Rain, food, more rain, more food and even more rain Part 1

I am now officially living back in San Francisco. I am moved in, unpacked and settled back in my lovely #304 dorm room at the Coco Chanel(yes, that's it's name)dorm at the Academy of Art. These past three days have been exhausting, but in the best way possible.

Let's start at the beginning:

Tuesday night, I stayed up till about 3am packing, woke up at 7am, said my goodbyes to my dear father and tried desperately to leave the house when I said I would. But as usual, me and my mother left about an hour later than planned. Somewhere in Bakersfield, my father was silently laughing the laugh of the righteous as he realized that we were leaving late even though we had insisted that we would actually leave on time. He calls it everytime without fail. No matter how much we say we're going to leave when we say are, we never do. I can just picture my father's smug face now. Anyway, we left, drove awhile in the pouring rain and eventually stopped when my mother needed food in her stomach. We stopped at good ol' In-N-Out. I don't eat fast food or beef anymore, so the only reason I was there was because my mom is a burger woman. Now, I really hate fast food and find it incredibly disgusting, but In-N-Out is the ONE place I miss. Every now and then I suddenly crave one of their giant sloppy cheese burgers, but I know it'll tear my stomach apart and the thought of eating all that processed junk would eat away(no pun intended)for months. So, I refrained from purchasing anything while my mother ordered a regular cheeseburger, minus the lettuce, tomato and onions. Normally she would have put everything on it, but she knows I can't stand the smell of that stuff in a stuffy car, so she sacraficed her love of onion breath inorder to keep my from complaining for the remaining 4 hours of the drive.

It looks harmless enough. Little do most people know of the diabolical innards that await their tastebuds and stomachs!

It's absolutely disgusting and beautiful all at the same time.

After my mother took a few required chomps of the delicious burger, we set back out on the road. Little did we know that we had basically stumbled into the "Grease Alley" of highway 5. Now, if any of you have ever traveled through the Grapevine(the road, not the song) to get to Los Angeles or anywhere in southern California, you'll know the Grease Alley of that area. Nothing but fast food and fat floating around. Seriously people, it's bad. Well, I thought that only exsisted down south. Apparently I was very wrong. We didn't even drive through this area completely...all we did was make a simple U-turn, and during that span of 5 seconds, I saw a least a dozen fast food chains. My brain was so shocked, it was only able to retain a few of thier names: Burger King, McDonald's, In-N-Out, Carl's Jr, Subway, Quizno's, Jack in the Box and TCBY Treats. It was seriously a heart attack waiting to happen. My chest hurt just looking at those places. Though, I must admit, I screamed like a 5 year old when I saw TCBY Treats. We don't have those in Bakersfield anymore because ColdStone's(BOOOO!) has taken over the world. Memories of my grandmother, me and my sister enjoying strawberry forzen yogurt together on Saturdays flooded into my brain and I could almost feel the brainfreeze. But sadly, we didn't have time to stop for a frozen treat and it was also very cold and still pouring rain, so I didn't even want anything actually.

This is what the drive looked like the entire time:

Gorgeous isn't it?

The ride was fine, aside from the weather. We stopped once more in some shopping center in Gilory(garlic, anybody?)so my mom could get some coffee and I could get some water. More driving was done, I was delirious from sleep deprvivation at one point and then we finally made it into San Francisco while listening to a techno remix of Earth, Wind and Fire's "Dancing in September.

LOOK! It's the city!

I peed in those bushes about two months ago.

The Academy of art owns the city AND YOUR SOUL! But seriously, when you're in San Francisco, you see those signs everywhere. There is no "main campus," the city is our campus. Anyway, we drove up Van Ness all the way to Lombard st and checked into our hotel. After I had my usual meal, I took my mother around the Fillmore/Union area to show her around and help her find some food. We passed some pretty interesting looking places, most of which were out of our price range. But then, a shinning light came from the darkness! There, right infront of us was PIZZA ORGASMICA. I kid you not, people, that is seriously the name of this place. It says that it's pizza is the original sin(it's made out of apples?), so you know it MUST be good because as a Catholic, we all know that if it feels good, it's most definitely a sin. But good pizza is worth going to Hell for, in my opinion. We didn't stop there though. We ended up at Crepe's A-Go-Go. It's a cute little Italian cafe with a fairly simple sweet/savory crepe menu and a small gelato selection. They had a HELP WANTED sign, so I applied(which consisted of me putting down my name and number on a piece of paper)before my mother ordered. I got a small cup of black coffee while my mothered got a crepe with monterrey jack cheese, scrambled eggs and avocado. It was possibly the neatest I have ever seen. It was so compact and tidy and CUTE. Yes, a cute crepe! And it wasn't morbidly obese either, which was nice. The cafe was actually on my list of places to eat, but since I didn't actually eat anything there, I didn't cross it off. My mother enjoyed her food a great deal. According to her, the crepe was slightly sweet, but not over powering, there was just the right amount of cheese(which in our family means, there was enough cheese to make you constipated for 4 months)and the avocado was the best she had in a long time. I'm sadly allergic to avocado, but it did look incredibly yummy. It was the greenest avocado I've seen in my life. It wasn't a disturbing neon type of green, it was like...this is a super fresh avocado that we just ripped from the ground(they come from the ground...right?)because this is California and that's how we roll. My mom also ordere a giant mug of hot chocolate, which I did have a few sips of. It tasted like melted chocolate, but it wasn't too sweet. It also had a large amount of whipped cream on top, which is obviously the only way to have hot chocolate. My mother kept insisting she couldn't finish the crepe and then proceeded to finish it.




After she finished, we decided to walk around the area some more since it had finally stopped raining. We passed by several places on my "QUEST TO EAT EVERYWHERE LIST" and a few places that I planned on adding. We also passed by this place called "That Takes the Cake" which is a cupcake place. I nearly crapped all over myself with excitement. See, along with my quest to eat everywhere in San Francisco, I've also decided to find the perfect cupcake. Yeah. I know it's pretty much like trying to find one of Jesus Christ's hair follicles, but damnit I'm going to try my hardest. Anyway, the cupcake place was closed so we kept walking. I thought I was just drooling all over myself, but it turned out it had started to rain again. We made one final stop at one of my favorite organic grocery stores(which I also intend at applying at.)bought me a granola bar and then headed back to the hotel. By that point it was pouring rain and we wanted to run but were terrified of slipping and dying in the middle of a crosswalk. We finally got back to the room, completely soaked and drained from the day's activities. We peeled our wet clothes off and both mentioned something about going to bed early. About 4 hours later we finally went to bed. My mother slept. I didn't. I was kept up by her snoring and the massive colony of hives that had formed on my neck and scalp. It was really fun. I had a blast. Me and my mother stayed up all night laughing aout how insanely itchy I was.





NOT.





It was terrible.





I popped some Benedryl sent by God Himself and finally passed out. When we woke up the next morning, it was finally time to move back into my dorm.