The summer is flying by.........

I left you, a number of weeks ago, I'll admit, going out for the Sunday New York Times and pouring another cup of coffee.

Actually, "pouring"a cup of coffee  has gone the way of "dialing" a phone number for me.  I got myself one of those Keurig coffee pots (actually, not being one that goes by halves, I got two, one for the office and one for home), which lets you put in a little puck-like thing and make one cup at a time.  I know all you purists in cyber-space are all turning up your noses, but I was just tired of drinking stale coffee (a common complaint of parties of one), and I love being able to chose my coffee - in the afternoon, I have rasberry white chocolate truffle coffee for a treat (Careful with those noses, you purists) - and am pleased with my purrchase(s).

When I left you, I had taken friend Jean off to her conference.  I picked her up from there, all wired for sound, as one gets from those conferences, and talked her down with another long walk on the dike in Steveston...

.....and with a lovely dinner at The Blue Canoe, my new favorite sea food place in Steveston.  It's very trendy, and you can't get within a foot of the place on the weekends.  You can sometimes get in if you get there early enough on a week day though.  Generally, I am not big on "trendy" as a rule, but in this case, there is a beautiful outlook on the water, the service is great, the fod is great, what's not to like?

And off Jean went to the ferry the next morning.  She'll be back - look how happy she looks!

The rest of the week was work, work, work.  Don't get me wrong, this is a good thing.  Working in the summer in Vancouver and playing in the winter in Palm Springs - well, it couldn't be any better.  And the weather has been glorious - in the 20's (the 70's, for those of you not metrically inclined), sunny, a few wispy clouds, and a breeze off the water.  We have a bit of a green space behind the office, I keep one of those portable chairs in my car, and if I am not napping on the sofa in my office at lunch, I am knitting outside.  Not too bad, eh?

Saturday (the 13th, if you are keeping track, and no I could do this without my -old fashioned, paper and pen- calender in front of me), I went out to White Rock to see friend Robin and to "do" the art show with her and her sister in law Bev.

..that's Bev, the tall one on the left...

It is held in a lovely wooded area, privately owned (in one of those "only in Vancouver stories, owned by the god-mother of one of my colleagues, and steps from friend Robin's front door), a juried show, with good quality art, jewelry, pottery and sculpture.  A perfect thing to do on a glorious afternoon!

I rounded out the weekend on Sunday with (in addition to the New York Times) dim sum with the usual cast of characters at our favourite place, Fisherman's Terraace.  I won't bore you with any more pictures; suffice it to say, dim sum has got to be one of my favourite meals - Stay tuned, it makes another showing on this post.

Colleague Lois from Victoria was staying over in Vancouver this week, so we took the opportunity to have dinner (imagine it - me, eating again1) at the Yokahama, one of four (and, of course, my favourite) Japanese restaurants in Steveston.  This one has been around since the Japanese fisherman were fishing in Steveston and working in the canneries,, and you should put it one your list for when you come.

Finally got to Bard on the Beach on Wednesay, the 17th.  If I have not explained before, this is our answer to Strafford on Avon, or perhaps the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  They put on 4 plays every year.  But first, dinner....

The restaurant wasn't memorable (so unmemorarable that I don't even remember its name), but the theater was great!  The setting of course, is magnificent, in tents, open to the air, mountains and water the backdrop for the theater (no photographs permitted, sorry).  They do a good job with the plays, too.  Of course, I would never go to the comedies if Bea didn't drag me to one every year (she goes to the theater to be entertained, I - generally - go to the theater to be moved).  This one was Twelfth Night, one of the better ones anyway, and it was lovely.  I won't tell you the story - look it up if you need to - but they set it in a spa in Europe just before the First World War.  They don't do much scenery besides nature, of course, but the costumes were gorgeous, the staging was brilliant, the songs (and singing) were extremely well done, and the acting there is always great.  Bea, who lives on Bowen Island, stayed over at my house, so we had the whole trip back to me house to just be dazzled!

( Interesting aside.  I thought it would be a wonderful night to come home from the theater with the top down, but Bea insisted in going in her car.  Apparently, she feels too "exposed" in a convertible.  I have known Bea for almost 20 years, and I never knew that!  It just never came up in conversation, and apparently, whenever we went to lunch, it had been raining, so the top was up!)

And now we are up to Thursday, July 18th.  For those of you who don't recognize the date, put it on your calendars for next year.  It's my birthday!!  Happy birthday to me!  And yes, you get to hear the line again:  If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself!  Actually, I am in pretty good shape for an old (67!) broad, if I do say so myself!  Anyway, had a great time on my b'day, going to dinner and Bard (different play, Timothy Findlay's Elizabeth Rex) with friend Tom.

Tom agreed that the play was staged well, and well acted, of course, as things always are at Bard, but doesn't like the play.  I loved the play.  The premise is that it is the night before the Queen's lover (Essex?) is to be hanged.  There is a curfew, Shakespeare and his troop and caught in town, in a barn, and Elizabeth wants to be amused.  So it is a conversation between actors and the Queen, made even more poignant because (some say) Essex was the one to whom Shakespeare wrote the sonnets.  Anyway, I loved the premise and the play.  It was a wonderful evening, and on that night, I was able to decompress on the way home with the top down, albeit by myself (Tom lives the other direction).

And the celebrations of my birthday continue.  Friday, I had lunch with Richard, an old friend from law school.  We do this twice a year, for his birthday in October and mine in July, always in the same place, the The Victoria Restaurant in downtown Vancouver, one of the oldest dim sum places - certainly outside of Chinatown - in Vancouver.  The food is great, although I think that some of the charm is lost when they don't have the illiterate Chinese ladies pushing the carts around the restaurant!  Oh, well, progress.  Anyway, between travels (he is quite the traveler too) and work, and politics and economics, to which we are both addicted - well, we never seem to run out of things to say!  And, seeing as it was my birthday, it was his turn to treat!

And even moe celebration on the weekend.  Friend Mar and Mariah came up from Seattle.  Art, my neighbor in Palm Springs, is escaping the heat in Washington State, so they picked him up too, so there was a full house at Nora's B & B last weekend. First on the agenda (Mar insists on it every time) were a walk on the boardwalk, but only as far as Pajo's, the infamous fish and chips place (previously mention in this space I am sure!)

As always, it didn't disappoint.  As you can see, the weather was, still, glorious, and they are all convertible people (of course, until talking to Bea last week, I thought everyone was - more or less - a convertible person!), we drove down to White Rock to revisit the show, and actually, before the weekend was out, revisited the Yokahama as well.  I know, I know, a failure of imagination!  But you know, I am not very good at just "hanging out", and it was good being with old friends, not worrying about discovering trendy new places, just hanging out.  I really don't do that very much, except when I visit Hank in San Francisco, about which more later), and it was lovely.  Apparently, or so I'm told, a great weekend was had by all.  Certainly by me!

(That's us, at Yokahama)

I did have a chance to glance at the local newspaper on Sunday, after they all trundled in their car to head south, and discovered, by sheer accident, that on Monday at the local cinema they were showing a documentary called Springsteen and I (don't blame the grammar on me - I didn't name it!), and of course I had to see it on Monday evening.  It was actually quite good - for a Springsteen fan, at least.  A little hokey, of course, but a lot of old footage from concerts at the Stone Pony and beyond which I had never seen before, as well as from new concerts, and, as a bonus, a melange from the Hyde Park concert last year, at which Paul McCartney joined Bruce and the E Street Band on stage in Hyde Park, London, in front of tens of thousands of cheering fans.  (I hav seen that whole concert - catch it if you can, it is on video).  It always makes me weepy, something about the history of rock and roll, or maybe just me getting old (althugh some of the fans in the movie were older than I am!)

Anyway, it was great, although it provided yet another illustration of why I like the USA.  In the USA, leaving an event like that, everyone would be talking to their neighbors, about the concerts, the songs, their personal adventures with Bruce.  In Canada, I tried - as I always do -to talk to my fellow movie goers.  They answered me, all right, because they are polite Canadians, but you could almost hear them thinking, who is this strange woman and why is she talking to us?  Never mind, I didn't let it spoil the evening, although I did wish I had some Springsteen CD's to listen to on the way home with the top down, instead of having put them all in the juke box in Palm Springs!

More partying on Tuesday.  Colleagues Lois, Deirdre and Susan invited themselves over for dinner.  I cooked (yes, folks, I can actually do it, although I don't very often any more, since David died) some rib eye steaks and fixings (If you must know, perfect baked potatoes -there is a trick, ask me some time - and candied carrots, the girls brought dessert and 5 - count 'em - 5 bottles of wine, we sat out on the deck and got sloshed (for the morals police out there, everyone was sleeping over), and, once again, a good time was had by all.

Whch brings us back to real life on Wednesday, work and having dinner and bridge with the boys.  (Although maybe there was a bit of a treat there - I did come in second at bridge, and, even more important, got some very interesting hands!)

And Thursday morning, I left bright and early for Bellingham, Washington and my flight out to San Francisco, where I am now,  hanging out with Hank.  But enough of this for the moment.  I'll get back to you with the San Francisco adventure, I promise. 

One day turned into 10 .....

Well, that is what happens in San Francisco - too much action to have time to sit back and reflect.

Okay, let's see if I can catch up this time.  I left you having just arrived in San Francisco (or Oakland, to be precise), safe and sound.  I took BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) into town - have I told you yet that I finally broke down and got a Clipper card, so that I can just swipe and go anywhere (so there, all you greenies who think I am married to my car1) - and we had our traditional lunch at Henry Hunan's.  A break from tradition, though; Andy, Chuck and I had to do without Hank - he had to stay in his office at the bank to wait for $19,000,000 which had gone missing in action1  (and yes, I brought him back a doggy bag!).

I went back to Hank's apartment just long enough to empty my suitcase before I was off again.  Hank had booked us for that (Wednesday, June 16 - even I have lost track) night for an LGBT event, and there were errands to be run, don't you know.  A few hours later, I picked him up from his office - the 19 mil still hadn't arrived, but by that time it was too late in the day to invest it anyway - and off we went. 

Reminder - LGBT is Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender.  I have to write this because it is still hard to grasp that the University of Arizona would have an LGBT studies program, the head of which we were feting.  The "do" was, perhaps appropriately, was being held on the patio of a leather bar on Folsom Street in downtown San Francisco.  Wednesday was the day that the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, and also California's Prop 8 prohibiting gay marriage, so - as you can imagine, it was quite a festive event - lot's of toasts to the "death of DOMA" and all of that.  It was fairly well attended,, too, as alumni events go, including, Hank tells me, a number of people who never attended such events before.  Some that stood out for me were the head of the program herself (transgender, but so comfortable in her own skin that it was totally a non-issue) and a lesbian couple who had been together for 36 years, had married in San Francisco 5 years when there was a brief window for that to happen, and were now going to remarry in honor of the momentous events!

Thursday, I began what was to be the daily ritual.  I took the down to the opera house....

...at 11 A.M. to stand in line for rush tickets for the opera that night.  You all know that I don't like to stand in line for much, but paying $30 for a $200 ticket for the opera?  Well, that's worth getting old for, much less standing in line.  (I got second row right aisle!) 

Then, go about your day, and head for the opera at night.  Thursday was a visit to the De Yonge Museum in Golden Gate Park to see the Diebenkorn exhibit.  And yes, I liked it.  Diebenkorn is one of my favourite modernists.   (I find his mixture of representational and abstract just about right.)  It was a lovely exhibit in a lovely space.  I didn't even want to see some of my old favourites in the museum; the special exhibit was quite enough!

Then off to meet Ray at Stanly Ho's for dinner.  (I may be getting that name wrong - the restaurant, not the guy).  Ray and I met each other 30 years ago when we were both working at the Bank of America.  (He likes to tell the story about how we met.  It was December, he was hitchhiking from Marin County to the Bank because he was too cheap to pay the bus fare and I was driving from Marin in my convertible with the top down in December - it was California, after all.  I was stopping at the allocated place - it was San Francisco, after all - to pick up hitchhikers so that I would have more than 1 person in the car and wouldn't have to pay the toll on the Golden Gate Bridge.  I picked him up, and we started talking banking - we both worked at B of A - and symphony and opera, and, as they say, the rest is history.)  Ray has long since gone back to Boston and I, of course, ultimately went to British Columbia.  We have kept in touch, and seen each other on occasion, although we worked out that we hadn't seen each other for 9 years prior to Thursday night.  Anyway, we discovered that we were both going to be in San Francisco at the same time, and I reminded him of the summer opera; a meeting was born.

The years have been good to Ray - he looks pretty much the same as he always did...

....although he tells me there are now some replacement parts!

I had forgotten how much he liked spicey food. and so we had quite the feast at this, one of his favourite Hunan restaurants (yes, I know, if I would have remembered my schedule, I wouldn't have had Hunan for lunch yesterday.  Luckily I too adore Hunan food, so it wasn't too much of a sacrifice.)

We walked it off with a hike to the opera house. and got there just in time to grab our seats for

(Okay, I'm still working on this scanning thing, I obviously don't have it down yet.  I was hoping to be able to scan these things so I can save the cast listing and throw away the program - I am obviously not there yet.)

The Hoffman was Matthew Polenzani, and also memorable were Christian Van Horn - an up and coming baritone - as Lindorf, and Hye Jung Lee who played Olympia.  Believe it or not, Natlie Dessay as Antonia was an also ran in this cast!  The music was glorious and the singing was fabulous.  I had some quibbles about the staging when I saw it on Thursday, but when I saw it again on Sunday, I loved that too.
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Out on the patio of the opera house at intermission, this is what we saw - City Hall, lit up in the rainbow colours, in honour of the death of DOMA (see above) and Prop 8.  Only in San Francisco!  Anyway, Ray and I talked and talked, the music was wonderful, altogether a wonderful evening!

Friday, another day, another opera, this time with friend Peter.  We headed off for dinner at Absynthe, an old favourite in the Hayes Valley, quite close to the operaa.  The food is good, with a very traditional menu (I had coq au vin, for example, when was the last time you saw that on the menu??)

The opera?

 A world premier.  The singers were young, and quite good.  It was a pity they didn't have anything better to sing.  Peter and I agreed totally (which is not, I can assure you, always the case) - the first act was at least 20 minutes too long, the libretto needed work - if I had to listen to another rhyming couplet I was going to run screaming down the aisles - and the music was trivial.  However, in certain company, it is almost as much fun to pan something as it is to praise something, so in the end, a good time was had by all!  (It also helps if you have only paid 430 for a ticket instead of $200 - you can take risks for $30!).

Srurday afternoon, Hank and I met up again, and (irony alert!) went to the Jewish Community Center for a lecture of the Wagner Society.  The lecture was Wagner and Freud -

(Doesn't he look just like the kind of person who would be lecturing on Wagner and Freud?)

The title of the lecture to the contrary notwithstanding, it was actually interesting and informative, and will send me back to my Wagner books - when I finish the pile already on my nightstand.

And from the sublime to the ridiculous.  On Saturday night, Hank and Pat and I went to the midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  It is such a cult classic that Hank was appalled that I had never seen it.  So, off we traipsed.  For those of you who, like me, were Virgins, well, I am not even going to try to describe it.  Suffice it to say, I loathed it.  (I was mollified to hear that even Hank, who had seen it 90-some times, was appalled at how commercial the production had become).  However, I was not sorry to have gone.  It was one of those things that you have to have done, you know?

In spite of the late evening (we didn't get home until after 3:A.M. I was off to get my opera ticket bright and early on Sunday morning for the matinee performance of Tales of Hoffman.  I had a few hours to kill before the opera, so I caught lunch at Max's deli (another old favourite, and convenient), and managed to catch a bit of the Gay Pride as well. 

I know, the pictures didn't turn out very well, but I had to include them to show you a bit of the scope of the thing - thousands and thusands of happy people thronging the streets - some in costume, some naked (sorry, no pictures!), and totally benign.  I would have stayed longer - and perhaps taken better pictures -  but rushed back to the nearby opera house for the afternoon performance (my second Tales of Hoffman, see above).

After which. Peter. Hank and I met at Kokkari for a delightful (if pricey) dinner (we have come a long way from hitching and trying to save money on bridge tolls!)

(From left to right, Ray, Peterr, Nora and Hank)  All of us met in the Bank in the 80's, although really, the guys all knew each other through me.  So, great conversaion, great food, great booze (believe it or not, some of the best ouzo that I have ever tasted) - I think I can say that a great time was had by all1  (The restaurant, by the way, gets a definite thumbs up from me on all counts atmosphere, service and food - and the location on Jackson Square is not bad either!)

Which brings us to Monday.  The last several days had been a bit much, even for me, so, having picked up my rush ticket in the morning, I rested (and packed) during the afternoon, and headed out to the opera in the evening, this time an old stand-by, Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte.

It was a lovely production, with lovely voices, but I guess I was just opera'd out (or maybe, as Ray and the King said, Mozart just wrote too many notes!).  Anyway, I left after the first act, but perfectly satisfied, really, with everything.

I said my goodbye's to Hank when I got home that night, as I was leaving at the crack of dawn on Tuesday, and Hank doesn't do the crack of dawn.  BART was on strikke, so a taxi was required - oh, well, think of all the money I saved on those opera tickets!  Anyway, once again, the flight was uneventful, Mariah picked me up from the airport in Seattle as previously organized, and after a quick Mexican lunch at a neighborhood restaurant, I picked up my car and headed back to Vancouver.  It was a lovely day for a drive in the convertible, a lovely end to a fabulous week.

And now, back to reality, working all week with only a brief respite for dinner and bridge with the boys on Tuesday, and long walks every evening.  A nice change, yesterday, though, with friend Jean arriving from Edmonton.  Jean was a former neighbor from Salt Spring, now working as a city planner in Edmonton.  We've managed to see each other from time to time over the years (I think she has made previous appearances in this space), and generally kept up.  She's had a bad year, though, with breast cancer requiring several surgeries as well as radiation and chemotherapy, so I was thrilled that a professional conference brought her to town.  I picked her up from the airport, and headed strraight for dim sum - her request, which I was happy to comply with!

It was fabulous to see her and hear her sounding so good.  And, oh by the way, The restaurant, The Continental, is another in my ever growing stable of favourite dim sum places, this one one of the few left with actual carts wheeling around.  Come visit - I'll gladly take you to all of them!)

Worry not, folks, we went for a long walk on the dike afterwards, so the talk continued.  Then, I left Jean at her conference at the Bay Shore - another glorious day for a drive from Richmond north to Vancouver, with a fabulous view of the mountains. 

And now we are up to date.  Today is Sunday, so I am heading off to pick up the Sunday New York Times. as is my habit on Sundays. then, well, I should go to the office, but will probably come back here, pour myself another cup of coffee, and read the paper out on my deck.

And wonder what you guys are doing.  Hope you are having a wonderful summer, as I am.  Be in touch.  And (I know you have heard this before, but...), I will try to be a better correspondent.