ONE DAY I had to get out of the house because everything in it was putting me to sleep. The furniture, the stereo, coffee. My writing. The telephone. I tried to sit outside and even sitting outside depressed me. All the neighborhood babies were crying at the same time. Squirrels and birds took one look at me and then looked away. They didn't care.

I had Crawdad's Fast Pass so I went to the corner and got on a bus, any bus. I didn't have anything in particular in mind. But I didn't have anything in particular in my stomach either, so one of the first things I did was I got back off the bus as soon as I saw Marcello's Pizza at Castro and 17th. That's one of those things you can do when you have a Fast Pass: get off the bus and get a slice.

I'm not going to review Marcello's (except to tell you that right now it's my favorite pizza in the city); I'm just trying to give you a general idea of what this day was like. It was a day in the life. Not my favorite day, and not your favorite life, I'm sure.

But what can I do? It's all I have. My life, this day, and a Fast Pass. And a slice, green onions and sausage, after which I did a thing I'd never done before, 13, almost 14 years in the city, give or take Sonoma County for 2. I went down into the Castro Muni station and I got on an L Taraval, outbound. There was a stop on that line I'd never even heard of: Forest Hill, or something like that. You're underground at the time, unfortunately, so I can't tell you what Forest Hill looks like. Maybe you know. I can only imagine (green and magical, deer, leprechauns), because for some reason, Fast Pass notwithstanding, I didn't hop off the train then and there. I had started to think about the beach, and the beach seemed like a fine idea, this day, this life.

Long before the beach I got thirsty. We were above ground by then, so when I saw a convenience store I hopped off and got a bottle of water and a bag of spits. I ate and spat most of the spits waiting for the next L Taraval. I was trying to think poetically.

It wasn't working.

Train came, and I took it all the way out to 46th Avenue, when it turns to the left and goes, I assume, to the zoo. The beach is just a block or two away; you're almost there. There's also a funky-looking little restaurant called the Cutlet House Cafe, corner of Taraval and 46th, which tries to entice you with these three words: Lunch. Dinner. Snack.

I'm easily enticed. At this point of the day in my life in question, I'm especially easily enticed by the word "snack." It was smack between lunch- and dinnertime; I'd already come to think of the slice of pizza and bag of spits as lunch, and I already had plans for dinner. So snack seemed perfect.

I am going to review the Cutlet House Cafe. It's a boxy little place with booths around the outside and tables in the middle. They have framed posters of (1) Steve Young, (2) Hideo Nomo, and (3) Michael Jordan along one wall. And the windows, which you can't see out of, are framed by colorful plastic flowers and little white X-mas lights. Television tuned to TVBS – and I won't make the obvious joke. Four little ceiling fans.

They didn't have any more oxtail stew with red wine sauce ($6.75), so I ordered the combination cutlet ($6) off the "snack" section of the menu. This way, I figured, I'd get to see what the Cutlet House Cafe's cutlets were all about. The combination consisted of a slab of chicken, a slab of fish, and two or three prawns, all breaded and fried, thin slices of tomato and cucumber by way of a garnish. Nice little snack. The chicken had plenty of juice to it.

I had left the house without any reading material, however, and TVBS, without making the obvious joke, was unbearable. In addition to Chinese, so I reached behind me for a takeout menu from a rack on the wall by the door. As you might imagine, if you see the way this day is going, one thing led to another just like I like things to do.

This one was from the "Macaroni/Spaghetti/Instant Noodles (In Soup)" section of the menu. It was bacon soup! For $3.50, a bowl of "instant noodles" (basically ramen noodles like you get in the store), with cabbage, broccoli, a couple mushy chunks of carrot, and three strips of bacon. You know what I'm going to say about this half of the snack, because there's only one way to feel about bacon soup: happy.

I went to the beach.

Cutlet House Cafe. 3560 Taraval (at 46th Ave.), S.F. (415) 566-9035. Daily: 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. No alcohol. Takeout available. MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.