"You can't do it."

I'm in training to volunteer at Sutter Hospice in Emeryville. Adam's work buddy Bob volunteers there and recommended that I look into it.

"Allison, you're going to want to save the world," he told me when we were hanging out at the company Christmas lunch. "but you can't do it."

I wish I could.

Adam, over email

I love how I could say "Let's drive to outer Mongolia for coffee" and you would be stoked.

It's 1974 today on 10 at 10

Of course I remember nothing. I'll spend the morning making stuff up.

Day in the South Bay

Dessert Republic, San Mateo.
Lots of cool Hong Kong-inspired decor.
Summon the waitstaff!
Happy with my Ovaltine freeze bubble tea.
Adam always gets the most amazing pictures of me.
Alice's Restaurant, Woodside.
Alice's.

The dream

I am at MacDowell and it is Medal Day. It looks nothing as I remember -- larger, with more ornate buildings, sprawled along a roaring ocean reminiscent of Pacifica -- and the staff members don't recognize me. I go with a group into someone's studio, feeling guilty that we are invading their space. They are not around but their possessions are -- a sweater, a notebook.

The group is eclectic: an elementary-school friend, a friend who I also consider a mother figure, Adam, a few strangers. Very little is recognizable and almost nothing is mine. That which is is about to be stolen.

Workplace

"That would be a little weird."

Adam is very understated. He'll rarely if ever go off the way I do. But when he says something is "a little weird", that means it's not kosher with him.

I like to ask him all these stupid theoretical questions: "How would you feel if I ..." The other night, I asked how he would feel if I went to a movie with a guy friend.

It was deemed a little weird.

I said: "Do you know how many platonic movies I've been to?"

"Things have changed," he said.

And that's true. I used to go drinking with my guy buddies, make pancakes at three in the morning at my friend David's house. Nothing ever happened because there was nothing there to happen. That said, I see where Adam is coming from.

Things have changed. These days much of my social life takes place with him at my side. While we are not joined at the hip, I can understand why he wouldn't want me sitting in the dark for two hours with some dude. Even if we weren't splitting a popcorn.