halloween 2004

well we didn't start off with quite the bang we're used to.
but we having been doing a few things....

before vacation sam hosted a clay party. the theme of the party was to make scary skulls and other goolish objects that could be useful or not.

i made an ash tray for gio


last sunday we had some more people over to carve pumpkins. lots o'fun.
done by girl sam

this is mine

i'm not sure


last night sam, hazel and i went to the scream park in brighton. good fun. pretty scary.



it was the high tech scary that you'll find at primitive fear or over at elitches haunted houses.
it was the good ol' dangerous fun we all used to have during halloween - the halloween when mom and dad didn't check your candy!


there were two haunted houses, a fun house, a kiddy haunted train ride and another kiddy haunted house.

well if any one knows hazel you'll know that her biggest fear is clowns.
end count of evening = fifteen clowns ( some children size in groups),
two pint size scream masks,
several gools with blood,
several odds and ends people in the dark
one chainsaw guy,
one red neck boy on top of his trailer who would leep on to trampoline
and bounce onto another trailer!!!!! super cool

moving on

the rest of the trip?

i have waited too long and now san fran seems like a foggy memory.... pun not intended

napa......
at the last wine tasting were other older couples seemed amused to find out that we were biking around to the tastings. crazy kids!




the drive back was short and we stopped off at the golden gate.....



after we got back from napa there was only three days left before the drive home to denver.
we had not been over to the mission. we went in search of the brazilian market that we had heard of....we found a cute little italien market as well....



gio and i spent a beautiful late afternoon at baker beach.
this is the beach that cathy and darren used to live by when they lived in the presidio








over all the vacation was brilliant but to short.
the time i spent in the car driving was almost equal to the time in sf. but there were parts of nevada and utah that were breath taking: canyons, mountains, big sky.
it really should have been a two week vacation....
hard to pull off with the both of us at st.marks.

thanks again to my two wonderful sisters and super great brother in law using his powers for good!!! thank you for helping us see you all and have a great vacation!!!!

maybe soon we will all be able to go away to gether some where warm!!!!
not that i don't like the cold..... ocean city any time soon?

there and back again

vacation.

i want more than one big one every three years.....

the big question i heard from a lot of friends was: in your car?
what's wrong with my car? she not beautiful but her heart is good!

i have taken long drives before. my grandmother lived in florida and i would drive down with family and then later on being the driver (twenty-six hours dc to fla). the drive out to san fran i just wanted to get us out there....we took 80.

i don't think i'll ever drive on 80 again. large trucks, high speeds, salt flats all not good. 50 is good: beautiful scenery, not much traffic, gas stations at least every one hundred and six miles.

we arrived at heathers at ten at night....she and her roommate were asleep. heathers and her roommate thought we were arriving two days later....ooops

heathers home


gio and i spent the first day walking thru golden gate park - which is the back yard to my sisters!
(if you want to see more photos - www.zerogerman.com - photos)
we walked out to the height. this area reminded me of a hippy georgetown from the 80's. it did have a ton of thrift store - but i didn't want any stinky hippy crap! after the haight we made our way over to skippy's coffee shop to meet up with skip and go out for dinner.

skip took us to a friend's restaurant "bluejays". the resturant is soul food. the food was good but i was more impressed with the layout of the restaurant. it had the most beautiful u shaped counter with bar for more casual dinning. they even used old shutters as part of the lower wall treatment! supercute!

we also took a side trip to napa valley. we rented a room in calistoga and got to bike around and go to a few wineries. ah! there is the best italian restaurant there! they make their own pastas and had the best ravioli, i haven't had any pasta that delicious since the east coast with the di dio and their familie members. uncle joe's cousin marie reagan had a wedding for one of their three daughters- good lord they can that family cook!

food.
the trip had a lot of not eating at home. the restaurants that we chose we good but san fran never wowed me like new york could do. although we did go to an interesting vegi chinese restaurant the last night we were there. the hulahula? hua hua? hu ho? i can't remember.
they served items like vegibeef, vegipork, vegichicken, vegifish. it was interesting, but i don't think i could eat fake meat all the time.

activities:
love parade - a parade from germany that started by a dj that has turned into a huge event. this is the first year that the love parade was tried in another country. super fun! here's some pics







heather and her friend and german hiko


some freaks


some dj


some big boobies


super cutie


zen techno freaks


more cuties


crowded freaks


bridge freaks


dirty clown freaks


big balled freaks


thumpin' freaks




short bus freaks


numchuck swinging freak








super cool! painting the feeling of the parade


heather's so cute that a film wanted her to try out.....the movie's called drunk! they want people to come and drink as muck as they want and answer questions....will heather do it?
will find out later!

then time to go home....it looks like everyone thought that at the same time!!!! i was a sardine for an hour


more to come.........

and off we go!!!!!!!!

today is the day we're off to san fran

as i said before i could pee with the excitement!

i am the only driver in the car.

gio is frightened of utah - aren't we all
we should be there by monday night....

photos to come

aj's birthday

aj - for all of you that don't know here - she is a wonderful female
if you know her you know what i mean....

on thursday nite the ladies of spirit ways threw a cake and punch party for her to give gifts and celebrate her.....spiritways is the metaphysical shop where she works.....the photos are a little quriky..........






i have spent quite few birthday's with aj.
in fact the first birthday we spent together was hers (not to be corny) we both got tattoos. we both got symbols that look as if there painted on - hers on her back and mine on my breast bone....


aj and i met at 849 washington street house.
i met her right after my mother passed away and aj was starting to realize that her father was not going to beat cancer the second time. because of these situations she and i gave a lot of understanding to one another about learning the stages of mourning. we cheered one another up by becoming great playmates - one of the reason i love her

i lived on the entire first floor and she had the whole basement apartment. there were three other apartments in the house only one of which we were super friendly with - rob and kelley.....they've gone their own ways now.

one evening aj had her niece in town and we promised to wake her up after we got back from being "out". we decided to go back to the house wake up cj and build an entire pillow & sheet fort that would cover the apartment, i seem to remember convincing a few other people we knew to come and join us in our well thought out plan

aj and i lived in that house for a few years and only moved out because of the two other horrible apartments and the slum lord....boy oh boy was that house fun when those three problems weren't around. we then went to 2950 humbolt and started living with other roommates. bad idea.

but now she and i have passed 6 or 7 birthday's together and i suspect that there will be quite a few more in store.........

the week of movies

for some reason this week (and it's only thursday) i have seen three movies - sam has been to all of them with me!

last friday some of us were going to go to the spike&mikes sick and twisted animation festival....but i wanted to see it with gio and he was covering for tyrone (doing a double! noon to one am!) and the rest of the participants of the evening couldn't get it together - including me

monday:
labor day.
i was busy at work - we are one of the only coffeeshops open on holidays all of them but christmas day. 364!
sam and i decided to go to the dollar theater and see the latest harry potter. much better than the last one.

tuesday:
brasilian independents day
gio and i celebrated by a bbq and beers in the afternoon while waiting for the ups guy to deliver gio's new doll.




we met up with sam while waiting for nils to get off work at armasan.... then off to the movies




when the movie got out gio and i stopped by craig thomas' new art gallery "ism". we chatted for awhile - craig told us he was waiting for a lady he'd just met to come back (they were going to hand out) and in walks a customer of ours maureen....that girl gets around town! she hangs in good spots.

we got home and had a few cocktails. gio pulled out his new guitar from mark and played while i did some yoga/acrobatic moves and took picture....

i love evenings like that!

wednesday:
just pain ol'wednesday
work again.....work.work.work.work......


then another movie! sam and i went to see ju on.

it's a horror flick -i have to say i was nervous going in thinking i was going to pee my pants at some point. no pee to report. not to scary but good.