Fleet Week

So much has happened and I really need to catch up before I forget anything.  The first thing is Fleet Week.  If you're not familiar with this, it's San Francisco's way of paying homage to our military.  I thought it would be a good thing for me to do while Don's away.  Don left Thursday morning and by the afternoon I could hear the Blue Angels practicing over SF.  I was so excited I got chill bumps.  By Friday morning, it got a little annoying.  I would be out walking the dogs and all of a sudden a plane would whoosh by.  They  are loud.  I mean LOUD.  I had to not only give Bailey his medicine again, but I gave Missy one as well.  They were freaking out.  I read in the paper that they expected a million people to descend in the Marina area.  A million.  I seriously considered putting the dogs in the car and going somewhere else.  But at this time I still had hopes of meeting the Gamecock Club for Saturday's game so I decided to try to enjoy it.  On Saturday during the main event on our back patio I took these:

They were writing things in the air!  This one was for Geico.  I walked to the Marina Green to join in the festivities and tried to see how they were doing it, but I couldn't see a thing.  

There were so many people in the city that I decided not to try to drive to watch the game.  The paper was discouraging people from public transportation so I thought I'd take a cab.  The land lady had recommended something to Don so I called them and they turned out to be a limo service.  Long story short, I decided to walk up to Campus (a local bar on Chestnut) to watch the game there.  I got there and it was not so crowded so I got a table and a beer and started watching the game.  No one else was into the game, but that's alright.  It made me a little lonely watching it by myself, but they were doing well.  After my beer was gone, I noticed the bar was filling up.  It was 5 o'clock so I was a little surprised.  Then I found out the A's were playing trying to get in the playoffs.  Everyone was there to watch that game.  It got so packed that I thought I'd walk down to Ristobar, sit at the bar there and try to watch it.  As I tried to go pay my bill, there were so many people there I was stepping on peoples feet.  As I stood at the bar waiting and stepping on people, I just looked up, apologized and shrugged my shoulders, I couldn't do anything about it.  Down to Ristobar and no luck.  The Giants were playing after the A's so everyone wanted to watch that game.  That place  was so crowded I got one glass of wine, couldn't get anyone to switch the game over to mine and gave up.  There is an "Irish" pub down the street so I headed over that way.  As I turned the corner I saw a tv set up outside with Giant's game on and I knew I was not going to finish watching USC.  So I went over to Meze's to sit at the bar and have some dinner.

The service there wasn't any better.  Not because of the game (no tv's there), just bad timing.  I eventually had a nice dinner though.  As I was paying my bill, the bartender came over to apologize for the poor service.  I said I had been to two other places that night and this was the best.  She said that she was sorry I was having such a bad evening.  I gave her a big tip and went home.

But the Gamecocks beat Georgia!!  So it wasn't a wasted evening.