San Francisco is deep in the gloaming cloud cover (I’ve decided to make this an adjective). I am assured that there are high temperatures and sunshine throughout the remaining Bay Area but I cannot believe it; I am burrowing into my sweater collection and striding around in my boots.

Next week I’ll spend five days on the houseboat in a bikini…

Nope, I was just saying it to see if I could believe it but I really cannot.

Christine was talking about china shopping recently. It made me wonder what my own house is lacking. I came up with this list:

A limitless supply of glowing jewelry.

I want glow bracelets to be something I can idly slap on while reading Jane Austen of an evening, not something I have to save for a special outdoor occasion.

A fake Christmas tree.

The weather has been so gloomy in SF that I was beginning to feel very wintery yesterday, so I decided to have a Christmas date with Gene. I put up stockings, bought candy and little gifts to put in them, and set up my creche. The effect was half-hearted, though, without a tree; if I had a fake one in storage (maybe one of those spangly hot-pink numbers?) then I could make my point. I should probably also have baked something.

A limitless supply of champagne.

Adam’s been hooking us up with cases of assorted wines, bless him, which usually contain a few bottles of champagne. Invariably at least one of these is saved for a weekend day when neither of us has any plans; we spend all day drinking mimosas and playing computer games and usually make an enormous, caloric breakfast that we live on until dinner time. I’m thinking: if it’s a great way to spend a day once in a while, why not every day? Hell, I work from home. I’ll start with a case of champagne, but eventually I’m going to need to install some sort of faucet.

Bath toys.

My Christmas present to myself yesterday was two little rubber duckies that light up when you put them in water. I need more of this sort of thing. I really like being in hot water (literally, not metaphorically), but it gets boring quickly; when I was little I had this whole complicated Sea World set with people and animals and a building that fastened to the side of the tub with suction cups. I need to dig that out.

Well, I’m off to shop. In a few weeks, Gene will start wondering where I am all the time and you can tell him I’m in the bath playing with Sea World while wearing eight glow bracelets and drinking a pineapple mimosa. Also, it’s Christmas again.

I’ve been considering ways to celebrate my upcoming thirtieth birthday. Some ideas:

Vegas

Pros: food, friends, fun, Circ, spa, strippers.

Cons: expensive, far away, and we just went in February.

Wine tasting, and then a night somewhere fancy with Gene

Pros: wine, friends, limo.

Cons: I won’t spend resort prices to stay someplace that’s not overlooking some body of water, and no matter how fancy the place is, sex in a B&B is always going to feel like sex in someone’s grandma’s house.

Vacation rental on the Russian River

Pros: waterfront (I can stare at water for hours), we can go wine tasting nearby, plenty of alcoholic hangouts with friends.

Cons: mid-October weather might not encourage water sports, feeding 8-12 people for a weekend can be a nuisance.

Thoughts? Other suggestions? I’m all eyes.

I feel a little deviant when I admit that I don’t have much use for music. I listen to it when I’m doing something that requires the use of my hands and eyes but not my brain (washing dishes, choosing produce), but I don’t deeply care about it, or miss it when I go without.

I feel especially wicked when admitting this to someone with a large record collection. Being a voracious reader and book collector is impressive in its way, but most books are easy to identify on a shelf. A record collector has to get personal with his thin-spined records in order to find something; he has to take his time. The patience required for finding a record about equals the patience required to listen to a record; humans are visual creatures since TV and movies came on the scene, and employing only the ears for an experience necessitates some training.

This is not my chosen leisure activity.