Step one: dinner

I went up to the City tonight to visit with Elina, have dinner, see her place, pet Mr. Kitty, talk about website designs and the like. I had intended to head up last week, but was thwarted first by work, then by a migraine. This week, today, however, I was successful in my journey. I, of course, took the train up. I'm starting to really, really like taking the train up. Talk about concentrated time to relax, accomplish tasks, and just mediate on nothing, watching the scenery out the window.

Instead of my usual hop-off-the-train and hustle-down-the-Embarcadero route, however, I hopped into a taxi (good lord, will I ever be rid of the need to use taxis - maybe I should start comparing taxis in various cities, most from a novice taxi rider's perspective, at least until I become an old hand at these taxi things), and rode a $7.60 ride to her place.

Her place is an incredibly adorable little one bedroom, with lots of late afternoon light, high ceilings, and cute nooks and closet spaces. It is, of course, also nicely decorated, as is the way of Elina. I suspect that, if she wants it, we could use her as the fourth lady flipping in our little band of adventurers. I'll have to check with Mom and Heather first.

After the little tour, and lots of Mr. Kitty snuggling, we dashed off to Flippers, a gourmet burger joint which also happened to have a fantastic array of vegetarian items available. My eggplant wrap? Can you say bigger than any burrito I've ever had? Yeah, I can say that, too.

I enjoy listening to Elina's stories, expecially the ones where she states the obvious stupidity of those around her. Most of our taxi ride over and the parts of dinner where I wasn't talking about ultimate or the client meeting this morning, was taken up by the story of Black Love Calendar. Oh, to have had a voice recorder for that conversation: I'd have a humourous post instead of a no-one-cares-what-you-had-for-dinner post.

Eh.

We were intending to take a taxi back to her place after dinner, but we became so engrossed with our conversation, and the brisk walk, that we forgot to stop and wave down a taxi. Which suited me just fine: I like the walking and the reminder that this city just isn't as big as some people think it is.

The walk back did, however, take time that we had intended to use discussing website designs, so upon arrival I just jumped into the discussion. I think it went really well, and I'm very excited to see what she designs. She commented on feeling nervous about designing a website, but I'm in the least bit nervous. All of the school projects she's shown me have been fabulous. Since I'll be translating it from design / image / PDF (<sarcasm>oh, joy, my favorite task, theming</sarcasm>) into HTML, any bad HTML will be totally my fault.

Which works for me.

I wasn't sure about the travel time back to the Caltrain station, so I left around 9:05 to catch a taxi back, nervous about being able to catch one quickly. Elina accompanied me downstairs and outside, then walked to the street and tapped on the taxi waiting at a light right in front of her place. What was I worried about again? I don't know, I made the train with ten minutes to spare.

Her taxi luck is just like that.