nothing good. nothing fresh. i promise. since January 2001

INVISIBLE INK

since the blogspot connection is down, this won't be seen for days, hence the cloaking feeling of writing with invisible ink. not that i have anything burning to share, just have nothing to do here at work and wanted to fill my hours with something. When I do my timecard for today, I will have to write that I had EIGHT hours of non-billable work. That means I did nothing. We've got a half day, on account of Memorial Day weekend, and I got in to work to find a stack of nothing to do. Glorious. So going to have lunch with the girls and then slog home to read. I would do something active, but today is gloomy cloudy and foggy. So that puts a damper on my active spirit.

M is attempting to wing his way to Florida to visit his parents. On the way to the airport last night he realized his flight was at 7:25, not 7:52. So he missed it, bought a ticket to LA to try and catch his connection to Florida, and of course the fog in LA prevented any such luck. So after a sleepless night at LAX, he got on a plane to Dallas, and that was the last I heard from him. Hopefully he won't spend the weekend in the airport in Dallas.

Watching too much Sex & the City-- got the complete 2nd season from netflix... it's addictive somehow. Reading The Money & The Power: The making of Las Vegas and it's Hold on America. Going to see Russ Ortiz pitch against Neagle on Sunday.
posted by Say It Loud at 12:45 PM

TODAY FEELS LIKE MONDAY

my week's gonna be all screwed up b/c i took yesterday off. today was monday for me, but tuesday for everyone else. People at work kept smirking when they asked me how i felt. Goddamn it you don't have to be PHYSICALLY ill to take a day off. But it's not exactly easy to say i was emotionally sick. It was crazy hectic at work with messages piling on top of themselves, breeding and ballooning. The four of us have a mountain of messages to test tomorrow. on Thursday we're moving into the building right beside the one we're in now, consolidating with the parent company. which means no work past 2pm. on the ironic side, i started feeling actually sick around 4pm today, in retribution for my glorious yesterday.
posted by Say It Loud at 8:19 PM

CLARIFY YER NONSENSE

purpose: to try and recreate the sparkling post that was lost to my computer 'striping' (all of a sudden the screen was striped in these 3 inch green and blue and black and white stripes that were cool looking, but deadly to my computer)

white stripes, the band: saw 'em at the fillmore, which was not as huge as i thought it would be, but still it was disconcerting to see such a multitude of fans cheering on jack & meg. they rocked, but i mourn the passing of their smaller status/smaller shows.

housing: saw a ultra cool SOMA loft on Saturday afternoon that keeps sticking in my head, which i guess is a good thing? It's a converted warehouse space for $1750, including utilities (free laundry!), which is way cheaper than what M& I will have to pay to keep this old clunker above our heads if the KKKimmer ever moves out. He was planning on moving in with his brother and another guy, but his brother (even bigger asshole than kim) signed a lease with the other dude excluding Kim from their plans. So now he's here until he finds a roomate in the outer world who's willing to take him. Which essentially means M&I will have to move first.

mystery of picasso: AMAZING movie shot in 1956 with Picasso painting in front of a camera so you see every stroke he makes. He painted 15 pictures just for this documentary, and destroyed most of them after the filming. The very definition of an art film.
posted by Say It Loud at 4:27 PM

AH, HOOKY

couldn't deal with the prospect of sitting through a three hour team-meeting about quality assurance today, so I am officially home sick. as soon as i made the decision to skip work, my internal writhings ceased and i looked forward to getting out of bed. amazing, the theraputic value of goofing off. i know, i know, it's MONDAY for cripes' sake, and I just had 2 days to goof, but there's an intangible deliciousness to spending a glorious sunshine filled Monday outside amongst the other loafers/weekend workers. so far i have done my laundry, bicycled to Baker Beach, made myself a genuine gormet lunch, and caught up on my reading.

the beach-time juiced me up considerably. just laying on the warm sand, watching dogs frolic and napping. a tiny bit of ogling at the nude sunbathers, but hey, they're asking for it. days like today make me want to quit my job. i'm sure to feel that doubly tomorrow when i show up to work looking sunburned, trying to explain that my malaisse was mental, not physical.
posted by Say It Loud at 4:13 PM

POST LOST TO COMPUTER FRENZY

oh well. stuff about housing, white stripes, mystery of picasso. details when i'm not feeling so defeated by technology.
posted by Say It Loud at 6:45 PM

HOUSES THAT FLOAT : LIFE IN THE SUBURBS?

6 houses into the new-home search and i have seen it all. From the floating home in Sausalito to the crumsville 'penthouse' in the Tenderloin. The houseboat was tre cool, but too small for M's 6 ft frame. I was running around in it fine tho. The houseboat community is like a trailerpark for hippies. No dogs allowed, the pier is a cat sanctuary. Cats peering out windows, roaming the docks. And all the while, your house bobbing up and down, waiting for you on the East Pier! It had 3 decks, but was a little small on the inside. Boo hoo. The guy who showed it to us is going on a long sea journey, maybe 6, maybe 10 years. Aaarg! Does that mean we could stop sending him rent after 2 years? Another strange thing about this boat would be living in the burbs of Marin-- in SAUCE-TOWN for peets sake!

The second best place so far was a hardwood floor, totally redone 1 bedroom flat with fireplace. The only problem with that one was the $2200 price. Doesn't make sense to move from our huge clunker of a flat to a more expensive (yet nicer and smaller) one. But it was close to a park, 2 blocks from M's work, and beautifully redone. And the FIREPLACE! I'm tempted to go to the showing tomorrow and offer $1800 to take it immediately.

Third best was the smallish 1BR with cool garden and kitchen area. Had a bedroom with living room connected through french doors, outside patio & garden, and Edwardian bathroom where the toilet was in a separate room from the shower, but both rooms were tiled in this aquamarine color.

The most disgusting award goes to the high-rise 'penthouse' loft right across from Great American Music Hall. 888 O'Farrell. Sounds like ritzy skyscraper living at first (jacuzzi, penthouse), but it's your basic fleabag.

I am still planning on checking out this one later this afternoon. It's a converted warehouse space close to my office.
posted by Say It Loud at 2:23 PM

NOT SO DEAD AFTER ALL

yesterday i did my now-usual blading after work, going from the Giants' stadium up to Pier 39 and back. But this time, when I rolled back behind right field, I watched the Expos take batting practice for a while, then strolled on into Box 107 to watch the game. My boy showed up in the 2nd inning, while it was still tied 0-0. Livan Hernandez took a 3rd inning shellacking of 5 runs, to which the Expos added a snippet of runs to across the remaining six innings. Final after three hours was 9-0. Watching Vladimir Guerrero in person, seeing how totally built he is, set off a whole chain of musings. Like, baseball is all about individual accomplishment. Everyone has their own stats. But then it's also a team sport, with team stats. Very complex and complete.

After the game my boy somehow convinced me to accompany him to the Elbo Room to see Andrew Bird & the Bowl of Fire, who I'd never heard. Much to our surprise we saw that Kelly Hogan & the Pine Valley Cosomonauts were also playing. Total bonus! Kelly was awesome and she seemed to love the place, calling the bar "foxy." She sang some Magnetic Fields (Papa was a Rodeo) and Willie Nelson (something from the divorce album, "just go ahead and buy it, you never know..."). She sang one song to commemorate Cabbagetown, I forget what. She looked like a Cabbage Patch kid, beaming and wearing some 50's style green nurses dress. Then Andrew came on and damn, I could not stop my feets from tapping. Good show overall, just a late night and the pleasant taste of hangover in my mouth this morning.
posted by Say It Loud at 11:31 AM

LINK'D

decent article in salon about the SF dog-mauling case which involves the adoption of a 38 year old inmate named Cornfed, Mexican Mafia, sexual acts with the dogs, etc. And you don't even haveta subscribe to their 'premium' service to read it! Free article on the internet! Gasp.
posted by Say It Loud at 10:51 AM

ACHES

on the bus home tonight i was comfortably seated, reading The Flanders Panel, when i looked up to find my face practically inside the shirt of this boy who was hanging from the bars above me. It was one of those shirts with ultra-big arm holes, so you could see his nipples and all his armhair glory. ewww. totally ruined my relaxing in the afterglow of yet another blading session along the embarcadero.

today i busted it on part of the waterfront trail. i'm surprisinglly intact for someone who wasn't wearing any kind of pads. minor scrapes and the happy knowledge that people do stop to see if you're ok and manage to hide their giggles for later. the salty smell along the bay is so rejuvenating... whenever i take advantage of these kinds of things the city offers for FREE, i don't mind the soaring gas prices or the flickering lights of rolling blackouts; i just run down the street beaming, arms flung wide, looking like yet another cali nutjob.

HEY JINGA you coming out for white stripes or what?? Saw your workplace on fuckedcompany, so i KNOW you got time off!

posted by Say It Loud at 6:50 PM

PAIN MAKES YOU BEAUTIFUL

i could get used to this. it's been beautiful and HOT (by SF standards) the past week and it looks like more of the same for the upcoming! the appearance of the sun is not a new thing for northern california, but the temperatures have created several (rare) opportunites to leave the house jacket-less. now i just gotta pay attention to the whole pant-less thing and i'll be on my way to popularity.

so i don't know what it is, but something has been making my lazy bones crave exercise lately. the past few days have found me delirious from too much sweat; i have rollerbladed, biked, and hiked 12 miles up and down mountains. i think living in california just softens the brain and makes you want to push the limits.

Poor Jamie, he's completely lost it. A few months ago, I ran into Jamie at the In-N-Out in Marin, and did a double-take because i recognized him from Real World. We were both waiting for our orders and even though I knew who he was, I asked, 'Did you go to Duke?' He was always wearing a Blue Devils cap in episodes of RW-New Orleans, so this was a legit question. I think it left him a little perplexed, because he said no and I said 'oh, I thought I recognized you.'
posted by Say It Loud at 10:04 PM

PUBLIC BOOKMARKS

i always considered this chere space to be a place to bookmark whacky links on the web. i never claimed to have trawled the web to find these gems, i freely admit to plundering other sites/blogs. that said, here's my booty for the day:

icyhotstuntaz
lobster magnet
caffenated meatloaf
lego robot that solves rubix cubes
call center hilarity

posted by Say It Loud at 2:32 PM

TRA LA LA

it is sunny and over seventy degrees, which is about as hot as it gets here, so me & some work pals walked over to South Park for lunch and just lay in the grass and gabbed about crap for a whole hour. Feels sneaky to take a full hour for lunch, but also feels GOOOD. Now that I'm back I can't quite ratchet my attention up to the appropriate work notch. Just been surfing and sending emails back and forth.

Yesterday after work (hold on to your hat!) I went rollerblading along Embarcadero. GASP! and it was so much fun that i'm planning on doing it again after work today. My blades are in the trunk of my car, which is parked in the Giant's parking lot across from the stadium. Since they're playing a 2 week road trip, I can park for the next coupla weeks no problem. So I bladed from my car, down along the water to the ferry building, underneath the bay bridge. At first I thought I was having serious problems blading because it had been so long since I'd done it. Then I realized it was because I was skating INTO the wind. on the way back the wind basically did the work for me, I'm not kidding.

After the much needed exercise, I drove home and picked up some freshness at the grocery, and made dinner for myself when I was hungry instead of having to wait for my boy to get home. This was because he was having a business dinner, which lasted well past midnite. He got home and I was already half asleep, watching 25 Large on MTV, the top 25 videos that had the most profound effect on rap. There were people that I hadn't even heard of, since I'm a relative newbie on the scene. RawKim? Not sure if that's even how you spell it. But i'll soon be napstering it to my mp3 player. Anyway, my boy relaxes for all of ten minutes when he realizes he has to send out an email, which leads to his discovering that one of their servers was down, which leads to him calling everyone in his office at 2 in the morning trying to get the problem resolved. Was it? I don't know, I fell asleep as soon as I convinced him to take care of it downstairs, and he was still sleeping when i left this morning.

It's going to be hard to drag him away early tomorrow, but I want to drive down to Big Basin around 5p so that we can set up our campsite in moderate darkness. That's right, we're going camping/hiking this weekend! Another activity! I must be getting too California for my britches.
posted by Say It Loud at 3:14 PM

INTERNET BASEBALL

the internet is made for baseball. to be on hold, watching J-Lo hit a homer in the Bravos/Brewers matchup via gamecast, it is nice-n-ez. plus fantasy baseball is nice. plus sportingnews is full of info. so even tho it is may and that means MAY MAYHEM is about to begin. Not sure what that entails but if it's anything good i'm sure i'll post it.

i just forgot why i was on hold. it's been like 30 minutes + ROOR = forgetting stuff. this is why memento was such a good movie for me.

note to self: i am on hold with phone company. in re: bill with strange DSL charges that aren't ours. is this important enuff to tatoo onto my body?

posted by Say It Loud at 6:36 PM

BURP

just back from a fabulous walk around my work environs. it is freaking may and a beautiful day to boot. so i walked down 3rd street to the Giant's stadium, walked along the water to the embarcadero, and then wove my way back to work on brannan via delancy street. the combination of sunshine and water satisfies some primal need of mine. all sorts of ideas popped into my head, such as, i could move to this area of town, i could buy a boat, i wish i could find a job that paid me lots to do something i am passionate about. i especially love walking past pac bell park when it's totally empty and the sunshine pours in on all those green seats. there's a section of fences in right field that enable you to watch the game without buying a ticket. it's surprising that that option isn't utilized more. i envisioned myself rollerblading along the smooth concrete path that follows the water, and made tenative plans to drive to work tomorrow, get geared up after work and GO blade into the sunset.

but between then and now, i face several messages that i must 'test' by clicking their links. ugh. somebody pass me a cup of hemlock.
posted by Say It Loud at 1:21 PM