Riding the electrified third rail.

First of all, it was a mistake to think I could get away with wearing my new boots in San Francisco. My sister and I, no matter how lazy our plans, always spend at least an hour walking all told. She will say a place is at "the end of my street," and it's 12 blocks away.

So by the time I reached the Powell St. BART station around 8 p.m., my calves and toes were crying out for mercy.

Not that this precludes the day from being full of joy and wonder, mind you. Margot's new apartment is in an awesome location and looks amazing. Her new roommate is sweet. Her bar is stocked, not that this matters to me, but it does to her. Her kitchen has a gas range. You could do a lot worse.

We picked up a falafel to split and had coffee from somewhere--iced--and hung out at her place for awhile before the day's activity was decided. It was determined that we would go to a store and buy things to cook. This involved a bus trip up Geary to Trader Joe's, where Margot stocked up on liquor, coffee, and coffee-flavored liquor, and I got things to make a small Mexican-style feast.

The food turned out amazing: tilapia fillets baked in a jar full of Cuban mojito sauce, black beans mashed with garlic and baked with pepper jack cheese, and avocado mashed up with fresh lime and salt; finished off with pico de gallo and thick corn tortillas. We ate it all. We are gluttons.

At that point, we determined that a visit to Good Vibrations was in order. Margot said it was "just up the street" from her apartment, which it was, in fact, not. That is when my toes inside my boots started screaming at me. Perhaps I really am not cut out for wearing shoes with a 2-inch heel after all. Anyway, we went to Goodwill on the way, which was amusing and somewhat productive. I found two boring shirts to wear to work; as we were heading to the register, Margot spotted a cute, hippie-ish top that fit her perfectly and was quite flattering, really. Score. Good Vibrations yielded the expected level of amusement from penis pasta, boob cake tins, flaccid dildos for sexual acts we are too young to know about, and multicolored vibrators of all shapes, sizes, and species. I don't even want to know how many high-larious google hits that last sentence is going to get me.

My feet were trying to fall off my body, so we thought about catching a movie, but our timing was all wrong, so we parted ways and I got on the next train towards home.

And here I am. Home. Happy to be barefoot.