This is really what me and my friends do for fun.

We are ahead of a trend. Or something.

A couple of months ago, at some random person's 11th (read: 44th; it was February 29th) birthday party somewhere in the depths of SOMA at like 4am, I commanded the friends I was with to "dance to the music in their head!" The DJ at this place was incredibly lame, and did not have the stuff we wanted them to play, and so I felt that this was the only solution. It was pretty sweet. Perhaps you had to be there. It was the weirdest crowd ever, in a dance studio that had been converted into a party locale. There were only about 40 people there, alcohol was for despite it being a private party, and there was a line for the bathroom (I suspect now because the bathroom was probably the hot spot, and perhaps there were lines in the bathroom as well as outside it). But we had a grand ol' time dancing to the music in our heads.

Then, in Belize, on the craziest night of the trip (the one that started with me and Justin "bonding" -- for the sake of research -- with this drunk 40-something Kentuckian at the pool bar at two in the afternoon), I was taking a little cat nap (ok, I was sleeping it off) when suddenly Dan woke me up and handed me an iPod. I was confused. What was going on? Why did I need this iPod? What was the point? I quickly realized that all of us had iPods! We were dancing to the music in our heads! This proceeded for quite some time, and I ended up ditching my iPod with its legit music and just shared headphones with Laurel (who, to be fair, was using my second iPod, what a yuppie I am, seriously). The thing you need to understand is, Laurel has ridiculous taste in music. Ridiculous in the sense that it is amazing and totally singular and specific to her. There are those of us who can tolerate it, and who even love it, but none of us could have originated it. I will at some point post a list of the songs that are on the "Laurel Party Mix," but until then just trust me: it's ridiculous.

The iPod party continued for some time. We ended up boarding the water taxi to town while still listening to the Laurel Party Mix. (The boys, I must admit, straightened up and did not listen to their music on the boat.) We fist-pumped the entire way there. At one point someone on the boat apparently made a judgy comment about "Where'd we learn those dance moves, Muhammad Ali?" (Or some other boxer, I am not sure.) I was in quite the aggressive mood that day (blame the rum punch), and so I responded with something like "Whatever, you don't even know, you couldn't understand," or perhaps something a little more colorful. Then someone remarked on what we were listening to (did I mention that we were singing out loud the entire time too? On a crowded boat flying alongside a Belizean coastline in the dark?). Either Laurel or I told them it was "the fucking Pet Shop Boys." (It really was.) This led to one of the top quotes from the trip: one passenger explaining to the other that the Pet Shop Boys were "a homosexual band from the 80s." Classic.

I will stop reminiscing now, except to say that after returning from San Pedro back to our resort, and after the best grilled cheese sandwich I've ever had in my life, we continued the iPod dance party. On the beach. In the wee hours of the morning. It was the strangest communion with nature and fellow man that I can really imagine. And Laurel fist-pumped so hard once that she jammed her elbow into my head. We are really, really cool.

And! This is the entire point of this post -- we are also apparently really trendy, without even realizing it, and possibly with less trendy music (although probably whatever Dan and Justin were listening to was way legit. I think James just listened to "La Isla Bonita" a lot, which I cannot blame him for since it's about the island we were staying on!). Seriously. There was a "silent rave" in New York recently.

Then, Dan's younger brother was in Sao Paulo and participated in a "Silent Disco."

This is apparently a large global trend and we totally did it before it was cool.

Thus concludes my delirium-induced self-indulgent blog post of the day. Also, I should clarify that the picture at the top of this post is one of the only ones from the iPod party in Belize. It doesn't show that all of us were participating. But it does indicate the awesomeness, if I do say so myself. You know, the haze, the warm glow, the blur, the headiness of it all. (UPDATE: I changed this photo from the original after consultation with Justin.)

P.S. Because this blog post would not be complete without another non sequitor (although at least it's not a parenthetical (damn)): "Today, we saw a junkyard dog attacking the bones of a rotisserie chicken." "Nature."

3191 Evenings

Also, to continue to beat a dead horse, 3191 is back, with EVENINGS this time. Go here.

This is my favorite one so far.

Rain

It's been raining and windy as hell all day, and there are a few big giant branches (they are at the size where I think they are technically "limbs") that have broken off and are lying in my street. But suddenly about five minutes ago the sky through my window just lit up and became this lovely sunrisey peach color, like, at sunset, because if you don't do it at sunset when would you, the sun is giving it its last shot to break through the clouds. It is losing, but it's losing in a lovely sad way.

Clearly I've been alone all day.

Sunset

Literally the best sunset I've ever seen. It was amazing... right when the sun dipped low to the water, all the people on the beach slowed and stopped their activities to watch it sink. The wet sand was blindingly reflective of the sky. And the sun wavered just on the horizon for what felt like minutes, while we watched it flare like explosions in the distance. And then suddenly, almost without me noticing it, the people on the beach started moving again and going back to their routines. It was pretty cool to see a beachful of people aligned to watch one event in nature, unconsciously bound together as witness.

Winter coming

Guess why I like this 3191:

I really hope they turn these into a book sometime. Two more recent good ones:

(here)

(here)

It's clear and cold and windy out and all the leaves are fallen on the ground after the rain last night. It's beautiful out. I don't know how to take advantage of it.

(3191)

More 3191s

I love these latest 3191s. I know I keep posting them and it feels like blog cheating but they are just too lovely.

Feathers

Lights & kitty

Moment of Zen

Ace bought me and Dan matching glass "log" candle holders for our birthdays. Sunday night in my exhausted state all I could really do was gaze at them. Our house can be quite lovely when low-lit. (You can just spot the succulent garden behind the candles.)

Tricked you!

So you thought I wasn't going to do it... that I wasn't going to make it through NaBloPoMo and I was going to fail on Day 2. As Bethany used to say, fooooo' youuuuu!

I admit, it's something of a miracle that I'm here on a Friday night, almost 9 o'clock, and I'm sitting alone in my empty house writing instead of out doing something mildly self-destructive. But here I am! Dan is out at a play, and Justin is in LA. If either of them were here I'm sure I'd end up doing something non-solitary, but it's probably good for me. I'm considering this night in a birthday gift to myself. The gift of rest and reflection.

I recently finished "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," which came to me via a recommendation and loan from Laurel. She told me it was reminiscent of our lives and I think it kind of is, in many ways but not all. The book is about a guy who recently graduated from college in Pittsburgh and finds himself suddenly friends with a new crowd over the summer, and if you boil it down to the essentials, it's about friendship and that kind of madness that affects you when you are surrounded by people you admire so much it's almost painful. In that sense, it reflects where I am now. Since I moved from Palo Alto to San Francisco, just three or so months ago, I have felt maddeningly joyful about my life more often than ever before. It's not that I'm never sad or bored or frustrated, but it's that the highs are so high here... and the lows are just normal. I feel really lucky to have met and had the chance to hang out with the people who live here, who are now my friends.

It's not that I don't have great friends in Palo Alto - I do - but the intensity of the city life is different. I sound stupid right now, I know it - I sound really naive - but really, it's true. We all live now in this crazy, constantly happening environment, where you can stumble across something amazing any moment. That ratchets up the intensity of things pretty fast. Throw into that a lot of really smart, strange people and that's pretty much my life of late. It's hard to really comprehend it, to really grab ahold of that and make it conceivable, because things and people and interactions are too sprawling, too big, too boundless to be pinned down.

All I know is that I'm grateful. I have to remind myself, because I've been really tired and burnt out lately, that it's all for a reason, and that this is a place and a time that I can't live again, not ever in the same way I'm doing it the first time. So I am happy that it's here.

Tomorrow I'm going wine tasting with some friends, some very new, some old. I know it will be another weekend like the ones I've had recently - a blur, a happy blur. I'm excited.

another 3191

I love the grape stems in this 3191. They look very Halloweeny... like hands or creeping branches. Definitely something in motion.

3191 with kittens

Love this 3191 today. Makes me miss my kitty, and all the other kitties there have been throughout the years.

It's so sensory. I can just feel the almost-splinteriness of the wood deck in the sunshine, the slight warmth that you can tell is there, the fragility of the kitty's ribs and featheriness of her fur.

I want my life to be like that.

Why I love my city

This past weekend I had a borrowed digital SLR from work. We took TONS of pictures. Some of them are here (I haven't uploaded the ones from Saturday yet). My favorites from Sunday (Dan took all of these I think, he pretty much commanded the camera yesterday):

I love my hair. I'm sorry that's vain.

This is what SLR can do for your food photography.

Dan and I went to The Apartment and I bought a couple of awesome old photos and a postcard. This one is a postcard from 1910, and Dan caught it in the focus here (Justin is reading it).

Fannnntastic glasses.

On our walk home to our place, the shadows were perfect.

Thinking

I was going to write something angry. Actually I did. And I just deleted it. Instead.


One thing I love about Northern California (one of many!): the dusty smell of oak trees at night, when it's finally cooled off after a very hot day. It's sort of funny because I'm highly allergic to oak, but I love it just the same. I was putting the mini-fridge (ok, beer fridge) out to defrost tonight and got a big whiff of it and I felt like I was a little kid again at my grandparents' house in Redding, where it's insanely awfully hot all day but at night it's finally bearable. And that's what oak makes me remember - that immense relief from the heat, that laziness of a summer night, the comforts and frustrations of family. The stones in the backyard, the strangeness of the sunroom, the cool leather chairs in the living room, all these very tangible, inexplicable feelings I won't ever feel again - that's what oak is to me, and that's why I love it. It's so enduring and fleeting at once.

It makes me feel good about moving. (Something I am in the middle of writing about right now and will hopefully post on tomorrow.)
And it makes me feel good about life.

Pretty much in a nutshell this is why I love San Francisco. What crazies:

This was yesterday evening in Potrero Hill after eating a LOT of tasty pizza at Goat Hill. Sorry the pictures are a little blurry.

I love the Internet because it enables things like PostSecret, Passive-Aggressive Notes, and the latest, Deleted Images. Another brilliant, collaborative/user-generated, this time artsy website. Made up of the photos that you would normally delete off your digital camera, just because they're blurry or bad or whatever. (Pretty much every photo taken during my little sister's 21st birthday extravaganza falls into this category.) But put together they end up being kind of beautiful and quieting.

I also have to add, since I'm on the subject of beautiful and quieting, that if you do not read 3191 you are a bad person. It's absolutely gorgeous, looking at it is like doing a one minute meditation. It's a reason to get a feed reader. This one is my favorite recently, although this one the other day was pretty amazing as well.

(Deleted Images via Notcot.org)

Lately I've been so impressed with the amount of media available for free on the Internet, whether it be legal or very, very illegal. It's really amazing. I've watched most of Veronica Mars Season 3 online. I get new mp3s every day from music blogs and the Hype Machine, and if that fails I can always find them on YouTube or Imeem or something. It's really very exciting.

Anyway, here's just one example of this. I hadn't really paid attention to this until today, but La Blogotheque does "Take Away Shows" of musical artists performing sort of on the fly. Like here, Sufjan Stevens on a roof in Cincinnati:

#50.2 - Sufjan Stevens (MusicNow) - The lakes of Canada
Uploaded by lablogotheque

Or how about the National, my latest favorite:

#40.3 - The National - Start a war
Uploaded by lablogotheque

The Office.

I might die.

It's just... I can't express. I really, really cannot express how I feel right now about that finale. It was honestly, just, too perfect. I spent the last three minutes of the show STARING at my computer (oh btw, I watched half of it last night when I got home from pub night, and then I bought it on iTunes because I had to see it and there was no other way to see it before Sunday, and I watched the last 20 minutes at work. Don't tell anyone).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I feel the way you feel before a first date.

Summer Manifesto

For a long time I have been wanting to write a spring manifesto. I bombed all my New Year's Resolutions and spring is a time of renewal and this spring especially for me is a time of renewal and recharging and rearranging my life. But spring foiled my manifesto with fever and gorgeous weather and good friends, and now it's the middle of May (no matter what the weather in Mountain View thinks right now). Almost June. Therefore, almost summer.

Here, then, is my summer manifesto:

This is the summer I will go outside every weekend in the sun. I will go camping at least once. I will go to the beach. I will kayak at least once. I will go swimming.

I will eat in season - tomatoes, berries. I'll go berry picking. I will do my best to eat naturally. Avoid Splenda overdoses.

I will remember how good it feels to run in golden afternoons. I will buy a bike, and use it.

I will barbecue, have picnics, make cucumber salads and tomato tarts. I will make sangria. I'd like to make sun tea.

I will wake up early on weekends and enjoy the whole day.

I will meet people and catch up with people and value the time I spend with people.

I will take my time. I will write more. I will sit still sometimes, paying attention. I will divorce myself from mediocrity, boredom and superficiality.

I will have at least one party in the hot weather when the nighttime breeze is your only air conditioning and you feel purified by sweat. A party that goes long into the night and is like a beacon of light in the dark summer evening.

I will go to Costa Rica and to Chicago.

I will take time out for solitude, for reading, for cooking, drinking iced tea and iced coffee alone.

I will force the rest of you to join me!!!

What I've been up to...

I've been busy! What follows is a brief photo essay of my last few weeks:

Zeitgeist!








Berkeley for Brunch, Playgrounds, and Wiffle Ball with Kevin









Wine with Amelia, Renee, and Laurel for Amelia's birthday







San Francisco with the Google admins to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge









Dolores Park for barbecuing on Saturday



I love spring.

It's official. Memorial Day weekend I am going here.

Led by the ever intrepid Dan, I'll be hiking in 11 miles and camping and then hiking out 11 miles.

I can't wait for sore muscles, sleeping bags, nature, fresh air, quiet, sunrises, and dinners of vacuum packed tuna.

Dan alerted me yesterday to let me know that Cafe Amelie, this tiny little courtyard cafe restaurant we went to in New Orleans on our road trip, is still open. Despite the fact that less than three months after we ate there, Hurricane Katrina hit. And despite the fact that when we did eat there, only about 2 other couples were eating in the restaurant and it employed 2 people, which includes the owner, who was a transplanted New Yorker who I suspected, but hoped, would never have weathered the troubles in NOLA post-Katrina. Turns out he did! There isn't really any information about the restaurant on the web, but it's in this courtyard and on a certain level I am thinking to myself... damn, that would be a good place to get married! Not that I am getting hitched ANYTIME soon, but if I was...

Anyway I love the idea that the owner of this restaurant stuck it out and stayed. It was such a beautiful, tranquil, not to mention delicious place. I really want to go back.