Acceptance

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.'

-- Robert Frost

Merry Christmas one and all. (~_-)

Oh man -- took an extra hour today and an extra hour yesterday but I finally am free of my job and open enrollment for the next 10 days!! Woo hoo!

Steve and I head for Baltimore tomorrow and then CT on Sunday. Can't wait.

On a different note, you may or may not have heard the cases of people publicly soliciting "directed" donation of organs for themselves or loved ones. There have been a few recent cases with some publicity on this. I thought you might like to know the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS)'s stance on the matter, which is also CTDN's stance:

You are probably familiar with recent instances where transplant candidates or their family members have solicited deceased donors for their individual need through public communications such as billboards and web sites. There have also been isolated attempts to learn the identity of potential deceased donors and individually contact the potential donor’s family[...]

The overwhelming majority of deceased donor transplants occur anonymously and without specifying an intended recipient of the donated organ. The existence of a personal bond that would cause a donor or donor family to favor a named transplant candidate is rare. Attempts to develop such a personal bond through unsolicited contact with or public appeals to families of deceased donors are problematic[...]

Recognizing that organ donation and transplantation are founded on altruism and equity, the OPTN/UNOS Board of Directors opposes any attempt by an individual transplant candidate (or his/her representatives) to solicit organ donation from a deceased donor ahead of other waiting candidates in a manner that subverts the established principles and objectives of equitable organ allocation. This is a particular concern when commercial space is utilized to solicit directed donation from a member of the public for a specific candidate. Such efforts may divert organs from patients with critical need to those who are less ill. In addition, such appeals, although well-intentioned, compromise the principle of fairness.

The Board encourages anyone considering a public appeal to promote the overall need for organ donation and not solicit an organ donation for an individual candidate. (my bold)

Food for thought -- should this topic come up in your daily life, consider doing a little educational outreach. :)

The holiday party CTDN had this past Saturday was a blast. I forgot my digital camera, though, so I'll have to wait and see if any of the other people send out an email with pictures. :( Steve came with me and though he didn't have a tie with red in it to match my red dress, he still looked dashing and handsome.

They had some casino booths set up and gave us a fake $500 bill with which to 'gamble.' Any chips we had at the end of the night went toward raffle tickets. Steve and I played roulette for hours -- the first time for both of us -- and he divised a pretty solid system that won him either 35 to 1 or 8 to 1 odds fairly frequently. Because the raffle was technically for CTDN employees, he donated his extra chips to me, so I had twice the chips with which to enter the raffle.

I did win 3 raffle prizes (!): a round of mini-golf, a free lunch at a nice restaurant, AND...a massage and facial at a local spa!!! Very exciting. And Irma, who had to leave early, gave me her chips, and I put her name in too -- so she also won mini-golf and free pizza hut.

Lucky girl I was this weekend. (*^_^*)

By the way, on November 20th I attended a coworker's wedding. Here's me with the blushing bride and my other coworker -- the one who gave me the pumpkin pie recipe. 

This is that insignia of which I spoke. 

Thanksgiving was a huge (and by huge I mean enormously fattening) success. I even made the pumpkin pie this year, thanks to a coworker's recipe, and it came out shockingly well. It's amazing what a thrill one can get from the simple act of creation -- in this case, baking.

My newest addition to my nutcracker collection is a Jester, signed by Steinbach himself. VERY cool. The jester was the unofficial mascot at EWS, thanks to Revels.

We also were treated to a delicious meal at a decadent new restaurant in Colonial Williamsburg -- the Fat Canary. I adore their insignia, which I'll post shortly.

We're finally being plunged into our 'winter' here in California -- I'm freezing today!! The local weather report has today's temp at 53 degrees...have I grown SO thin-skinned?? They'll make a cali-girl of me yet...Steve pointed out that only in California does winter mean that everything turns green. And it's true. The famous tall grass coating the rolling hills of California that gave it its nickname -- the golden state -- turns a lush green during the fall thanks to the cooler temps and added precipitation.

2 weeks from Thursday Steve and I will be on a plane to the East Coast. I can't believe it, and I can't wait. In the meantime I'm throwing myself headlong into the gauntlet that is Christmas shopping...so much stuff, so much cost, so hard to make a decision...

Just another example of how great CTDN is: both Christmas Day and New Year's Day -- standard holidays from work -- fall on Saturdays this year. So our CEO decided not only to give us Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve off, as per our policy, but the Thursdays before as well, since ordinarily we would get two days per holiday.

Now tell me, what company follows that logic?? And yes, they're paid holidays.

I was going to take the Thursday before Christmas Eve off anyway, since I'll be in CT. What this new announcement means, though, is that Thursday won't count against my personal vacation time. And my first week back from said vacation will be a 3 day week.

Fa la la la la, la la la RA!

While doing data entry, the brain is driven to create random and crazy things to compensate for the tedious orderliness of entry after entry.


This time, unfortunately, there were victims involved.
Anthony pointed out to me the really beauty of this picture -- it's a visual pun.
He's drowning in life savers. :o)

Sometimes, particularly on especially stressful days, I am struck by just how weird it is to be human, in light of all the arbitrary and bizarre constructs we have set up around ourselves. Some of it seems real -- finding a mate, or a meal, for example -- but some of it, especially the work world, with all of the anxiety and neuroses that have nothing to do with physical danger, is just so bizarre.

How the heck did all of humanity get me to the point where I'm trying to speak as quickly as I can about dental plan websites to a manager who is trying to get an appointment in before the plan year is out?

This is a nifty hippo holder that I found at a second-hand store. I think it's from the 70s. It tends to hold my post-its and pens, though here one of my coworkers has fed it a persimmon. ;)

Click on the word "persimmon" to relive my first experience with one nearly a year ago.

This year marks the second election I've ever been able to vote in, and the first time that I educated myself on the state and local issues as well as the presidential race. I watched two out of the four debates (the first and last presidential ones); donated money; read the newspaper, newsletters, and email forwards; and all around did my darndest to stay informed and involved.

I must say, it's a hard pill to swallow when you put so much of your mental energy into something and then your candidate doesn't get elected or your measure doesn't pass (but what a thrill when it does work out...stem cell research, for example). It's startling to see, every four years, just exactly where your opinions stand among your fellow countrymen, and where your city/town, county, state, and region stand. The vote seems to me to be just as beneficial as a national poll as it is an election.

Steve and I spent some time last night at dinner discussing where else in the world we might want to live. We went over the roster -- Europe, Russia, Asia, Africa, Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Caribbean...but the truth is, no matter who is in power, there's really no place like the U.S. once you're used to it.

In the end, we decided that if the Continental U.S. drove us crazy, we'd move to Alaska or Hawaii. We figured six months of winter and a ratio of 7 men to every 1 woman, or volcanoes, tsunamis, and mice infestation might take our minds off the powers that be...

...at least until the next election. See you in two years. *Sigh.*

Did YOU vote today?

Everybody's doing it.

I will have done my part to effect change in my local, state and federal governments at approximately 4:45pm PST today.

If there's anything George Bush's presidency has unequivocally and inarguably done, it's been to rally an unprecedented national interest and involvement in politics in all previously apathetic demographics. For him or against him, you're talking about him.

Your prey is one of the dumbest birds on earth. As dumb as a rock, and therefore aptly named: Rock Dove. More commonly known as a pigeon. Sitting atop a building at the crest of the hill on 19th street, a particularly fat and naive one wobbles into view, mid-street. You see red, smell victory. Your lovely flight-ready feathers are nearly silent as you dive bomb and - SUCCESS! - clasp your unwittingly witless prey in your steely grip. You take a moment to savor the idiocy of the foul fattie beneath your claws -- and hear a noise. Human voices. Two of them emerge from the front gate of a house nearby and head towards you. "What is that?" you hear, and they continue to approach. You can't risk it -- as they stop in awe, you release your voluptuous victim and escape to the top of the nearest building. "That was a HAWK!" they screech, as the portly pigeon flees to the shadows of a nearby truck, unscathed and barely aware of its brush with death. HAWK?? Come on. You're small, your tail is small, your beak is small, your coloring smooth, and your tail is most certainly not red. They advance on the site of your attack, but alas, you had not even shed blood yet -- nothing but a handful of scattered feathers marks the spot. They look up at you, the female puts on her glasses, the male suggests red-tailed hawk, the female insists on later research, noting your small beak. As they walk away, you hear the male say, "in all my years of living here I've NEVER seen that before..." Your pudgey prey is at this point well-hidden, and escapes unpunished...for now...

(editor's note...to see the birds you actually probably were, go here for theory 1 and here for theory 2 (female).)

You might find this a little hard to swallow -- but it's good to have this approached in moderation for once. I found this on snopes.com:

Claim: 75% of Americans are "chronically dehydrated" because they fail to drink eight glasses of water per day.
Status: False.

The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/toxins/water.htm
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2004 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson

I wanted to reproduce the whole article here, but it's copyrighted, so I daren't. Please visit it, at my request. ;o)

Hi All. S'been a while since I blogged, and I'm up in the middle of the night on Saturday and feeling responsible for your information withdrawal. My visit with Mom and Steve was a success; a low key weekend of walking around and eating and them getting to know my Steve, and vice versa. From what I've heard there was approval all around. My life collects snow and starts to roll down hill...hits a mogul and experiences a moment of anti-gravity where everything is suspended, only to land with a whoomp and keep accelerating. I'm in the anti-gravity right now, or you wouldn't be hearing from me. And yet all the stuff of living floating around me as I rise upward in a spray of snowflakes is just out of grasp; this is all you're getting, folks. A moment in Elise's metaphorical brain where she looks around and says, "Oh."

But it's a good "oh." I'll be blogging again when the momentum resumes.

The house warming party was a success. We bought WAY too much food and drink but that's cool, because should a nuclear incident occur we can live off sausage and tostitos for at least a week, and we can bathe in vodka should the water source be contaminated.

Don't ask me where that came from...

...in any case, I'd say we had about 25 people show up, but between 5-10 people actually there at any given time, from 4pm to 11pmish. Steve and I were able to indulge in a very satisfied collapse on the couch at about midnight, with minimal clean up the next day. Thanks to consumption being primarily beer and wine on top of every carby snack you can think of, sausage dogs, garden burgers, and Steve's famous carpet-bag steaks, no one got too drunk or too tired; people seemed to wander through and camp out in all the space instead of clumping; nothing got stolen, broken, or burnt, and generally, from what I can tell, everyone had a pleasant time.

Next big test: a visit from Mom this weekend. ;)

Some pretty amazing news from the world of transplants:

Woman infertile after chemotherapy, becomes world's first ovarian transplant recipient to give birth
A 32-year-old woman, who was infertile after she
underwent chemotherapy due to Hodgkin’s lymphoma
in 1997, has become the world’s first ovarian transplant
recipient to give birth to a baby.
Ouarda Touirat gave birth on September 23 to a
healthy 8-pound, 3 ounce baby, Tamara, at Cliniques
Universitaires Saint-Luc hospital in Brussels, Belgium.
Professor Jacques Donnez, head of the Department
of Gynecology and Andrology at the hospital, removed
the ovarian tissue from Touirat before she underwent
the chemotherapy and froze it in liquid nitrogen. Five
years after she was free of cancer, the tissue was grafted
onto her fallopian tubes. Five months later her menstrual
cycle was restored and in January 2004 she conceived
naturally with her husband, a fellow Algerian, Malike,
according to press reports.
"This is the first time that the tissue was cryopreserved,
removed before chemotherapy and was
successfully implanted, Donnez said. "It is a big
message of hope for all women with cancer who have
to go and have chemotherapy."
Donnez said 146 women were undergoing the
procedure but Touirat was one of the first in 1997 who
underwent cryopreservation.
In addition to providing cancer patients with hope
of giving birth, physicians said the ground breaking
procedure one day could allow women to delay
motherhood beyond menopause, which could raise
serious ethical issues.
Donnez strongly opposed allowing the delay, saying
"the technique must be reserved for young women
with cancer." He went even farther, saying health
authorities should make it "a medical legal obligation"
to offer women who have to undergo chemotherapy
the option for fertility preservation because "more and
more women [are] surviving cancer."

--From the September 30, 2004 issue of Transplant News.

So I haven't updated the blog in some time. This is what has been going on:

1) As most of you know, I moved in with Steve about a week and a half ago. That's been going great. We are having our official house warming party this weekend; looking forward to having everyone check out the new digs.
2) Steve's 30th birthday was this Friday. I got him 30 roses which I placed in a vase in the middle of the living room surrounded by 30 mini-packs of tissues (With a card that said, "you look 25, you feel 25, but there's something in your eyes that somehow says, '30'...tears, I believe they're called")! I also got him a few other things, including tickets to a comedy club in North Beach that night to see Tracy Morgan, a favorite of mine from recent seasons of Saturday Night Live. We laughed pretty hard, all told...it was a great birthday. We'll continue to celebrate it with his friends at the house warming party.
3) I finally ran into Meg, one of my best friends from high school whom I hadn't seen or heard from in 5 years. We arranged to have a drink last Wednesday, and when we did, it was an astonishingly easy night of conversation and nostalgia. After all the things that we went through as teenagers, it was so pleasant to meet up as adults and get complete with everything...
4)...I then took off from the drink and went to a giants game, courtesy of my CEO, with Steve. The Giants romped on the Astros just as we got there at the bottom of the fifth -- they won 5-1. They walked Barry all 4 times he was up to bat, but the garlic fries consoled us.
5) Finally, last night Leslie and I had our final Landmark Seminar. It was great to finish up and I feel pretty complete with the whole Landmark process now.
I think that's about it...sorry for the long lapse in communication. :)

Okay guys, the seal is finally broken -- I *just* felt my first earthquake.
My first thought was that I was dizzy -- it's most definitely a gentle rocking sensation, kind of like when you stand up suddenly and your blood throbs so emphatically through your head that your whole body sways a little. Only I was sitting down, and even when I moved a little bit, the rocking didn't change. I looked into the office across from mine where one of the managers has a lovely gold wind chime hanging from the wall, and it was swaying slightly too. And then the CEO called out from her office, "oop -- is everyone okay?"
If I didn't know that that exact sensation can destroy whole cities in a fell swoop, I would say that it was almost pleasant, like cantering on a very small horse with a very smooth gait or having your little fishing boat rocked by a passing ripple.
In doing some research just now, looks like there was a strong 6.0 quake down in Parkfield which we felt up here. Crazy! I hope everyone down there is okay...
http://quake.usgs.gov/research/strongmotion/effects/shake/51147892/intensity.html
And here's the story from yahoo:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040928/ap_on_re_us/calif_quake

And here I am with my prize-winning Peach Cablooie pie. It's a bit odd in appearance but delicious otherwise.  

Me and my fellow pie-baking winners at the company picnic! 

This is the most thought-provoking article I have read in a long time:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/07/MNGGC8KQNO1.DTL

It's from the Tuesday, September 7th edition of the Chronicle and written by Julian Guthrie. Studies of schizophrenia are not so shocking any more, but it's the nature of the psychotic break that this man experienced that has me reeling and contemplative. Here's the gist, quoted directly from the Chronicle:

Brandon Staglin, national merit scholar and future astronautical engineer, was 18 when he lost half of his self. The right side, to be specific. It went away. In the blink of the eye, beat of the heart.
He spent the next week unable to sleep. He wandered the town of Lafayette, covering his right eye as he walked, fearful another personality would fill the void.[...]

"One minute, my identity was there," he said softly. "The next minute, half of my identity vanished. I walked around the house trying to call up emotions that weren't there. There was a very bright void. I remember sniffing, inhaling deeply to try to get these thoughts back into my head. I thought my soul was leaking from my head or feet. I thought I could spontaneously die."

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this since I read it. So amazing, that he could construct that -- that terror, that bizarre half-emptiness -- out of of something insubstantial, something which is immeasurable except in concept -- Identity. The idea of tangible identity, of the physicality of identity is not an altogether alien one, although most people I know don't split it into left and right. I'm sure that Mr. Staglin did not necessarily think of his personality in terms of left and right before the break; but his mind somehow grasped the concept enough to discard one half of it moments later. On a more common note, I got into a conversation with one of my friends wherein she inadvertantly pointed out a concept that I believe a lot of people share: that we have "outer layers" of identity that people have to get through, and a "core me" that most people don't get to see (with the normal exception being intimate, long-time friends and lovers). I have definitely felt myself being my "outer layers" and protecting my "core" at times -- but what IS that? Were I to experience a break in which I lost the outer layers of my identity, what would ensue -- would I be 100% candid? Would I feel paranoia towards everyone around me due to the experience of showing my naked "self"? Would I feel my body was a shell underneath which there was a hollow lining of air where my layers used to be? Would it feel cold? Conversely, who would I be if I lost my "core?" Would I be a walking fraud, an automaton? And how would I perceive these as escaping? Would I plug up my nose and ears, cover my eyes, fear the bathroom? Would I try to seal my fingernails and toenails? Would I coat my head in teflon? Would I suffocate by my own hand?

That's the funny thing -- the insistence that if I lost my "outer layers" of identity, that I could sensorily experience its loss. Perhaps the intangible mind seeks to replicate its concepts through the only tangible means it's truly familiar with -- the body, which has its outer layers (skin and muscles) and its core (the organs and bones). Thus a man can sensorily experience the physical loss of a mental construct. So strongly does he feel it, in fact, that when he experiences a (phantom) gaping emptiness with an entry way behind his right eye, he fears it being "filled" by another (now tangible, though external) personality!

So incredibly interesting. I welcome comments and further discussion.

Today during one of my forays into the kitchen to get still another glass of water (it's hot out here and I'm recently obsessed with hydration -- more on that in a sec) I discovered that someone had brought in all kinds of containers of chocolate and left them out for people to enjoy. While we get birthday cakes and bagels quite frequently, and while many of us host candy bowls at our desks (I am the reigning jolly rancher queen these days), it's a bit odd to have so much chocolate lying around. The explanation came later, in the form of a conversation I overheard in another part of the office: one of the admins asked the manager who brought it in where it came from. She said she'd gone to a local supermarket chain renowned for its cheap, healthy offerings of organic and quality products and asked if they would donate a basket for an upcoming health fair.

Turns out they donated a basket full of chocolate for the health fair!! People are hysterically funny sometimes. Or maybe it's yet another commentary on America's morbid obesity. But I had to laugh as I stuffed still another chocolate covered orange slice in my mouth.

The hydration thing: I recently realized that I am just not hydrating my body properly. The heat is a great catalyst for recognizing how much water the body needs, but in general my body was breaking down a bit. I was tired, my skin was getting itchy, my hair seems more brittle -- instead of being a hypochondriac, I made two decisions: one, give up regular consumption of coffee, and two, drink water like my life depends on it...since it mostly does.

As I experience the process of giving up the habit of coffee, it gives me insight into internal drives I had not previously recognized. For example, when I wake up, shower, and ride the BART to work, I am usually craving the coffee, wondering if I can go without for still another day. When I get to my desk at work, I pick up my water glass and think to myself, well, I'll start with a glass of water first. In no time, the craving is gone.

This tells me two things: that I turn to coffee when I'm sleepy and when I'm experiencing some level of stress, even the mild stress of my commute -- so it's an "awareness" aid and a comfort food. I was only a cup-a-dayer -- never upped the ante to two, especially since the java we drink here is pretty darn strong -- so it amazes me that I can experience withdrawal from such little abuse. Physically, it seems akin to being an alcoholic though you only drink a glass of wine a day.

I am allowing myself the option of a cup of coffee should I ever actually have sustained drowsiness. I'm also allowing it as a sedentary pleasure -- there's nothing like a good latte and a slice of cheesecake after a light meal, especially if it's after a walk through the pleasant night air to my favorite desserterie, for example. But beyond fatigue and treats, it's H2O for me these days.

This labor day weekend was quite warranted, and I'd hazard to say I spent it well -- I have no hang over, no sunburn, and no misanthropy, so I must have done something right...well maybe that's arguable. :) Perhaps one of the more interesting parts was on Saturday, when Leslie and I revisited Union Street, which involved not just window-shopping but a walk down memory lane. Nearly two years ago I helped Leslie move out to SF, and when we first went to explore, we found this part of Union Street. Hadn't been back since. It was fun to go the place where I got my first SF manicure (a mere $9!!), shops where Leslie and Lexi first bought accessories for their house, and where I was impressed with the quirky urban clothing stores.

What's that saying? You've come a long way, baby? Or is it, Wow, you've learned to take a lot of stuff for granted, baby? ;)

In either case, it was fun. And otherwise, I had a gloriously restful weekend.

This saturday was CTDN's company picnic. I brought a volleyball net and was pleased to find that nearly everyone who came was willing to take a stab at it, and we had a lot of fun.

I also entered the pie contest...and won!! Here's the recipe I used. It got RAVE reviews on the website I found it on:

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 (3 ounce) package non-instant vanilla pudding mix*
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1(29 ounce) can sliced peaches, drained and syrup reserved**
1(8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup white sugar***
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

*there was much debate on the website, but I used instant pudding mix and experienced no problems with the "crust," which is really more cakey than crusty.
**Since they're in season, I used 6 fresh peaches, removed the skin, and cut into 1/8ths. I did buy the canned peaches so could use 3 tablespoons of the syrup in the topping (then ate the canned peaches with some lowfat cottage cheese. Yum). A lot of people who did use canned peaches had issues with overall sogginess, so if you used canned, drain well.
***more debate on the website about the topping being too sweet, so I reduced the amount of sugar used. (I eyeballed it and I'm too lazy to do the math. If you do this, use the 1/2 cup measuring cup and use about a third less.)

Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease sides and bottom of a 10 inch deep-dish pie pan. 1.5. if using fresh peaches, peel off skin and slice them. Set aside.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, mix together flour, salt, baking powder, and pudding mix. Mix in butter, egg, and milk. Beat for 2 minutes. Pour mixture into pie pan. Perhaps b/c I used instant pudding, the mixture was tacky and did not 'pour.' If yours does this, fear not; the crust still comes out yummy and fluffy. Arrange the peach slices on top of the pudding mixture.
3. In a small mixing bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy. Add 1/2 cup sugar and 3 tablespoons reserved peach syrup. Beat for two minutes. Spoon mixture over peaches to within 1 inch of pan edge. Mix together one tablespoon sugar and one teaspoon cinnamon and sprinkle over top. I found that the cream cheese mixture expands nicely. So try to thinly coat all of your peaches, and don't worry about getting it perfect. And the cinnamon sugar topping is key -- the pie would be a bit bland without a healthy smattering of cinnamon. So don't skip that step!
4. Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, until golden brown. Chill before serving. I baked for about 40 minutes and chilled overnight in the fridge.

Because this is rather an odd 'peaches and cream pie,' and was often called a hybrid of a cake, cobbler, and pie on the website, I renamed it Peach Cablooie, where cablooie is an amalgam of the words CAke, coBLler, and pIE. ;) It's easy to make, light and sweet and delicious, and I've heard tell of making it with apples and with blueberries, too.

Hey, I hadn't even tasted the thing before in my life -- the judges got first dibs and we had to await their verdict before we could try them ourselves -- and I won a blue ribbon and a better homes and gardens cookbook. So trust me and try this for yourself. Enjoy!

My friend James W. and I take on drag and the 70s all in one go...we're singing "everybody was kung fu fighting...HYAH!" This was on Saturday, August 6th...the karaoke that I spoke of in my August 13th blog. :)

So the wedding was really cool. I already knew that I really like S's friends, and seeing them again only confirmed it. The bride wore the veil her grandmother wore to her wedding. The wedding was held on the Balclutha, a real ship preserved as a museum down at Hyde Street Pier. The ceremony was held up top and then the reception was held below; it was such a whimsical venue. The ceremony was very concise without leaving anything out or feeling rushed. I did find an outfit -- though the right dresses to wear on a ship at night are just not in season yet -- and enjoyed myself immensely.

In other news, I got a new phone. I'm very excited. My old one was crapping out a lot, incredibly finicky about reception, and basically just getting senile. So I invested a little more cash and got a new one...

Here it is. Isn't it lovely? Aesthetics aside, Motorola's are known for being good, solid phones and having great reception, and plus it comes with all kinds of features, including a camera. I'm addicted to it already. Give me a call!

Where have I been?

Singing Karaoke. Working. Going to an A's game with my entire organization. Seeing movies -- the remake of the Manchurian Candidate -- I'd seen the 50's version my freshman year in college. The new one is much gorier, but certainly an interesting update -- corporations are the enemy in this one, rather than communism. Denzel was pretty amazing, though I did love Frank Sinatra in the old one. Also saw Collateral last night, which is sort of a standard action thriller, though not nearly as suspenseful as you'd expect. My over all impression of it is that it was too glossy. Steve gave it a C+, I gave it a B; we both appreciated Tom Cruise's and especially Jamie Foxx's performances.

Steve's best friends are two sets of engaged couples. This weekend, the first set "bites the dust." On a boat at the wharf. Should be pretty interesting. I shall take this opportunity to go dress shopping -- need something formal enough for a wedding, low key enough so that I don't threaten the bride's spotlight, and warm enough for a boat at dusk.

Good thing I love a challenge!

The dowitcher photo didn't work...here's a different one.

The beach house weekend was a blast. A relaxed blast, if that's possible. Turns out Pajaro Dunes abuts a bird sanctuary, and a short walk down the beach brings you right into view of it. There were swarms and swarms of all kinds of cool birds -- the ubiquitous western gulls, but also barn swallows, dowitchers, sabine's gull, some tiny birds that were probably pipers, some big gull-looking birds that were probably albatrosses, and some pelican looking birds. (Forgive the vagueness-- the internet is NOT the best resource for figuring out just exactly what you saw! I will confirm what I saw once I get my hands on my guides after work. )

That was one awesome (mostly personal) hit of the weekend. Lest you think I've given up on my extensive food blogging of late, I'll inform you that the other was Steve's cooking skills. He made a "carpetbag" steak -- a flank steak, marinated in good old magi sauce (you may not know the name but you would recognize the taste for sure -- very traditional steak marinade), cut almost in half and stuffed with (cooked, not fresh, in this case) oysters, capers, shredded cheese, onions, and garlic, and then grilled to perfection.

And I do mean perfection. I nearly swooned it was so delicious. In fact, we had known red-meat-decriers AND even a vegetarian who tried it and also swooned. Amazing. Steve is at last proving his culinary education! Yum.

Wow...MORE food news. (I am a creature of appetite these days, I guess!) I once again attended the Gilroy Garlic Festival on Sunday. (See my original post about it last year, or their website.) Leslie and I were the veterans from last year, with S., Noah, and Julia accompanying us this time. It's definitely something you only need to do once annually -- the memories of crowds, heat, and costliness ultimately fade, but the memory of that delicious stench pervading every possible type of food imaginable lingers on. We tried their garlic combo sampler (shrimp scampi, sauteed mushrooms, pasta, and chicken sausage sandwich, all with a healthy dose of garlic as their top ingredient), deep fried rattlesnake on a stick (yeah, you heard me correctly -- and that was among the other choices, which included gator tail, frog legs, crawdads and kangaroo!! They sure lived up to that creole swamp hodge podge you'd expect from a cajun booth), garlic ice cream, garlic jelly beans, and an assortment of (non-garlic) fruit smoothies, frozen lemonade,  and shave ice to keep us cool. The biggest hit was by far the dish that Leslie and I honed in on -- beer battered garlic french fries topped with Dungeness Crab shreds and homemade aioli. To die for. I wish I had some right now.

The day before that was also a lovely day -- there were two farewell parties for friends leaving the bay area at the end of the summer. One was a pool party at Laura's house in Lafayette -- she has a great little ranch house with a pool and hot tub. They even broke out a slip & slide! And they have a sweet rotti-dobi mix (basically looks like a slightly stocky doberman or a slightly slimmer rottweiler) named Baily who ran around and made sure nobody threw anything without her permission. And in true Laura fashion there was oodles of food -- hotdogs, chicken, hamburgers, fritos with all different dips, a veggie platter, a HUGE sugary cake, beer, pina coladas, margaritas, snapple, water, even a pinata stuffed with candy! Then that night there was an "aloha" party for another friend -- people came all decked out in their hawaiian and caribbean finest. It was fun to dance with no cover charge for once. :)

This should be another busy week -- landmark class tonight, conference call on Wednesday, possibly going to a movie tomorrow, always running around with friends, and then this weekend a whole crew of us drives down to our beloved beach house (again)!! VERY EXCITED!

By the way -- S. and I saw Catwoman last night. Definitely a rent-it-on-video-if-at-all movie.  Trust me.

Today at the local cafe the woman behind the register called me "sweetie." I know that lots of people see this tendency as patronizing or too familiar and thus get annoyed, but this never fails to make me feel good. Especially since I see this woman all the time, though we've never acknowledged each other in any way and it would come as a shock to me if she recognized me. I also realize that I went in at a time when they weren't busy, and I have my hair in braids, which a lot of people seem to respond to on me, and I happen to be wearing a bright yellow over-sized man's dress shirt that I bought at the Salvation Army a couple years ago. Perhaps I looked like a "sweetie." For whatever reason, it made me happy.

The blog has been infrequently updated mostly because my life has been on full blast. It seems like every weeknight and all weekend I have a commitment of some sort -- the weekly landmark seminar, the landmark group leaders conference call, movie/game night with my friends, dinner here, gym there, happy hours, parties, barbecues, clubs, events...plus with S. in  my life, friends see me less and thus schedule more...and to think that nearly two months ago I had the energy to do maybe a quarter of this and was usually resentful or disengaged when I did do anything.

Yesterday I watched a mourning dove fluff up and call out its single woeful call while the tree branch it was on bobbed like a swimming pony in the San Francisco wind.

Darned if I know whether or not I'm the dove, the branch, or the figurative swimming pony, but I identified with the whole scene!   

Hmmmm, another post about food: Leslie and I found a GREAT new restaurant called Espetus Churrascaria. It's an all you can eat (but classy) brazilian barbecue with a prix fix of about $29 a plate -- but when I say all you can eat, I mean MEAT. MEAT MEAT MEAT. YUM. In the back they have a side-dish bar set up with salad and cous cous and beets (chowed on those, great beets) and potato salad and stuff. Basically different kinds of salads. You fill up on that and go back to your table, which is when the fun begins. Servers come by with enormous skewers on which is a type of meat, which you can try or decline. Leslie and I tried roast beef, beef ribs, chicken, the chef's special sirloin, and the house favorite, TOP SIRLOIN. (We declined the lamb and the chicken hearts, and I think they ran out of the sausage, though I saw they had some when we arrived.) The top sirloin was the tip top kaleidiscope of delicious. Seriously. It was cut SO thin, it was SO smooth and moist, their signature flavor is smokey, when I first put it on my tongue I was so enamored of how good it was that I didn't want to CHEW! (And I didn't, until Leslie made fun of me.) Amazing. And they come by a lot. They actually have a little sign wheel on the table that says "YES PLEASE" or "NO THANK YOU" so that you can designate when you need time to consume and digest. They also served us fried bananas (which I, of course, couldn't eat, but Leslie reports that they're awesome) and grilled pineapple, which was mouth watering.

After that display of culinary prowess, I HAD to try dessert. I selected the marscapone & ricotta cheesecake with raspberry sauce. Amazing. Simply amazing. The smoothness of the marscapone and the lumpiness of the ricotta play so well off each other -- not to mention the flavor combination -- that the cheesecake was both smooth and dense at the same time, without being too much of either. YUM.

Visitors be forewarned: all visits will now include a trip to Espetus. ;)

Last night I fired up the ol' fondue pot for a little shindig with 3 of my friends. SO MUCH FUN. The fondue was a gruyere/emmentaler mix with some fume blanc, a teeny bit of garlic, and lemon juice -- soOoOoOoOo good -- with ciabatta cubes, red, orange and yellow bell pepper slices, carrot slices, granny apple slices, broccoli, cauliflower and mushroom heads, pan fried garlic and artichoke sausages slices, and honey wheat pretzel rods for dunking. DELICIOUS. I was pretty proud of the spread. When we sated ourselves on savory, I threw some semi-sweet chocolate, half and half, and a little triple sec into a double boiler and made chocolate dessert fondue with marble pound cake, marshmallows, strawberries, bing cherries, and my favorite of the night, raspberries for dunking.

I am one fat and happy and accomplished-feeling girl this morning!! Mom & Steve, thanks again for the fondue pot for Christmas. And anyone who wants to try it, come and visit soon -- I'd be happy to do it again, any time.

I had a great 4th o' July weekend.
For starters, my CEO gave me 2 tickets to the Friday Giants v. A's game at Pac Bell, so naturally, I brought Steve. It was a lively game with another home run by Barry Bonds (I believe it was #680) and the Giants won. At the end of it was a fireworks display set to big band tunes -- pretty dazzling.
The next day we went back up to Bruins Lair for a less-than-24-hour stay. Mostly because the owners had a grill with two legs broken off and asked Steve if he would weld it back together in time for their big Sunday dinner. Being the nice guy and star-welder that he is, he agreed; and since he had to work on Saturday and Monday (don't ask) I knew it would be a brief jaunt and decided to go with him. As it turned out, his mig-welder blew a circuit almost immediately, and he had to do some innovative solutions involving L-shaped brackets, nuts and bolts. Everyone's vote was that it was a pretty ingenious solution. ;0)
As opposed to the 15 or so people of last weekend, there were 225 up there. The campground is spaced out enough that the impact wasn't horribly noticeable -- though there was a lot of noise at night, DJing through most of the day, lots of people in the pond -- but not nearly as bad as I had anticipated. I got some quiet time when I woke up at the crack of dawn Sunday morning -- I sat by the pond and listened to all the bird calls and watched the sun come up over the pine trees. And Steve and I mostly stuck to ourselves anyway. So it was worth it, and now that the summer celebration has come and gone, Bruins Lair weekends go back to being small groups who come up and relax in exchange for some light work. We're looking forward to going back. :)
On the way home, we stopped at Steve's art space to drop off the welder, and in doing so drove through Bayview, one of the poorest neighborhoods in SF. It was pretty scary in that it was the 4th, and people were setting off fireworks in the streets -- indeed, we had to drive around a clump of kids mid-street at one point -- so there were fireworks going off all around us with loud reports and sudden flashes. It is perhaps the closest I'll ever come to even the suggestion of a war zone (with any luck, anyway), and I was glad to drop off his stuff and go.
I spent most of yesterday sleeping and doing some much needed lazing about. When Steve got done with work, we ordered Chinese and watched Futurama on DVD. All in all, a restful and companionable weekend. Hope yours was enjoyable too!

More pictures below...and if you'd like to see the infamous Steve bouquet, I inserted that into the relevant blog entry, so scroll down. ;)

This gives you a sense of the lovely birthday bouquet Mom & Mary sent from Hawaii. It was very fresh and crisp and bright and it smelled marvelous. I love the pale red poppy (around back) and the creamy gerbera daisy. 

This is me on my birthday. After the wrap-up of the LMF, we went to Orphan Andy's for some late night grub, and my friends surprised me with a chocolate cake. Look at that 4 Alarm Fire...and even in my old age, I blew it all out in a single, easy, poof! 

This is characteristic of many fountains in the Bay Area: steps. They look as though they are meant for you to step right into. It's a funny phenomenon compared to your more regal and user-deterring East Coast fountains... 

What strange birds are these?? 

In his poem, Verses on a Butterfly, Joseph Wharton calls butterflies "Nature's completest miniature divine."

In another poem entitled The Way Of The Coventicle Of The Trees, Hayden Carruth writes, "I have looked at them out the window / So intently and persistently that always / My who-I-am has gone out among them / Where the fluttering ideas beckon."

And Jorie Graham writes, in Salmon, "What is the light
at the end of the day, deep, reddish-gold, bathing the walls,
the corridors, light that is no longer light, no longer clarifies,
illuminates, antique, freed from the body of
that air that carries it. What is it
for the space of time
where it is useless, merely
beautiful?"

Perfection. This is why I need to write again.

We so often create checklists in advance of going on camping trips. So I thought I'd create a post-camping checklist detailing the proper packing in of experiences:

1. Injuries (Designate experiences with Yes/No)
Cuts (Y)
Scrapes (Y)
Welts (Y)
Bug Bites (Y)
Bruises (Y)
Sun Burn (Y)
Fatigue (Y)
Achiness (Y)
Bone Fractures (N)
Heat Exhaustion (N)
Altitude Sickness (N)
Snake Bite (N)
Dog Bite (Y)
Death (N)

2. Activities
Bear Wrestling (N)
Swimming (Y)
a) with all kinds of water bugs and spiders (Y) *If yes, please detail below
b) with teeny tiny frogs (Y)
c) with snakes (Y) **If yes, please detail below
d) with giant squid (N)
e) in dirty gross muck (N)
f) in a shockingly pristine 25 foot deep pond (Y)
g) in the early morning (Y)
h) in the late morning (Y)
i) in the early afternoon (Y)
j) in the late afternoon (Y)
k) after night fall (N)
Sleeping in a tent (Y)
Cooking on a portable stove (Y)
Axing and digging up nefarious black berry limbs (Y)
Machete-ing nefarious black berry limbs (N)
Watching a cowboy-hat-wearing teva-clad testerone tornado machete black berry limbs (Y)
Gathering pretty rocks (Y)
Clearly delineating a new trail with said pretty rocks (Y)
Clearing brush (Y)
Napping (Y)
Number of cool new earthy hard working people met: 11
Number of canine companions: 3
Number of sticks/pine cones/pieces of bark thrown for doggy entertainment:" ~3,000

3. Sounds Heard:
Buzzing chain saws (Y)
At least 10 different species of bird calls (Y)
a) including hawks (Y)
b) including jays (Y)
c) including hummingbirds (Y)
d) including lovely unidentified songbirds (Y)
e) including wild dodo (N)
Mid-afternoon snoring (Y)
Splashing (Y)
Robins tromping around underfoot in the brush (Y)
Snide jokes (Y)
Wild yeti call (N)
Ambulances going by (N)
City cacaphony (N!)

4. Food consumed
Egg, sausage and cheese scramble (Y)
Belgian Waffles with fresh Strawberries (N)
Olive Bread dipped in Balsamic Vinaigrette (Y)
Melba chips and duck pate (N)
Fresh salad with red bell peppers (Y)
Venison Jerky (N!)
Sausage Stroganoff Soup (Y)
Liver and Onions (N)
Egg, Sausage, Cheese and Potato Scramble with Lemon Pepper (Y)
Chocolate Croissant (N)
In-N-Out Burger on the way up (Y)
McDonald's (N)
Rick's Freezette's (founded in 1960) infamous Nacho Cheese Dog (Y!!)
Quinoa (N)

5. The Drive:
Hours spent driving up there: 5
Number of hours added by SF/Sacto traffic: 1.5
First use of 4W Drive option in Pick up truck (Y)
Hours spent driving back: 4
Number of hours added by traffic: 0
Number of hours added by Nacho Cheese Dog Consumption: 0.5

Overall Impression: AWESOME, can't wait to go again!!!

*I've had a heck of a time figuring out what kind of spider we saw. It was big, sleek, and sharp-toed, looked black with yellow stripes. I think it must have been a kind of wolf spider -- family lycosidae -- since they are known for being comfortable with water surface locomotion. But I can't find any pictures that match what we saw. We also saw lots of dragon and damsel flies, including their nymphs; water boatmen (very cool); and what looked like a large beetle with big pinchers. And plenty of tadpoles too.

**This is the common garter snake, eastern subspecies. It's the closest in appearance to what was swimming around with us in the pond. Very docile and not the least bit concerned about our company.

Oh wow. Oh wow. I just went to go do some little administrative thing and when I walked back there was a crowd around my desk. And an enormous box on it, whose contents were too tall for the box and thus covered in tissue paper. And I opened it and it's a two and a half feet tall, I literally measured, bouquet of fresh summer flowers. Irises, pink gerbera daisies, purple hydrangea, pink roses, purple liatrus, purple stock, yellow chrysanthemum, magenta dendrobium orchids, bells of ireland, heather, stuff I don't even know the name of. Deep lush purples with yellows and pinks to highlight. And it's from Steve...


Here they are... 

I believe the work consensus is "he's a keeper."

Interesting. I looked back on my enneagram type and wondered if I had changed, the same way my myers-brigg changed. What's fascinating is...

Conscious self	Overall self

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

...my conscious personality did not change, but my unconscious one did. Crazy!!

Last night (my) Steve got back in from LA, so I picked him up from work (he'd driven but he had to take a work car to carry the equipment) and brought him back to his apartment. There was soft lighting, fresh flowers, a sense of joy and delight...and a big ugly squirmy CENTIPEDE on the ceiling!! (For a vague idea of what it looks like, click here.) My first reaction was to squeal with total horror, mostly because it was on the ceiling -- the idea of it dropping on me was horrifying -- muscles rigid, staring, ready for fight or flight. Steve was going to kill it, but then my entomological impulse kicked in, and I nabbed a clear pint glass, climbed up on the couch and captured it.

That's when I realize how incredibly amazingly COOL these creatures are. The pint glass became a means of holding it up close and studying it. The glass had a film of water on the bottom and Steve pointed out that we probably saved its life, as centipedes usually prefer moist, damp areas. The centipede pounded the walls for a second -- they have that amazing synchronization of their legs, like an assembly line of coordination -- then did the most curious thing: first, it tapped the sides of the glass with its antennae. Far from being flaccid appendages sticking out from its head, these things were muscular: he had total control and to prove it, formed amazing little intricate spirals at will. He then curled a single spiraling antenna down to his incredibly sharp horizontal fangs and ran it through them. He did this with each one over and over again. He was basically collecting the water and sampling it, and to watch him curl his antennae was indescribably fascinating.

He then got bored and started to claw the walls again. When he bent half his body over backwards as he looked around, that gave me the heebie jeebies again, and I was done. Blllluuuuuhhh. When he was at rest and doing cool muscular things, that was okay; but any unnecessary displays of unctuous flexibility made me histrionic. Steve got a moment's jolly from taking the pint glass and threatening me with it, and then he threw it out the window.

Oh man, that thing was cool. Terror and intricacy all wrapped up in this little segmented bundle. But if that thing had dropped on me, I would have freakin' lost it: Dear Mom and Dad, I'm writing you from the local asylum...

I am going camping here this weekend. It looks like quite an amazing place. It will be "car" camping more than trail camping, so I can bring bird books and journals and too much clothing and not-so-perfect hiking boots and not have to bear the weight of my inexperience high up on my shoulders and back. :) And it's a work weekend, so I'll be digging in and clearing some trail and getting dirty, along with frolicing in the pond and sunbathing and bearwatching.

So I'll be MIA this weekend via all things electronic. But know I'll be communing with Connecticut Nature's distant cousin, California Nature. Very exciting.

My boss is so incredibly thoughtful. She was working overtime last week, so she gave me my birthday presents this week. One of them was a small frame on one side of which is a bas relief of palm trees -- so I can put a picture of Sanny in there. So touching.

If any of you have a 3x3 suitable picture of Sanny that you can spare, I would love that.

On a lighter note, another one of my coworkers at CTDN gave me a promotional tote as a belated birthday present. On the side it say, "ATHU / Accepting Organs for Research" and then ATHU's number.

I can't wait to see what happens when I take THAT out in public!!!

I am still so incredibly happy. This has to have been the happiest week I've ever had, maybe ever, or maybe since I was a kid. Seriously. Between Landmark, my birthday, the awesome people at my job, my awesome friends, and this amazing person I just met and have the most intense connection with (you know who you are), even a rare visit from Jeptha, a dear friend from college -- well, it feels like I just stumbled upon a free time share on cloud nine. With an option to buy...

Aloha, everyone.

Funny -- I've taken the MBTI twice now. Back then I was an INFP; now I'm an ENTJ. Another possibility is that in answering specifically towards my work persona I'm an ENTJ; but perhaps I'm at heart an INFP. The Myers-Briggs is big on this kind of inconsistency, seeing as we all act out slightly different versions of ourselves in each of our life capacities: friend, lover, coworker, family, and "just ourselves." Either that or I'm just expressing my gemini self.

Thank you to my ENTP for catalyzing the memory of the INFP in me. (~_-)

ENTJ - "Field Marshall". The basic driving force and need is to lead. Tend to seek a position of responsibility and enjoys being an executive. 1.8% of total population.

Take Free Myers-Briggs Personality Test

Most of the people at CTDN have taken the Myers-Briggs, so I thought I would. For a more complete understanding of ENTJ, look here.

LANDMARK WAS AWESOME. I am so happy right now. I see the world as full of possibilities. I feel complete with my parents. I feel complete with my friends. I feel like I can have anything I want...

...and so many good things are happening right now that I keep forgetting it's my birthday because everything else that's happening is already so great. And then I realize that I've been around for 25 years today and take a look at myself and see my own happiness and everything is even GREATER.

I'm walking on sunshine...

I've meaning to write about this: a couple of days ago I was riding the Muni underground and there was a man in a wheelchair on board. We ended up getting off on the same stop and as I watched him wheel toward the stairs leading up, I wondered where the elevator was; I'd never noticed it before.

If there was one, it didn't seem to matter to him. He wheeled right over the escalator, got both sets of wheels safely on, and held the moving hand rails to stay balanced. It was impressive, independent, and pretty cool.

However, I have noticed in a few places that the hand rails sometimes move faster or slower than the escalator. Here's hoping he doesn't go to malls, for example, very often...

By the way, those of you curious about the landmark forum can see the relevant page on the website by clicking here.

I changed the title of my blog (note, this does not affect the URL, a.k.a. the web address, so don't worry) because House on Wheels just didn't seem proper any more. I was indeed once very mobile (in fact, within two weeks, the anniversary of my road trip will arrive, and two weeks after that, as of July 1, my one year anniversary in SF) -- mobile in flesh, mobile in mind, mobile in spirit -- but none of that's true right now. Circumstances have conspired both to cement me in the Bay area (yay job!) and to cement me from traveling for work (I said, YAY job!). As for mobility of mind and spirit...those are a little stagnant right now. A great deal of personal issues* have cropped up in the last three months, added to the long term anxiety of finding a job, paying bills, etc. Now that I have a wonderful job, I at last have the time to tackle these issues -- I'm going to Landmark in two weeks, which is VERY exciting, and I'm exploring local Al-Anon meetings in the hopes of finding one that I can attend weekly. June is going to be a revolutionary month for me, and I'll do what I can to keep you posted.

All of that in mind, I've changed the blog name to Dwelling. It is both a synonym to my last name (and thus an homage to the previous blog name) and a synonym for the act of recounting, though with slightly more obsessive connotations. I hope you like it.

*(To respect the privacy of the people around whom these issues revolve, I'll refrain from getting into them. Most of you who would want to know the gritty details do, and most of you who would rather not, don't, so I'm pretty sure this isn't as much of a tease as it seems. I'm open to discussing them privately if you'd like to.)

Hi Guys -- here's a bunch of pictures I'd been meaning to show you. Remember the easter feast I described? The sudden outburst of flowers I'd forlornly tried to describe with words? Tales of Halloween, Fred dressed as Ali G? At last, you can see for yourself. By the way, you can click on any of these pictures to enlarge them.


This was that easter feast I described. Leslie's behind the camera. Duke's holding a feta, spinach, and mushroom omelette; those are home fries in the frying pan; that's strawberry and chocolate chip pancakes on that plate; closer to Chad, you can see the French Toast I made...and the clock says 3:30 on easter Sunday. Can't beat it! 

James arranged this one. This is the smallest I've ever seen Dan. 

Ah ha! At last, proof of Fred's true alliance (and true fashion sense). If Daddy only knew... 

If you can see him...this is Will at the one and only performance I've ever been to of The Bother's. He's a great peformer.  

This is the infamous bottlebrush. I'd never seen it before I moved to San Francisco, but now it's a definite favorite of mine!  

This one needs enlargement. But if you look closely, the sun catches it in a way that's downright ethereal. I can hardly believe I took this picture! 

This rose was born to be a star. 

Bougainvillea is papery and ecstatic... 

Us Surprising Lexi In Seattle. 

AT LAST -- Blogger came up with a free way to post pictures. So very exciting. Consider this your warning...

Hey guys -- sorry for long time no update. I've been combatting a head cold since last weekend. I've also been super busy at work. This combination not only means that the cold stays put on a minimum level, but that my communication has been lacking as well. If nothing else, my health insurance kicks in on Tuesday -- AT LAST! -- and I can see a doc then.

I'm still loving my job.

Okay, this struck me as funny. A little background first. My brother joined Big Brothers Big Sisters a year ago, maybe two, and his contributions to his little brother's life and happiness have been such that he is up for an award -- Big Brother of the Year -- to be given to him by the Governor of Virginia. While I am proud of this accomplishment, I definitely had to call him up and give him some flack. You see, when my mom sent an email entitled "FRED HOUSE -- BIG BROTHER OF THE YEAR," I'm thinking, "um, says who?" Fred is indeed a wonderful, caring, considerate, consistent big brother to any kid -- he's great with kids -- of the non-sibling variety. Which is not to deny him this award, because he is great with kids, and he's great with siblings of the adult variety. But in my humble experience, Fred and siblinghood below the age of, say, 20 years, do not mix well.

Fred informed me that he'd been saving it all up for the kind of siblinghood you can actually get awards for. To which I replied, at least you got it right once in your life, bucko. The conversation then devolved in to taunting, raspberries, and cellular hair-pulling, so I'll spare you the rest, but all of this is to say, next time I call first right of "best/worst" designation. I'll be sure to let the Governor know.

Yesterday was our quarterly staff meeting, in which all the staff from all the locations come to a meeting center in Berkeley. We went over our collective mission, stats, finances, and then brainstormed and discussed what expectations of us are, who we answer to, how we affect the organization at large, how we'd like to see it change, what it would need to do to keep us as employees, etc. We also listened to a guest speaker talk about technology and usually we have a donor recipient come talk to us about their experience. This time they couldn't arrange that, which was disappointing, but there's always next time.

My real involvement in the staff meeting, though, was to put faces to names (since I'm in HR I see ALL the names, but have met few of the faces) and to be seen myself. And I realized that I really fit into this organization well. In one of the small group exercises/discussions, my group nominated me to present our views, and before we'd convened I'd hardly met anyone in the group yet. I made the whole organization laugh, intentionally, while I was presenting. I also participated in a presentation by all the administrative assistants in which they hoped to give people some background on where their experience lies and what they do now, in the hopes of personalizing us and garnering some respect. (I hadn't noticed this lacking, but apparently it's just a sensitive issue worth attention.) So I got a chance to talk about my experience with admin work, and my writing studies, and to joke about how if anyone had ever been to Middlebury, CT in the summer of 97 and ridden the Mad Mouse at Quassy, I was the one running the brakes. :)

My boss said she had all KINDS of people coming up to her and telling her how well they thought I fit into the organization, how capable and professional I was, how funny I was, how much they liked me, (and of course, how tall I was). Experiencing a day where I really got to see the face of the organization as a whole revealed to me that the average employee here is smart, dedicated, light-hearted, and even-tempered. It makes me really want to invest my time. For the first time, I can envision myself living in the bay area for more than just a year or two, and I can envision myself staying at a job for more than just a year -- as opposed to the annual wanderlust I seem to experience.

Time and management could change all that, and quickly. But for now, I really feel that not only did I survive the job-seeking experience in the Bay Area, but I came out on top, too.

I am running myself ragged at work today but I just wanted to post that I will actually be starting FULL TIME on 6/1/04. My boss is so busy that she made the case for needing the help and the CEO said it was fine.

I did enjoy the loose schedule but my finances sure appreciated the security!

Lord of the Rings!


What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
brought to you by Quizilla

Let me know...

I took away the google search bar. I didn't get the vibe that any of you were using it, and according to Dad it was causing viewing issues. So it's gone. Should any of you truly miss it let me know.

On the train every morning someone sits or stands next to me and who they appear to be in my peripheral vision is always completely and utterly different than who they are when I eventually look them full in the face. The tall, stylish, raven-haired woman standing next to me yesterday morning turned out to be young drag queen. The middle-aged, straggly haired woman sitting next to me this morning turned out to be a tan, friendly, clean young woman who didn't even growl when my bag bumped her as I was getting up from my seat. Facial expressions that I swear I see turn to dull spaciness when I confront them. Men are women, women are men, starers are reading, readers are staring...my eyes sideways are the most imaginative part of my body, brain be damned...not to be grandiose or anything.

Every morning when I come up from my BART stop into a small alley between two roads, there's a bright yellow sporty motorcycle painted to look like a wasp. Today the owner thereof was mounting it as I came up the escalator and it turns out he has a bright yellow leather jacket with dancing orange flames and big yellow helmet to match. I was mildly disappointed that his jacket did not follow the wasp theme...would a set of teflon transparent wings hurt??

Today I had my pre-employment physical. Basic physicals are incredibly silly. In sum, they had me pee in a cup, identify colors on different signs, cover each ear while facing a wall and repeat a whispered number, stand on a scale and have my weight and height measured, read a line of letters on an eye chart several feet away, and then read a paragraph of the smallest print I could see from a card I held in my hand. They then had me change into a paper gown and looked into my eyes, ears, and throat, listened to my lungs and heart, palpated my belly, banged my knees, had me close my eyes and hold my palms up and then proceeded to swiftly knock each palm and then each shoulder (is that a test for balance, reflexes, vertigo, what??) and finally had me touch my toes and arch backwards. Upon doing all of these ridiculous things, I was pronounced healthy and told to go.

Based on these activities, kindergartners seem to check each others' health ALL THE TIME.

Oh, and I spent the 5 minutes I had waiting for the doctor to come in counting the Pooh stickers on the wall. There were 11 tiggers, 13 poohs, and 12 eeyore/piglets.

Goo goo gah ga and adieu.

During the weekly Monday conference call today, Irma announced my presence as a new hire. She then pointed out that I also "said I bake a mean muffin." (In a fit of hubris, I had written that on my application under "other talents & skills." Looks like I'm going to have to put my money where my mouth is...or their mouth where my money is...or something.) The next woman who spoke also announced a new hire, though she admitted she "didn't know anything about HIS baking skills." Which prompted me to promise to help him.

This is a fun place.

Permanent jobs aside, I got to hang out with some of my old Auburn/Merced coworkers this Friday, and the really great thing about that job was them. I have 5 or 6 people I (hope to) see monthly whom I otherwise would never have met. They're funny and intelligent and I consider myself lucky.

Happy May!

I have actually signed on the dotted line. Thank you St Cajetan!! Woohoo!

I have just been informed that CTDN would like me to "come on board" as a part time employee as of May 1st, benefits to begin on June 1st.
I will inform you when I have actually signed on the dotted line so that you may at last stop your voodoo dances, altar sacrifices, incense burning, and prayers to St. Cajetan -- patron saint of job-seekers and the unemployed.* I am quite pleased, and I feel that I have found a GREAT boss, a low-stress job, and something that will not only maintain my interest for a long time but will also serve me well when I choose to move on. But, that's putting the cart before the May 1st horse. 3 days and counting!

*Go to this website to find a patron saint for just about anything!!: http://www.catholic.org/saints/patron.php?letter=A
For example: Mom, you'll be interested in St. Agatha/St. Camillus de Lillis/St. John of God, and both you and Steve will be interested in St. Hubert of Liege/St. Roch/St. Vitus. Sandie, you'll be interested in St. Martha. 2-Dad, you might be interested in St. Gertrude of Neville...as am I!!

We did indeed take in the Giants v. Padres game on Thursday, along with some hot dogs and fries. It was hot and though they opened the 1st inning with a home run right off the bat, they lost. We got some shopping in, had a late dinner at the hotel (delicious crab cakes!) and turned in for the night. Friday we had coffee in the castro, lunch in the financial district, strolled in the Yerba Buena center, tried a smoothie at jamba juice, then collapsed at home for a half hour before I had to leave for my flight to Seattle.

Seattle was great; gorgeous weather; absolute shock on Lexi's part at our sudden appearance; good food; lots of dancing and even more laughing. It was a shame we had to go home (I was even getting used to Julie's dogs, an inquisitive dachsund and a gentle giant german shepard/dobie mix) but I was glad to finally unwind too -- it's been a non-stop hyperactive whirlwind 8 days.

Okay. Nothing creates a whirlwind tour of SF like having a set of parents in town. Mom and Steve got in Saturday at noon and the fun hasn't stopped since. We visited Haight Street (where some very elaborate shopping took place which I shall have to explain another time), did crepes at the Bean Bag Cafe while my car's oil got changed, and did a lot of catching up. That's plenty of activity, right?

Ha. On Sunday we:

1) had dim sum in Chinatown (big hit, until the little girl next to us started eating her hot peppered chicken feet toe by toe -- and that's no joke)

2) bought boba teas, random chinese candy, and pickled, chilied, or gingered tidbits (mostly Steve) at Sweet World. Boba Teas are drinks consisting of a cold, sweet, milky tea (though you can improvise with Chai or what have you) and large, round, super chewy tapioca balls that sit at the bottom and come flying up into your mouth through an extra wide straw. Chad retched, mom was fascinated, Steve bought his own!

3) walked the aquarium. The aquarium is rather meager compared to what I'm used to and what I've seen recently -- Mystic, of course, and Chicago's -- but they did have the good foresight to construct glassed in tunnels with slowly moving walkways, so that you can be surrounded by striped trout, leopard sharks, wolf eels, and bat rays and without having to think about walking. I could've sat in the tunnels for ages. They also had touch pools. I touched flounder (nubby), bat rays (velvety), leopard sharks (firm, skin-like only less loose than ours), sea urchins (surprisingly stiff), starfish (bumpy and hard) and sea cucumbers (mushy). Further, they had an exhibit where you could see inside the egg pod of a Skate where tiny, finely veined skate fetuses hovered umbilically over their yolk sacs (something I've never seen before in the big aquariums) -- all of which definitely redeems the lack of size, variety, and dolphin trick shows!

4) Killed some time at the wharf with lattes and espressos, some light shopping for rain gear (it was wet but not torrential), and a quick visit to the Sea Lions, a younger pair of whom were engaging in a sea lion form of sumo wrestling involving using one's entire girth to knock the other off the raft, only to have that one, with much honking and barking and protestation, scramble back on to the raft on a different side and then knock the first one off! Very funny.

5) Ferried out to Alcatraz where we did the "night" tour from 4-8pm. I've done Alcatraz before (see blog of August 6th, 2003) but I relished the chance to go back, and this time we got to tour the hospital upstairs -- which was mostly innocuous but undeniably creepy. I also saw the black-capped heron on this occasion -- gorgeously plumed, relaxed, elegant even when hunched over herons perched on some of the denser trees on the coast of The Rock.

6) Ate seafood at Fisherman's Grotto, at a more casual version of Allioto's.

7) Finally, (on a last leg of energy) went to the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum! While there were many bizarre and wonderful things there, I have this weird little place in my heart for the replica of Van Gogh's Self Portrait made entirely from toast.

Chad and I left the house at 10:30am and didn't get back until 11:30pm!! And that was after a long night of me out dancing with my friends. Going to work yesterday was actually relaxing! Mom and Steve came to see where I work ("this time!") and we had lunch down at City Center. Despite Steve's having visited the Bay Area at least three times in the last 30 years, it was his first time riding BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit -- the trains that run under the bay between San Francisco and points east). Interestingly enough, he'd written a paper in high school on BART back when it was newly developed and cutting edge.

For their birthdays, I'd bought both Mom and Steve manicures and pedicures at my favorite local place in Noe Valley. Mom has never had a pedicure from embarassment over her feet. So despite years and years and YEARS of manicures (indeed), yesterday after work I met them there for her first pedicure. I thought her toes looked great, and appearances aside, it was incredibly relaxing after the long day before it. Leslie joined us there for her own mani-pedi and then we all cabbed to the Mission for Ti Couz's amazing, hearty crepes.

Mom and Steve took the ol' Forrester to Mendicino today, where they will frolic among the redwoods while I'm working, to return on Thursday -- which as it turns out, I may have off. We may try to take in the Giants game...

http://baseball.msn.com/articles/661631.armx

THIS is exciting. I need to take in some games this season. Apparently the CEO here is big into baseball; I might even get a shot at a seat sometime!

Go Barry Go!!

Okay...I'm seriously considering upgrading my blogger account so I can post photos. Just yesterday I visited Oakland's city center and it's full of funky sculpture. More importantly, SO many flowers are in bloom. I took my camera with me everywhere I went this weekend just to capture the local flora: roses, bougainvillea, bottle brush, cherry trees -- bushes, plants, trees, everything's in bloom. You wouldn't think that you'd even notice spring in such a temperate city, but nature begs to differ.

I'll look into expanding my account.

More things about CDTN:
1) Even if *I* want to donate my organs, my family has to give consent. Thus I want you all to know should anything happen, I want to donate my organs. Please give your consent. (Note: I have actually been signed up as a donor since the day I got my first driver's license. This is not job propoganda!)
2) The building housing CDTN has bathrooms that alternate floors. Unfortunately, I am on a men's bathroom floor, so I have to go up or downstairs to use the bathroom. The upstairs bathroom has a mirror on the paper towel dispenser -- which gives me a great view should I need to preen my belt. Sigh.
3) This job is part time because my boss takes classes on Friday. Thus I won't be working Fridays for the next month. Yes!
4) The benefits start as soon as I stop being a temp. (Mr. Jackson is going to chat with Irma this week to see if/when they want to hire me. As soon as I am not receiving pay checks from Mr. Jackson, I'll have benefits.)
5) Donors up to the early 70's in age can donate. A 72 year old was found healthy enough to donate in the last week, while a 71 year old could not. So while my very, very distinguished father is probably exempt from being a donor, the rest of you should do some serious thinking and sign up. One donor can benefit 7 people -- heart, both lungs, both kidneys, liver, and pancreas. Not to mention tissue and corneal donations. Imagine 'leaving' on that kind of note; I believe if St. Peter starts listing off your sins and you rebut with "One Heart, Two Lungs, Two Kidneys, One Liver, and One Pancreas, thankeeverymuch" he will most decidely say "Touche. Please come in."
6) No, I do not win a toaster for signing up a certain level of donors.
7) They order too much food for meetings, so there's lots of free lunches in my future.
8) The IT guy misspelled my name as "Elize." I must say, though, it's a step up from Elisa or Elsie.
9) My boss is very pleasant, reserved, and smiles easily. She's been working here for 20 years. These two facts lead me to believe that working here is a good thing.

Easter was a sleeper hit. I awoke after a late night of dancing to a phone call from Leslie inviting me to breakfast at her house -- and by breakfast I mean FEAST. She, Duke, Chad and I went shopping and then cooked for an hour: rosemary home fries, spinach & feta omelettes, jack and pepper and onion omelettes, strawberry, chocolate chip and/or banana pancakes, biscuits and gravy, cinnamon french toast (I made that one -- amazing how easy it is) -- complete with bloody marys and mimosas. Considering that there were only four of us (well, Laura came home just as the meal was ready -- excellent timing) it was a considerable amount of food. And everything, I mean all of it, was good -- cooked just right, nothing burned, nothing broke, nothing bland. It was like Thanksgiving only brunch and Easter. We spent the rest of the day Sea Lion styles -- lolling about with full bellies and chatting aimiably.

I hope you all had as wonderful an Easter.

Today is my first day at the Donor Transplant Network -- it's VERY interesting. I'll update further later. I still intend to fill you in a bit about how SF deals with the homeless problem as well. ;)

p.s. just discovered quite an odd but delicious "new" drink -- grasshoppers. (Creme de Menthe + Vodka + Cream on the Rocks with a Cherry = Green Milky Cold Scrumptiousness). A few of us got together for happy hour on Thursday night and went to a bar in the mission that specializes in Grasshoppers. If you try it, though, save it for last -- it's very much a dessert drink.

So, many of you received my email about my time at SFHP ending and the second email about my temp agent finding me a new job immediately. I have since learned more. The new job is with the CA Transplant Donor Network and I will be assisting the head of HR there. I'm looking forward to it; it's going to be good to learn the inside ropes about what goes into benefits, hiring, firing, payroll, etc. I believe it will be an experience that will serve me in good stead later in life, and especially in CA. ;) Cons: The job is in Oakland, so I will most likely be BARTing every day; it's not a full 40 hours a week. Pros: I start on Monday; the pay per hour is better; it's specifically temp to hire (none of this "apply but we'll cut you loose with no warning" stuff!) and most distinctly: benefits -- health insurance, pro-rated vacation days, etc. -- start immediately.

Freddie, in light of all this, brought to my attention that it may be hard to understand why I'm applying to temp jobs. It's very simple: in my time here, I've applied to a lot -- a LOT -- of permanent jobs and gotten an interview with exactly...NONE...of them. In applying to temp companies, I've gotten every job I've had here. I can only assume that it's stating the obvious, but I'll say it anyway, that while I'm one 24 year old experienced admin assistant/writing tutor among an ENTIRE city of twentysomething experienced admin assistants/writing tutors using the same job sites and resources as everybody else, with a few recent and tenuous connections that haven't panned out, a temp agency that's been here for a mere 10 years has well established connections and companies loyal to them and merely needs a pool of applicants that's going to represent them well. By applying to agencies and not to specific jobs, I have basically have a well-established company promoting me for free in a way that I can't do for myself alone.

This system is, of course, successful and fulfilling keeping in mind one important tenet: I still have NO idea what I "really" want to do with my life. I'm aimless. If I were driven about being in publishing or working at the zoo or getting education credits to teach or going back to grad school, this system might be a waste of time. But I don't know what I want, and I need the time and the means to think about it and formulate a plan. Temp jobs are perfect for that. Once I start this job, I'll have three concrete local references to support me for any "real" job I seek and I'll hopefully have some money saved (I already do have a decent chunk in my savings account).

Please don't think that by applying to temp jobs I'm deliberately underachieving. I'm actually using the resources available to me in an optimal way.

I learned a ton of interesting stuff when I accompanied Mr. Jackson to the health & employment subcommittee of the SF Homeless Council. I'm going to try to make it into something cohesive and post it next.

A new addition: you can now search my blog using the Google search engine. I might take it away because it's kind a sore thumb, but let's leave it for now. If there's an old post you want to reread, trying searching! The cool thing about doing so is you can learn about relevant sites to that information -- for example, if you type in "sea lions," you get a couple listings inside my blog, but on the sidebar there's a link to the official website of the Pier 39 sea lions!

Enneagram Test Results Type 1 Perfectionism |||||||||||||| 60% Type 2 Helpfulness |||||||||||| 48% Type 3 Image Focus |||||||||| 34% Type 4 Hypersensitivity |||||||||||||| 52% Type 5 Detachment |||||||||||||||||| 72% Type 6 Anxiety |||||||||||| 47% Type 7 Adventurousness |||||| 25% Type 8 Aggressiveness |||||||||| 33% Type 9 Calmness |||||||||||||||||| 79% Your Conscious-Surface type is 9w1 Your Unconscious-Overall type is 2w1

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

Type / Focuses more on / Primary Behavior / Secondary Behavior
2w1 / attracting love / helpful/caretaking / perfectionism
9w1 / acquiring power + attracting love / calm and peacefulness / perfectionism