An excursion

Well, for the first time in fourteen months I took public transportation to go into the City to visit my mother at her place. We've been able to see each other a few times in socially distanced picnic situations, and we talk on the phone every day, but I might as well have been living back in Minnesota for the past year. The walk to the BART station now includes many new clusters of tents. All but one of the entrances to the BART station are closed. There weren't that many people on the train and we were all able to space ourselves out. I got off at Embarcadero and took the 38R Geary, since the 2 and 3 buses have just been discontinued due to lack of ridership. Luckily, the 38 drops me just a few blocks from my mom's place. The ride back on BART included a hostile ranting crazy person who followed me from one car to another while ragefully screaming, so there was that. Sometimes I wish I had my car again, but then again I don't miss Bay Area driving at all.

I spent some time helping my mom go through old files to see what could be discarded and to make sure things were easy to find. I'll go back tomorrow and do some more. We walked up Fillmore Street to get a document notarized but I messed it up by filling out the signature area incorrectly so we'll have to go back and try again tomorrow. It was not a long walk but it is all uphill so I was concerned about her stamina, but she did OK. She's going to be 88 this summer. We stopped for lunch at the outdoor parklet of a burger place, and had a mediocre burger and lousy fries (so disappointing!) for a whole lot of money. Oh, well, I have to say that almost all of my dining experiences of the pandemic have been like that--I get all excited that I'm going to have someone else cook my food for a change, and then the food turns out to be not so great. I'm hoping my dining experiences will improve when I go to Brooklyn next month.

It was really foggy and cold and I was slightly under-dressed (East Bay fog isn't as damp and bone-chilling as SF fog), so tomorrow I will make sure to add a few layers. Gotta remember how these things work! Must have a hat and fingerless gloves! One more layer between the long-sleeved shirt and the sweater! Just wear that down parka!