Music and Art

If you're following my Twitter feed or correspond with me in any other way, shape or form, you'll no doubt already know the big piece of news--the offer on my YA book. All I can say right now is YES!!, which seems inadequate to what I actually feel, but will have to do. More info later.

On a separate note, yesterday we spent the afternoon and evening in San Francisco, starting things off with lunch at Hotei, where Rob had ramen and I had nabeyaki udon and we both worked up a sweat just eating the hot soup. Our walk in Golden Gate Park after that was a nice cool-down (with mist and cool breezes, unlike the 90-something degrees we left behind a mere hour and 45 minutes away).

The DeYoung Museum's King Tut exhibition, which we saw in the afternoon, was fantastic, though when you consider that they found 5,000 artifacts in the actual tomb, the fact that there were only 130 in the exhibit made it seem like we got only the tiniest taste of the incredible objects. If it comes to your area, you shouldn't miss it, though. Really. I was too young to go to the 1979 exhibition (at age 2, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have cared) so I was very excited to see this one. Plus, I love ancient Egyptian stuff.

After the Tut show, we did some more walking around and then drove over to North Beach--our friend Jess is on tour with his band, Los Tikkilyches, and since he lives in Mexico these days, we hardly get to see the dude, so we had to seize the opportunity when it presented itself. The band was playing at Grant and Green Saloon, kind of between North Beach and Chinatown--a location which presented some excellent dinner options. We ended up at a Basque restaurant we just randomly walked by, and at some point during dinner, we found out that the owner/chef is currently competing on Top Chef. So that was exciting. Plus the tapas were tasty.

So we were satiated and happy by the time we walked a few more blocks over to Grant and Green, and then we were even happier to see our friend Jess and his fiancee and bandmate Alyssa already at the bar getting set up. It was an evening of running into old friends, in fact; the kind that you've known so long it feels like they're family, even when you haven't seen them in years. We saw another college friend there, Jason--in fact, Jason was there the first time I ever met Jess, over 12 years ago at a party in the house Rob and I would eventually move into about eight months later.

We also hung out with Jess's dad and brother, who we'd last run into at a concert in Berkeley last summer, and another former roommate and bandmate of Jess's from a different band, Jackscrew. The band had a great time, and the audience seemed to be feeling it, too, so it was a fun evening. Best of all, though, it was awesome to see Jess after about a year. He was rockin' a goatee that was very nearly a homeless-beard, which made Rob ask him if he'd gotten any change thrown at him on the way over. Jess claimed that yes, someone had given him spare change in Washington Square. This may or may not be true, but it made us laugh.

All in all, the evening was most excellent, with a few pints of Newcastle (for Rob) and Lagunitas IPA (for me) putting the icing on the cake (or perhaps the head on the pint o' beer?) and yet again I do not have documentation since we can never seem to remember to bring our camera when we do something fun, and our phone cameras are truly sucktastic. So you'll just have to hear me now, believe me later.