By 7.00 p.m., Brett and I had checked into our room at the Marriot, for New Year's Eve. The bad news was that neither Brett nor I were feeling very good. Brett seemed to be coming down with the flu, while I'd had a sore throat for the previous couple of days. Brett decided to hang out for a while and watch the New Year celebrations around the World on TV and hope that he'd feel better later, and I stayed in with him. By 8.00, Brett was clearly not well enough to go traipsing around downtown looking for somewhere to eat, so we ordered room-service. We both splurged on fat and carbs for once - I ordered a bacon-cheese burger with fries, and we shared our first bottle of champagne of the evening.

We watched the new Millenium in New York and Chicago before finally heading out around ten-thirty. Brett was feeling very weak, but wanted to see the fireworks. Most of the downtown shops were boarded up to protect from looting, just in case, and there was a large, noisy crowd of people streaming down Market Street towards the Embarcadero, where the fireworks would be. We slipped through the quieter streets of the Financial District and came up with the idea of trying to find a vantage point on the top deck of the Embarcadero Shopping Center. We truly lucked out, since most people were at street level - by 11.40, we were in a great position to see everything. We had some crowd too, to supply a festive spirit.

I won't bore you with a description of the fireworks since probably an appreciable percentage of the World's population watched fireworks that night :) Ours were of course the best in the World, bar those of London :)

Walking back to the hotel, Brett felt so weak and tired that we had to stop a couple of times for him to sit down, poor guy. It didn't stop him from sharing the champagne we opened when we got back :)

By around two, I was asleep, I guess. At six, I gradually woke up and became aware that Brett is a persistent snorer, at least when he's sick. In fact, he snored constantly until around 8.30, when I fled to Starbucks to escape the noise. The streets outside, in the cold, grey morning, were fairly deserted, and all those on their feet looked like they were under a cloud. Our hotel was right across the street from our frequent haunt, the Metreon Center.

And here's the butt ugly hotel itself.

When I got back from Starbucks, Brett was lounging around in his undies, although he wasn't feeling any better. I took a look out of the window. The view from our hotel window was interesting, if not inspiring. They're building a Four Seasons right next door.

When Brett dropped me off home before he himself headed home to crash, I fired up my aging desktop computer with some trepidation. I suppose that the ease with which the World entered the new Millenium should have assuaged my worries. Thankfully, my computer was fine, and I was able to spend an hour or so catching up with email, in which I've gotten shamefully behind yet again. I'll draw a veil over the rest of the day - or should I say a veil drew itself across my mind, as the previous day's full bottle of champagne and inadequate sleep caught up with me.

This morning, though, I woke up fully recovered from New Year's Eve. In the early afternoon, my date picked me up and we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge for a drive in the Marin Headlands. We attempted to eat our chicken-caesar- salads-to-go outside on a gun emplacement overlooking the Bay, but it was too cold and windy. At least the skies were clear and the views spectacular.

Back in the city, we climbed 39 floors with the help of the Marriot elevator to drink Irish coffees in the View Lounge. I'd never been there before, and it's kind of like sitting in an enlarged version of the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon - imagine it flying over San Francisco. Maybe that image is a bit too fanciful :) It was a great place to relax and get to know my date bit better - this is our second date. It's the girl near the right with the red jacket :)

The view towards the South. That black ring is not a Ferris Wheel, but denotes where my apartment is. You can see how close the freeway is!

In the Metreon Center

Afterwards, he persuaded me to drive right across the city to Ocean Beach to watch the sunset. It was too cold to get out of the car, but it was pretty.