Jess & the Twinkie-Bus-Neatloaf Friday

Friday we went up to the city for a surprise birthday gathering for Jess. It was a pretty cool dive bar and we got to meet up with a few people we haven't seen in a while. We also freaked Jess out cuz she was actually surprised.

First we picked up the bus from Tassi. I gotta say that Tassi's RULES. Bruce is a really awesome guy - I needed to have the rear bearings replaced and they also replaced the drum brakes and all that jazz back there. That's kind of internal serious work that I don't have the tools to do. They only charged me labor for one job. Usually mechanics try to make money by charging for all jobs separately even if they are doing them concurrently. There is a price guide in a little book and they are legally allowed to charge what the book says. That let's them make more money as they get faster as a task. Crazy, huh? Well, Tassi doesn't go for that and even said - get this - when I need to do the front end, HE'LL SHOW ME HOW TO DO IT MYSELF. You gotta love a good mechanic.

Then we headed up to SF and went to a new vegetarian restaurant near the bar Craig planned the shindig at. Well, it was new to us. It's called Ananda Fuara. It was pretty nice but everything on the menu was stuff that Alicia could and does make for us. Actually I had a Neatloaf Sandwich. We had never heard of it and I don't know if "neatloaf" is a trademarked thing, but it was really interesting. The sauce they put on it was good too!

Then we walked over to Butter. It's kind of a dive bar on 11th & Harrison. They have a bunch of weird Smirnoff drinks (some with rootbeer!) and a bunch of food from childhood - like Tater-tots. They also have a deep fried Twinkie... which we tried. Now I know I never have to try one of those again. EVER. Craig had a bunch of us meet there to surprise Jess. He bought us all a beer and then we had cake. He got the cake from Citizen Cake. IT WAS AWESOME! It was fun to see people again and we met some new people too.