I miss New York today. The Haight in the fog seems small and shabby. A group of young men just passed loudly by, unaccountably clutching the famous red party cups. Is there yet another street festival of which I am unaware? Probably. There seems always to be one. I sort of feel like, "is this the best we can do, San Francisco?" Ah well. I am aware that this is the minority view. My fellow citizens are nothing if not enthusiastic about their chosen city. Me? I'm wearing a dress. It's not much, but I do what I can to raise the tone.
I watched the Ken Burn's documentary on prohibition entitled, not shockingly, "Prohibition." I learned many things. It was just like reading a book without having to put in all that effort of reading. (I'm joking. Mostly. Look, Rebecca Solnit isn't writing vacation fiction. It's taking some wherewithal to get through. Ow. All the thinking! It hurts.) I will not tell you all the things I learned about prohibition because that would take all the fun out of your learning things about prohibition. However, it was very satisfying to learn that "teetotaler" comes from the phrase "Capital 'T' Total abstinence." It was less satisfying to learn that "bootlegger" comes from early booze smugglers from whom you could buy a slug of hooch from the bottle which they kept stuck in their boots, secreted under their trouser legs. Well, fine. Why "bootlegger?" Surely the leg is the least relevant part of this scenario? Why not bootbottler or, if you are really committed to the leg, bottlelegger? Hoochlegger?
I've also learned that whatever the current age of the Upstairs Baby, it is my least favorite age of human. No words, a lot of screaming, plenty of running, and a hearty dose of floor beating. The current age of the Upstairs Baby is why I will never have children. So, in case you were ever going to ask if I'm pregnant, I'm not. I just really like spaghetti.
Generally, I try to keep the whole online dating thing to myself, largely because it is mostly dispiriting and kind of embarrassing. But things are occasionally too amusing to withhold. The way it works is that if someone sends me a message on the dating site (a rare occurrence, I am humbled to say), I receive an email notification containing a truncated bit of the message. Yesterday, someone sent a note the first line of which was "Maybe we should talk or enjoy a cocktail." However, in the email notification, the sentence was cut off right in the middle of the final word, rendering it a very unseemly proposition. I was briefly scandalized. But then, Oh! Tail. Cocktail. Better.
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