Jazz and coffee, 8am

Glamour: nursing one's blisters and sipping coffee to recover from the day before.

Yesterday was early morning wee adventure, daytime workwork, and evening haute SF -- en pied, in heels, all along the Embarcadero through North Beach and back to lovely Vietnamese at Ana Mandala. Paul is Le Foodie Extraordinaire (but of course), and sends me with instructions to visit the Slanted Door sometime this week. Orders received. I'll take the cable car this time. My poor toes! I'm bad enough alone in a city, but put together two people who love to wander but don't remember to look up addresses nor know north from south -- and at the end of the night, there will be whistling for taxicabs. If you're lucky, an enthusiastic doorman will whistle for you.

Today I'll do my own whistling. The office does call for a few hours, but then I will catch up with Aunt Lou (und Simon) for The Best Vegetarian Restaurant in San Francisco. Tomorrow is off, off, off. Hurrah.

EDIT: Mary Lou threatens extra-touristy day with transit provided by Hop On Hop Off double-decker sightseeing bus. I love it! Prepare for 1800000 photos of adorable pastel row houses. You are warned.

A Late Aubade

You could be sitting now in a carrel
Turning some liver-spotted page,
Or rising in an elevator-cage
Toward Ladies' Apparel.

You could be planting a raucous bed
Of salvia, in rubber gloves,
Or lunching through a screed of someone's loves
With pitying head.

Or making some unhappy setter
Heel, or listening to a bleak
Lecture on Schoenberg's serial technique.
Isn't this better?

Think of all the time you are not
Wasting, and would not care to waste,
Such things, thank God, not being to your taste.
Think what a lot

Of time, by woman's reckoning,
You've saved, and so may spend on this,
You who had rather lie in bed and kiss
Than anything.

It's almost noon, you say? If so,
Time flies, and I need not rehearse
The rosebuds-theme of centuries of verse.
If you mustgo,

Wait for a while, then slip downstairs
And bring us up some chilled white wine,
And some blue cheese, and crackers, and some fine
Ruddy-skinned pears.

-- Richard Wilbur