Fun Day in the City

Soon (but not soon enough) this semester will be over, and I'll have a few minutes to breathe. And maybe knit. Currently, I'm making snail's pace progress on a scarf in beautiful grey Canadian alpaca.

Now, I did take yesterday off--I spent a wonderful day in San Francisco with some friends. Some highlights of our day:

• We went to the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. It's a really nice museum with beautiful gallery space.
• The museum was hosting an artisan fair, with maybe 18 or so artists selling their jewelry and glassware and the like. As soon as we walked in, I was very excited, because I spotted Joanna Mendicino's table. One of her ceramic vases had just been featured in Sunset magazine, and I liked it so much, I'd torn out the page to use as inspiration for my (much less accomplished, obviously) pottery. Not only are her vases even nicer in person, but they're affordable, too. So I now own one of my own. And she is very nice, too. When I told her I've been taking a ceramics class, she was quite supportive. Another artist there, Cuong Ta, also had some really nice pottery, and he encouraged me, too. :-)
• Later, we were walking by city hall just as an anti-AIDS rally was finishing up. We walked across the square across the street, which was empty aside from a small group of cops and a guy in a suit. We walked right by them, and a moment later, one of my friends casually mentioned that the guy in the suit was Gavin Newsom, the mayor. So I turned back and took a more careful look, and sure enought, it was him.
• We had dinner at a Korean restaurant in Japantown. Japchae and kimchee. Mmmmm.
• Then we walked over to Yoshi's, which just opened on Fillmore a couple days ago. We had tickets to see Taj Mahal. The venue itself is quite nice--every table is a great seat, and the acoustics are really good. We had some dessert there before the show: chocolate cake with a scoop of caramel ice cream, with bits of caramel corn and nori (!) sprinkled on top. Strange as that sounds, it was delicious.
• Taj Mahal was fantastic. He puts on a great show. He's been performing for 40 years, and still seems to enjoy it. It was supposed to be a 70 minute set, because we were at the 8pm show and there was another show at 10, but he didn't finish until nearly 9:45.
• I didn't get home until 1am, and that's later than I've been out in a long time. When I arrived home, everyone was asleep and Hubby had cleaned up the kitchen. :-)