Now THAT'S a picture window!

This is the view out my window right now in San Francisco. Telegraph Hill ahead, Alcatraz out there to the left a bit, the Golden Gate Bridge presumably just around the bend. Apparently I got my room assignment BEFORE that fruity front-desk guy asked me with a suggestive wink who "Miles Smith," the other name on the room, might be. When I told him, he deflated but the keys were already in hand!

I swear this blog won't always be about our travels, it just happened to be born as we were about to do a lot of it. Fresh off the honeymoon, I had this weekend to head to San Francisco for the meetings of board members and chapter presidents of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Assn and I love this city, so I didn't want to pass up an expense-paid trip here. (I'm an ex-board member, current Vegas chapter prez.) We also had a free Southwest ticket that would expire next week, so Miles will join me tomorrow after my meetings for a couple of days for what must be the earliest second honeymoon in marital history.

I was incredibly tired of traveling and feeling I'm slipping further and further behind on my work, which means slipping behind on bills from all this revelry, and getting our home back in order. (It's now strewn with boxes from Bloomingdales full of wedding gifts, which reminds us both of how wonderful our friends and family are and also that we have to get to those thank-yous... how long do we customarily have for that before we're rude, anyway?)

All that went away when I walked into this room at the Hilton SF Financial District (which, as Gregory Zephyr of the AnythingSF podcast noted of his weekly show was renamed very recently from Holiday Inn Chinatown without actually moving the building.) This view was worth getting up and going for again, and now I can't wait for Miles to have the same response.

What's more, this hotel is so happy to have the NLGJA's business that they left a nifty swag bag that includes a notebook, a Ghiradelli mint chocolate bar and some binoculars. Not clear yet whether we get to keep those, although it seems like it. Oddly, the bag also contained a couple of small swaths of blue fabric in a tiny plastic ziplock bag. Not a clue why.