31st Floor

Rain. That's what it did today. And it fit perfectly with the mood Rob and I were in after Liverpool lost 3-2 to Chelsea in the Carling Cup Final. You can read about it yourself somewhere else--I'm not writing any more about it here since The Blog is more or less reserved for happier times.
Rob and I drove into San Francisco to meet the troops around 1:30. Of course, all the plans we made for the afternoon had to be rethought with the onset of the rain. Luckily, Nancy had the opportunity to hike up to Coit Tower twice before the rain set in. What a show off.
We walked around Union Square for several hours this afternoon popping in and out of shops we couldn't afford to be in. We spent a good 15 minutes in Burburry examining an overcoat trying to figure out how in the world it could cost $1,400. The findings were common, the big white buttons bordered on ugly but were much nicer than the overall styling of the coat, and the fabric technology was uninteresting on the whole. I think it's a scam. Rob managed to find the cheapest thing in the store--one pair of boxer shorts--$50. He didn't buy them.
I managed to convice Nancy that we could leave the girls on their own for an hour to do some shopping while we "adults" sat down for a cup of tea.



The girls had a real city experience and lost each other.
In one store.

We met up at the Westin St. Francis hotel in Union Square and rode the elevator up and down several times checking out the view and getting sick to our stomachs on the drop.



It's a great view over Union Square from the elevator, and also a clever opportunity for me to tell them how Rob asked me to marry him between the 28th and 31st floors, where the doors opened to reveal our friend Mark, playing "our song" on his guitar. At the time, I was in such a state of shock and joy, I didn't realize Mark was even there until the doors had shut and we were quickly on our way down again, with Rob frantically hitting all the buttons trying to send us back up.

Finally, we made our way through the rain, to enjoy dinner at Ponzu. Nancy asserted herself to the wait staff and got them to open an extra section of the restaurant so we could all sit at a round table. She was so full of complements to the staff about the service (before our food even came) that she made a black man blush.
Our poor waiter.



The food was really delicious and my Mahi-Mahi dish came with lovely Japanese eggplant and the sweetest cipollini onions, which unfortunately makes Bill's quotation from yesterday all too appropriate.