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cold Thai restaurant
Wednesday, March 8 2000
With the running around of yesterday largely behind us, Kim and I could do more cerebral things, such as worry about whether everything was going to be okay. So far the pursuit of the condo had been going surprisingly well. We'd already made it through loan pre-qualification and today we entered the escrow phase. It's still possible we won't be able to get a loan, but we're hopeful.
During most of the day I found myself occasionally fielding phone calls about these matters. When the phone finally fell silent for a reasonable period of time, I walked Sophie down to the Ocean Beach Hardware store to buy materials to repair things that the evil building manager would like to charge us $50/hr to fix.
On the way back, we waded through the activity of the Wednesday evening Ocean Beach street market. This was mostly for Sophie's benefit; it gave her the opportunity to put faces to all the dogs she knows only by urine.
I went on a walk through the nearby alleys to look for scrapwood to help with some of my repairs, and just as I was returning through the back gate, I stepped on something that exploded with a loud pop. Looking down, I saw a rather large nymph-stage insect wriggling its last. The vision freaked me out; I always regard killing in any form as a bad omen. For this reason, it's difficult to comprehend how people can cheerfully stomp ants and snails. (I must admit that I cheerfully swat mosquitos and flies, but everyone is a hypocrite on some level.)
In the evening, Kim and I ate dinner at a Thai restaurant in Point Loma (the one near the H & R Block). The plan was to fill out loan applications during the meal, but that quickly proved impractical given the messiness of the food and the small size of our table.
For whatever reason, the heat wasn't working in the restaurant, so we sat in the marginally warmest part, back by the kitchen. Normally, of course, a lack of heating is not an issue in San Diego, not even in the winter. But the weather of late has been uncomfortably chilly, with the occasional exception of a few hours around noontime.
While we were eating our meal, a grubby middle-aged homeless guy wandered in and asked the staff if he could please have some soup or rice because he was, you know, homeless. The staff didn't really know what to do except tell the guy no, but evidently they weren't sufficiently assertive, because he lingered for a time, asking different staff members for food in several places in the restaurant. When he realized he wasn't getting anything, he shouted "God bless you!" to everyone present in that slightly angry way that bums do when their begging fails to bear fruit. Of course, had a member of the staff given in and fed the man, they could have counted on him to return, perhaps several times a day, for the rest of eternity. My dog Sophie taught me that lesson.
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