Rain and No Snow

On the sixth of February I texted my date for the weekend and rode up past the Polo Fields and out to Panhandle.  I waited for her reply over coffee at Central.  She told me that her roomie would let me in.  I went down and buzzed and went up with my cot and other things.  She told me that she and a friend were getting burritos so I agreed to meet her at the bar.  They were talking to a Venture Capitalist and I was seated next to a Community College Trustee.  She and a guy from NYC Metro were talking about organizations.

A friend from the MTA was across from us with a guy from BART and some usuals were at the other end of the table.  When the professor came in, he and the commissioner took a new table.  I went over there with the guy from NYC MTA to introduce him.  I noted to the car share guy form the SFMTA that I had seen him on Page a few days earlier.  I introduced him and the commissioner to my companion.

She had to get her jacket so we stopped at her place on the way to Cat's Corner.  When we checked in for the classes I discovered that I should have signed up.  We got with the group and learned the Charleston from the instructors.  When the dancing was over my companion asked me to get more involved with the next class but I didn't feel comfortable because I hadn't signed up.  We had drinks and watched the next class instead and when that was over we did the drop in and that involved a lot of turns.  Then we sat and ate French fries while watching the band.  We went out and danced a bit.  We sat down and talked about it.  We left soon after that.

Next morning we went to Four Barrel I said something about a man who was clearly drinking Vodka and she wrote it down.  We had some pastries and walked to her place.  We then got into packing and she asked me to list ingredients and filled the flask.  We called a cab to her sister’s and we discussed dance on the way.  Then the three of us and a toddler hopped another ride and went to Rainbow.  I was getting cinnamon bun ingredients and they were getting everything else.  In the midst of this I got a call from a mapping company and we made plans for an interview.  I saw a friend that we had gone to Alcatraz with.  Eventually we got ready to go but our departure was delayed by a call from a recruiter telling me I had not been chosen for a job as a business analyst.

Forty-five minutes later my companion and I went to Blue Bottle for coffee and returned to her sister’s house to pack the rental van for our trip to the mountains.  We swung by our neighbor friend’s place on the way.  I remember there was discussion of Brompton's as we passed the old Bay Bridge.  We then passed through the Vaca Mountains.  The youngest in the car cried a lot near Davis and my companion figured out that he just needed to have a conversation.

We listened to music to Auburn and went to Ikeda's fruit shop and diner.  We had fries and I had a garden burger.  I got a call from a recruiter to learn that I had gotten a tech job at a better rate.  I told my companion that I would have trouble with deciding between the two jobs about which I had been contacted.  Some of our friends showed up in the machinist’s car.  We continued up the highway through the gaps listening to Invisibilia about expectations for the blind.

At the house in Soda Springs we unpacked and started making soup.  When the machinist’s group arrived I sat outside for a minute with them listening to the wind.  I grabbed a spot and helped unpack.  I then sat and ate the appetizers laid out for the group.  The insider and his group showed up then and we started eating.  I had a few beers.  The soup was crazy hot and spicy.  One of the riders from the machinist’s car was babysitting.  Later the second family showed up—they had a two year old.  However, a number of us had finished eating and were already in bed.

On the morning of the day that I wrote this I was going to get up for a ski run but gave up when I saw the weather was just rain and no snow.  My companion and I were up at nine and she ground the coffee beans.  I finally got to meet the second family.

We decided to go on a walk with five others then.  We found the cross country trails and a lift.  We walked above the climbing rocks and sat in the warming hut and drank the rye from a flask.  Two from the insider’s group had a snowball dual. We continued on to the ridge top. The machinist, my companion and I returned to the cabin because the rest wanted to play in the rain.

As we descended to the cabin it started to snow.  We found the house and learned that the others had had their own adventures.  I made coffee with and we discussed Tom Swifties on the porch, while the host and hostess threw snowballs at us.  Our neighbor friend’s girlfriend—the tester—was care of the baby.  I made her some soup.  My companion gave some advice and our friends from our walk had returned.  I noted that one of them had made hot totties which I had screwed up.  I ground coffee to make up for it.

My companion kept telling me to be quiet because people were napping on the couch.  I decided then that I needed to be alone but we ended up interacting later.  While I was writing, the group was downstairs playing games and making pizza.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.