I was in the bay area this weekend to visit my good friend Jill, who I know from Chicago but hadn't seen in two years, since before she moved from Nashville to Oakland.

big mama

Besides Jill and her circle of freaks and her party, I also had a chance to hang out with a bunch of other scary people, including Lauren (who insisted that I crash her birthday dinner), Eric Tiedemann (a Googler who I think if he were a movie star would be called “irrepressible” by lazy critics in a Roberto Benigni way, but the critics would be wrong), the different Jill (lazy-label: “terrible Google lizard”) and Dan Moniz (who took me to an EFF bbq next to one of those beautiful California beaches and let me sleep on his couch when my trip ran longer than planned, and whose L.L. might be “wunderkind”).

remnants of fires along the 5

I still didn't see half the people I would have liked to have seen.