40 Messages and Plans A, B, and C

The 40 messages and Plans A, B, and C began when another friend and I were planning to walk.  Jana told me that she had walked a couple of times with Nicki, whose birthday was coming up, so when Jana and I were exchanging e-mails about a time to meet, I suggested that we invite Nicki to walk with us on her birthday and then take her to lunch.  Lana, a friend who regularly walks with Jana, might come along too.  I'm not sure that Sarah, who counted 40 messages when we finally got together last Thursday, even knows about those first messages.  It's also funny that Sarah was there to count because I'd checked with her about her June 30 birthday even earlier, and she answered me from Madrid, where she was doing so much that she thought she might need a vacation from vacation after she got back.  

I checked first with Jana, who said "That might work," and I should have paid more attention to her might.  But on Tuesday morning around 7:30  I contacted Nicki and invited her, and when she accepted just before 9:00, I contacted Betsy, who's part of our usual birthday group and asked whether she'd like to join us on this walk along the Embarcadero that Thursday.  She answered that that sounded absolutely PERFECT.  Then she suggested an alternative to perfection:  a walk to Tennessee Valley near Mill Valley.  She also offered to host, and she is a wonderful hostess and cook.  Probably a good guide, too.  But she ended by saying again that she would be happy with us anywhere.  That took us into the morning on Tuesday.

I should mention here that Nicki did mention something about her e-mail not working quite right.  When she was hitting reply, nothing was happening.  But that was just her professional e-mail--that we could delete.

Nicki said she would let Jana, who had taken the walk before, "plot out a starting point and lunch destination."  She said she'd go along with whatever was planned.

Around this time, Betsy contacted Nicki to alert her to a phone message she had left about Nicki's upcoming birthday.  Betsy said the Embarcadero walk sounded like fun, but an option would be to walk over near her home north of Golden Gate Bridge, along the redwood train out of Mill Valley or Tennessee Valley to the beach.  Betsy offered to cook ahead and serve up lunch after.  But the Embarcadero was fine with her too. 

 In the afternoon Jana sent an e-mail saying that there were a lot of places to eat along the Embarcadero.  "
"I was thinking of taking the car but can only think of 2-hr parking in the area.  We can always walk back to the car and move it (even to a parking garage) or take a chance that those DPT devils wouldn't check exactly at 2 hours.  Or we could walk directly to our lunch destination and then be back to the car in time to move it somewhere for more of a walk."

I said I would walk to West Portal and take a streetcar.

Betsy said she would take the ferry from Sausalito and meet us wherever we decided.

Jana said we could coordinate more later and meet at various places and go by car. 

'There's a restaurant called "The Plant" that I've never tried.  It's on Pier 3.  It's only about a mile from where I would park.  We could walk (20 minutes), have lunch and walk (or run or take cab) back to car.)'

I sent back a message saying, "Sounds good!"

But I had been told by a Smart Computer genius that I needed to delete some of the 13 gigabytes of e-mail I had in Outlook, so I was busy transferring the 20+ megabytes of photos a cousin sent me on the anniversary of her mother's death, and I wasn't paying enough attention to the details--or to making sure that everyone knew what they were.  It was only a few hours later that I mentioned Becky's generous offer to host.

To be continued...