Anything can happen

The untold story of Wednesday night's strong beer victory is that Jamaica, who is responsible for inspiring us to go for the glass in the first place, still had two beers left to drink at the other brewery, 21st Amendment. No problem, we thought. We'll join her to get her glass and take a victory lap at 21A on Thursday night after her writing class which is near there. We might even try to finish Nelson's card, we thought audaciously, though he wasn't able to join us and still had five beers to go. But with a little fortitude, we figured Eric, Nonoko and I could probably manage it. Ha ha! Two more strong beer glasses in the bag.

But we had forgotten one very important thing: "while supplies last"

We arrived at 21A about 4 minutes after Jamaica to find her already in a lathery panic.

"They're out of glasses! They're out of glasses!" She was wild-eyed and frantic. Not only that, but they were out of four of the six beers that must be drunk to deserve the glass. Nelson's card was worthless - too many gaps. But the two they had were just the two Jamaica needed.

She immediately called Magnolia and the surly server who answered the phone informed her that there were two glasses left and there were people at the bar at that moment getting ready to claim them.

Jamaica's head nearly exploded.

"Do you know how much you guys wanted the glasses?" she looked pointedly at Eric and me. "Well multiply that by...four!"

Whoa.

"I've got to get over there!" she declared. Magnolia is about 20 minutes across town and she still had to get the two beers at 21A before she could go. And she needed someone to give her a ride. It was clear to everyone but Jamaica that this was simply not going to happen. But she was not ready to concede defeat.

And so, in spite of the full pint of beer I had only taken a mere sip of and the pizza on the way, I agreed to take up the offer of an adventurous race across town just to see if somehow we could make it work.

She ordered both of the beers, got her card stamped and completed, and we dashed out the door, leaving Eric and Nonoko to guard the beers, eat the pizza and hopefully find something to talk about while doing so.

We made it over there in record time and Jamaica didn't even wait for me to come to a complete stop; she literally leapt from the car as I was still slowing down to let her out.

A few minutes later she emerged from Magnolia: victorious.

She stood on the corner outside Magnolia waiting for the light to change, holding the carefully wrapped glass over her head as though it were the Stanley cup. She was beaming.

She climbed back in the car, handling the strong beer glass with reverent tenderness.*

"Wow!" she gushed. "I feel like I did when I found out I got into Brown."


*I think the more apt description will be to one day say "she cradled the newborn baby as carefully and lovingly as though it were as strong beer glass"

Strong will, strong beer, fragile glass

We did it!

It wasn't easy. Over the course of twelve strong beers, we had our share of hardship: there was the nonsensical post-strong beer conversation leading inevitably to absurd fights and the eating of more french fries than is really a good idea at 11pm on a Thursday. And of course there were the headaches and the diarrhea. But it was worth it: because now we each have a Strong Beer 2009 glass that is only available to people like us with the fortitude and the lack of early morning commitments who drank all 12 strong beers. Or to people with $12.95 plus tax.*


*It is unclear if the glasses are available for purchase. The idea, of course, is that they are not. But we think we may have seen someone purchase/bribe his way into a glass so now we're not sure.

You can get yourself clean

This week is the week that Eric and I are trying out our local YMCA for free.

I know. Just saying "YMCA" makes you want to wash your hands, right? But no! This facility is actually very impressive and potentially worth paying money to be a member of, so we're checking it out.

One cool thing I have discovered so far: you can do the elliptical machine while looking out the window at the Bay Bridge! It's amazing! Except that the Bay Bridge doesn't really do very much, so it isn't necessarily the best entertainment to distract you during a tough workout.

They also have a computer assisted workout setup where you meet with a fitness counselor to develop a workout plan which is entered into the computer. You get a code. When you go to each machine, you just type in your code and it knows how many reps you need to do, how much cardio at what intensity, everything! Neat, huh? In spite of my intuitive distrust of fitness counselors, I may have to try it out.

When I started doing yoga six days a week I dropped my gym membership, so it has been a little while since I belonged to a gym. I think it could be nice to go back! (And keep doing yoga, of course.)

The $200 Salad

I may or may not have mentioned that prior to beginning my current endeavor to grow actual vegetables in actual dirt, I thought I might give gardening a try "the easy way," i.e., in a just-add-water idiot-proof hydroponic setup called the Aerogarden.

On January 29, I bought the Aerogarden from the local Bed, Bath and Beyond and set it up inconspicuously on the floor in the living room. It is made of black plastic and consists of a base full of water and two bright lights that hover above. To grow stuff, you must also purchase little pods which snap into holes in the base and over the course of four weeks grow into plants, like so:

In this last photo, the light canopy has been raised higher to give the plants more room to grow, so even though they don't look as tall they are actually quite large.

After three and a half weeks of watching the greens grow, it was clearly time to start harvesting some salad and eating it. So at dinner time last night I took my harvesting scissors* and harvesting bowl** over to the harvest area*** to pick some lettuce. We washed it, tossed it with just a touch of olive oil and salt, and ate it right up.

It was the tenderest, creamiest lettuce I have ever eaten! It was divine.

But not very filling, perhaps because it it made only of water and "nutrients" that come in tablet form and are dropped into the bowl every two weeks. So, we had to make some more food, too.

*just normal scissors

**regular bowl

***floor near Aerogarden

We are not impressed

Some people seem to enjoy being miserable. We've all had bad days, and even bad months, and that's kind of how life goes sometimes; you just have to get through it. But there are people who seem to think that they are going to win some kind of prize by being unhappy - the most unhappy, and therefore the greatest victims, I suppose - and by making sure everyone in the vicinity knows about it. What, maybe if you're beleaguered enough you'll get a cosmic do-over? I'm afraid not.

This is what I want to say to those people:
Hey! Guess what*: this is it! Every moment that passes - like right now - is one that you aren't getting back. Sighing heavily every three minutes and trying to impress us with how burdened with work (and therefore more important...?) you are doesn't really matter to us and certainly isn't making your experience of your own life any better. What if you let go of this enormous commitment you have apparently made to being miserable and instead of using that to get attention and comfort yourself, you made one or two small choices that actually made you a happier, more relaxed, more intact person? Terrifying, I know. But wallowing in self-important misery is not actually a great way to spend one's limited moments on earth and you are the one who is missing out (and, incidentally, the one who can do something about it).

In the mean time, I am not going to be spending any more of my precious earth moments in your miserable presence.

(OK, now I feel like a teacher who has just yelled at the whole class when only one student has done something wrong. So, if this doesn't apply to you just disregard, k?)


*chicken butt

Rhymes with floored

I got through a classic biker nightmare yesterday mostly unscathed, other than a few scrapes and bruises.

I was moving uphill at a pretty good clip (given that I was peddling uphill) on a narrow-ish street when a truck came barreling up behind me. I had my lights on and I was wearing a bright green reflective vest like some sort of runaway utilities worker so it is unlikely that this truck driver didn't see me, rather he severely underestimated what a comfortable space buffer between truck and bike would be, pushing me towards the cars parked along the side of the road.

Then, immediately in front of me, a guy sitting in a parked car opened the door.

Ouch.

I slammed into the door, vaulting off my bike but not flipping. I landed on my left side but didn't lay in the street for more than a fraction of a second. I popped up immediately did a quick scan of my body and determined that I was completely intact. I turned around and yelled at the dooring perpetrator "You're lucky I'm OK!" And then I fled the scene.

I was hyper-alert as I pedaled home. I felt like I had 359 degree peripheral vision and could maybe even see infrared. Once in the shower at home, starting to calm down, I began to discover that I was in fact somewhat scathed. A scrape on my foot from getting yanked out of the pedal cage, tender spots on my left arm, elbow and hip, and a muscle pull in my neck. But, all told, not bad.

The purpose of the bike ride had been to time my new commute* and then had turned into a longer spin to enjoy the sunset on the water. I think it will be great to be able to bike to work and with every unfortunate bike incident I have, I am reducing the probability of future unfortunate incidents. That's how that works, right?


*Yeah, I got a job. More about that later.

How am I not myself, part two

My improv teacher has emphasized, cajoled and even attempted to shame us into keeping improv journals to help us develop throughout the class. I decided I would give it a try even though I think my personal journaling record is somewhere in the 7-9 day range, or approximately four entries.

Rather than buy a new journal to use as my improv diary I went down to the storage area and dug around in a box full of old journals, all empty except for the first handful of pages.

It was fun and horrible to read these excerpts from my brain many years ago. Some of it is stuff I would write afresh today; some of it seems like it was written by someone I once knew and didn't like very much.

Here's the opening line from the June 12, 2002 entry:
"I worked hard to relax this weekend and I did a pretty good job."

It speaks volumes, no?

Another gem:
"I should probably do some deep intraspection about myself - but I think I already know as much as I can."

Ha!

"I have a hard time turning work off. I woke up at 4am last night thinking about how to solve problems from work."

Yeah.

There's your typical true confessions type stuff:
"I am afraid of being crazy."

And I think perhaps most telling of all is how one journal started, with a question that I am still working to find an answer to:
"WHAT DO I WANT?"

I love you like ground meat loves refrigeration

I've got a great idea, I said to myself the other day. As a fun little treat to celebrate our one year anniversary this past Monday, I'm going to make red rice krispie treats and shape them into hearts.

Adorable, yes?

Yes, about as adorable as...raw ground beef.

Everything had been going really well: I had melted the marshmallows in the butter and put in red food coloring to make a dark pink gluey mixture, into which I mixed in the krispies. Then I had a flash of inspiration and mixed in some mini chocolate chips as an added bonus. These, of course, melted while I was mixing and then shaping the treats causing said treats to look much more like flesh than is really the idea.

Eric had a genuinely puzzled moment when he saw what looked to be raw heart-shaped hamburger patties sitting out on the counter, given that I don't eat beef even when molded into cute shapes.

At least now I have a good recipe for a spooky Halloween treat for next year.

And they're delicious, either broiled or grilled.

Domesticity in ten cities

The Clementina Show has mostly been wherever the butterflies go when it rains recently (or hails, as is becoming a daily occurence here which I'm sure is nothing to worry about) but yesterday, as a bit of sun peeked through the clouds, the Clementina Show perked up briefly.

Eric announced when he got home from work early afternoon that he had seen "a woman's poopy butt" on his walk down our block.

Then, as I was obsessing over the vegetable seedlings in the windowsill, I noticed Perm* and another gentleman down below collaborating on a project to better understand the workings of an umbrella. One would open it, maybe too far, they would pull it back in, then open it half way, then close it again, then...you get the idea. This went on for some time and was apparently fascinating. My attention drifted.

When I looked back a little while later, the same two fellows were now working as a team to fold a blanket. They had folded it in half and now each had one corner of it in each hand, but they were trying to flip it in opposite directions and it was getting twisted instead of folded. Then they would both switch, twisting it in the opposite direction. After a few false starts they managed to get going the same direction, made the fold and then did the bit where they walked towards each other, one person takes all the corners and the other person slides their hands towards the bottom to fold it again along the horizontal edge.

It was an odd and completely domestic moment happening right out on the street.

Then it started raining pretty hard some more and everyone went away.


*the "permanent resident" has officially been shortened to Perm, not to be confused with Big Perm, or Big Worm. Although it is true that he ain't got no job and he ain't got shit to do.

How am I not myself

Having stockpiled a year's supply of canned goods and planted a hefty garden of vegetable seeds, it should be self-evident that the next thing to do is to learn to shoot a handgun.

Obvious, no?

On Sunday, Eric and I and our friend Steffen (but sans Teresa who bailed at the last minute but had been expected) went to an indoor pistol range in South San Francisco called Jackson Arms. They do a Novice Shooter's Package that includes a 20 minute lesson ("this is a gun, this is the magazine, this is the safety," plus a few cautionary tales about disregarding safety rules sprinkled in for good measure), equipment rental and as much range time as you can handle.

First we shot a .22 caliber and let me just say right now that I was an excellent shot: 148 out of 150 points on the target. Not bad, eh? We moved the target out to various distances and I still stayed almost exclusively in the black, which is good. I was ready to buy myself a t-shirt that said "badass."

Then the boys got tired of shooting such a small gun, so we moved up to a 9mm to try out something a little more potent. This was a bigger gun with significantly bigger bullets. It had a lot more kick than the .22 and it made much bigger holes in the target. I was starting to feel less qualified for the t-shirt.

Then, just because we could (it was free with the Novice Shooter's Package), we once again traded up and took turns shooting a .45. Holy crap. This gun made the .22 feel like shooting a cap gun and made me want the people renting the guns to have asked for much more information about me than they had.

Being "someone who shoots guns" is pretty* far outside of my current self-concept. I like trying new things and I say yes to new opportunities as often as I can, which also means that I have done a lot of other things that also challenge my sense of "what I am about." I think that's a good thing, generally. But it also leads you to say things like "I'm not the kind of person who..." more often than feels credible; if you are doing those things, then you are, in fact, the kind of person who does them.

I am the kind of person who says yes more often than I say no. I may or may not be the kind of person who wears a t-shirt that says "badass." We don't know yet.

*very

**doesn't my hair look good?

Yesterday was my half birthday

As I was driving home from an interview in Redwood City I saw the Wienermobile on the highway and at the same time I learned that my blackberry will not take a photo while you are talking on the phone.*

I think a Wienermobile sighting on one's half birthday portends only good things for the remainder of the year.


*Trying to take a photo with your blackberry while driving on the highway and talking on the phone is not advisable. Clearly only a person in their first half of being 30 would be so immature as to think that was acceptable.

Step...then turn

I may have mentioned this before: Eric and I are taking salsa lessons at the Cheryl Burke Dance Studio here in SF. We are taking advantage of a bargain basement introductory offer which includes four private lessons and admission to one of their Friday night dance parties.

Our instructor is named Eric (also) and he is a chipper young fellow who immediately won Eric (student) over when he likened one hand motion to "wax on." Sold.

He speaks quickly and uses a lot of analogies. One that came up last night was in regard to turning: it is easier to stir a small pot than a huge one. If it isn't obvious, the dance insight to be taken from that is that tight, small turns are easier to execute well than big ones.

"Tonight, we will call Ellie 'little pot,' " he announced cheerily.

I think that one of my major weaknesses as a dancer is that I don't have great balance, which can make spins difficult if not actually dangerous. Another weakness is that I am just not a very good dancer.

Eric (teacher) watched me flail through a particularly challenging turn several times before diagnosing the problem. I was trying to turn while stepping, rather than stepping onto the foot, and then turning from there. In the notes Eric (teacher) wrote in our folder at the end of our class, he put an "F" for Follower (me) and then a big asterisk followed by all caps: STEP THEN TURN.

I'm just glad he didn't write me up as "L.P."

A bag full of wheres

Tuesday evenings I have improv class, a highlight of my week.*

Last night was no exception. The plan was to drill scenes one after another for the three-hour class so that we can get more experience doing the improv and spend less time talking about it (this is a challenge for my teacher, who looooooves to talk talk talk!).

To facilitate quick and easy starts to scenes we each wrote down 10-15 "wheres" on scraps of paper and put them in a bag. The improvisers starting a new scene choose a scrap from the bag and that location is where the scene takes place.

From what folks wrote down, you would think it had not occurred to us that we were in fact the same people who were going to have to deal with these locations. We all sat there gleefully writing down absurdly challenging locations imagining someone else's horror at having to do an entire scene under water during in the 19th century, or in a dark cave with no flashlight, or in a torture dungeon, or on a Bollywood movie set, or at Sea World leading a tour of mute children.

Even as I try to complain about these ridiculous locations, I can't help but be delighted with the possibility that each one holds. Because of course, there are no bad locations - only bad improvisers. Except for "in a cat's ear," which is just stupid.


*Other highlights of the usual week include salsa lessons on Wednesdays, live bluegrass at Atlas Cafe on Thursdays and usually something else fun on Fridays if we aren't heading off skiing.

Next time I'll skip the suit and wear sweatpants like everyone else

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Employment Development Department's cheery offices on Turk St. for my "personalized career coaching" session, a requirement of receiving unemployment benefits.

Personalized, it turns out, no longer means "one-on-one;" the days of George Costanza dating the EDD officer's hideous daughter to keep the government cheese coming are long gone. There were about 40 of us packed into the Mission Dolores room where Karen, who has long wavy silver hair and has been with EDD for 41 years, reassured us by telling us that, in her tenure with the department, this is the worst it has ever been.

The crowd was colorful and very engaged. When Karen opened the floor up to questions, it was open season.

"I'll tell you it's crazy out there! People be living in their cars, they can't get no job. It ain't never been like this before," shared a curvaceous woman in an Obama sweatshirt up front.

"You're right," Karen affirmed enthusiastically, as did many other members of the group. Excellent question.

"I applied to a hospital the other day and there were thousands of other applicants for just one job," offered a middle-aged man sitting towards the back.

"Yes," responded Karen emphatically. "That's right."

It went on like this for a while. There were a few actual questions sprinkled in, but mostly the people just wanted to be heard. Karen clearly understood this.

Perhaps my favorite moment, though, was when Karen asked if anyone had had trouble getting through to the EDD call center. As the room started to erupt with frustrated indignation, she laughed and waved her arms to show she was joking, and then passed around a handout.

The EDD call center is hiring.

Go that way really fast. If something gets in your way...turn

Eric and I hit the slopes again this past weekend in Tahoe. We managed, on several occasions, to cavalierly disregard signs marked with skull and crossbones and dire warnings about Experts Only and got ourselves into plenty of trouble. There's nothing like standing on the top of a nearly sheer cliff wondering how you will negotiate the boulder-field on the way down. Except then having to jump off it and hope for the best.

One example of a no-way-but-through exit was this steep chute between large boulders. Eric went down first and captured my not-so-graceful exit. Not pictured here is the rock wall which I am headed straight towards at approximately 800mph.

We were lucky enough that the worst that happened to either of us was a few somersaults down the mountain and getting snow down our pants. I was particularly proud of one tumble which prompted a woman nearby to shout "Holy shit are you OK?" If you're not falling, you're not skiing hard enough.

No wonder it took them so long to get their government together

February is Strong Beer Month in San Francisco.

Here's what happens during Strong Beer Month:

Some evening in February you innocently go to your local microbrewpub, say 21st Amendment, and you order a harmless sounding beer like "Monk's Blood" which you may or may not notice is 11.2% alcohol.

You will notice a warm, pleasant sensation all through your body and decide to try another intriguing sounding beer. "Oh look! The Hop Crisis Triple IPA! I'll have one!" you say. And then after just a few swigs of this 11.8% tonic, you will find yourself under the table curled up in fetal position.

If you are hardy enough to drink all 12 beers during February you get a commemorative glass and a commemorative beer belly to go with it. Neither glass nor belly is available for purchase separately and both prove that you are awesome.

Jamaica launched her campaign for her very own 2009 strong beer glass on Tuesday and had this to say:
"I made the mistake of ordering a third strong beer. I woke up at 4 am feeling like the crappiest of all crap, and spent most of Wednesday angry Belgium exists."

With silver bells and cockle shells

I'm making a garden! I am going to grow edibles rather than ornamentals because then I can eat them. Given the way the economy is looking, I think that having the knowledge and materials to grow one's own food may prove to be a useful survival skill when supermarkets are empty and people are rioting in the streets.

I spent most of the day yesterday gathering my supplies. I went to not one but two Home Depots because the first one I went to turned out to be the only Home Depot that doesn't cut wood. At the second one, I procured the wood for the frame plus other necessary structural components. After that, I went to Sloat Garden Center which is a longtime San Francisco gardening institution where I got lots of helpful, if sometimes contradictory, advice about how to set up my garden. I also got lots of seeds though I discovered to my great dismay that somehow I forgot to get spinach, which apparently grows very well in San Francisco.

I'm roughly following Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening method and building two 2x4 foot garden boxes up on my roof, and I'll be growing some herbs in other planters, too. Check it out! This is just one of the boxes that I built today as it went from empty box to covered wagon garden.

Coming or going

My aunt Susan left me a wonderful collection of photos. I've been particularly enjoying them today and thought I would share a few of my favorites.

Apologies for the reflection on the glass but my camera, the light and the glass were not cooperating. This is Leela. The photograph is by Edouard Boubat. The question here: is she coming or going?

This one is Edward Steichen and his Dog, Tripod by Hans Hammarskiold.

This is Simiane La Rotonde by Henri Cartier-Bresson. One of my very most favorites. It just drips lazy Italian summer.

This one is Chez Modrian by Andre Kertesz.

And finally, this one: Two Brothers. Robert Doisneau.

Duck tales

My aunt Barbara, Eric and I spent Saturday morning making quacks on the Bay Quackers SF Duck Tour. We need out of town visitors to provide excuses for us to do this sort of thing, which I had been looking forward to for a long time.

The tour is about an hour and a half and has a land-based portion which goes through North Beach, Chinatown, and SOMA, and then it has an aquatic portion where the "duck" vehicle launches into the water near China Basin and cruises around by the ballpark at about 3 nauts, also known as pretty much standing still. This allows the Captain to invite any children on board to drive the duck in the water, which several of them did. The youngest of them, who looked to be about 4, repeatedly ignored the instructions to just hold the wheel steady and turned us in a pretty aggressive 720 degree spin before the Captain plucked him out of the seat and handed him back to his father.

The tour included a wealth of information about San Francisco's history, notable people and places, and even some colorful nuggets about the present day. I would guess about 40% of it was true or close to true and the rest was greatly exaggerated or just completely made up. Was Columbus Street really created in response to Italian fishermen's demands for a shortcut from their North Beach enclave to the wharves? Did the Chinese really have an underground tunnel network snaking around under Chinatown until it was shut down by the city post WWII? Did the Bush Man really put two children through college by scaring tourists at Fisherman's Wharf? Is Riceroni really made in Chicago??

In addition to a lot of information of dubious accuracy, we also got to keep our "quackers," the yellow beak-shaped noisemakers we had gleefully honked during the tour. Walking home last night from a local bar where we caught the last few minutes of the Super Bowl, Eric re-discovered his quacker in his pocket and made some quacks at the corner while we waited for the light to change. A young gentleman leaning against the light post smoking chortled in our direction.

"Y'all tryin' to call ducks...in San Francisco?" he drawled, and then guffawed loudly. "Well I never."