“Mason and Vallejo please.” Then almost immediately, I asked, “Is it difficult to find a cab on Saturday nights in the city?” I asked as I got into the cab.

“Yeah…there’s a lot of xmas parties going on. Where to again?”

For the first part of the evening, I was in Potrero Hill and planned to leave the area for North Beach around 10:15 pm. Despite preparing ahead of time with a list of cab companies numbers, I wasn’t able to get a cab out to that distant “far” area of Potrero Hill. Most of the numbers had an “error in connection” or a busy signal. I would try again and again (thank god for easy redial). When I did get through, the call would suddenly drop. At one point, I got to a dispatcher and said that I would get a cab “soon”. I waited until 11:30 pm until I started thinking about how I could just walk down to a busier area and flag down a cab.

Fortunately, a few friends were driving to the Tenderloin to pick up something left at a party. They dropped me off on Van Ness and Eddy. There, I saw a flurry of cabs going up and down the street. This has got to be easy. So I start flailing about, you know, hailing the cab. But as I paid more attention, it turned out all the cabs on this street had the “for hire” sign turned off. Some had passengers. Some were just empty cabs cruising the streets.

At one point, a white passenger van pulled over and backed up to me “do you need a ride?”

Despite my frustration, I said with common sense, “Uh…no!”

The van went away. And somehow miraculously, a cab saw me and was for hire. I gave the cab driver a hefty tip for my relief. And arrived to North Beach at 12:15 am.

For weeks, I had been hearing about this place–a self-proclaimed indie nightclub. For 18+. Being 24, I heard about its reviews.

And because the tickets for Stirr’s holiday party didn’t pan out, I felt that I needed to find something to do on a Thursday night. Rather than spend another evening at my apartment or wandering the streets of Mission or Castro. And there was my chance.

I do shamelessly admit that I knew almost 85% of the songs played. Most of which are among my favorites. Of course, the crowd was extremely young. Full of girls with layered dresses and thick eyeliner. And the guys of course in female pants. It was obviously somewhat pretentious, but it reminded me of the 80s nights in Pittsburgh at the Upstage. Minus the 80s getup. Didn’t get a chance to do the salsa-like moves, but maybe that’s a good thing.

I saw a former coworker there. I also forgot his name.

Who knows me better? Probably neither.

Rather than just ordering water at a bar.

I order….

tonic with lime.

Some people say it’s like drinking gasoline or soap. But isn’t that just like alcohol? I am just trying to fit in with my glass of clear liquid and red straw. Besides, it does look like vodka on the rocks. Except why would I have an 8 oz glass?

A few weeks ago, in a moment of stupidity, I knocked over my (cooled) cup of tea on my desk. It didn’t spill on the keyboard, but rather surrounded my powerbook. I immediately lifted up my laptop and put it on a towel.

Everything seemed fine and in working order. But of course, in laziness, I neglected to turn off my powerbook to let it dry (you see, when it works fine, it should stay fine!) But in the last few days, I have noticed how my powerbook hates charging. A faint smell of burning wafts when I have the charger in my powerbook. And I hear a faint screeching.

But everything works fine. Seriously.

What if you could put all your favorite people right now in the same room? What if one of the greatest pleasures in your life is seeing your good friends getting along with your other good friends? What if despite the failure of deviled eggs, a lack of a party activity, the accidental male-female ratio, the conflicts with company parties/birthday parties/finals, everyone still had a great time?

That was my housewarming party Saturday. And the apartment wasn’t a mess either (afterwards)!

Despite what I hear about its comfort, I can never stand to wear Crocs. What are they thinking. But redesigned crocs? Maybe. But to me, they’re still ever so ugly.

On a side note, I am growing in my shoe collection. I have only 8-10 pairs of shoes now.

Yesterday at Presenting Data and Information course, Edward Tufte noted, “There are only two industries in the world that refers to its customers/clients as users. Computers is one of them.”

Even though this Saturday is filled with birthday parties, holiday company parties from pwc, yahoo, intuit and sony…I am having my housewarming party co-hosted with my roommate and my downstairs neighbors (didn’t get the invite, let me know!)

And it took a total of 30 minutes for me to go into a thrift store and find my ugly sweater. You could find me pawing through racks of used clothing (something I never do). Too nice? Too plain? Too coordinated? It was nice having to look for that bright colors and tacky decorations. Strangely enough, I saw one sweater on a rack in a corner and made a mental note to return if I couldn’t find anything better. But when I did come back, a middle aged latino lady was holding it out to her son, “¡Qué bonita!” Then she put it into her growing bag of clothing.

I didn’t want to tell her that I wanted it for my ugly sweater holiday party.

Although nothing can beat the clown sweater.

A drunken man sang from the doorway of a closed Mexican restaurant, “She got a big butt, but she got a small brain.” Over and over again. You could hear him…crooning from several blocks away.

It was almost 8 pm on Valencia and tired from a long day of work, I couldn’t help but smile.