A Long Day

Such a long day today. It started at 5 a.m. when I woke up hearing Liza Minnelli singing. It was a PBS special of her in concert in Las Vegas. I thought I would be able to get back to sleep, but...hey...it was Liza!

The show ended at 6, by which time I knew there would be no more sleep, though I had set the alarm to go off at 7, so really I had another hour. Instead I got up and got the makings for chili in the crock pot.

I was leaving around 8:30 for San Francisco to meet with people at Lamplighters World Headquarters for a meeting about the Lamplighters history.

Normally it only takes an hour and a half to drive to the city and the meeting was at 11, but I always like to leave time for heavy traffic, which I sorely needed today. I swear every big truck in Northern California was traveling to San Francisco, and every crazy driver of every big truck in Northern California was on duty this time. I was tailgated and honked at when there was nowhere to go but into the bumper of the truck in front of me. Speeders zipped in and out. When I tried to change lanes, trucks cut me off. Tall trucks seemed to quiver dangerously (my big fear for the past 25 years has been death by a truck in the traffic lane to the right falling over on me...a fear that was not eased at all by a period of time when there seemed to be a rash of just such accidents in this area several years ago).

There was even a long backup on the bridge. Even the FastPass lanes were backed up because of metering lights on the bridge. I don't mind doing this now and then, but I sure don't know how people do this every day. If I had to commute to San Francisco every day, I could finish The Great Books on audio in a matter of months!

Ultimately, I arrived at the office just 10 minutes before the meeting, exactly at the same time that Alison was arriving.

The meeting lasted a little over an hour and I think a lot got accomplished. Best of all, two new people have joined the committee and both had excellent ideas which seemed to focus attention where it needed to be focused.

When the meeting was over, Alison and I had our usual lunch at Denny's (if you're tempted to order the new "grilled peach French toast," forget it. It only costs $5.99 and it's worth about that, if that. But it filled the hole), then I dropped her off at the BART station and continued on home, stopping for about 5 minutes in Berkeley to finish listening to the last bit of Kristen Chenoweth's book so I could start a new one (back to blood and gore) before I actually started driving.

I got home too late to get a nap, but fortunately I didn't have to cook dinner, since it was already cooked in the crock pot.

Before dinner, I read an article in the paper that made me very angry. Two men have been together for 19 years, and legally married for 3. One of them is from Australia. The other has AIDS. The Australian's visa has run out and he is being deported. He is the only caregiver for his husband and if the husband moves to Australia, he will lose his medical coverage. Here (again) is where the whole Defense of Marriage Act hurts people. These men are legally married, yet the laws of this country have forced them into a horrendous decision (to say nothing of the thousands of dollars they have already spent on legal fees fighting this decision).

We ate our chili and then drove to Sacramento for this week's Music Circus production, Annie Get Your Gun.

It's a good production. They usually all are at Music Circus. And I like Annie Get Your Gun, though it never seems "right" since they made it politically correct. I shouldn't be nostalgic for the old Indian scenes, but I am.

We listened to "Says You" in the car going to and coming from the show and I'm trying to learn a word for the day, which is "natkin." A natkin is an unpleasant odor. I hadn't wrapped the bones from the chicken we had early in the week and we certainly had a terrific natkin in our laundry room until garbage pick-up today.

I don't always try to remember "Says You" words. The last one I copied down was "catilate," which is the act of licking a plate or bowl. With 3 dogs, there is frequently catilation going on around here!

After we got home, I had to write the review, write this journal entry and now, at 1 a.m., I'm about to head off to sleep. In 4 hours, I will have been awake 24 hours, if I don't get to sleep quickly!