my time in berkeley = the end of eating. from here, everything is severely downhill.

for lunch, mom and dad and i went to chez panisse cafe. it is not even "true" chez panisse cuisine; it is like the younger sister of the real restaurant. i am ok with this, because it was INCREDIBLE. i had a delicious green salad with baked goat cheese, then pork with thinly sliced and exquisitely marinaded veggies. dessert was warm espresso over vanilla bean ice cream. and there are no words tender enough to describe this lunch. there is no language for how great it was. it was the truest expression of what food should be. everything was cooked perfectly, the flavors were present without being overwhelming, and the portions were ideal. it all tasted like the most best, most intense food in the world. it was the goat cheesiest goat cheese in history; the veggies were cooked in a way that magnified their own flavors fantastically.

i don't know how else to describe it.

it was expensive, but i am not at all sorry. i would do it again tomorrow.

YOU GUYS.

one of soft skull's titles was reviewed on the cover of the _new york times book review_ yesterday! and it was a really good review! and you should all read the review -- www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/books/review/Schillinger-t.html?ref=review -- and then read the book (_black flies_ by shannon burke) and then buy like four copies of it for each of your friends and tell them to do the same for their friends. start a _black flies_ circle of love, people.

here is what i look like on my last day at counterpoint.


i feel so lucky to have spent four months at this place, with an office full of unbelievably incredible people who were far nicer than i ever deserved, working on books that i loved. the fact that it turned out to be an ideal situation still kind of weirds me out.




this is tilden park, where we all had a picnic on tuesday. it was gorgeous.

aggggh guys i am seriously sunburnt. my right arm seems to be exuding heat. i am slathering myself with aloe vera, but all the same i am quite worried.

sunburning activities for the weekend include: a visit to target yesterday, breakfast at the thai buddhist temple this morning (they sell delicious thai food between 10 am and 2 pm on sundays -- it is some of the best thai food i have eaten, and i have eaten quite a lot), walking around lake merritt in oakland for like two hours, and then getting ice cream at fenton's (it was gooooood ice cream, and the portions were embarrassingly generous). i got kind of lost at lake merritt because i forgot to note where i had started walking around the lake, so after walking for what seemed like a really long time, i figured that i had to be pretty close to where i started, so i turned on to an actual street. this was very untrue. in fact, i was only about halfway around the lake. another very long time was spent finding my way back to broadway, where i knew i could catch the bus that would take me to fenton's.

but yah, the sunburn is going to be fierce tomorrow. i tried to take a picture to show you what it looks like, and this is the best i could do. it's my wrist, and the pale strip is my tan line from my watch.

boy oh boy, do i have a picture-heavy entry for you lucky dames and fellas!

yesterday, i went to telegraph hill and coit tower. telegraph hill is the highest (i think?) place in the city, and coit tower is a very tall tower on top of the hill, so the view = amazing.

I mapquested the route from the BART station to t-hill, and it was only about a mile, so i figured i could walk it, no big deal. first of all, i must have crossed into a different micro-climate at some point, because, wow, all of a sudden it was noticeably hotter. also: IT WAS ALL UPHILL. and not just kind of uphill. observe:


this is obviously looking down from the top, post-climb. those are stairs on either side, because otherwise this hill would be a death-trap. ok, so i powered my way up this one, and i was feeling pretty good. the street ahead of me looked like this:


and i thought, man, i'm gonna be ok! but then:

GAH ANOTHER HILL ALMOST AS BAD AS THE FIRST AND IT WAS HOTTER THAN EVER.

by the time i reached the top of this hill, i was panting and sweaty. everyone else who had driven up to t-hill looked at me like i was a moron. i looked at them like the pansies they are.

here is coit tower:


so i went up to the top. there is no roof at the very top, and all the sides are windows. because the tower is old, they are predictably old windows with padlocks on them and they still allow drafts in. all of the windowsills (outside the windows, on the outside of the tower) were covered with coins.


at first, i was really perplexed by this. did people throw these coins up from the ground? was that possible? was there some coin launcher somewhere? i spent a lot of time thinking about this. then i saw a guy slip a penny through one of drafty gaps in the windowframe on to the sill, and i felt dumb for having spent all that time imagining amazingly accurate coin slingshots.

well anyway, here are some pictures of views from the tower. i took a lot more, because it was beautiful and i really liked it.






there are murals all over the walls of the tower on the entrance level. they were painted by artists during the depression. a sampling:






for some reason, i really identified with this girl, and i became convinced that, if i were in the mural, i would be her. i dunno, i was dehydrated and tired.


i took a very roundabout route to get back to BART, as evidenced by the above, very small map. the green dot is where i started. the 1 is where the hills got baaaad. 2 is telegraph hill. then i walked through north beach, had a cappuccino at cafe trieste, and stopped at the shrine of st. francis of assisi, where a really cool priest told jokes and taught a girl who didn't really speak english about the phrase "fo' shizzle." then through chinatown, which had a whole array of interesting odors. 3 is where the street (stockton) became a tunnel that i did not want to hoof my way through. so i turned, and, yes, eventually found my way back to BART, ie the red dot. that map looks a lot better if you right-click on it and open it in its own window, i just discovered.

it was such a beautiful day, and i felt really at peace and alone and happy. it was one of the best adventures i have had the whole time i've been here. i was worried that it was going to be touristy and dumb up there, but it was just peaceful, even though there were definitely tourists there. i'm glad i was there on a sunday; it's probably more crowded on a saturday.

all the guys who work at the indian place i go for lunch pretty regularly have learned my name (Natalie, ok? yes, i tell them my name is Natalie. i don't know why i'm capitalizing it, but yes, i lie to perfectly nice restaurant employees every day as i pay with a debit card that clearly says my name is Greta E Baranowski). i went there today for the first time since, i dunno, last wednesday or thursday. and it was incredible -- they all waved to me and asked me how i was. i got some spicy eggplant dish, and wow! it really was spicy. it was definitely not a let-down. i worry that eating so much at this place (vik's chaat corner) is making me fat. i think about this sometimes when i'm eating, especially when i'm stuffing my face with the delicious, refreshing yogurt and cottage cheese side dish, or the lamb dumplings, or the BEST SAMOSAS EVER... but it is all so delicious that, honestly, i have a hard time caring. so when you next see me, o readers, expect me to be wearing a lot of sweatpants for a while as i try to free myself of the burden of these lunches.

dude, the new spoon ring is doing great, so far. no itching, no small red bumps. my haircut, on the other hand, is looking like more and more of a not-so-great investment. the top is still very flat and the sides are still very big. i may need to get this fixed.

in a month, i will not live here. LESS than a month. that weirds me out and makes me sad.

this morning on the bus, a man wanted to talk about the time he spent living in hawaii. this was the one day when i was not really in the mood to chat. but no amount of conversational apathy stopped him.

yesterday, i walked over three miles. seriously. i wore a sweater and was still kind of cold, at times; the same was true today. i found spoon ring guy and bought a new spoon ring:





my hand look weird. you must accept that. the pattern is called margaret rose and was made in 1938 -- the guy looked it up in a book and showed me. he also took five dollars off the price. he was a-ok.

OMG! further update on spoon ring guy: on my way to the movie theater tonight, i saw him on telegraph, with his rings made from spoons! he still exists. i will return there tomorrow.

re: the movie theater: i saw _my blueberry nights_, which was a cool-looking movie. it taught me that natalie portman is much prettier when she is funny-looking than when she's just, yo, natalie portman. the film features a cameo by chan marshall. it was a fairly good, although rather slow, movie.

the #1 bus is useless to me on weekends, as it is always 30 minutes late. on weekdays, however, it is incredibly useful to me. this contrast is frustrating.

this is the last third day of a month that i will spend in berkeley.

golden gate park today was so fun! and i rode cable cars!