2006 goes out with a bang

Please excuse the long absence, but it's been a busy few weeks. Dates, visitors, sickness, and general holiday madness caused me to slip into a non-blogging coma. Now that things have calmed down somewhat, I'm back to share my adventures with you, my loosely interested readership.

Off the record

As expected, my date with Jess went wonderfully. I'm afraid I've developed a little crush on her, as evidenced by the mixtape I made for her. (Eww, mushy.) She's into Radiohead, indie rock, and alt-country, so that's where I centered the mix. The whole story of how I met her is really quite cute, but I have to let it simmer a while before I share.

1. "Step Into My Office, Baby" by Belle & Sebastian from Dear Catastrophe Waitress
2. "I Turn My Camera On" by Spoon from Gimme Fiction
3. "Sugar Pill" by Ambulance Ltd from Ambulance Ltd
4. "California" by Semisonic from Feeling Strangely Fine
5. "Crosses" by Zero 7 from The Garden
6. "Dissolved Girl" by Massive Attack from Mezzanine
7. "Burn That Broken Bed" by Iron and Wine & Calexico from In the Reins
8. "Heartbeats" by José González from Veneer
9. "Chinese Translation" by M. Ward from Post-War
10. "The Big Guns" by Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins from Rabbit Fur Coat
11. "Crooked Road And The Briar" by Calexico from Aerocalexico
12. "Sunburn" by Muse from Showbiz
13. "Exit Music (For a Film)" by Brad Mehldau from Morning Becomes Eclectic

We went to a charming soul food joint called The Front Porch, where I had a fantastically huge cheeseburger and she devoured a steak. The conversation and wine flowed, and then we parted ways after promising to go out again. (Insert "high five" gesture here.)

City tour, round 3

My parents came to visit for Christmas, so we spent a few days traipsing around the city. We stopped at the Wharf for some In-N-Out, walked up Hyde Street and down Lombard, and strolled through Chinatown. My dad and I went on a long bike ride up over the Golden Gate and back down on the ferry, which was probably the highlight of his trip. It felt good to show them around; it was almost as if by showing them that these things I've been telling them about really do exist, my time here was made more tangible and justified. Family Christmases are not always pleasant occasions, but this one was great.

You and me and the NyQuil makes three

One of my least cherished Christmas presents this year was the nasty cold I caught from my dad. I missed two days of work while I coughed up a lung in the privacy of my own apartment. Several boxes of Kleenexes and many, many Discovery Channel specials later, I'm on the road to recovery.

During the waning phase of my phlegm proliferation, I attended another of Jesse's legendary parties. His New Year's Eve bash was a big success, packing approximately 500 people into his cozy row house apartment (or so it felt). What made it a real success was the fact that everybody — even yours truly the wallflower — found somebody to snog at midnight. Some people even found a little more (or so I hear).