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.