Celebrate good times, come on!

It hasn't all been spider bites and MRSA infections here in Washington, D.C. I've actually had a lot of fun this semester.

Case in point: we celebrated my friends Alison and Anthony's 24th birthdays--as well as the end of the semester--with a party at my house last Friday. There was booze. There was cake. There were fun people. And--best of all--there were drunken declarations of (platonic) love, which is always a sign of a good party, in my opinion.

Alison the birthday girl with Claire and Genna

Anthony the birthday boy with Gary

Two Mikes, a Dan and the other Anthony

Mike and Claire

Merry Christmas to Me

So if I haven't mentioned it, this semester has been kind of . . . eventful. And by eventful, I mostly mean crisis-filled. What with the flooding of my apartment, my development of allergies to something in my apartment, the near-lethal spider bite, and the day when my external hard-drive over-heated and took all of my semester's work with it, this has not been the easiest few months.

But recently, everything had been going much smoother. Classes were fun and I was doing pretty well, I'd made some good friends, and have even ventured into a stable, not-f'ed up relationship. The only slight trouble was that I seemed to have become more clumsy than normal, and often found myself bumping into things or tripping. Hardly a big deal, I thought.

SO NOT TRUE. The weekend after Thanksgiving, I "tripped and fell and scraped my shin." Annoying, but I didn't think it was a big deal. Until it became clear that the scrape wasn't healing. I went to a doctor. She said it was infected. She gave me antibiotics and told me to come back if it didn't get better. It didn't get better. I went back, she informed me that an ABSCESS had formed and I was going to need to have it drained. Yikes. So I go to the surgeon she referred me to who informed me that they didn't drain abscesses--they just cut them out. So she numbed up my leg and cut a quarter-sized chunk out of my shin. When I went back the next day to have it checked out, I fainted and then spent 10 minutes throwing up from how much it hurt and how absolutely disgusting it looks. And now, just as it is starting to heal and hurt less, she has informed me that they got the tissue culture back on the abscess and it seems that I have MRSA. Yes, MRSA.

Merry Christmas to me.

Yuck

While I was home this past week for Thanksgiving, my mom made tacos one night. Now, I was pretty excited about this because I love tacos. I was even more excited when I was the container of what I assumed was guacamole out on the kitchen counter, along with all the other tacos fixin's. I LOVE guacamole, and I've been in avocado withdrawal since I moved to DC.

So I spoon some of the "guacamole" onto one of my tacos, but there's something kind of off about the texture. It feels really. . . .thick, and almost. . . .gelatinous? This makes me suspicious, so I taste some of the "guacamole" off the spoon. Hmm. Doesn't exactly taste like avocados. So I finally look at the container and discover I'm not eating guacamole at all, but "Guacamole-flavored dip"! And as I look at the list of ingredients, my stomach churns a bit. Because of the 23 ingredients listed on the label, avocados are number 12: well behind water, salt, dried onion powder and several chemicals I cannot pronounce.

I guess I'll be waiting for my next trip to CA before I attempt to feed that craving again.

When your pet surpasses you in popularity

Many of you know that I come from a family of dog lovers. As long as I can remember, we've always had at least one dog (always a dachshund--or weiner dog), and more often than not, we've had two or three at a time. Right now, we have three dogs, one of whom has made it to the ripe old age of 17 1/2 years old.

I'd never really stopped to think about how amazing it is to have a nearly 18 year old dog, until a friend of my parents called the local paper and suggested that they write a story about it. The paper jumped at the opportunity, and early last week, an article profiling my parents and Rudy--our dog--and talking about the challenges more people are facing in having older pets appeared in the paper. And mind you, this was no small, single column newspaper story. There was a small picture of Rudy on the front page of the paper. There was a HUGE picture of Rudy on the front page of the Lifestyle section. And then there was the actual article--complete with more pictures of Rudy and our other two dogs on an inner page of the Lifestyle section.

A good month

I realize it's been a long time since I blogged. This last month or so has been really fun, but sadly, I have virtually no pictures to prove it. So what have I been up to?

In the last month, I:

Went apple picking twice. Once we went in the pouring down rain, but we got lots of yummy apples. And a pumpkin. And some cider. The second time we went when it was sunny and beautiful, but didn't actually come home with any apples. (This is partly because I already had plenty and partly because there really weren't many left on the trees.)

Carved pumpkins for Halloween. My pumpkin was a landscape of Colorado. My friend carved his to represent the way that capitalism--like a boiling cauldron--consumes us.

Got lost in a corn maze (or maize maze, as I like to call it) and watched people shoot pumpkins out of a cannon.

Mike and Claire try valiantly to find their way out of the maze

Dressed up as a "Smarty Pants" for Halloween, while my friend Brianne dressed as a "Fancy Pants."

Brianne has the bling and ruffles to make her pants fancy, and I've got the Smarties

Finished my first short film--an autobiography.

Went to my dear friend Abby's beautiful wedding.

Becky, Abby and Claire at Abby's wedding

In addition, I have not been bitten by any small animals (or large ones), and there has been no more flooding, so that's been good. All in all, not a bad month.

Datey-dates

So I'm going on a very "datey-date" on Saturday night. It occurs to me that I can't remember the last time I went on a "datey-date." It has definitely been a couple of years.

Now don't get me wrong--I've been on plenty of dates. But they've tended to be lower-key dates. "I'll meet you there" dates (or even more common--given how many people I've dated who didn't have a car--"I guess I'll pick you up" dates). "Play it by ear" dates. Or sometimes, "I have a general idea of the plan" dates. And as a general rule, the content of the dates I've been on has been pretty low key and non-datey also. We'd go hiking, or have a picnic, or go for a motorcycle ride, or just kind of wonder around and see what happened. Hanging out as dating.

And really, non-datey's been good with me. The formality and planned-ness of datey-dates makes me nervous. I feel like staring at each other from across the table of a fancy restaurant isn't a very natural or organic way to really get to know someone. And it's certainly not representative of how I really like to spend my time.

And yet, this datey-date's got me intrigued. There is something to be said for a guy with a very clear plan. Who's going to pick me up in a car. And take me out on a Saturday night (not a Thursday night or Sunday afternoon). I don't even know what to make of it. But given my penchant for new experiences (particularly if they're awkward), I'm looking forward to it.

Here's to hoping we don't decide we hate each other mid-way through the appetizer, because it would be a really long night after that!

The Upside

So I've spent a lot of time on this blog lately complaining about things that are bad, but very little time talking about school or the stuff that's going well.

And I promise, there ARE things that are going well. School--for the most part--has been great. It's really challenging, and I spend at least half of my time feeling like I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm still really enjoying what I'm learning. I'm taking a writing class where we're writing scripts for fiction and non-fiction films. I'm taking a production class where we're making short films. And I'm taking a design class (for reasons I still don't quite understand) where I'm learning all about Photoshop. I will soon be sticking my head on all sorts of other people's bodies.

On top of that, I've made friends. I've learned my way around DC well enough that I can give directions to people who have lived here longer than I have. I've reconnected to Abby and Becky's DC-based parents. I've got an in for what I think will be a great internship, AND the weather here has not been as bad as I expected.

See? All good things.

There is hope for me and DC yet.

Washington, D.C.: 4, Claire: 0

A month and half ago, when I was (fairly calmly) dealing with the flood that put good chunks of my apartment underwater, I rationalized that everyone needed something bad to happen to them upon moving to a new place, and it was better to get it out of the way. After all, the damage from the flood was minimal, and if that was the worst thing that befell me while living in D.C., that wouldn't be so bad at all!

Foolish, foolish Claire. What on earth made me think that would be THE ONLY bad thing? What on earth made me think that would be the worst thing? Now, I know better. I will now wait in calm dread for the next ridiculous, bad thing that is going to happen. I'm very sure the bad luck is not over.

Why so sure, you ask? Why so pessimistic? Here's why:

I have had what I presumed was a cold pretty much since I moved to D.C. This past week it occurred to me that 6 weeks was kind of a long time to not be getting better from a cold, and that my symptoms (stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat) improved drastically when I was away from the apartment for long stretches of time, only to return with a vengeance when I walked back in the door. My friend Brianne--who would know a thing or two about this--has pointed out that it probably means I am allergic to something. Yes, that's right. I'm ALLERGIC to my apartment.

And, all the nose blowing I've been doing has triggered yet another problem: nosebleeds. Yup. All throughout the week, my nose has spontaneously erupted blood at the most inopportune moments, forcing me to walk around (although thankfully not in public yet) with a twisted up Kleenex shoved up my nose, as I try to staunch the blood. This makes me feel like the geeky loser I was when I was eight and had to stop taking swimming lessons because the chlorine made my nose bleed. There is nothing sadder than being the 8 year old who has to sit with the teachers while all your friends splash away in the pool.

But I digress. As if the allergies and the nosebleeds weren't enough, there's been another problem. It seems that earlier this week, a brown recluse spider bit me. For those of you not up on your spider hierarchies, the brown recluse bite is extremely dangerous, second only to a black widow. In worst case scenarios, the bite gets infected and all of the surrounding skin rots off. I'm not even joking. It's really disgusting.

Now, I've been bit by a spider before, and it was annoying and it kind of hurt for a few days, but then it faded away and left me with this stupid lumpy scar. Not a huge deal. So I didn't worry too much when I noticed the bite. I didn't worry too much when it still hurt several days after I first noticed it. I started to worry yesterday, when I realized that the redness and swelling looked worse than when I first noticed it and that my entire leg was throbbing with pain.

The advice nurse at Suburban Hospital was pretty worried, too, when I described it, and she ordered me to haul my ass ASAP to the emergency room, which I did with the help of said friend Brianne. There we proceeded to wait for 4 hours until I finally got seen. They loaded me up with antibiotics and painkillers, took blood, gave me a tetanus shot and told me that if the swelling and redness hadn't gone down substantially in the next few days, I'd have to come back in and they would need to carve out the chunk of infected skin to keep it from spreading. I'm hoping they just said that to scare me into taking all the antibiotics.

So yeah, that's been my week. Allergies, nosebleeds and spider bites, oh my. And I don't even get to enjoy the tiny silver lining of having a spider bite that hurts like a motherf---er: They offered to prescribe me percocet for the pain, and I had to turn them down. Even extra strength Tylenol makes me feel like I'm on a tilt-a-whirl and about to throw up, so I definitely can't handle big-time painkillers.

I feel like these experiences have made me wiser, more prepared for whatever other bad things will come my way. I am completely expecting to find out that mutant killer crickets live in the laundry room of my apartment, and it would not surprise me at all to find that a school of pirhanas has taken up residence in my toilet bowl. Bring it--nothing would surprise me now!

D.C. is Finally Looking Up

Since I last wrote, things in Washington, D.C. are going much better. We never did discover the cause of the crazy flood waters that overtook my apartment (and my mom, the neighbor, the plumber, the contractor working on the house where I live, the landlords and I all made a valiant effort to figure out where the water could have come from, to no avail), but we did tear out the old, wet carpet and go crazy with a couple of fans and a dehumidifier. (Note: I have never seen a device that sucks water OUT of the air before. Being a nose-bleed prone child from an arid state, I had no need to be taking any more water out of the air. Ordinarily, we were looking for ways to put moisture back INTO the air.)

But anyway, right around the time the apartment dried out, the movers showed up with the rest of my stuff, the carpet guys came to lay down new (and much prettier) carpet, and I finally got to unpack, put together my bed and stop sleeping on a mattress in the kitchen. And somehow--luckily--the only things that suffered any damage from the flooding were my cable box (ironically, I'd been really hesitant to get cable, fearing it would suck up too much of my valuable time) and the biography of Richard Nixon, which promptly started to mold. HA. Karma's a bitch. (And no, I don't really want to explain why I have a copy of Nixon's biography. It's a long story.)

So now, relatively settled, I'm getting into the process of making new friends, reconnecting with old ones, and poaching other people's D.C. friends. Orientation for my graduate school program was Friday, and so far I've managed to stay more excited than scared. I'm not a) the only person who doesn't have film experience or b) the oldest person in the program, although I'm not that far from it.

I realized how old I am, and just how long I've been out of college, when this librarian came to orientation and started talking about appropriate research methods. She said: "I know when you all were undergrads, it was OK to just do all your research for a paper on Google, but now you should be using different methods to research." She says this, and it suddenly occurs to me that I'm not completely sure Google even existed when I was an undergrad. And so my slow descent into old age begins, at the ripe old age of 27!

I guess that's about it for now. I start both class and work tomorrow. I hope it goes well. I hope I don't discover that I'm in over my head. Or really, I guess I'm OK with being in over my head. Everything I've ever really learned from, grew from or been challenged by involved me feeling like I was in WAY over my head. I hope I learn, grow and am challenged by this!

I'm Living in a Swamp

And at the moment, I mean that quite literally.

So my mom and I got to DC on Monday night, and we've been staying at a hotel, and running around trying to get some of that move-in stuff done (e.g., visits to the DMV, buying groceries, multiple trips to the hardware store and the Bed Bath and Beyond, etc.) Last night--despite the fact that none of my furniture is arriving for about a week and they hadn't delivered my new bed yet, we decided to stay in the apartment on an inflatable mattress I'd brought along.

One small problem: while I can inflate the bed no problem, the cap that keeps the air IN the mattress is missing. So we slept on the very hard floor on top of a deflated air mattress with no pillows. Awesome. (Mental note to me: DO NOT travel without your thermarest camping sleep pad and sleeping bag.)

After a very sleepless night, I got up early, spent about 4 hours at the DMV and car inspection place and ran some more errands. With those out of the way, my mom and I headed out to actually do something fun, like be tourists.

So here comes the swamp part. On returning to my apartment 5 hours later, we found that something, somewhere had flooded, leaving the carpet soaked, everything that had been on the floor drenched (and I do mean DRENCHED--I was wringing water out of clothes I'd left in a suitcase on the floor), and a good half inch of water on the floor in the bathroom (which we had to clean up using a dustpan, because we don't have a mop, buckets, or towels to use yet). That's bad enough, but the amount of heat in the air coupled with all the water in this apartment has given this place the feeling of being a swamp--thick, muggy and utterly disgusting. Add to that a bunch of slugs bigger than my index and middle finger combined and the 30 or so mosquitos who have bitten me in the 3 days that we've been here (leaving behind huge red welts, because I'm incapable of not scratching), and I feel like I've landed in the Everglades. And it's just made me miss California all the more.

I'm hoping that, with the really bad thing out of the way, Washington D.C. can only get better. Seriously, I'm looking for something--anything really--to like about this city.

The Free Lunch? It Really Doesn't Exist.

I've been home in Colorado for about a month. That's been nice, but kind of. . . well, boring. As a way to alleviate some of said boredom, I went with my parents a couple weeks ago to volunteer with their service group--The Lions Club--at a sporting event for blind athletes. At the event, I got to talking to another member of the club--Jim--about my future plans and why I was interested in pursuing documentary filmmaking.

A few days later, my mom asked if I wanted to come to the bi-monthly Lions Club meeting that day. I wasn't really interested, but she said there'd be free lunch, and who passes that up?

So I went, ate my free lunch and politely listened to the club members discuss the orders of business, one of which was a proposal to start inviting non-club members to come and talk about whatever it was they did. At this very moment, Jim-the-guy-from-the-other-night pipes up and says he'd really like it if I could talk more about what I was doing and why.

Suddenly, every head in the room swiveled to stare at me. The president of the club announced that HE thought it was a great idea (with my dad very thoughtfully seconding him) and asked if I'd be willing to come back and present at the next meeting. Before I could try to back out, my dad had assured them I'd be happy to do it.

So much for free lunch.

So yesterday, I came back to the meeting, got up in front of this club of mostly old, slightly cranky Republican men and talked about how JVC and the union had turned me into a crazy lefty commie who believes in obscene things like empowerment and equal rights for all and how I was going to take all of those beliefs and use them as the basis for propaganda. Ahem, I mean documentaries. (Or at least this is how I am sure what I said--which I really tried to make as neutral and non-partisan as possible--was perceived. Seriously, when I mentioned--JUST MENTIONED--Michael Moore in passing, eyes narrowed, lips curled, and I thought at least one guy might attempt to jump me and shake those liberal values right out of me.) Needless to say, it felt like a tough crowd. I definitely earned that damn lunch.

Who Needs Kevin Bacon?

So I was in D.C. last weekend, searching frantically for an apartment that I can move into when I get to D.C. in the middle of August. After looking at what felt like a million apartments and trying to navigate the many flaming hoops that apartment management companies feel are necessary to determine whether or not you're worthy of living in their apartment (you want the application fee as a money order and the deposit as a cashier's check? You need to see my 3 most recent pay stubs and my W-2s? You need to know the balance of all of my bank accounts and you need to see my actual social security card as well as my passport and my driver's license? Um. . . Ok), I found a place that I'm excited about. (And didn't require any flaming hoops at all!)

I also managed to find time to take in a Nationals game. I went with my friend Brianne, who brought her friend Rachel, who brought her friend Fred, who brought his friend Alex. Alex, like me, happens to be a former HERE union organizer, so we bonded over that. After the game the group of us headed out to a dive bar on U Street that soon got overrun by a bunch of drunk rugby players who'd just won the Mid-Atlantic Rugby championship in their division, or so they drunkenly told us. Repeatedly.

Anyway, Alex and I continued to chat, and in the process of talking, discovered that his dad grew up next door to the mom of my very dear friend, Miss Abby Levine. Wow. Kind of random. And yet, somehow, I am not surprised at all. And neither was Abby, when I told her about it.

You see, Abby, was the link that led me to meet nearly everyone I know in San Francisco. So of course she would somehow be connected to the friend of a friend of a friend that I meet at a baseball game. Also, Abby was my introduction to San Francisco's progressive Jewish circle, so it seems fitting that she would manage, inadvertantly and without even needing to be there, to be my introduction to that exact same circle in D.C.!

With friends like that, who needs Kevin Bacon to play the "6 degrees" game?

Heard on the streets of D.C.

While walking down a street in Washington, D.C. last weekend, I heard this little piece of a coversation:

A 30ish woman talking to her family: "I mean, I don't know. When I have the baby, I'm gonna have to sell it for more than it's cost me."

Wait, what?

It took me a good 5 minutes more of eavesdropping to realize she was actually talking about selling her mustang convertible, not her baby. That's what I get for not listening to the conversation from the beginning!

Missing California

When I first made the decision to move to Oakland (was it really 5 years ago?), my friend Erin made me a mix CD of songs about California. It is a testament to Erin's spectacular taste in music that the CD wasn't overly campy or kitschy (as theme mixes often are), and that I still listen to it occasionally even now. In fact, I listened to it the other day. It, along with a number of experiences I've had in the past two weeks at home in CO, has made me miss California even more.

So I thought I'd write up a little list of some of the (non-people) things I miss most about California--it should go without saying (although I suppose I'm saying it right now) that I miss the people I left behind in California.

Alright. With no further ado, here's what I'm missing most about California at present:

1) Falafel. There is one--I repeat ONE--place that sells falafel in the greater Colorado Springs metro area. What I wouldn't give for some falafel, fresh pita and minty lemonade from Holy Land right about now.
2) Produce that actually tastes like something. I had forgotten that produce, by the time it makes its way to the middle of the country, has lost both its flavor and texture, and thus everything tastes. . . .sort of mealy and watered down. I didn't really appreciate tomatoes (or most vegetables, for that matter) until I moved to California.
3) Recycling. In fact, I miss the whole Reduce/Reuse/Recycle concept. It hasn't quite made it here yet. I went to an ice cream place the other day where they gave me my scoop in a styrofoam cup. I couldn't even enjoy the ice cream because I felt so guilty about the damn cup. This is what happens when you get used to cups (and spoons) being made out of recycled materials, and knowing that if you throw it away, it WILL biodegrade.
4) Independent movie theatres and "arty" movies. Landmark cinemas, how I miss thee. And the Parkway: I miss you too. I'd pretty much kill to see something with subtitles right now. Or that starred Parker Posey. I still read the SF Chronicle's movie reviews every Friday. It's really just an exercise in masochism, because all it accomplishes is to remind me of all the movies I wish I was watching but that will never make it to Colorado, much less Colorado Springs.
5) The ocean. Water in general, I suppose. Colorado doesn't have much in the way of water. Even though I'm not a big beachy person, I miss the smell of the ocean, the sound of waves. Hell, I even miss the crazy seagulls who try to shit all over you.

But just because I don't want to sound like an ungrateful wretch, I'm gonna add one thing I've missed about Colorado that I'm happy to be near again: mountains. Big-ass, craggy, timberline-sporting mountains. Because if it doesn't have a timberline, kids, it's just not a mountain; it's a really big hill. I suspect that being born and raised at the foot of a mountain that shoots up more than 8,000 feet has made me into a mountain snob, but so it goes. For the next few weeks, I'll be trying to get my fill of mountains, while I hope and pray that in Washington D.C., it's possible to find a tomato that actually tastes like tomato, and that someone, somewhere, might be willing to compost the part that I don't manage to eat.

Port of Oakland, deconstructed

When I decided that I was leaving the Bay Area, I made a list of things I wanted to make sure to do before I left. Some of the items on the list involved re-visiting old favorites; some were new things I'd always meant to do but hadn't ever gotten around to. High up on the list was taking a boat tour of the Port of Oakland. I have a deep and slightly obsessive fascination with the Port and had always wanted to go on the tour, but the part where they only run the tours during the summer on weekdays at ten in the morning made it challenging, given that whole job thing.


But with a departure date set and a more flexible work schedule made possible by temping (and my temp placement's complete adoration of me--heehee!), I was determined to go. I called for reservations, argued my way off of a waiting list, told the movers that I was sorry, but they just could not show up for my stuff on that particular morning, and cleared my work schedule--nothing was getting between me and the Port of Oakland.

You know how sometimes, you build things up in your head until there is no way they could possibly meet your inflated expectations?

Definitely not the case with the Port of Oakland boat tour.

It was fascinating and informative and beautiful and great. So great, in fact, that I found myself rejecting the advances of a very charming Romanian man (the only other person on the boat even close to my age--be warned: this is a tour that is overrun by 6 year olds in day care and 85 year old retirees) because he was trying to flirt with me while the tour guide was talking: "So, beautiful lady," he said to me, "what brings you here on this lovely day?" "I'm sorry," I replied, "I'm sure you're very nice, but I really just want to learn about the Port."


And learn I did. I learned that if you stacked the containers on a ship end to end, they would stretch 17 miles. I learned that enough containers come through the port every year to reach from Oakland to South Korea. I learned they had to deepen the estuary leading into the Port by 35 feet to be able to fit the newer Panamex container ships (and I learned that a Panamex container ship was designed to be exactly as large as possible to fit through the Panama canal). I learned that Alameda wasn't always an island, and that they dug the channel between Alameda and Oakland in the 19th century. I learned that Alameda used to be the headquarters for Skippy peanut butter and cornnuts. I learned that there is a gigantic gun hidden in one of the pylons of the Bay Bridge, in case enemy combatants in WWII ever attacked the Bay Area. And my awe and obsession with the Port is more intense than ever.

People often ask me why I'm so interested in the Port. There's a two part answer: 1) I think the Port is beautiful and enthralling. It's definitely not pretty, but there is something striking and yes, beautiful--in an urban, industrial way--about the bold lines of the cranes, the way the light catches them at sunset, the way they glow eerily amber after dark. They look like post-modern trojan horses, and it's easy for me to see how they could inspire creative flights of fancy (just ask George Lucas!) 2) Shipping has existed in a relatively unchanged way for thousands of years. We live in such a modern, fast-paced, technologically-advanced world, and yet we still depend on boats--ON BOATS--to move our goods around the world. When you think about the amount of stuff that we sell and consume every year--every day--and it all comes into and out of a Port somewhere . This amazes and humbles me every time I think about it. My only regret is that it took so long to learn more about it. For all of you left in the Bay Area, I highly HIGHLY recommend going on the boat tour. If you don't come to share my obsession, you'll at least be better situated to make fun of it, no?

Closure

Honestly, the last thing I wanted to do today was blog. It's hot, I'm running on two hours of sleep and I've spent the last 13 hours cleaning, packing and moving. (Moving definitely sucks, but moving by yourself is SO much worse.) But I couldn't bear the thought that a whole month would pass without me writing anything, especially when I have tons of things I want to/should blog about: the Port of Oakland boat tour I went on last week, my run-in with a psychotic seagull earlier this week, the insanity (mostly in a good way) that has been my last week in the Bay Area, and most especially, my thoughts on leaving.

Because as soon as I finish writing this blog, I'll pack up my computer, stick it in the car with all the rest of my crap, and head out. Crazy. And sad. And still completely unfathomable. Even though I am sitting in an apartment with literally nothing in it, even though I have met the woman who is moving into my apartment tomorrow, even though I've been saying goodbye to old friends and sadly admitting the impossibility of maintaining relationships with people I just met, I still don't think my head really gets that I'm leaving Oakland--the place I've called home for 5 years--and probably won't be back as anything but a visitor for a long, long time.

I think it will probably hurt like hell when I finally realize that truth.

And then the stupid

So here's the dumbest thing I've been asked to remove from the website since I started working there:

Why, you ask? Because--and this is a direct quote from the email--"he has no clothes on and thats my bad report." It's a cat. It's a FUCKING cat. And you're a 35 year old man who should really have something better to be concerned with.

Grrr. Have I mentioned how this job is making me hate people? Because it kind of is.

First the Bizarre

I'm really coming to hate this job I have where I remove inappropriate content from a website. More on that in my next post. For now, I'm just gonna post this link to one of the stranger things I've been asked to remove lately. I can't help but think that the person who came up with this is well on their way to being a sociopath.

Goal-Setting

I'm about to leave the Bay Area and start a new life, so it seems like as good a time as any to make some goals. So far, I just have one:

The next guy I get involved with will be physically and emotionally available. I think it will be a nice change of pace.

Drumroll Please

Last summer, while suffering through the first pains of my quarterlife crisis, I complained to a friend that I felt really overwhelmed by the number of options I had to pick from to determine what I wanted my life to look like: What to do? where to live? I said that making a decision felt really scary, because by deciding you had to turn your back on all the other options, and what if I chose poorly?

He said I needed to change my perspective on decision making. He said he thought about it like swimming. When you're out in the open water trying to swim, it can be really hard to get anywhere, because you have nothing to push off of. But once you had a limit--made a decision, if you will--like a wall in a swimming pool, you could push off it and get so much further.

He's right. As much pondering and deliberating as I've done in the past few months, once I made the big decision everything else seems to be falling--easily and not at all scarily--into place.

So with no further ado, as of August of 2007, I will be starting my MFA in Film and Electronic Media at American University in Washington, D.C. They have a great documentary program, really accomplished faculty, and they threw quite a bit of money at me--so all really good things. I'm excited. I'm nervous. I'm sad to be leaving. But we can talk more about those some other time. For now, I'm just excited to finally be pushing off the side of the pool!

Who needs a drink? I do. Yes, I definitely do.

After a week of worrying about falling down an open drain, my third bad thing finally happened. While driving to the REI this afternoon, I got into a car accident when a woman ran a red light and I smashed into the side of her car. The impact of the collision literally tore the whole front end off my car, and took a good chunk off the back end of hers (including her tire). I think we're both really lucky that the accident wasn't any worse, and that neither of us was injured.

The other (very small) bright side of this wretched day is that the first responder to the accident was a ridiculously hot fireman from the station around the corner. Have we discussed that I have a thing for firemen? I think if I hadn't been in complete shock, I definitely would have tried to flirt with him. My friend Abby thinks I should drop by the fire station with some baked goods and say thank you. I think this would be a good idea if 1) I owned the ingredients to make baked goods, 2) I was actually capable of making baked goods, and 3) I weren't sure that I would feel like a complete jackass doing something like that.

Oh well. Like I said, at least he was a small bright side to what has otherwise been a kind of traumatic afternoon.

I don't know what to do

Large life decisions MUST be made this weekend. And I really don't know what to do.

That's really all I have to say about that.

Inappropriate?

More often than not, when users of this social networking website email me and tell me that a photo is inappropriate, it is clearly, completely and indisputably inappropriate (i.e., it's a picture of a naked woman, or people having sex, or someone flipping the bird). But sometimes, the images marked inappropriate look something like this:


This one included the caption "Jesus stays at the _____."

Also in threes

So I never did fall down an open drain or anything else bad, but something else has happened in threes which has left me with quite the (good kind of) dilemma:

1) Received acceptance letter from Emerson College in Boston
2) Received acceptance letter from American University in Washington, D.C.
3) Received acceptance e-mail (that I almost deleted because it was in my spam box) from Westminster University in London.

And now the part where I have to figure out where I'm going and what, exactly I'm doing. (Followed shortly be figuring out how, exactly, I'm paying for it.)

In threes

My friend Jess reminded me today that things--both good and bad--tend to happen in threes. This has me a little on edge. Why, you ask?

Last night, as my friend Emily and I were driving to our weekly America's Next Top Model party, she ran out of gas right as we crested this hill. I got out of the car and pushed and she steered us into a not-so-crowded intersection where we "parked" the car while she went to go find a gas station.

Then, this afternoon at work, I accidentally got myself locked in a bathroom stall. The lock fell apart when I went to open the door, leaving me stuck in the stall. After a few minutes of frantically trying to put it back together, I started pondering whether I would rather try to climb over the top of the stall door or crawl under the bottom. (I had forgotten that I had a third option--to karate kick that door open!). Thankfully, before I was reduced to actually crawling on a nasty bathroom floor, someone came into the bathroom and helped me unlock the door.

But yeah, what with the gas and the bathroom door, I'm now a little nervous about what accident #3 will be. I've been keeping my eyes open for drains with the manhole covers missing and I'm being extra-especially careful on stairs, but you never know when bad luck is gonna getcha!

Paradox

This website job is wacky, and just keeps getting wackier. Yesterday, I responded to a 13 year old user and explained that she had been flagged for telling someone to go "suck some d--k" and for calling another user a "f---ing c--t,". Then when I went to look at her profile page, I found a profile covered with cuddly pictures of puppies, kittens and other baby animals, and a self-professed love for the Disney Channel staples "Hannah Montana" and "High School Musical." How is it that someone who is--according to her tastes in movies and her interests--still a little girl be the same person who's talking about sex and calling other people words that I won't even print? Crazy. I'm thanking the heavens for not making me a teenager today--I think it must be really hard.

Say What?

This is an actual message I received from a user of the website that I monitor. And yes, he is a native English speaker (from England), although you probably wouldn't guess it:

"ello erm can u or who every owns dis site plz rise the amount of friends u can have because i got max n i got ldz of other ppl who wnt 2 ad me"

I actually got an even more incoherent and cryptic message back when I replied to the above, but silly me--I forgot to save it. So much for the Queen's English--I doubt she'd understand a damn word these fools say.

Happy Birthday to Rudy

Today was our dog Rudy's 17th birthday, which is pretty amazing. Even for a small dog, that's impressive, and considering he's had multiple back surgeries it's amazing he's lasted as long as he has.

To celebrate such longevity, my parents went all out. (Actually, that's not true. They really went all out last year--with a party, gifts, guests, and a cake with Rudy's picture airbrushed on to the top. This year was much more moderate.) Along with the giant birthday card, birthday treats and a new collar, the whole family--Mom, Dad, and three dogs--made a trip to the local Sonic drive through, where all the pups got to partake of their very favorite "people food" treat: Tater Tots. Yum.

Rudy puts up with the indignity of the Elmo party hat.

How can you not think this is the cutest dog ever?

Holy Crap!

I returned home from my fun (if chilly) Easter vacation to find a very large white envelope—not a small, skinny envelope—with Emerson College’s logo waiting for me. Even before I opened it, I knew what it was: an acceptance letter.

Holy Crap! An acceptance letter!

It’s a crazy thing. 6 months ago, I was getting ready to leave EBASE and searching for the next job in what I presumed would be my ongoing career in the progressive non-profit world. Thank God for the woman who—in the middle of an interview—challenged me on whether that line of work was really making me happy.
Upon reflection, I had to admit that it wasn’t, that it never had, and that I’d better figure out what would.

I’m generally not much for making spur-of-the-moment decisions and acting on them. I’m more of a deliberator, and I can ponder a course of action for weeks, months (hell, even years) before I’ll feel ready to act on it.

So it was somewhat out of character that less than a week after that interview, I had decided to ignore 5 years of non-profit work experience, a year of career counseling, and possibly even my basic common sense to pursue something I’d always loved: movies. And I decided that if I was going to pursue something I loved, I wasn’t just going to be a “professional appreciator” of movies; I was going to try making them. Because I firmly believe if you’re going to take leave of common sense and un-do 5 years of work experience, you should go for the big dream, and not half-ass it.

So in a matter of weeks, I memorized 4000 vocab words, re-learned 9 years of math, took the GREs, cranked out grad school applications and harassed my former co-workers and professors to speed-write letters of recommendation. And then I waited. I talked about “if” I got into grad school, what I would do.

And now suddenly, the “if” is a “when.” Something that was only a crazy pipedream two months ago is now much more real. And now I have to face the scary tough questions: will I be good at it? Will I succeed at it? Is this the right route—the best route—to get where I want to go?

But as scary as all of those questions seem, I’m excited to get to answer them. Scary is definitely better than safe, if safe means not ever being happy in what I’m doing.

I'm dreaming of a white. . . Easter?

I went home for Easter this year, to spend some time with my parents, celebrate my dog Rudy's 17th birthday, and to hang out with my uncle and his new "lady friend" who were coming to town. Behind Valentine's Day, Easter is my favorite holiday of the year (because I interpret it solely as a holiday celebrating the coming of spring--my favorite season), and I was really looking forward to spending some time in the Colorado sunshine.

One small problem with this plan: in the 9 years since I've lived at home, I had forgotten that the front range of Colorado is infamous for its dastardly shoulder season weather. While you could go practically all winter enjoying sunshine, mild temperatures and barely a flake of snow,
October and April are inevitably freezing cold and marked by blizzards.

Somewhere in the time away from home, I had forgotten how I never got to trick-or-treat without the protection of a ski jacket and hat. I had forgotten that we got more snow days in April than all the other months combined. And I had forgotten that Colorado does not, in fact, have a springtime. It goes straight from winter to summer, almost literally overnight.

A case in point: this year, it snowed all Easter weekend. When we finished Easter dinner on Sunday, it was 25 degrees outside and there was probably about an inch of snow on the grass in our yard. The following morning when I woke up--less than 24 hours later--all of the snow had melted and the temperature was creeping into the 70's.

Not exactly what I was expecting for my Easter vacation, but we still managed to have a good time.

My uncle and his "lady friend," enjoying Easter in Colorado

Our house, just prior to the heaviest of the snowfall.

This Poor Dog

I think I've probably mentioned that my parents have a relatively new dog named Sammy. He's kind of a weird dog--he's completely afraid of the dark and he does this slightly creepy staring thing where he doesn't move his head, but his eyes still follow you all around the room. Jokingly, my parents always refer to him as being "a poor, pathetic thing." And there is something slightly sad about him. But overall, he's a good dog and we all love him.

I think, however, that our love could be called into question by a recent purchase my mom made. There have been some pretty cold days in the last month or two, and so my mom bought sweaters for the dogs. I always think clothes on dogs look a little goofy, but the sweater she bought for poor Sammy takes goofy to a whole new level:

This sweater my mom bought must have been made for a 1970's dog--it's all burnt sienna and brown and puke-y green colored stripes--but I doubt it would have looked good even then. It makes Sammy look like a gigantic pyschedelic caterpillar, and if people didn't think he was pathetic before, they definitely will now. I hope the weather stays nice until I have a chance to burn this horrible sweater and get him a better one.

The Upside

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Lessons Learned

Here's what I've learned so far from my job dealing with inappropriate content on the social networking website:

1) Inevitably, when men older than 30 are flagged for inappropriate behavior, it's because they're spamming. And specifically, because they're telling all the sweet young things on the site how hot they are, and asking if they'd like to be friends. (Although about half the time, what they're asking is much, much worse than that.)

2) Just like you can guarantee that the people you'll see at a nude beach are the ones you'd least like to see naked, you can also guarantee that the men who feel the need to post pictures of their penises have the least to be showing off. (Not that I condone anyone posting pictures of their penis. Or any other body parts that are regularly covered with clothing, for that matter.)

3) You really can do amazing things with Photoshop these days. In the past two days, I've seen fairly convincing "naked" shots of Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, and Angelina Jolie.

4) There are more naked pictures of Carmen Electra and Pamela Anderson than there are stars in the sky.

5) Disney's "High School Musical" is quite possible THE most annoying TV movie ever made. (And considering it's up against every TV movie that's ever been shown on Lifetime, I'd say that's quite an accomplishment.)

6) There are more people out there upset about a video of two hipster boys making out to emo music than there are people upset about the naked photos of Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. (I personally choose to be upset by the emo music--not the making out. I can't stand all these whiny hipsters crying about their feelings.)

7) I really need to think about a different job. This one makes me cranky.

If Children Really Are Our Future, Then We're Completely F***ed

Yes, I know. It's a pessimistic title. But in the last two weeks, my faith in humanity (especially that portion of humanity that is younger than me) has been severely eroded.

You see, I just recently started yet another random part time job, to complement the work with the bitchy blond girls (who now seem more dumb and annoying than actually bitchy) and the occasional temp gig I pick up. My new part-time job is working for a social networking website, kind of like MySpace but not. I'm not going to name names.

My job is two-fold. First, I remove images and videos that are inappropriate (i.e., pornographic, or containing nudity, excessive violence, or foul language). Secondly, I respond to users who want to know why they've been flagged for inappropriate behavior. So basically, I look up all the things they've been flagged for and summarize for them why they were flagged.

I've only been doing this for two weeks, and I am already completely appalled and horrified. These kids (because I'm sure the average age of the site can't be more than 15 or 16) are so mean to each other. They gang up on each other. They say horrible, nasty things to each other. I've never seen so much swearing, and sexually explicit (and often violent) language, and racial slurs, and straight out hate speech.

And then there's the spelling and grammar. If the above weren't appalling enough, then I'm also faced with the fact that apparently, no one under the age of 20 knows how to spell, or how to use a comma or a period, or voice a thought that is even remotely coherent. And here I had hoped that the education system wasn't as defunct as I feared. . . .

When I was in school, we studied political philosophy. I don't remember much about it, honestly, but I remember having to read Thomas Hobbes. I always thought that Thomas Hobbes seemed like such a gloomy pessimist--the premise of his book The Leviathan is, after all, that men are inherently brutish and bent on destroying one another. That seemed kind of bleak when I was 20 years old.

But now, after only 2 weeks of managing inappropriate user content, I think Thomas Hobbes nailed it on the head. If the kids on this website are any indication, then the life of man (and woman) is indeed "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Violent Tendencies, Manifesting as Dreams

I had a dream last night about getting into a full-on bitch fight with one of the blond girls from my office. There was slapping and hair-pulling (and she was doing a lot of crying) and then I got her into a headlock. Oh, and we were in an airport and Lindsay Lohan (pre-needing rehab LiLo, with red hair and a little bit of meat on her bones) was there too.

I'm pretty clear on what this all means. The blond girl in the dream is the queen bitch blond girl from my office. All of the rest of them I have decided are really nothing more than benignly annoying but mostly nice, but this one is trouble. She gives me this fakey-fake smile while simultaneously shooting daggers with her eyes, and she always has some sort of passive-agressively snotty comment for me. Who knows what I ever did that's got her panties all up in a twist, but it ever came down to an actual fight, I would definitely win. And it wouldn't be because I was pulling her hair.

Angel Island

Because it would be completely criminal not to take advantage of the kind of weather we're having here in the Bay Area, I convinced my friend Helen that we were both in need of a little day trip to my favorite (not so touristy) tourist spot in the whole area: Angel Island.

The island has had quite a history, serving as the "Ellis Island of the West" for incoming Chinese immigrants in the early 1900's, holding people while immigration officials determined whether they had a legitimate right to enter the country. Later it was used as a processing center of German and Japanese prisoners of war during World War II.

Besides being historically interesting, the island is also just plain gorgeous! If you hike to the top of the island's Mt. Livermore on a clear day (as we did), you have an amazing 360 degree view of the Bay Area. While at the top, Helen and I took the time to enjoy a fantastic picnic lunch, complete with a bottle of red wine. We felt a little sheepish about boozing it up in the middle of a hike until the guys sitting next to us busted out their own bottle of wine. And a bottle tequila which they had already mixed with Margarita mix. And 4 boxes of girl Scout cookies. No water, and no real food of any kind, but they were definitely ready to drink. At least Helen and I managed to cover all of the food groups and brought water!

Enduring Love for the Bay Area, or Why Global Warming's Not So Bad

I know I shouldn't say that. Global warming is terrible, but let's just discuss for a moment, the following:

1) It is March 9th.
2) If I look out my window, I can see (and smell) cherry blossom trees, daffodils and tulips in bloom.
3) The temperature for the next 7 days will be 67, 72, 75, 72, 76, 78 and 75. With no rain. (And for anyone who suffered through the two straight months of rain last year, you know why I think this is awesome.)

I can't tell you how happy I am not to be stuck in ice storms or blizzards or in places where the windchill might still drop the temperature below zero. I can't tell you how happy I am that I live in a place that is already in the middle of spring. When it's June and it's unusually hot and we haven't gotten enough water and everything's setting on fire, I will be sad. But for right now, all I want to do (and all I plan to do) is spend as much time outside in it as is humanly possible. Seriously. I might start camping out on my balcony.

Holy Crap

Last night, something not that unusual for the Bay Area happened: we had an earthquake. We live on a fault line, so that's really not that unexpected. Apparently, there are earthquakes practically every day; it's just rare (every few months or so) that one is big enough that you actually feel it.

So here's why last night's earthquake freaks me out:

A) It's the second one I've felt in a little more than a week.

B) It was pretty big.

Now, it wasn't huge. No one was injured, and there was no major property damage reported. But it lasted longer than any earthquake I've felt yet--a good 15 seconds, while most just last a second or two--and it was strong enough that it actually knocked a picture off my wall.

I know earthquakes aren't like hurricanes or blizzards. It's not like you can see them coming. It's not like there are signs that one is approaching. I know that more frequent small earthquakes does not necessarily mean that a big one is coming. But it still gave me pause. Because a big one is coming, eventually. We all know that. And I just hope to hell I'm either not here, or ready, when it does.

I had a friend who was the earthquake safety manager (or some such title--I don't quite remember) for her floor at work. She had a big checklist of necessary supplies that she had to make sure they had in case the big one hit. One of the supplies was giant-sized industrial strength garbage bags. When I asked her what those were for, she told me they were for wrapping up dead bodies so they wouldn't rot in the open and contaminate the air. Shit. I'm not even kidding about that.

Hey Carrie, want to send me that list of earthquake supplies? Might be time to stock up. And I can't tell you how much I'm kicking myself for never watching the earthquake safety video that was a permanent part of my first apartment in Oakland--it was the only video in the whole apartment and had been for years. And not a single one of us watched the damn thing.

What's dorkier?

In an effort to own my inner dork, I offer this story:

From 8th grade through 12th grade, I annually attended the Colorado Mathematical Olympiad. Math geeks from all over the state showed up to sit in a room for 4 hours and attempt to answer 6 ridiculously hard math problems. They were so hard that if you managed to get even one right, or you showed your work and they thought you were on the right track to an answer, it was possible that you could swing an honorable mention in the awards ceremony.

I admit that going to the Math Olympiad is dorky. But how's this for dorkier? In all the years I attended, I never even came close to being able to answer any of the questions. I would play at answering them, but really, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. So my senior year, after brief attempts to work out answers to the questions, I decided instead to while away the rest of the test time constructing poems about how hard the math problems were, and why.

Happily, this labor of artistic love was recognized and rewarded by the Olympiad judges when they awarded me the 1997 prize for best literary achievement on the math test.

And just to show how little these die-hard math geeks value artistic vision and inspiration, while the winners of the math test received really nice graphing calculators and scholarships, I won a cheapo pen and a notepad of paper. No wonder the expression is starving artists, not starving mathematicians.

A Public Service Announcement

I hope I'm not the only one who didn't already know this, but apparently starting this year, Daylight Savings Time is going to be about a month longer. It seems that two years ago, Congress passed a law (a measure? a decree? a something.) that says we'll be springing ahead on the second Sunday of March and springing back the first Sunday in November, instead of springing in April and falling in October.

I am very excited about this, as it means it'll be getting lighter sooner and staying light longer. I don't understand why Congress didn't do this years ago, and as long as we're on it, I don't understand why we ever go off Daylight savings at all. What is the point of ever being in a period of time that should rightfully be called Daylight wastings?

But this springing forward thing is not all fun and games and light and joy, I'll have you know. According to the IT people at my new job's headquarters, this could be the Y2K problem of 2007--except, you know, that maybe this time it won't just be a bunch of hype about computers exploding because they can't deal with rolling over from 99 to 00. The IT people are worried, and I would say rightfully so, because computer programs are set to spring and fall automatically in April and October, not March and November!

They are especially fearful of the havoc that will be wrought by the Calendar function in Microsoft Outlook. There is apparently a distinct possibility that if people aren't careful, for those three weeks everyone in America could be showing up for all of their previously scheduled appointments and conference calls an hour late. Or early. Or something. This could destroy our economy. It is not to be taken lightly. You must be prepared. Make sure to double check the time of your appointments. Or better yet, start writing them down. On paper. With a pen. It's crazy, but it just might save us all.

Weirdest. Valentine's Day. Ever.

Have no fear kids. Despite the rough start my Valentine's Day got off to (damn blond girls and their damn flower-sending boyfriends), as always, it turned out to be a great day.

So what exactly did I get up to that made my Valentine's Day so great?

I went to a MASS PILLOWFIGHT.

Yeah, you read that right. Josh and his friends Jessica, Dina and Emily and I went to a mass pillowfight in downtown San Francisco last night, with at least 500 other people. As I drank coffee and waited for my friends in the hour leading up to the fight, I watched as hipsters bearing pillows streamed into the Financial District--and investment bankers wearing suits eyed them with fear and moved quickly away.

And rightfully so, because at 6:00 on the nose, the take-no-prisoners pillowfighting began in earnest. Everywhere you looked, people were swinging pillows. Some wore costumes. Some wore helmets. Some wore their pajamas. One guy with Braveheart-style facepaint let out a large growl everytime he tried to hit me with his pillow.

Cheers of delight went out as one-by-one, pillows exploded and released their feathers into the night air, for it was surely the closest San Francisco will ever get to anything that looks like a blizzard.

The fight went on for more than hour. We, however, did not last that long. After 30 minutes of whacking people with pillows, we were tired, dizzy and in need of food. So you know what's almost as awesome as having a pillow fight in public? Leaving the pillow fight and trying to look like a group of respectable adults while covered in feathers and toting pillows around under your arms. I've gotta say: it kind of undermines any attempts you make to be perceived as mature.

So we trudged through the Financial District to Chinatown, in search of Chinese food from the brightest, most fluorescent and tacky-looking restaurant we could find. Once there, we ordered salt and pepper squid (yum) and something called "bean sprouts with salty fish." Now, you know you've ordered well when they waitress feels the need to say "Are you sure? Do you even know what salty fish is?" Apparently she didn't think the white kids could take it, but after a moment of uncertainty, we went ahead with the salty fish, and lived to tell the tale. (It was actually very good. And, not so surprisngly, rather salty.)

We rounded out the night with gelato (from a store that had at least 15 different flavors of chocolate gelato. That's my kind of store). Overall, it was a pretty good night. In fact, the only thing I can think of that would have made it better would have been a mass nap before the pillow fight. We were, after all, already carrying pillows.

Oh, and one last thing. My parents know I love Valentine's Day, and they support my love for the holiday. My parents have also always been known for the wierd and random things they like to send me in the mail. (Does anyone else remember the dancing Snoopy doll wearing the sorcerer's outfit?) These two things came together perfectly this year, when the UPS man delivered an enormous box to me from my parents. I opened it to find that they had sent me a 3 and a half foot long stuffed dog, with "I love you this much!" embroidered on his side.

If the only Valentine you're gonna get is going to be from your parents, then at least it should be a really good one. Good work, mom and dad!

The pictures of the pillowfight are courtesy of Scott Beale/Laughing Squid.

Also, here's a link to the little blurb in the Chronicle about the pillowfight.

That's Disgusting

What was the first thing I read on MSNBC this morning?

This article about how a pregnancy counseling center asked students to share a piece of chewed gum to demonstrate how STDs are spread.

Dude--don't they know that they might have just given an entire sex-ed class mono?

My Valentine's Day Post

Normally, I love Valentine's Day. But I'm just generally kind of grumpy this week and not yet in the mood to love Valentine's Day (26 years of being single and without a Valentine other than your parents will eventually wear you down), so you'll have to forgive my lack of enthusiasm about a holiday so steadfastly focused (whether it needs to be or not) on romantic love. It's early still, though, so I'm hoping I'll warm up to it.

Here's what I've got: my friend Sophie sent me the link to a blog called Post Secret, which has a bunch of postcards people have sent in about Valentine's Day. Some of them are funny. Some of them are sad. Most of them I could totally relate to, so I'm sharing it with you.

New Job

Today was my first day at my new, long-term temp gig. (It's keeping me relatively gainfully employed until the end of May.) I'm not going to name names, but I'm helping a large health-oriented non-profit plan a big fundraising event. Here are a few observations about my new place of employment.

1) Because this is a health-oriented organization, there is a chart on one wall where people are supposed to keep track of how much exercise they get. Does the person who fills their line of the chart first get a prize? I haven't discovered yet. If they do, and they allow temps to play, I'm gonna kick some serious butt.

2) Again, because this is a health-oriented organization, there are signs up everywhere about healthy snack choices you can make, ways to beat fatigue without turning to caffeine, and positive ways to deal with stress. I find this a little odd. Whose job was it, I wonder, to find these signs and post them? Do they switch them up, or have these same signs been up for years?

3) In an effort to promote health and wellness amongst the staff, someone keeps a supply of healthy snacks on hand, like fresh fruit and air-popped popcorn. This may be the only office job I ever have where I don't end up worrying that I'll gain weight from all the candy, donuts and birthday cake. A dollar says that when these people have breakfast meetings, someone brings in whole-grain cereal and low-fat milk, not muffins and croissants.

4) Of the staff of 15 people or so, ALL of them are women. I know that there is a disproportionately high number of women who end up in the non-profit field, but I still find this a bit strange. Not a single guy? In any position?

5) Of the women on staff, about half are older women who are clearly married (or partnered up) with kids. And then the other half are all hot, skinny, blond girls. And then one angry-looking hipster girl with an asymetrical haircut and hot pink "highlights." I can't help but wonder how she feels about working in an office of Barbie dolls, because I personally find it a bit disconcerting. They all seem nice but a little too peppy for me. (I wonder if they did Team in Training?) And I can't tell any of them apart. Oh, and they're bringing up all sorts of feelings of inadequacy in me. I suspect that working around a million skinny hot blond chicks will do that to you.

So that's Day 1. Will I unravel the mysteries of the office? Who has a secret stash of M & Ms? What's the prize for getting the most exercise, and how many people on staff are lying about it? And most importantly, where are they hiding all the men and normal-looking brunettes and red-heads?

So Cute

I normally don't post blogs about things I think are cute. But my mom just sent me this picture of our puppies, and they're way, way too adorable not to want to show off.


This is Casey, Sammy and Rudy (who's turning 17 in April--I can't imagine what kind of party will top last year!)

For men: some guidelines for being a good lead

I have been taking tango classes fairly regulary for several months now. And from those several months' experience, I have a few observations:

Gentlemen: I understand that having to lead kind of sucks. Ultimately, you are responsible for whether or not we look like crap on the dance floor, and I am really just following along. I can see that there's some pressure in constantly having to figure out what we're going to do next.

But here's the thing. If I were to compare the thousands of years of oppression and second-class citizen status that women have suffered to you having to decide what we're doing on the dance floor, it's obvious who got the worse end of the deal.

So suck it up and learn how to lead already. Take a cue from our president and be a "decider." Your hand is strategically located on my back so you can push me around a little bit, and let me know what it is you want me to do. Because I'm not a mind reader. I don't just magically know what step you want to do next, and I'm really tired of apologizing for the times I don't do what you're doing because I had absolutely no idea what it was you were going to do.

Also, remember that you're the one who's supposed to be steering. Generally, I'm the one going backwards, and I can't see what we may or may not be about to run into. So it's your job to keep us both from running into anything--please don't just plow ahead into that other couple because they happen to be where you were planning on leading me. Just lead me somewhere else instead.

And while I am sure you find it fun to sway back and forth and then spin me around, doing that isn't teaching either of us a damn thing about floorcraft or the actual tango steps. I got my fill of swaying and spinning at my prom. Now, I am actually trying to learn something and I would appreciate if you could at least attempt some tango steps, even if they're very basic ones.

One last thing. I know that I am tall. And I realize that often means I'm taller than you, and we're dancing in a fairly close embrace. That still does not make it acceptable for you to stare at my chest while we dance. If you do it again, I will slap you.

Now, with those guidelines, I know we'll have a lovely time dancing the tango.

To Do List

My to do list for the weekend:

Teach a white guy how to salsa. Check.

Play tourguide to my friend Sejal who very spontaneously showed up in town. Check.

Enjoy the unseasonably warm and dry and sunshine-y weather. Check.

Get ignored by Seamus O'Malley, the taciturn bartender at Johnny Foleys. Check. (Yeah. I totally made up that name for him.)

Make my obligatory Irish friend of the week. Check.

Kick ass on the GRE's. Check and Double Check.

All around, I'd say it was a very productive weekend.

I always knew clowns were scary. . .

I'm taking the GRE on Saturday, and I've been very methodically working my way through one of those GRE prep books so that I don't mess it up completely. Near the end of the book, they have a list of the 300 words that most often end up on the GRE, along with definitions and a sentence using the word, so you have the context. Here is my personal favorite:

ENGENDER: To Produce, cause, or bring about

His fear and hatred of clowns was ENGENDERED when he witnessed the death of his father at the hands of a clown.


WHAT? What the hell kind of circus has this GRE sentence-writer been going to?

Blogging as procrastination

I know, I know. It's been too long. When even my parents start complaining about having to look at the same craigslist blog post for almost a month, I know it's time to stop being lazy and start blogging. And it helps that I have tons of other things that I should be doing. So of course I'd rather blog.

And it's not like I haven't had things to blog about. There's been lots to blog about: funny, strange people I've met, crazy unfoldings in my life path, major life decisions, etc.

So with no further ado, some highlights of the last month:

1) My friends Darren and Miranda took me to the Alley, got me super drunk and managed to get me to sing, by myself, in public. Twice. Anyone who knows me well can tell you that at the top of the list of things I am terrified to do is sing in public by myself. So the fact that I did it twice is an indication of just how drunk I was. And you know how they say that the anticipation of the scary thing is worse than the actual thing? It's a load of crap. The singing was scary, and not just for the people who had to listen. That will not be happening ever again.

2) Met a guy in a bar named Sean (from now on, he'll be referenced as Crazy Sean). Crazy Sean knows every bartender and every bar regular in every dive bar in Oakland, he has nothing but beer and cat food in his kitchen (literally. Not even condiments), and he thinks it'll be fun for us to go hang-gliding and then get grills from the Gold Teeth Master on Broadway in downtown Oakland. I'm looking forward to it.

3) I've decided that I'm done with the progressive non-profit/activist world (at least as a profession), because frankly, I've never really enjoyed it and I think I got into it for the wrong reasons. Some people take jobs they hate because they feel they have to make money. I think I've been taking jobs I hate because of white guilt and a misguided notion that I could and should save the world. The outcome is the same though--being stuck and miserable in a job I don't enjoy, unable and unwilling to envision a future that I could be happy with. And that's really no good--life is too short not to enjoy it.

4) So now that I've sunk 5 years into progressive activist work, what do I see myself doing? Um, not entirely sure yet. But it will involve pursuing something I love--writing, movies, travel--or some combination thereof. Maybe I'll make movies. Maybe I'll write about other people's movies. Maybe I'll take videos of other people traveling. I don't know. But I'm already excited about it. And that's something I haven't been able to say about work in a very long time.

5) Started doing temp work this past week. Wow. Being a receptionist is BO-RING. But heck, it pays the bills while I figure out what's next, so it'll do.

6) Met an Irishman named Peter at a football-watching party last weekend. He was visiting SF for a few days before continuing his world travels. As I was not yet working, I convinced him to let me show him my perfect SF day: the Exploratorium (this has been on my agenda with every guy I've dated and friend I've made in the last two years, and finally it got fulfilled!), the Golden Gate Bridge, Baker Beach at sunset, the Mission for burritos, a movie and a bar. Perfect. And I think Peter had a good time too. :-)

7) I've seen something like 7 movies in the theatre in the last 3 weeks. (It's Oscar time and I've got to get caught up!) Most of them have been fantastic, but also extremely violent. Seriously, I wish I'd been keeping a body count. What have I seen, you ask?
--Pan's Labyrinth
--Letters from Iwo Jima
--Children of Men
--The Last King of Scotland
--Volver
--The Good Shepherd
--Little Children

While I could rave about almost all of them (with the exception of The Good Shepherd, which I just wasn't in to), I'm giving a big thumbs up to Volver and Pan's Labyrinth. See them. They were amazing: resonant and beautifully made.

Et c'est tout, je crois. That's all I've got for the month of January. Sorry for the long delay, and I'll try to be better in the future.

Seen on "Best of. . . Craigslist"

This is why I love the Bay Area, Love BART, love craigslist and have a blog about awkward and funny things:

BART 24th-W. Oakland. You threw up on my dog. - w4m
Date: 2006-11-26, 4:35PM PST

I was hiding my new mutt puppy (Sam) in a very large bag. You got on at 24th/Mission reeking of stale booze. You sat next to me. You suddenly grabbed the bag containing Sam and vomited into it. Kudos on not dirtying the train, but I just spent the last hour desanitizing my dog with doggy shampoo. Thanks for the best BART ride of my life.