Okay. Nothing creates a whirlwind tour of SF like having a set of parents in town. Mom and Steve got in Saturday at noon and the fun hasn't stopped since. We visited Haight Street (where some very elaborate shopping took place which I shall have to explain another time), did crepes at the Bean Bag Cafe while my car's oil got changed, and did a lot of catching up. That's plenty of activity, right?

Ha. On Sunday we:

1) had dim sum in Chinatown (big hit, until the little girl next to us started eating her hot peppered chicken feet toe by toe -- and that's no joke)

2) bought boba teas, random chinese candy, and pickled, chilied, or gingered tidbits (mostly Steve) at Sweet World. Boba Teas are drinks consisting of a cold, sweet, milky tea (though you can improvise with Chai or what have you) and large, round, super chewy tapioca balls that sit at the bottom and come flying up into your mouth through an extra wide straw. Chad retched, mom was fascinated, Steve bought his own!

3) walked the aquarium. The aquarium is rather meager compared to what I'm used to and what I've seen recently -- Mystic, of course, and Chicago's -- but they did have the good foresight to construct glassed in tunnels with slowly moving walkways, so that you can be surrounded by striped trout, leopard sharks, wolf eels, and bat rays and without having to think about walking. I could've sat in the tunnels for ages. They also had touch pools. I touched flounder (nubby), bat rays (velvety), leopard sharks (firm, skin-like only less loose than ours), sea urchins (surprisingly stiff), starfish (bumpy and hard) and sea cucumbers (mushy). Further, they had an exhibit where you could see inside the egg pod of a Skate where tiny, finely veined skate fetuses hovered umbilically over their yolk sacs (something I've never seen before in the big aquariums) -- all of which definitely redeems the lack of size, variety, and dolphin trick shows!

4) Killed some time at the wharf with lattes and espressos, some light shopping for rain gear (it was wet but not torrential), and a quick visit to the Sea Lions, a younger pair of whom were engaging in a sea lion form of sumo wrestling involving using one's entire girth to knock the other off the raft, only to have that one, with much honking and barking and protestation, scramble back on to the raft on a different side and then knock the first one off! Very funny.

5) Ferried out to Alcatraz where we did the "night" tour from 4-8pm. I've done Alcatraz before (see blog of August 6th, 2003) but I relished the chance to go back, and this time we got to tour the hospital upstairs -- which was mostly innocuous but undeniably creepy. I also saw the black-capped heron on this occasion -- gorgeously plumed, relaxed, elegant even when hunched over herons perched on some of the denser trees on the coast of The Rock.

6) Ate seafood at Fisherman's Grotto, at a more casual version of Allioto's.

7) Finally, (on a last leg of energy) went to the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum! While there were many bizarre and wonderful things there, I have this weird little place in my heart for the replica of Van Gogh's Self Portrait made entirely from toast.

Chad and I left the house at 10:30am and didn't get back until 11:30pm!! And that was after a long night of me out dancing with my friends. Going to work yesterday was actually relaxing! Mom and Steve came to see where I work ("this time!") and we had lunch down at City Center. Despite Steve's having visited the Bay Area at least three times in the last 30 years, it was his first time riding BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit -- the trains that run under the bay between San Francisco and points east). Interestingly enough, he'd written a paper in high school on BART back when it was newly developed and cutting edge.

For their birthdays, I'd bought both Mom and Steve manicures and pedicures at my favorite local place in Noe Valley. Mom has never had a pedicure from embarassment over her feet. So despite years and years and YEARS of manicures (indeed), yesterday after work I met them there for her first pedicure. I thought her toes looked great, and appearances aside, it was incredibly relaxing after the long day before it. Leslie joined us there for her own mani-pedi and then we all cabbed to the Mission for Ti Couz's amazing, hearty crepes.

Mom and Steve took the ol' Forrester to Mendicino today, where they will frolic among the redwoods while I'm working, to return on Thursday -- which as it turns out, I may have off. We may try to take in the Giants game...