Finding My Soul

Yesterday, I spent some time with my friend Marla. I hadn't seen or talked to her in over a year. She was at the King Tut exhibit at Deyoung Museum in Golden Gate park. When I headed over there, there were so many people. I was getting lost trying to find which garden they were at. I didn't realize there were so many gardens there. Goodness gracious, I really need to get out more. Anyway, I picked them up and headed to Ocean Beach. We walked down the beach and caught up each other with our lives. I told her about quitting my job and she was very happy for me. To put it in her own words, "It was about time." She was right, but I did have to do it on my own and figure it out for myself. I caught her up with me, she caught me up with her, Mike caught me up with him. We caught up a lot with each other and the great part of it all was that we are happy. It was so great to see Marla so happy. She was smiling a lot which is a lot different since the last time I saw her. It's a great thing. I think we walked down to Noriega and then headed back up stopping by Java Beach for coffee before walking back to my car.

We hung out staring out at the beautiful view of the ocean with the sun in the background. It was beautiful. We stayed there for a while and chatted about random stuff before we went to my house for them to checkout. I showed them around the house and then to my room. After a while, we headed out for dinner. Originally I had planned to take them to Marni Thai for dinner, but it was a bit out of their price range since they were on a budget. They wanted something more like Applebee's. I suggested Olive Garden. So, we headed over there. I took the Great Highway, but it took forever. Marla was freaking out because of the crazy drivers her in the City. A car drove right in front of me. Idiot! Anyway, I found some parking and just parked. It was a bit further away, but not a problem. I checked in and there was a 25 to 45 minute wait for tables. It wasn't a big deal since I was starving. We chatted a bit more until we were seated.

Our waiter's name was Joshua that was on his name tag, but he introduced himself as Josh. He offered a sample of Castello del Poggio Moscato wine and I "LOVED" it. It was so good. We talked about random stuff. I had my Zupa Toscana, the soup that I just adore. For the entree, I had Pork Milanese with spinach and cheese tortellini. It was so good. Marla talked about another wine that she loved. She asked Josh if I can have a sample of it. It was called Principato Rosato. He brought it over and it was good. I'm not much of a wine person since I'm still trying to get into it, but I'm glad that I got to taste these. While we waited for our check, Marla was telling me about this show she watched on VH1 called the top 100 funniest pranks. When she was telling me the top 4 that she was able to see, I was dying of laughter. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard that I cried. It was such a great time. As dinner started to end, we asked for our check. Josh was a pretty good waiter, so I tipped him well. He always had a smile on his face and was very pleasant to us. After dinner, I drove them to the Embarcadero BART station. It was great to see them both. I told Marla that the one thing that I noticed about her was how much she smiled. It made me happy to see her so happy and I'm glad to finally see that for her. I'm very happy for her. Today was definitely a good day.