What an Amazing Weekend

The World Cup has begun. Congratulations to Germany, England, Mexico...

After el Gran Combo on Friday, I woke up on Saturday a little tentative. I am taking medicine lately that's a little strange for me to get used to, but it's been okay. I spoke with my doctor about it as well as the week's goings-on and she laid out an observation for me that seemed revolutionary.

Armed with some new perspective, I left her office and went into San Francisco to get directions for my students' graduation. This was graduation number 2: Leadership High School. She won a Gates' Millenium Scholarship, in addition to several other scholarships. What felt pretty good was that I wrote a few letters of recommendation for her and they seemed to have paid off. Woo.

I went home to relax a little bit. I was still tentative about going to a birthday party on Saturday night because I wasn't sure how social I would be.

Thankfully part of me was smart enough to call my friend Solomon. He offered to be my buddy for the evening. Cloud covered never burned off in Oakland, but in Orinda, there were chards of sunlight that I welcomed.

We tarried talking to George and Sanjiv and then off to Albany and Montero's for Anita's birthday.

All the while I wondered how social I would be...

We walked in and the table was lined with friends...and it felt good to see them, kiss them and hug them hello.

We sat and ate. And laughed and grumbled at discrepencies between what the website said was admission including dinner and their interpretation of admission with dinner...we worked it out, however.

And a slew of us walked in, took over the lesson and doubled the couples that were on the dance floor.

When the music began we were sailing. The old crew together: Michelle, Joe, Huy, Anita, Seb, Koichi, Lisa, Ameena, Erin, Jason, Doug, Austina, Omer, Sol...who else am I forgetting?

It was awesome.

My lip stuck to my top teeth I was smiling so much.

Around and around...bouncing from partner to partner, having yelling conversations reconnecting with people.

We would down about 11:30 and decided on Schmidts (The PUB). We sat, about 10 of us drinking tea or beer or a lovely port and played What Were You Thinking?

Twas awesome, I must say.

Then Sunday I played with dirt.

I thought I would lay in my bed all day, listening to NPR and just zoning...but Bonnie called.

And she was doing gardening and I asked if I could help.

It took me almost 3 hours to motivate from bed to shower to car, but I got there and I played with Maile, ate some lovely turnip curry and dug in the dirt, filled the crevices under my nails with wet earth and planted lavender. We then took a walk with Maile and saw the goats again and fed some of the younger kids fennel.

It was like an autumn day in the Bay. And all was good.

About 7 pm I left and was headed home when Ms. Megan called. She finished teaching. I said "How about dinner?" and off to Megan's I went for leftover Hawaiian, Fame episodes and a phone call to our friend Mike and much, much mirth.

We fell asleep to one of the earlier episodes of Fame where Gene Anthony Ray's brother comes from jail to sort of mess up his flow. God, I loved Bruno. He was the thoughtful, quiet keyboardist who was fascinated by the "new" synthesizer movement.

Yay.