The weather has turned rather strange these last two days. In typical San Francisco summer weather, a cool finger of fog snakes under the Golden Gate Bridge and reaches across the bay to Berkeley, shooting off cold jets of wind to keep the city cool. But since Monday, a murky brown haze has settled on the city, and the fog has receded off the coast. Since I spend my days on the 34th floor, and my evenings on the 22nd floor, I'm becoming ever more acquainted with San Francisco weather patterns.

To be frank, I'm bored silly. I'd much rather be in a project and have something challenging to do. Everyone is continuing to steer clear of me, though, since they know I'm sitting under the sword of justice right now. In less colorful language, tomorrow I return to San Francisco Superior Court to find out if I've been selected for a jury. On Tuesday I went in for the jury panel selection: I was duly selected and sworn in. Tomorrow I'll find out whether I'm one of the unlucky few who gets to sit in a court room for the next two months.

Things could be worse. It's a brand new court house - all the rooms are shiny and new, with comfortable seats. In each court room there's a beautiful, large silver panel with the Great Seal of the State of California. But the trial I may be selected for doesn't look promising - one of those interminable industrial lawsuits. In the questionairre they ask you to complete, I forthrightly set out my views on both "ambulance chasers" and powerful corporations, so I'm hoping I'll prove undesirable to both sides. If not, then my poor, long-suffering boss will have to do without my services for at least another two months!

I finally gave into temptation and bought a new digital camera. This time it's a top-of-the-line model. I've become increasingly interested in photography. This camera is a 3 mega-pixel job which gives you complete control over everything: aperture, exposure, light-sensitivity, focus, flash - the works. I'm looking forward to getting outside and putting it all to the test - that is, when the weather improves.

Sunday would have been a great opportunity, since Hunter and I drove up to Sonoma on a hot, still, clear day. Unfortunately, I hadn't yet made my mind up which camera to buy, so I missed that chance. I'd never been to Sonoma before. You drive through some spectacular, dry valleys, which spread out on either side of you, opening up on one side to reveal a distant view of San Francisco miles away across a flat plain. A landscape that could easily be desolate at this time of year, with its dry, brown hillsides, is saved from such a description by the variety of plants and flowers that somehow cope with the lack of ground moisture. The temperature must have been over 90, but it was so dry that once we were in the shade with our picnic, it was completely comfortable.

Hunter is one of those gay men who always seems to know exactly how to pull things together. If you asked me to prepare a picnic, I'd probably come up with tuna-salad sandwiches, and maybe a hunk of cheddar cheese. But Hunter had a picnic basket, napkins, little tins with cucumber sanwiches, lemon cookies, brie and gorgonzola cheese, and even a tin of sardines. I was almost surprised he didn't spread a tablecloth and top it all with a floral centerpiece.

Afterwards, we returned to the city, the temperature dropping a full thirty degrees by the time we encountered the indraft of fog across the Golden Gate Bridge. We huddled in our sweatshirts, inadequately protected by the windscreen of my jeep (we'd taken the top down and removed the top halves of the front-doors). It was so nice to get inside Peets Coffee in the Marina and suck down our mochas. We sat companionably and watched the passers by: mostly straight, in this neighborhood, although there was one extremely hunky, smooth-chested bronzed guy in a sleeveless bicycle top unzipped and open to a point half way down his chest. And Michael Tilson-Thomas, the musical director of the San Francisco Symphony, walked past, looking very dapper and handsome, accompanied by his dog, and bearing a secret smile. He glanced into where Hunter and I were sitting and I made eye-contact with him. I even had half an urge to dash outside and tell him how much I loved his performance of Mahler's Third a couple of seasons back, but my nerve failed, as usual.

Well, it's 12.30. Time for my usual Starbucks lunch of a chicken-caesar salad and large coffee. I've somehow managed to fill another inactive work morning with sufficient personal activity to keep me from falling asleep at my desk. But what shall I do this afternoon?