September 25, 2004

Meredith Visits San Francisco

So like I mentioned earlier, I moved out to San Francisco knowing only 2 people in the entire Bay Area - and between being busy with my new job and San Francisco nightlife sort of sucking a cock in general (literally, ha!), I was having trouble meeting kids my own age. (New City + Weird New Job + No Friends = Depression!) St. Meredith decided to fly west and help me try to have fun in my new town.

Friday, September 24th

me, meredith — Here's me picking her up at the airport. See how excited she is? I told you that my Nissan Sentra rental drives the bitches wild! After we'd caught up, I made good on something I'd been promising for weeks...

meredith — ....and crushed her skull.

Saturday, September 25th

meredith — Look, my very first visitor at my new apt!

meredith — Oh, did I forget to mention that the elevator in my townhouse opens out into an open-air deck that's accented by florescent pink pieces of translucent plexiglass? Meredith strikes a quick (80s) pose before...

meredith — ...hopping in my car and heading down the famous Rt. 1 (the Pacific Coast Highway) to check out the view.

Here's the view of the hills on the other side of the road. Even on the cloudy, overcast day the colors were amazing.

meredith — Then we ran down the slope to check out the sea view.

meredith — Cliffy!

Me pretending I'm comfortable on the scratchy, thorny, twiggy, lumpy ground.

me, meredith — Then we took a quick "windy hair" pic.

meredith — And, um, Meredith did a high kick that I managed to capture with the cam (it looks like she's got a broken leg!). People say that it's good to try living in different places so that you can experience new things...

...turns out, people are right! If I hadn't moved out to California, I never would've been able to discover the goodness of Carl Motherfucking Jr's!

meredith — Not only is the food all tasty, but after you order they hand you a lil' number and tell you to "Go on and sit down. Make yourself comfortable." I was like "Uh, why?" The lady behind the counter's all "We'll bring you your food when it's ready." And then I was all "Oh, wow. Thanks. Uh.....will you marry me?"

After our delicious (and courteously served!) meal at Carl, Jr's - we drove down to the Monterey Aquarium.

Right near where you walk in there's this huge glass cylinder with a school of thousands of silver fish that are furiously swimming in a circle. It's pretty rad.

Me looking out in the ocean for sea lions.

Look! I think I can see the Castro from here!

meredith — Meredith kept making fun of the weird "all natural" California lip balm stuff that I bought because she said it made my lips look white. I didn't believe her until she took it and put it on. (I can't figure out if it looks like she's dead, or it looks all hot like the frosted pink lipstick that Kevin Arnold's insanely hot mom used to wear on the Wonder Years. Oh, Mrs. Arnold.).

We spent the most amount of time in the jellyfish rooms watching them slowly undulate and drift in the water.

Jellyfish invasion.

meredith — Nerd invasion! Meredith walking like an Egyptian in front of the tank.

After jellyfish, we headed over to the shark tank.

I'm not sure what kind of shark this was, maybe a thresher? (I found myself wishing that Grant was there - I mean, the kid's caught so many sharks that I'm sure he would have been able to identify it).

Hammerhead!

Look at this little otter guy all fucking chilling on his back, floating around in the tank. He was so cute I wanted to smash the glass and reach in there and drown the little fucker.

me, meredith — Meredith realized that her recent haircut enabled her to do a creepily spot-on impression of me. Later on in the gift shop I did my own impression...

...of one of the sharks we'd seen earlier.

Me getting ready to slide across the car all Dukes of Hazard style an' shit.

What's that you say? You want me to, uh...

...put it in?

Unnnngh

meredith — Hey, cut me a break - I'm from NJ where you're not allowed to pump your own gas (no, I'm serious) so somehow it's still a novelty.

me, meredith — After filling up, we drove back north into town, got some dinner and then went and saw Shaun of the Dead. And afterwards, we went to the Sony store and Meredith got herself...

meredith — ...a digital camera! Which upon returning to NYC she used to start her very own exciting (yet short-lived...*sniffle*) photoblog.

Sunday, September 26th

me, meredith — On Sunday we woke up earlier and decided to do some exploring closer to town.

We headed over the Golden Gate bridge towards Marin County. Check out the bridge all shrouded in fog from the Bay.

me, meredith — Even after seeing it a bunch of times, the views are so beautiful that it literally makes you go "Whooooooa!" every time you see it. I managed to snap this pic of Mer mid-gasp.

meredith — On the other side we parked in the little scenic pull-over area and watch the fog roll across the bridge.

Here's the view to the east...

....and if you look a little more to the south you can see San Francisco in the background.

Sooooo neat!

meredith — After we were done standing around gawking at the fog for almost an hour like two half-wits, we hopped back into the car to the check out the redwoods at Muir Woods National Park! I don't think I managed to get any photos that truly capture how massive these things are.

meredith — Okay, this one might give you a little bit of an idea. See how tiny Meredith looks? (Keep in mind the tree still goes on for like another 70ft!)

meredith — Here are a few of the smaller trees that I was actually able to get in the frame. Even the littler ones are awesomely massive!

meredith — Speaking of awesomely massive.

Me standing next to one of em.

meredith — We looked at the trail map and decided to do one of the hikes through the forest that was a 3 mile loop.

But somewhere along the way we missed the turn that loops you back and accidentally ended up doing the much, much longer 7 mile version. About 90 minutes into our hike I was like, ""Uh, shouldn't this trail be heading back towards the car by now?" Doh.

meredith — We go so tired we almost called it quits and just moved into this little hobbit house tree.

Hey look! It's me in front of a tree again!

meredith — Finally, after just over 3 hours of wandering through the forest (with no water!) we made it back to the park.

meredith — The view of the valley on the way back towards San Francisco.

me, meredith — Awwwww.

On the crazy, twisty coast-hugging road back, we saw signs for some beach (Baker Beach, maybe?) and decided to head over and check it out. Maybe even take a swim!

meredith — Hey, most of you being smarter than me probably already know this, but just in case any of you out there are as dumb as me, here's a little factoid for you: the Pacific Ocean is FUCKING FREEZING! WTF?? You can't swim in there! Here's a picture of Meredith getting the soles of her feet wet moments before screaming and running back to dry land. Damn. That shit was so hold it felt hot! Like and ocean of lava. Fack!

But hey, at least the view was nice.

Driving a little further we saw a turn in off the road that led to a nice little park and took it. Then we got of the car and saw this sign. Fucking mountain lions? Are you kidding me? So let me get this straight, California - you've got a beautiful ocean that too cold to even GO IN and you've got scenic parks where CHAIN MAIL SHIRTS are recommended if you want to toss a frisbee around? W. T. F. ?

Ok, you do have nice views. I will give you that.

Meredith standing up out of my sunroof and snapping pics.

We later used said sunroof to take sneaky periscope-style photos trying to get a good shot of the mullet on one of the German tourists that pulled up in the car next to us.

Bingo! (Actually, though - it looked really good on him. It was this really comfortable "not trying too hard" mullet. The kind of mullet that Chet Baker would've grown had he lived long enough to get into NASCAR).

Heading back home. (Home! Arrrrgh!) On the way home we stopped at a Rite-Aid looking to buy the game Scrabble. A few weeks prior, Meredith challenged me to play Scrabble online (I'd never played before!) and I ended up beating her - and she wanted a rematch! Anyway, in the store I noticed that...

...even though San Francisco prides itself on supporting the openly gay, they still totally care for their citizens that for whatever reason haven't gone public with their orientation. They even have a whole aisle of specialty products to accommodate them. So progressive!

meredith — Oh! I forget to mention the best thing about my new apartment: it came with a dog! The only thing better than a dog of your own is a roommate's dog. That way you get all the benefits of dog-loving without ever having to clean up their poop. Ladies and Gentleman, I introduce you to Chandler the Dog (aka - Chandler the Little Pointy Dog). Oh, so it turned out we couldn't find a store anywhere on a Sunday evening that sold Scrabble (fucking San Francisco!). So I was forced instead to entertain Meredith with...

...my asscrack.

meredith — Which she totally loved.

Monday, September 27th

meredith — On Monday I took a day off work to do more SF-sightseeing with Meredith. But first things first, we finally managed to find Scrabble and scored a slice.

After lunch we hopped in my car and headed north to check out the Fisherman's Wharf area. Where there are all sorts of hot tourist attractions like the world famous...

..."Spanker Boom off the the Balclutha."

Man, sometimes you wait your whole life to see something and you finally see it and you just got to stand back and be all like "Wow, I'm finally seeing it." But then depression sets in because it's like "Where do I go from here?"

Then we drove around and decided to check out Telegraph Hill and the Coit Tower. (This was all Meredith's plan - I told her to think about some stuff we could do while she was visiting and she showed up with a motherfucking internet-researched itinerary that she typed up in a Word document and emailed ahead of time! Hot Damn!). If you look in the middle of the horizon in this pic, you can see Coit Tower.

This is one of the pictures that Meredith STOLE FROM ME and used in her recap of the visit. She pretty much summed it up best when she said "The ledge was covered in coins that people had slid through the window, in an apparent attempt to harm anonymous passers-by. That, at least, was one sentiment we (as New Yorkers) could relate to." Hahah.

And here's the northwest view from the top of Coit Tower. (Yo, as much as I kid around about having trouble adjusting to San Francisco, it really is hands down one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Everywhere you go, you look around and there's a view that makes you go "Whoa." If only they could get improve the public transportation and figure out a way to import tons of slutty girls...)

meredith — She pretty much summed it up best when she said "The ledge was covered in coins that people had slid through the window, in an apparent attempt to harm anonymous passers-by. That, at least, was one sentiment we (as New Yorkers) could relate to." Hahah.

View of the parking lot and the bay.

Here's me in the pre-game using the international sign language for "YOU are GOING DOWN!" (As in "You are going to lose this game." Not the other "YOU are GOING DOWN!" There's a whole different set of gestures for that one. Be careful not to confuse the two or you could end up playing the strangest game of Scrabble in your life...or uh, becoming really good friends with a deaf person. It could go either way.)

I put up a good fight, but in the end Meredith ended up winning.

meredith — Oh, lookee here! Look who's gloating? (She's only laughing because she has no idea that this one time would be the ONLY TIME SHE'S EVER BEAT ME AT SCRABBLE! Bwa-ahahahahaha!)

me, meredith — Later that night, she packed her bags and I dropped her off at the airport! Back to having no friends! Bah.