How I spent the last day of 2007.

6:30 am - I buy a bouquet of flowers at the grocery store and plop it in my parents' living room. I read the paper as the house wakes up.

7:00 am - Breakfast with mummy and dad: fried eggs and beef and rice while the sun is barely rising, my absolute favorite holiday indulgence.

9:00 am - James sends me that Sonic Youth cover after finding out how much I loved Juno. A smile crawls onto my face that doesn't leave for the rest of the day.

10:30-1:30 pm - I BART into San Francisco and run into Samantha, completely unplanned. Spend the next three hours together drinking coffee and taking in the lovely at Anthropologie. I check my camera and discover that my batteries are dead.

1:50 pm - Meet up with Dan in front of Anthropologie. I eat an entire tablet of Airborne while we wait for Molly, not realizing that Airborne is meant to be dissolved in water and drunk. Dan watches me as my mouth bubbles over.

1:55 pm - Dan and Molly meet each other for the first time.

2:00 pm - The three of us walk into CompUSA and several other electronic goods shops looking for digital SLR camera batteries. Man at CompUSA huffs that they are a computer store and not a camera store. I give up and sigh -- it is a gorgeous day and my new lens will never know it. Molly's camera, which is NOT the size of a nuclear weapon, will have to do.

2:30-4:30 pm - We visit the temporary site for the California Academy of Sciences and stare at hundreds of swimming fish (I relive all my fish nightmares), get our hands attacked by a rabid disgusting sea anemone, watch penguins get fed and discover great alternative names for animal poo (frass, scat).


We search for a parasite exhibit so that I might show off my extensive knowledge of tapeworms, but fail to find such an exhibit. Dan and Molly, for whatever reason, take turns reciting the names of famous Jewish people. I cite Ferdinand Marcos and myself as famous Filipinos.

4:45 pm - Dan and Molly no longer need me to have any fun, and prove it by posing with these giant pens at the museum gift shop. I one-up them by planting a kiss on Charles Richter's biography and rendering it unsaleable. Dan, to the befuddled sales clerk: "She is really into Richter."


5:00 - 6:30 pm - Leisurely dinner at Osha on 2nd. Dan and I constantly make obscure references to that time we were in Switzerland or Scotland or Oxford, and I tell him we need to quit sounding so pretentious. From that point forward we start referring to Switzerland as "Oklahoma."


6-7:00 pm - We drink beers at Thirsty Bear. Dan and Molly become BFF's during one of my trips to the bathroom.


8:00 pm - At a house party on Page, a guy named Frisco mixes me a "rum and nectar." I drink it to be polite. He later offers to make me another drink and I warn him that he'd "better not mix date rape drugs in there." The entire room goes quiet and stares at me.


10:00 pm - We run into my favorite Diane at another party on Middle Sunset. Diane and I stand by a firepit in the backyard and gossip for half an hour. My new coat smells like stale smoke for the rest of the night.


12:00 am, Jan 1 2008 - I ring in the New Year with a backyard full of incredibly drunk people.

12:10 am - I surprise myself by wondering where James is. I contemplate sending him a message, but forget all about it when I find myself posing in various people sandwiches.


1:00 am - Dan and I hug Molly good night and we BART to Rockridge in a train full of hilariously tipsy, happy, crazy, smelly people. My head is pounding and I eat another tablet of Airborne. Dan shakes his head as my mouth bubbles over a second time.

2:00 am - Dan and I spend half an hour in a line of cars to buy Oreo shakes and curly fries from the drive-thru at Jack in the Box.

2:30 am - We watch Stella from Dan's tiny laptop. I let Dan know that his new Stilton and Port spread, which he has been building up for days, tastes like dung beetle frass. Dan tells me that if I'm actually determined not to appear pretentious, then I'd better stop criticizing his cheeses.

3:30 am - Dan drives me home. We argue the whole time about the degree of his unfunny-ness. I conclude that it is very good to have a friend like Dan.

4:00 am - I crawl into bed and check my phone. A message from James: "I know 2007 was a tough year for you. 2008 is yours."