A Lesson in AP Style

As the AP Stylebook makes clear, there is no such thing as a "first annual" anything since annual is an adjective that should be applied only to what has been accomplished, not what is promised. Thus, this weekend I may correctly say that our 2nd Annual San Francisco Anniversary Celebration took place.

Since our wedding anniversary falls on or about Thanksgiving, we've never been able to mount much of an commemoration, but last year -- our 40th -- deserved something, I thought. So we spent a couple days at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero, where we stayed on our first visit to SF in 1979 on a freebie trip back in my Atlanta Magazine days. We parked in Oakland and took BART in, which is journey enough on Thanksgiving weekend.

I wrote a piece about that 1979 visit. Without that piece -- the wit; the joie de vivre, the merde heureuse de cheval -- I would never have gotten my job at the Chronicle the next year.

Yes, it was a hell of a piece. But so much is contingent, so much is circumstance.

Ah, the accompanying photograph. The Hyatt drapes its lobby with lights during the holiday season. May I recommend you drop by some evening and order a nine-dollar drink in the lobby bar.