August in San Francisco

I am finally getting the house back to myself - Erika and Peter are off to France for the rest of August to visit Erika's parents and introduce Peter to Martin's father and stepmother. Martin is taking over Cat Appreciation Duty while they are gone. Erika is taking the laptop with her, so there won't be any more updates from me until September. However, Martin did help me get my fifteen minutes of fame, even if I do have to share it with the baby. If you don't get the joke, click Home and look at the other photographs or read about LOLspeak. Many of you will still not get it, and that's just fine. Erika thinks Martin spends FAR too much time with LOLcats anyway.

We had a lovely visit this weekend with Willett cousins Andrew and Becky, along with Becky's wonderful husband Jason and their two sweet children. We spent an uncharacteristically sunny August Saturday in Golden Gate park eating burritos (the Willett cousins have been living outside of California for several years now, and MUST HAVE burritos whenever they are in San Francisco). Sunday it was back to freezing cold windy fog, but Martin, Erika, and Peter picnicked anyway, in the shelter of the visitor's center in the Marin headlands. I wisely stayed home and lounged on my kitty condo, dreaming of sun.

Erika did manage to slip out for a few hours on Sunday to see "WALL-E", which she enjoyed very much despite the fact that it is a Movie with a Message. It's a good message, and there is a very strong, smart female lead, both of which score big points with Erika. It was a nice antidote to Saturday night's movie, "The Taking of Pelham 123", a pretty good, suspenseful drama set in 1970s Manhattan in which women are referred to as "dames" or "broads" and one character (we could never figure out which one) appeared in the credits only as "The Homosexual".

Besides movies, much ice cream was consumed over the weekend. Mitchell's Ice Cream vs. Bi-Rite Creamery had a clear winner. (Bi-Rite, duh.) There was also much sourdough consumed, as Erika experimented with different ways of using the sourdough starter. The pancakes came out a little salty (bad recipe from the internet) but the crusty sourdough bread was not bad at all, despite a verrrrry long rise which produced a rather dense loaf. More experimentation is necessary, if the starter survives the month of August in the fridge.

In other news, Peter slept for 12 straight hours last night. A new record! I've still got him beat for total sleep time in a 24-hour period, but he's catching up...