Yesterday my sister and I made an excellent meal. The kind of meal so basic that it was perfection. Being home is awesome.

My friend Joanna taught me how to drive stick shift. Actually, she only meant to teach one of our friends, but she ended up teaching all of us. Learning to drive stick shift was sort of brilliant and sort of horrifying and there was lots of shouting and cheering and screaming and laughing. At the end of the evening, I found myself very much in awe of Joey, who has driven me all through San Francisco on those horrific hills like it ain't no thang. All when I could barely navigate a parking lot and in fact stalled out before I ever did anything. One of my very favorite memories with Joey is driving home from the Fillmore from seeing I-don't-know-who and we got stopped at a stop light in the middle of the night and we thought we might die because the incline was so steep and the car behind us had pulled up much too close.

We also went to a playground at one of the nearby elementary schools. They had a fantastic jungle gym, where first you are just climbing and then a little bit later you realise you are hanging upside by your elbows and knees and you are perfectly content. The jungle gym is shaped like a very big spider. It was the one at Duveneck with the indescribable chair that Bryn attempted to describe to me once.