A seething mass of turgid drama.

After the TooGood Whole Fuds unhappiness, I gave the app another try. We reserved a dim sum package for dinner last night from a local hole-in-the-wall. Getting there was not terribly convenient; the pickup time was 6:45 (they close at 7, so understandably the restaurant is getting rid of end-of-day food) and it's in the Mission so the area is always crowded. It's only a mile walking, but a couple miles driving and of course quite busy at that time of day. But the trip was not difficult and after a bit of a wait, I was handed a couple plastic bags of leftover dim sum.
We got two of each:

• vegetarian egg roll
• veg rice noodle roll
• siu mai
• large fried meat dumpling
• egg custard tart

Of course they weren't as good as hot out of the fryer/steamer, but they were fine and I didn't expect anything different for $6. The meat dumpling was the best; the egg roll and noodle roll really needed some soy sauce/ mustard/ chili crisp to punch them up. The egg tart was fine but I would of course been much happier with a sesame ball.

Not what I want to do very often, for transit and fried-food reasons, but not a disappointment this time.

I lay awake for an hour early morning. This made it hard to get out of bed and I was a bit slow in my morning prep. I had a pile of work waiting so I decided to not make my standard cup of coffee so I could catch the early bus and get to the office earlier, and then catch up with mediocre coffee in the work lounge. I don't want to make this a habit as I am trying to ignore the free work coffee, but it seemed a worthwhile thing for today and it wouldn't be a second cup after all. That worked; I walked to the bus stop one minute before it arrived, and then my BART transfer was near-instant. BOOM! Nice prioritizing, me.

When I went to the lounge, the coffee machine was out of order.

For my birthday, we went to see an Irish sketch comedy troupe that was in town. We saw them around the same time last year and apparently their tour was successful enough to 1) do another one; 2) play larger venues, including Carnegie Hall. In SF they booked the Warfield and it seemed mostly full.

We drove to the area - I didn't want to deal with getting a late-night Sunday cab - found some sketchy parking (it's all sketchy around there; we should have used one of the hotel lots), and went to a regional Italian pizza place for dinner. They call it "pinsa", and it's more flatbread-based. Think the '80s Stouffer's pizza... but much better. Plenty of customers even on a Sunday night. If it was local to us I could see hitting it for happy hour.

This year I was able to get better seats for the show. We were in the second row, about 10' from the stage. This did mean a bit of neck-craning but also meant we were in the interaction zone. The show was good - mostly short sketches but they started with some audience questions that they mined throughout the whole show. Early on they started making fun of San Francisco for having multiple names: "You use Frisco!" and we all booed. "And San Fran." We booed again. "What do you use as a short name then?" "The City." "Oh, that's not pretentious. But you do hate Los Angeles." We cheered.

I did yell out one thing during their last skit that was a callback to one of their questions, and got smirks as they incorporated it.

A fun evening, but we didn't get home until 10:30 so I am listless today. I should probably fortify up with a second cup of coffee.

I met the wife near the office after work. We had a drink at a local bar, which was fine. Not outstanding but fine. The bar pre-pandemic was very finance-bro frat boy environment. It shifted after re-opening; I read a review that called it "Harry Potter-themed" - in reality, it's more classic English pub, brick and dark wood. Get your references right, kids. And get offa my lawn.

We then went to a local dim sum restaurant that is one of the few to still use carts. Sadly, when we got there we found out they were closed and aren't serving dinner! (Despite what their website said.) After some back-and-forth debate we went to a bayside seafood restaurant and had some overpriced oysters and a crab cocktail. They were fine, but not what we had our mouths made up for so it was still a bit disappointing.

The wife's feet were hurting so we called a cab instead of taking the bus home. Unfortunately, their dispatch has been unreliable; three of the last four times we called, they have sent the cab to the wrong address. (They are still better than many other cab companies, and I don't use Luber from lingering spite.) So our commute home took 20 minutes longer than it should have.

I fell back asleep this morning after turning off my alarm. Not for very long - but I got up about five minutes late, and couldn't make it up before leaving. (Not acceptably, anyway; I would have had to forego my morning coffee and I wasn't in that much of a rush.)

Since I left the house late, I decided to take the later bus to BART. Unfortunately that bus lived down to its flaky timing and was also later than expected. I caught BART right away, but then we sat at one of the stations for ten minutes due to "an incident" at my final stop.

No one is going to care or notice that I got in late, but it sets a tone for the day.

Best case: I somehow left my carefully-packed lunch at home.
Likely case: I somehow left my carefully-packed lunch on the bus.

My usual bus didn't show up this morning. I took the backup bus, which is more crowded and takes longer.
The city has four blocks of Market Street closed to buses for two weeks as they work on some pipes. My backup bus normally goes down Market. I usually take the reverse route in the afternoon and it diverted over a block for those four but my usual stop was unaffected, so no big deal.

But apparently the inbound bus doesn't actually divert back at all. I didn't realize this until we got to the end of the line (because the geography was different and it's dark, so I couldn't triangulate by landmarks or cross streets). Which meant that I took BART back up a stop and got into the office 15-20 minutes later than usual.

Yesterday I walked to a bus stop I use sometimes - the last time was last week. It's got a sign calling it a temporary stop through April 2023, but it's still in operation. I waited.

The bus showed up, dropped people off half a block up, and drove past me without stopping.

Okay, I thought. I guess the temporary stop is no longer in service as of this week. I walked the half block to the other apparent stop. It wasn't labelled, but Muni can take a long time to get their painting and signage up. I waited twenty minutes for the next bus.

Which promptly drove past me and stopped at the temporary stop.

Fortunately there were a few people getting off and on, so I was able to jog over and get on at the last minute. Otherwise I would have been really irritated.

The recent and current drenching storms have reminded me of the saga of San Francisco bus stop shelters from about ten years ago. Sadly, it's a good parable of how SF government works. Or more correctly, doesn't.

Initially the plan was for basic enclosures: three walls and a roof, to keep sun and rain off people while they waited for the bus. But then various supervisors, agencies, etc swooped in and demanded that they design custom shelters "to uniquely suit San Francisco's unique needs." Many of these decisions are, on their own, for laudable reasons. Some are flat-out stupid.

First, the back wall had to be largely eliminated so that wheelchairs "wouldn't lose dignity by having to back in."
Then they decided to make all the walls glass, so that people's views weren't obstructed.
Then somebody decided that they had to make the shelters public art, so that the sidewalks weren't crowded with utilitarian boxes. The winning pitch made the roof wavy red plastic curves, supposedly to look like a seismograph reading.

How did all these work out? The glass walls all get smashed, to the point that the agency isn't bothering to repair them anymore. The art roof design meant that there were multiple gaps between the curves and the top of the walls. What we have are two side walls (often just frames because the glass is smashed), no back wall, and a roof with sizeable gaps. We have bus shelters that expensively fail to perform their most basic function: sheltering people from sun and rain while waiting for the bus.

This has sadly repeated itself multiple times, most recently with our $20k trash can fiasco. All too often, they get wrapped up in process and lose sight of the desired outcome - which is to solve a problem.

And we all pay the price.

I introduced the wife to Flogging Molly. I wouldn't call her a rabid fan, but she enjoyed it during the drive.