awake.

i think about leaving all the time now. it's not like i dislike my work. i just daydream about my next trips.

i have a trip at the end of the month, to la.

i will go to chicago in july for zoe's birthday.

i will go to ny in august, probably.

maybe i'll do italy in the fall when mandy's in florence. who knows.

i'm thinking too much about leaving here. why is that?

so i guess there are at least two people who read my blog.

today, i got an im from mike with kelly tunstall's site URL. ok, i feel stupid.

then, i got an email from willo (yeah, i knew she read my blog) with a couple of fish news stories. i guess i will have to be a little more cautious about the amount of fish i eat.

i had a pretty mellow day at work, considering. it was relatively mellow, i should say. i still have to do some work tonight, and a rumor that i thought might give me some respite turned out to be just that ... a rumor. however, there were a couple of highlights.

todd, a guy who works with me, brought in the four bottles of wine that he got for me yesterday while he was at gary farrell. i had suggested a bunch of wineries for him to visit with his sister who was visiting from out of town. one of the wineries was rochioli and i asked him to pick me up a couple bottles of the pinot if it was still around. it wasn't. the pourers at rochioli suggested gary farrell, which i totally forgot about and haven't yet visited personally. anyway, they also make amazing wine and actually bought some grapes from the rochioli vineyard to make one of the pinots todd got for me. very cool.

highlight #2 i met asante, a physical trainer at work, and i feel better already. our first session is tomorrow and we'll do a few tests and take my measurements (gotta make sure i psych myself up for that on the drive in). i told her that i used to be a lot thinner and she said something like 'oh, it'll be fun. i have trained a little girl like you before.' hmmm... dunno if anyone has every called me little? ok, maybe the 6'5" guy i dated for a few weeks. to him, yeah, i can see how i was little.

i won't see her for a while after that since she'll be out of town, but we already scheduled another meeting on the 19th. it's in the morning, though. this might be tough.

i wanted to write a bit about my friday night.

started out at slow club for dinner with willo, her friend michelle, wes, and rebecca. willo was feeling a little under the weather, so i ordered her a ginger ale, which did the trick. she moved on to vanilla (stoli) and ginger, which was a perfect precursor for the drinks that lay ahead of us that night. i had a great piece of salmon even though michelle warned me of the potentially high mercury levels in the fish. apparently you're not supposed to have more than two servings a week. this of course prompted me to look for some info online. i found some, but it's not clear to me what it all means. i mean, i have heard that pregnant women and women of childbearing age (i guess includes me) shouldn't eat certain types of fish. however, i have yet to find michelle's statistic. hmmm...

anyway, after our meal, we walked over to southern exposure for the monster drawing rally. we caught the tail end of it, but was able to watch damon soule do his magic. they had hung up all of the finished works on the walls and i was definitely drawn to one of damon's pieces. i didn't pick it up. i probably should have. it was only $50. of course willo started a conversation with him and i told him that i had seen some of his pieces at culture cache. he seemed like a nice guy. young. i also watched kelly tunstall draw some girls. i looked for her site, but wasn't able to find one. i did find this review of her show at 111 minna.

after southern exposure, we headed down to the punch gallery. outside i saw aimee, nate, and judd. i haven't seen them in a while. we headed in and i realized that i had been there before. i was there for the metadiggers show with dj spooky a while back. my favorite piece was by kozyndan. his version of hokusai's the wave was my favorite piece.

rebecca was chatting with a guy who she bummed a cigarette from, theo. he invited us to the cat club on folsom for drinks. we headed over there, as none of us had been, and we were all pretty surprised. there are two main rooms. the first was playing 80's music (the cars, prince, etc) and back room had industrial (die warsaw-esque). we hung out in the back and danced. wes could not have been happier with three women to dance with, while random guys were denied entry to our circle. it was a good night.

yesterday, i went down to stanford for a few hours with rebecca and robert. there were presentations fo me216, which i think is called 'need finding'. it's in the product design program, and it's a mix of undergrads and grads. we sat through about 10 presentations. all of them were interesting in their own way. this one student even made the problems associated with measuring flour interesting. there were some really brilliant and elegant designs which i think will have a lot of potential in the marketplace. it's amazing to me that these students have the opportunity to take a class that asks them to discover a legitimate problem, find an innovative solution, and then really figure out how much it will cost to get made. wow. kind of makes me regret not having gone to stanford as an undergrad or at least taking this class when i was there for grad school.

i ran into a few people i knew there, one of whom, mandy, is probably the nicest person i know. she taught the jewelrymaking class i took while in school. she's going to florence for september and may keep her apartment there for a couple of months. although september may not be the right time for me to go cuz of work, maybe i'll rent her apartment for a couple weeks in october. i've never been to florence and it's high time i get back to europe. very enticing.