Saw this on my way to work today, looks like the protests have come to San Francisco. Got to love the 'look at me!' cammo gear, very SF.

Back to the doctor

Another week, another session with Dr. R the chiropractor.

My back eased up after the last visit but then progressively got worse, so another session was in order. I’m still not sure why this chap seems to feel the need to have his fingers in my mouth to reset my jaw, but it seems to help.

As for the ribs only time is going to sort that out. I’m still feeling like I’m being stabbed every time I sneeze or laugh, but it seems the floating rib cartilage has been damaged and the alignment is still wonky where two others meet the vertebrae. I was pushed, prodded and cracked and came away feeling a little better.

I booked in again for a session next week. Tuesday to Thursday will be a heavy conference, so I suspect I’ll need a tune up.

Little bit of politics

It’s a measure of how long I’ve been over here that this clip had me quite shocked - not for the violence but for the criticism.

For the last week protestors have been holding a permanent encampment a few blocks down from Wall Street to protest about, amongst other things, the lack of financial regulation and the bailouts bankers have received. But you wouldn’t know it to watch the news.

There’s been a quiet media blackout over the story. I covered day two of the protest after it appeared Yahoo was blocking emails about it (turned out to be a dodgy spam filter) and noted in it that there had been four times the covered of Charlie Sheen’s latest shenanigans than of the protest. The police attack the clip shows garnered a whole four mentions on Fox (Faux) News that day – imagine what that figure would be if a Tea partier had ben maced on a peaceful demo.

For MSNBC to come out with criticism quite this strong is encouraging and I can only hope some of the other stations break their silence. The protestors may not be very organized (the daily camp policy meetings sound like hell on earth, and it already has set up a social committee) but they raise points which should be heard. This self-censorship over anything left wing in the media has got to stop.

Water baby

M left early this morning for a four hour paddleboarding session. For someone who’s not spent much time on the water she’s taken to it like a duck to, well, you know what I mean.

I decided to have a lie in, but Boo wasn’t having any of it. I’d start dropping off and she’d either start licking my head or jumping on me playfully, usually dangerously close to the groin. After many failed attempts I gave in, administered an intensive belly rub and went to get a bowl of last night’s soup for breakfast.

M came back glowing from her session. I suspect I am to become a paddleboarding widower. The she went for a nap, since she’s out tonight for an evening with her first husband –techno. Claude Young was playing his first SF set in nearly a decade and it would have taken a small thermonuclear device to stop her. Since tomorrow is a work day I wasn’t going, but she had the day off and was intent of going sailing on Monday afternoon. At this rate she might even be teaching me in a few months.

Hangover and Indian

Ouch, should never have had that brandy. Got up at 9am to teach down at the sailing club but got there and it was cold, misty, and my head was killing me. Called it a day very early and headed home, wanting tea, my bed and a good book.

However we are playing hosts tonight, as a friend is staying over and it’s as good excuse as any for a cooking session. I’ve never tried much Indian cooking but since our guest is a vegetarian it was a logical choice and a good excuse to learn. We did some recipes and settled on mulligatawny for the soup course, a lentil and spinach main course and curried chicken for the carnivores among us. M’s ex was also over – it might seem odd but we’ve become fast friends and he comes out with some genius conversation points.

Delia Smith’s mulligatawny recipe was examined and rejected for being too bland, but some on and offline research was done and we found something that was acceptable. A quick trip to the local market turned up everything apart from curry leaves, but we dispensed with those and the dishes still came out well. All in all it was a success, but we’re going to be eating leftovers for some time to come.

Leaving do

Someone leaving the company can be a fraught experience. The best kind of leaving party is one where the person going isn’t well liked. It’s a pleasure to see them go, a good excuse for beers and gossip and as a bonus you don’t have to see their ugly mug around the office again. This was not one of those occasions.

M hired me to my current job and in the few months we’re been friendly he’s been encouraging and a great help in getting used to a new publication with a radically different house style. He’s got a dry wit, writes wickedly good headlines, thinks before he speaks and we’re all going to miss him in the office.

If M has one fault (at least to a British journalist) it’s that he doesn’t really drink that much. This is in many ways a blessing – drink is the curse of the journalist and we’re one of the highest rates of alcoholism of any profession. However, our quest for the night was to get him drunk (something I’ve never seen) and a couple of guys from the UK office had come over to see him off and get him lathered.

So we clocked off early and went to the House of Shields for cocktails before dinner – three hours before dinner to be exact. I do like a dry martini (gin not vodka, stirred not shaken) but since it was only 3pm I went a little easy on them. So too did M. After a couple we switched to beer and then headed off of an excellent dinner that I’d been looking forward to for culinary reasons.

For certain types of food SF has few equals. You can get sumptuous sushi, very good Vietnamese and there’s even a school of cooking dubbed California cuisine. In the latter case no-one’s really nailed what this is but the best I can see is that it’s like French provincial cooking but without the heavy, butter-laden sauces.

But this place had something I really wanted to try, and haven’t had for over three years – the Scotch egg. For those unfamiliar with this culinary delight it’s a hard-boiled egg encased in slightly spicy sausage meat, rolled in breadcrumbs and then deep fried. Many a post-booze up stomach has been settled by the application of these little balls of joy, and the restaurant is the first place I’ve seen in SF that actually serves them.

What came out of the kitchen wasn’t anything like the fat-laden creations I was used to. Instead the outer shell was made up of barbequed pork scraps, shaped around the egg before frying and there was nary a breadcrumb to be seen. Still and all it was delicious.

But M was still refusing to get drunk. By the end of the meal we’d sunk two bottle of wine between five of us, with a couple of hardy souls skipping desert in favour of a brandy. M, while noticeably more relaxed and ebullient, wasn’t exhibiting any of the behavior we’d been hoping for, but was having a whale of a time judging from his grin. We admitted defeat and headed home, but it was a great send-off.