"I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies"

I'm feeling a little annoyed with blogger right now. I want to upload some more pictures of my walk, and it's not letting me. So, you'll all have to be content with the pictures it let me have.

So, yesterday. I started the day with a walk a Cesar Chavez Park. You've seen pictures from there before, but it is one of my favorite places, so indulge me...



The first leg...



This is the least picturesque of the trail.



You can't see it, but to the right is Angel Island. Someday, I'll take the ferry over there and you'll get beautiful pictures of it.

After my walk (on which I saw a number of crows, gulls and ducks), I went to B's house and had breakfast with her and her husband. It was lovely, sipping mimosas, eating tofu scramble, and talking about various funny stuff. We tried to stay away from work, but didn't always succeed.

After leaving, I came home and put the wild rice on to soak. I spent some time reading a book and reading blogs...I think I may have taken a small nap at this point, too. Then I put on the wild rice and started getting ready to go.



This is what the wild rice looks like when it's ready to eat.

I went over to Hippy Chick's and BeeDragon's around 2 p.m. HC had a friend in from Vancouver...let's call her RockerChick (it just seems to fit). She'd been up since hella early. Eventually a crowd had gathered and the food, too, and we began to feast. Thanksgiving is the height of decadence. It's about the food mostly. It's good to see friends and family, but really the food is the star.



I did call my family before eating. Mom was good, my aunt was good, Sister asked me what I was going to eat (really, the turkey is only one of the 30 different dishes served, so it's annoying she asks every year). The highlight of the phone call was when the phone was passed to my dad and he said, "Hello, love." I know it seems small, but he's never greeted me that way. It was so sweet and so endearing. It made up for the maddening questions about my vegetarianism that Sister had persisted with.



After the food, there was much talking. I read the Rolling Stone article about Green Day (did you know they are back in the studio in January?). HC & BD handed out their holiday gifts - CDs of holiday songs, my favorite being The Little Drummer Boy by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.

And of course, there were the cats...


Marley


Shiki


Kito

I went to bed early last night and slept in late this a.m. I had my traditional post-Thanksgiving breakfast of pumpkin pie. Then HC called to say that she and RockerChick were braving the mall today for some shopping.

This is as good a spot as any to explain to my foreign audience an idiocyncracy of US consumer culture. The day after Thanksgiving is considered one of the biggest shopping days of the year. People begin the descent into Christmas madness on this date. We, of course, were up to no such thing. Tomorrow, I'll do a small fashion show of the buys I made. It was ill advised. It was decadent. Tomorrow I will regret having already removed the tags...but there it is.

I will say it was more than maddening going to a mall...in the suburbs, no less. I stil feel a little shell-shocked tonight. But I'm glad I went. This year, I seemed to feel the need for some lingerie (which I will not be modeling for the blog world). I'm kind of excited about those buys.

I came home after seeing a client and have been catching up on blogs for the rest of the evening.