Hasta luego amigos!

We're off to Mexico tomorrow and I'll be on vacation from blogging as well as from everything else. If you miss me while I'm away, just picture me here.

Ice ice baby

At childbirth prep class last night we learned some pain coping techniques and then practiced them.

Our teacher used ice as a simulation of the contractions. We would each hold a handful of ice in our bare hands for a full minute, then we'd get to put it down until the next "contraction" started. I didn't find it that painful but apparently some people in the class found it extremely uncomfortable, which I guess is kind of the point.

We also spent most of the three hours of class sitting on the floor, which for some folks* was more than enough practice in coping with pain and discomfort.

During each icy contraction we practiced the different techniques we were learning. One of them involved mooing like a cow. I actually found it quite effective as getting my mind off the pain and even kind of fun. I also liked the one where Eric held one of my feet and just gently squeezed it.

Am I preparing for childbirth or for getting a pedicure at a petting zoo? I think possibly both.


*Eric

Secret Santa

Either our cleaning people have switched to old-fashioned feather dusters, or my Secret Santa this year is a pigeon.
(My skylight was closed when I left last night and when I came in this morning.)

Lost and found

I went to the bathroom during a meeting today at my client's offices and was perplexed to discover a pair of panties left in one of the stalls. The panties were bikini style, black with white dots along the seams. They were laying on the seat as though casually misplaced by their owner, like an umbrella or a scarf might be forgotten when they aren't acutely needed.

How do you accidentally forget your panties in the bathroom?

When I went back an hour later they were gone. It remains unclear whether they were reclaimed by their original owner or sent to the landfill by the cleaning staff. Or perhaps they were adopted by a particularly forgiving and opportunistic woman.

How to tell your downstairs neighbors that you are expecting a child

Just 5 easy steps:

1. Happen to take the same bus as downstairs neighbor in the morning, but don't acknowledge each other or say hello.*

2. Also happen to take the same bus as a friend who lives across the street who is also pregnant.

3. Sit next to pregnant friend and within earshot of unacknowledged neighbor.

4. Discuss pregnancy with pregnant friend.

5. Observe shocked and horrified look on neighbor's face when she realizes she will be getting a new, very small and probably very noisy neighbor this coming spring.


*Eric took the bus with me this morning and he is the one who has met her before and recognized her. I didn't know she was our neighbor.

200 thoughts for the bus

I realized late last night that I was going to have to take the bus early this morning and neither Eric nor I had any single bills or more than a few stray pennies in our wallets.

I took a moment to wander aimlessly around the apartment in search of inspiration or some pile of small bills I had put down and forgotten about.

I didn't find any small bills. What I did find was a jar of pennies.

So I counted out 200 pennies, put them in a plastic baggie and put them in my coat pocket for the morning.

Epilogue:
The bus driver gave me a quizzical look as I hauled the sack of pennies out of my pocket.

"I'll just be a sec. You can go ahead - I'm balanced." The last thing I wanted was a busload of glaring non-morning people blaming me for making them late to work, or wherever they were all going.

The bus driver looked at me, may or may not have sensed the potential rage of the other passengers, and decided that driving on would be a good idea. Everyone went back to their reading, napping, or vacant staring, as desired.

It took me two stops to get all of the pennies funneled into the machine. The full fare "beep" was a great, great sound to hear.

Let it snow

On Monday, I was in a meeting with my team and our clients at their office buidling on Market Street downtown.

We were about two hours into a four hour meeting when one of my team members stopped mid-sentence and got up out of her chair and walked to the window.

"It's snowing!" she exclaimed.

And it was. Right here in San Francisco. Little white flakes falling from the sky as though that were a completely normal thing in a city where the temperature is, I think it is appropriate to use the word, never below freezing.

As we all stood there in the window looking out we saw that the people in the building opposite us were all doing the same thing - window after window had amazed faces in it. The ones who could open their windows were sticking their heads out of them like dogs in a moving car.

It lasted about 90 seconds, then turned to sleet, and then regular rain.

Later that afternoon, there was some very small hail, too.

Family traditions

Eric and I got a Christmas tree on Saturday and trimmed it on Sunday. It is just a wee bit larger than the tree we got last year (we're moving slowly) and it was really fun taking out the lights, the bead garlands and the ornaments and decorating the tree this year. You may notice the make-your-own-ornaments from last year which include Eric's bloodshot eyeball and my clown-drag queen snowperson. Make-your-own ornaments for this year are still to come. Watch out!

(We did not intentionally take this photo to hide my increasingly large belly, or to emphasize my foot; it just worked out that way.)

We also made cookies. Just like last year. They're very modern, and delicious.

These traditions make me feel like we are a real family. I love coming home to the tree and the lights and the cookies each night. It feels great to celebrate even these little things.

So they might be good on pizza

Savory-vegetable-flavored jelly beans came up at work today. What would be good? Cauliflower? Yam?

A colleague who had just been on the Jelly Belly factory tour chimed in to say that they have the Harry Potter inspired flavors of dirt, boogers, barf and more. She sampled them all (ew) and said they were disturbingly true to their names (double ew).

Then she shared this interesting fact: the barf one wasn't very hard to come up with - they just tweaked their pepperoni flavor and were able to totally nail it.

Triple ew.

Push

We started our natural childbirth class last Wednesday. It is a 36 hour class. This is a lot of time but giving birth feels to me like something I would rather risk being over-prepared for than under-prepared.

The first 3-hour class session laid the groundwork for working together. The other 4 couples in the class are a lot like us: white, 30-something* professionals who are having their first babies.

Other than introductions and a lot of administrative stuff, the theme of the class was "unlearning" what we have learned about childbirth from the media throughout our lives. We watched a video which showed maybe a hundred birth scenes from tv shows and movies from the past 30+ years.

This video included labor and birth scenes from the Coneheads movie, Junior (where Arnold Schwarzenegger, our illustrious governor, gives birth), and a Star Trek birth where, because the baby has already sprouted its horns in utero they opt for the "fetal transport" and the baby is beamed effortlessly and painlessly onto a table next to the mother.

They say that the technology supporting childbirth has come along way but I still haven't found any hospitals in the area offering a "fetal transport."


*Eric gets credit for still being 29. At least for another 17 days.

Come for the birth, stay for the food

Eric and I did the California Pacific Medical Center birthing facilities tour the other night to check out one of our three options for a hospital delivery in San Francisco.

If I were to write a brief synopsis of what was covered on the hour long tour, it would be something like this:

There are three doors you can come in; once in the building go check in with OB reception
Here are the elevators.
Here is the second floor where all the births happen. And what you can really look forward to is your farewell meal. It really is delicious.
Here's one of the labor and delivery rooms. Only 7 of them have jacuzzi tubs but they all have showers and a cot for your husband.
Here's a postpartum recovery room. This is where you spend a day or two recovering and this is where they serve you your special meal before you leave. They offer a really nice steak which is really quite tasty.
You can have a lactation consultant stop by to help you start breastfeeding.
Oh look - there's one of the food carts now. It is so great - you get a menu to order from while you are here. The food is very good.
We started a Halloween party for NICU graduates in 1967 and this year over 500 people came to it.
I'm not supposed to give you recommendations for pediatricians but I will. Talk to me after the tour.
This one woman who was on the tour last week had her baby here seven years ago and she's going to have her second one here in a few months. She came on the tour and she asked me "Do they still have they great steak dinner before you go home?" Some things have changed in seven years but not that. I guess that was what she was most looking forward to about coming back.
I hope you all enjoyed the tour. Good luck with your upcoming births and enjoy the food!

Behind The Blog

Me: I'm really struggling with my blog lately.

Eric: Why don't you try to write a funny blog post?

Me: Shut up.

Delivery

This morning I had a 10am meeting at my client's offices downtown. This was an excellent opportunity to pick up the deposit check from our Clementina Show landlords which we had missed over the holiday since the post office is open during the convenient hours of 9:30am-4pm, Monday through Friday.

Boy was I surprised when, after handing over the "sorry you missed our delivery" slip to the guy behind the counter he returned with a large box.

How odd that they would have put our deposit check in a large box, I thought to myself.

He handed me the box and it wasn't heavy enough to suggest that they had returned our deposit in gold bouillon, leaving me out of ideas for what it might be.

I opened it up with great curiosity and discovered: baby gifts. A yellow bib with a duck on it and a matching bottle cover, a sleep sack blanket thing and a little plastic bottle. And our deposit check, too.

A lovely, lovely surprise. Which I then had to bring with me to my client meeting. I think they particularly liked how the bib looked on me.

Eric, meet everyone

We spent Thanksgiving in Chicago, splitting the time equally between my mother, my father, and sleep.

Thanksgiving day we spent the first portion of the day at my father's place where Eric got to meet the more than 20 friends and neighbors who came over to celebrate. The highlights of this celebration were wasabi deviled eggs and working on a devilish jigsaw puzzle.

Mid-afternoon we headed up to spend the rest of Thanksgiving overeating with my mother's family. Here again, my husband Eric* was introduced to the extended clan for the first time. My grandfather toasted to us the newlyweds and Eric got to play the Wii with my brother and young cousins in the "no girls allowed" basement man cave. I spent most of the evening babysitting the pumpkin pies. They needed a lot of looking after.

Saturday night my mother hosted a party of long-time friends and Eric got to meet yet another 20 or so of the people who have been part of my life since I was born. I think they all found him to be an extremely sensitive man, due largely to the fact that the cat allergies triggered by my father's cat were still raging, causing the occasional tear to slide down his cheek.


*Yep, still sounds weird.

Harvest bounty

After longer than I think it usually takes to grow cherry tomatoes, this week we harvested a generous handful of red and yellow cherry tomatoes from the Aerogarden. Thanks Aerogarden! They were delicious.

On handwashing: the sequel

I'd like to report that as soon as I got my H1N1 vaccine, I backed away from the slippery precipice of manic germophobia and can happily report no ill effects, at least so far.

And today, further vindication. The BBC reported results from new scientific studies that prove what I have long asserted as undisputable fact: dirty children are healthier children.*

I do admit to being somewhat more conscious than I used to be: for example, after spending an hour checking out and sitting in at least 25 different sample chairs in Macy's on Saturday, I did hesitate as went to reach for a handful of almonds in my purse. H1N1 vaccine notwithstanding, it just didn't seem smart to thrust my potentially germy hand into the bag of almonds and then put them in my mouth.

So instead, I held the bag up over my face and attempted to gracefully pour just a few almonds into my mouth. Eric quickly distanced himself from this public spectacle. But we were both facing dangerously low blood sugar and so a few minutes later he took the bag, found a private corner and poured some almonds into his mouth as well.

Later, when we got to dinner, we both thoroughly washed our hands before sitting down to eat.


*Extra bonus of reading this article is seeing the word "mollycoddled" used.

Perfect cure for a long week

Mid-afternoon on Friday Eric and I discovered that it was a great idea for us to go to the Sharks game that night in San Jose.*

So we did. Eric had driven to work because he had to chaperone a new piece of equipment for his lab and it worked out perfectly for me to ride Caltrain down to Palo Alto so we could drive the rest of the way together from there.

It has been long enough since I have been to a hockey game (almost two years?) that going to this one was unbelieveably exciting to me. It was a total thrill just to be there - and we got to see a great game. One highlight was when Dany Heatly scored three goals, which is a hat trick. As soon as the goal light for the third goal lit up a shower of hats began to cascade down onto the ice. This stopped play for a few minutes while men with shovels attempted to clear the hats from the ice. It was glorious.

This is them picking up all the hats. So many hats! What do they do with them? I don't know. Maybe they give them to needy children?

I texted my brother Andrew that we were in the Shark tank and he left me a voicemail the next day saying he had checked out the game and "was glad to see it looked like we'd gotten a couple of good fights." Apparently, this is a site he checks daily to stay up to date on this sort of critical info. I can't believe I didn't know about this incredible resource.

Overall, I think the thing I was most surprised by is how solid the Sharks fans were. I had this idea that they were some kind of suburbanized half-assed overly-family-friendly "soft" hockey fans - nothing like the Chicago hockey fans I was raised with.

How wrong I was! Well, mostly. The crowd represented with a huge showing of teal jerseys, and every Sharks power play elicited a sea of arms waving in chomping motions. Good show San Jose! That said, I didn't hear any no foul language and there were no fights in the stands, so they still have a ways to go to get to Chicago standards.

I can't wait to go again! They play the Blackhawks in January and it is on the calendar.


*By some cruel stroke of fate, the Bay Area's hockey and soccer teams both play in San Jose rather than a place that it easy for people like us to go see them on a regular basis, like San Francisco.

Is it the weekend yet?

I have had many, many meetings this week. A couple of days I have literally had meetings or phone calls from first thing in the morning until late in the afternoon back to back with no breaks. This forced me to do things like bribe colleagues to bring me food and water in the conference room and leave my phone muted while I hurriedly dashed to the bathroom to pee.*

If I had an assistant who was in charge of my calendar, that person would have been fired for what they did to my schedule this week.

Sadly, I have only myself to blame. I'm not firing myself but I am instituting new rules starting next week.


*Turns out I can do it in under two minutes - and that even includes washing my hands!

We were just riffing

Last night was one of our highly anticipated symphony nights and the SF Symphony was performing the Brandenburg concertos. They were wonderful (though admittedly not as transcendent as the Mahler pieces we saw last time). I played some of this music on the violin in a previous life which made it especially neat to hear it performed.

One fun aspect of these pieces is that there is a spot for some harpsichord improvisation. Yes, really. Surely this is not an opportunity that many harpsichordists get very often. The fact that Eric hates harpsichord music just made it that much more fun.

Walking to the car after the show, Eric and I debriefed the concert, and in particular the harpsichord solos.

"He totally wailed on that harpsichord," Eric observed.

"Yeah," I agreed, "he tore that harpsichord into three pieces."

"Was he bad?" asked the tall dark-haired woman walking in front of us, turning around to look at us.

"We have no idea," I clarified. "I'm sure he was great," I added because I felt bad that she thought we had been critiquing him when really we were just entertaining ourselves with funny language.

It's in my head

I heard this Soul Asylum song in Bed, Bath and Beyond on Sunday when Eric and I purchased our robes.* It has been in my head ever since, and I am concerned about the potential detrimental effects on both my well-being and that of my unborn child.

I suppose I was particularly vulnerable to it having at one point owned the CD and known all the words to the song. In case you missed that stage in your development, here are the lyrics.

Runaway Train
Call you up in the middle of the night
Like a firefly without a light
You were there like a slow torch burning**
I was a key that could use a little turning***

So tired that I couldn't even sleep
So many secrets I couldn't keep
Promised myself I wouldn't weep
One more promise I couldn't keep

It seems no one can help me now
I'm in too deep
There's no way out
This time I have really led myself astray

CHORUS
Runaway train never going back
Wrong way on a one way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here no there

Can you help me remember how to smile
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded
Life's mystery seems so faded****

I can go where no one else can go
I know what no one else knows*****
Here I am just drownin' in the rain
With a ticket for a runaway train

Everything is cut and dry
Day and night, earth and sky
Somehow I just don't believe it

CHORUS

Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughin' at the rain******
Little out of touch, little insane
Just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train never comin' back
Runaway train tearin' up the track
Runaway train burnin' in my veins
Runaway but it always seems the same*******


*They're glorious and mine has made me late for work every day this week. Somehow having it on makes me care less about being a productive member of society. It is entirely consistent with what I expected but it is nonetheless very powerful.
**In my head, I was singing "blow torch burning"; slightly different connotation.
***What does that mean?
****Oh, to be in high school again.
*****What does this mean?
******This I understand.
*******This is actually a major insight.

One way to meet the neighbors

Last night my attempt to broil up some omega-3 rich Dover sole for dinner caused an inadvertent test of the smoke alarms in our new apartment. Not just the one in the kitchen - all 5 in our apartment.*

So we did what people quickly going both insane and deaf naturally do: run around the house flinging open doors and windows while trying to keep our ears covered and get the alarms to stop shrieking at us.

We looked up from the melee at one point to see that we had company: there was a stranger standing in our kitchen, having come through the back door.

"Everything alright?" he asked casually.

"No fire, just a dirty broiler," I explained.

"Ah, yeah. I just wanted to make sure we weren't burning down."

"I'm Ellie," I said, after a pause.

"Oh, I'm Brian, I live upstairs with my roommate Nate."

Eric came and introduced himself and they made neighborly chit chat about the girls who live on the first floor and how long Brian and Nate have lived here. At this point the fish, snap peas and garlic bread, all of which I had timed perfectly to be ready at the same exact moment, were all ready.

No one likes their Dover sole cold, least of all me, so I plated it up, we bid farewell to Brian and promised to avoid making such a racket again soon.

We didn't mention that we are expecting a boy shrieking machine at the end of March. Mental note: keep the back door locked.


*Yes, 5 smoke alarms. It's big, but it's not that big. Here's to extreme caution.

Paper or obese feminized boy children?

Troubling information abounds on the impact that plastics in our environment are having on the human body. Fair warning - this is a bad news blog.

An extremely troubling article in Newsweek recently showed how plastic chemicals may be related to obesity.

Then just today, an article on the BBC website relayed some additional surprising information. First, there's a Journal of Andrology.* Second, boys who play with Barbies are more likely to play with Barbies due to the feminizing impact of phthalates (found in many, many, many things we are all exposed to every single day, in particular vinyl flooring and plastic shower curtains).

The really really bad news is that these plasticizers are totally ubiquitous. Not only are they in plastic (obviously) but the chemicals in this family are often used as fabric treatments on furniture and clothing and as protective film on glass and metal containers. Europe, being extremely European, banned phthalates in toys but not in other everyday items so they are still fairly ubiquitous there as well unless maybe you live and work in a toy store.

I'm trying not to be totally defeated by this information but it falls into my least favorite category of threats which is at the uncomfortable intersection of "real and relevant to me" and "very little I can meaningfully do about it."

Now I am going to sing a quiet happy song la la la la la la la.


*Really? Is there a Journal of Left-handedness?

Bridge: burned

I broke up with my therapist yesterday. It was one of the more difficult conversations I have had to have with someone in a while, not counting my attempts to update our address through the automated voice response systems at Comcast, Chase Bank and PG&E.

I had tried to break up with her last week and it didn't stick, so I found myself back there again this week to make it abundantly clear that this would be my last session.

She wanted to really understand my decision and what was driving it. This led to an exchange that was sort of like watching a hockey team warm up the goalie: shot after shot after shot, and me in the crease doing my best to deflect.

I made it clear that I didn't think I was "done" with therapy - I just didn't want to do anymore of it with her right now. Nonetheless, she saw ample reason to question the wisdom of my decision. And her inside knowledge of, you know, all my vulnerable spots, insecurities and weaknesses made her assault especially potent.

"In my experience pregnancy can bring up a lot of issues around your own relationship with your mother..."

"Do you really think it wise to discontinue our work together during this incredibly tumultuous and challenging time in your life?"

"Aren't you interested in exploring {insert major life issue} further?"

And my favorite: "You know, as I see it you're really just getting started."

At the end of the 50 minutes I left and will not go back. On my way out the door, her parting words were "My door's always open! Call any time!"

Unlikely.

Halfway to somewhere

As of Monday this week, Belvedere is officially half-baked. 20 weeks ago he began, and 20 weeks from now, give or take, he will be, well, fully cooked.*

As far as we know, he is developing well. The ultrasound pictures revealed all the right things in the right places and we are choosing to forget the creepy 3D ultrasound pictures that make him look like a very small old man.

I haven't gotten too much advice on my pregnancy so far but I have gotten a few tips from our friend Nelson, often on the potentially serious consequences of poor diet during pregnancy:

"If you eat too much high fructose corn syrup then will it turn out to be a Republican?"

"The only risk of drinking a glass of wine while you're pregnant is that the baby will turn out to be kind of French."


*It's a boy! I may not have mentioned that yet. Yay! Name suggestions are welcome.

The space heaters in the closet should have been a clue

We're getting settling into our new place and into a new cold hard reality: it's cold.*

I guess we shouldn't be surprised: it is much bigger, has higher ceilings, and was built in 1906.

It is, nonetheless, a brutal new world

We are adapting but it isn't pretty. I've taken to wearing several bulky layers and, when available, a hood. Eric wears a hat indoors all the time now. I think it might actually be colder in the apartment than it is outside.

But I fear the worst is yet to come. We may have to become "robe and slipper" people.

You know - slovenly, smelling of stale coffee and bad breath, and always scratching something.**

At least it isn't haunted. That we know of. Yet.


*When I told my brother "We love our new apartment, there's just one thing we're having a hard time with" his response was "It's haunted?"
**No offense to any robe and slipper people out there.

Further warning signs of adulthood

In what might be a sign of adulthood, or what might just be a sign of being really disorganized my whole life, I fulfilled a long-time dream this past weekend: I got a proper jewelry box.

Previous jewelry organization methods generally involved plastic baggies, small pouches, and a bunch of small colored boxes. Actually looking through my jewelry to see what might be a good choice that day was so challenging and time-consuming that I basically just started wearing the same two pairs of earrings, rotating from one to the other in the interest of variety.

In going through my "jewelry collection" to organize it into my new box, I unearthed all manner of items I had no idea I actually possessed including not one but two stopped Swatch watches, one of which was missing the face altogether, some plastic jewelry that was literally disintegrating and was sticky to the touch in a way that was impossible to get off of my fingers with soap, and one of what used to be a pair of earrings shaped like a tiny naked woman in "dancer's pose." Wonder why I stopped wearing those.

Having set up the new jewelry box feels like a major life upgrade. I am now ready to dazzle the world with my new, well, actually old, jewelry.

The Connecticut Show

This has been the first week that the Connecticut Show is on the air (or, more accurately, the first week that we are getting to watch it). For a start, it is much more family friendly than the Clementina Show.

The Connecticut Show mostly features the #22 bus. This is apparently one of the more regular buses and it runs every 7-8 minutes from 5am until 1am, and only slightly less frequently during those off hours.

It is an electric bus which gets power through cables above the street, to which it connects with these big pincer-looking things.

From our bedroom, buses slowing down to a stop sound a lot like when Obi Wan Kenobi* disables the Death Star's tractor beam. Buses pulling away sound like that but in reverse.

A few nights in, Eric had a dream in which he was looking at a wall with two numbers like big counters on it. The number on the left was 308, and this was the number of buses that had already gone by. On the right, the number was 3041 and this was the number of buses still remaining to go by that night. I sort of feel like that says it all.

Other than that, and the whistle from the Caltrain, all is quiet and we are not yet finding that boring.


*Yes, I had to look up how to spell that.

Farewell Clementina Show

As of November 1, The Clementina Show is no longer being broadcast on a channel that we receive. It isn't off the air, we just don't get to watch it anymore.

I wish there were a word that expressed the feeling of no longer experiencing something horrible that you don't really miss, exactly, but still feel an unexpected affection for. This is the word I would use to describe how I feel about moving off of Clementina St.

True to form, The Clementina Show season finale was impressive. The night before we moved out, on our way to dinner we walked past a woman wearing a tiara who was squatting and peeing through her pants onto the sidewalk.

For our farewell dinner we went to check out a new fancy sausage place called "Show Dogs" that had just opened up two blocks from our Clementina joint. While we were paying for our fancy dogs, urine-reeking tiara lady showed up to "trick or treat," but instead of grabbing a Starburst from the proffered bucket she reached over the bucket, into the tip jar and grabbed a wad of bills. When the woman behind the counter protested, the woman paused, smiled dementedly, put a single dollar back in and then ran out of the restaurant.*

The next morning, as we left to get the truck for our move, we noticed some fresh human poo and other goodies on our sidewalk. There were also some people doing some form of hard drugs in a car parked across the street.

We had no second thoughts about our move.


*When we left, Eric dropped a few bucks in the tip jar, saying "Don't let the trick-or-treaters get it!"

This year we even roasted the seeds!

Like last year, this past week Eric pressured me into using Spookmaster "trace & carve" designs to carve pumpkins this year. I went along with it and have to admit, once again the results are pretty impressive.

Here's our pumpkins! Eric did the skull, I did the witch*. Happy Halloween!





*Buaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

I demand my share of the life-saving potion!

The H1N1 vaccine arrived in the Bay Area today and Eric, myself, and thousands of other pregnant women, their partners, parents of small children, others who fall into the high priority category, and people so desperate to get theirs they were pretending to fall into the high priority category lined up to get jabbed.

When we arrived, the line was out the door, through the parking lot, down the bock, around the corner and then down* the next block. Here we are at the end of the line. We got there at 6pm, an hour before the clinic was scheduled to close, and there were easily 200 people in line ahead of us. It seemed sensible to walk to the front and see what chance we had of actually getting the vaccination before deciding to stand in line for an hour, maybe more.

The nurse who was managing the line was actually just about to count back in the line and hand out cards to the people that she estimated would be able to receive the vaccine that day. They had plenty of vaccine, the challenge was not having enough people to administer it quickly enough to meet the demand. (Self-administration was not an option.)

I walked with her back up the line as she counted and as she would point to someone and say a number, at least one out of every three people would blurt out "I'm pregnant!" with a desperate, scared look in their eyes, or "I've been here since 3:30 with my kids you can't turn us away!" or "Gimme gimme gimme!" - this just at hearing a number and having no idea what it even means.

Her count got to the end of the line with numbers to spare, suggesting that all of us were "in" for that day. Common sense suggested otherwise: it was about 6:25pm at this point, and the line had barely moved since we had arrived. We figured it was worth the wait.**

At about 6:45pm, with the line still essentially unmoved, another nurse came down the line asking that just the pregnant women come forward -that we were the only ones who would still receive the vaccine that day. I eagerly skipped to the front of the line, trying not to look the people who had been there for three hours or more or their children in the eyes. I feared them.

When the head of the clinic came out and officially told people they had to come back the next day, I feared that this was going to turn into a very gory pre-Halloween special event. After assuring everyone that they would get priority the next day and that there was plenty of vaccine to go around, the doctor apologized sincerely and then headed quickly inside and called the police.

The line did not disperse. People continued to stand there.

Meanwhile, inside the clinic in line for my shot, I sweet-talked the nurse into letting Eric come wait with me inside, and then, since he was there, why not just give him the vaccine too? They did.

We left feeling like we had stolen something.

It was 7:15pm when we left and the line was still there. The police were encouraging people to go home, the clinic was closed. I don't know what happened next.

*This block was a hill, so it was actually up the block, not down it

**"We've waited more than two hours to ride roller coasters. I suppose another half hour can't hurt," Eric reasoned.

Then we got married

This is the balloon in which we were married. (Pretty in its own right, and infinitely better than the balloon that launched along with us which looked like the Puerto Rican flag.)
This is the view from several hundred feet up, just after dawn.

This is us listening to Scott the Balloon Captain (and self-proclaimed "balloonatic") as he read us the ceremony.

When we landed, we were married. Eric helped me out of the basket while the balloon crew packed the balloon back up.

It was a wonderful, dreamy, perfect day.

Me-to-be

As I pick the last of the nail polish off my fingernails today, I am relishing memories of my bachelorette party from a week and a half ago.

There's something that feels kind of fun and subversive about being pregnant at your own bachelorette party. Nobody suspects that the bride-to-be is also a mother-to-be.

At the spa where we got massages, the therapist who knew she was doing a pre-natal massage literally went through everyone else in our group before looking questioningly at me - with my hideous mock-veil headband and plastic "I'm the Bride" pink sash - to confirm that it was me.

At the nail salon, the owner stopped by to say hello and after I gave a somewhat saucy reply to one of his questions his playful response was something along the lines of "And you haven't had several glasses of champagne today!" I just smiled. The sparkling cider can really go to my head.

I had a fabulous time and owe a huge thanks to Jamaica and Nonoko for their exceptional planning and incredible generosity. You guys rock!

On handwashing

Recently, in spite of my better judgment, I have started washing my hands regularly.

You're probably wondering if there's a typo in that sentence. There isn't. I actually make a point of not washing my hands too often. I have a theory, which I expect will soon be supported by scientific studies if it isn't yet, that frequent exposure to very small amounts of pathogens actually keeps me healthier rather than putting my health at risk. Judging by the woman next to me on my flight home from Vegas the other day who applied Purell to her hands literally every 3-4 minutes without leaving her seat or actually touching anything, I may be the world's only germophile, standing against legions of germophobes*.

But, there are other considerations now that I am pregnant. Getting sick has more significant consequences now than it would if it were just me moping around the house blowing my nose and whining. Even more seriously, H1N1, everyone's favorite swine flu, a) has a frighteningly high fatality rate for pregnant woman and b) is all over the Bay Area (oh no that's where I live!).

So, grudgingly, I am now very conscientiously washing my hands A LOT. And I am more aware of germs than ever. For example, last week I volunteered at Stewart Brand's Long Now talk where they fed we volunteers pizza before making us work. I had washed my hands and was happily munching my pizza when a late-arriving volunteer came over to introduce himself and offered to shake my hand while I was eating with my hands. Normal Ellie would have set down the pizza, given him a good nice-to-meet-you shake and thoughtlessly gone back to licking pizza sauce off my fingers.

Germ-aware Ellie looked him in the face and said "I can't touch your hand right now, I'm eating. You know, germs."

What have I become?

I guess a lot of things change when you have someone else's well-being to worry about, and already I am making different decisions about how much to sleep, what (and how much) to eat and how to deal with work and stress. I guess the good news is that kids are actually extremely germy, so my germ-limited life is probably going to be short-lived whether I like it or not.

Bring on the (non-fatal, non-permanently damaging) germs!


*I think my typo "germophone" in the first draft of the post is funny.

On Angels' Landing

Since last Wednesday, I've been in Zion National Park (without internet access, hence my absence. This is the second week in a row that I've been out of town for several days but I won't be disappearing again for a while, I promise).

This was the Moss family annual National Park trip and I joined my aunts Barbara and Jane and their brothers, my uncles, Bill and Fred, at Zion for a long and very enjoyable weekend in southern Utah.

The focus of the trips has always included wonderful and challenging hikes, and in the past has included the Grand Canyon (to the river and back all in one shot, against the stern warnings of signs everywhere), Half Dome at Yosemite, Brown Mountain at Glacier National Park, and many others. This year, the Angels' Landing hike was the marquis hike and a notable highlight.

It is worth noting that I am the only person in this group of five who does not have a crippling fear of heights. This is important with regards to the Angels' Landing trail because it is noted for its steep drop-offs and for a half-mile section of trail which follows a 'knife's-edge ridge' to the final destination. To aid hikers in not falling off, the National Park Service has thoughtfully installed a set of chains that you can hang on to as you scramble your way to the end.

It is a spectacular hike.

Here is where the 'knife's-edge ridge' section begins. Note the evocative warning sign:

This picture, showing the first section with chains, is taken from a spot affectionately known as "Chickenshit Ledge," which is also where I reluctantly left Fred and Jane (in the company of many others who were not up to the thrilling endeavor with the chains). We three did a worthy job together scaling over 21 switchbacks and nearly 1500 feet, and it seemed cruel that vertigo as opposed to lack of fitness or ability would prevent them from getting to see the full panoramic views at the end. They were bummed for sure but were also happy to sit there, eat peanut m&m's and tell passersby that they had sent the pregnant woman on without them.

This is a view of the ridge that leads to the end of the trail: look closely and you can see people walking all the way out to the end of the line (the left side of this big standalone ridge rock).

Wow!

Needless to say, I made it all the way and very much enjoyed doing it. For better or worse, I am totally unphased by heights and have no trouble at all walking with no handrail across a 36 inch wide span of rock with 1200 foot drops on either side. I'm not sure this is necessarily a trait that promotes survival, but for Angels' Landing it did the trick.

What remains to be seen is if I am as strong and fearless next year carrying a six-month old baby.

Up up and away!

On October 25, which is not far from now, Eric and I are getting married in a hot air balloon. It might look something like this:

This will be the official wedding ceremony and the captain of the balloon will officiate for us somewhere over Sonoma County. We are honoring all superstitions we can think of in the hope of getting great weather that day, as it is quite a weather dependent sort of event.

(It is worth noting that the weather in San Francisco today was a lot like the scene at the end of Karate Kid II. I was convinced that the tree in front of our place was going down more than once, but most of it is still there.)

In case you were wondering, there are maternity wedding dresses to be had out there, ranging in price from $39.99 to much much more. I bought a 'regular' wedding dress and am probably the first bride in history to ask the saleswoman, "Do you think I can gain five pounds and still fit into this dress?" Currently, I am on track to look neither normal nor pregnant, merely Ellie Extra Chunky for this wedding. Eh, I'll take it!

The balloon only holds eight people plus the captain, so this is going to be a pretty intimate event with just our parents and my brother joining the festivities on board. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not capable of celebrating any milestone, be it birthday, President's Day or any given Friday, on just one day, or even within one week. This is certainly no different. We are going to hold a big bash wedding party next August to celebrate with all of the friends and family (and our new baby) who won't be with us in the balloon.*

*OK, I guess technically the baby will be with us in the balloon.

Off-off-piste

In June 2008 I started this blog, which I called Off-Piste as a nod to taking a different road, or rather, paving an totally unknown road, into the next chapter of my life. I ended my very first blog post with:

So there I was: jobless, newly certified as an Ashtanga yoga teacher, shacking up with a guy I've been dating for about 5 minutes in a sublet we can't afford next to AT&T Park in San Francisco, and I've just decided to move from Washington DC where I've lived for three years to see what sort of life I can make for myself in San Francisco....

What happened next has been well chronicled in the posts that followed: we found a place to live in which we urban camped for a while, I started a company with a guy in DC, which failed shortly thereafter, leaving me unemployed again. In spite of being unemployed, Eric and I lived a full and celebratory life: we took a number of wonderful trips including Joshua Tree National Park and a week in Maui, we went skiing in Tahoe several times, we climbed Mt Shasta, and we explored the city and surrounding areas by bicycle, on foot, in kayaks and even on a motorcycle. We spent more than our fair share of time in wine country. I did eventually get a job, my 'dream job' in fact, and I rejoined the working world this past March, which has brought adventures of its own.

One evening in July, as Eric and I were enjoying "retirement" (we try to take at least a few minutes of our retirement every day just in case we don't get to retire later in life for any number of reasons), I commented to Eric that life at that moment in time was as easy as it will ever get. It was so simple! So blissful, so peaceful, so easy.

God or some other deity or universal life force with a mischievous sense of humor must have overheard me because the very next day I found out I was pregnant.

It was without a doubt the most exciting and wonderful news I have ever received and it was also perhaps the biggest single shock of my life.

Apparently, this is what living Off-Piste is all about: we're doing this a little differently. And the remarkable thing is that, while this wasn't "the plan" (possibly because there was no "plan") it is actually probably the best way to start the next chapter of our lives together that we could have come up with.

Telling friends and family has been a lot of fun, and many have been as caught off guard by this news as we were. When Eric told friend Anne from grad school that he's going to be a Papa her response was:
"You're getting a dog?!"

When I shared the news at work, it disqualified me for a long-term project they had been moments away from staffing me on. The colleague who would have managed me on that project told me:
"I have had a lot of people do a lot of things to avoid working with me but you are the first one who has gotten pregnant to stay off my team."*

And so, we continue Off-Piste. If I were starting this blog today, it might read something like this:

So there I was, not much more than six months into my dream job and already nearly four months pregnant, two weeks away from getting married in a hot air balloon, and seriously questioning the wisdom of becoming parents in our teeny fourth floor walk-up apartment in a neighborhood where the sidewalks often feature human poo, among other things...

This is going to be interesting!


*My response: "If having unprotected sex is what I need to do to stay away from you, I'm willing to do it." I think this made him uncomfortable.

Weasels playing yahtzee is also a favorite

I'm in Stinson Beach for a work offsite Wednesday through Friday of this week. We are staying in beach houses that all have their own flavor. I was pleased to discover not only glass dolphin figurines in the bathroom but this, the little know Japanese version of Dogs Playing Poker.

List of things I should know but don't

Having biked around San Francisco for a total of over four years now, I tend to think of myself as someone who knows the flattest routes for getting around the city, avoiding the worst of the hills.

I was recently proven dramatically wrong when a friend of ours, having heard about the route we took to bike from SOMA to Golden Gate Park on Sunday, said, incredulously:

"You don't know about The Wiggle?"

No, we don't.

But now we do. The Wiggle is the flattest path through the city, in particular going from SOMA to Golden Gate Park. This discovery is akin to finding out, after a year and a half of walking up and down four flights of stairs every day, that our apartment building has an elevator*.

Eric said it best in his response to the friend's follow up email with additional info about The Wiggle:

"I can't believe we've been getting all that unnecessary exercise! I'm definitely going to wiggle from now on."


*I remain reasonably sure that it does not.

Still doesn't make it OK to list a one bedroom with a "nook" as a two bedroom

We are looking for a new place to live and I checked out a place on Saturday that was listed on craigslist through a local broker named Gavin Coombs. His listings are all over craigslist and though I have never met him in person, I have heard he is quite the local character. Apparently he is particularly well known for his prominent chin.

In confirming the appointment to view the place (one of his helpers would open the door for us but would not know anything more than the apartment number), his email included the following third person reference which I felt was worth sharing.

"Circle back with broker G if you have any follow-up questions or if you'd like to rent after viewing."

I'm almost tempted to start referring to myself as Consultant E but it doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Yogi E?
Not quite.

Blogger E?
Hmmm.

Hardly strictly the best-kept secret in SF

You may remember Hardly Strictly Bluegrass from last year when Eric and I had to hang our bikes from a tree to lock them up because it was so crowded and there were so few places to put bikes.

To give you a sense of how much more crowded it was this year, we got there relatively early and we had to lock our bikes hanging up in trees three blocks away because the trees, benches, signs, everything was so covered in bikes. It resembled a pestilence of some sort, actually. An example:

The festival lineup gets more and more impressive every year and this year was no exception. We saw Gillian Welch, Earl Scruggs, The Del McCoury Band, Aimee Mann, Doc Watson, and others and the artists love to bring each other up on stage, so we also saw cameo appearances by Emmy Lou Harris and the Old Crow Medicine Show. (There is an even longer and even more impressive list of people we didn't see.)

One thing that felt different this year from last was the crowd. San Francisco crowds are always completely weird (par for the course: we saw two people, not together, wearing red clown noses) but there was something a little off about the crowd gathered this weekend. A little crazier, a little edgier; more than a few of them really seemed like they could be running meth labs somewhere in the outskirts of the city. For example, the people we sat next to today included a guy they all called Roach who was twitchy and kept trying to sell us cans of Budweiser for $2, a skinny bald guy in cutoff shorts and a hoodie who brought not one but two plastic bottles of Dawn to fulfill some ill-conceived bubble-blowing vision, and a woman in her early twenties with pretty blond hair and too few teeth for someone of her age.

They got to be tiresome neighbors after a while, and we were in the shade which was easily 15 degrees cooler than in the sun, so we left those creepy tweakers behind and moved to a sunnier spot, ate some pizza, and enjoyed the show (both of humanity and of music).

Memo To Everyone Who Is Trying to Kill Me

Attention all operators of motor vehicles in the city of San Francisco:

I kindly request that you please signal when you are going to make a right turn so that bikers like me can go around you on the left side. If flicking the little lever to use your signal is too much effort, perhaps just a brief flick of the eyes to the rearview mirror so that you don't turn right into me? Is that too much to ask to avoid senselessly murdering someone?

Further, I would ask you to please refrain from double parking in the bike lane on busy streets. I can understand how convenient that must be for you but it is a real hazard to bikers.

Also, would you be so kind as to look for approaching bicyclists before suddenly pulling out of a parking spot with no signal or any indication of imminent movement? I would be so grateful, really.

And finally, please, please, look for bicyclists in the bike lane before suddenly swerving over into it and almost hitting me. (Taxis, this applies double to you.) Do you have any idea how scary that is when you do that? If you did, you would understand why I have to yell at you and maybe give you the finger. And why I have to swear extra when I can see that you are inevitably talking on your cell phone. (You know that's illegal, right?)

Though you act as though I were, I am not in fact invisible when I put on my helmet, roll up my right pant leg and hop on my bike to ride to and from work.

I beg you to spend the infinitesimally small amount of extra energy and attention required to be more biker aware as you drive around your thousands of pounds of motor vehicle.

7:15pm, Thursday evening

[Eric and I, sitting on the couch. Windows are open. There's a ruckus from the street. Eric stands up and peers out the window.]

"It's those Mexicans again, riding little bicycles, drinking beer and singing," Eric reports.

"Which ones?"

"The guy who wears the Steelers jersey, and the older guy who called you 'churro.' "

"Oh yeah, those guys."

I've heard Jupiter is overrated anyway

Last Saturday night was one of those nights that didn't turn out quite how we had imagined it.

We had a reservation to camp out in a small regional park which happens to be right near Oakland and even more importantly right near the Chabot* Space Center and Observatory. Chabot is particularly neat because up on the roof they have several enormous telescopes that they open up to the public on Friday and Saturday nights after dark.

Our brilliant plan was in place: go set up camp, drive over to check out the telescopes, and then head back to the campsite for a fire, some late-night smores and to sleep under the stars. What a great evening!

Almost. A few unexpected snags got in the way, some of which were my fault. Others of which were not. Most of the ones that were my fault involve us getting lost, which we did more than once, and which I will not discuss in any detail here for obvious reasons.

Thus the story begins while we were turning around and trying to get on the right highway heading the right way, and I called the campsite to confirm that the google maps directions were actually going to work. They weren't: it hadn't taken into account the different gates and the one we had to enter at for the campground was on the far side of the park. Further, the "road" that google said we could drive on through the park to get to the observatory was a phantom and we would have to drive out and around to get there. Then the final blow: gate to the campsite locked at 10pm. No entry after that even if all your stuff was there.

It became clear that we had to choose: telescopes or camping? Which did we want more?

Telescopes.

So we turned around again and went away from the campground towards the telescopes. We got there just before dark and after chasing exiting families around the parking garage trying to get their parking spots (we were not the only ones doing this, and we were clearly not the best at it as we kept getting beat and missing out on the spots), we finally secured a parking spot and headed up to check out the scopes.

As we could have suspected from the parking garage mayhem, we were not the only people who had had this idea. There were hundreds of people up there, most of them in one of the lines for the various telescopes. We immediately got into a line, and then started wondering exactly how long this line was going to take. It was very dark. We stood there and the line moved very, very slowly. The longer we waited the hungrier we got, but also the more invested we got and so we stayed and stayed well past any rational person's willingness to wait in line to see...a star cluster. That's right: we spent an hour standing in line to look through a little hole and see a small grouping of bright white dots against a black background.

Only too late did we learn that one of the other lines was for a telescope that was looking at Jupiter.

On the way out there was also a small telescope set up that was looking at the Moon. We each took a peak and were totally blown away at how clearly you could see detail on the Moon's surface. It was amazing. It almost made up for waiting an hour to see a cluster.

Starving and disappointed, we proceeded to get lost on the way home and ended the night eating pizza at 11pm at a place near our apartment. Then we unpacked our camping stuff and went to sleep in our own bed. We'd seen enough stars for one night anyway.


*Sha-BO, in case you were tempted to make it rhyme with the Vermont cheddar cheese makers.

It must be 4pm

My office is on the top floor of my building and it has a skylight that opens onto the building's roof deck above. My office mate and I keep it open for fresh air and so that lots of extra dust and dirt can accumulate on our desks each week.

For the past week, there has been a new ritual as well: an unknown lady who works in the building and wears high heels has gotten in the habit of going up to the roof deck every afternoon right around 4pm for a smoke, a chat on the phone and to pace loudly just over my head.

Clip clop, clip clop, back and forth she goes like a chatty Clydesdale.

Rather than sit at my desk and roll my eyes in the direction of the roofdeck, I've decided it's a perfect opportunity to take a walk around the office, get the latest news, and snoop for snacks. Today I'm on the hunt for dried mango.

Things you find in the forest

Eric and I escaped the blistering heat of the sun-powered oven in which we live to go for a hike in the woods yesterday. We decided on a hike that starts up on a ridge on Mt Tam and descends into Muir Woods, from whence you must then climb out. The main attraction of this hike: trees. Eric estimates we saw about 40,000 of them, give or take.

I don't usually love canyon-style hikes (down first, then up) because it can be hard to pace yourself, and whereas one* might find it tempting to bail out early on a summit, you have no such option when up is where the car is.

We didn't see many other people on the trail, which was somewhat surprising given what a glorious day it was. We did, however (or perhaps as a result) see some fun wildlife.

• At our first break on the way down we noticed, after a moment of standing there, that there were honey bees everywhere and they seemed to be coming and going from a large tree right near us. "A treehive!" exclaimed Eric excitedly. We did not try to get any of the honey even though (/because) in my black t-shirt I could easily have been mistaken for a bear.
• Woody woodpecker made an appearance during a long flat stretch as we loped along a ridge. We heard the characteristic wood-pecking not far away and saw there on the tree ol' Woody knocking his head against the branch. Very cool, and only slightly disappointing that we didn't hear his characteristic "Ha-ha-ha-haaa-ha!"
• A large-sounding rustling noise in the brush put us both on the alert. Insurgent? No - a small buck deer who had scampered up a hillside as he heard us approaching. Once he was about 15 feet up the hill from us he stopped and turned and looked at us, looking very comfortable. Eric waved. "He thinks he's hidden," he observed. "We can see you!" he called to the deer. Deer just stared at us. We waved again and then headed on our way when it was clear the deer wouldn't be providing any further entertainment.
• Towards the end of the hike we passed a group of four young Asian men who were sashaying delicately down the trail giggling and squealing. "Gay-sians!" whispered Eric after we said hello and passed. At first I thought he said "Geishas" which I also thought was funny.
  

It was a very satisfying hike.


*Not me, but other people.

Pear Guy strikes again

It being Tuesday yesterday, I went to get the fruit, as I do.

I was greeted once again by the new young fellow who gave me the free pear last time, and we started with the same ritual as last week. "Your box sucks - have one of these special pears." I thanked him and proceeded to load the rest of my fruit into my backpack. He stood there watching me, and another young gentleman colleague came over the watch the unparalleled drama of me piling peaches, Asian pears and pluots into my bag.

Pear Guy's monologue about my fruit box continued this time.

"Oh look," he went on, "look how they gave you a whole bunch of really small peaches this week. They must think you have really small teeth."

Courtesy laugh.

"Or maybe they think they're for all your kids. They don't know that you're a single lady who..."

"Stop it man!" hissed the colleague. "Dude, look at her ring!"

"Oh yeah, look at that. That's quite a ring. What does this guy do anyway?" Pear Guy was not letting up.

"He's a scientist," I offered.

"What kind of scientist?" they wanted to know.

"A virologist."

Mercifully, the fruit was now safely stowed in my bag and I zipped it up, thanked them for their help and headed for the door.

"Watch out for H1N1!" Pear Guy called after me.

Homeless on homeless

Standing on the street waiting to see an apartment, Eric and I watched the humanity show at Church and Market.

There was a homeless man collapsed on the street about 25 feet away. He was clutching a fifth of something that appeared to be empty. It was either the contents of the bottle or some other thin liquid that streamed away from the middle of his prone body and down the sidewalk. He was either doing pilates or struggling to sit up: he kept lifting his head and shoulders off the ground, hovering for a moment, and then collapsing back down.

All flavors of hipster, fresh young ingenue, steampunk, angry older Asian woman, and muscly gay man streamed past as we continued to wait to see the apartment.

A homeless looking fellow wearing a too large suit and untied sneakers walked by and as he walked past the prone homeless man he gave him a good swift kick.

Then, not more than two minutes later, an older homeless man doing a good job of staggering down the block, paused his bobbing and weaving to yell at his collapsed comrade.

"What is it about passed out homeless people that makes other homeless people so mad?" wondered Eric aloud.

I called the guy who was supposed to be showing us the apartment. He was flaking on us. We merged into the parade of humanity and went on our way.

Strictly speaking

For no reason in particular, both Eric and I woke up Sunday feeling a little lethargic and mildly grumpy.

"Are we suffering from malaise?" I joked with Eric.

Then later, over lunch, as I flipped through the economist, I read about a medical condition the symptoms of which included chills, fever and malaise.

"Ha," I said. "Did you know 'malaise' can actually be a symptom of a disease?"

Being a virologist with extensive medical training, Eric did know this.

"I always thought malaise was more of a philosophical condition," I admitted*. "But maybe that's just a different type - so there's medical Malaise and then there's French malaise."

Eric laughed through his nose with a sneer. I briefly had the impression that he had a pencil mustache and was smoking a cigarette through a long elegant cigarette holder.

"Yes, I think you've got the French malaise," I concluded.


*When not overwhelmed with malaise, it is moments like this when Eric brings up the wisdom of my Brown University undergraduate education which, due to the absence of a core curriculum, largely lacked the more science-y offerings.

First one in gets some free Mahler!

Eric and I kicked off our subscription to the San Francisco Symphony last night with the first concert of the season. It was the SFS's beloved MTT* conducting Mahler, his specialty. The selections from last night were a set of songs called the Ruckert songs, and then Mahler's 1st. Eric and I missed the official pre-concert talk so we had our own and debated whether Mahler's music is more aptly characterized as "angsty" or "tortured." There was also some discussion of the actual meaning of the word "lachrymose" as it applies to oboes.

The concert began with the songs, sung by mezzo-soprano Susan Graham. I do not exaggerate when I say they were transcendent. This was music at its most glorious.

The performance of Mahler's 1st was wonderful as well though without that same heartbreaking beauty the songs had captured. MTT was fun to watch as he hopped around on his little podium almost like a mime performing a range of characters for the orchestra: the Tin Man, Mousy Old Woman, Used Car Salesman, Dick Van Dyke, Pillsbury Dough Boy, and many others. Parts of it were eerily like the soundtrack to Mary Poppins, which I don't think was Mahler's work but I started feeling less and less certain of that as the music went on. I think Eric's favorite part was when everything got very very quiet and I closed my eyes and everything was very soft and lovely and then CRASH! enter the cymbals. I practically leapt out of my chair.

They were recording the concert and as a bonus (and a bribe to minimize extraneous noises during the concert) they handed out cards which have a code that you can redeem on iTunes for a free Mahler sampler courtesy of the SF Symphony. We happened to get two extra cards, so the first two people to try these codes get some free Mahler!

From the iTunes store, click Redeem under Quick Links. Enter the code below and your download will start immediately.
Download code: FYKEMHPMRL9J
Download code: E96HK6NJ3M9J

Who says I never give away anything good? (Let me know who the big winners are!)

*

The cause of, and solution to, all life's problems

I'm a little late to this news but while listening to an outdated podcast on my ipod this week during my commute, I learned that researchers have finally proven what I have long suspected: beer is great for women, especially older women at risk of health issues due to a loss of bone density (I'm not sure I knew about that last part).

Mom, it might be time to switch from wine to beer.

Sweet

I went to get the fruit today* around 5:30. The shop officially closes at 5pm, so they have the gate pulled closed but they are still in there hanging out and cleaning up. Each week I pull up on my bike and wave and ask them for my box, and they open the gate just enough to squeeze the box through so I can unload the box into my backpack and bike it home.

This time there was a new guy there who I hadn't seen before and he was the one who brought me the box. He brought it over to me, opened it up, looked in it, and then looked at me and said:

"Your box sucks."

"Um...." I was a little perplexed by this exchange.

"Your box sucks," he reiterated, "because it doesn't have any Mumblety** Pears."

He set the box down and walked away, then returned a moment later with a plate of cut up pear.

"Eat this" he instructed me.

I ate a piece of pear. It was good: sweet, and peary.

"Isn't that above and beyond." It was a statement, not a question.

"Yeah, that's a great pear," I acknowledged.

"Here. You need to have one of these." He picked up a brand new Mumblety Pear and put it in my box.

"Now you're all set."



*We belong to a local, organic, fruit-only CSA at Frog Hollow Farm and every Tuesday we have to go pick up our box of fruit. It's delicious and you always get whatever is in season.
**He was clearly talking about a specific varietal of pear but I have no idea which one.

Nobody does it better

The folks over at Deepish Thoughts have said so well what I was going to say today that rather than trying to come anywhere close, I am just going to send you over there to enjoy the real thing. Not only is it funny and touching and important, it includes some truly cute and hilarious photos. Don't miss out.

For the record, this is a recognition of a job well done and not a cop out. I'd like to be very clear on that point.

Go Carson's Thunder!

And we're back

Football season began yesterday. I know this because, in spite of having just arrived off a 12 hour flight from Amsterdam and having been up since the equivalent of midnight the night before, I found myself at Jillian's watching the Titans and Steelers duke it out in the season opener.

Eric and I still don't have a TV, and we still don't want one 90% of the time. So when we need to watch live TV as is usually the case with sports, we go to this bar a few blocks away which is fine for the Sunday morning games but which in the evenings gets downright sketchy. If SF police ever wanted to nab the entire SF-based Russian mafia all they need to do is go on a night when the Red Wings are playing.

Another good thing about watching football in bars is that you have an immediate bond with anyone near you also cheering for your team. Not that there aren't plenty of Tennesseans living in California*, but it was fun to discover last night that the Titans fans at the table next to us went to Eric's high school and one of them graduated the same year as his sister.

And like that, the football season begins! Go Bears!


*there aren't

New view of old friend

And on your right, Mount Shasta from 40,000 feet.

A walk near Schiphol

This afternoon our meetings ended at 4pm so I had some time to relax a bit before dinner. I decided to go for a walk. You may recall that I am staying 100 yards from the airport, so this isn't exactly walking tour country, but one of the guys from my meetings said he'd been running along the bike path and within minutes you're away from the airport and in farmland. He said he saw chickens. I had to go.

So I set off on a little walk down the bike path, hoping for fresh country air and relaxation. I quickly discovered that one of the different things here is that motorized scooters also go on the bike paths and as far as I can tell they are all in a quite a hurry.

It was great to be outside but walking is a lot slower than running and I didn't get to the good stuff until it was pretty much time to turn around. So I got a full helping of jet fuel fumes and airport operations scenery, and just a taste of the pretty countryside. I didn't get to see a single chicken.

On the walk back not one but two scooter-ers stopped to offer me a lift and both seemed sincerely puzzled when I did not accept. It was very tempting, but then again I had gone out expressly for a walk so taking a ride would have defeated the whole purpose.

Here's the best of what I saw:

And now for something different

I'm in Amsterdam this week for work and because I didn't get to book my own travel, I am not staying at a Starwood property (booo); instead I am staying in a hotel called Citizen M which is remarkable in a number of ways.

1. It is walking distance from the airport. I literally got off my flight, wheeled my bag out of the terminal and down a small paved walkway about a hundred yards to the hotel. It it well sound-proofed so you don't hear airport noises, which is nice. At check-in I was offered a 'runway view' or a 'World Trade Center' view, which is nice way of saying the view that looks at some other buildings with a bunch of flags on them. I chose runway view but somehow got WTC view instead. Eh, whatever.

2. If one day you found yourself making hotel arrangements for George Jetson this would be a safe bet if you were worried about him feeling comfortable in familiar surroundings. As you can see in the photo below, the room includes two sliding-glass-enclosed pods for the toilet and shower. They seem to have forgotten the pod that puts your clothes on you and does your hair.


3. The room makes a lot happen in not a lot of square footage and doesn't include silly wastes of space like, oh, a closet. You only get three clothes hangers for the rack by the door and when you ask for more like one of my colleagues did, you get a look like "Ugh, Americans." And then you get told no.

4. The room has a mood pad that allows you to change the way the lights go and varies between a range of mood music options and probably other things that I haven't even discovered yet.

5. The blinds are motorized and you can open and close them from a push button you can reach from the bed (then again, practically anything in this room is reachable from the bed so that's a dubious distinction).

I've heard that the bed actually converts to a couch at the touch of a button, too, but haven't seen it for myself. Am vaguely concerned I will accidentally discover that button on the middle of the night and get squished.

Stuff and more stuff

It's Saturday morning. Eric is teaching his first class at the UC Berkeley Extension this morning (Go Eric Go!!!) and left at least 90 minutes too early but I think you kind of have to do that the first time.

I am packing and doing last minute prep for a business trip to Amsterdam for which I leave today* which means I am actually vacuuming and dusting and cleaning the bathroom because for some reason those are all more appealing right now than the things I am supposed to be doing.

Drunk Mexicans are singing and laughing on the street below. They're singing "Cielito Lindo" which I remember from my 9th grade Spanish class. It is one of those rare songs that actually doesn't sound all that different sung by bored, embarrassed 9th graders or by drunk Mexicans.

I've now decided I need to throw out all of my shoes. They are in a paper bag by the door. All except for a few essential pairs that were spared. The rest must go. And by go, I mean that they go down to the "storage area" in the garage where they sit in Goodwill purgatory while I wait to realize that I have made a horrible mistake choosing to throw them away. After a few months, if I haven't thought about them, then off they go for real.

I'm back to reading fiction books again, something I gave up for about 18 months there for no reason other than that I just sort of stopped reading them. But now I am back and making up for the lost time. The only good thing about the 11 hour flight ahead of me is that my laptop battery will die and I will have no excuse not to tuck into some quality fiction. One other good thing about the flight is that it is direct to Amsterdam. The bad thing about the flight is that I am flying coach, even though it is for work. But now it's time to go so I'll have to save my self-righteous griping about that for another time since I still need to finish packing.


*Brutal, no?

Made a friend in the airport bathroom

So that's what's on my mind

I had a full-day meeting today with two colleagues and two clients. We were preparing for the summit we're holding next week in Amsterdam and so we were running through the agenda, reviewing the various slide decks and videos, and making sure all the logistics have been thought through.

At one point in the early afternoon, one of the clients turned his laptop to the other and said "I thought this might be great at this point in the agenda."

He was so mysterious about it that one of my colleagues said "Ooh, I wonder what it is."

"It's a video of a mermaid riding a donkey," I said without hesitation.

"Sometimes Ellie accidentally lets her true self show through," explained my colleague to address the stares and confused titters of the clients.

We all like to feel useful

I am doing one of my quick Seattle trips and flew up this morning on, mercifully, not the crack of dawn flight but the one immediately after it.

I had a middle seat. The woman to my right, who had the window, was nondescript and mostly just sat there. There was an older gentleman to my right, on the aisle, who was traveling with his wife (I assume) who was seated on the other side of the aisle from him.

After the beverage service, the man put his napkins into the empty plastic cups and stacked them up, put his tray table into its upright locked position, and then just held the trash in his hands.

He sat there and held the trash. For kind of a long time.

Then, every so often, the wife would add another item to the pile of trash this fellow was holding: her empty coffee cup, then a crumpled napkin, then a gum wrapper added to the top of the pile like a cherry on a sundae. I couldn't really see her - all I could see was a ghostly hand floating into view, depositing used bits and pieces, and then floating off. The intervals between deposits were just long enough that you would start to think that it was done, and then more trash would float in from offstage left and be set just so onto the growing pile.

He continued to sit there and hold the trash.

Time passed. I took a short nap.

After a while, when I had woken up, he turned to me and said,

"Do you have any trash?"

Really?

"Um, yeah, I guess" I sputtered. I took my empty coffee cup and crumpled napkin from the seat pocket and added it to the pile.

He seemed pleased.

A solid ten minutes later the flight attendant came by with the garbage bag and he was relieved of his armload of airplane refuse.

I probably imagined it, but he almost looked disappointed.