Welcome to Evany Thomas! I live and word in the Bay Area, can play a drinking straw like a penny whistle, and once walked around with a detonated appendix for 5 long, strange days. I'm also a sleeping pose expert.

And that's not all!

life made me this way

Thursday, oct. 26, 2006   |   0 comments

Wow another jam-packed day in my head and life! Once again I woke up at six (I don’t know who I am anymore, either) and did some freelance-type work for a few hours. Pow!

Then my mom stopped by and we went to get coffee and cheese rolls. Zlurp!

Then Marco rolled in from surfing (he left the house before six, back when it was still dark, because he is crazy that way) and we packed up the truck with guitars ‘n’ things and headed over to the Oracle OpenWorld conference where his band, The Five Hundreds played the Wrap party. The band sounded great, and I took 129 photos. Hotdogs! Bud Light!

At one point, someone in the crowd gleefully, boozily yelled out “eBusiness Suite!” As Marco at the mic said, it was probably the first and last rock show at which that particular software got a shoutout. Any software, really. Zing!

While Marco was packing up afterward, I darted up the street to the opening party for the very fancy new BellaPelle digs on Maiden Lane (BellaPelle being the place where the lovely Leisa now works, a job you may recall that I helped her get on a very intimate level). The opening party was packed with pods and pods of fantastically well-groomed people, including my dear friends Liz, Caroleen, Jeff, Cash, Sunny, Amy Silverman, and of course lovely Leisa. There was also wine galore, a gelato cart, free waxings (eyebrows only, sorry), and a beautiful new look and feel, courtesy of designer/architect/friend Jeff. There was also a person slinking around in a big foam cat head and white jumpsuit: the store’s icon, Glamourpuss. Yes that glamourpuss. Kerplunk!

Then Marco came and picked me up and four seconds later we got a ticket for driving in the bus lane on Market Street. Oof!

When we got home, I stepped up to Safeway for some necessities (half and half, aspirin, one green banana), and the sight of my banana launched the nice checkout lady into a story about her ex-husband who used to boil plantains speared with cinnamon sticks, a story infused with an unnamable yet unmistakeable meloncholy. As I gathered up my bags, she summarized her tale with a rueful laugh and this small slice of brilliance: “Life made me this way.” Yay!

And now dear Diaryland, I press the “done!” button on this entry and hit the hay with violent force. BLAM!

ZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Wednesday, oct. 25, 2006   |   0 comments

It’s suddenly very late and I’ve had such a busy day, starting way back at 6am, and also I had a beer at dinner and it left me feeling groggy and tender-headed. Really I’m asleep already, but did I ever tell you about how my interview on Seattle’s KUOW finally aired? And also I don’t think I mentioned my interview with a nice reporter named Dru, did I?

Oh and hey! Did you guys know that words with capital letters featured mid-stream (for some reason, probably because I’m asleep, the only example I can think of is “JavaScript”), that style of wording is known as “Camel Case“? Like the humps of a camel. How great is that? Though really it should be CamelCase, right? Yet another reliable disappointment. (Thanks for the camel-tip, friend Jay!)

iced wheee!

Tuesday, oct. 24, 2006   |   0 comments

I am on an iced tea TEAR right now, all thanks to the Lipton Specially Blended Iced Tea Brew tea bags. I did try making iced tea out of regular Lipton tea bags, but it tasted sad and bad. So it turns out the tea really does have to be specially blended? But wow, now it’s like I have and endless supply of restaurant iced tea, right there in my refrigerator! Round the clock! Every day! I’m also not sleeping all that much.

this town, is coming like a ghost town

Monday, oct. 23, 2006   |   0 comments

This weekend, while I was driving into the city to attend Maggie‘s birthday pumpkin carve-off extravaganza (at which I consumed a cupcake, 1.5 macarons (aka a “mouth full of heaven“), vegetable soup, carrot sticks, champagne, a mint milano, many cheeses, and a ginger snap), I had the most amazing American Beauty moment. I was coming into that hairy, construction-ridden stretch of freeway just past the Bay Bridge on the City side, when suddenly the freeway was swept with a flurry of packing peanuts (or, as a friend in college used to call them, “ghost farts”). And for the next quarter mile or so, they swirled and whooshed around all the cars on the road, quietly and merrily, like little leaves or big, big snow.

Say my name!

Sunday, oct. 22, 2006   |   0 comments

Having an unusual name like “Evany” means that meeting someone for the first time can be fraught with pitfalls. “Ebony?” is a favorite misstep, and it’s always accompanied by a small little frown of confusion…because what kind of parent would give such a pale child such an ironic name?

Almost as popular is spontaneously breaking into song: either “Ebony and Ivory” or its much grimmer cousin, “Evany and Ibory.” People always end the song with a little knee slap and an “I bet you get that all the time!” And, like all the Roxannes and Glorias and Lolas before me, I just smile and nod, smile and nod.

One guy started off a job interview by asking me who at my company was “Evanyest”, like there was some kind of continuum of Evany, which is kind of an awesome concept. (I totally offered him that job.)

I also had a random couple track me down over the internet and email me that they were considering naming their soon-to-be-born baby “Evany,” and what did it feel like to have such a name, was it a blessing or a burden? And I responded with a very long email full of my many theories about the cruelty of childhood, and how having a weird name definitely leaves you open to school-yard mockery—everyone used to call me “Ebenezer Scrooge,” which was an odd mock for third graders to make about another third-grader, that I was cheap?—but even so, I believed that kids will make fun of you no matter what, and in the absence of a weird name, they just move on to something far more damaging, like your slightly-larger-than-average nose? So really, giving your kid an easy-target name like “Evany” is a service. Don’t you see?

The dad actually wrote back to say that he just could not stomach knowingly cursing his child with something that was going to be fodder for taunts, however mild or Dickensian, and anyway they wound up having a boy, so yeah, nevermind.

But my all-time favorite response to my name was what an old boyfriend’s mother said when he first told her about me. First she said, “Ebony? Is she black?” Paul clarified that no, it’s actually “EVany, with a V.” And Judy, she said, “Oh. Is she vlack?”