On Friday I had dinner at NYC’s molecular gastronomie center, WD-50. We ordered the tasting menu. An incomplete list of what we had:

• Foie gras, extruded into a squared-off tube, and tied, somehow, in a knot
• Deconstructed French onion soup
• Deconstructed eggs Benedict (the egg yolk sous vide, the hollandaise sauce separated, breaded, and deep-fried)
• “Pizza pebbles”

I was disappointed that “pretzel consomme” and “popcorn soup” were only available a la carte.

I have been working my ass off lately (one is tempted to add literally but that would end up sounding gross). So when I had the opportunity to go up to Gloucester for the evening I decided to make it the fastest possible vacation that fit with my schedule, which was to take a half day off and get the hell out of town as soon as I could.

It turned out that Friday was unseasonably warm and it really did feel like a summer holiday. I don’t drive much so long trips by myself can be kind of fun. I kept the windows down the whole way and played music so loud I missed some of Clive’s directions. There was no dog panting in the back.

As soon as I crossed the bridge into Gloucester I could smell the sea. This always reminds me of being in the car as a kid, crossing the bay to the Jersey shore. We usually ran the air conditioning while on the parkway but I’d always roll down the window and lean out once we were close. The sea smell was one reason I liked living down by Fort Point Channel, that and the sound of the gulls.

The night was just like a vacation and when I got in the car to drive back I was so tired I thought I should put on some happy, upbeat music to sing alone with, so I sat for a long time tossing CDs aside because hey, I don’t own any of that.

This was crazy and awesome.  Brady and Nat are awesome for making it possible for me to attend.

Other awesome things:

1. Drinking whisky with African linguists who tried to plan my wedding
2. Convincing Ben Bangert I did not know as much about his web framework as he thought
3. The bicycle designer who insisted if I’m going to ride a fixie I might as well be riding a unicycle
4. Fifty containers of french fries dumped on the table full of E. coli samples (the fries were delicious!)
5. Attractive founders of social networking sites
6. Erin McKean’s stand-up lexicography schtick
7. Not sleeping in a goddamned tent

Improbably enough, I am in Sebastopol, CA for O’Reilly’s Foo Camp 2007. With me I brought Clive, my Garmin Nuvi GPS. Clive is a British male text-to-speech implementation. Last week in Oxford I noted that a male taxi driver had selected a female voice for his GPS. I’m sure someone at Foo has written a white paper on this topic already.

I like Clive because his voice and manner are soothing and authoritative. I want to believe that my navigational system knows where it’s going. Like a man, it should never ask for directions. So far, I trust my GPS. It has not let me down before. Thus I was a little surprised upon leaving SFO this morning when it went, as Clive would say, a little daft.

I wanted to stay on 101 North but Clive wanted me to turn left onto a different highway. Normally I will bow to the reassuring tone of Received Pronunciation and do what he says, but he wasn’t inspiring confidence:

“IN 500 FEET TURN LEFT ONTO ROUTE THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY. TURN LEFT ONTO ROUTE THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY. APPROACHING LEFT TURN ONTO ROUTE THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY. IN 500 FEET TURN LEFT ONTO ROUTE THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY. IN 500 FEET TURN LEFT ONTO ROUTE THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY.”

And so on. I yanked out Clive’s power, got on 101, and drove for a few minutes while letting him, I dunno, settle down. When I plugged him back in he was prim and respectable again. At that moment, traffic on the eight-lane highway ground to a halt.

Welcome to California.

I’m tired.