evany, evany thomas

she cried mo, mo, MO!
Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2008 | link

Do you live in Missouri? Do you know anyone who lives in Missouri? Do you suspect someone secretly lives in Missouri?

If yes, please tell yourself or your secretive friend to head over to the Missouri rosters at Project Vote (the love-child site of my big-brained, tender-hearted, and well-groomed friend Who Shall Remain Nameless) to make sure your/their name isn’t on the list of peoples who may think they’re registered to vote and yet who might not actually be registered to vote. (Due to problems, accidents, or general sinistery with applications, some people’s registration never went through!)

If you find a familiar name on the list, good news: There’s still a few hours to fix the problem! But you have to hop to it—the deadline for Missouri is the end of day today, October 8, so now’s your chance!

PSSS: Pass it on!

sometimes I worry
Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008 | link

The other night I rewatched Lost in Translation and was struck anew with my love for Sophia’s way with the little things. This time, it was something that Scarlett said in the middle of a relationship freakout in a call home to a friend. So she’s tearfully unloading about how she’d gone to see some chanting monks and was all disturbed because the experience didn’t make her feeling anything. Then, onto her bonfire of complaints, she tosses in this tiny camel-breaking straw about how her husband has “started wearing hair products.” I just love that! It’s such a weird whatever kind of non-issue, but it’s the exact sort of small fact that would trigger a realization that the person you’re with is different than what you’d imagined or hoped or planned on.

Recently I spent some high-quality time with a friend who’s going through a not so awesome divorce, and I asked her if and when she first knew that it wasn’t going to work out between her and her husband. She told me that there was no big, horrible event or battle to blame, more it was a series of small misses and faulty communications over a long stretch of time that caused the unraveling. And that maybe if they’d stopped and nipped things in the beginning, when the issues were small and ridiculous, they’d still be together. But since they let the little things build and accumulate, they’d snowballed together into an impossible impasse.

I trotted out my favorite analogy about how long-term couples are like garden gates, where over time weather warps the wood and causes the frame and door to swell in different directions. And as the door loses the ability to swing clean, you either have to force your way through with a kick or a shoulder-shove, or make room by shaving off some wood. Otherwise the door freezes and you have to just let it go and maybe find a new way to get into the back yard. Etcetera.

Then I started ruminating on what the small schisms might be that would cause Marco and me to swell in different directions—because if we stay together as long as I hope we do, the law of averages and human nature dictate that inevitably there will be real hurdles and growing-aparts that we will have to clear.

Then my friend said, “Whatever it is, it’s probably happened already and you didn’t even notice.” I gasped, and then we laughed and laughed, because she and I both know how worrier me so loves to dig my teeth into paranoid thoughts just like that. Oh, we do have fun!

When I got home, the first thing I did when I walked in the door was corner Marco to tell him what my friend had said and then ask him what relationship-ending seed he thought might already be growing between the two of us. Marco, without even pausing for a beat: “Oh. Your worrying. Clearly.” Bam! Ha ha! Wait.

I knew it!
Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008 | link

A malevolent power has stolen control of all the souls of Evany, it turns out.

naan combatant
Friday, Aug. 22, 2008 | link

As someone living in this modern world, a world that requires a certain amount of circumspection regarding the strangers we choose and choose not to engage with on our sidewalks, I sometimes find myself caught in a struggle between my plucky sense of fairness (which believes everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt), and my wily sense of self preservation (which believes the lurching man with the clawfoot and the exposed underbelly deserves a wide berth).

Sometimes my plucky side wins the day, and when I’m approached, I will stop and listen to the stranger’s story. Most times, the story is of the sob variety, full of automotive troubles, infections, and used thermoses in need of selling. But every once in awhile, I’m rewarded with someone who simply wonders what time it is, or needs to know how to get from downtown San Francisco to Yosemite (“just drive…East”). And on these occasions, my plucky side is always so happy that she decided to stop and listen, because there’s nothing Plucky loves more than sharing the time and showing the way.

But if there’s something funny about the person’s body language, or pants, self-preservationist Evany does a little internal profiling and conclusion-jumping, and opts to simply mutter “I’m sorry” as she sidesteps on by.

Most of the time, that’s the end of it; the person simply tries again with the next passerby. But sometimes, for instance while we were walking to get Indian food last night, the sidestepped person goes bananas and starts yelling about how rude it is to not even listen to what he was going to ask, reasoning that tugged directly at Plucky’s guiltstrings.

So I circled back and told the man to go ahead and ask me his question. Only instead of asking the question, he launched into a longggg preamble about “respect,” with all these sub-sections and bullet points and a sad lack of question marks. I was crabby and hungry and the naan bread was calling, so I not very nicely began to count down the dwindling seconds of my patience on my hand digits, “5…4….3…” This total rudeness struck the man as rude, and suddenly he’s all screaming and FUCK-YOU-ing and pedaling furiously after us on his bike.

Which is how I wound up yelling in the middle of Grand Avenue that “My ears are not trashcans!” And then, pointing at one of the public trashcans on the street, inviting the man to insert his “mouth into the trashcan!”

Not exactly the reasoned exchange of information that Plucky had hoped for. Or the low-profile, low-risk exchange that Self Preservationist was shooting for? Welcome, unpleasant, regrettable, uninvited Evany! Please, won’t you just sit down and put some of this giant Taj Mahal lager into your mouth. See? How much better? Yes. Shh. There there.

Maybe I should skip the multiple-personalitied decision tree and simply answer each and every approaching stranger’s request with a gigantic smile and an oblivious “I believe it’s about 7:30!”

cafe platitude
Monday, Aug. 18, 2008 | link

There is this awful hippie restaurant here in the bay area called Cafe Gratitude, where every last raw, vegan item on the menu has an unforgivably self-affirming name, like “I Am Fulfilled” and “I Am Dazzling.” And when you order these dishes, you’re not allowed to just say, “I’ll have the kale.” They actually make you say it: “I’ll have the ‘I am Giving.’” And then the waiter turns it back on you, affirming that indeed “You ARE giving!” “You ARE dazzling!” Horrible, horrible.

While generally I believe in the value of positive reinforcement, I think it only works if it comes from a reliable source, for instance someone not a waiter hoping for a tip. And also the message has to be meaningful, something beyond words that translate to just “carrot avocado soup”?

Sadly their food is kind of tasty, jerks. But their whole shitty concept makes me so crabby, I refuse to interact with them. So like a kid getting someone to buy wine coolers at the 7-11, I sent my friend Megan (who speaks hippie) up to the Cafe Gratitude at the farmers market (where of course they have a booth), and she purchased me three I Am Insightfuls as I stood off to the side, trying not to faint from rolling my eyes so hard. As the guy handed back the change, he asked Megan, his face all punch-me-in-the-face-please serene, “So what core value do you care about most?” (Oh and that’s another one of their gimmicks: they end each visit by asking you a metaphysical question about your life philosophy or whatever. There’s even a board game, possibly the most perfect instrument of Evany-torture ever imagined, board game (oh no) + hippie spiel (help!).) And Megan, who is nice, gave him a considered answer. “Integrity” I think she said, or maybe “Honesty.” He nodded sagely, giving his royal approval of her core values, and then he craned his neck up and over at me, and said, “And what about you? What’s your core value?”

I shook my head no, oh no. But he just kept staring at me with zen-like expectancy, so finally I muttered out a defiant, “Privacy…how about.” Pow! Take that! But he just kept smiling his hippie face in loving, unflapped support of me and my selfish reluctance to forthcome. Yes, you ARE judgmental. You ARE withholding! Re-reminding me once again of the age-old lesson about how verbal sparring with a highminded hippie is like punching an animated sponge: the sticks and stones, they bounce right off the hippie, while you just huff and puff and get very, very tired.

domino's delivers
Monday, Aug. 11, 2008 | link

Our local Domino’s Pizza used to have the most beautifully depressing table set up on the sidewalk out front, a tipsy, dirty, sunburned table with a breathtaking view of of the gas station. And plumly located just inches away from four-lane exhaust jamboree that is Grand Avenue! There was also a moldy umbrella, which I never ever saw unfurled, and a rusty metal folding chair. One chair.

Marco and I liked to entertain ourselves with talk of going there for our anniversary (four years of dating this September!), how first we’d get into position: Marco in a suit, teetering in the rotten chair, with me hovering at full attention beside him, my gown blowing in the wake of all the cars whizzing past. And then we’d cellphone in our order, giving the address of Domino’s Pizza itself as our delivery destination. As confusion ensued, we’d tell the pizza people inside to look out their front door. And there we’d be, smiling and waving and pointing at our hungry, pizza-shaped mouths.

But all our plans were dashed the day Domino’s ad hoc pizza patio suddenly up and disappeared. Gone! Nevermore!

Marco and I were very glummed by the loss, and would always sigh woefully whenever we walked past. But then one day our love of the insane local Domino’s was renewed anew when we caught sight of this magic in the making:

This kind of beautiful does not come from Corporate. Clearly this is the ambition-child of a power-hungry Branch Manager who spotted his pizzamen lounging during a lull in business and, in a fit of got-time-to-lean-got-time-to-clean-liness, sicced them on this little project.

While the lettering may look like it was done freehand, I can attest that many painstaking manhours (three different pizzamen were painting on it as we passed!) were spent taping off the outline for each letter, “oinch” by “oinch,” and then painting in the negative space. However they opted not to paint in the logo, which if you look close is constructed out of nothing but teeth-torn tape, a testament to the glory of restraint. For, more than anything, our Domino boys in blue know the sublimity of the sub-standard.

breathe, breathe in the hair
Friday, Aug. 8, 2008 | link

Just over a month ago, I read a post over at Angry Chicken that mentioned the benefits, both financial- and scalp-happiness-wise, of washing your hair using nothing but baking soda and apple cider vinegar. Not at the same time, of course—since that would cause your head to turn into a volcano of a science fair—but staggered, with the baking soda as the shampoo and the apple cider as the conditioning rinse.

My love of home remedies being slightly stronger than my since-childhoood-in-Marin distaste for hippie schemes, I decided to give it a try. And for the past month, I have indeed been washing my hair with 2 cups of water mixed with 2 tablespoons of baking soda (double the usual amount, but I have troubling amounts of hair) and rinsing with 2 cups of water mixed with 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar—it’s all how-to-ed in satisfying detail over at Babyslime.

And I am here to say that I’m very happy with the results! My hair feels good—when it gets wet, gone is that American squeakiness, where your fingers sort of stutter down your head. Instead, my hair feels…supple? Elastic? Childlike? And there’s a lot less tangling. Best of all is the smell, which I for some reason keep describing as “lake-like,” a description that I know sounds boggish and silty and generally unappetizing. But I’m talking about that fresh, comforting, elemental smell of an exhausting childhood day spent sunning and diving into non-chlorinated waters. That smell. And all the people I’ve forced to “smell my head” this past month seem to agree, or at least are not repulsed!

Also, my hair actually looks better, or at least less puffy. And not at all dirty-hippie lank, as I feared.

All in all, a very successful home remedy experiment! Unlike the clove of garlic the internet once convinced me to try as a cure for a yeast infection, an experiment which was…not quite as successful. Suffice it to say that if you’re not single when you start stuffing your infected parts full of garlic,
chicken-style, you very soon will be. But you’ll still have that yeast infection to keep you company.

oh, baby
Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2008 | link

Sometimes I think having a baby might be nice, but neither Marco nor I seem to have developed the all-import Baby Fever, nor has the even-more-compelling Accident of Fate seems to have occurred. Without Fever or Accident, the baby-thinking seems to keep getting back-burnered. And now that I’m 38, it seems the decision may have already been made through lack of deciding, what with my eggs being mostly rotten by now?

Sometimes I think about adoption, though given my luck with picking out mealy, tasteless produce, and non-functioning used automobiles, and bathtub-peeing, fireplace-shitting cats, I’m pretty much guaranteed to choose a lemon…like a kid who wears patchouli or a burning man. Really it’s the whole responsibility of of choosing (versus having it genealogically beyond my control) that scares me. Maybe if the choice weren’t up to me and my Black Hand of Bad Picks, like if the child was just magically left on my doorstep? (Though after that “adoptive child as lemon” analogy, I’m guessing no one’s going to trust their kid to me now.)

Sometimes I think I’ll be fine without ever reproducing, that my wide circle of active and child-free friends, plus my wide circle of friends with awesome kids, together we will fill that need for family.

And sometimes I worry that ten-years-from-now-Evany is going to be very sad that she procrastinated her way out of motherhood, and twenty-years-from-now-Evany is going to be sort of disconnected from the world, without a pair of young eyes to see everything through?

Hm.

what not to wear, the reunion episode
Monday, Aug. 4, 2008 | link

In just over three weeks, I will be attending my 20th high school reunion, an event that fills me with a yucky hot-stomach feeling that I’m guessing (though can’t really be sure…it’s so dark in there) is part social anxiety, part career uncertainty, and part wrinkle sadness, stirred with an unhealthy splash of “oh my god, my life is half over.”

Like a birthday or New Years Eve, a reunion is the kind of milestone that invites painful reflection and personal meter-reading. Blowing out the candles, counting down those last ten seconds of the year, these are times when the small, regret-weakened voice inside really likes to pity-party, fixating on the failures, belittling the achievements, and generally taking dim stock of the previous year. And a high school reunion is all those things, only ten times worse, what with the event rearing its ugly head only once a decade, meaning there’s ten times the annual should-haves and could-haves to look back on. Hurray!

Who should I be for my 20-year reunion: The Mead-Soaked PTA Mom?

So August 30th would be a hard day for me even if it weren’t for the fact that the last time I saw everyone was at my profoundly regrettable ten-year reunion, an event at which I accidentally got myself very, very drunk. As in red wine splashed across the chest of my shirt, mascara down to my chin, holding for dear life onto the railings in the handicap stall, confrontational “Hey! What are you doing here? I thought you’d for sure be serving time by now what with you being such a sick fuck!” and “Remember in eighth grade when you touched my nipples?” drunk.

The Demure Tea Partier?

I’m convinced that the reason I got so heinously plastered that fateful night, apart from the buckets of vodka I mean, was my outfit. It just was not right! For me, the wrong outfit makes me feel tongue-tied and boring and misunderstood, while the right outfit makes me feel attractive and smart and comfortable with the person I turned out to be. And on the night of my tenth high school reunion, I was wearing the wrong outfit.

The Bendable, Posable Cha-Cha-Charming Action Figure?

I had spent the afternoon trying on shirts after pants after skirts after dresses in a terrible fit of outfit indecision. When it came time to head over to my friend Megan’s house—where our circle of still-friends had planned to gather beforehand for drinks—I still wasn’t dressed. So I threw on sweats and grabbed pretty much all the clothes I owned and took them with me, and while we sipped pre-reunion libations, I modeled outfit after outfit, trying to find the perfect combination of fabric and color and texture and not-too-snugness to forge the protective coating of confidence and body-comfort I needed to face the next four hours. But before I could find the Right Outfit, we were late and everyone was yelling at me to Come on! And Let’s go! So I just went out the door in what I was wearing at that moment: a weird cropped neon green shirt, a black-and-white stripped belly-gripping angle-length skirt, and towering maroon platforms. It was a very late-90s look, which was okay since it was 1998. The problem was, it just did not capture my me of that moment. For not only does the right outfit have to look cute, but it also has to make me feel like my outsides match my insides. And clearly, on that night of nights, my insides were begging for vintage postal pants, black webbed belt with metal “E” slider buckle, Rebel sneakers, and a black tee with heart-shaped neckline. Which I firmly believe is why, when we arrived at the reunion, I started pouring myself one bad idea after another. I think I was just trying to drink my insides into matching my outsides!

The Dry Wine-Whitened Gallery Sophisticate?

But this time, it’s going to be different. For my 20th reunion, I’m going to make sure I’m wearing the right outfit. Because you’re going to help me, maybe! Here’s what I’m hoping you’ll do: Take a look at the survey of all my outfits, and if you see one that you think makes me look ultra pinchable (important!) but also embodies the Essence of Evany (absolutely key!), then add a comment for that photo that says, “I totally think you should wear this to reunion!” A reunion, by the way, that will be staged here in the Bay Area (i.e., too cold for short-shorts), in the evening-time (so no brunch-style clam diggers), and we’ll be charmed by the musical stylings of the very same high school band that played at Prom (i.e., actually sweatpants would probably be just fine).

The Cheerfully Swedish Exchange Student? Or some other me entirely? Type your vote at me today!

With your wisdom to guide me into the Right Outfit, clearly there’s no way I can fail! Now the only remaining question is: Do I stay sober to demonstrate how most improved I am? Or do I keep with tradition and get even more loaded and tell all those pieces of dried and tanned fruit leather what I really think…again?

Or maybe this dark night calls something in between…a toast! To temperance!

one is silver, the other gold: part done!
Thursday, Jul. 31, 2008 | link

Oh dear. Where were we? Finishing this description of all the friend-packed fun I’ve been having lately is getting harder by the day, what with time continuing to pass in the meanwhile, thereby packing more also-fun events onto the pile of things I want to remember not to forget! And now somehow I’m farther behind in my round-up than when I first started? Time is the worst! Not for the first time do I find myself wishing for a time-stopping Gold Watch machine—I wouldn’t even use it to win roulette or untie ladies’ bikini tops. I’d just stop time for a day or two, long enough to get my internet timeline caught up with my actual lifetime, and maybe take a sweaty long nap. (Explanaside: I have not been sleeping at all well these days, between the biting of mosquitoes, and the howling, growling house mammals, and also french-fry poisoning, I haven’t experienced more than a handful of restful hours of the last week, and I’m the walking woozy as a result. I also have epic chin acne, and a randomly swollen left foot. There’s a party going on right here, it turns out?)

Okay: So: Saturday: Mic checks, mimosas, and handbag parties
After staying up late GoGos dancing and donut cramming the night before at the Mightyhaus party, I found it difficult indeed to peel my old self out of bed on this particular Saturday morning. But peel myself I did, for I was scheduled to appear on the What We Do: Pursuing Your Passion Never Gets Old panel at the BlogHer conference, and staying in bed was not really an option, though a bed-based panel—with breakfast burritos!—would have been interesting. (Next year!) And so I got up, dabbed some aspirin between my lips, hurtled on the best panel-worthy outfit I could muster, and Marco drove into the city with silent, brooding, stage-frightened me at his side. (I’m convinced that each time I speak publicly I’m shortening my lifespan by at least a month. I’ll have to drive over a lot of railroad tracks with my fingers crossed to gain back the lost time…typing this, it suddenly occurs to me that maybe not everyone knows about the “railroad tracks+crossed fingers=one extra day of life” recipe. Maybe this is another one of my weird only-child things?)

Things got off to a mildly rocky start, but once I made it through my sputtering self-introduction—during which Maggie had to throw me a few life-saver questions (“And you are…?”)—I managed to start swimming and stop sinking long enough to actually get to the point of enjoying myself. I have no idea what I said, stage fright for me being the equivalent of seven memory-obliterating Swedish Massages (scroll down for the recipe), but I do remember laughing a whole lot and being super interested in everything everyone else was saying (both the ladies on my panel as well as all the nice audience people). Apparently I also did a lot head flapping and perhaps even some mild seizing, because word has it my lapel microphone only caught every other word I said, like Lina Lamont in The Dueling Cavalier. Yes, yes, yes? No, no, nooooo.

After the panel, I did a quick book signing. (Yes, I’m still trotting that one out, can you believe it?) Then I went to the BFD meet-and-greet-(and-mimosas!) event, where Annie and I participated in some rapid-fire chatting with the lovely Mo, Wheetabix, and a whole circle of lovely ladies. Then we darted over to the Can You Take Back Naked Blogging? panel, which was heart-wrenching (the depths that comment ogres can sink to!) and funny (watch a crying baby turn her mother’s milk-laden breasts into Pavlovian squirt guns!) and generally great, aside from the audience person who chose to clip her nails during the show, which is possibly the grossest, most brain-curdling sounds ever and whenever I hear it I just want to punch the whole world. But sadly there was no time for world-punching, because quick like a cheetah we had to sprint over to the closing keynote, Living the Truman Show, which was a whole rainbow of interesting, wow.

Fame is a very weird thing in and of itself, but there’s something extra boggling about highly contextualized fame. Like a hotdog-eating champion, he can stroll around Cost Plus or wherever completely unmolested, without anyone noticing or even really caring who he is. But then he walks in to a hotdog-eating conference, and everyone’s face turns toward him and tracks him like a sunflower follows the sun. And all those sunflowers want their picture taken with him.

It can be a little disconcerting to witness, especially if you have no prior understanding that such a thing existed, at least not at that level. It feels like you just turned over a rock and suddenly there’s this whole world of activity going on, with its own complicated system of loyalties and betrayals and misunderstandings. It’s fascinating. But uncomfortable, too, and maybe even a little scary? Hm.

Finally, a shot of the ceiling of the antechamber of the keynote ballroom.

After the keynote I did a quick Oh Mighty Isis costume-change into my great Great Lakes dress, and Annie and I dashed over to Macy’s for the strange end-of-conference shop-and-sip party involving champagne-drinking amongst the handbags and noodle-gobbling amongst the shoes. Fun! Weird!

Oh, just sipping champagne over here by the cash register.

And then (this is still the same Saturday?) I strapped on a conical birthday hat and went behind the bookcase and down the rabbit hole of Bourbon and Branch with a whole crew of outstanding ladies and gentleURLs (Jon, Sarah, Antonia, Carol, Alice, Eden, Melissa, Maggie, Bryan) to celebrate of the birth of the sweet baby awesome that is Heather! After a flurry of ridiculous drinks and loud bar-shouting, we broke into cabs to hit North Beach for some birthday fooding.

Our particular cab was helmed by a creepy little man who happened to overhear me say (possibly because I was yelling?) that I wasn’t wearing any underwear—not for sexy reasons but because I’d only just discovered that the underpants I’d been wearing with success all day did something new and awful and sausage-y once I made the switch to my clingy woolen dress. Me, while backing slowly out of the cab so as not to Britney my parts all over Little Italy: “Oh no! I’m not wearing any underwear!” Perv Griffin, eye-locking me in the rear view: “I thought so.” Me, to Sarah and Carol who were already halfway up the street: “DID YOU HEAR WHAT PERV GRIFFIN JUST SAID TO ME?” Perv Griffin: [Nothing but the sounds of a cab peeling out into the night.]

After a long, chatty dinner there was some muttering about hitting another bar…WHAT? Luckily everyone else was just about as exhausted as I was, and we all agreed to use the last 2% of our energy reserves to just stagger home. I cabbed to BART with Jon, Heather, and Carol, wherein we were razzled and dazzled by the driver’s (NOT Perv Griffin) selection of energizing panty jams. I asked the cab at large if anyone knew what we were listening to, because it was actually kind of glorious and perhaps just the new soundtrack my staid life is begging for? Jon whipped out his iMachine, put it up to the speakers, then started tapping on buttons and sending pings out into space or whatever. And within moments, he turned to us with a wide, proud smile and held out his computational device, which, based on sound-waves alone, had managed to produce both the name of the song and the panty jamming individual who created it. (Data which I’ve since totally forgotten. I was tired! And drunk! And not wearing any underwear.) We were all suitably impressed with the technological feat, and were in the middle of oohing and ahhing when the cab driver nonchalantly ejected the CD, upon which all the salient info was clearly printed, and handed it to me, all: Is THAT what you idiots were looking for?

And…that’s it! I hopped out of the cab, got onto the BART, and Marco kindly met me at the station and drove exhausted, silent, already-hung-over me home again, home again.

But that’s not all! (I know. I’m sorry. It’s like there was never a time when I wasn’t writing this entry.)

Sunday: Brunch with my amazing friend-since-high-school Megan and her new man, Tony, then to the Oakland Museum with Brian and Sandra for the Birth of Cool, then off to Batman II, III, IV, and V. Have you seen that movie yet? No? Well be prepared to walk out feeling like you’d just beer-bonged four entire movies all at once.

Hat shopping in the Oakland Museum gift shop.

Tuesday: Dinner at the St. Francis with Maggie, Marco, and Sarah, during which Marco told the story of the fake “perfect for burning man” ads he’s been placing on Craigslist in an attempt to get Stephen and Jessica of Vintage Microwave to profile them, which caused Maggie to actually spit-take into her water glass, possibly the only non-elegant thing I’ve ever seen her do. Dear diary!

Wednesday: Dinner at the St. Francis again, this time with the McSweeney’s kids. Food, fun, and monkey grinder milkshakes!

Friday: Impromptu Domino Magazine watermelon margaritas at our house. Fun, fun, fun…and then drunken sadness.

Saturday: Hangover, hangover, hangover…then only at dusk managing to rally for a jaunt to Dolores Park for The Breakfast Club amongst a sea of drunks and puppies and groping hippies for Kari’s birthday!

Why was it called The Breakfast Club when they were there the whole Saturday, and the only meal they had was lunch?

When the lights, go down, on the city.

Birthday Kari and old rubber face.

Sunday: Quality time with my mom and Frank, then home for a re-screening of Lost in Translation, which is still pretty much perfect, it turns out. And how often in life do you get to put the words “still” and “perfect” together?

Tuesday: Dinner at the St. Francis AGAIN for long, leisurely chatting about trains and time zones and midwives with some of my oldest and dearests: Heidi, Liz, back-in-town Jill, and later Sunny.

Wednesday: Orange tang booze drinks and mini hamburgers at the CB2 opening party and then mojitos and big rolls of sushi products at the Ritz with Jill, Marco, Adam, and Julia, whee!

Drinking the koolaid.

Marco is a giant among hamburgers.

Then, finally, finally TODAY! Just another day at the bank, plus the endless exhaustion of words and photos that you see before you.

And now, here I sit, internet sore and halfway hungry, my ears aching with earphone fatigue, my glasses smudged with finger juice. Ah so! THIS is what living in the now feels like.

letterman gets savaged!
Sunday, Jul. 27, 2008 | link

Look! Adam Savage! Staying up late with David Letterman!

Oh just sitting in our living room with Adam’s GIANT HEAD.

Dave makes Adam laugh.

Adam makes Dave laugh.

I love this. I want a painting of this. Instead of my actual television.

Adam is one of my favorite people for a whole rainbow of reasons. First of all, Marco and I met at Adam’s wedding (at where he tied himself in a knot the lovely and witty and sharp-dressed Julia, pow!) close to four years ago now, a turn of events that I thank my lucky charms for each and every day.

Also Adam is pure awesome, a contagious laugher and thrower of the kind of all-night eating, wining, and dancing dinner parties that your teenaged you always hoped that grown-up you would be invited to.

And he’s also such a good story: The kind and chatty, juggling, card-throwing, unicycle-riding, people-loving maker of whips and R2D2s is desperately in need of a job, and one day he discovers himself…at a job where he chats and juggles and throws cards and meets new people and builds things! Adam’s life reads like an inspirational book for kids, with pages packed with adventure and pictures, pictures, pictures. A book your kids would love without even knowing that it was teaching them fundamental truths about how happy endings (the job, the girl, the guest spot on Letterman) can come from those weird fun hobbies that you obsess on and teach yourself and just love doing when you’re little.

Yay, Adam!!!

one is silver, the other gold: part two
Thursday, Jul. 24, 2008 | link

When last we spoke, I was telling you about my rambling, scrambling ten-or-so previous days, and I’d made it as far as last Monday. And so:

Tuesday: Party-favor stuffing at Maggie’s house!
Now this was a really fun day. First of all, I finally got to pat the in-the-flesh pattables of the beautiful and hilarious Alice of Finslippy and the perfectly toothed Melissa of Suburban Bliss (is it possible to have a crush on someone’s mouth?), which right there makes for a Dear-Diary-caliber day. But then you add on special toppings like Bryan mixing Glass Houses (and even going so far as to walk to the store to purchase more vodka, wow), endless Thai food, relaxed catch-up time with both Ally and Maggie, and—the cherry on top—Hank’s perfect cheeks, and suddenly you’ve got yourself a metaphorical sundae of epic greatness. On a Tuesday!

Pill popping in preparation for the Mighty Haus launch party.

Each gift box was ingeniously furnished with two doses of hangover relief.

Wednesday: So You Think You Can Dance…Dance…Dance
Yes, on Wednesday Marco and I stayed home and sat on our dog-haired couch, eating cereal for dinner and watching the best season of the best reality show on our gigantic black hole Death Star television. That’s right.

Thursday: Insecurity, perverts, and grilled cheese
Thursday got off to kind of a rocky start when I walked into the party for all the BloghHer speakers, wandered the circumference of the room, realized I knew no one, and was promptly blindsided by a wave of social anxiety the likes of which I’ve rarely (never? ever?) experienced. I tried to quash the discomfort with alcohol, a trusted friend which, when applied orally, typically brings on the happy, but it didn’t even dent my feelings of intense dorkwardness.

A nice woman (whose name I completely forget, such was my panic…I’m sorry nice woman!) came up and chatted with me and my social anxiety for awhile, but I still keenly felt the sting of my inability to gel with the partygoers as a whole. Finally I noticed someone whom I sort of recognized, so I took a big sip of booze and lurched at her with a, “Don’t I know you? Don’t you have…twins? I think?” Of course she turned out to be Stephanie of Greek Tragedy, who is hugely famous in an online web diary sort of way? Or something? Enough so that she was actually lined up for the closing night Keynote about “Living the Truman Show”? I know nothing.

At that point, my first nice woman friend left the party, and Stephanie and I were left to chat about the recent release of her third book (!), and how maybe it was going to be made into a movie (!), and how the actual Amy Sedaris had actually just called to chat about actually being in said movie (!). And I…told her how I like to take photos of my outfits.

I had these outfit cards Moo-ed out for the conference, pretty much the best $20 I’ve ever spent.

Throughout our conversation, Stephanie super-nicely smiled and nodded and asked interesting questions, all of which I, in my self-cringing state, interpreted as just polite tolerance. But I’ve since read that she felt equally outsidered at some of the BlogHer events, which has prompted some real “isn’t life funny, etc.” thinking over here in my head. Huh!

Stephanie also later revealed (in her Keynote talk on Saturday night) that she’s not really a big laugher in person. And really, nothing throws Nutty Confessor me more than a non-laugher. I always think the reason the person isn’t laughing at my self-defecating and neurotic comments is that they don’t realize I’m (kind of) kidding and they’re trying to spare my feelings, and so I EXAGGERATE even more in an effort to make it clear that I don’t really, truly believe what I’m saying. And then, when I STILL don’t get the chuckle-release I’m waiting for, I just start talking faster and waving my arms around and opening my eyes wide and sweating and tap-dancing. Poor Stephanie!

(She actually bought one of my books later in the conference and then voluntarily came up and asked me to sign it, so at least she doesn’t seem to be actively pursuing a restraining order in my direction, which I consider a small yay.)

Anyway, anyway, anyway. Once my word storm on Stephanie finally ran dry, me and my feelings of self-craziness scampered off to grab my coat and remove myself from Dodge before I could take another hostage. But as I was walking out the door I found myself pulled into the attractor-beam that is the supermodel eyeballs of Kelly from Mocha Momma, whom I fell in love with instantly. And then I met Kelly’s wildly together daughter, Mallory (oh to have been that wise and poised at her age…or even at my age), and before I knew it, another hour had passed and all my social weirdness had totally evaporated. (Wow, just look at all this typing. Is anybody still reading this?)

Liz and our Awesome New Friend Lisa, sipping drinks on Gawker’s dime.

By then I was late for my next engagement, and so quickquick I lurched over to the Otis bar on Maiden Lane to join Liz for a Gawker-financed drink to celebrate her triumphant appearance on a panel at the PSFK conference. Due to the phenomenon of free drinks, the place was packed well beyond my capacity as a 38-old, so I hovered in the corner with our Awesome New Friend Lisa and drank whatever drinks that this weirdo guy, an asshole-obsessed asshole who was trying very hard to get with Liz, brought to us. The man was not the greatest, but the drinks he procured sure were. And they totally worked! After about an hour I was too liquored up to weather the cramped, crowded cement hole that is Otis, so Liz and I snuck ourselves away from the Ass Man and she walked me back to the BlogHer hotel, where…

…I was immediately overwhelmed with a whole parade of Ladies on My List of Want-to-Meets, including (but not limited to): Sarah of Que Sera Sera, Eden of Fussy, Whitney of Ugly Green Chair, Antonia of Whoopee, Leah of LeahPeah…just like that. Bam, bam, bam! Rat, tat, tat! After a flurry of hugs and business cards (so many business cards), we all decided that we were in dire need of food, and so we turned to the place that so many San Franciscans turn to when it’s after ten and that grilled-cheese sort of hunger strikes: Sparky’s.

Eden, Maggie, and Sarah say “blog.”

Friday: In which I stand up in front of hundreds of people and say “Wow”
So on Friday I cut out of work early and hustled over to the St. Francis ballroom, home to the BlogHer opening Community Keynote in which I was scheduled to read a short entry I wrote for this very website. After many, many talented women and even a smattering of men had their turn at the mic (I laughed, I cried!), it was time for shaky and profoundly sober me to get on up there. I went directly after the mythical Jenny of The Bloggess, who had been back stage sipping from airplane bottles of Disaronno. Jenny loose-cannoned out onto stage and, clutching the curtain for balance, announced that she was wearing her “confidence wig” because of her “anxiety disorder” and then she warned us that she was going to be saying “cunt” a lot, and then she said something about her “riot gun” (I think?) and threw her hands up in the air and yelled “NRA!” And I, from my warm-up spot just off stage, started to get very worried that she was going to go completely off the rails of her crazy train. But! Somehow, someway she managed to bring it all home and proceeded to tell the all-time funniest story about oral surgery that I’ve ever had the pleasure of. Truth! She brought the house down and was pretty much the funniest read of the night. And so, it was into that vacuum that I tiptoed out into the spotlight and, looking offstage at Jenny’s teetering retreat, summed up my shellshock with a small, whispered “Wow.”

After the reading, we went over to Ruby Skye for chicken pot pies and raw-chicken pasta. And then, lickety splickety, the great Sarah and I cabbed over to the Mighty Haus party, the big kick-off housewarming for the spanking-new Might Haus site, brought to you by the mighty Maggie and the bliss-making Melissa. And it was a truly epic party. It was. I learned how to sip wine out of a cracked cup (tip: drink fast). I “Push[ed] It” all over the dance floor. My new favorite Zan of A Cup of Tea and a Wheat Penny may or may not have cupped my ass. Marco talked jacket fashion and practiced fancy handshakes with Zan’s Jonathan. Heather of Dooce and I exchanged shouts of “So nice to finally meet you!” The beautiful Holly of Nothing But Bonfires and I talked The Knowledge. And…and…AND I got to take home my own antique key necklace and aspirin and a DOUGHNUT!

Me, wearing my key to the Haus party.

And here, as I stumble home from the best party of 2008 with sore feet and high-heels in hand, I will leave you to give my story-fingers another break. Tune in tomorrow-ish for Part Three of the tale, in which a microphone is attached to my clothing.

one is silver, the other gold: part one
Tuesday, Jul. 22, 2008 | link

As I said during my panel this past weekend, sometimes life serves up so many great experiences all at once, and my head gets so full of words that I want to use to describe it all, that I get overwhelmed and wind up watching Ghostbusters on TNT instead of writing it all down the way I so want to.

But this has been such a fun week, so packed with people I admire and love—from some of my oldest and dearest friends to spanking-new meets whom I’ve only just had the opportunity to greet after long admiring their writing, websites, and art, and things—that I refuse to let my bad habits swallow these experiences into the void of my non-written-down memories. I will not! My apologies in advanced, however, if this reads like a catalog for a summer daycamp for adults, which is actually very much what it felt like. Starting with…

Last-last Thursday: Art and edible doglets!
I’d say this lucky string of events I’ve been enjoying started on Thursday last, when I hit the Rare Device opening for the most excellent Julia Rothman/Caitlin Keegan (such intimate, fun, funny paintings and drawings!). The opening turned out to be a hot-house hotbed of women whose websites I’ve clicked all up and over, women I’ve always, always hoped to meet in the face one day. Happy in-the-flesh surprises included Elizabeth of a Browner Brown, Victoria of sfgirlbybay, and even out-of-towner Grace of Design*Sponge.

When I met Grace, I actually struggled for a minute to come up with her human name—I’m convinced my brain is filled with a finite number of slots, one name per person, and once a domain name gets in there, it’s forever difficult for me to put another name to that face. And embarrassingly enough, I think actually referred to Grace as Design*Sponge in that same way Buster on Arrested Development talks about “Army,” like an all-powerful entity with no softening “the” before it? Like, “Design*Sponge is so pocket-sized pretty and friendsome!” (Though now that I’m letting this out of the confines of my head, I’m realizing that the Buster analogy doesn’t make much sense at all…really, adding a “the” before “Design*Sponge” would have so much more dehumanizing and worse?) In anyway, Grace was very nice and chatted with me about a whole number of different topics until I noticed that I’d had her cornered for like ten minutes and I stuttered off to get myself a drink and give her leave to snap her amazing photos of the show in peace.

Meanwhile I got in some quality time with my true and great friends Maggie and Annie, and even the Judith (an URL no longer!), whom I’d met once before way back at the Web99 conference? Or maybe it was Web98? Ten years ago? TEN YEARS. (As you read those words, know that I was saying them out loud in an ominous zombie voice as I typed them.)

That’s me, chewing on Lisa‘s magical mystery dog, Wilfredo. In a world where such a perfect dog can live and breathe, how could crime and sadness and rotten milk even exist, I wonder?

Elizabeth, Grace, and Maggie, oh my!

Afterward, Annie rode me on the back of her motor bike to Chow (a ride that earned me a totally authentic exhaust-pipe calf burn), where we met up with Marco and I had myself some delicious chicken-and-steak-and-peanut noodles with ginger cake and pumpkin ice cream on clean-up, the perfect sponge-meal for my many servings of art-opening wine, whew.

Friday: Condo-warming floor party!
Inger just landed herself her very own condo! From the 1920s! With cute built-ins and vintage octagonal bathroom tile and everything! To celebrate this celebratory event, her friends (all people from Marco’s side of the friend family, whom I’m so happy to have in my life now, too) gathered on the day of the official key hand-off for the traditional pizza-and-champagne-on-the-empty-floor ceremonies. Loud, echo-y fun was had by all!

Saturday: Renegade Craft Fair and BBQ and, what the hell, Hell Boy
The fair was an overwhelming parade of greatness, which is why we (Marco and the Mellos) immediately had to hunker down for some giant hotdog fortification before we dove in, despite the fact that we had a BBQ on our horizon. Filled with frankfurter, we were finally able to face all the ingenious and cute and satisfying wares, and I bought all kinds of stuff, from earrings to giant stuffed logs. My log purchase led to a long-hoped-for meeting with the amazing Erika of My Imaginary Boyfriend, the creator of my beloved felt robot ornament and whose felt rock valentines I profiled during my stint filling in and Mighty Goods.

Erika and me and my new log!

The log in action.

After the fair, we went to good friends Peter and Laura’s for face-stuffing of all kinds (including Lisa’s homemade apricot tortelets, holy god), and then ten of us scampered off to the very loud and just-okay but still fun as an overall experience Hell Boy—not nearly as funny as the first one, I’m not sure what happened there. And yet…popcorn! Coke! Marco’s hand to mash!

Sunday: Another BBQ, what?
This time the grill was grilling out on Yerba Buena island, the halfway body of land that splits the Bay Bridge…of all places. Mapquest gave me the most awful directions, causing me to get immediately lost and panicky (you wouldn’t think there was enough room to get lost and panicky on that isle, and yet). After driving around and around, and getting pulled over (by two whole cop cars!) for lurching over a bump-encrusted double-yellow line (no ticket, thank the law, but lots and lots of disappointed head-shaking), I finally found the party. I quickly fell to with the chicken-eating and beer sipping, and nuzzled up with some of my oldest and dearest friends: Sunny (and her cute mom all the way out from Florida!), Leisa, Cash, Caroleen, Scott, Liz, Heidi, wow. In short: lots of laughing and screaming and angel food cake.

Monday: Rest day
Work. Home. Cereal. Sleep.

…Wow, this is getting really long. And my fingers are so hot and sweaty and full of complaint! So I think I’m going to stop the story right here and pick up where I left off (key parties! confidence wigs! liverpudlian! BLOGHER!) tomorrow. Tune in, turn on, and stay cute.

let your chest do the endorsing (was: "barack you like a hurricane")
Thursday, Jul. 10, 2008 | link

Nothing says “support your favorite presidential candidate” like a double-inverted-meta-ironic ringer tee:

Perfect for standing around in your kitchen and drinking half-and-half by the gallon.

Why I’d say this tight, tight tee counts for two votes right here! PS: I’m actually talking about my knockers…I mean my Barackers! Boy are my arms tired. I mean my Obamarms! Help.

My own favorite Marco made these tees and he is very excited about them. And now, if you are similarly excited, you can buy your own for just $14.99 on his etsy-ma-thing, with 25% of what gets made going right into the Obama. Get some!

simple bra necessities
Monday, Jul. 7, 2008 | link

What to do when you’re a big-topped lady in a bra that refuses to map to the cornered terrain of today’s latest silhouette?

Jill recommends a balconette bra, while friend-from-high-school Jennifer claims the 100-Ways Bra from Victoria Secret to be just the answer. But how annoying to be forced into buying special underthings just for the sake of one simple summer dress! Especially a simple summer dress that was purchased at Ross Dress For Less for just $29.99, i.e., less than the relatively steep toll of either specialty bra. Ffft!

My cheapskate solution?

The ribbon was FREE, part of the cute wrapping that Kari used to wrap her happy birthday gift to me this year. I just snipped off two generous lengths, cinched the visible bra buttressing into a tight bow, and done!

I wore this outfit to our fabulous Russian River Escape this weekend with Annie and Eric and their pride of oh-so-friendly friends. Sadly my ribboned ingenuity couldn’t help solve the dress’s other fatal flaw, which is its intolerantly narrow-minded bodice, the boning of which strained uncomfortably against my weekend intake of steak, corn, blueberry pancakes, American apple pie, pulled-pork sandwiches, wine, mimosas, greyhounds, and s’mores, and I was forced to change into a more accommodating dress with plenty of eating room. Triple-hooray for room-to-gorge Plan B dresses!

how the turtle got its grump
Thursday, Jul. 3, 2008 | link

At 2am, the ominous crunching of Daisy working a bone out in the livingroom penetrated my deep-sleep brain enough to stir me into semi-awake-itude. The hollow clunking of the dog worrying a marrow-stuffed bone wasn’t such an unusual sound in and of itself, but the timing was off. In my sleep-slowed head, I mused on the anomaly of it—in my years of knowing her, Daisy had never left our cozy bed in the dark, small hours of night to go chew on her bone. Stranger still, I didn’t recall either Marco or myself giving her a bone in recent days. Maybe she found some chicken bones in the trash? But chicken bones have more of a snapping sort of crunch to them. And the chicken we’d had that night was boneless. Huh.

After about five more minutes of pondering, the pull of the mystery overcame the pull of sleep, and I got up to discover just what she’d managed to get her mouth onto.

It was dark, so all I could figure was that her little chew project was rounder and darker than any bone I’d ever seen. I picked it up and brought it up to my face for a closer squint, as Daisy wagged cheerfully at my feet. And then in a whoosh I went from sleepily puzzled to freak-out scream-mode. “Daisy!” The dog wagged even harder, all proud and self-congratulatory. “This is NOT FOR YOU!” Because? It turned out? The thing I was holding was our turtle’s shell, denuded of its arms and legs and head and tail.

Marco came staggering in at the sound of my yells and I—scrambled and garbled—managed to break the news to him. And Marco, who has owned that turtle for 15 years and who was still basically asleep, did not react well. Tearfully he took the shell and cradled it, and then he asked me if I would do a perimeter check for turtle parts, because he just couldn’t face it. I turned on the light and carefully checked the carpet. Nothing.

We took the remains over to the light, and after closer examination we realized that the turtle’s legs and etc. weren’t so much missing as they were tucked impossibly far up inside him. Marco rushed him back into his turtle house, noting in a panicked, self-recriminating voice that the door was open and that Marco had probably forgotten to close it after changing the turtle’s water the night before. And how thrilled Daisy must have been to discover that oversight! Marco gently placed the turtle inside his water dish, which he likes to swim around in, but there was no movement. So sad! With waning hope, Marco set him beside the water dish, closed the door to the house, and scrambled over to ask the internet how long turtles can survive with their heads sucked inside out.

Marco searched on “dog” and “turtle” and “attack,” which conjured up a gruesome list of links to “hilarious” videos of dog attacking turtles. “That’s not funny,” Marco yelped. “Nothing about that is funny!”

As Marco continued to frantically ask the internet for answers, I went and lay down next to the turtle cage. “Marco? MARCO? I think I just saw his leg move!”

Marco rushed in and the turtle moved again, and we cheered a big cheer. And then we gave him some raspberries. But he wasn’t really in an eating mood, since that would require removing his head from its inverted triage mode, which he didn’t even consider doing until well into the next morning.

But slowly and surely, the turtle and his various extremities came out of their shell. And after a week of vet-prescribed medicated salving for his various scrapes and dents (poor thing!), including a weekend jaunt to Russian River—he needed his drops twice a day so we had to bring him with us when we went to visit Maggie, Bryan, and Co. Evany: “Does baby Hank know about not putting fingers near the mouth-end of angry, biting turtles?” Maggie: “He’ll learn!”—he now seems to be back to his same enraged self, if perhaps even a shade grumpier.

Meanwhile bad, bad Daisy is currently in the midst of a long lecture series about how the turtle is family and we never, ever chew on family, no matter how great it tastes.

And, just like in Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing when the Fudge ate Peter’s pet turtle and the parents made up for it by giving Peter a pet dog which he named Turtle, we all lived happily ever after.

Welcome back, turtle.

spare change thought
Sunday, Jun. 29, 2008 | link

I’ve always said that I don’t like change, but I think maybe I’ve changed?

Now that I’m older, I’ve started to notice that some of my personality traits, traits that I’ve always thought of as fundamental to who I am, don’t necessarily apply anymore. Even so, I probably continued to tell people my “I hate change” mantra years and years after it ceased to be true, just out of habit. And my friends did the same, all “everyone knows how much Evany hates change!”

I think it takes a special kind of self-aware vigilance to first of all notice that things are no longer as they once were, and then second of all make the effort to update those personal taglines so that the world and your friends are aware of your latest revision.

Sometimes I worry that I’m the same exact person I was in high school, that the things I’ve done and seen and weathered in the years since then have taught me nothing. And how sad would that be? THIS SAD! So it’s a relief, and a comfort, to notice myself doing things I never used to do—transforming from night owl to early bird, making my bed with semi-regularity, embracing change—little signs that I’m capable of personal evolution after all.

welcoming you into the fold
Friday, Jun. 27, 2008 | link

You and your respective HR departments will be glad to discover, as I recently did during an impromptu hallway meeting at my internet job, that all a person has to do to make the words “below the fold“ sound racy is to deliver them in a tart mid-Atlantic accent (with optional raised eyebrows).

If you think about it, like I have, non-stop, “above the fold” and “below the fold” are actually the perfect metaphors for the continuum of sexual progress. So much better than the confusing “bases” we had to work with when I was coming up! A “homerun” was always clear enough, especially when it was described as being slid into. “First base” meant…frenching? I think? “Second base” I’m pretty sure was shorthand for going up the girl’s shirt, which was always so lame because there wasn’t really a similarly titillating male equivalent, and what are you supposed to do if the person you’re making out with doesn’t have knockers, skip directly to third? Meanwhile third was a murky thing indeed, signaling acts that varied widely and awkwardly from school to school—for some it meant hot hands-to-parts action, others thought it referred to examinations of the oral persuasion, and there were even those who thought of third as nothing short of full-on pants off dance off…so confusing.

But the tidily binary “above the fold”/“below the fold” (or, even better, the newspaper equivalent: “under the crease”) is so elegant, so straightforward. I say, “How are things going with that ice cream salesperson you’ve been dating?” And you say, “Oh, we’re still strictly above the fold. But we’re going away to Big Sur this weekend, and I’ve already purchased a bottle of tequila, so I imagine we’ll be well below the fold come Saturday morning.” And I know exactly where you and your ice cream salesperson are coming from. Exactly!

Something else I discovered at work recently: “P2P” has almost nothing to do with prostitutes and the payment thereof?

thunder, lightning
Wednesday, Jun. 25, 2008 | link

Driving up, moments before the sky tore open.

I drove far, far away up north this weekend to hang out with my great friend Kristin, who’s currently recovering from gnarly gut surgery. Which meant I had a totally reasonable excuse to lie around and watch retarded amounts of television all the live-long weekend—best birthday present ever. If only Kristin would get surgeried on more often!

The sun was just about slipping away when the air weirdly filled with that unmistakable electric smell of rain, and then suddenly…big drops on the windshield, then bonafide cracks of shazam-style lightning all across the sky, plus real loud thunder. In California! In June!

When I drove across country with Jill a few years back, we were in I think Ohio when suddenly all this water started falling on our car. Born-and-raised-Californian I just could not get my brain around what I was seeing—I actually asked Jill if maybe a fire hydrant had burst nearby? Midwestern-born Jill just laughed and laughed.

But I tell you, summer rain does not happen out here like that, no. But wild forest fires, with their poisonous, eye-searing reek (nothing at all like the cozy whiff of a fireplace wood fire, or fun Halloween-time leaf fires, despite the fact that forest is nothing but wood and leaves?), those we do just great.

The brown-filtered drive back down, after passing eleven firetrucks and also a freaky man lying on the side of the road with no shirt on and a smiling policeman at his side.

q.e.d.
Tuesday, Jun. 24, 2008 | link

Evany: I think that’s actually one of my best qualities, my willingness to laugh at my shortcomings.
Liz: Well, first you get offended, and then we tease you, and then you see how funny it is.
Evany: [Momentarily offended, and then] laughs and laughs.

I say it's my birthday
Thursday, Jun. 19, 2008 | link

HAMBURGER!
Six layers of hamburger-identified chocolate and cream and airbrushed crunchy-lard frosting, courtesy of the Merritt Bakery in Oakland. And there are more fun birthday pics to be found over at the websites of Eric and Maggie.

I was born thirty-eight whole years ago today, at about 12:50 in the afternoon. It’s true! As my mother tells it, they celebrated the moment with a festive summer lunch of champagne and raspberries, smuggled into the hospital by my father. I’ve always love that little detail, my bearded dad tiptoeing down the White Halls of Labor with berries hidden under his Goodwill tweed.

And then my parents got divorced. And the hospital burned down. And my teeth grew in crooked. And then I knocked them out horsing around inside in slippery socks. But other than that (and the epic earthquakes, and the car fire, and the rug fire, and the layoffs, and the exploded appendix, and the getting caught stealing when I was five), these first thirty-eight years have actually been a pretty great!

Except that it sure doesn’t feel like thirty-eight. Like just last week, when strep grabbed me by the throat and I was forced to finally go in and meet my new primary care physician (a nervous giggler with a strangely appealing case of social retardation), the new-patient form asked me how old I was, and without hesitating, I wrote “27.” Twenty-seven! That truly is how old my brain thinks it is! But then I started listing all my ailments – the bunions and the alcohol intolerance and the weight gain and the patchy skin – and I went from feeling 27 to 907 in five seconds flat.

It didn’t really help much that my hypochondriac’s dream of a doctor answered each one of my concerns with an almost comically depressing three-alarm answer. In response to the sight of my blotchy face skin: “So, is that cancer?” About my new and great intolerance to alcohol: “We better check you for liver failure. And diabetes.” And in response to absolutely nothing at all: “Let’s check to see if your eggs are still viable. After all you are 37, so if it isn’t already too late [to have kids? to be a young genius? to become an Olympic gymnast?], you better find out if it’s time to start hurrying, right?” Right!

Me and my rotten eggs are celebrating our goodbye to 37 (sort of a blah year, I’d say) with a hamburger party, which as those of you who have thrown your own hamburger parties know, involves a large, lard-frosted cake dyed and sculpted to look exactly like a gigantic hamburger, plus ten full pounds of beef.

It’s my opinion that any year that begins with gross amounts of beef (both real and cake varietals) is bound to be mighty. And I really do have high hopes for thirty-eight, what with all the fun I already have lined up on my horizon. Just look:

This weekend I get to hang out in scenic Humboldt County with my favorite Kristin!
Fourth of July weekend it’s to Russian River with Annie and Eric!
Saturday, July 19, I’m scheduled to appear on Maggie’s panel at Blogher alongside Sarah and Melissa, two ladies I’ve long admired and whom I am just Christmas-morning eee!xcited to actually finally flesh-meet!
Early August: Yosemite with Jill and Caroleen? Maybe? If I can get the time off work?
Late August: My 20th high school reunion (I actually wouldn’t say I’m looking forward to this, per se, but it just has to be better than last time, right?). October: To Brooklyn to see Todd and Lisa get nupped! My heart is already swollen in anticipation of this one. And I already have my dress all picked out and dry cleaned! I am ready! Let’s go!

But first: Ten whole pounds of all-beef patty fun.

today's oral fixation
Tuesday, May. 27, 2008 | link

Right now I am wishing I had many dollars to burn regarding this orthodonculous gold retainer necklace, which at $300 is pretty much a bargain seeing as actual, tooth-reforming retainers are probably costing a lot more than that these days?

I wonder whose mouth they got as the model…Pam Dawber, maybe. Or Al Roker? And more importantly, if I start wearing this retainer in earnest, by which I mean in my mouth, will my smile eventually take on those very star qualities?

bedside anthropology
Thursday, May. 22, 2008 | link

Look! Captured! A rare glimpse of Marco’s bedside table:

What we have here:

Mid-century Scandi-modern tripod lamp from eBay

Blue-glow LED clock from the future, via the MoMA Store

Puka-shell necklace from the tropical Hawaiian island of Kuaui

Generic motel ashtray filled with six screws and a guitar pick

Jaunty kerchief

Am I living with Schneider from One Day at a Time? A time-traveling gay man? A Dr. Frankenhangten who, as the inimitable Pamie suggests, is “planning on building a surfer”?

camino for real!
Tuesday, May. 20, 2008 | link

So Camino, the fine-eating restaurant up the street that’s been trying to open its doors for like a year now (it started out as a furniture store, so I guess it had a lot of metamorphing to do) is finally, finally open for business! Marco and I sort of crashed the opening party on Friday night when we innocently strolled slowly by, our necks craning for a glimpse inside, and then a friend of a friend recognized me and we got pulled inside, yay! It’s very pretty in there, all exposed brick and crazy-huge chandeliers and wooden ex-church chairs (bought in bulk on eBay!). But it was very hot and crowded, and we were already packed full from our own dinner which meant we couldn’t take proper advantage of the free food and drink and gawking.

So last night Marco and I decided to do it right and we threw on some finery and marched all 200 feet or so up there and asked for a table. And there was already a wait! On their second night open! (The owners, at least the man half, come from a long tenure at Chez Panisse, so they do have the momentum of reputation on their side.)

We happily agreed to do our waiting at one of the cute vintage metal painted tables at the bar, where I got myself a one of their special tart and icy ginger-mint-“rhum” drinks—pure liquid delight. And then we had a pork-spread toasty thing, which tasted way better than it sounded and also looked (tan, tan, and more tan). And then we noticed none other than Alice Waters and her entourage of ponytailed and natural-fibered Berkeley sorts at the bar—so clearly everyone had to wait!

But soon enough we were seated at one of the bowling-alley-long communal tables, where more drinks were ordered and sipped down with vim, and we got down to eating—sausage salad for Marco (possibly the best sausage I’ve ever sausaged?) and artichoke heart and nettle surprise with polenta for me. Glorious! And then for dessert a cherry crumble with generous dollop of whipped heaven on top!

For those who share my fear of the “popping eyeball” sensation some cherry-related deserts offer, I can assure you that this is a sweet you can order without risk of off-putting mouth sensations! For that crumble was all sticky and gooey, and not at all pop.

Another word to the wise: Don’t miss the jet-propelled air blasters in the bathroom, which assault your hands with so much force they cause your skin to ripple and morph. You know how in the movies, when the guy is strapped to the front of a speeding train and his face starts to flap and pool outward? Like that.

In short, Camino on Grand: offering sausage salads, nettled things, loose cherries, and also bathrooms that will simply blow you away! Bam! Who just typed that? I did.

three yays for ebay!
Monday, May. 19, 2008 | link

I am, generally speaking, a gigantically huge fan of eBay. (Some may even say unhealthily so? What with my 96 positive feedbacks, wow?). But the times I love eBay the most are when it allows me to reconnect with items that I’ve fallen hard for elsewhere but never thought I’d be lucky enough to get my own hot, stumpy hands on.

My top three such love re-connections are, in descending order:

3. The Technicolor Bird Tray
I so admired this Deka bird tray when the Thrift Store Addict landed it on one of his miracle St. Paul thrift-a-thons. In truth, I was a even a wee sick-green with the jealous? But thanks to his lovingly detailed description (he’s always so good about listing, if at all possible, the maker behind each of his purchases), I was able to turn to eBay, type in the key details, and there it was!

2. The Technicolor Dream Dress
This BCBG Max Azria dress was listed for a very long time at Bluefly for a mean price of over $400. Ridiculous! And yet I was still sorely tempted to Add to Shopping Cart. But before I could give in to the heady lack of oxygen in that sky-high price tag, I took a peek for the dress on eBay, and lo: my second all-time greatest eBay triumph!

1. The Insane Miniature Aluminum Briefcase
Ten long years ago, I wandered in to a boutique in LA, one of those crazy high-end places where you have to ring the doorbell before you’re allowed in to even shop inside? And tucked between all the jewels and finery, there it was: The Insane Miniature Aluminum Briefcase. I fell in love on sight and bought it so hard for, I think, a whole $22. And I then proceeded to bring it with me everywhere, from brunch to business meetings, where I would, with much seriousness, whip it out and snap it open like it contained documents of the very highest importance. In fact I whipped and snapped it so frequently that over time the hinges broke off. And then the locks. All the kings horses and men and I tried to glue things back together, but it kept on breaking, and soon I was reduced to the indignity of wrapping rubber bands around the its mini waist, thereby killing the visual awesomeness of it all. Finally, and which much sadness, I put the insane miniature aluminum briefcase out to pasture. But I still spoke of it fondly, pausing over drinks with friends to reminisce over the good times we had with that insane mini aluminum briefcase.

And then one day I had the bright idea to search for a replacement on eBay. It took some work to come up with the right combination of search terms (“small, metal, cardcase, snaps, awesome”? “card holder, briefcase, impossibly small”?. And then…Eureka.

Isn’t it perfect(ly insane)? Lucky for you, there’s plenty more where that came from.

a sad daisy chain of events
Friday, May. 16, 2008 | link

I had kind of an awful day yesterday! First off, we got home from Fontanelle’s (awesome! sweet! pretty!) debut rock show at about 1am the night before, which was pretty late on the work-night scale, so we went straight to bed, no chit-chat.

But unfortunately Daisy the dog had somehow, while we were otherwise off rocking, lucked her way into a barrel of peanuts that we had…tucked away in some closet somewhere? Not sure. All we know is that when Daisy stopped her wee-hour pacing and worrying and whining long enough to barf spectacularly in the corner, the puddle she produced was chock full of nuts.

Daisy then moved her sad self over to the front door, which I took as a hint that she very much needed to go outside. So, even though it was still dark out, I assembled an sweatpanty outfit and trudged outside and watched sympathetically while she hunched into her shitting pose and unleashed a toxic Whoosh of unhappiness. Ridding her system of that hot mess left her quite a bit perkier, though, and as she trotted back upstairs, she seemed almost human again.

After me and my fuzzy two-hours-of-sleep head filled up on coffee, lots and lots of coffee, Daisy and I went out for our regular AM walk, and she was her normal, darting, perk-eared self. As we we rounded the first corner, I whipped out my cellyphone and to give Marco a call. I started to leave him a message about how Daisy seemed completely recovered from her peanuttle debacle, and I had just finished saying the words, “She probably won’t need to go to the vet…” when the dog on the third house in, the one that Daisy has engaged in many a screaming match in the past, threw her body at the fence surrounding the house. Daisy did not hesitate. She ramped right up to defcon 11 and lurched herself at the other side of the fence. I’m not exactly sure what happened next because it all went down so fast (and I was on the phone, hello?), but I think the neighbor dog had learned herself a new trick, one involving the ability to squeeze her sharp jaws out through one of the cracks in the fence. And Daisy got one look at those snarled open jaws and decided the best idea was to attack them with her nose. So suddenly the world was this armageddon of dog screams and blood. Blood! Splashing! Everywhere! Me, in a sluggy panic, at Marco’s voicemail: “Uh, let me call you back.”

I hung up and stood there for a few milliseconds, unsure quite what to do. I knew what I wanted to do, which was throw up everywhere, but instead I took a few uncertain steps forward, pulled by the soothing momentum of our normal walk pattern, but then I woke up and realized we needed to get back home, like stat. So I shakily turned us around, and shakily run-walked toward home, with Daisy trotting happily along and seeming none the worse for wear, aside from periodic gore-spattering head shakes. So we got home and I hustled her into the bathroom and swabbed down her face with a wet washcloth to reveal? One itty bitty wound the size of a pinprick on the tip of her nose. Dink! She was totally fine, in smiling-good health even.

The bleeding had stopped, but I didn’t want her roaming around the house and rubbing open her nick on the furniture. Also it was hot yesterday, like almost 100 degrees already, so I thought maybe the cool, non-direct-sunlit and also very large bathroom might be a good place for her? So I moved her bed and water bowl into the bathroom, and she immediately curled up and seemed totally content. And so I went to work! (By way of a visit to the neighbor, whom I introduced myself to and explained what happened and made sure their dog was okay and he was very nice, etc.).

But when I got to work, I started obsessing over the idea that Daisy would start re-bleeding somehow, and maybe the bleeding wouldn’t stop this time, and maybe she needed to go to the vet, after all? So I left Marco a series of fun messages, and finally he got back into range and was able to call me back, and it was agreed that he’d leave work early and go home and see what needed what-ing.

An hour later, he called in with a report. “She’s fine. If you hadn’t told me what happened, I’d never have known she’d been injured. The bathroom door, on the other hand…” Apparently poor Daisy had spent the bulk of the morning trying to claw her way out of the cool, relaxing bathroom. And when Marco walked in, her smiling face was covered with paint chips, like a kid covered in brownie, all, “Hi!” and “What?”

In short, I make bad decisions and also am not responsible enough to own small animals, and I should just forget about having children. Tada!

Daisy smiles a “what nose wound?” smile as the polydactyl Marbles lounges above (slap me seven!), both more or less de-boned by the heat of the big Bay Area heatwave of 08.

Caroleen and Sunny of Fontanelle touch the soft spot in all of us on a warm San Franciscan night.

a future bright with new shoes, clean teeth, and gentle rocking!
Wednesday, May. 14, 2008 | link

Top three things that are making my happy even happier today:

1. My new spring-sprongy yellow slingbacks, which I purchased this Sunday in the heat of a dire wardrobe misstep (toasty combination of boots and socks and tucked-in pants) brought on by the weather, which started out cold, so cold but then traitorously transformed into a hot, sunny day? We were counties from home and had an hour to kill, so I hotfooted it into Macy’s, where I spied the lovely yellow things, which I’d been actively coveting for weeks after seeing them in action on both another Wardrobe Remixer and one of my favorite online reads. So I snapped them up and wore them the hell out of there, my boot-pruned piggies sighing happily all the way home.

2. Brushing my teeth in the shower. Go ahead! Scrub and froth with impunity! For you have no clothing to worry about tainting with those irascible white spots! Also, it’s strangely cozy?

3. Fontanelle, the new musical offering (which I happen to know features some sort of prerecorded “beats” and “loops”) from my favorite Sunny and Caroleen of Waycross, is unfurling its magicality tonight at the Hemlock in San Frisco! Come on down and sip sippables with me at the bar! I’ll be the one with the notably attractive yellow shoes, and shower-fresh teeth.

I brake for white russians
Monday, May. 12, 2008 | link

Oh what a weekend! Like all great weekends, things started way back on Thursday, when Maggie and I got totally souffléd in North Beach. It was a fluffy, bubbly, chatter-packed night, with many revelations and self-reflections and hour-long asides and explosive point-making and self-shhing and waiter-teasing and maybe some champagne? All of which I paid for dearly with many alcohol-rattled hours tossing and moaning on the couch deep into the night, followed by a dim, hung-overcast morning. I wasn’t really right again until around noon the next day, thanks to a bacon and cheddar cure-all eggwich miracle with side of Coke, holy shit. When I came text-moaning to Maggie with anti-champagne “never again“s that next day, she suggested that maybe the White Russian on an empty stomach, which I ordered at Tosca before our evening really even got started, was to blame? Oh, yes, well. I suppose there’s a personal domino theory in there somewhere.

I went on to sleep the sleep of the almost-dead for 12 whole hours on Friday night, so great, then we woke up and went straight to the gym, of all places. I trained elliptically for about 20 minutes, then I moved on to the weights where I seriously burnt my dark meat, working my wings and thighs beyond all sense. I even got myself onto the skanky inner-thigh machine, which is always just one lingering eye contact away from sexual intercourse, Perfect-style. The singe deepened to a universal, please don’t make me laugh soreness on Sunday, and now today it’s even worse—I feel bruised, like someone battered me with a pillowcase filled with oranges, Grifters-style, or even a pillowcase filled with soda, Bad Boys-style. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but it kind of seems like the gym is trying teach me a lesson? A lesson about never going to the gym ever again?

Other weekend highlights include: BBQing for hours and hours in honor of Caroleen’s birthday along with so many long-lost pals (Amy P. and Julie P.! Marilyn in from Boson! Heidi out of Heiding!), visiting my dad (who is doing much better despite a general sense of unease over his still-undiagnosed inability to exercise without feeling like he’s going to have a heart failure, an issue that I personally would celebrate and use as an excuse for never gyming again (read above), but which makes him very sad since he actually loves exercising, crazy I know), Indian fooding with my mom, brainstorming over what we’d name our brake shop if Marco and I were to own our own brake shop (tie between Sir Francis Brake’s and Stop Your Squealing), emergency shoe-shopping for emergency happiness-yellow slingbacks, and even getting myself seriously banged up.

Now that the weekend’s all over, I feel very tired and droopy, like I need a weekend from my weekend. I guess someone’s got a case of the Mondays! Office Space-style! PS, something I’ve been disturbed to discover since going undercover in corporate USA is that office workers now actively quote Office Space, meaning that if they were to make Office Space today, the grim coworkers would be chirping Office Space quotes—all “TPS reports” this and “flare” that—in lieu of the “TGIF“s and “happy Humpdays” of simpler, gentler yors. And, as it turns out, nothing makes a person feel more like she’s at work than meta irony.

childhood rememories to magnet onto the refrigerator of your soul!
Sunday, May. 11, 2008 | link

I’ve had these two thematically similar nostaligigreat internet finds tumbling around in my brain for weeks now, getting shinier and smoother with every passing day. Look! How great!

First, we have these photographic reenactments of childhood drawings (via Lisa), which are so very beautiful and weird and dare I say…Japanese? But with…Russian text everywhere? Yeah, I don’t get it. But I love it! (Marco says they also remind him of the Monster Engine…oh yeah!)

And second, there is this deeply cheering and yay-ful dancigraphic reenactment of childhood and also Huey Lewis (via Marilyn and also Maggie).

Don’t they both make you feel a little warmer, and brighter, and like this maybe world of ours is going to be okay?

heartstrings
Tuesday, May. 6, 2008 | link

Another UPDATE: As of Friday, my dad’s back at home, feeling better but with his ailments still more or less undiagnosed. We’re all very relieved that he won’t be needing surgery, but the looming odyssey of medicinal trial-and-erroring as the doctors try to figure out what’s wrong and, more importantly, how to solve it, is maybe a little bit anxious-making? Hm. In any case…onward and upward. Right?

UPDATE: So my dad had his angiogram yesterday (it was scheduled for 11:30 but he didn’t go in until 7, which as you may know is a lot, lot, lot of the longest kind of hours, especially for my dad who wasn’t allowed to eat or drink the whole day, fun). The good news is that they didn’t spot anything more than a few moderate problems with his arteries, so there seems to be no need for another bypass, which is great! But there’s still the little matter of figuring out what’s behind his failed treadmill test and the heart pains, the shortness of breath, the professor and Mary Ann…So! He’s still in the hospital while they run more tests. And I’m back at work, wondering and waiting and eating my weight in cookies, huzzah?

So I just got word that my pop’s in the hospital with heart woes again, after having his triple bypass eight years ago. They’re pretty sure it’s only going to be a matter of going in (through his thigh!) to do a little ~~angioplasty~~ angiogram, and maybe add a shunt (or is it a ~~stint?~~ stent (thanks, Karen!)), and they’re very optimistic, like 98% so (hospitals like the percentages, and as far as percentages go, that’s a good one!), that it’s just going to be an in-and-out one-day procedure, nothing too scary at all. And when my dad arrived at the hospital (via ambulance, not at all fun, bleh), there were two other guys lined up in the heart room, both having had heart surgery a number of years before, just like my dad, and now back in the hospital with shortness of breath and heart pains, just like my dad. So it’s more common than you’d think, more like a garden snake than the rattler it could be.

So it’s all very much in “it could be much worse”-ville, but still I reacted not so swimmingly to the news. I was at work, in a meeting, and got back to my desk to find a number of messages from my stepmother, who never ever calls unexpectedly. So, with that sinking “unexpected call” feeling, I called her back and got all the details and was totally fine and sane. And then I went back to my desk and…sudden showers! It was like when you hit your head on a dumb cupboard door that you yourself left open and abruptly burst into tears, not so much because it hurts, even if it does very much hurt, but because it surprised you? And you’re also frustrated with yourself for being so dramatic, and that frustration makes you cry some more?

If you’ve worked in corporate culture, and have weak eyes, then maybe you know the particular awfulness that is sitting in your small, grey, sound-porous cube and snuffling very, very quietly, because more than anything, you don’t want your coworkers to notice that something’s wrong because then you’d have to talk about it, and when you’re only just managing to keep it together, nothing opens those floodgates worse than having to talk about it.

And then! After work, walking to the bus stop, I kept freaking myself out like you do after watching a scary movie, where without really trying you can transform an innocent, early evening trip downstairs to get the mail into this harrowing, heart-beat drum solo of self-manufactured fear. I kept imaging worse-case scenarios and then feeling sorry for myself over these imagined scenarios, and then I’d get all weepy and snortly all over again.

But yes. Anyway. I’ve taken the day off work. I’ve lined myself up with a Zipcar for the whole day so I can drive myself to the hospital and eat hospital pudding from the hospital cafeteria and give my dad some high-fives and listen to the doctors tell those weird flat jokes that they always seem to tell, and everything is going to be totally fine.

one happy, sorry, wistful sunday morning
Sunday, May. 4, 2008 | link

Things that make me happy this morning:

1. Using the very last of my less-than-optimal hair oil defrizzer, I LOVE getting to the end of any bottle (unless, of course, that bottle is a bottle of vanilla, and I’m trying to bake something that needs more). Probably it’s my internal revolt against growing up with packrats, but it gives me such great thrill of pleasure to clear out that 1.5-diameter of shelf space. Pow!

2. The perfect, miraculous rin