It’s Mr. Poe’s birthday!  Make sure you wish him a happy one on the bestest day of the year.  I’m planning on leaving work early to come home and make him dinner.  Why is it that his favorite things that I make are the ones that take three hours to make???  Ah, well THAT’s how they get you!  I dragged myself out of bed at a reasonable hour and went for a ride before work.  It was incredibly foggy again but, like yesterday, not so cold.  I headed off 17th to Eureka to 18th to Valencia to Mission to Silver to Alemeny to Sagamore to Brotherhood Way to Lake Merced to John Muir to Skyline to the Great Highway and up the coast.  I went into Golden Gate Park at MLK and then took Middle to Transverse to JFK to 8th to Cabrillo to Arguello to Euclid to Presidio to Post.  I got a couple of pics in Japantown:

Me:

I continued on Post to Kearny.  This is what the Financial District looks like as seen from Kearny and Post:

Towards Columbus:

Towards Market:

Towards Montgomery:

I took Kearny to Bush to Sansome and into work.

I went for a ride after work which seems uncharacteristic after the lazy summer I’ve had which has left me so far out of shape that I’m currently exploring the limits of the tensile strength of my pants.  At least Mr. Poe is back to work so I’ll be back to a more or less normal schedule where I’m forced to come home at lunch to check on the dogs instead of eating a calorie laden burrito at my desk.  It wasn’t particularly cold but it’s incredibly foggy.  I headed off down sutter and stopped at Buchanan for a pic of Japantown:

I continued on Sutter to Fillmore to Clay to Spruce to Washington to Arguello to Cabrillo to Funston and into Golden Gate Park at the Rose Garden.  Sadly, the Rose Garden has recently been vandalized by some disturbed person who cut down a bunch of the bushes.  You can read more about the case here.  Survey the damage:

I hope that’s the end of his/her tirade because this garden is one of my favorite places in the city even in all this fog:

Me:

A foggy view of the De Young from JFK:

I headed down JFK and stopped at Spreckels Lake for pics.  Incredibly foggy:

I continued on JFK to Bernice Rodgers to MLK to The Great Highway and down the coast.  I took Taravel to 47th to Ulloa to 17th to Taravel to Dewey to Laguna Honda into 7th to Hugo to 3rd to Frederick to Stanyan to Haight.  I stopped at the famous corner of Haight and Ashbury for a few pics.  The Haight is a little light on the hippies these days.  Too expensive:

I continued on Haight to Scott to Duboce to Castro to 17th to Ord and home for dinner.  I took the dogs for a nice walk up to Ashbury Heights after dinner and then headed home for bed. 

Mr. Poe’s birthday in on Tuesday and, as everybody knows, Mr. Poe likes to make a big deal about his birthday.  He starts celebrating it in late June and we keep on celebrating it until it’s time to buy Halloween candy.  I think the only one who gets more elaborate birthday celebrations would be Jesus, although in fairness it’s really Jesus’s friends and relatives who insist on such a fuss and he’d probably just rather have a quiet night out with a couple friends and go to bed early.  But not Mr. Poe.  So we spent Sunday afternoon watching Beauty and the Beast at the Golden Gate Theater as part of the birthday festivities.  It wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t very good either.  Thankfully, Mr. Poe loved it and cried at several points but then again he’s been known to get a little misty over international coffee commercials on television.  The show was very, very bright.  The sets and costumes were likely designed by someone who had consumed an unknown substance imprinted on a tiny square of paper earlier in the day.  There were many girls in their best princess ensembles and I don’t think that it would have been possible to overdress for the show.  It had a very Disney look and feel but I think that they were a little constrained by the size of the venue.  Afterward, I wanted to go to Saha on Sutter street and we headed up Hyde which a huge mistake as Hyde Street in the Tenderloin is crawling with Crackheads even at four thirty in the afternoon.  I actually saw some guy try to sell something to a terrified couple with a child age six.  How was he thinking that sale was supposed to go??  “Honey, you and Chelsea go on to to Chuckee Cheese.  I’m gonna buy a couple of rocks and then smoke them on this filthy mattress in the alley before dinner.”   Sadly our walk through sketchburg was a waste because Saha is closed on Sunday and Monday.  So we walked down Polk to Market and went to Barracuda in the Castro.  Which was very good.  Then it was home where I walked the dogs and we went to bed.

I’ve been sick with something I likely picked up in that petri dish known as jury duty.  Yuck.  I worked from home Wednesday afternoon and Yesterday.  I’m back in the office today but will likely head home a little early.  I don’t think I’ll be riding this weekend but I want to be back on the bike by Monday.  I think the lack of activity makes me feel worse than I did already.  Oddly enough, the only food I’ve been wanting to eat has been Mexican food.  What’s up with that??

The dogs love it when I work from home.  Rufus sits on the back porch and keeps an eye on things which manages to tire him out despite the fact that he doesn’t seem to move.  Mimi and Ashley Jr. compete all day to see who can sit on my lap.  I try to rotate them so that nobody gets angry but Mimi can be very, very insistent and she’s the kind of gal who makes you offers you can’t refuse. 

Mr. Poe’s birthday is on Tuesday and I’m looking forward to that.  It’s also the first day of school so I’m going to come home early and cook him dinner instead of going out because he’ll be pretty tired.  He’s going to have salmon cakes as an appetizer and enchiladas.  Enchiladas take a very long time to make because I make the sauce from scratch.  You mean you don’t??

Good Lord it’s hot.  So fucking hot.  Which is particularly shocking given it’s been so amazingly cold all summer.  Last night was particulatly miserable.  Hot, sticky, unpleasant.  But today–  ah we have the revelation!  Mr. Chris had given us his air conditioner before decampting to the Millennium last year.  Bless him it’s very nice.  You can see Mimi lounging in front of it:

Mr. Poe managed a cold dinner although nobody was particularly hungry.  Too darned hot.  I took a video of little Ashley Junior.  He refuses to eat at all until he’s guarded his dinner for a while.  My little baby…..

Sunday I went on a Different Spokes ride out to the Cheese Factory returning through Novato.  It was a good ride and we got to have lunch at Chipotle which made me happy.  I want to work on this ride a little more but I think it’s a good choice for a new Lifecycle training ride in the spring. 

We ran into my pal Buz at Perry’s in Fairfax:

Tom:

We had a great ride to Novato past Stafford Lake and then an uneventful ride down to San Rafael where we stopped for lunch.  Burrito’s never tasted so good.  And their guacamole is definitely better than what they’re serving at Leticia’s.  I stopped on the Golden Gate Bridge for a few pics of the coast on my way home:

 

Me:

I went home and got cleaned up.  The house is still a disaster because of the house painters.  Painting is a dusty mess and all our furniture is piled up in the middle of every room.  They’re doing a great job and they’re very nice but I can’t wait til they’re gone.

Bike Mileage:

Today 84.4 Week to date 175.7 Month to date 376.1 Year to date 5,503.4 To Goal 4,496.6 Over (Under) plan (907.6) YTD Mileage vs Last Year 1,050.7 Rolling Year 8,942.8 Since Inception 10/1/07 26,673.2

Saturday was my birthday.  Forty.  How could such a thing happen to me??  It’s just too horrible to think about.  I think these videos pretty much sum up my feelings:

I elected to go for a bike ride because I wanted to stymie the thought of Mr. Poe planning anything.  It’s not like I wanted a surprise party with all of my friends and a few celebrities and some Japanese finger foods….  I posted a ride on the Different Spokes calendar.  Nobody showed and I went on a much shorter ride instead.  Which is probably why I put rides on the Different Spokes calendar in the first place.  I headed down to the airport to watch the planes take off.  I love the park at the foot of Millbrae Ave.  Pretty salt marsh, aircraft–  what more could you want???

This was the only heavy I saw coming in while I was watching:

I headed home up through Brisbane and then went up to McLaren Park which I haven’t been to in forever:

Me:

I also haven’t been to pretty Flynn Elementary in forever:

I headed home and Mr. Poe took me out for lunch.  We went to the relaunched Letitia’s and, although I chose it, it was kind of a meh.  Who the fuck puts broccoli in a vegetarian burrito??   Then we headed home and Mr. Nathan and Mr. Daniel came over for dinner.  Nathan and I got substantially drunk.  It was my birthday, leave me alone.  I passed out went to bed around nine.  Fucking birthday.

Bike Mileage:

Today 41.0 Week to date 91.3 Month to date 291.7 Year to date 5,419.0 To Goal 4,581.0 Over (Under) plan (964.6) YTD Mileage vs Last Year 966.3 Rolling Year 8,858.4 Since Inception 10/1/07 26,588.8

I’m finally free of jury duty.  They managed to pick twelve sorry bastards plus four alternates without calling me.  Which I’m really thankful for.  The case was a particularly nasty murder case and I wasn’t looking forward to viewing the crime scene photos which would undoubtedly be in nauseating detail.  You can read all about the case here.  You should have seen the defendant.  Dazed and hopeless in whatever clothes that they had lying around the prison that they’ve been keeping him in since he was arrested in November.  I hate to seem biased, but I’m not sure that I could find a man wearing last season not guilty. Don’t even get me started on the district attorney clad in what could best be described as “early lesbian”.  The judge, however,  was a totally hot daddy but sadly I was not able to love him long time in my capacity as potential juror.

Happy Anniversary to me!  Mr. Poe and I have been together for 10 years today which, if you’re counting, means that we’ve been together for 1/4 of my life.  The happiest 1/4 if you’re keeping score.  Whoever thought that Mr. Poe would certainly murder me for good reasons and drop my headless corpse in the bay have lost their bet despite the favorable Vegas odds.

I spent my 10th anniversary in jury duty sitting in a hot, disgusting courtroom wondering whether one can contract herpes through one’s feet.  They’re still going through the arduous process of selecting a jury for a criminal case that I’m not allowed to talk about until either the case is settled or I’m out of the jury pool, whichever happens first.  There’s about 100 or so of us left in the gallery and an unlucky group labeled jurors 1-24.  They keep releasing people from the juror group and replacing them with people pulled from the larger pool.  I’ve thankfully not been randomly chosen for the juror pool yet and I’m hoping to be released completely tomorrow.  My favorite moment of today was the punky purple haired youth emerging from his court date.  Sweaty, shaking, clearly on whatever his poison of choice was.  Joseph’s advice:  stay off crack for your court dates.

I’ve got the jury duty this week.  Fuck.  And it’s criminal.  Which makes it worse because at least the civil court is in a reasonable neighborhood.  I had to show up early this morning and wait around a bit and then I had to fill out a huge questionnaire and then I’ll be back tomorrow to see if I’ve been chosen for a jury.  Which I’m hoping I will not be but you gotta do what you gotta do.

In other news they’re painting the interior of my house.  For the next week my house is encased in plastic sheeting and resembles strongly a Japanese porn set.