Giants and Ghosts and Killers, oh my!

I got back from Mazatlan last Friday, and have barely had time to catch up from my vacation. I promised pictures, but am waiting for my parents to figure out how to e-mail them (Mom, if you're reading this please send them soon!). A lot has been going on since...

I caught a SF Giants game on Wednesday, it was the first night game of the year so there were fireworks afterward. I went with my friends Lindsay and Thomas, and despite the fact that our team is having a terrible season so far and we lost the game - we had a good time. My favorite player (duh, Noah Lowry) was not pitching, so I guess I'll have to plan to go to many more games during the season to enjoy the view :).

Thursday my Aunt Kris and cousin Emily visited on their way to Southern California. I booked their room at the Queen Anne Hotel, which is reportedly haunted by the ghost of Mary Lake. It is also the starting point of the San Francisco Ghost Hunt which you may remember from my prior post. I'm a little disappointed that they did not experience any paranormal activity, but will refer anyone there again. The hotel is in a beautiful neighborhood, clean, quiet, and surprisingly very affordable (less than $100/night!).

A good friend from college came into town on Saturday and we went to see The Killers at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. It is one of my favorite bands, and I saw them in October at the Warfield. The other venue was much better, and the acoustics were a little disappointing at Bill Graham. My co-worker Fabian also went, and had the same complaints. We had a great time - the energy from the crowd was amazing and of course the performance was awesome. We met up with more friends at the Bubble Lounge, then headed to Swig, and eventually ended up at Encore Karaoke. My friend Thomas does a mean rendition of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."

My friend Lindsay had big plans for Easter Sunday, but we ended up losing motivation at the last minute. We were going to bake and dye Easter eggs, but realized that we didn't want cake and would have no use for dozens of colorful eggs so we settled for a nice brunch and a relaxed day. We went to Thomas's house to cook and hang out and relax, but our day was interrupted by a bizarre experience. As we were putting a DVD on, we heard loud banging from downstairs – Thomas figured it was his neighbor slamming the door. But after several loud crashes he went down to investigate while Lindsay and I watched from the window. We were surprised to find a guy (not the neighbor) staggering away from the building and up the street with his bike. He yelled, “you get the hell out of there you ****” and then told Thomas “there’s a guy in your back yard, he just ran through the neighbor’s house.” Thomas turned to look and realized the neighbor’s door had been kicked in. Lindsay and I panicked because the door opening to the shared back yard was wide open. We had no idea whether there was an intruder in the yard or even the house for that matter, and had no intention of going back there to find out. Thomas called the police and they responded quickly – they searched the back yard and found nothing (thankfully). Confused about what had happened, we determined that the guy with the bike was the intruder, and had been trying to distract us so he could get away. This was in a nice neighborhood, in broad daylight (it was about 1:00pm) on Easter. Sigh. City life can be a little bit overwhelming at times – I’m glad no one was hurt and nothing stolen. I know it can’t be easy for anyone, but I think it’s especially hard for a girl from a town where many people didn’t even have keys to their front doors because there was no reason to lock them. If we came outside and saw our car missing, we would assume someone had needed to borrow it and would return it soon. Not the case here.

Later in the evening Jeff and I went to see Zodiac. It was pretty creepy, but surprisingly not as scary as I'd anticipated. Considering it takes place here in San Francisco and has not been officially solved, I figured I'd be afraid to go to sleep afterward. Not the case, I'm ok with the ending and won't lose sleep over it.

Jeff will be in the area all week visiting friends, and there is no shortage of social events planned at work so I think it will be a busy couple of weeks coming up as well. I’ll try to post the pictures as soon as I get them, until then, adios.