2003-05-14 - 11:06 a.m. sick day Post travel, I almost always get sick, and I almost always go into hibernation. As you can see by the lack of writing here for the past week or so, the hibernation part has happened; as you can see from the unusual midday timing of this post, I am now experiencing the getting sick part. Staying at home, sitting in bed, playing w/the cat and the laptop isn't so terrible really. It will be nicer when I don't feel like vomiting though. So far, a highlight of this past week was dinner at Chapeau!, a fabulous neighborhood French bistro. It seemed appropriate to take my most frequent cat sitter (Maira-Rose is my other beloved cat sitter) there as a thank you for the 3 or so weeks worth of cat sitting he has done for me in the past year (especially since I have some more cat sitting needs coming up shortly thanks to work). I recall being charmed by this restaurant when I first visited it several years ago with my ex; in fact, the memory of dinner there with him is probably what caused me to avoid the restaurant for so long. I was immediately taken in by it again, as soon as the waiter arrived at our table with my favorite bottle of sparkling water (the hard to find Santa Lucia) in hand. It took me forever to decide what to eat, and thus what wine we should order. Once I found the Delille Cellars 2000 D2 red blend on the list though, I knew the onion soup and lamb chops with zuchini gratin were what I had to order. My cat sitter had a special tomato soup with fennel and the very good duck with a creamy polenta. Everything was so tasty and perfect I'm not sure how we refrained from licking our plates clean. We even sucked down desserts: I had a meyer lemon tart served with a scoop of Sharffenberger chocolate ice cream, while stealing a taste of my dinner mate's sorbet trio (lemongrass, passion fruit and something else I can't recall.) I think I am going to make this my neighborhood "splurge" restaurant. If I can convince people to dine with me before 6:00 (i.e. right after work) then we can take advantage of the early bird prices, which makes it more doable on a regular basis. French food makes me very happy indeed... On a completely different topic, I am I the only one who was excruciatingly irritated by the last 60 seconds of Buffy last night? any comments? (0 so far) previous - next recently on almostgoldsf... in defense of an email box I came to do battle with SPAM - 2008-05-17 hello 2006 - 2005-12-31 Happy Thanksgiving - 2005-11-14 bon voyage - 2005-11-05 October already? - 2005-10-09