p.s. I still stink at racquetball, and I still love it. I have yet to break my 6 point maximum...I'll miss the very free very accommodating Merced gym -- perhaps the only thing I'll miss!!

Sorry it's been a while since my last blog. Been pretty busy. This is the last week of my temp job, which is good, because Merced was wearing us all thin. I'm a little afraid of going back to the job search grind, but I feel a lot more prepared; plus my temp agent said they have another project in the works that they may be able to use me for. My options, in short, are open, and I'm seeing a lot of great job openings out there. Now if only I can get my foot in the door!

Chad is also moving to San Francisco this weekend, which is very exciting. It's been a long wait!

For those of you in search of a good book, read Bill Bryson's A Short History...as aforementioned. I've told all of my coworkers different tidbits I've learned and they're all convinced. For example: did you know that Yellowstone is one of the biggest threats to human existence on all of the earth? Yup, that's right, the park might destroy the U.S. And did you know that rain has the potential to kill us all as well if it weren't for one single defense we have? I'm not telling you what it is. Buy the book. By the way, it's not all morbid stuff; I just hit the intense chapters in the middle!!

I'll have a lot more time to blog/email/catch up on my hands next week, so have some patience; I'll be in better touch soon, and I'll certainly keep news of my job search posted here.

I have a new love: racquetball. If any of you thought hitting a hard rubber ball around a confined space with a racquet sounded stupid, think again. Or rather, don't think, try it. Of course, thus far I've only gotten 6 points in any given game. But it's fun enough to keep trying.

Vballers: Side out rules live on in racquetball. Play to 15, points can only be earned on the serve. Side out lives!!

Some interesting facts from Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything:

"The average species on Earth lasts for only about four million years, so if you wish to be around for billions of years, you must be as fickle as the atoms that made you. You must be prepared to change everything about yourself - shape, size, color, species affiliation, everything -- and to do so repeatedly[...]Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely -- make that miraculously -- fortunate in your ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you" (pp.3-4).

"[Atoms] are also fantastically durable[...]Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms -- up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested -- probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name. (The personages have to be historical, apparently, as it takes the atoms some decades to become thoroughly redistributed; however much you may wish it, you are not yet one with Elvis Presley)" (p.134).

"When two objects come together in the real world -- billiard balls are most often used for illustration -- they don't actually strike each other. 'Rather,' as Timothy Ferris explains, 'the negatively charged fields of the two balls repel each other...were it not for their electrical charges they could, like galaxies, pass right through each other unscathed.' When you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting there, but levitating above it at a height of one angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimeter), your electrons and its electrons implacably opposed to any closer intimacy" (p.141).

Happy Valentine's Day, Belatedly, Everyone!

I had a most enjoyable weekend with my step-dad, who was in town from Thursday to Sunday morning. After 2-Dad spent the day walking through Golden Gate Park and Haight-Ashbury (I'm sure the liberal in him was intuitively drawn to the biggest hotbed of hippie-dom in the city!!) I met up with him Friday evening at his hotel -- the Marine Memorial hotel, a very classy building dedicated to Veterans, located at Sutter and Mason (a block over from Union Square and a 5 blocks up from Market Street). We then met up with my 2 out of 3 housemates and hit Scoma's on the wharf, where I enticed 2-Dad to try the whole cracked Dungeness crab and the lobster bisque I'd so messily delighted in back in July. I believe his response was somewhere along the lines of quintessential 2-Dad: "That hit the spot!" We then filled in the cracks with a genuine Ghirardelli sundae. Having been to the city once or twice already, he'd hit all the major (kid) tourist spots -- the Exploratorium, Ghirardelli Square, etc. -- so I tried to drum up some new stuff (I can't quite lay claim to knowing actual insider stuff, so I'm just going with calling it new-to-him stuff!). Saturday morning we hit the Farmer's Market -- talk about a kid in a candy store! -- where he bought his very own farmer's market tote to carry all of his impulse buys -- 2 kinds of cheeses, one Welsh, one French, a sampler of olive oils, some California Laurel soap (for his girlfriend), and a Lavender sachet which reminded him of the smell of his mother's house. We then tromped a ways down to figure just exactly what that huge bow and arrow sculpture is -- darned if we learned anything except that a Dutch (?) couple gifted it to the city in 2002, but it's one of the few clear spots along the piers and the sky was a perfect blue, making for some great photo ops. His last visit was in the late 80's, so I of course took him to see the Sea Lions on Pier 39, who'd shown up in the early 90's. I then proceeded to tell him all the facts I'd learned from the last time when Mom and Steve were here, only to find that I was standing next to that day's Sea Lion expert from the place in Sausalito! Fortunately I'd remembered the facts right. He lasted longer than Freddie did -- about 10 minutes -- so Mom still holds the record for sea lion fascination (two visits, one at least an hour long). To save time, we'd hopped a street car from Pier 1 to Pier 39, which brought back memories for Dad of his childhood days in Washington, when he'd catch a street car for 50 cents with his young buddies to a local amusement park. We took another one back to Washington & Embarcadero, and then walked several blocks up Washington to Chinatown, which was at last less crowded (after several weekends of Chinese New Year's celebrations). My goal was to take him to good old fashioned Dim Sum, but we got there late in the afternoon on a Saturday, so rather than crowds and carts being wheeled about and lots of pointing, I actually had to check off a few choice dishes on a Dim Sum checklist. Not quite the ambience I'd hoped to share, but still delicious.

We split up then for an afternoon Siesta and remet a couple hours later for a Valentine's impromptu dinner, which I brought James to. We managed to find a place with room available on the most over-booked restaurant holiday of the year (I'd wager) and with that in mind, it was still pretty good! Afterwards we hit the main event, a production of "Noises Off!" being held in the Marine Memorial Theater (yup, he had a theater in his hotel) which was hysterically funny and amazingly well-choreographed. It was a great way to spend the evening. The next morning I drove Dad to the airport and spent much of that day and yesterday hanging out (one of my friends was in town) or napping, both well-deserved!

This weekend was a triumph of navigation -- getting from Fishermen's Wharf to Chinatown to Dad's hotel, and getting from my house to Dad's hotel, to the 101 the airport -- and quite a lot of fun. Hope yours was as good!

I start this new week in Mer-dead a new person. I decided at long last that my experiment with growing out my hair was done. It's been over 2 years since I shaved my head for Mary's birthday and it was time for a change. Nothing drastic, just something more me. Leslie and I had a girly day on Saturday -- we got fingernails and toenails 'done' (Mom, cancel your pre-SF nail appointment in April, this place is awesome and will do BOTH for $15 total...with no sacrifice of quality -- in fact, they do more than your CT woman does!!) -- the last manicure I had was at Christmas over a year ago, and the last pedicure was the September before that. In case you're misinterpreting me: it wasn't so much a sudden farcical misappropriation of femininity pre-coif-change as much as it was a means of relaxing and being fussed over, which I, for whatever reason, sorely needed. (Hey, when's the last time YOU turned down a foot massage? Exactly.) I then went to a walk-in salon in Noe Valley which had gotten rave reviews in articles and had them cut my hair about an inch above my shoulders, and then layer it and give it texture. In other words, it's a choppy, sporty kind of look that suits me perfectly. And it was only $21. You heard me correctly. (~_-)

I hope you all are succeeding in being bargain-pampered as well. Although, don't settle for less unless you have to -- you deserve the best. Cheers!

Last night I awoke at 12:30am to the sensation that somebody was softly tapping my hip.

Then I realized my hip felt damp.

On with the light. Sit up. The cieling is dripping on me, slowly -- the tap tap tap I felt. Or more correctly, the smoke alarm directly above my bed is dripping on me. My first groggy instinct is that the room above me must have flooded their bathroom, until I realize I am on the second story of a two story building. But all of yesterday it poured and poured and poured, and even now I can hear the rain pattering ever so sweetly against the window.

So the roof must be leaking. My next groggy instinct: both to inspect the leak and disconnect the smoke alarm so nothing shorts.

Yeah, hotel smoke alarms are tamper-proof. So that thing goes off full scale as soon as I twist it out of its little casing. It screams. I put it back. It screams more quietly. I let go, it screams, stops, screams again. It is not an intermittent pulse -- it's a piercing single note (I'm sure I woke up a whole host of nearby dogs) that NEVER PAUSES.

I call the front desk. Some young front desk attendant answers -- I explain -- she says, "oh, hold on," -- I'm thinking, yes! remote disconnect! -- I get the dial tone. The alarm is still screaming. I run over and open the door thinking she's sent someone. I wait several cold screaming minutes. I call back. She says, "oh is it still going off?" Her answers to the obvious questions: No, I'm alone at the front desk so I personally can't come over. No one else is here. I can't send maintenance, there's no one else here, there's no one I can call. I can switch you to another room, but you'll have to come down to the front desk. (The front desk is about 100 yards down, walking outside.)

With the alarm still screaming bloody smoking murder in my ears, I grab all my clothes off the hangers, shove them in a bag, throw all my toiletries into my toiletry bag, grab my bowl and utensils and mug and glass and throw all of my newly bought groceries back into the three bags from whence they came, grab my back pack and all the books and pens and pads and crosswords lying around, and finally, grab my boots, throw on some flip flops.

At this point, just as I am leaving the screaming mimi for good, a boy, who could have been no older than mid-collegiate and seemed younger to me, comes running across the parking lot waving and hollering. He says, "WAIT! WAIT! ARE YOU SURE IT'S NOT THE ALARM CLOCK??" My ear drums can only bleed morosely in reply. I tell him I'm pretty sure that i-- DO YOU MIND IF I JUST CHECK?? (In order to ask these moronic questions, he has to, of course, YELL above the din.) He goes into my room where the alarm clock is situated next to the bed and just below the bone-chillingly loud smoke alarm and literally taps the alarm clock to be sure. Now fully convinced, he climbs up on the bed and yanks the smoke alarm straight off, wires fraying and all, and says, "yep, it's the smoke alarm."

I then take all 5 bags, my book, my boots, and various and sundry other items -- I have absolutely no part of my body that is not clutching, gripping, or shouldering a belonging -- and hike all the way down to the front desk in the drizzle, with one side of my boxer shorts riding up my leg, with this guy following along behind me explaining how people call him at 6 in the morning insisting the smoke alarm is going off when it's just the alarm clock and he's not even thinking twice about shouldering a bag or five, to be greeted by a girl who can hardly be 18 who apologizes and hands me a new room key and says that this boy -- "the manager," -- arrived just in time to come "help" me.

I then once again take all 5 bags, my book, my boots, and various and sundry other items -- I have absolutely no part of my body that is not clutching, gripping, or shouldering a belonging -- and hike all the way back to where the new room is slightly below my other room.

Only to find that the key card doesn't work. It's not flashing green for go or red for no, it's flashing yellow. Yellow?? What, am I not keying the slot cautiously enough? As I am robotically sticking the key through the slot and consistently inciting the yellow light, you guessed it, the door opens, and I am greated by a rather bewildered looking young woman who is wondering what this frizzy-haired, boxer-wearing bag lady is doing on her doorstep rattling her lock at 12:45am. I give her a six word answer -- "they -- wrong room -- dial front desk?" to which she agrees and closes the door on me. Three sound-proof minutes in the drizzle later, she opens her door and says, "They're really confused. They said go back to the front desk."

I then once again take all 5 bags, my book, my boots, and various and sundry other items -- I have absolutely no part of my body that is not clutching, gripping, or shouldering a belonging -- and hike all the way back to the front desk, where the boy is ranting in Bulgarian on the phone and the girl is once again apologizing and saying no one ever tells her anything and they do this to her all the time, and all the rooms in the hotel are full except for two. The boy gets off the phone and nods at her and the girl then promises me the 'big' room, which she gives me still another new key card for, and which turns out to be right next to the room whose doorstep I was standing on.

This room, thankfully, is empty. My card works. It's the 'handicapped accessible' room, so the bathroom is twice as large. It has two warm, dry beds.

I put my stuff down and at 1am thankfully climb into the one that's NOT under the smoke alarm, and lay me down to sleep.