Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Greetings from Deutschland

I have had a serious few weeks, folks. Well, fun weeks. But serious. Seriously fun. Work has been nuts, and my dad was in town. There was much beer drinking and good food eating. He flew in two Fridays ago, which happened to also be Mike's last day at Greenpeace. As a result, my father and I watched a movie on bees (The Vanishing of the Bees) at the Hayes Valley Farm while Mike got tanked on whiskey with his now-ex-coworkers.

We got up bright and early the next day to head up north and get a campsite at Pomo Canyon, so that we could show off to my father the glory that is Northern California. Mike was none too perky, but we got ourselves a campsite and then got our butts to a brewery so Mike could watch UT get absolutely spanked by UCLA. College football is rough, man. We then retired to Pomo for a sunset hike out of the redwoods and up to a ridge, then spent the rest of the night cooking over the campfire and scaring raccoons away from our neighbors' food, since they were too dumb to know to put it away while they went night hiking. Raccoons be wily bitches.

In true My Dad fashion, we managed to get to a brewery the next day, too - Lagunitas. My dad complained that we were trying to kill him by making him drink beer so soon after breakfast, but since breakfast was delicious and filling bread from Wildflour Bakery (seriously, go), I figured it was just a natural progression from real bread to liquid alcoholic bread. When we got back to San Francisco, for good measure, I took my dad to my brewstore so he could meet the epic Griz, the curmudgeonly savant-like mountain of an owner. He was very friendly to my father, and it turns out he loves Lyle Lovett like I do, so we're all good.

My dad spent the week walking around San Francisco all day every day. I drew up a few itineraries, and so he went down to Dolores Park, up Buena Vista Park and through the Haight, out into Golden Gate Park, and up Fillmore into the Marina. In the evenings we ate our way through my hoarded Groupons and drank fine beers. Dad was impressed by Toronado, if not by the decor or the clientele.

Last Wednesday I took the day off work and we hit up Tartine for breakfast, because their bread pudding makes me the happiest girl in the world.
We then visited the Anchor Steam Brewery for a 10 a.m. tour. We were drunk by noon.
We slept it off, walked up to Amoeba, and my dad helped me pick out a half dozen albums to start a classical music collection. Nothing too adventurous here, but I'm glad to have a good foundation. And I'm taking suggestions, if you have any.

Over the weekend we continued our tradition of religiously attending the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in the park. We rode our bikes each day, plopped down our blankets, drank some homebrews, caught up with friends, and relaxed. We were lucky enough to have Katie and Larry and Avery in town, so I got some baby snuggles in. The weather was decent, the company was great, and the music was excellent.
My dad flew out Sunday night, and I boiled up some beer so that Mike will have it ready for me when I get back. Because: Monday I flew to Germany, and now here I am, at 6 in the morning, wide awake and jetlagged. Yesterday we had an all-day meeting (fresh off a redeye) to prep for the Frankfurt Book Fair, which starts today. Last night we had our regular Frankfurt team dinner at a traditional German restaurant, in which the apple wine tastes vaguely like pee, the pig knuckles still have hair on them, but the sauerkraut is delicious. It's fun, trust me.

And now I am off to the gym, because my colleagues convinced me that a 6:30 gym party was a good idea. Guten morgen, or guten nacht, wherever the hell you are. I'm here for a week, then off to Berlin, so I'll make sure to keep everyone updated with more tedious lists of my comings and goings.

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