Wednesday, October 29th

The lovely woman allowing me to sublet her studio deserves some discussion.  I met her for two hours on my first day in San Francisco.  She is the friend of a friend and was understandably nervous about renting her furnished pad to someone she’d just met.  She’d heard a few things about me from our mutual friend and was mildly comforted that I wasn’t a total random.  As we toured her apartment and the building, I did my best to dispell any concern but she was busy managing excitement for the trip, exhaustion from preparation, and dread for a horribly long flight.

In a very short period of interaction, I was quickly able to “size her up.”  To put it simply, she’s the woman you want your daughter to be when she grows up – beautiful and kind, self confident and funny, socially aware and ambitious.  She also put a rubber sheet over her mattress “just in case I get lucky.”  She is on her way to Africa to help children with HIV/AIDS.  She walked away from a perfectly good job to make this happen.  I have a feeling this makes her a better person than I… actually, I know it does.