My Blogger Return

It seems as though my attempt to return to blogging after a two-year hiatus has ended in tragedy. I just wrote a rather lengthy entry about my recent trip to San Francisco and when I attempted to spell check it, the whole entry was lost. Live and learn I guess. Next time I'll be sure to copy it before I proceed.

Anyway, I returned from San Francisco on Monday and it's taken me some time to readjust to Rochester. It's enough to know that there is still snow on the ground in Rochester and the temperature is hovering around 30 F. In contrast, in San Francisco I was walking around in flip flops and tank tops, sitting in parks writing postcards and working on my dissertation, growning new freckles and acquiring the tiniest bit of a tan, which has given my anemic flesh a slightly healthier looking glow. Wonderful weather aside, San Francisco was fantastic. I'd never visited the city before and so I hit all the usual tourist destinations: Golden Gate Park, the Botanical Garden, the Japanese Tea Garden, Fisherman's Warf, The Castro District, the Mission, Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill, Lombard Street, and several shopping districts on Union Square, Russian Hill, etc. I didn't visit Alkatraz, which everyone now tells me was incredibly stupid--particularly given that my research focuses on criminality. I had this stupid idea that it was 1.) too expensive, and 2.) not nearly as interesting as one might think. Well, my good friend Amy gave me a serious tongue lashing yesterday and I have now decided that I'll have to return to San Francisco to rectify the error. That's not a chore, really, as I'd love to go back sometime soon.

While we were in San Francisco, we stayed at this lovely little bed and breakfast called The Golden Gate Hotel on Bush St. just about a block from the Powell St. cable car stop. It was relatively inexpensive, neat as a pin, conveniently located, and it gave me a chance to meet other people who were attending the conference that motivated my visit to the city. In short, it was a fantastic place to stay and I'd highly recommend it to anyone else who might be visiting San Francisco.

I also went to Fort Bragg and Mendocino with Aviva. We rented a car and drove up to visit some of the people she worked with last summer at a horse ranch called Ricochet Ridge in Mendocino. I've never really done any horse back riding (a couple of stressful and short-lived encounters hardly count) but Aviva was very patient. She found me a nice, docile, slow-moving beast to ride, Chiquita, and made sure her horse, Night-cap, lead us at a very pokey pace. It turned out to be a lot of fun, though I'm sure Aviva would have enjoyed galloping or trotting much more. I'll post a few photos of our ride so everyone can see how ridiculous I look wearing my glamorous helment, which I suspect is really a snowboarding helmet.

Anyway, I'll keep this short for now as I need to go work on a paper I'm writing for another conference in London. I leave on Tuesday and have a million things to do between now and then: pack, write my paper, mark students' papers, work on my dissertation, etc. etc. Let's see if I can get even half of that done before the weekend comes to a quick close.