Wet cement

Last week I took a trip to San Francisco. I’d been there once, when I was seventeen, and remember thinking it was gorgeous and that I wanted to live there someday, but I’d forgotten just how beautiful it was. Everything just smelled so good. Everywhere we went, I rolled the car window down and stuck my head out to inhale, which made Aaron laugh. Also, all food tastes better in San Francisco. I think it’s the air, but even my scrambled eggs at breakfast were heavenly.

We went all over the place, and saw pretty much the entire freaking city, and my snakefish foot was definitely feeling it the next day. At one point a very nice woman recognized me on a very crowded bus, which I think freaked Aaron out a little. I was mostly just glad I wasn’t picking my nose or talking shit on anyone at that moment. Then we went home and looked her up, and it turned out that the week before, she’d been in Tulsa, to read at the Nimrod Awards. Nimrod is the literary magazine where I interned in college. So once again, way to bring it full circle right upside my head, Internet.

We also saw My Morning Jacket at the Fillmore, which was extra awesome because they were filming the show for a DVD, so everyone was dressed up like they were going to a rave in some Victorian garden. The guy next to me was dressed completely like a unicorn, and the guy next to him was wearing a top hat and tails and waving this freaky glowstick egg thing around the whole show. Okay, sure.

One day we drove out to Muir Woods, where, according to Aaron, they filmed the Ewok parts of Return of the Jedi, which made perfect sense to me, because when the full moon rose over the trees, I said, “Oh! That looks just like the poster of Endor I used to have in my bedroom at my parents’ house!” and Aaron said, “What did you just say?” so I repeated it, and then he said, “Aw, come here, baby,” and kissed me, which just reaffirmed my conviction that a lifetime steeped in Star Wars will do nothing but get you super laid.

Unofficially, my favorite part of the trip was a conversation we had about For Better or For Worse while having coffee and reading the paper in bed Saturday morning, but I think that one’s best kept under wraps. So officially, my favorite part of the whole trip was the drive up to Muir Beach Overlook, listening to old Willie Nelson songs, and then getting out of the car with the trees and the moon rising behind us and the sun setting over the Pacific in front of us, and the fog cusped on the hills to our right. It actually made me gasp, it was so beautiful. Then on our drive back we talked and listened to Summerteeth and I was like, well, if I die right now, I guess that’d be okay.

I have never been so bummed to get on a plane aimed for New York.