Last night we decided to honeymoon in Asia. This is why. The $699 All Asia Pass includes roundtrip airfare right out of San Francisco and twenty-one days of free travel between seventeen cities. SARS be damned, I’d be on a plane right now if I didn’t have some cake tastings and dress fittings to tend.

Meanwhile, Bridesmaid dresses are getting less offensive (and more expensive) all the time.

Laura and I pass City Lights bookstore, which is hosting an apparently popular event.

Me: Who’s reading?

Laura: I think it’s Sam Shepard.

Me: What do you think, should I press my face to the window and do the blowfish thing?

Laura: Totally.

Me: Like, “Shep! What’s up Sheppppp!”

Laura: “Sammehh!” (Mimes banging on the window.)

Me: We should.

Laura: We totally should.

(We keep walking.)

Hours later we stop into Tosca for a couple of chocolate brandies. Sam Shepard is sitting in the booth next to ours. An hour or so later, he sits down at the bar facing us. Laura and I chat for a while longer, and then get up to leave. As we pass the bar, Mr. Shepard takes note.

Laura: Dude, Sam Shepard just checked us out.

Me: Yes, he did. Sam Shepard just gave us the up and down.

Laura: Ha!

Me: Awesome.

Laura: Damn.

Me: We should have bought him a drink.

Laura: I know! Why didn’t we?

Me: I don’t know. It would have been weird.

Laura: True. Damn.

While in Tuscany, Jeff successfully taught baby Evan to say “poop.” Evan learned other stuff too:

Bryan: I taught the boy not to touch cigarette butts when we were out walking yesterday, and now he’s shaking his finger at them and saying, “Dirty! Dirty! No! No!”

Janice: Yeah. He does the same thing to the bidet.

I’ve abandoned you, my pals. Over the last month, life has kept me incredibly busy, but I’ve had little access to the Internet. Now–for the first time in years–I have no record of my foibles and triumphs, which bites. And so, to recap, in the last month we:

• Flew North Carolina for Rosecrans and Rachel’s fabulous wedding.
• Took a beautiful road trip up to New York.
• Flew to Milan, Italy for the Adaptive Path workshop.
• Vacationed in Tuscany for a week with a group of lovely people.
• Flew back to New York so that I could meet with book agents and publishers (!) and visit our East Coast friends.
• Drove to Connecticut for Josh and Kayla’s fabulous wedding.
• Flew home to San Francisco.

We’re jet setters, baby. I’ll post the juicy details as we go along. Thanks, as always, for checking back in with me and for your emails while we were on the road. I missed you guys.

Me: Which way should we go?

Ali: Let me check the map.

(Older male jogger appears on the trail.)

Me: Excuse me. Which trail leads back to the trailhead?

Him: Heh. You ever seen Deliverance?

Me: Yes.

Him: “You’re a long ways from home son.”

Me: Huh.

Him: I’m thinking of that toothless guy.

(Ali and I exchange glances.)

Me: Do you know which way leads to the trailhead?

Him: Yep. You take the trail on the left, cross a bridge, it’ll fork off to the right, but you don’t wanna go that way. Just keep going straight.

Ali: Thanks.

Him: No problem.

(He hesitates, then jogs off.)

Me: Yeah. Word to the wise, fella. When you come across two women alone in the woods, the Deliverance jokes aren’t gonna make an entirely favorable impression.

Ali: Seriously.

Me: Is my pocketknife in the pack?

Ali: I think so.

Me: I’m just gonna grab that.

I only spent about ten minutes at Bay to Breakers this year. The best thing I saw was a guy sitting in a wheelchair, naked from the waist down, walking the chair up the street with his feet.

Later that day, I went to visit my grandmother.

FOOTRACE

Wanna come with us to Bay to Breakers?

I’m going.

Cool, wanna pull a keg with us?

Actually, I’m running it.

You’re running it? …Without beer?

I have an actual blister on my wrist from typing too much. It’s time to go outside.

Bryan: What did we have for dinner last night?

Me: Popcorn.

Bryan: That’s what I thought.

A friend of ours just got a car; it is yellow and zippy. We drove along the coast, tried to think of a name for the car, and ended up out at the pet cemetery in the Presidio. I’d never been before, and the place is an odd mixture of pathos and hilarity. Best pet name goes to a fish called Macaroni Heart. Rest in peace, little buddy.

As of this morning New Architect magazine is no more. And that means I’ve gone from being a managing editor to looking for bartending gigs. I don’t own a single Wonderbra, people.