Day Four - I didn't even blog yesterday!

That, of course, is the view from my window this morning. You can go back and see what the weather has been for the past few days. I've taken all of the pics from the same spot at about the same time every morning, give or take half an hour. It's my own little picture diary of my week here in San Francisco.

No, I didn't blog yesterday, with the exception of first thing in the morning. I'll do a quick re-cap and get you caught up on what I did, and then fill you in on what today has in store.

There was a "thing" yesterday morning. A very lovely woman, who happens to be a motivational speaker and a pianist, did the conference opening. I'm sure that she was great, but I didn't stick around to find out. I was a little disappointed that, with all of the Honor Roll authors here, one of them wasn't opening things. But alas, I wasn't in charge of the speakers, and they didn't e-mail me and ask me to approve the guest list. So.

I finally made it to JapanTown!

I kidnapped my roomie and we took a cab. We got a few pics of the place before we hit the mall there. Check it out. My oldest daughter and her friend Angela would have loved it! There were plenty of restaurants, and even more little shops. The people were friendly, and it was very nice.

Yes, I did some shopping, but the girls are just going to have to wait until I get home to see what I got for them. I will admit that I kept checking over my shoulder for Anne Stuart. Alas, she was not there, at least not while I was.

We then took another cab down to Fisherman's Wharf in search of food. We found it here, at the Blue Mermaid Chowder House and Bar. We sat outside and had great seafood sandwiches (she had crab, I had cod), drank very nice wine, and shared stories from our childhoods. I have to admit, I have been forgetting, quite often, that my roomie is this Fabulous author, because she is such a warm, friendly person. It's more like she's one of my best friends from my school days and we're just catching up on the past decade, than that she's an author that I all but stalked and is now my roommate. She is fast becoming a very dear friend, and I will treasure these crazy memories we are making now for years to come.

After lunch, we headed off in search of the Holy Grail of San Francisco (at least in my humble estimation) - Chocolate. We found the San Francisco Chocolate Store, of course. They had so many things that were chocolate covered, I could have lived there forever. I only bought a few things though - a shirt and something from the "Adults Only" section (for my husband! He gets a treat when I get home, and I'm not just talking about the chocolate!). Yes, they have an "Adults Only" section, and my roomie and I had a blast (and probably came very close to getting kicked out for noise!) as we looked at all of the things on that shelf. I will admit that I'm not entirely sure what some of those things were. Sheltered? Not much. :)

We also saw this great place that makes sourdough bread, a street preacher that we both thought was very tame, a man covered in glitter that totally had a thing for my roomie, and the trash can man. Trash can man? Well, we saw this whole group of people across the street, standing almost in the road, laughing, pointing, and taking pictures. We had no idea why. Then the man in front of us screamed and jumped back. There was a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk, with his back to a trash can, with two large palm fronds in front of him. He'd open the palm fronds and scream at people as a joke. The group across the street was entranced by this! We found it both totally childish and endlessly amusing!

No visit to the Wharf would be complete without going to Ghirardelli. So we did. It was wonderful, we met some really nice tourist families, and got some great coffee. My coffee ended up on the floor of the backseat in the CabOfDeath, driven by Igor, the Russian DeathByCab driver, whose only goal in life was to make us thankful to have arrived at our hotel alive. No, I'm not joking. My heart still stops when I think of that ride. It was like one of those action movies you see of SF, where the car is barreling down one of the incredibly steep hills, hits a plateau, then literally goes airborne as it continues on its journey down. That was us. Airborne, laughing hysterically, bouncing around the back seat, seriously praying to God and all the Saints in Heaven (and no, I'm not even Catholic, but I was praying to whomever would listen at that particular moment!), that we would not leave our children motherless. When he realized we were laughing instead of crying, Igor kicked it up a notch. How he managed to go faster and drive crazier is still a mystery. But he did. Upon arriving at our hotel, we stumbled from the cab, an hysterical mass of quivering flesh, and promptly kissed the ground. The doorman thought we were nuts. Igor simply chuckled.

There is more, MUCH more, from yesterday. But I'm almost late for a workshop, so I will continue this later.

I'll Keep You Posted!