It is cold, cold, cold in San Francisco this week. All I want to do is eat and take baths. And the office is going through some truly perverse heating issues (regarding a door falling off its frame, among other things), so we've been huddled over our laptops in scarves and earmuffs and blankets, blowing on our pink fingers and leaving every four minutes to get coffee and soup and hamburgers. (And yet not, somehow, going the gym. Plumpy Thomas!)

On Wednesday I decided to work from the relative comfort of my relatively warm apartment, and I was all settled in -- hyper-productive with my toaster toasting and my laptop actually talking to the internet (a semi-elaborate process that involves me unplugging the cable modem wire from the back of my PC, crawling under the table and unplugging my cable modem power cord for a count of ten, replugging in the cable modem power cord, then plugging the cable modem wire into my laptop and rebooting, and yes I know I could avoid this with a simple $40 router, $20 on sale, sure, sure) and two loads of laundry going in the only-available-during-work-hours communal apartment washing machines -- when I got the email from work about there being birthday cake that afternoon in the office! So obviously I had to race into work. Unfortunately, TRAGICALLY, "cake" turned out to be a sampling of pastries and cookies and tarts from gourmet tour of force Tartine, a bait-and-switch that saddened me with the deep and irrational sadness of someone who, say, loves cake enough to have the image of a piece tattooed on her stomach, not at all metaphorically, and who is lured out into the cold with the promise of a REAL slice of REAL cake, only to be given some sort of lesser something-something -- poor Heidi at work got the full brunt of my sullen, nailed-to-the-crossness, "I guess I can just go and buy myself a piece of cake latier," I actually SAID. (I am an embarrassment to myself and others.) But then I filled the gaping maw of my shameful crabbiness with banana cream-chocolate pie and gingerbread and passionfruit something, and was instantly infused with happy, and also sick.

When I got home that night, I ran into Liz Dunn as she was pulling into our garage (not "ours" for much longer, she's sniff moving out within a matter of DAYS to live with her fabulous and loving BOYfriend whatever), and she invited me up to her apartment for ... I can't remember. But then she popped open a bottle of champagne, "no pressure!" she said, and we ended up drinking that kitten UP. Then I stumbled out to a birthday dinner at ... Beelzebub? Bissap Baobab, which was GOOD, I had fish and plantains and couscous and salad, and also oceans of this amazing hibiscus vodka situation? Anyway, I got that kind of drunk that makes you speak very carefully as you reveal many embarrassing things. And then, as I shivered through work the next day, I did so with furrowed brow of a lingering and angry hangover. Done!

(PS: My diary has officially moved over to my official evany.com website. Let's meet up over there!)

(PS: My diary has officially moved over to my official evany.com website. Let's meet up over there!)