I haven’t been home since six o’clock this morning. I spent the last five hours talking almost non-stop at two different bars. My dinner consisted of several pints of beer and some onion rings.
It’s the best I’ve felt in months.
Pop quiz: One of us left the mall Saturday with four new pairs of shoes. Was it me? Keep reading for the answer.
This weekend marked a milestone in my excursions to San Francisco. (Yes, I went to San Francisco. Again. For the second time in three days. Good thing my friends are worth it!) Even more noteworthy than my spending entirely too much money on a dress — a dress for work, no less, not even a dress for fun — was that this was The Time I Finally Figured Out How to Get Around the City.
Previously, I’d gotten directions, arrived at a specific place and then did whatever I was there to do — attend a meeting in X building, stay in Y hotel, meet people at Z location — but I had very little sense of how points X, Y and Z related to each other. This weekend, though, was the breakthrough. I get it now! I know (roughly) which neighborhood is which and how to navigate among them for like eight whole neighborhoods. I know this leaves much more of the city to be explored, but I’m just happy to finally figure out which way is north. (Hint: it is not the direction of the Bay Bridge, where you came from.)
The world of public transportation though…well, I’m going to stick with either (a) walking or (b) blindly following someone else. That’s not entirely true. I managed to successfully navigate my cable car trip, and I think I can handle the bus. Sort of. But the actual Muni? Definitely employing the sheep methodology. To all you baseball fans attending the
We pause now for some rampant consumerism before I continue with the story-telling.
The dress, um, is apparently not available anywhere on the Internet. It is like this dress, only black and has pockets on the hips and khaki detail stitching around just about everything (collar, cuffs, belt, pockets, vertically along the column of buttons). I love it, but it makes me cringe a little because once upon a time, two dress sizes ago, I owned a very similar dress from Ann Taylor Loft. Which probably cost a third of what this dress does. And I may very well have choked on that price. Sigh. (I miss the dress, but not the dress size.)
(Clickety-click for larger pictures.) I am not 100% sold on the above dress, because the detail stitching, while making the dress interesting, also makes it very memorable and limits its functionality. I may trade it in for this (more boring versatile) one instead.
Feel free to weigh in. Nordstrom will be happy to process my return/exchange.
That concludes today’s commercial message. We return you to our regularly scheduled programming.
Day One: Shopping extravaganza. If you guessed that I was the one with all of those new shoes, bzzzzzzzzz. Not this time.
Day Two: Giants vs. Diamondbacks, followed by the Fillmore Jazz Festival. Photographic evidence:
Willie Mays, Giants legend.
Please ignore the disembodied heads at the bottom of the frame. After all, that’s what I did.
Spanking of the D-backs. Please note that the score is 8-0 in the top of the 6th.
I didn’t think it could be worse than the beatdown the A’s delivered to the Yankees earlier in the day,
but the Giants won this one 13-0.
Jazz. Kinda loses something in photographic form.
So that was San Francisco, where the sun shines every once in a while but it never gets above 70. I’m getting the hard sell about coming back for the Fourth, but I don’t know if I can stomach the thought of wearing long sleeves to the beach. In July.
What are your plans for tomorrow?
You know, if you don’t want to run again, I respect that. But if you don’t run because you think it’s gonna be too hard or you think you’re gonna lose, well, God, Jed, I don’t even want to know you.
A while back I had dinner with my friend Danielle and, as we put back a bottle of wine, we discussed our respective career plans and personal life exploits and hatched plots to Escape from
Of course, in looking ahead to the future, we also analyzed the past — what worked, what didn’t, how we ended up where we are. About her selection of undergrad majors, she said, “Everyone said it was hard, so I was going to do it.”
And in that one moment, our eight years of friendship suddenly made a lot more sense.
I don’t know that I choose things simply because they’re hard, but I certainly don’t shy away from things that are challenging. (See, e.g.,: moving to
I really don’t mind new challenges, but what is driving me nuts is the seeming endlessness of the quest. The pursuit of a goal, without any intermediate victories to sustain me, my god, it is soul-sucking. It makes me question whether the pain is really worth it. It makes me wonder if I shouldn’t stop with the banging-head-against-a-brick-wall lifestyle.
I expressed some of my doubts to Danielle, explained why my pursuits are nearly in vain, why perhaps I should focus on a slightly more attainable goal — like single-handedly curing cancer — rather than continue headlong down this endless path of futility, how I have to come to terms with the fact that maybe things aren’t going to work out for me like I want them to.
She looked at me, and asked pointedly, “But you’re not giving up, right?”
And the thing is, for all my doubts (not doubts in my abilities, mind you, doubts that The Universe will come through for me) and all my pragmatic thinking and the reminders that maybe I won’t get what I want, I.Will.Not.Give.Up.
So. What’s next?
Ahh, Texas. There’s no place like it in the world. And thank goodness for that — I’m not sure I could live somewhere with that much humidity and that huge of roaches on a regular basis! (No, there are no roach pictures. You’re welcome.)
The capitol.
Inside the capitol dome.
Fuzzily-lit downtown Austin.
A zillion bats flying at night. To see what happens when I apply my CSI skillz to this picture, click here. And never trust the dark again.
I miss it already. I miss vodka every night before bed. I miss waking up in the morning without an alarm clock. I miss burning off enough calories just by talking to make up for the constant supply of tempting, un-diet-friendly food. (What I do not miss? Animatronic LBJ. Dude is frightening!)
But mostly I miss someone I’ve known for half my life, who probably knows me better than I know myself, and, despite that, is friends with me anyway.
See how the grainy film effect makes us not look so ghostly pale? Love it!
I keep thinking, “tonight’s the night when I’ll write about the weekend.” But “tonight” is also the night that I’m going to make a bunch of blog fixes, do laundry, work late, go to bed early, and have an hours-long conversation with a friend.
So, yeah. All I have to offer you today is a pretty picture, courtesy of Lori, in honor of my decidedly superfantastic. week last week. These are the Official Rat Bastard Flowers, which are appropriate when someone has been a rat bastard to you. Or The Universe at large has. Regardless of the reason, they’re awful pretty!
I think this episode serves to make Lori the best boyfriend I never had.
RSS Feed