Crumb by crumb

I have now officially caught up to the present time. I apologize for keeping any of you waiting, as I'm sure you were, with bated breath. And I'm also sorry that the wait was obviously not worth it, as none of the posts below which I have finally published have much of anything interesting to say.

In other news, let us all join hands in welcoming JenHen to this side of 33. It's not really so bad. Despite my crazy musings on the fact that if you turn 33 on its side like a smiley face :) it reminded me of the "furniture disease" my grandma used to joke about, when your chest falls into your drawers with old age. Really, if it helps any to think of it this way, we're only 1/3 of the way to 100.
I'm going to go weep now.

Also, dear Dr. Ebony, I'd love to hear all about this dream of yours. Was it produced in a vicodin-saturated haze of hallucinatory slumber? Do you really luuuuurve me?! And how are your students trying to destroy you? I bet they'd think twice if only you'd ended up with the Dr Doom titanium jaw.

Studying with the Professor

You know you've lived in San Francisco for a long time when you're in someone's apartment and casually ask "hey, what are these pills in with your weed?" wondering about the tablets while completely unfazed that there is marijuana sitting out on the coffee table in plain view of the front windows and without thinking twice about the bong tastefully decorating the sideboard beneath a picture of the grandparents.

You belong among the wildflowers

My friend Meredith moved with her perfect family to Atlanta at the beginning of the year. This makes me sad for a variety of reasons. It is particularly poignant today, because I was forced to go to Bouquets to Art without her.

It'd been sort of a tradition every year since she turned me on to it - we'd even ditched work one year for an extra-long lunch break.

Once a year, they open up the museum (it used to be at the Legion of Honor, but has moved back to the de Young, now that it has re-opened in its amazing new space) to florists and flower designer types, who then create amazing flower arrangements to match, mimic, or otherwise complement the artwork throughout the galleries. It sounds sort of silly, perhaps, but it's partly why I pay for a museum membership each year.

Alas, it's not quite the same without Mer.

And may they ever be

Among the great things about living in San Francisco is that its restaurant scene and dining opportunities are virtually unrivalled this side of NYC. It's been said that a new restaurant opens every day (which means that nearly as many close their doors). It's also been said that you could eat out at a different joint every meal and never eat at the same place twice due to the sheer number of restaurants and the fact that with the turnover, you'd forever be playing catch-up.

Of course, when faced with all these options, it can be very difficult to choose between them. Or when someone asks for recommendations, well, I gotta have some criteria for whittling down the choices. Does the neighborhood mater? How about price range? Interior lighting? Wait staff attractiveness? Type of food? Because just deciding which sushi place is tough enough, so throwing in Greek, pasta, Thai, French, Persian, seafood, dim sum, Afghani,* or any of the bazillion other possibilities makes the task nigh on impossible.

Anyhoodle, all this is to say that it was difficult for me to come up with a list of a few dining options when Erica (of the Rawlins Ericas, best friend to Joy since forever) e-mailed me to say she and Jeffery would be visiting. Which, YAY!

So where I failed, they stepped up and were able to decide on the Bambuddha Lounge as the meeting place - a funky loungy place attached to an old motel (complete with swimming pool), with asian-fusion cuisine that turns into a rockin' bar on weekends. It was not particularly rockin' this evening, but the tunes were good, the food was tasty and the company, terrific!

Despite all I've heard about Erica in the years I've known Joy, I'd only actually met her and Jeffery once, at Joy's wedding. But hanging out with them over dinner it was as though we were old friends. I love that. (And they brought me a bottle of Jeffery's wine which I can't wait to try... I love that too!)

When I try out that wine, I'll raise a glass to good friends of good friends who are now good friends. I'm so glad they got in touch!


* Ok, scratch the Afghani off the list. The best Afghani restaurant in my neighborhood is closed because a giant chunk of hillside crashed into their building a few weeks ago. Stupid landslide. Now I'm craving pumpkin lamb ravioli.

I am the harsh nemesis of all that is unclean

Laundry sucks. There's just no way around it. I think it might not be so bad if I actually had my own washer and dryer in my apartment. But having to haul it down the block and pay for it generally means that:
A) I'll wait until a mountain of dirty clothes has accumulated past the point that I can reasonably lug it up and down 3 flights of stairs;
B) I'll cram so much stuff into the crappy laundromat washer that most of my stuff probably hasn't been truly clean since I bought it.

Seriously, at $2.25 for one load in the washing machine, there's no way I'm going to just do a few socks. That washer has every sock I own, all my boxers, and most of my 300 t-shirts stuffed into. I just spent over $20 in quarters... and that was just on sheets, towels, whites and darks. I didn't even do jeans, fuzzies or the rest of my darks! And when the dryer is only 6 minutes per quarter, well half my stuff goes home damp too.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, there's always at least one wild-eyed drunkard who wants to tell me about his medical problems. And then use my detergent. Which, I guess is still better than the muttering homeless guy who didn't bother with the wash and went straight for the fluff cycle in the dryer to freshen up his crusty clothes, which he stripped out of right there in front of me and the little old Chinese lady. Either that or he put the high heat on in an attempt to kill the lice. In any case, I don't use that dryer to this day.

*shudder*

A train wreck waiting to happen

As many of you know, I walk to and from work every day, rain or shine. (Ok, I've been known to take the bus in a pinch, but seriously that happens maybe once a month, at most.) I generally walk with a super nice co-worker who lives up the street a block and a half from me and who probably considers me a very close friend. Unfortunately we have somewhat differing perceptions of the passage of time, as well, so often when we agree to meet at the park in 10 minutes, it will really be 20 before she arrives at the corner. I've been late too, certainly, but usually that's me trying to guess how long her 6 minutes is in real minutes.

Anyhoodle, walking the same route at basically the same time everyday, you can't help but come to recognize a bunch of the regular strangers on the sidewalk. There's the grumpalotapus who always scowls as he storms past, there's the make-up queen with her drawn-in eyebrows, there's the old coot who shuffles along delivering papers, the guy with with the too-tight pants. And then there's the really cute tousley-haired gentleman who's eyes meet mine whenever we pass and who returns my smile with a quick grin of his own. Mysteriously, he's been MIA for a while.

Today, however, I happened to be looking out my front window and wondering how much longer I'd need to wait when who should I spy walking past but the guy! That guy! I pondered only briefly before decided to ditch my walking buddy, grabbing my things and sprinting out the door. Curiosity had gotten the best of me - where does he work? What's he doing in front of my apartment when I usually see him downtown? But when I got outside, he'd completely disappeared. It was a flash of inspired logic that led me to my corner coffee shop across the street.

So there he was, sitting down at a table with his coffee, and yes, I ordered a mocha, despite supposedly cutting down on my caffeine. I hadn't really thought this through and couldn't just pop in and dash back out. Sadly, since he was seated already I couldn't exactly bump into him and I'm too much of a wuss to just sit down and say "hey." But I did look over as I walked past and he raised his cup and nodded with a grin.

Which meant that all day I was both giddy and annoyed with myself. I think I may have discovered my inner stalker. And now he's caffeinated.

In case there was any question

I'd lived in San Francisco for a couple of years before I noticed that a MUNI bus seemed to be crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. So one day while at the Bridge on a scenery break, I hopped on the bus and found that it climbed the hills on the other side of the Bridge and circled around at Fort Cronkite and Rodeo Beach in the Marin Headlands. It immediately became my favorite bus line, despite running hourly on Sundays only.

Without a car, and especially after Bryan moved on with his Ford Explorer, it would be long before I'd start to feel claustrophobic and have to get out of the City. So there was a period where almost every Sunday I'd hop on the bus to get recharged in the fresh air and open space in the Headlands. I've tramped all over the cliffs, explored the hilltop ruins of the abandoned batteries, clambered over stone arches to hidden tidepools, combed the gravel beaches for carnelian stones -- and all within site of the dense urban crush.

For whatever reason, it's been ages since I'd done this, so today dawned with such astounding clarity that I dropped everything and jumped on the bus with a sandwich and a bottle of water. And it was the perfect day.

In solitude I hiked a few trails through my old haunts, the hillsides blooming with electric wild irises and fields of golden poppies. Little birds twittered amongst the blossoming blackberry canes and turkey vultures turned lazy circles in the gentle breeze. The air was so clear that I could see the Farallon Islands 27 miles out at sea, the Santa Cruz Mountains to the south of the City, Mt. Diablo rising vividly to the east, and Pt. Reyes sprawling out to the north. At the end of my hike, I waded into the frigid grey waters and soaked up the warming rays of the setting sun while surfers tamed the pounding surf.

This, this is why I still live here.

It was a good day.

The Vortex

Our TV gave out last fall. I didn't even particularly like the TV, but I suppose it was a little better than our previous one... which, by the way, was a Zenith and was free. So now that the newer fancier one is kaput, the old free one is back in place (I'd held on to it since, well, it was free). But this has spurred several conversations with my roommate about getting a new one. Which would mean, naturally, a bigger and flatter HD variety.

But then, I'd have to upgrade the cable, and the Tivo, and probably the stereo. Not to mention rearranging the furniture to accommodate a widescreen, which would entail buying a new couch, naturally.

Paralyzed in the face of this mortifying domino effect, we're still watching the old-school TV I got for free... (which is sort of like riding an ox-cart on the Autobahn)

I, as I suspect many of us do, completely identify with this opinion piece.

Gung hei faat choi

Yes, kids, it's that time of year again. Specifically, the year 4704. The year of the Pig. Actually, if you're interested, the Lunar New Year began on February 18th, but the giant parade through San Francisco wasn't until last night, which I guess is appropriate given the 15-days of traditional celebrating.

And speaking of traditions, I have sort of my own going on which I think I've recounted before. Every year during the Parade, there's a Treasure Hunt put on by a former detective/history buff /film noire lover. Imagine hundreds of people frantically trying to solve clues and running off into the night on a wild pig chase though the Financial District, Chinatown and North Beach, dodging tubas, poking about in dark alleys, pushing their way through the thousands of parade spectators, trying to avoid the winding dragons and deafening firecrackers in search of answers.

It's great fun. I'd managed to participate each of the last 3 years and, wasn't about to miss out this year, though all but one of my former team members had made other plans by the time I realized it was almost too late.

But I scraped together a few friends and off we went, meandering for what felt like 5 or 7 miles over hills and around blocks, seeking such things as the "words of a wilde man" where the double-lettered name for an irrational number key to circular thinking is followed by the 2-letter name of a blood and guts TV show and 55688.193 is divided by 18562.731.*

And get this: Out of 101 teams to complete our level, we came in 12th! No prize, but still, not to shabby. Thanks Nichole, Beth, Adam, Jeff and Joel for such a fun, if exhausting, time! Next year, we're winning the cake and the glory!

* On Pier 3 is a plaque quoting Oscar Wilde: "It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city possessing all the attractions of the next world."

You always take the weather with you

You know what's weird? Denver has had a crazy winter of seemingly ceaseless snow so far, and yet when I was there, it was pleasant and sunny and most of the remaining snowcover disappeared.

But now? I'm back in California and guess where the freak snow is falling?! Oy.

It's been sort of a fucked up winter all the way around, hasn't it? Oh global climate change, you silly joker.

Tangentially, that's one thing I've just never gotten used to about California, especially coming down out of the Sierra into Sacramento. Snow and palm trees just don't mix in my mind. And yet, here they are.

I'm back. Honest.

So, I'm back from vacation. And it was lovely. Really!

I always have such a complex mix of feelings when I go "home" to visit my family and when I leave again to come back here-home. I mean, I love my family, of course, so I can't help but confront the question of why I live so far from them, what I'm doing with my life, and all the crazy muck that dredges up.

And maybe because of that, there's usually a little bit of relief when I throw myself down on my own couch again, because I don't have to face these questions and feelings again for a while. Out of site, out of mind.

So it's a crazy carnitas platter of emotion, spiced with some salsa of regret, topped with the guacamole of love, a side of refried comfort, covered in melted relief and wrapped in a tortilla of guilt.

At any rate, upon arrival in snow-covered Denver, Mom picked me up at the airport and we headed straight to the mountains after a brief pause to repack and load the truck. Sunday on the slopes was crazy -- avalanche control had closed I-70 for much of Saturday, which meant everyone came up on Sunday to ski, and I had never seen such lines at the lifts.

But the weather cooperated, the crowds eased on Monday, and Caden tore up the slopes with us the 2nd day while Grant hung out in the village and lodge with the, uh... stepsisters. Which is the right term, but just feels so strange to use. Anyway, we all had a terrific time.

And the rest of the week went by too quickly, with some time at the zoo, Denver Art Museum, the planetarium and Imax, school auction setup, and all the miscellanious activities that fill up a family's busy routine. So unlike my own routine, which is hollow in comparison and doesn't seem to be filled up by any amount of metaphorical Mexican food.

I'm not dead

(3/16/2007)

I didn't hit a tree.
I'll update soon.

We never change do we no, no

And by we, I mostly mean me, being totally strung out before taking time off.

I'm leaving Saturday (at 6am) for a week with the fam back home-ish in Colorado. It's going to be fun, I've been looking forward to it for months, I'm taking my snowboard gear and we're heading straight for the slopes when I get in at noon. So that's all the good and the yay and the yippee and the can't wait.

But the flip side of that is, of course, that I'm coming down to the wire, again, at work, trying to get stuff done and prepare everyone for my being out. It's true, I may not be that adept at time management, but I've been working really hard to get this stuff dealt with. But between Jury Duty, dental hell, and all the usual day-to-day whackiness, I'm not left much time for things like documentation, requirements feedback, training, etc. And of course, again, I'll be out just as new stuff is rolling out, leaving people who are less, um, familiar with stuff, to handle things on their own.

And I haven't even begun to get my stuff together for the actual trip. The stress! The lack of sleep! No wonder I have no problem sleeping on airplanes -- it'll be such a relief once I've made it that far.

So anyway, I'll be out of touch for a week or so. If anyone cares. I'm just sayin'.

More Happy

I don't drink Pepsi. In fact, I hardly drink soda much at all anymore, but when I do, it's Coke. However, you may recall me mentioning a Pepsi commercial filming that I walked into the middle of a while back. Well I just saw the end result on TV and it's all San Francisco shots. In fact, a good chunk of it takes place on my street. Watch carefully as he rolls down the straight tree-lined stretch of Lombard below Coit Tower and you can see my apartment building very briefly. So that's cool. Watch the ad (but drink the Coke).

The Saga Continues

Well, boys and girls, I still have my tooth, such as it is. It may be hollowed out, filled with gutta percha, built up with some magic fake tooth material, and covered in a temporary crown, but it's still embedded in my upper jaw bone. So that's something.

After undoing all of the original work from a few years ago, the dentist seemed pretty confident that the root wasn't cracked anywhere, which is what would have forced a complete extraction. He said there's still a chance this one won't work, in which case he'll still have to take the tooth, but he's optimistic. Of course, he also said that the best we can hope for is that this one will only last about ten years, and then the tooth will probably have to come out anyway. Which, jeesh. I was tempted to say let's just get it over with. But upon further reflection, I'm happy to put off the additional pain, both physical and fiscal, until the semi-remote future.

But let's talk about pain for a moment anyway, shall we? So, I know people who've had root canals and claimed it wasn't so bad. I, however, distinctly remember, as I've mentioned, the feeling of my nerves being plucked like guitar strings. The dentist claimed this time around wouldn't be so bad because the tooth was already dead and all. Ha. I learned several things during my 2 hours in the dental chair on Friday.

1) Dentists lie. I already knew this, of course, but continue to be duped repeatedly because they seem so nice, I give people the benefit of the doubt, and I'm stupid like stone.
2) I metabolize novocaine (or lidocaine or xylocaine or whatever the hell local anesthetic they use) faster than the ordinary person. Basically he'd get about twenty minutes of work done before I'd jump, white-knuckled and wide-eyed, at some jolt of pain mumbling "Mpphh-hmmmm" when he'd pointlessly ask "you feel a little something there?" So he'd shoot me up again and off we'd go. At one point, he just gave up and would warn me about certain things, saying "You'll probably feel this a little, sorry about that." No wonder people would just die of dental infections before anesthetics were discovered.
3) Apparently the jaw bone is highly ennervated, which more than makes up for the lack of living nerve inside my molar.
4) One of the levels of Hell without a doubt involves laying on your head in a dental chair, blinding light in your eyes, a rubber block propping open your jaw, trying to breath through your nose but feeling some errant sinus drainage blocking that route while a stretched rubber sheet is effectively smothering your attempt to breathe through your open mouth where the saliva is accumulating anyway, being asked to open up even wider though your jaw is so fatigued you start to shake, then being told to not move a muscle while three different implements and two hands are wedged between your jaws lest the whole procedure has to start again while your swallow reflex meanwhile suddenly becomes uncontrollable and your tongue starts flailing about impertinently. Oh Sisyphus cakewalked into eternity by comparison.

Bad to the bone

Ok, I should explain that usually I'm really a glass-half-full type. I know my posts lately have been a little manic, and so have I. But this is the exception, I swear. Unless I've turned that corner onto the one-way road to bitterness and despair. Which, seriously folks, is a possibility.

Anyway, on the good news side, my jury service is complete! Both prosecution and defence rested their cases on Monday, and we heard closing statements yesterday. After sitting through the juror instructions and a tutorial on the applicable laws, I was released yesterday afternoon and just got word this evening that the jury reached a verdict: the guy is guilty on both counts. Which is pretty much what I thought, but it still would have been interesting to get to debate that with 11 other people and arrive at the conclusion together. But whatever. Always a bridesmaid. At least it didn't carry over into my upcoming vacation or anything.

What may actually carry over into my time off, however, is the latest in the woe-is-me saga. Remember my unexplained mystery health issue of a few months ago? Well, everyone finally agrees that it's most likely a tooth issue. And not just any tooth, but the very one that had the root canal. The root canal that I never wanted to experience anything remotely resembling ever again.

My dentist told me today that it's probably leaking (!!) and so I'm going back tomorrow to experience something not just resembling the root canal, but in fact that very root canal all over again. See how the lightning strikes over and over from my own personal dark cloud? But wait, there's more! If the old root canal is leaking because the tooth's root is cracked, which is a distinct possibility and one that can't be ascertained until the dentist is rooting around inside my head, then -- get this -- he'll have to extract the tooth!!

Sweet merciful mother of crap. I knew this is the sort of thing that happens when you get old, but I'm only thirty-three! That's too young to be toothless. And? If it comes out, I should get an implant, an actual metal screw anchored into my skull. Which insurance will hardly cover. So I'm about to feel some serious pain in both my palate and my wallet.

No one mentioned the option of just letting it go on leaking, but that sounds pretty ok by me.
I think I'm going to go cry now.

**No pictures with this post. I just did a Google image search for tooth implants and nearly fell out of my chair in horror.

Bum-pee road to work

When I was young and naive and my urban experiences were limited to driving through Denver to visit my grandma in Littleton, I thought living in a city must be grand and exciting. Of course, now that I have spent the last 14 years enjoying all the wonderful joys of the urban existence, I can say with some authority that it ain't all glitz and glamour. Oh no, it requires a certain amount of intestinal fortitude just to go about your day.

As I've mentioned before, I walk to and from the office everyday with my co-worker/neighbor/friend Janet. It's a 1.5-mile 30-minute walk from North Beach through the Financial District to South of Market on Second at Harrison. All perfectly pleasant neighborhoods filled with coffee shops, restaurants, people in suits, shops, tourists and so on. And yet, this walk demands vigilance.

What I mean is that rarely a day goes by that we're not walking past some fresh horror: trying to avoid the mystery splatter of chunky ick in the middle of the sidewalk, holding our breath past the steaming sewer grate, stepping over the running puddles of bum pee, desperately dodging the tubercular coughs of the toothless woman with smeared lipstick ruddying her gaunt cheeks, avoiding eye contact with the crusty young psychotic who punctuates his constant mumbling with epithetic outbursts and wild gesticulations, staring straight ahead pretending not to see the pantsless person squatting between parked cars to the left while skirting the fresh pile of excrement to the right. It's sad, but it's become second nature to not even acknowledge these things, discussing instead butterflies and puppies and rainbows and mountain springs. Blinders are necessary else we'd be forever clutching each other in gagging repugnant depression.

I did wish I'd had my camera today, though. Not to poke fun at the less fortunate or anything like that, but simply to capture the moment. One of the old homeless guys who hangs around near the office had on a Monster.com hat and I couldn't help but smile at the wry incongruity.

Yes, life in the big city is so much more than I ever expected.

Voir dire of inevitability

I should have known. I really should have. It's just the way my luck runs. And yet I never seem to take the lesson to heart; instead I continue to test the fates, hoping the winds will blow differently to shift the raincloud out from over my fortune, drowned as it is in absurdities and mixed metaphors.

They say lightning never strikes twice, but I sometimes feel that it continues to zap me repeatedly, figuratively defying the odds in singling me out and leaving me stunned and bewildered but missing any marks as proof that something strange and ridiculous and hellishly divine may have just occurred to me alone, just as it quite literally did nine years ago while I was out for a solitary stroll along the empty shoreline with a borrowed umbrella for a lightning rod.

Anyway, this week was nothing nearly that improbable. Instead, rather than postpone to a future and, quite possibly, equally bad time, I answered my call to Jury Duty in the hope that, as a purely numbers game, I would walk away unselected. And that was clearly my first mistake.

Naturally my number came up Monday, so I reported to the Jury Room at the Hall of Justice on Tuesday at 1pm, still hoping for a reprieve. Of the several hundred people sitting around bored, reading, napping, and trying to conduct business in absentia, surely the majority of us would walk away without getting called into a courtroom. And my confidence grew as first one, then two, then three courts were filled or canceled without me. Several hours passed and the end of the day drew near and one court remained, and obviously my confidence was mistake number two.

Of course, among the 75 or so people ultimately assigned to courtroom 17, I was still sure that I would walk away. And in fact, all afternoon on Wednesday, I sat in the back of the room, uncalled, as the jury box seats were filled and reshuffled. 24 people whittled down to 12. Come back Thursday at 1:30. Seats 13-23 are refilled with the computer's random selections - a wave of relief washes over me as it becomes clear that they can't let all those people go. Even when I was called to fill that very last seat, #24, I still thought I would get to go home at the end of the day. I'd seen who they let go, I knew how to answer the questions to be excused: Guns are bad, that hypothetical question is pointless, it's difficult to set aside emotion to consider just the facts.

And yet, one by one, the seats in front of me emptied and I was left to occupy seat 13. And despite going through the motions with another 11 people, the counsel finally had no objections and I was sworn in as Alternate Juror #1. Seriously?! Seriously! Not only do I have to sit through the whole trial, but I likely won't even get to deliberate! I know this because it's precisely what happened the last time I was called to Jury Duty three years ago.
Oh the suckage.

This is why I don't gamble with money.

Cheeky monkey

This has probably been around for ages, but I just discovered it and it absolutely kills me. What do you get when you cross two young tigers with an agile gibbon? Hilarity, I tell you.

I'm 33 for a moment

Welp, there you have it. Another birthday has come and gone, sweeping past like a commuter train, knocking me aside with its gusty bluster and leaving me unbalanced by the tracks in its turbulent wake while the litter swirls and settles, strewn about hopelessly.

How did I get here? Why didn't the train slow down? Will I still find myself bewildered trackside when the next one comes? Is it possible to have a one-third-life crisis?