Whoo! Long weekend. Mostly pleasant.

Saturday was mellow in the extreme. Slept in unusually late, then answered all my Star*Line e-slush (still have lots of postal submissions to get to; should be able to do that this week). Otherwise, I watched bits of the Stephen King film festival on Sci-Fi channel -- bad movies, mostly, but I have a certain fondness for their kind. Heather and I took a long walk in the evening, actually went all the way to Grand Avenue. Very nice, walking through beautiful neighborhoods, past beautiful houses, nice views of the hills all lit-up with lights, and going down a steep, secluded stairway, with trees and bits of statuary and ornate doorways. Sometimes I really love where we live, and I'm beginning to adore these almost-nightly walks of ours. We stopped for milkshakes on the way back, and ambled along, pausing by dark playgrounds, drinking up the night. Back home, Heather prepared her sexy-librarian outfit, with some modest help from me (I pinned the skirt so she could hem it!). I capped the evening by answering some Flytrap submissions, and watching more bad horror movies.

Today, Sunday, we rose at about 6:45 a.m. Heather had to be in the city to start work at Folsom Street Fair at 8. I drove her (and she looked incredibly sexy in her outfit, by the way), then went to Mama's Royale Cafe for breakfast. Pleasant, especially since it's not crowded at all there at 8:45 a.m. Afterward I went home, read a bit, wandered aimlessly around the house, and took a nap, because really, 6:45 was just too early for me to stop sleeping. I rose around 11:30 and headed for BART. Found parking with some difficulty, and took a train into the city, then ambled down to Folsom.

The Fair was much as I expected. Many people in fetish gear, latex, leather, etc. More chest harnesses and buttless chaps than you could shake a, ahem, stick at. Some few very attractive men and women, a lot of nothing-special-but-not-offensive-to-the-eye people (though I should note that even an objectively rather plain person, when wearing certain items that strike my personal fancies, can rise quite a few points in attractiveness in my estimation), and a few people whom I applaud for not bowing to societal pressures and having self-confidence and a healthy self-image despite their distance from predominant cultural norms of beauty.

I didn't linger overmuch anywhere, since I was trying to find the Blowfish booth to have lunch with Heather. She only got a half-hour break, unfortunately, and ate her Indian food standing up by a wall while we chatted (and she got sick a few hours ago, we think because of that self-same bought-from-a-sidewalk-vendor curry-and-samosa). I carried her wallet in my bag, because she had no pockets. This is important later in our story, for reasons you can probably guess.

She went back to work, I wandered around the fair a wee bit, then headed back to the BART station. On the train, I read what I have of the Rangergirl story. It's quite good. It still lacks an ending. I should do something about that. I went to Berkeley to check the PO Box (lots of Star*Line subs, a bit of Flytrap mail (including a subscription from an editor whose work I respect rather a lot -- wonder where he heard about our fledgling zine?), a few miscellaneous things, nothing too overwhelming). From there I wandered around, got ice cream, bought 5 Songs by The Decemberists ("Apology Song" is just marvelous) at Rasputin, walked through the beautiful Berkeley campus, wound up eventually at Au Coquelet. There I noticed that I still had Heather's wallet, which I presumed she needed to get home, something that's difficult to do without money or a train ticket.

In the café I finished reading Kalpa Imperial (it's lovely, but it's not a novel -- better described as a story-suite), worked a bit on my review of Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures, and left around 5 p.m. Took the train back into the city, walked the many blocks back to Folsom Street Fair, and found Heather. It turns out she didn't need her wallet after all -- she had her train ticket in her bag. Ah, well. I hung out with her while she and the other Blowfishies broke down the booth, took a couple of pictures of Heather and her strikingly-attired co-worker, tried to stay out of the way, and finally pitched in to load the van. We went to Hole in the Wall afterward for a drink and to see Richard (bartender, artist-extraordinaire, kind-hearted soul, and Flytrap contributor). The bar was crazy-crowded and very loud, rather overwhelming, actually -- I'd gotten mildly anxious in the crowd on Folsom earlier, and being in that mad press of bodies triggered my latent crowd-o-phobia (Enochophobia? Demophobia? I'm not sure of the connotations for those words, but Agoraphobia isn't quite right). Though when the guy standing next to me in the bar was kissing one man while receiving oral sex from another, I felt very acutely how strange and wonderful it is for a simple country boy from soybean-and-swampland like me to be living here in the big lovely crazy liberal sexually-progressive city. (Well, all right. I live across the bay from said city. But anyway.)

We only had one drink, and then slipped out. Heather's feet were killing her from standing all day, and mine weren't doing too great, either, since whenever I wasn't on a train today I was walking. We rode home, and clumped up the stairs. Heather took a bath and turned in early (and woke up sick, though she's been in bed again for a while now, so I'm hoping she's okay for the night this time -- I feel so ineffectual when all I can do is make tea and rub her back and tell her she'll be okay). I finished my review, and sent it off, and since then I've been aimlessly reading online, and reading short stories, and staring around the house, and watching terrible late-Sunday television. Just a bit ago I got productive and answered all but four of my Flytrap fiction submissions.

Suppose I should go to bed soon...