Saturday was not a good day.  Then I again with the year I'm having, any day that doesn't end up in an emergency room visit should automatically be thought of as a good one.  It started out with me oversleeping til 6:30.  Mr. Poe and I got got cleaned up and went to the grocery store early because we had vet appointments for Rufus and Ashley.  Cue ominous music.  Both of the boys are in excellent health but getting them to the vet was a very challenging activity.  I think Ashley would have been OK on his own but Rufus was TERRIBLE.  He started crying the second we got in the car and it continued until we got home.  Thankfully, somebody else's dog was having a major freak out session in the waiting room so we didn't have the worst dogs in the office.  Mr. Poe documented the visit on my iphone.  Apologies for the poor quality:

By the way, here's a random photo I found on my phone while I was getting those.  I took this while riding the Geary bus on afternoon because there was this hot Japanese hipster with a great ass and I figured would garner a lot of interest from my friend Nathan.  Not so much--  Nathan said he looked like he had too much self esteem:

We went home and I started cooking.  I made three things on Saturday.  Brownies for a house warming party we were going to, a gingerbread house with gingerbread men made out of the scraps, and scalloped potatoes that I was trying out for Christmas dinner.  The brownies were a complete disaster.  The plan was to make brownies with a thin layer of rasberry preserves on top of them with white chocolate ganache on top of that.  They started out well.  The brownies, from the Joy of Cooking, turned out beautifully and I didn't have any trouble getting the preserves on them.  Then came the ganache.  I got the recipe from Martha Stewart and it didn't work out at all.  It didn't set up and when I cut them they looked like brownies coated in jizz.  Yuck.  Check this shit out:

It was so disappointing because they were looking so great until I tried to frost them and then they turned out horribly.  I blamed Martha Stewart and promptly chucked her riddled with errors cookbook into the recycling.  Up yours, bitch!:

The gingerbread turned out a lot better but is it ever hard to roll out.  I had tripled the batch so that I didn't have to measure molasses but that turned out  to be a very poor idea because it produced more dough than my mixer could handle and I had to knead it by hand which was really hard to do.  My gingerbread house panels turned out pretty well.  A little Bedrock, perhaps, but not terrible for a first effort.  I rolled the scraps into gingerbread men and I was getting really beat by the end of it so some of them turned out hilariously thick.  The scalloped potatoes turned out really well.  Joy of Cooking again.  I think they will be really popular at Christmas.  We were both exhausted by 6PM so we decided against going to the house warming party.  The jizzy brownies went into the compost and I went to bed.  Apparently I left the kitchen a mess and Mr. Poe was up late cleaning gingerbread detritus.  Sorry, baby.

After work Thursday I headed down California and got onto Muni at Embarcadero.  My nighttime photography is still a little hit or miss, but when it turns out well I like it a lot.  Case in point:

The Philip Johnson designed 101 California has these comedy sized Christmas ornments decorating the building inside and out.  I liked the ones outside:

The ones inside were pretty neat too.  I got a bunch of pics of them from outside the building.  I probably could have gone in and got better detail but I don't think I would have liked them as much:

I went home and had dinner with Mr. Poe and we went to bed early. 

This morning was very cold and very foggy.  The fog was incredibly patchy.  I saw the moon on Taravel and it was clear at Ocean Beach but everywhere else was fog, fog, fog.  It totally tested my desire to be biking.  It was miserable--  like biking in the inside of a freezer case at the grocery store.  My fingers went numb everytime I rode downhill.  I've got some overgloves I don't like wearing because you can't shift gears very well in them but I'll be wearing them starting Monday if it doesn't warm up.

I rode Corbett to Portola to Woodside to Dewey to Taravel and down to the coast.  I froze my way up the Great Highway and then got on Geary to 34th and up to the Palace of the Legion of Honor.  I got on Camino Del Mar and took that into the Presidio and then took Lincoln to Kobbe to Washington to Arguello to Lake to 8th and into Golden Gate Park.  I headed over to the Music Concourse.  It looked like this:

The California Academy of Sciences:

The De Young:

Me looking cold and miserable:

I came out of the park at 9th and took that to Judah to 7th into Laguna Honda into Dewey to Pacheco to Merced to Hernandez to Laguna Honda to Portola to Corbett to Ord and home to get cleaned up.  I definitely feel like I accomplished something by riding this morning and I'm glad that I did it.  Here's hoping for warmer weather soon.

Bike Mileage:

Today 19.8 Week to date 102.0 Month to date 82.6 Year to date 7,661.6 Rolling Year 8,213.5 Since Inception 10/1/07 20,939.3

Last night I took Muni from the Powell Street station so I could get a look at some of the Christmas decorations that are going up around the Financial District and Union Square.  So far, the best I've seen in the Financial District is the Bank of America at California and Kearny.  Gorgeous:

They've also got lights on the trees on both the California and Kearny sides of the building:

I headed home from there and fed the dogs and myself--  Mr. Poe had to work late.  I baked biscuits while I waited for him to get home.  A friend at work had raved and raved about the biscuits that they serve at Red Lobster restaurants and even furnished a recipe so I thought I'd give them a try.  I had planned on making gingerbread but realized I didn't have all the ingredients I needed and I was in a baking mood anyway.  Basically they're garlic cheddar cheese biscuits that you brush melted garlic butter on when they come out of the oven.  The recipe had them as drop biscuits but I rolled them out.  I think they turned out OK.  They looked good:

Mr. Poe came home and surprisingly not angry about the trees being up.  He agreed it was a good idea to get the heavy pieces up before the weekend.  The fact that he came home without having had dinner and I had garlic cheese biscuits fresh from the oven might have been a distracting factor.  I'm trying to think of other Christmas decorations I can put up without inciting rage.  I haven't been able to locate the nativity scene.  That's my favorite decoration.  Other people's nativity scenes include Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and maybe the three kings or a shepherd or two.  One of Mr. Poe's friends gave him resin nativity figures for years and the result is like the full Broadway cast of the nativity.  Stay tuned for pics.  Our tree is, of course, fake.  We both seem to be allergic to real ones.  And dogs like to eat the needles and then throw them up.  Here's the one in the kitchen.  It still needs a little fluffing.  But who doesn't:

This morning was very cold again and even foggier than yesterday.  I headed off Corbett to Clayton to Parnassus to Cole to Waller to Stanyan and into Golden Gate Park at JFK.  I came out of the park at 8th to Cabrillo to 47th to Fulton to the Great Highway and down the coast.  I took Skyline to Lake Merced to Font to Holloway to Harold to Ocean to Phelan to Judson to Foerster to Hearst to Edna to Monterey to Diamond to Wilder to Arlington to Randall to San Jose to Duncan to Valencia to 19th.  I stopped by Dolores Park for pics.  Brrrr:

Me in Dolores Park:

I took Dolores to 17th to Sanchez.  This pretty building is on Sanchez at 14th.  It's across the street from where Mr. Poe and I used to live.  I'm very fond of the it.  I love the corner bay with it's intact octagonal roof.  I think used to be a lot more of them but they were taken off:

I continued on Sanchez to Duboce to Castro to 17th to Ord and home.  I got cleaned up and headed down on Muni.  Which I'm getting used to.  When I was laid up with my knee and couldn't ride at all I really missed commuting on my bike.  So far, I'm not missing it much at all because I'm still riding every day.  I like the idea of being done on the bike for the day in the morning.  It's nice because if I'm tired towards the end of the day I don't have to think about the ride I've got to do after work.  I also like the idea of looking and smelling fresh all the time.  That seems to be the biggest benefit so far.  I think I'd understated how grungy I was getting commuting on my bike.  I've noted a 200% increase in freshness.

Bike Mileage:

Today 18.3 Week to date 82.2 Month to date 62.8 Year to date 7,641.8 Rolling Year 8,233.7 Since Inception 10/1/07 20,919.5

It was the coldest that it's been so far this winter this morning, I think.  It was in the low forties when I headed off.  Normally I would head up Corbett first to warm up but I wanted to go around Lake Merced again and my routing yesterday was pretty crappy so I took 17th to Eureka to 18th to Valencia to Mission to Silver to Alemeny to Sagamore to Brotherhood Way to Lake Merced.  There was definitely enough light to see by which was nice.  This route is a good choice in the dark because it's really well lit on Valencia, Mission, and Alemeny.  It's kind of hard to get warmed up because it's pretty flat but I figured it was so cold I wasn't likely to warm up too much anyway.  I continued on Lake Merced to Skyline to the Great Highway and up the coast to Geary to 34th and up to the Palace of the Legion of Honor.  It was cold and dreary up there.  Which I don't get because usually the fog keeps things a little warmer but not today:

THis is the view of the Marin Headlands from Camino Del Mar this morning.  Gloomy:

I took Camino Del Mar to Lake.  These are some of the super fantastic homes on Lake Street:

The view across the Richmond to St. Ignatius and Lone Mountain from Lake:

Me on Lake.  Attempting to smile with my eyes:

I took Lake to Arguello and into Golden Gate Park and then JFK to the Panhandle and then Stanyan to Page to Scott to Duboce to Castro to 17th to Ord and home to get cleaned up for work.  Ashley refused to come out of his kennel when I got home.  He was sleeping! 

I brought the Christmas tree up for assembly later today.  Which is going to cause Mr. Poe a huge degree of consternation.  But he's completely disorganize and has no plan for decorating for Christmas at all and he will likely be doing all of this while I'm biking so I figured it would be a wise move to get the heaviest pieces up into the house because the Collins-Poe's have been to the emergency room enough in 2009, thank you very much.  I'm sure this will all be lost on Mr. Poe who insists on micro managing the entire process despite the fact that he has no plan at all.  Maybe he should run for congress.  He has to work late tonight so I should get quite a bit done by the time he gets home.  His reaction will likely be a lot of fretting and I'll probably have to get him flowers.  We need them anyway.  A passive aggressive power grab on my part??  Probably.  But everybody else has their trees up and I want one too.

When I was leaving the house this morning for work I couldn't believe how cold it was and that I was biking in that weather by my own volition half an hour earlier when it was likely even colder.  True I froze but it was totally worth it.

Bike Mileage:

Today 21.2 Week to date 63.9 Month to date 44.5 Year to date 7,623.5 Rolling Year 8,255.8 Since Inception 10/1/07 20,901.2

Muni worked out pretty well for me on Monday.  I don't think the subway is slower than biking home for lunch and it might even be faster.  I would say it's less dangerous except for this shit.  What the fuck??  I was just happy that the assailant was not described as a little white dog who made her escape on a Barbi Big Wheel.  Because I can totally see Mimi getting all stabby on Muni for no apparent reason.

As for the evening commute, I think if I time it right I can avoid a lot of the nasty crowded trains.  Mr. Poe says that people tend to get off work on the hour and if I get to Muni on the half hour than it's much less busy.  It was certainly true last night.  I walked through Union Square and got on Muni at Powell.  Mr. Poe was stunned to see me show up for dinner dressed up like an adult.  I walked the dogs and we went to bed early.

I was up at 4AM for some reason this morning.  I was hungry and felt rested.  Mr. Poe thought I was nuts.  I got up and had breakfast and tried to be super quiet until he got up at 5:20.  I headed off and tried a bike routing that turned out to be kind of a disaster.  I wanted to go around Lake Merced but I was there too early and it was darker than I'd like.  There's a bunch of places in the city I don't mind biking in the dark and Lake Merced is not one of them.  I rode Corbett to Portola to Woodside to Dewey to Claremont to Portola to Santa Clara to Monterey to San Benito to Ocean to Ashton to Head to Holloway.  Holloway was a bit darker than I wanted it to be.  I continued to Font to Lake Merced which was really dark and kind of an eek to John Muir to Skyline to the Great Highway.  The sun was just coming up by the time I got to Taravel.  I won't try this routing again until the sun comes up a lot earlier:

I continued on the Great Highway and went into Golden Gate Park at MLK and followed that to the Music Concourse.  It was cold and hazy this morning.  But gorgeous.  Check out the De Young:

An interesting view of the California Academy of Sciences:

I got on JFK and came out of the park at 8th.  I took that to Lake to Arguello and into the Presidio.  I came around on Washington and stopped at Immigrant Point for pics.  So pretty:

It was getting really late so I headed back on Washington the way I came and then took Arguello to Jackson to Cherry to Clay to Presidio.  This was the view looking towards Japantown from Pine (I think):

I continued on Presidio to Post to Scott to Duboce to Castro to Market to 17th to Ord and home to get ready for work.  I had to wait forever for Muni and we were packed in like sardines.  Yuck.  Oh well, at least some of the passengers were hot.

Bike Mileage:

Today 23.3 Week to date 42.7 Month to date 23.3 Year to date 7,602.3 Rolling Year 8,276.0 Since Inception 10/1/07 20,880.0