“Flight to SF, Dinner with Rich and Friends™”

Flight

The flights from Providence to Washington/Dulles, and from Dulles to SF, were exactly how you want flights to be: utterly boring and uneventful.

Thai Food

In fact, everything yesterday was boring except for dinner! I'm staying at the Marriott San Francisco, but Rich is at the W. So after I was settled in and caught up, I walked over there so we could figure out what to do for dinner.

The W has a slightly bizarre lobby. It looks like the entrance to a nightclub. I told Rich that it looked like they were sizing people up as they walked in, to decide if they were dressed well enough to get into the club. About an hour later the third (of four) for our dinner party showed up, and he also said that it looked like a night club! (I even walked most of the way around the building trying to find the real entrance.)

Rich, of course, has a ton of friends out here right now as he's been in the Mac software business (and successfully) for a long time. So I'll just consider myself lucky that he was able to go to dinner with me/us last night: doesn't look like that will happen again until (perhaps) Thursday.

The dinner party of four consisted of Rich, Ciaran (another friend of Rich's who will be helping out at the booth), someone who used to do the Bare Bones marketing but whose name I can't currently remember (sorry!), and myself. We went for Thai food.

On the way out of the hotel, Rich asked the concierge where a certain Thai restaurant was that he remembered from years past. "It was a little hole-in-the-wall place up on such-and-such a street..." The concierge didn't want us to go there. In fact, he repeatedly recommended something closer, and in the end he actually said, "It's much nicer, but I think you'll like it anyway." I repeated that twice after we left the hotel, shaking my head. What a snot.

Still, we went where he recommended, and the food was good, and served very quickly. There didn't seem to be any waiting at all, but we were discussing a tentative plan for World Domination (via fobs and keys, of course) so the wait may have just passed very quickly.

Rich has a picture of the dish I ordered... it was very pretty. If he sends it to me, I'll update this post.

After dinner we all went our separate ways, and then I went to bed.

Breakfast

This morning I went down to the buffet (at the Marriott's "Garden View" restaurant) for breakfast. Wow! The food was good, but the wait staff was amazing!!! There were at least two staff people (in vibrant, cobalt blue shirts) per guest. Seriously. But they were all very good at not getting in the way: when I walked from my table to the buffet, they always stepped aside or changed course, so their numbers were never a problem. And they were all very friendly... lots of "good mornings" and smiles all over the place.

(I'm not a big fan of formality, nor the effort to make the guest feel like royalty, but I admit that their almost-choreographed behavior was impressive. Still, I prefer the genuine friendliness of our waitress at Snoopy's, and Corinne still makes the best breakfast I've ever eaten.)

Today

We're setting up the booth this afternoon at 2pm, but that should only take an hour, maybe a little more. Brian is going to show up at about 3... I'd like to introduce him to Rich, if he's available, but then he and I are going to find something to do for the rest of the afternoon. The weather is nice, so perhaps we'll go to Golden Gate park (his idea).

Home Status

Corinne says she's doing ok at home, and managed a decent night's sleep last night (two down, five to go). Unfortunately, she woke up with a sore, puffy cheek. We knew she needed some dental work, but now it's urgent so she made an appointment for Wednesday. :-(

Mike's lawyer called my cell phone a few minutes ago to find out "what I wanted." I just "wanted" to know if he felt a letter of support for Mike & Shannon would help their case at all. He changed his tone very quickly: he feels it would, indeed, be quite helpful. So now I know what judge to write to, but I still need to speak with Shannon's lawyer to make sure she feels the same way and to let her know to expect it.