I am seriously lagging on the blog thang. Time seems short – but it’s not. Summer, I guess.

Renee and Eddie built their beach island on the 4th. They got there at 5:00 AM and worked for five hours while a bunch of cops watched. Then, at 10:00 when they were done, the cops came over and told them to level it!

Kind of sucked, after all that work. Thankfully they did not let this ruin their day. They piled all the ice (which was suppose to go in a moat) in a pile and stuck a palm tree into it. This palm tree made it very easy to find them on a very packed beach.

The rest of that day involved a great deal of fantastic wine and delicious food, and I have earned the uneasy reputation of she who likes to lay on the floor and listen to live Wilco really loud.

Yesterday, Margaret invited me to go to the Padres game with her. We started at Cafe Chloe, a little French bistro a few blocks from the park. It was my first time to this popular place and I totally fell in love with it. We ate a prawn brochette that had a garlicky lemon sauce, a little mushroom tart and cheese tart, and finally the charcuterie plate, which was a little dish of pork rillettes. It was all amazing and now I am more ready than ever for France in September. Pork rillettes is a sort of shredded pork thing all mixed up with fat and you spread it on bread… I know that does not sound so great but let me tell you, it was fantastic.

On to the ballpark. I am always a bit blown away by Petco Park. It’s a lovely baseball stadium, with the downtown highrises all around, and yesterday the game did not start until 5:00 so the green on the field and the light in the air was especially beautiful. But, there is something that weirds me out about Petco Park. I think it is the mass consumerism that goes on there, and the high prices of everything. In every possible nook and cranny, there is a place to buy something. Guys walk around selling bags of popcorn for SIX DOLLARS. What is that, a six thousand percent markup? I’m no baseball purist, but heck, is it not about the game? It’s not like tickets are cheap, either.

My friend Mark, who is a baseball freak, would have also been very pissed off by the constant comings and goings of spectators while the ball is in motion. I don’t know shit about baseball (besides the basics) but I do know you go to the bathroom between innings.

Everythings been a bit weird lately, so I’m not surprised I was feeling the way I was there. We came back to OB and went to the Vine for some wine and a cheese plate – and everything seemed, for a time, in it’s right place.

Starting today I am going vegan for one week, just to see if I can do it. I’m allowing myself a little bit of cream in my coffee; that’s it. Maybe it will keep me grounded during a week that already looks ugly; maybe, it will send me spinning out of control.

Top Chef is on again Wednesday. My Spoon package should arrive tomorrow. Something to look forward to in bean and rice land.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Tales from a Strange Land. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.