Water Logged and Carbonated

Today I'm going to post what I've already started writing up for my Environmental Science class:  A month of my Water Logged and Carbonated day-to-day accounts of my life style in terms of what it does to/for the environment and how this life style project affects my day-to-day life.  I'll first recount what happened yesterday, when I proved the adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Now the paved road has lots of carbon footprints, which of course I was trying to avoid leaving.

Strictly Vegetarian

  
          Javier my meque (mejor que un esposo--better than a husband) asked me to go with him to get fabric so his tailor in Nicoya--the one he's gone to for fifty years--could make him some trousers next month when he goes back to his hometown.  In an off-handed way, he said, "Let's Eat Out," which are supposed to be the three words women love most to hear.   I explained that for my environmental science class, I was supposed to improve on my life style in terms of the environment, so I'd vowed to eat exclusively in vegetarian restaurants to give them the support they deserved and might need.

                “Okay,” he said in his usual agreeable way. 

                On our way to Fabrix on Clement, Javier revealed that he had forty pairs of pants, and I told him that one of the suggestions for our life style projects was to reduce, as in to not buy anything new for a month, and he admitted that he didn't need any more trousers but it was a tradition with his tailor.

        

                Javier proved to be  a very decisive shopper, finding three bolts of wool in only ten minutes.  We then waited for another ten minutes for an employee to cut the fabric.

                When he paid at the counter, the clerk asked him whether he wanted a bag and he quickly changed his “Yes” to “No.”

                I knew that it wasn’t because of the new law asking customers to bring their own or pay ten cents.  He didn’t want me to catch him empty handed, without his own bag, so he just scooped up the material and headed towards the car.

                That was when I said, “Let’s walk.  The vegetarian restaurant is just seven blocks away.”

                Javier is a good walker, so I was surprised when he hesitated.  Then I realized that he was hungry and wanted to get there as fast as possible.

                “We’ll walk fast,” I said.  “It’s at 832 Clement.” 

                But when we got there, 832 Clement was a Hawaiian-style restaurant, and this is not the month to relive our Kauai experience.  Are Luaus ever strictly vegetarian?   The Big Island dish had the choice of Portuguese sausage, spam, bacon or house made sausage.  And what, I wondered, was kalua pork?

                “There’s one more vegetarian restaurant on Clement,” I said.

                “Okay,” he said.

                “Shall we walk?  It’s ten blocks farther.”

                “No.  Let’s drive.”

                “Okay,” I said.  Then it occurred to me that if we were returning to the car so close to Arguello, we could go a bit farther east to The Bangkok 900 on Stanyan.  I called their number and found out that they opened at five.  It wasn’t quite four-thirty.

                So we went back the eight blocks we’d come and drove to the restaurant at 1820 Clement.  We saw a big banner announcing “GRAND OPENING.”   The Bok Choy, formerly Vegi Food, vegetarian restaurant was now North China.  They promised “No MSG,” but they also promised pork and beef in big letters. 

               I suggested that he get something to tide him over, and then we could eat at home.

                We were greeted at the door with, “How many?” and Javier said, “Well, two, but only one is eating.”

                “When did this stop being a vegetarian restaurant?”  I asked the greeter, trying not to sound as if I  were asking “When did this become a hard drugs joint?”

                “I don’t know,” the hostess-server said courteously.    Was she disassociating herself from the place, trying to sound like an innocent bystander? 
                Javier ordered noodles with prawns, but after a couple of bites, he said, “Let’s go,” and not in a hostile way, he asked the hostess-server for the check.

                “Would you like me to put this in a box?”  she asked.

                “No, thank you,” Javier said.

                “I’m sorry,” the waitress said, really seeming to mean it.

               I wanted to comfort her, to suggest that things could be better if they’d just go back to a meatless menu.  But we just thanked her and left.

               "Let’s go home,” I said, but Javier didn't want to disappoint me.  He wanted me in the romantic mood that the words "Let's eat out" create.

                “No, let’s go to the other restaurant,” he said. 

                He was even willing to drive down a very congested Clement Street by the restaurant at 832 so that I, having forgotten to write down what it had turned into, could include that detail in my report for my environmental studies class.      Ono Grindz Hawaiian.          

               When we got to Stanyan at Frederick, parking became another issue.

                Suffice it to say that we went around and around and around and around, and Javier’s usual parking karma didn’t show up until we’d already spewed carbon through the neighborhood of  the Upper Haight Ashbury.  Only then did we find a place right across from the Bangkok 900 restaurant, which—we found out after being seated—now served meat.

                We got in the car and headed home, west on Frederick.

                I should never have mentioned that the Ganges vegetarian restaurant was on Frederick.  After a bit of circling around to find a parking space, we parked  and then found out that the Ganges had folded the previous year.

              This time I insisted we go home and told Javier there were two ways we could go—left to Judah or straight ahead to enter Lincoln.

                Javier chose Lincoln. but it's one of those stressful entrances, where the traffic never seems to stop, so instead of turning left and going west, Javier turned right and headed away from my house.

                Once Javier had made the circle back to Stanyan and Frederick and gone on to Judah,  I  knew that he wouldn't be in any mood to make all the changes I was going to suggest he make in his life style.  Not only had I unwittingly increased the carbon throughout the city, but I had lost a possible convert on that road to hell paved with good intentions.