diary : april 2004

Back to London!  Stay in a nice hotel on the north side of Hyde Park, not too far from our 2001 home exchange. Try to see some stuff we haven't ventured to yet, and find ourselves in the Docklands, Greenwich, & having tea at the Lanesborough Hotel.  We also saw a fantastic samurai flick called Zatôichi, which was later released stateside, about a blind samurai who kicks ass (of course).

The SF Historical Society invited Marilyn Chase, author of Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco to speak about her research and writing of this chronicle of how plague got into the US via SF in the early 1900s. And how one intrepid health official kept it from ravaging the city. Great read - great presentation!

I also attended the Historical Society's annual "Chicken Ball" (there's a chicken theme this month, you'll see...) at the Old San Francisco Mint this month. I'd been dying to get into this old landmark, shuttered & surrounded by homeless for over 20 years when the Society bought it to turn into a museum last year.  The party's theme is based on the Clark Gable movie "San Francisco" about unrequited love at another fundraising "Chicken Ball" the night before the 1906 quake.  It was great fun skulking around the place at night, while festivities reigned in some of the old vaults!

Continuing the theme, I started working with a student film crew shooting the heart-stopping thriller, "Chickens in the City"!  Ok, not a thriller, really, but engrossing & hilarious, in all the best ways. Howard hooked me up with Christie, a Stanford University student, who was shooting a short documentary about, well, chickens in the city.  I had great fun working with the crew, and wrangling Miss Money Henny.  That buxom redhead is a burgeoning starlet!

Have seen a couple Ibsen plays this season, including Ghosts, a searing portrait of a community whose repressive and hypocritical sense of morality devastates lives. His plays feel very modern, even though they were written at the cusp of the last century.

Happily celebrated our second wedding anniversary - at SBC Park watching the Giants vs. Brewers. Go team! :)

Did my once-a-year AWG activity - attending the Outstanding Students Awards dinner hosted by the SF Bay Area AWG Chapter.  Always great fun to see the best & brightest women students (of all ages!) honored for their hard work.  And it feels great to encourage them to continue!

And finally, I got authorization to hire an assistant at work, so I could concentrate more on a couple major projects, including rebuilding the Earthjustice web site.  We had some steller candidates, and snagged a hugely qualified & delightful woman, Judy!