Another lovely Weekend in SF ...

My life has been so full of activity recently it seems I can barely keep up.

My weekend started Friday afternoon with a fancy-lunch girl-date with Sydney to start the pre-party for her Birthday weekend. The beautiful sunny Friday made up for the beginning of the week hail. We walked over to Hayes Valley for expensive food at Absinthe highlighted by several even fancier cocktails. Yum! and then to keep the ball rolling we stopped off at Orbit Room where the bar tender concocted some special drinks just for us. Unfortunately I had to work that night, so I cut myself off and headed home.

My long night of work lead to a long night of play. Syd came to meet me and we headed over to Brass Tax 1st Friday at Amnesia. I have decided BTX at Amnesia is the best antidote to working a busy and annoying Friday night shift at Blowfish. No matter how beat I am after a night shift, I'm always so wired from running around and my brain is too active from multi-tasking I can never go straight home to bed 'cause I end up having unrestful dreams about working all night. bleah.

1st Friday is great cause it's drinking and dancing and music and lots of friends all at once in a relatively intimate environment. I love knowing I'm always going to see many people I don't usually see regularly without actually having to coordinate too much. Good Times! and late nights ;) We participated in the 'outside-after-last-call' mingling thing for some time before Syd and I headed back to her place where we stayed up later chatting. We did, however managed to get into bed before the sun came up.

The next morning Fritz picked us up for a delicious Syd's Birthday brunch at Zazie (bacon and mimosas included, naturally). Syd and Fritz headed to Zeitgeist, but I was tired, went home and spent the rest of the afternoon napping and showering intermittently, resting up to meet for another birthday dinner that night. Still the same birthday girl (that brat!) 11 of us spent several hours feasting on a delicious (and pricey) Italian dinner while polishing off multiple bottles of wine.

We then headed to 12 Galaxies to see the New Orleans Bingo Show. A few weeks ago I noticed they were coming to SF and was hoping to rally the troops to check it out. The deal was sealed when I heard Stefbot, Ding Dong and Jeffro had seen them at Mardi Gras last year were super stoked to head out to their SF show. The group from the birthday dinner met up with the StefDongFro crowd and continued to drink and cause some whiskey fueled havoc in the crowd.

The New Orleans Bingo Show epitomizes everything that is creative, unique, individual, imaginative and beautiful about New Orleans. It incorporates creative performance art and beautiful music with costumes and face paint and games and bingo and more!! They have fun while also taking themselves seriously. Their music and their look is old-timey, carnival style but through the lens of a contemporary translation into today's time. I love that shit! Chad always says I was born in the wrong era.

I wish I could more accurately express how talented, original and amazing the show was, how much it reminded me of New Orleans and how much I miss the creativity and character and care that is put into everything that comes out of that town, but I feel my words are weak and something is lost in the translation.

Seeing the show on Saturday night definitely made me miss New Orleans and everything that comes from the city. New Orleans will always hold a piece of my heart....

I stumbled home that night shit faced and happy. I awoke the next morning still drunk and I am forever grateful to Melvin, the best roommate ever, for delivering me a bagel and cream cheese (it saved my sunday). And now I'm ditching out on my Monday volunteer commitment at SF Center for the Book to catch up with my life and enjoy the sunshine before I head back to work tonight.

In two weeks from today I will be on a plane to Bangkok. I'm gonna try to enjoy this city and all my friends and everything else as much as possible til that time comes. It's been a while since I've been able to say this: right now I love my life. So, here's to good friends, to good times, to travels and to sunshine in the city.