What can I say about the city by the bay? It's very cool. Literally. After a year and a half in the balmy tropics, SF is a rude awakening. Sure the sun shines, but it's usually only 55-65 degrees out. So the minute you step into the shade, you freeze. 'Course, out in the sun, you fry like an ant walking past a bored 6-year old with a magnifying glass. It's usually cold in the morning, then sunny all day until the fog rolls in around 5pm. Then it drops like 150 degrees. And fast. The key to living here is "layers". You can't decide what to wear from the weatherman because they go way out on a limb and predict temperature ranges like "50-90 degrees". Sure they're accurate, but what help is that? So I don't even listen any more. I just dress for every type of weather imaginable. It's a pain. SF has a lot of hills too, but I think I wrote about that when I first visited this fair city.

TAHOE.

Amy's mom came to town and we drove the four hours up to Lake Tahoe. It's only about 200 miles northeast of SF, but it took us 4 hours to get through the mountains. Located 6,000 feet above sea level (your first realization of which comes when you notice your car starts wheezing like the Marlboro Man). If you haven't been there, you should go. The scenery is nothing short of spectacular. The entire lake is surrounded by snow-covered, mountain peaks (and we went during the summer). The elevation of the lake itself is fairly high. Water level there is something like two miles above "typical" water level. It's also eerily clear and deep. The color blue changes visibly as it gets deeper. You can see down a hundred feet easy. “The lake of the sky” sports several different hues. Cobalt, Turquoise and Wow, Now That’s Freakin’ Blue. Not one prone to exaggeration, I found myself at a loss for pithy adjectives to describe the beauty of Tahoe, so I fell back on the tried and true expletives. Lots of them. The water is 99% pure and you can “see a dinner plate on the bottom twenty feet down”. (This analogy struck me as an odd descriptor of the lake’s clarity, as well. I did not see any plates on the bottom, so I was unable to corroborate the story’s validity.) Essentially, Tahoe looks like a big blue lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains. In the winter, everything is snow-capped. The lake is so large that even though it looks like you can see the other side, you really can’t. The curvature of the earth gets in the way. The water is pretty chilly year round. Somehow, the area has managed to avoid having the lakefront peppered with cheesy fast-food joints. I don't think there was a single McDonald's anywhere around there. The border between California and Nevada cuts right through the middle of the lake. On the Nevada side, you can bet money on the remote chance that you’ll win money. They call it Gambling. On the California side, it’s called the Lottery. The Nevada side was total cheese. What is the draw with these casino's? They're so tacky. One even booked Pauly Shore (And they wonder why people aren't showing up).

Amy and her mom in front of Alcatraz.

LA-LA.

We went to LA for Thanksgiving and stayed on the beach in Santa Monica near the Pier. I'd been there before, but it was Amy's first time. So we went to all the touristy places in Hollywood. We also hit some of the swankier restaurants. One was Wolfgang Pucks' Chinois On Main. A very nice place--got to see the "Ira" character from the thankfully now-canceled CBS show, "Sybil". He was just leaving as we came in. The restaurant is one long room with a bar running half the length along the left wall and an open wood fire in the back. Had sort of an Asian motif. We sat at the bar while we waited for our table and Amy asked if she could have a cigarette. The bartender instantly produced an ashtray and said, "sure". (Now when Amy asks to smoke a cigarette, what she really means is "attempt" to smoke. Amy is by far the worst smoker in the world--mostly because she does it so rarely. It takes her at least two tries to light up, and if it's even slightly windy, forget about it.) Fortunately, we were indoors and she did it with no trouble. Having been in California long enough to know that Jan. 1 the state was going no-smoking in restaurants, I scanned the room for dirty looks. There were none as far as I could see.

After Amy got about halfway through, we were seated. We were just poring over the menu when a kindly looking woman about 75 years old came up to our table and leaned down to Amy and hissed, "I hope you die of your cancer!" and turned to leave. What I heard was, "You two kids look lovely this evening." But slowly what she had actually said started to sink in. We were both in shock. At that moment the woman circled back around and added, "You ruined our dinner! You were the only one to smoke for the last two hours! You Bitch!" and then disappeared.

We couldn't believe it! What a miserable wretch! If the food hadn't been so fabulous--and it was--that one woman would've ruined our whole evening! Upon retrospect, I deduced that the woman was obviously insane. Why? Because when I looked around to see if anyone was giving Amy dirty looks, I didn't see any, which meant she had to be sitting in the back of the restaurant....NEAR THE OPEN WOOD FIRE! Smoke must really bother her. Secondly, she never asked Amy to stop smoking WHILE she was actually smoking. Thirdly, she commented that we were the only people to smoke for the last two hours. Oh, yeah. So out of her two hour meal, we ruined the last minute and a half. How can we live with ourselves? And people say the rich are better people.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I do not in any way condone smoking. It is a filthy, and life-threatening addiction (except of course for an occasional really good cigar). I do, however, believe in personal freedoms. And until we can figure out a way to make smoking illegal and lock up all those disgusting bastards, we have to put up with it.