The Long Goodbye

Technically, our journey has begun. Though we have not yet left the Bay, Chris and I puttered out of our "home" for the last three years, the Loch Lomond Marina on Sunday. So far, we've just sort of criss crossed the SF and San Pablo Bays, up to Benicia for a birthday party (Hi Tom!), to Sausalito for an evening, over to the City and back over to Fort Baker to our yacht club where we will have our official going-away soiree tomorrow evening.

So far, I've just been underwhelmed by the weather, which is reminiscent of the August four years ago when Chris and I settled down in San Francisco and I could be heard regularly griping, "What the *$*%)#, isn't this supposed to be SUMMER?!?" while watching the temperature drop as the fog rolled steadily down the street in front of our Richmond district apartment. So, it's cold. Boo.

We did get in a great day of activities yesterday - went for a visit to the spectacular California Academy of Sciences Museum, which houses an indoor rainforest, aquarium and exhibits on such subjects as the evolution of tortoises in the Galapagos islands and an amusing video of lemurs. A few in our party actually watched a live scientist as she was stuffing a bird, ostensibly as part of a future attraction. Not dinner.

Speaking of dinner, the second excellent activity was dinner at the restaurant Burma Superstar on Clement. Back when that area of the city was our stomping grounds, Chris and I made a few futile and admittedly half-hearted attempts to dine at the always-packed little place, but were always deterred by the long wait, our rumbling stomachs, or a combination of both. I am now rather sad that we didn't go there before last night, because it was fantastic. Especially the samusa soup, which is a local secret. Actually, it's been featured on the Food Network, apparently, which means we were probably the last to know what we were missing. Even people in Idaho knew what we were missing.

So in the case of the Museum, we knocked something off our list (of things TO DO BEFORE WE GO), and in the case of Burma Superstar we hadn't had it on the list, but should have. Now it will just go on the list of FOOD ITEMS THAT AMANDA WILL CRAVE SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN AND MOAN INCESSANTLY ABOUT NOT HAVING THEM. It will be in the company of Sol Food, Double Rainbow Ice Cream, and Teresa and Johnny's french toast. Tasty company, indeed.