Odds and ends

This sort of made me nostalgic for the Midwest that I've never known... Not sure why, I just kind of feel like I owe them something since my family was "originally" from there (not Minnesota though).

If you are a "Top Chef" fan, here's a pretty weird article about Padma Lakshmi. I did not know she went to school in La Puente! That is like 20 minutes from my house! Also she just sort of strikes me as being a bit all over the place. I still believe all the rumors about her being a total stoner.

Yesterday, I went to Barnes & Noble with my aunt. I was picking out Christmas cards (I have a LONG list of people to send cards to this year), and I was considering buying a pack featuring some popular cartoon characters (can't tell you which; that would spoil the card, wouldn't it?). Then I said to myself, "Or, is this too commercial?" Oh, the irony. Christmas is so weird.

I have this inexplicable want for this outfit -- I think it's the Swedishness of it all (to bring my odds and ends full circle!!)

Mom and I counted our top rated books on Goodreads.com. I had around 110 books rated 5 stars -- of those, only 35 of them were adult books. I don't know what that means exactly. Perhaps I'm too repressed and adult-y to give books 5 stars anymore. The only one I've given 5 to is "The Road," which I initially gave 4 and then I rethought it.

One for the fashion ages....

Not to talk about totally stupid things, but, this is my outfit right now:

-Navy Google "Blueprint" zip-up sweatshirt from the sales conference this past year.
-Red plaid flannel shirt, hugely oversized, that my friend Miguel gave to me 6 years ago.
-Leggings (obvi)
-Bright red and pale gray mukluks
-Gold bangle bracelet I found in the garage and didn't have a place for

This is what working from home does to you!!!

"affecting audience's hearts and minds with honesty"

I never wrote about this much but I saw Broken Social Scene in concert a few weeks ago and they were pretty fantastic, mostly cause they rocked out more than I expected them to and the venue was very conducive to that kind of show. The new NPR music site has a full concert recorded from the last night of this same tour, and it kind of gets at the experience, except in a very 2D way, and it sort of emphasizes the moments where Kevin Drew's voice is offkey (I think that, just like when I saw him in SF, he probably had a cold or something). But it kind of shows his sort of fun-on-stage personality.

Also in general the NPR music site is pretty cool. If I had more time to screw around at work listening to music and watching videos and such, I'd do it (I feel the same way about podcasts).

More on Broken Social Scene though...
After the concert I did some Google searching and came across (of course) the Pitchfork Media review of Kevin Drew's "Spirit If..." (Basically he's in Broken Social Scene, but he borrowed them to be his pseudo-actual backup band for his own music... it's just the same, but the name for some reason is different, although, I don't think anyone really cares. I don't.) I liked this part of it, cheesy as it is:

But to know Spirit If… is to know Kevin Drew: One-time teenage burn-out, current 31-year-old master of scruff, and lifelong romantic. He hugs audience members during shows, and once described his band's objective to the New York Times Magazine with all the quixotic wonder of a wide-eyed Bono: "We want to affect audiences' hearts and minds with honesty."

Kind of a nice idea.

And, next February, yet another Broken Social Scene-ster is putting out a "solo" album.. Jason Collett. You can find songs to download here.

Fall into the gap

This is embarrassing. I just spent like 15 minutes searching for a downloadable copy of the Will Arnett/Amy Poehler Gap ad where they are sharing-wearing like 7 different sweaters. It's funnier than this one:


And you can see it if you go to Gap's homepage. It kind of just makes me giggle, mostly because they are hilarious, and she is so adorable with her bangs (it makes me want to get bangs again, although I've been told that they were a really bad mistake, and I should probably keep my sort of half/swept bang). It also reminds me of how hilarious they were in (gulp) Blades of Glory, which was actually much funnier than I thought it was going to be. And it makes me want to watch Arrested Development. And! It also makes me want to post this recap of the SNL show at Upright Citizen's Brigade last Sunday, which I obviously did not go to (for about 1 million reasons) but which sounds awesome, mostly because, while I never watch SNL, I appreciate funny people being funny together, and this seems like it was that (kind of like how my main sentiment in a lot of comedies these days is not "damn this is funny" but "damn I'd like to hang out with these people" -- kind of like Mindy Kaling! and I am starting to repeat myself).

Also, I just watched Superbad again the other day and it was really truly funny, more so than the first time I think, and Michael Cera is just too good. That whole scene at the party at the end with him, all of it, is pretty much genius.

And finally, speaking of cute funny actors, and Gap ads, how do we feel about the John Krasinski Gap ads? My feeling is, why are they making him pose so weirdly? It's kind of like the Gap version of an awkward elementary school photo ("Tilt your head this way, and your chin this way, and now, look at me, no, tilt just a little this way" -- jamming your chin at an unnatural angle -- "ok, now STICK YOUR PELVIS OUT SO IT LOOKS LIKE YOUR PANTS ARE TOO TIGHT!").


At least it's better than the one here.

Sunday morning selves...

I feel like I just ingested about 80% of my daily sodium recommended value, but in reality according to the pack of almonds I just ate, it was only 6%. I rule. This is utterly besides the point, by the way.

So, striking writers, guys, how do we feel? I felt sort of grumpy about it in the first place, given the whole Office situation (it's over for who knows how long! although the most recent episode can only be described as fucking amazing, or possibly fucking transcendental, I'm not sure), and then I got briefly grumpier upon watching the video of the Office writers (most of whom are also actors) on the picket lines, because a) I want to hang out with them so bad and b) It feels weird to watch these actors and prominent writers on strike for a bigger piece of the pie. That said, I'm completely on their side, because as I'm reminded, the reality is that these are the exceptions to the writerly rule.

This brings me to my real point, which is (surprise!) Office related. I've recently decided that I need to subscribe to Mindy Kaling's (aka Kelly Kapoor's) blog, which I find to be quite hilarious and again, it really makes me want to hang out with her and the rest of the cast/writers of that show. Mindy wrote a nice piece today about why she's striking. She also wrote this great post the other day which discussed her feeling about women's "Sunday morning fantasies." I quote:

These underwear play an important role in my Sunday Morning Fantasy #27 (most women I know ages 21-31 have several dozen Sunday Morning Fantasies. I have discovered an extremely vulnerable and weirdly creative side of most women I know, that plan, cast, and set design how our Sunday mornings look in our futures. Like, somehow if a photographer where to surprise me at my house Sunday morning, I am doing something completely cool and photographable.)

Sunday Morning Fantasy #27 looks like this: Park Slope, Brooklyn. I am reading the Times Book Review and eating granola and fruit in these underwear and a tank top at my kitchen table with Pharell, my boyfriend.

I love how the little details are so key here. As in: Park Slope. My Sunday morning fantasies also frequently take place in Park Slope! Either that or in some cottage type place somewhere inaccessible where I would never actually live, like Portland, Maine (guess why?) or, like, Walden Pond. I am kidding sort of about the Walden Pond part. What I really mean is that they take place in semi-rural areas in the Northeast, where I've never been and which I can't be more specific about except to say that pretty much all my design/home decor bloggers seem to live in these places (New Hampshire!? Is this like a hidden mecca for artsy homebodies who like the Internet??). Like I said, I am never planning to live in Portland or New Hampshire. But damn if these fantasies don't appeal to me (that is, after all, why they are fantasies - Emily, stop circular writing now). Other detail: granola and fruit. Because the way I really wake up on Sundays is generally like this: "Ugh, tell me it's not morning yet. And my head hurts. I need brunch either right now or in like seven hours." Rarely do I wake up totally refreshed and ready to eat some (homemade) granola with (purchased at farmer's market) fruit.

Essentially what I'm saying here is that the Sunday morning fantasy is just another way of describing my ideal "blog self." I can't find it, but one of my many aforementioned design bloggers once wrote a post talking about how she, and her life, are not really as perfect/idealized
as they come across on the Internet. That really appealed to me because all these women (they are all women!) live, at least on the HTML page, the lives I thought I was going to lead when I was like ... um, well, more like when I was 21 than 12. I was never the think-ahead type as a little kid, so I didn't have life goals really then in the same way I do now. What I mean is that these women, on the page, seem to have it all together. I don't juts mean have a career they love, husbands they love, kids they love, etc. I mean more superficial things -- the things that to my mind can be or could be adapted to fit any lifestyle. Like, they all seem to have time to take lovely pictures of their surroundings, to send Christmas cards they made themselves, to bake seasonal treats, on and on. I guess what I mean is that they all seem to have the right thing in place for the right situation... the right upholstery for their chair, the right breakfast for that rainy day, and so on and so on. And I so frequently find myself saying, why don't I have the right breakfast on hand? Why don't I have a great digital camera to capture the way that shadow of a maple leaf falls just so next to my cat's tail. Why don't I live somewhere that I've made a home, with cute trinkets everywhere and neatly made beds and messes, if they exist, that are appropriately homey?

Perhaps it's the age... or the place... or whatever. I know that all these people I'm reading are older than I am, more settled. But I also wonder if it isn't a personality thing - or, worse, if I could have these idealized settings if I sacrificed some other things (like, the right to wake up hungover on a Sunday, or, put a better way, my tendency to say yes to every social situation, even though I'm tired)? I mean, do I really want these things if I'm not doing them? Couldn't I have them if I wanted... if I wanted to prioritize baking over bars?

I've come a ways from where I started in this entry, now, back to that eternal question of how is it other people seem to manage to have it all when I can barely keep up with what I have already... the issue of whether or not there's something fundamentally off, such that I don't grab ahold of what I want and instead get swayed by the crowd. But the point, too, is that I like my crowd... I want to be able to do everything with them, keep my job (quite frankly though, that's only really because I don't have any money without it), and take another 8 hours a day to wander around, take photos, read, stay on top of the news, and make myself dinner, and while I'm at it get some knitting and house decorating done. And let's face it, that isn't happening... and perhaps if it doesn't happen naturally it just isn't going to happen at all, like it would be forced or something.

Anyway. It's actually my opinion (as you can probably tell by the noncommital tone of that last sentence) that we should always shoot to be that most authentic best version of ourselves, that blog self, the Sunday morning self. (If that's what it is. I don't know anyone who has a Saturday night fantasy, at least not in this sense, but I couldn't say they don't exist.) And so, with that ramble as usual, I return to work... and to contemplating the ideal Sunday.

Things I learned from the New York Times article on Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, did basically a survey of his life in the New York Times mag a little while ago. Why do I care? Not sure. For some reason I regard him with a certain level of suspicion that is entirely unmerited. Anyway: What I learned.

-Jimmy Wales has bad taste in movies.

Favorite movie: “The Matrix.”

-Jimmy Wales likes to use various permutations of the word "spiffy."

Latest gadget: I’m really spiffed about the Sidekick.
Favorite item of clothing: I have a black velvet sport coat that I wear quite often. It is soft, spiffy and it looks cool.

-Jimmy Wales and I have the same bad habits.

Guilty pleasure: Playing Scrabble on Facebook. I do that when I am supposed to be working.

-My job decision a year ago was apparently a lot more of a decision between competitors than I knew.

Obsession: Currently, it’s wikia.com. It is meant to take on Google by creating a search engine where all the editorial decisions are made by the general public and all the software is open.

The Encyclopedist's Lair

How I spent my Thanksgiving vacation (so far)... part 1

Well, today is what I would call a productive day. The boring stuff first: I woke up after 9.5 glorious hours of sleep, ate Grape Nuts (this matters to me: I love Grape Nuts), read 100-ish pages of The Satanic Verses. Around one in the afternoon, I embarked on the true adventure of the day. I had promised my dad that while I was home for this week, I would help him go through the boxes and boxes and boxes of junk and irreplaceable treasures which are currently intermingled in our garage. Armed with Barrel Aged Old Rasputin, we did this from around 1pm until 8pm, with a break for dinner. Seriously, it was one of those situations where it just keeps coming, like in cartoons when things pour out of closets. One box gone through just led to another... I was alternately disgusted, amazed, ashamed, you get the picture.

Notable Discoveries:
-Birkenstocks I wore for about a year in high school exclusively (I have this distinct memory of wearing them with green cargo pants and this pink peasanty top my Mom had bought for me). I wore them for the rest of the day, because I forgot flip-flops in my packing rush.
-A make-up bag literally FULL of Barbie hairbrushes. I would estimate that there are around 40 or 50 of them. We kept this.
-A box intended for 3.5 floppy disks, labeled and containing "Smooth Rocks." I'm not sure why. I almost kept this, except that I realized the likelihood of me bringing it up to San Francisco and using it for gardening/plants in vases was approximately 1%.
-Pogs
-Two Tamagotchis, lifeless, obviously

Lessons Learned:
-Do not keep stupid shit. I found about 4 decks of cards with less than 52 cards in each. Why did I keep these? I am not sure.
-I have a postcard problem. I know for a fact that I have 2 full boxes of postcards in my apartment. I found two more boxes here -- one from the Washington, D.C. trip I took in 8th grade, one from my trip to Spain in 12th grade. TONS of freaking postcards.
-It is true what they say about Americans and waste, or perhaps just about modern people and waste. We threw out so much junk -- stuff so useless that we can't even give to Goodwill. It's really quite frightening. Some of it was stuff that I know I never used -- things that I'm sure we got for Christmas one year and were excited about and then never touched. For example: A calligraphy set. A paper airplane set from Eddie Bauer (I don't know why). A Chinese brush painting set. A mosaic concrete tile set. A make-your-own Native American Moccasins set. A macrame friendship bracelets set. I realized today that we have around 25 Beanie Babies, and I would like to point out that we were definitely less into that whole trend than most other families in our community. (See below for my treatise on stuffed animals.) So think about the sheer weight of all that stuff in the landfill. Terrifying.
-All that said, stuff can tell a story. For example, in one box, I found a deck of Tarot cards and a Henna painting kit. Can you guess what phase of my life I was in then? (Hint: It was closely associated with the Birkenstock period.) I found the headdress from a costume from a Toyon special dinner I went to with Amelia and Laurel. I found signs from "Slappin' Ass Day" -- motto was, I believe, "Make a friend, slap an ass" and Cristina can really explain more. I found lots of cocktail umbrellas and origami paper and jewelry wire from the good ol' Stanford Craft Guild Days.

All in all, it was actually fun, although daunting by the end, when we had lots of "keeper" stuff out in piles, utterly disorganized still, and no place to put the boxes of yet-unsorted stuff. Also: We have yet to go through any of the stuffed animals. I am paralyzed in the face of stuffed animals. They look so pathetic when you give them away. (Apparently sympathy for inanimate objects is a major symptom of Asperger's. Just a side note.) The aforementioned Beanie babies really present me with a traumatic choice -- I feel like I can't give away one Beanie and keep another, even if the kept one is something rad and weird like a buffalo or a ferret (yes, I have both!! Who am I!!) and the other is something boring like a dog. We will see. When Lucie is here tomorrow we are going to go through all the stuffed animals together, and I have a feeling her sentimentality is not as strong as mine. I'm bracing myself.

LolOffice?

I must have lied about bedtime. Before I crash... Two of my favorite things - one guilty pleasure, one totally justified and awesome one - have united.

LOLCATS + The Office.

OfficeTally, every Office nerd's favorite blog, is running a lolcat Office contest - you just make a lolcat with an Office quote. I'm too tired to look at all of them, but here's one that builds off of one of the best Office quotes everrrr!!! (Get my meta-reference there?)


Ok, it's not the most hilarious thing, but it's hilarious that these exist. And I will explain more about my inexplicable affection for lolcats later. That would take way too much time.

(Lolcat from OfficeTally commenter "Pamela Dean")

I love LA?

I flew from San Francisco to LA today, home for a whole week for Thanksgiving. Words cannot express how thrilled I am to be somewhere I have almost no friends, where I can just sit around. It's sort of sad that I have to leave town in order to really force myself to relax and get sleep and watch those Netflix that have been sitting around since September. But, here I am.

Leaving a week early for thanksgiving as an "adult" somehow reminded me of that first Thanksgiving weekend during college, when leaving those friends you'd known for two months felt absolutely traumatic and wrenching. Breaks always felt like that back then. Now, life is much faster paced... things move so much faster, it's almost like we don't have time to feel wrenched. Either that, or we're just more mature.

Sometimes when I'm talking to someone who is leaving town for a bit, or when I'm leaving, or what have you, I end up talking like we're not going to see or communicate with each other for a painful or at least inconvenient amount of time, but the reality is that we are all online again within minutes. Or sending text messages. Or something. I guess when I was a freshman in school, I didn't have a phone, and I didn't sit around on IM over break - at least not all the time. So communication was less frequent over breaks back then. Because I have this weird, visceral memory for temperatures and lighting, I am currently flashing back to winter break freshman year. I remember talking to Pablo online, and I remember an e-mail from Miguel who had just watched Bridget Jones and, and this should speak to the fact that it was freshman year and I know weird people, felt like the "Nice guys don't kiss like that -- oh yes they fucking do" was really validation of his entire "nice guy" shtick. I feel like it was cool that year here, and sort of blue and shadowy. I think I remember someone calling me on New Year's Eve... which baffles me a bit, partly because I can't remember who.

It's very upsetting to me that my entire, embarrassing, awesome Diaryland.com diary has disappeared. It documents not only those first breaks, but my entire last year of high school -- a formative moment for anyone I should think.

As usual, upon my arrival to LA I felt like I was coming into a bit of a foreign land, and I felt as though I hadn't been here in ages, although the reality was I was here in September, for a weekend. It is a strange place -- it looks different from everywhere else. The smog is sort of weirdly futuristic feeling, like: post-apocalyptic. And I'm saying that on a pretty clear day. I was thinking about this today -- I don't think I couldn't ever live here again, even though I love San Francisco and the Bay Area. It's more like -- if I lived here, I would become a worse, or at least lazier, less challenged, version of myself. It's kind of easy to live here, everything is at your fingertips, everything comes to you, everything in LA takes 20 minutes (to quote Cher Horowitz' dad), you drive everywhere. The sad thing is that I'm kind of prone towards taking the easier option, possibly in part because I grew up here, and also just cause I think I can be kind of lazy, or stressed enough not to consider the possibilities that may not be totally obvious, whatever it is. So I can see it being easy to settle into a routine here, but I wouldn't want to do that.

Still, it's nice for a holiday. All I've done thus far since arriving here is help (er, I trimmed green beans and drank some chardonnay in the kitchen) make dinner, eat dinner, watched on DVR the winning play Stanford made against USC earlier this fall (it was so awesome, really -- I mean, the sheer horror on the faces of the SC fans), watched three episodes of Jeopardy Tournament of Champions, and stand/sit around talking to my parents. This is exactly what I want my vacation to be.

And, since its now 10:58, I believe it's my bedtime. This is great.

Looking ahead

Off to go see Superbad in the Haight. I know I have been a bad blogger today. Mostly I've been paralyzed with happiness that it's Friday. I'll write more tomorrow.

Obama!

I've been in a real slump about the current Democratic candidates for President in 2008. I loved Obama early on and then I felt like he succumbed to the politicky infighting (with other Democrats!) that he claimed to be above and against. But yesterday he spoke at work, and I feel really good about him again. He is clearly very smart, really thinking about the issues, does not try to spin questions into something that he can answer with canned responses about something entirely off-topic, and I really just think he cares. I've seen plenty of other people speak (Hillary and Edwards both) and they are just so overly polished and mechanized-seeming. I like Obama's genuineness, and I like his idealism, and I want him to succeed at this campaign because I think he can do something to fix things. (Oh yeah, and I like his policies, too.)

Here's the video of his talk yesterday:



(P.S. My favorite part was when he talks about how he is impatient with the status quo.)

Buying Books, and reading them, eventually

Well, I totally blew the From the Stacks Reading Challenge already, kind of like I knew I would. Not that I am not reading books from the stacks, but that I bought a bunch of books yesterday. I'm quite excited about the new purchases though. I got:

-Second Sex, because Cristina and I were talking about how it's hard to be a woman, and I need to put my money or reading material where my mouth is and actually read some feminist stuff
-Essential Feminist Reader (ditto)
-Full-Frontal Feminism, by Jessica Valenti, the founder of Feministing, a blog which I love
-Friday Night Lights (the book), because I've had to say "No, I haven't read the original book" about 80 times when discussing my love of the TV show, and because it's supposed to be realy good
-The Human Stain, because it was $3 and Julia says it's one of her absolute favorites

I'm pretty thrilled. I also got "Love, Actually" on DVD because I always rent it once at Christmas time, and for $9 I can just own it and never rent it again.

Anyway, with that admission of total weakness in the face of Amazon, friends who have read more than I have, and Super Saver Shipping, here are my From the Stacks books, which I am going to read by January 31:

-The Satanic Verses (100 pages in already)
-Cloud Atlas (made it through part 1 once, and then put it down.)
-The God of Small Things (I've read the first half of this twice, and can't believe I haven't finished it)
-The Corrections (I feel like a bad reader of modern literature for not having read this)
-Jesus' Son (because I borrowed it from Renee about a year ago and still haven't read past the middle. Also, because it's shorter than all the rest of these and I think I'll need a break from the tomes for a while.)

Runners up, which I will read if I don't have other things that are more enticing:
-Book Thief (a Valentine's present from my mom, which I have not even opened, even though I want to read it and it's supposed to be really good)
-White Noise (I was supposed to read it for class and did not finish, plus again, I feel like a bad hipster/reader of modern lit for not having read it)

Oh, I'm sorry, does "Moment of Zen" not count as a post?

I think it does. But at any rate, I am posting again, briefly again. I had an actually lovely day, or, I should say, a lovely evening. My friends Matt and Julia took me out for a belated birthday dinner at Tamarine, in Palo Alto. I'd never been there, and always wanted to go. It was delicious and didn't feel too fancy, even though it was filled with Silicon Valley business people. Probably my favorite thing food wise was the scallop curry that Julia and I shared (we ordered strategically, as Matt doesn't eat seafood, and Julia rarely eats red meat, and I eat everything, and it worked perfectly). The curry had three squashes in it - the little yellow regular squashes, zucchini, and butternut (or maybe it was yam...?). Whatever it was, that butternut thing was cooked to perfection - I could have eaten a whole meal made up just of little perfectly-soft-firm-teeth-just-slide-through squash cubes. Ok, possibly not, but damn, that was good.

What was better was just having a quiet dinner with Matt and Julia. The past year of my life has brought a lot of new people and Matt and Julia are two of the best. I feel calmer when I am with them, more centered, more certain of myself and what I want. It's amazing when other people can do that for you. I miss Matt & Julia since I moved to the city, and when I say I miss them, I mean I miss hanging out with them, but I also mean that I feel a sort of lack where I think if I saw them more often I wouldn't feel it. (I guess it's a lack of that calm feeling.) So it's good to see them.

Christmas lights are starting to go up on my street. I'm excited. Even Dan, who last week claimed he hated Christmas, bought some lights and a timer and has all kinds of artistic plans, apparently, for their hanging. I am plotting Christmas cards already... and for some reason despite my epic to-do list of things this fall, I think I will be able to get going on my holiday gift-giving plans. Perhaps the grayer weather, with its non-dazzling sunlight, is calming my mind a bit and I am seeing clearer. Whatever it is, I feel pretty happy and centered tonight, and that's a wonderful thing.

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.)

Veronica Mars nostalgia

I only know two people who have been disappointed in Veronica Mars after they started watching it. Seriously, it's so good. I delayed watching it for ages and then finally after about four friends told me I just had to, I borrowed it and promptly became obsessed. It's just really good and clever and in one show there are about 8 different genres. Sadly, it got canceled, but the director/cast made a few "mini pilots" showing what the fourth season could have been like - where Veronica is now in the FBI. As Entertainment Weekly put it, it's kind of like Alias, without Rambaldi, and therefore it is pretty damn awesome. I miss this show. It was such a great viewing experience - the kind you turn down invitations for. (I mean that.)

Part One:


Part Two:


Believe it or not, I'm going to bed right now. I am very excited about sleep.

the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Every once in a while I'm totally tingly-in-awe of an actor or a writer or a singer or something. I have to admit I get that feeling watching just the preview of Sweeney Todd, starring Johnny Depp and, I did not know until now, Alan Rickman. Yippee. I don't know if the movie is going to be good, but Johnny Depp is just so good and creepy and weird. He manages to be good and creepy and weird in everything but always in a slightly different way, which is pretty impressive for someone so distinctive looking. Here's the preview:

Juno

WAY excited about this.

Owls again

This is why owls are so darn cute!!

Look at them! They are fuzzballs.

Crawling back into my hole of shame now.

(via CuteOverload)

Armistice Day

I know I quoted this last year, plus I'm a day late. But it's too good. I think we should read this quote ever year, kind of like Casey reads "The Grapes of Wrath" every year.

When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is.

--Kurt Vonnegut, Nov 11, 1922-April 11, 2007

I kind of consider him a sacred thing, to me.

Facebook News Network

This is old news but kind of also hilarious and worth posting. Parody can be so easy sometimes.

NaBloPoMo Weekend Roundup 2

*whew*

What a weekend. I'm exhausted. But it was good.

Started in a rush Friday night because it was my roommate Dan's birthday. He'd put off planning until the last, last minute (I admit, it was driving me crazy) and then pulled it together in style. We had a take-out potluck - we each brought food from a different restaurant and then just ate it at our place. It was a impressive spread. We had food from all corners of San Francisco and the globe: Chinese from the Tenderloin, French and Pizzeria Delfina and tacos from the Mission, sushi from the Inner Sunset, Indian from the Lower Haight. It was a great way to try a few new places and it was also nicely representative of our friends in the city -- sort of sums up where we all live. Then Dan has assigned us to all be on our A game as far as dressing up to go out. I wish I had some pictures since I sort of love my outfit. Basically, I wore this blue and red sort of silky 60s style dress that I got at H&M like 8 months ago and have never worn, plus red tights and a navy cloche hat that I bought literally years ago and have almost never worn for obvious reasons (hello? cloche?). I felt like I really took it to a weird, matchy level but I sort of loved it and luckily with these friends I feel like I can wear anything and feel confident on the street. Case in point: Justin's A game consisted of a brand new (to him) pair of red corduroy Osh Kosh overalls, a yellow World Beard and Moustache Championship t-shirt, and yellow shoes. You can see how I have no problem going out in public in any getup. (Also, while waiting for people to show up for the party, I used the gift certificate I got from work for my birthday to buy myself those Anthropologie boots I want. They won't come until January. I can't wait.)

Saturday was a rush: Woke up and dragged myself to the shower and then to a pseudo brunch with Dan and the crew, and then drove frantically, late, to Palo Alto for lunch with Casey who was visiting from LA. (Pseudo brunch meaning I didn't eat because I was saving room for lunch. This is sort of like executives at my work who go to 3 meetings in one hour.) We had a couple of pitchers of margaritas and reminisced about old times. Afterwards, totally unplanned, Laurel and I met up with Amelia and Renee, also visiting from LA. We hung out at Amelia's place and then took a nap (seriously, we needed it) before going out to the Nuthouse, where we witnessed some pretty fierce foosball games. Long story short, we ended up at some random guy's house in Mountain View until 4am, and the take-home point from that evening was 1) that a pub-slash-laundromat is a really good idea and 2) that the phrase "post-decisional regret" is sort of redundant, because you have to make a decision to have regret. We think.

Sunday we had brunch at Hobee's, where I swear the weirdest people are employed as servers, but their coffeecake still kicks ass, especially the cranberry one, and then Laurel and I high-tailed it back up to the city for shopping with Casey. We hit up all the crafty ridiculous handmade places: the Curiosity Shoppe, Little Otsu, Paxton Gate, Rare Device (love it, kind of want a purse they have there...), and Doe. I could spend a lot of money in those places but instead of really going hog wild, I just bought a bunch of random stationery, proving once and for all that I am my mother's daughter. The three of us had a snack at Cafe International in the Lower Haight until the ridiculously loud music drove us out. I had dinner with Dan and his parents at Suppenkuche, really the designy conclusion to my day because I just love their decor -- the butterflies on the ceiling are too wee and adorable and simple and I like the funny printing above the moulding on the walls and the wheat wreathes. Plus, who can argue with the food?

Dan's fam and I came back to our place and sat around talking house decorating (inspired by Suppenkuche and our antlers) and drinking tea, and I have to say all the Dan family time is making me excited for next weekend when I get to go home to my own. I don't really feel like a week is long enough. Justin came over too, and after Dan and his parents left we basically just sat here in a Sunday night haze. I spent about 20 minutes clicking through every item on Etsy that had an owl on it, because my defenses against being a total freak are low right now and I don't care if people see me coo-ing over owl stationery or earrings or what have you. I'm about to go to bed and am really very excited about it, especially after the ridiculously late night last night.

This has been a poor blogging weekend. I think a lot of funny bloggable things happened. But I'm too tired to remember them! So I think I'll go to bed now and start tomorrow in style. Happy Sunday.

BLOG!

I fully admit that this is cheating. I am just blogging because I don't know when my next chance will be before tomorrow and I don't want to cheat on NaBloPoMo. Today has been great, though. I will explain more manana.

Not Embarrassing!

Entertainment Weekly does this thing where they ask you to say the 5 songs most recently played on your iPod. Normally I cringe at this suggestion but today I think I was on a good run. A lot of recently added stuff that turns out to be awesome. So much so that I feel the need to share! Who knew?

5. MGMT - Time to Pretend

(We listened to this song in the cabin last week and I am pretty sure I was dancing by myself to it while 3 of the other 4 inhabitants of the place were passed out on the floor.)

4. Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew - Back out on the...


Saw them in concert in October and they kicked ass. Seriously, they rocked out more than I expected and this latest album is really good.

3. Augie March -One Crowded Hour

Can't figure out who this reminds me of. But I likes it.

2. Scotland Yard Gospel Choir - Aspidestra

Nice and jumpy.

1. Eef Barzelay - Lose Big



Yes.

Taking things literally

My mom sent me this.

Appalled by descriptions of adolescent pill-popping, suicide and lethal injections given to babies and the elderly, two parents are demanding that the Mt. Diablo school board eliminate a controversial but award-winning book from school reading lists and libraries.

"The Giver" by Lois Lowry depicts an efficient and war-free society that exists at the price of strict rules.

Doesn't it sound like an Onion article? It's like no one understands anything not-literally. It's called science fiction for a reason, fuckers.

Ironically, "The Giver" deals with freedom of choice. In it, citizens apply for spouses and children. And, in Orwellian fashion, "elders" assign each person a function to keep their utopia running smoothly.

The sensitive Jonas, 12, is being groomed as the next "receiver," one who alone holds all the memories of the past and understands what it is like to feel joy and pain. In the end, armed with the knowledge of what life can be like, he decides to flee to a place where he will be allowed to read, feel and love freely.

Oh wait, maybe it's not so fictional after all.

Damn.

My uber-roomie sent this to me and it's really quite hilarious. Charts made out of rap songs. Here's my favorite:


Because in case you didn't know I have this real, deep love for "Damn it feels good to be a gansta."

For sers.

This one is pretty awesome too.


Kind of like indexed meets music:

Because I can't help but make inappropriate Office references on holidays...

Tonight, one of our most ethnic co-workers, Kelly, has invited us all to a Diwali celebration put on by her community. What is Diwali, you may ask. Well, to have Kelly explain it, it’s … blah blah blah … it’s so super fun, and it’s gonna be great, lot of gods with unpronounceable names, twenty minutes you find out it is essentially a Hindu Halloween.

--Michael Scott

This is an upbeat post

Well, because my blogs have been getting a little introspective lately (hmm, I wonder if I should blame NaBloPoMo for that), I figure I might as well share with you a few fun lighthearted hilarious things just as a break.

Starting with...

-I think I am going to go ahead and half-participate in the legendary "From the Stacks" reading challenge. Basically what this is supposed to be is, from November to the end of January you don't buy any new books but you read 5 books that you have been delaying reading, ones that have been sitting on the bedside table or in the shelf that you've been meaning to get to. I sort of accidentally started this already, because this week I was struck by inspiration to finally read "The Satanic Verses," which I've been planning to read for, oh, 5 years now, and have never gotten through. I have tons of books like this in my shelves, and it's quite shameful because so many of my friends lately have been asking me for book recommendations or to borrow books and I haven't read half the stuff that I own -- in fact, I've probably read less than half. So I think I'm going to choose 5 of them to read by the end of January. Now, about that not buying books part... I don't think I will worry much about that. (And Dad shakes his head silently and reproachfully.)

-I totally caved and used a $25 gift certificate towards the new My So Called Life disk set. Yes, I definitely already have the set that was released a few years back, but this one is supposed to be better, and I got it for only 22 dollars after the gift certificate.

-I could not recommend someecards.com highly enough. Yeah, I know it's sort of old news since there was a New York Times article about it and stuff, but honestly, every time I go back there I find a new, hilarious card. A few great recent finds:

• This one really speaks to the mood of my blog posts of late
• This one too.
  
• Tivo addicts, unite.
• How I feel about my Thanksgiving vacation, except with less implied hatred of family (I am actually really excited about going home, for family and also naps.)
• Finally, this is in honor of tomorrow. And I am totally going to send it to some people and hope that they don't read this blog entry first.
  

-If you like the Office, which, um, clearly you do, you will love this deleted scene from last week's episode. And you should be very, very sad that last week is the last episode for a while because of that f&*)$#)ing writer's strike.

-How do you feel about these ankle boots? I want them *so* much. These are just part of my new dedication to my wardrobe. It sounds shallow, but I have decided I am not dressing up well enough for work (yeah, I realize I work at a very casual company, but I dress up for weekends and then I don't dress nicely for work, so I feel like it gives off the wrong impression), so I'm on a quest to 1) make the most out of what I have clothing wise and 2) buy a few key pieces to help take it to a new level. The boots, I admit, don't count as a "key piece" because they are, well, impractical and awesome and silly and expensive, but I can dream, can't I?

-I am really getting excited about Christmas. It is really silly but I love it, even though I am so unreligious. I just like the spirit of things and the food and the lights. I mostly love the way Christmas lights look against blue, wintry skies. There's such a great contrast between the warm colors of the lights and the coolness of everything else, the silhouettes and such. As usual I'm hoping to get Christmas cards out, or holiday cards I guess I should say... and I'm seriously shocked that it's already the second week of November. Where on earth did 2007 go?

-On a related note, and this will be my last random comment for now, I was listening to NPR last week and they were talking about how a year from this past Tuesday is the Presidential elections. Wow. These have been so long in coming that they all of a sudden seem like they are incredibly close at hand, like they crept up on us. And now in less than two months there will have been primaries already! I'm so undecided now. I was a big Barack Obama fan early on (you know, before he started running) but now I feel like he's been spoiled by the political-ness of politics. So now I feel like I'm back to square one, and it's just in time for the real gearing up of it all.

Anyway. Hope these stop this blog from being all-contemplation-all-the-time. And now to watch this week's Office.

Coming to conclusions, for today. (There is always tomorrow.)

Today is a reminisce about childhood day.

I don't mean that in a gloomy way, more of a contemplative way. I was thinking about how when I was in high school and it was gray and cloudy out I would just go home after school (i.e. before 3pm), make myself a cup of tea, and sit around the house. Did I do that? It's getting hard to remember but I feel like I did... sat at the kitchen table, likely cluttered with newspapers and bills, and read my book and ate toast. That's a funny memory because it should feel really warm and cozy but in reality it feels sort of cool and gray, the way those days were. Still, I would prefer it to sitting at a desk all day in fluorescent lighting staring at a computer screen.

Then I was thinking about the simplicity of some things. Home cooked food -- I know it sounds cheesy but honestly, sometimes all I really want is spaghetti or something. At Google, the food is overwhelmingly complex and fascinating and unusual and to be honest, sometimes it's frustratingly gourmet. (Oh yes, Emily, please, complain about your free lunches.) Choice can be baffling.

It's interesting to thing about the "base state" of your life. Like, what you would do with no outside influences. Obviously that's impossible -- you're beset by outside influences from the moment you're born, and if you want to get into human behavioral biology, you're sort of stuck with them even earlier -- but I mean on a daily basis. What if you lived in a city you didn't know anyone? What would you do?

I know what I would do, and I know it with a mixture of shame and longing. I find that when other people have plans, when I have a night on my own, I sit in my house and I do nothing. That's not a particularly bad thing sometimes, but it would be terrible if it happened all the time. One thing I like about living with Dan is that he doesn't really allow for the sitting-at-home thing. Meaning, he doesn't think that you should, by default, choose sitting at home over doing something fabulous in the city. Neither do I, but sometimes it's good to have him remind me of what's out there.

Still, tonight is a sitting-at-home night. I had Campbell's split pea soup with Saltines for dinner (talk about childhood, eh?) and I'm sitting here blogging and downloading some music and doing silly things like reading Self magazine and watching The Office. I like to call these nights in "dates with myself," which is probably some cheesy phrase from a dumb magazine like Self or maybe something like Sex and the City but the reality is that that's a really good way to look at it. Take yourself out, or in. You know, treat yourself like you are worth it, blah blah. I know I'm sounding even more cliched as this paragraph goes on but it is good to remind yourself of these things sometimes. When my sister was here we got into a discussion (abstractly) about our relationships with men. It was brief but my conclusion was, sometimes it is hard to be a girl. You are fighting a lot of weird, deep-seated societal habits. Not even pressures, not even oppression, but just habit, I think, most of the time. So I think I get in the habit of being unhappy with myself, my body, my brain, whatever it is... and the key is reminding yourself to break the habit.

Last thought. Today I mentioned to Justin that I was really glad that he could "deal with my crazy." (On a serious note, I am. I know he reads this, at least occasionally, so this is rather silly, but one of the most surprising things about moving to the city was my friendship with him which I'm now really grateful for. And that makes me think about how surprising friendships are... I'm still surprised that Dan and I are such good friends, I'm thrilled and surprised about how wonderfully Ace is as a roommate and friend, I am constantly flattered and amazed by the friendships I have and the loyalty that those people have and their patience and brilliance and ridiculousness and uniqueness. I will stop this parenthetical here!!) His response was "Don't get too caught up in your crazy. We've all got some of that." Suddenly I remembered that, paradoxically, the strongest I've ever felt, the sanest, the most sure of myself, was when ---- and I were breaking up and there was a moment he actually asked me if I was sure I wasn't just crazy -- because he felt like he couldn't recognize me. But that lack of recognition was because right then, I was being really strong. And I knew myself better than anyone else could. And so it's strange, but that is the strongest I've ever felt and the proudest of myself I have been, for anything. And right now I would like to find that strength, not for anything in particular but just because it was a great feeling, and I felt empowered and happy and brave. I think that is how you should approach every day. (I hadn't thought about this until Justin made that comment and it reminded me that I should never think I am crazy. Because everyone is, a little bit, and because the idea that women are insane is far too common, and because I'm not.)

It is good to have little victories like this. One of the best things about life is stumbling across things in your past that inform your present, lessons you forgot you learned, channeling old emotions or feelings or what have you into your present and using them for future good. That is, in a way, the upside of nostalgia... I find that if I can tap into the visceral feeling of something -- coming home from school and having a cup of tea and a book, feeling strong, feeling smart, feeling creative, feeling in love, feeling comfortable, liberated, whatever memory you have that you can grab ahold of, that is like a medium or a path to achieving that again, or avoiding it, or whatever it is. It's not just a matter of learning from mistakes, it's a matter of literally feeling that again, down to your bones, and hanging onto that, even if you can't replicate it exactly (you wouldn't want to). It's like a shortcut to yourself.

So I guess I have a position on the boundaries of blogging and Facebook and what have you. I guess I'll just be honest. I don't think it can hurt. I think I yam what I yam. I have things to say and I will say them.

PS

This really rang true for me:

"When you're young, you think I'll just get over this hill and then everything will be on an even keel. Then you get used to the fact that, no, you're never gonna get to the point of equilibrium. All you do is move forward. That's what life is -- being in motion."

-Steve Coogan, quoted in the New Yorker Nov 5.

I always think that calm and rest is just around the corner, but so far into my adulthood (ha, if you can call it that) I have to say that this seems a lot more realistic.

"This life has been a test"

"So when Rayanne Graff told me my hair was holding me back, I had to listen. 'Cause she wasn't just talking about my hair. She was talking about my life." -Angela Chase

The identity is a mysterious thing, especially the online one, especially the fractured pieces here and there, the different audiences, the different "levels" of communication. Recently, I linked this blog to Facebook, thinking that way, I could share my silly Facebook-posted-items style things with my blog audience, largely consisting of my immediate family, and that I could share my longer stuff with my Facebook audience, if indeed I have one (so far it seems like I don't). But it does present some interesting dilemmas. The stupid shit I post on Facebook seems mundane and boring and unblogworthy here (probably it would seem better on Tumblr, but the real problem is that that is too short-form for the kinds of long posts I occasionally want to do). And then I feel like I can't write a lot about personal thoughts/feelings because in the event that some random news-feed reader comes across that post in Facebook, I don't really want them to know about my issues. (And Facebook is, and I'm being totally honest here, starting to feel a little creepy, just because of all the news of late about Facebook employees being able to read your private messages, change your profile info, log in as you, and, oh right, the big one: look at which profiles you view. I guess it makes me a little more aware of my own Facebook "stalking," which of course I do somewhat, but what about the people I'm just curious about, whose photos I realize I never looked at before, who had a favorite book listed that I wanted to remember, etc. Are people at Facebook going to misjudge or misunderstand my purposes for looking at a profile, and will it have real-life consequences? I don't want to get too far off the topic, and I have a problem with overusing parenthetical statements, so I will stop here, but: still. It's weird. If I do have any Facebook readers out there, and especially if you work at Facebook, which is only unlikely because I don't think any of the people I know working at Facebook would be interested enough to read this, give me your thoughts.)

So, the subject at hand is how to express yourself, or, let's be straightforward, myself, and really be honest, when you want an audience, and you want it to be somewhat general, but not worldwide? Maybe there isn't an in between anymore, or maybe there isn't for someone like me who has this urge to share in the first place. (Clearly I could just e-mail close friends, or something, or family, or write in a diary, or not connect my Facebook to my blog, or have another blog, but these things all seem less than ideal for a variety of reasons.) I'm not sure. A while ago I said I was just going to be honest here. You know, to own up about being hungover or sending a stupid text message or being unsatisfied with myself or being happy with myself. But that's really hard to do and see in print, even if it's just in HTML. And no one wants to be a whiner, and no one wants to read whining. Even if (my brain spins too fast -- I feel like I always have a rebuttal to my own statements, so pardon the circularity) that's what blogs are all about anyway... or at least personal blogs, the whiny ones, the stupid ones like this one. This isn't a real blog, it's not of interest to anyone who doesn't know me, and I am not sure if that should matter to me or not. (It sometimes matters. Sometimes it doesn't.) I'm also not sure if brutal honesty would be more interesting or less.

My point is, I'm thinking about things a lot lately, and feeling more than a little unhinged and disorganized and too high (figuratively) and too low and too all over the place. I know what my ideal life is and I know what my life is now and I don't know if the two shall meet or can meet, and I don't know if I can ever have that ideal; I assume I can't, but trying to rationalize and wrestle and ground your ideals is sort of like what happens to little girls watching fairy tales and playing with Barbies, this shit gets ingrained, and then you want a prince charming or what have you and you've lost sense of reality, and if you are aware enough of that then you end up second guessing everything and third-guessing everything until you're blue in the face and writing extremely babble-y blog posts for no one. (Insert John Mayer reference here.) I just don't know what version of the story to trust anymore, and I mean that in most senses - I don't know what people to go to for advice, I don't know whether my paranoia or my overthinking is my instinct, I don't know whether the way my life is now is just a phase or maybe just the way life is, maybe it never stops and it is always baffling and tiring and awesome at the same time. I wish I could explore that here, or somewhere. I wish there was a freelance magazine column titled "Girl tries to figure shit out" because I think I'd be qualified to write it, and that's about the only thing I feel qualified to do right now, so that's unfortunate it's a figment of my imagination.

You see what I mean? Lots of stuff going on here. And I can't pin it down. I would like to try, here, but I just don't think that's a good idea either... not when I am so exposed as me here. Except that's the fucking point. What's the point of partial exposure, and what's the point of expository self-writing if you don't go there, if you don't push the boundaries at all. I don't know. Maybe I'm not brave enough, or maybe I'm too self-conscious (um, this is likely, but I don't think it's everything), or maybe I'm not old enough to pull a Stephen Elliot or insert-famous-writer-here and just bare it all. Or, maybe I just need to stop, for a second, and take a breath, and stop trying to puzzle out the meaning of it all ("one of those 'what does it all mean' things") and just take my life without contemplation (the unexamined life may be easier to live) and just go to sleep now and wake up tomorrow and start all over again.

But I'd rather not. (I am going to sleep though. I will think more about this tomorrow.)

Just to round things off in style, I leave you with another of Angela Chase's brilliant moments: "This life has been a test. If this had been an actual life, you would have received instructions on where to go and what to do."

The sad truth is, sometimes I do feel like Angela has it right.

More, more, more

Not surprisingly my stomach hurts today thanks to my weekend of epic eating and the fact that my body hates me. So it's hard to concentrate on work. It's easier to concentrate on blogging.

I have a collection of blogs I read of people I vaguely know but don't know well enough that we actually admit (often) to reading each other's blog. One such person is Ellen, who lived next door to me at the Columbia Publishing Course, went to school with the "east coast half of the Lasky twins," the west coast half of which is one of my friends. I guess this is sort of a public de-lurking and it's inspired primarily by NaBloPoMo (it's because Ellen was doing it that I remembered it existed and jumped on the bandwagon) and also partly by the fact that this girl posts to goodreads.com even more than I do, so she is therefore awesome. Anyway, she essentially started a meme the other day for the "Last Five" books that you've read. For you loyal goodreaders, this is old news, but I felt like doing it anyway (remember, I have an excuse to post useless things today).

Last 5 Books...
-Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I saw it on sale at Green Apple (remaindered) for around $8, but it seemed wrong to buy it after I just finished it. Still, you already know I appreciate this one.
-Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Genius. Also almost bought Consider the Lobster yesterday until I realized it was more than $8. I only bought books under $6 yesterday.
-The Last Picture Show. I liked Lonesome Dove better. But. Still. Good.
-Not Fade Away. I quoted this for you already. Wow, I think I am a better blogger than I thought.
-Jonathan Franzen's "The Discomfort Zone." Better than many of the reviews indicated. He has a great way of synthesizing random things and thoughts and ideas and making them all seem related, which I appreciate in a memoir, and aspire to do myself, and often do, in a sloppy way.

Probably my last 5 movies (half-watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Edward Scissorhands, The Darjeeling Limited, Into the Wild, Match Point) are more interesting, or my last 5 concerts (Broken Social Scene, Josh Ritter, Justice, Dan Deacon/Girl Talk, and... Feist? Was it that long ago?).

Grump. Back to work.

(Edit: You know what's actually really strange? That all of this stuff you could already know if you were plugged in on the Internet just slightly more. Meaning, there is this site called FriendFeed, started by a couple of ex Google employees, which basically aggregates ALL the stuff you use online -- Netflix queue, Amazon wish list, Flickr photo posts, etc. -- on one site. You can get all the info all the time. Is it creepy? A little. Am I intrigued? A little. Ok. Back to work for real this time.)

I think they call this a weekend roundup

I had a great birthday weekend. It was long and luxurious and I can't believe it's over.

It started Friday when a work colleague/friend presented me with a box of black & white cookies from The Grand Bakery in Oakland. He had been with me during a failed trip to a bakery near the Google SF office, which claimed to have black&white cookies but actually had chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips. Liars. So Marcin (the friend) ended up tracking them down and going to Oakland for them! I was pretty floored, and baffled by the sheer quantity and size of the cookies (5 of them, about as big around as my hand from wrist to fingertip). I still haven't eaten them all and my waistline thanks me.

Then Dan and I went to dinner with Ivan, Dan's old roommate who moved to Princeton this year for school. We discussed how baffling and strange the east coast prepsters are while eating dinner at Weird Fish, a restaurant I've wanted to go to forever. I had a good grilled trout, but the star of the show was definitely Ivan's fish & chips. I'll have to go back for that. Friday night I went to bed at 10:30pm, after watching only 30 minutes of The Last Picture Show. (I pictured Mrs. Popper very, very differently, but am withholding judgment otherwise.)

Saturday, as you know, we went wine tasting, after a truly ridiculously decadent and messy breakfast of Tartine pastries in the car. I'd never been to Tartine before, so this was a random last-minute inspiration on our drive to pick up friends in the Lower Haight. I of course had a croissant, which was pretty much pure butter and delicious. I'm not a big breakfast pastry person besides croissants and scones, but, I do love my croissants and they are a special treat.

WINE! We were ahead of schedule despite the Tartine diversion, and made it to Cline, our first winery, at 10am. Then on to Schug, where we got a free (empty) half-barrel of wine for garden planting. To fit it in the car, which was already full of 5 people, we had to take out the spare tire, nestle the barrel in the spare tire well, and replace the tire inside the barrel. It was a pretty amusing operation and I was glad I am friends with male engineers who can fit wine barrels in my car.

The best wine we had was at Elyse, and appointment-only place with an adorable friendly wandering dog on the grounds and an $80 cabernet sauvignon for tasting (complimentary tasting, too). I loved it, but talked myself out of the $80 purchase. I just don't think $80 wines are in my budget at this point, but it was quite excellent. They gave me a wine glass for my birthday. (My comment: "Does it come full?" I actually meant that seriously, but only because the way the guy offered it was a little confusing.)

Continuing the theme of "Nothing that is not addictive should pass your lips" that we'd adopted earlier on, we hit up Taylor's Refreshers in St. Helena. I have been obsessed with Taylor's for about years. We discovered it on my very first trip to Napa, senior year spring break, when Cristina, Rachel and I were all quite tipsy at the Coppola winery and decided what we really needed was chili cheese fries. (I think that was Cristina's decision.) That turned into, we really needed a burger. The guy at the counter recommended Taylor's and we were sold, immediately. I was re-sold on it when I discovered the sweet potato fries. So Saturday's meal was a patty melt and sweet potato fries. Yum. Wow, I think I ingested like 40,000 calories this weekend. I don't normally eat this well (or, um, poorly).

After lunch, we finally had all our party with us except for Dan, who was off getting keys to the cabin we were going to stay in at night. He was absolutely wonderful this weekend, by the way, getting everything set up for the trip even though it was all my idea and really just a shameless celebration of myself (I did pull the birthday card once or twice, with mixed results). We went to Heitz, which was inattentive and meh, and then Saddleback, which was lovely. They have picnic tables outside and they bring the tastes to you in the sunshine, scant yards from the vineyards. Mumm was next, where they were closing in 15 minutes, so we just bought a bottle to share and overtipped the waiter because he was nicer than everyone else there. (Birthday card did not work there.) Finally we went to Peju, where the guy hosting our tasting did weird impromptu raps (he was about 60) and freestyled about (what else?) my birthday. It was sort of mind bogglingly ridiculous but I let it go.

I guess I shouldn't make you read about my entire weekend, but it was great. Maverick was absolutely delicious, and then on Monday after Lucie and I woke up, we had Burma Superstar for lunch (no wait, it's great) and then I spent a bunch of money at Green Apple Books (another birthday gift to myself) and got an Eggling at Park Life. We basically meandered all day, and took a lot of time to do not a lot. At the Candy Store, back in my hood, we got matching little owl dolls made of burlap (I have this weird obsession with me and Lucie having a few matching trinkets like the matching ivory elephants in the Secret Garden, so we have these two Buddhas for some reason and now these owls), and I got a new wallet, which is great except I realized it doesn't have any places for cards... I need to find a place to buy extra inserts for cards. (Any ideas?) After that we went to Therapy where I bought a coat, a shirt, and a necklace with an E on it made from a 1935 typewriter. We made brief stops at the Valencia standbys, the pirate store and Paxton Gate, before heading to Berkeley for tapas & pisco sours (in my case, at least). Somehow we ended up at the diviest of dives, with my cousin Owen, and then at what he called "the ultimate grad student bar" where my friend Peattie was hanging out. Back in the city, Lu and I met two more friends from high school for a few drinks. I had this sudden flash of what my life would be like if I hadn't left Whittier. Strange.

To top it all off!! When I came to work this morning, I discovered a giant Happy Birthday banner and confetti all over my desk. My coworkers pretended that we had all had a big party together (the banner had a bunch of things on it like "The party was awesome" and "Crazy how those candles burned off your eyebrows" and there were cupcakes with already-burned candles in them). It was pretty damn funny and it came with an Anthropologie gift card. Consider me flattered and pleased.

Happy Tuesday.

Casey's classroom library

My friend Casey teaches middle school English in LA. She's trying to get funding for her classroom through this site Donors Choose. I don't have the hugest readership or anything here, but I want to help her out if I can. Here's what she says:

Below are three proposals I'm trying to get funded through donorschoose.org. You may have seen Craig Newmark (of craigslist fame) on the Colbert Report recently. He's been pushing Donors Choose, a wonderful site. Teachers are able to list their needs, and people can fully or partially fund the proposals. I'm hoping to build a better classroom library, and I know better than to think my school material budget will stretch. I'd really appreciate it if you'd give my proposals a look.

You can donate here. (The link was wrong before. This is the right one.)

Rage. and fried chicken.

It's amazing how quickly your mood can change. Like, for example, if your plumbing in your apartment is broken for the third time in a week and your landlord keeps pretending that he can fix the problem without a professional. That can affect your mood pretty quickly.

Not to be a total downer, though, I guess. Last night for my birthday I went out with a few people and my sister who is staying with me for last night and tonight. We went to Maverick and it was delicious. This has been a luxurious weekend food-wise, really. At Maverick I got the fried chicken and the pumpkin fritters, which I guess means I had two fried dishes, but, really, who is counting? We had a good pinot noir and then a Zinfandel that I had had at a winery earlier this year and really like. Justin and Dan both ordered the antelope, and I tried it and it was quite frankly amazing. The dessert was good too. All in all a great birthday meal. Lucie was laughing at us because, as she puts it, only in San Francisco can you get fried chicken for $24. Probably not entirely true - you could probably get it for that in New York and maybe LA. But I guess it is a very SF thing to have like free-range antelope and fried chicken and milk & cookies for dessert, all for about $300 for 6 people. Still, I recommend it highly. We'll be going back for brunch.

More later.

Napa = great success

James and me on a HUGE chair.

This, as Dan says, really sums things up. After the last winery we opened a bottle of Mumm in the parking lot and stood around listening to Broken Social Scene (played via karaoke machine and iPod in the trunk) drinking it and hanging out in the twilight.

lovely.
They made me pretend to throw the empty bottle into the vineyards.

This was our cabin. Five of us, $125 for the night, $170 worth of food at the grocery store, and all fire lighting. It was amazing.

Wiiiiine

And, we're off!

This is a cheating blog post today. I don't have time to write anything actual! I have to go start drinking wine at 10am!

First, some coffee.

A manifestation of the will to quote things...

"I anticipate a coming season of dilated time and of women all in disarray."

"On the way out again, I suddenly saw everything clearly: Sigmund Freud painting cocaine onto his septum, the rising uproar of the past hour and a half, the idling Audi full of rash behavior that lay ahead, the detonating summer; and because it was a drunken perception, it was perfect, entire, and lasted about half a second."

"I felt another of those sudden onslaughts of love, the desire to run to them and embrace them both, to be seen in their company, to live my life among men and women who dressed up like this and then went down the sidewalk like cinema kings."

"This bar was esteemed for the quality or at least the profusion of the graffiti in both its gentlemen's ad ladies' rooms, which were rarely washed or repainted. I read this exhange:
WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT WOMEN, ANYWAY?
And, lower:
HEY, EVERY WOMAN, PAL, IS A VOLUME OF STORIES A CATALOGUE OF MOVEMENTS A SPECTACULAR ARRAY OF IMAGES
Then:
PLUS THERE'S THE MYSTERY OF LEARNING ABOUT HER CHILDHOOD
A fourth man had concluded:
AND OF EVERYTHING THAT'S CONCEALED UNDER HER CLOTHES"

"That evening I rode downtown on an unaccountably empty bus, sitting in the last row. At the front I saw a thin cloud of smoke rising around the driver's head.
'Hey, bus driver,' I said. 'Can I smoke?'
'May I,' said the bus driver.
'I love you,' I said."

"How about 'a manifestation of the will-to-bigness.' "

"When I remember that dizzy summer, that dull, stupid, lovely, dire summer, it seems that in those days I ate my lunches, smelled another's skin, noticed a shade of yellow, even simply sat, with greater lust and hopefulness -- and that I lusted with greater faith, hoped with greater abandon. The people I loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places I sat with them, movie lots and monuments. No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything."

--The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

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.

NaBloPoMo! NaNoWriMo!

Which to choose? How about both!! I have crossed the line into crazy!

Or not.

National Blog Post Month is supposed to be chiller than National Novel Writing Month, but I am adopting them both with the same spirit. For the novel thing, I'm not thinking of a novel.. I just want to get some words on paper. The same with the blog. I'm not trying to write deep, insightful posts every day, I'm just doing a little expressing. And I want to introduce a kind of routine, or rather, rhythm, to my life. (Right now the rhythm is like this: AHH CRAZY AWESOME WEEKEND OR WEEKNIGHT, AHH SHIT WORK, AHH SO EXHAUSTED BUT AHH STUFF TO DO, AHH CRAZY AWESOME WEEKEND OR WEEKNIGHT, AHH, REPEAT.) Some kind of quiet routine. Hence: a writing routine.

Wish me luck, and feel free to keep up.

another 3191

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