Sunday, 8/27/06: Buying Supplies
Late again. This may become a trend. But the paper is empty and it must be filled.
Today was an adventure in retail. Quite the contrast to what the rest of the week will bring. Our day:
- Sports basement – Vinay had no gear
- Rainbow grocery – “You think you want to go to Trader Joe’s but you’re wrong,” according to Max. He was right.
- Café Lunch – We can’t handle this right now.
- Costco – It closes at 6! Too big!
- Rainbow Grocery – Better the second time around.
- Target – Chaos and no cell reception.
- Home Depot – Bins, Buckets, Belts, Burning Man. Bs, like the airport’s schedule of Bathroom, Baggage, Burning Man.
- Indonesia Diner – super cheap in the Mission, with Vaughn and Phil.
We met up with Max, Brian, Adam and Alex (Max’s brother) at Rainbow Grocery –a delightfully hippy crunch cooperative grocery store in SoMa. While shopping, Adam, guru of substance abuse, commented on the diuretic power of tea. Never you mind the drugs, it’s the tea that will do you in. I only feel the slightest tinge of guilt that we mocked him for his tea comment for the rest of the trip.
Max and Brian are a delightfully entertaining couple to be around. Max’s brother Alex is a good kid, too. I had never spent much time talking to him, as he is so much younger than we are that the age gap was previously an impediment. Now, he’s off to Princeton. We have placed our lives in Max’s hands – potentially a disaster. We’ll see.
While in search of Home Depot, Vinay and Mary discussed memory tricks. Vinay mentally assigns tags to his memories. The tags serve as triggers and allow him to call them up. An ingenious method. I do believe that the human mind is a complex computer, but is it under complete control of the individual? Can Vinay alter his mind at will? I wasn’t very involved in the conversation – I think I was tired and possibly napping.
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
(But money well spent)
Afterwards our Indonesian dinner, we went to Mary’s local bar with Vaughn and Phil and discussed selectively aborting fetuses based on screening for intelligence/depression etc. All this because Vaughn told me to move to SF and I commented that I had heard that it wasn’t such a great idea to raise kids on the West Coast. Phil, raised there himself, disagreed. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, and really, do I have any idea what I’m talking about with regards to educating children? I think one of my mother’s friends who had moved to SF with her family for two years on business and then moved back to Westchester had planted the idea in my head. She had once commented that the laid back, do-what-makes-you-feel good atmosphere of the west coast didn’t inspire her children to look to their futures. Perhaps the East coast is overly neurotic when it comes to education – all I know is that the system worked for me. At least, I think it did.
We need to unpack/repack the supplies from the car early tomorrow morning. So much work for a “vacation.” I do look forward to the ascetic aspects of Burning Man, away from fast-paced NYC life. No email, internet, blogs, cell phones, cars, transit, showers, real food… Just fresh air and sunshine. And dirt.