I do so love sleeping in on weekends. It has to be quality sleep, though; it's no good if you have to fight for it through slight illness or interruptions or restlessness. This morning was perfect. I don't even remember dreaming.
The afternoon was good, too. Bryan Barrett was in town, and so was Rubberama, one of the big traveling rubber stamp shows. He and John and I drove up to the city and fought traffic all the way over to Fort Mason where the show was being held. It was windy and the dark green and blue water was whitecapped; across the bay, sailboats raced along the Marin headlands and windsurfers skipped and splashed off the shoreline at Chrissy Fields. I restrained myself at the stamp show, truly I did, and only bought five rubber stamps. Here, have a look:
I own more than 200 stamps and I don't have the money to invest in just any old cool image so I was extremely picky. The pine branch and decoration are destined to be combined for this year's Christmas cards; the French Maid was 75% off and I've coveted it for nearly three years, I'd never seen a sushi stamp before so I had to have it, and I simply could not resist adding the 17th century guy inexplicably holding a whip to my collection of historical costume stamps. I thought the show was a nice balance of unusual public domain artwork, personal quirky artwork, and horrible cutesy artwork. I almost succumbed to an adorable collection of Japanese children stamps by a Hawaiian company but the table had been picked over and I was able to walk away without a qualm because their best images were sold out already. See this halo? Yes, I figured as much.
Afterwards, we pitted our car against the incredible steepness of Buchanan Street. I wish I had had the money to rent on Russian Hill when I lived in the city. The old gingerbread Victorians are as breathtakingly gorgeous as the view. I rubbernecked all the way to Japantown where we had bowls of hot noodles at Mifune's, bought laughing vegetable stickers at the Kikokuniya bookstore, and picked up some yummy drinks for the ride home. I tried Mandarin Orange Pulps and Juice which was a bit hard to drink because of the pulps, some ordinary Calpico Water (related to the fabulous Calpis -- imagine a milky lemonade), and Melon whose motto is "Tasty and enjoyable drink for your fuller life." It tastes kind of like a melted popsicle.
I topped off my Saturday by turning in my article for Metajournals (it'll be in the September issue) and finishing the Greg Bear novel before turning in a whole twelve hours after I got up.
I love Saturdays.
