next thursday, i'm still in love

Bike commute group gets canceled but I show up anyway. A couple shows up too - let's call them David and Sigrid. Sigrid is not as fit as David, so while I ride up with the latter, he curses the former, telling me she lacks motivation and prefers to sit on her ass. "Just follow my wheel!" he says, exasperated. As the sun warms up the bay so too does David shine upon Sigrid, eventually giving her a sweaty peck at a stop light. Still they bicker. "The bike fitter will measure the power output in each leg," she says. "No, don't be ridiculous, that's not what he's doing," he says. Eventually I shout, "I'm never riding with a couple again!" It's light enough to be said with a smile, but passive aggressive enough to make them sheepishly stop the quarreling. Sigrid tells me how her bike seat relieves pressure on her "soft tissue" and I complain that marketing around women's bike seats is so euphemistic that I can't tell what's supposed to be happening to which portions of one's beef flaps.

Then work. Pull on the spandex again to run Thursday errands - walk Boo, date with Grandma to shop at Costco. Back into business casual for three more hours of work, then back into spandex for the train ride home.

I'm exhausted and all I want is 6 oz. of beef flaps ground up into a burger with blue cheese, caramelized onions, sauteed mushrooms, honey dijon sauce, lettuce, tomato, and a crisp plank of pickle. While I eat alone at the bar, I take great pleasure in a local IPA and an article about Hollywood's lessening disinterest in a raunchy blond comedienne.

I finish the magazine an hour after I finish the food, then wander out drunk (one beer! blame it on the bike fatigue). I follow the sound of coronets to the corner of Valencia and 22nd Street, where ten musicians all on brass are playing Balkan folk music as they move down the street. Like many others, first I ogle then I join, walking slowly with a growing pack of people right behind the band. Diners in the restaurants look mesmerized. Hippies (dreads) and hipsters (tattoos) pour out of one particular bar and soon there are clouds in the air and people dancing along. A woman in a red boatneck shirt and leggings appears to be having the time of her life. A younger Asian woman named Kim in a crocheted hat and a crocheted waist-length poncho smiles at me and we chat about the experience. One of Kim's friends randomly bikes by and she convinces him to join. We follow until the band turns inside a venue and sets up on the stage. Another of Kim's friends joins. Kim takes out a beaten-up soup thermos and sets it on a table, and turns to me and says, "We're going to go smoke pot!" I demur, and they smoke outside the bar and while I keep watch on the companionate thermos. It stays with me like a quiet friend. Kim returns with a third friend and says, "Let's dance!" And then I am dancing, awkwardly, hands nowhere, feet out of time with the incomprehensible 5/4 or 9/8 or whatever it is Balkan rhythm, and Kim's second friend is doing that dancing thing where you hunch up your shoulders, keep your fists near your chest and make a motion with them like you're turning a crank, with your brow furrowed and lips pursed all the while. It's charming. Then she cranks over to me and rubs her shoulder against mine to indicate that I should be dancing more zealously, and I should be having more fun. After the Macedonian love song, I say, "It was so nice to meet you all," and leave. Half an hour after seeing the band on Valencia and 22nd Street, I'm right back where I started, except there is a sharpie mark on my hand and $5 less in my wallet, and I have been hugged by four strangers.

Nurse texts to ask can I meet at Tartine for coffee at 7am? She gets off the night shift then. I am not sleepy and I am not ready to go home, so I buy a 24-pack of Ferrero Rochers from the drugstore - she says that nurses on the night shift need two things: chocolate and coffee - and walk the mile to the hospital. Halfway there I get bored of walking and pick up my bag and run. I show up at the emergency room and there is a man shaking on a gurney and vomiting into a bed pan, and a girl holding a steady wail in the waiting room, and dozens of other people in states of disrepair. I find my nurse in a low-ceilinged, well-lit room partitioned by curtains and filled with unwell, unconscious people. Chocolate hand off. We sit in her car while she takes her break and she shows me the tools she keeps in her pockets. Stethoscope, scissors, pen, pill pushing thing. Half hour later she texts to say the chocolates are almost gone.

At home, Z.'s meeting ends and she and the attendees play around on my gymnastics rings and talk about a contortionist friend who teaches "extreme stretching" at a local acrobatics gym. Z. shows me the paltry, unlovable responses to her w4w Craigslist ad, and I bully her into responding to one promising ad and she dutifully drafts an email until we realize that the promising ad belongs to our roommate A. A. comes down the hall and we have a laugh about this most awkward of situations. Thursday is starting to be my favorite day of the week.