evany, evany thomas

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.