We Don't Come to Play Around

My weekend has me still dancing in my head to "I Kissed a girl and I liked it." and other fantastically catchy songs. Summer aka global warming is in full tilt her in the city with a weekend of 83 degree sunny days and warm, balmy nights. After a ten mile hike with Connor and some of his guy friends in the east bay, I went to some fellow UPSers' house for a BBQ. These guys are a year below Connor and I in school and were in Beta with Connor. Their stories of baling each other out of jail drunk, Funday Sunday's of all day drinking and finding Large cantankerous friends in the tiny Beta closet was good affirmation that Connor and I certainly met at the right time and not a moment too late. After explaining to them multiple times that I am quite allergic to alcohol and can only have one drink, I found myself five shots deep and ready to hit the club scene. My coworker/ friend Crystal with whom I went to Bodega Bay was entertaining her fiance's high school friends for the weekend. 
After paying away my first child's college education at the door (yes that is what $20 dollars is to me) I met the group in a place called the Rickshaw. In the Rickshaw they teach Bhangra lessons until 10:00 and then there is a live D.J. and Indian dancers on a big stage and everyone else is dancing. Most people have been there many times and are quite good at Bhangra. Bhangra is basically Bollywood dancing meets hip-hop. It's extremely energetic and fun. Crystal and the other girls managed to make it look just as rhythmic as the Indian girls on stage but I wasn't quite so lucky. It involves a little bit of shimmy in the shoulders, some suave hip action and throwing out your limps in an elegant and rhythmic matter that made me look more like a starfish caught in mid air than any sort of dancer. Luckily no one was paying attention to my starfish jig as apparently they had all been drinking since sun up. The music was really cool; It was traditional Indian music with hip hop songs overlayed on top of them. We danced non-stop for about three hours and ended up as sweaty messes.

Our next destination was a mere neighborhood away but instead of walking we waited ten minutes for a cab to take all ten or so of us. When a cab didn't come and I suggested walking, the friends marvelled at how much people in San Francisco walk. They are from LA and did various thinks ranging from working in Marketing at Disney, to acting, to rapping, to being too drunk to say what they did. 

When a cab didn't show up, Crystal's fiance Alan called "their car guy" and had the sedan pick half of them up. Wowza. When we arrived at the next club Crystal said, "Don't worry we are on a list. I do NOT wait in lines." Just like she "doesn't do public transportation." I made some exclamation of surprise to which she said, "We don't come out to play around" and marched past the long line of people to the front. Sure enough they opened the back gate and let us all in. This bar has huge ornate chandeliers all over the ceiling. There are about six big round booth tables around the edge that you have to pay to reserve for the night. The rest of the people stand in the middle or go to the bar. Each booth is equipped with an old fashion round-dial phone that you can use to call other tables. Good for situations such as the night we got a call from "The guys at table one" who wanted us to come over and say hello. We peeked over the tall retro-fitted black booths, saw the gray hair across the room, giggled and hung up. It can be a fun game.

Right when we sat sound the waitress brought out a tray and set down ten shots of Patron with lime that we all took together. Then two more waiters came out with a pyramid of elegant clear glasses and iced bottles of Grey Goose Vodka, other alcohol, different juices and toppings. They made each of us our own personalized drink right there at the table and then left us with all the bottles of alcohol. 
The whole time I have that shallow rap song G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S running through my head like I am living in a music video with all the fancy drinks, music blaring, and chandeliers and glasses glittering in the dark. Us girls all got up to dance the rest of the night away while the guys sat at the table. Looking back at them, Alan was in the middle with his arms around all the guys one shoulder cocked, long hair flowing down his back, looking very serious and much like some lord or sultan. The alcohol bottles had those little metal snouts on them and some of the guys were pouring vodka straight into their mouths. One of Crystal's married female friends was grabbing her every place she could find while her husband exclaimed, "I always thought she was bisexual." The night progressed to Crystal and Alan's' apartment for some Wii tennis and golf into the wee hours of the morning. It's my second saturday in a row of going to bed at 5 am and waking up wondering if I'm back in Europe or if life is just this ridiculous. And it is. 

I finished the weekend off with a picnic in the park with my other friend/ coworker Rory and her husband and their friends. (being the fifth or seventh wheel is becoming a theme) It was incredibly. The Marina Park is right on a nice little beach. Because of the way the bay arcs, you look out at the bay and across the the tall buildings and towers of the Financial district. It was so sunny it looked like the buildings were gilded in rosy gold, where the windows glinting off the sun. To the other side is the Golden Gate Bridge, very close and bright red in all it's glory. We stayed until the pink and blue colors of the sunset descended on the bridge and it started to cool off. Connor met a bunch of his friends at the park and they played football and frisbie. We ended the weekend with a trip in the back of pick up and another BBQ at Connor's house. His friends are catching on to my somewhat strange sense of reality and have started following all my statements with, "Recently said on Lindsaynews.com" A good summer weekend before Thanksgiving indeed! My weekend has me still dancing in my head to "I Kissed a girl and I liked it." and other fantastically catchy songs. Summer aka global warming is in full tilt her in the city with a weekend of 83 degree sunny days and warm, balmy nights. After a ten mile hike with Connor and some of his guy friends in the east bay, I went to some fellow UPSers' house for a BBQ. These guys are a year below Connor and I in school and were in Beta with Connor. Their stories of baling each other out of jail drunk, Funday Sunday's of all day drinking and finding Large cantankerous friends in the tiny Beta closet was good affirmation that Connor and I certainly met at the right time and not a moment too late. After explaining to them multiple times that I am quite allergic to alcohol and can only have one drink, I found myself five shots deep and ready to hit the club scene. My coworker/ friend Crystal with whom I went to Bodega Bay was entertaining her fiance's high school friends for the weekend. 
After paying away my first child's college education at the door (yes that is what $20 dollars is to me) I met the group in a place called the Rickshaw. In the Rickshaw they teach Bhangra lessons until 10:00 and then there is a live D.J. and Indian dancers on a big stage and everyone else is dancing. Most people have been there many times and are quite good at Bhangra. Bhangra is basically Bollywood dancing meets hip-hop. It's extremely energetic and fun. Crystal and the other girls managed to make it look just as rhythmic as the Indian girls on stage but I wasn't quite so lucky. It involves a little bit of shimmy in the shoulders, some suave hip action and throwing out your limps in an elegant and rhythmic matter that made me look more like a starfish caught in mid air than any sort of dancer. Luckily no one was paying attention to my starfish jig as apparently they had all been drinking since sun up. The music was really cool; It was traditional Indian music with hip hop songs overlayed on top of them. We danced non-stop for about three hours and ended up as sweaty messes.

Our next destination was a mere neighborhood away but instead of walking we waited ten minutes for a cab to take all ten or so of us. When a cab didn't come and I suggested walking, the friends marvelled at how much people in San Francisco walk. They are from LA and did various thinks ranging from working in Marketing at Disney, to acting, to rapping, to being too drunk to say what they did. 

When a cab didn't show up, Crystal's fiance Alan called "their car guy" and had the sedan pick half of them up. Wowza. When we arrived at the next club Crystal said, "Don't worry we are on a list. I do NOT wait in lines." Just like she "doesn't do public transportation." I made some exclamation of surprise to which she said, "We don't come out to play around" and marched past the long line of people to the front. Sure enough they opened the back gate and let us all in. This bar has huge ornate chandeliers all over the ceiling. There are about six big round booth tables around the edge that you have to pay to reserve for the night. The rest of the people stand in the middle or go to the bar. Each booth is equipped with an old fashion round-dial phone that you can use to call other tables. Good for situations such as the night we got a call from "The guys at table one" who wanted us to come over and say hello. We peeked over the tall retro-fitted black booths, saw the gray hair across the room, giggled and hung up. It can be a fun game.

Right when we sat sound the waitress brought out a tray and set down ten shots of Patron with lime that we all took together. Then two more waiters came out with a pyramid of elegant clear glasses and iced bottles of Grey Goose Vodka, other alcohol, different juices and toppings. They made each of us our own personalized drink right there at the table and then left us with all the bottles of alcohol. 
The whole time I have that shallow rap song G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S running through my head like I am living in a music video with all the fancy drinks, music blaring, and chandeliers and glasses glittering in the dark. Us girls all got up to dance the rest of the night away while the guys sat at the table. Looking back at them, Alan was in the middle with his arms around all the guys one shoulder cocked, long hair flowing down his back, looking very serious and much like some lord or sultan. The alcohol bottles had those little metal snouts on them and some of the guys were pouring vodka straight into their mouths. One of Crystal's married female friends was grabbing her every place she could find while her husband exclaimed, "I always thought she was bisexual." The night progressed to Crystal and Alan's' apartment for some Wii tennis and golf into the wee hours of the morning. It's my second saturday in a row of going to bed at 5 am and waking up wondering if I'm back in Europe or if life is just this ridiculous. And it is. 

I finished the weekend off with a picnic in the park with my other friend/ coworker Rory and her husband and their friends. (being the fifth or seventh wheel is becoming a theme) It was incredibly. The Marina Park is right on a nice little beach. Because of the way the bay arcs, you look out at the bay and across the the tall buildings and towers of the Financial district. It was so sunny it looked like the buildings were gilded in rosy gold, where the windows glinting off the sun. To the other side is the Golden Gate Bridge, very close and bright red in all it's glory. We stayed until the pink and blue colors of the sunset descended on the bridge and it started to cool off. Connor met a bunch of his friends at the park and they played football and frisbie. We ended the weekend with a trip in the back of pick up and another BBQ at Connor's house. His friends are catching on to my somewhat strange sense of reality and have started following all my statements with, "Recently said on Lindsaynews.com" A good summer weekend before Thanksgiving indeed!

A Small Tribute to Coddled Eggs

I was eating my coddled egg this morning and felt ridiculously happy. The day had already begun quite well. I forced myself awake at 6 AM and ran down Nob Hill to the gym so that the evening was free to watch our dear gun toting Alaskan Governor make an ass of herself on National television. I took the cable car back up the hill as the day was breaking over the bay. I chatted with the cable car driver over the not-so melodious jinggling as the turquoise waters of the north bay came into view. At the top of the hill I jumped off the car and bolted towards my quaint and lovable new studio, holding my breath through the stinky hallways (I like to tell myself the already exorbitant rental price would be even higher if they painted the walls and replaced the moldy smelling carpet) I thought, what could possibly make the morning better than a coddled egg?

As I enjoyed my egg, I fell into a deep contemplation about the current state of coddled eggs. Are they a distant memory of the past? Are they extinct? Was anyone else in San Francisco enjoying a coddled egg at this very moment in their equally tiny and old fashioned studio? I feared they fell out of favor in the Carter administration along with a feasible energy program and true oil conservation.

I grew up with them, my mom grew up with them, but is the rest of the world bereft of this small pleasure?

First of all, many of my most vivid morning memories involve coddled eggs. My tow-headed older brother- a gourmand from the beginning- invented “egg stew” which was always a breakfast favorite. This consisted of chopped up soft boiled coddled egg with generously buttered toast that was ripped into tiny bits and tossed in with the egg to soak up the yolk and compliment the dish’s soft texture with a little crunch. Not only did we fight bitterly over who got the most egg stew, we perpetually drove my mother nuts by making her late for meetings with the deep involvement of creating egg stew. Now maybe you can’t relate to this BUT, a couple words on why you should love coddled eggs:

1. The name of course. Everyone likes the idea of being coddled, even when we pretend to be adults. I even like being coddled when only a couple years before I thought both coddle and swaddle meant to paddle someone violently with a blunt object. Under said pretenses , I might have threatened a certain blond friend about swaddling and coddling her with an oar on some menacing early and dark morning.

2. They are made in beautiful porcelain coddlers. They are egg shaped and usually have colorful and ornate designs like orchids or birds.

3.They are the same as hard or soft boiled eggs, except you don’t burn your hand when peeling the hot shell, you just simply crack a raw egg into the coddler, boil it in hot water, scoop the egg out of its coddler and voila! There is your eggie. Bon apetit et bon matin!!