Last Year
It's amazing, all the stuff we found.
The walk was steered by our curiosity. David has lived in this apartment for a year and a half, and he's never explored his neighborhood (we always go the same way on walks - down to Lake Merritt). We actually went down the hill not too long after we set out (it looked dark and cool --oooh, what's down there?). At the bottom of the hill, we found a little park that ran along Glen Echo Creek (what a pretty name). We strolled along that for awhile, admiring the big trees and wondering over the massive towering buildings along this quiet street. We hiked up a long flight of stairs back to the top of the hill. We wandered there for a bit, commenting on the lack of yard space for these huge houses. At the end of a particular road, right before it curves to go back to David's street, we found a small park. This is maybe a 5 minute walk from David's apartment, and we never knew it was there!
A little white cat popped his head up over the stone fence, zipped back down and trotted down the steps to meet us. He was very frisky, and seemed a bit attention-starved, although he seemed healthy and not a stray. But when he batted at David (albeit playfully), we both started giving him a wide berth, with David muttering stuff about "rabies ID tags". I wondered if a white cat crossing our path was good luck (if a black one is supposedly bad luck). He followed us at a distance, evidently very excited about our presence in his little park. The park is only a small playground, a few picnic tables, a grassy field (which needs to be mowed) and a largish building which I called a community center (I think David simply called it "Off Limits"). I wish I had known this was so close to David's place...I can't tell you how many times I would have liked to have escaped to a little park...but I thought he was surrounded entirely by apartment buildings.
I checked Indiana's weather. Oh. Great. Highs around 55, with rain predicted now through Sunday. I wanna stay here, where it's warm!
No, I want to go there, see Kellie and Brian and Holly and Mom et al. But there's so much cool stuff going on this weekend! Tomorrow after work our company is getting together with another company nearby and having drinks and playing spin the bottle (I'm not kidding). Sunday they're filming "Bend Over Boyfriend II" at Good Vibes in SF and need extras to pretend to browse their store (and will give you a copy of the tape if you volunteer). And there's a beach party tomorrow night. So much is going on.