On the road

A few highlights from life on the road this week:

Dinner: Cafe Presse in Seattle. Anywhere that the appetizer is beer with fries and mayo can't be all bad. Cauliflower soup was nutty and good. I confused myself by ordering the beet salad because I don't like beets, and it was kind of just a plate of beets with some blue cheese on the side. I confused myself further by eating a number of said beets, which were not horrible but were still beets. When I commented "whoa, that's a lot of beets" it prompted one of the clients we were having dinner with to say "Remember that you've eaten a lot of beets. Tomorrow when you go to the bathroom don't freak out. No need to schedule an appointment with your doctor. It's just the beets." Um, thanks.

Rental car: PT Cruiser. Emerald green. It has the turning radius of a cruise ship and when my colleague and I took several wrong turns on our way from dinner to the hotel we learned quickly that attempting tight u-turns was only going to result in multiple humiliating three and four-point turns in the middle of the intersection. I'm driving without my glasses but haven't admitted this to my colleague yet. I think she just thinks I am a total jerk driver because I keep having to get over for exits at the last minute and cut people off; but then people expect that when you drive a PT Cruiser. This morning parking at the client's offices we were very satisfied to park next to an identical PT Cruiser. Good stuff.

Breakfast: Cruising downtown Bellevue for a spot to get a quick bite for breakfast, we spot Blazing Bagels. Exactly what we wanted! I pull into an awkward driveway that leads down a hill to an empty lot with uneven pavement and confusing signage. It's empty and early in the morning so I leave the car parked somewhat haphazardly and we walk to get our blazing bagels. Within 45 seconds a grumpy old man is chasing us down (I remember him waving a rolled up newspaper over his head but that's doubtful) saying if we don't move the car immediately he's going to have it towed. Fine then. Colleague goes to get the bagels, I go to get the car. It is at least 15 minutes before she emerges and I see no one else enter or exit, but there's nowhere to park the car so I wait. As she gets into the car, coffees and bagels in hand, she informs me that they're not open for business - they officially open this weekend and they are doing a "soft" opening a few days this week to start getting operations ramped up. Apparently no one knew where anything was, they didn't have most of the things they were supposed to have (eg, bagels) and the woman cursed violently at the toaster most of the 15 minutes that she was in there. The upside: our coffee was free.

Everybody's living for the weekend

It was such a good weekend that it gets two blogs.

To make sure that we had a little extra fun, in addition to all of the other fun we were having, I made up a game where we would write haikus every now and then throughout the weekend to capture a particular moment or experience.

For example, when we took the bus to downtown from the airport we had a moment that was captured thusly:

On the slow bus. Yeah.
Hmm. I think we hit something.
It’s so northwest here.

Eric got something in his eye while waiting in line for coffee at the Peet's in SFO. It was still there several hours later when this game was invented. The result:

Irritated eye
I see and I do not see
A new perspective

Profound, no? This next one was in honor of our flailing tour guide, and it is almost verbatim:

Here’s some good advice:
Have fun...as much as you can
Oh look! Cute puppy!

Another highlight was inspired at the lobby bar at the W where we spent more time than I will admit to not under oath. I was entrusted with ordering us drinks and managed to quite unintentionally get one that tasted like grape flavored Big League Chew, but not in an awesome way like you might expect. It was called "A Currant Affair" and was the impetus for this late-night haiku:

A currant affair
Made my tastebuds unhappy
Took one for the team

And on your left, a naked pig

Eric and I spent the weekend in Seattle. I have to be here this week for work so we figured we'd make a trip out of it. That seemed like a great idea until we were getting on the plane Saturday morning, leaving sunny and 75 degrees to head to rainy and 37 degrees. Perhaps this was not the most logical weekend getaway one might have planned.

Our only real plan for the weekend was the Savor Seattle tour, a must-do according to Trip Advisor. Seven stops for fresh, local, organic, sustainable and seasonal food and drink sounded like a delicious way to spend the afternoon.

Our guide, Eric, started off the tour by announcing that this was his first day following a minor format change and he might stumble a little. He appreciated our patience.

It is hard to imagine what sort of "minor" format change would have left him so completely unprepared for the afternoon.

In addition to the niggling sense I had that he made up most of the "facts" that he shared with the group, he, more than once, completely ran out of things to say. At one point, walking from one location to another, he literally resorted to "um, and over there are some apartments, and, hmm, yeah oh look a pigeon!"

All in all it was a good experience and it did include a lot of delicious food, though not all of it quite as local, sustainable and organic as it was made out to be. (During the tour of the "all local organic gelateria" we spotted industrial-size cans of Libby's pumpkin and sacks of coconut from the Philippines on the shelves in the storeroom.) I suppose to them local means it comes from the storeroom, which is right there, after all.

Oh look! Cute puppy!

Golden Beetloaf Sandwich Saga Ends Happily

We've probably been to Atlas Cafe for live bluegrass Thursdays at least fifteen times now. It's fun, cheap and tasty.

It was on our twelfth visit, when Jamaica and Nelson joined as well, that we stopped regarding the Golden Beetloaf menu selection as just another reason to make a funny face.

Jamaica was so demonstratively satisfied by her choice that it left all of us feeling as though we had missed out on something big. She literally at one point said to all of us including Nelson "I can't share this with you - it's too good. I can't spare even a single bite."

Well. That's quite an endorsement for a sandwich.

On the thirteenth visit we were devastated to learn: out of beetloaf. Eavesdroppers on our previous visit must have gotten to it first.

Fourteenth visit: again - out! Do the laws of supply and demand not function at Atlas Cafe?!?

Fifteenth visit, last night: sweet beety success!

And I'm already looking forward to visit sixteen, beetloaf number two.

Dietary time travel

I went back in time last night for dinner. Dietarily speaking. I went to Millenium, a wonderful vegan restaurant here in SF that used to be the "special treat" destination restaurant whenever I or a fellow vegan had a reason to celebrate.

I have to somewhat ashamedly admit: I wasn't that excited about going because I was worried that the food wouldn't be very good.

This is where my former vegan self slaps me. Hard.

For shame! How can I say such an outrageous thing? Questioning that vegan food not be the height of deliciousness? That's not fair! And also not true.

I was relieved and thrilled to discover that it was delicious. It also brought back a flood of vegan memories that ranged from having my grandmother think I had joined a cult* through the years of always carrying food in my purse for fear of going hungry at day-long events and business trips to the south to the guilt of secretly starting to eat cheese again. It was quite an emotional journey, that happily ended, like the meal, with vegan chocolate bread pudding and peanut butter ice cream.

I think I might even go back some time.


*This is true.

TTFN to Gerri

Last night was my fourth and final improv class with Gerri, for now. With the works demands of actually having a job, and the fact that I'll be traveling some over the next few weeks, it is time for a break in spite of the fact that improv might be the most personally insightful and developmentally beneficial 3 hours of my week.

Four sessions is not very many, but they are intense enough that the group to got to be pretty well gelled which allowed us to take more risks and experiment more in our scenes. I had a couple of great scenes and couple of horrible ones. In one of them I attempted to continue working on using accents and I committed to a southern black accent which was great except that it sounded a lot different from my scene partner's. This would have been fine until he declared that we were twin siblings, necessitating the further clarification that we had been separated at birth and raised on different continents.

I also had an entertaining and emotional scene where I was a high school tennis star and my coach showed up to practice with me drunk. I got to yell. It was fun.

I think this break will be a great chance to take what I am learning in improv and experiment with it in real life. You know, like active listening and reincorporation of ideas, or taking on different accents in meetings at work.

I'll let you know how that goes.

This guy

It makes me wonder if he gets pulled over more often or less often.

The Clementina Show goes burlesque...

Saturday night Eric and I got home close to midnight. We were returning from our third, yes third, trip to the horrible standup comedy show that we sort of hate but also keep getting free tickets to. This time, though, was probably truly the last time because no more free tickets for us and we are definitely not paying to hear those sad acts for the fourth time.

Entering our building, we noticed that the lights were on upstairs at the lesbian hybrid car garage across the street and there seemed to be some hubbub, but we couldn't really see what.

From the convenient upstairs-neighbor's-eye view allowed by our apartment, we could tell right away what the Luscious ladies were up to: just your typical lesbian mechanic burlesque show above a hybrid garage.

Disappointingly for at least one of us, our line of sight was not of the show itself but rather of the changing room. Our view was probably a lot like being backstage at a Victoria's Secret fashion show: mostly naked women come scurrying back, strip off the scant clothing they're wearing (underneath which it turns out they are not actually naked but wearing protective things like pasties on their upper parts), quickly slip into some new flimsy item and perhaps a colorful wig and then dash back to give their breathless audience a little bit more.

I don't know how long it went on for - long after I went to sleep, I'm sure. For some reason, even though I didn't watch it it made me happy just to know that it was going on. They seemed to be having so much fun! We don't often get that sort of silly, carefree fun on The Clementina Show. It was a nice change.

Keeping up with the Obamas

There's news sprouting up everywhere about people starting kitchen gardens. It seems there is a bonafide urban and suburban agricultural revolution underway!

Adding to the list, the BBC reported today that the Obamas are getting into it too. Only they are doing it with 1,100 square feet, 55 varieties of vegetables and an army of local school children to help plant, tend and harvest. Not to mention they have a chef who will cook it all up for them to eat.

For the record, I had no idea all these other people had the same idea that I did when I decided to build my garden. And I suppose that's probably how these things happen: we all think we are doing our own thing and then we realize that everyone else was thnking the same thing. It happens with baby names, why not urban gardens too.

What I think is particularly exciting about the kitchen garden revolution is that it has the potential to accomplish nothing less than fundamentally change Americans' relationship with food and the land. It is also good preparation for imminent total societal collapse.

Let them eat garden-grown vegetables!

Beak-shaped bites

I went up to the roof this morning to water my roof garden and noticed that my plants had been nibbled! At a glance it all looked normal and fine but as I was watering and being observant I started to noticed irregularities in some of the leaves. A few leaves had been nibbled all the way down to nubs, while others were intact save for a trivial pursuit pie piece shaped munch mark. Can you believe these rascally birds are nibbling my plants? The nerve!

Definitely time to get a gun. Or some chicken wire.

Emotional noises

My Tuesday night improv class once again did not fail to be outrageous, uncomfortable and thrilling.

The teacher, Gerri, is incredibly focused on each of us as individuals and what we are working on. The starting point for our "work" is our own idea of what we should be improving, which we shared with her in the first class. She takes that and then observes us with unsettling perceptiveness until she can see our souls laid bare, and then pokes us in all of our softest areas.

Last night was week three and she's got everyone's number at this point. Her singular focus with me: emotional noises.

Several of the exercises that we did were toward this end. One was set up as scenes between old married couples where one of them is chatty and prattles on and on and the other has to be extremely communicative and involved but only use emotional noises. "It feels totally retarded, and it is, but it totally works!!" explained Gerri.

After were were thoroughly primed in using non-verbal communications, she put me up for a scene that she had specially set up to help me work on developing characters. I was to be an old black woman. The scene was me at home with my husband making dinner, and then whatever else evolved. The key, as you would imagine, was emotional noises. You see, old black women, and many young ones, specialize in this form of communication.

It was a little awkward getting into it. I'm not great at maintaining an accent or dialect (inevitably, Mexicans become Indians and New Yorkers become Valley Girls) but I did my best and made way more emotional noises than is actually humanly possible.

The scene was a hit with the class and Gerri was delighted. So delighted that she smacked me on the ass several times, then grabbed my face and kissed my cheek. This is how she gives feedback.

Mmmmmm hmmmm mmmmmmm!

So you think you can dance

If I told you that I spent my Monday evening touching strange men and then got punched in the nose, you might not immediately guess that Eric and I had gone out to practice our salsa moves.

It was an adventurous Monday night after a pretty long Monday day. We were out until midnight Sunday night hanging out with friends* and I was up at 6am to teach yoga and then stay focused on not screwing up at work all day.

Cafe Cocomo (pronounced with emphasis on the second "co" for authenticity) has $10 salsa classes on Monday nights starting at 7:30 with Basic and getting harder and harder as the evening progresses. It's like a limbo but with much faster music.

Had we thought about it for a few minutes before going over there we might have expected that we would have to dance with people other than each other, aka strangers. Instead, this was an unwelcome surprise around 7:35pm when we were rounded into concentric circles, with women rotating every minute or two to a new partner.

It might be that Mondays are Opposite Day at Cafe Cocomo, but the male:female ratio was 2:1. The arrangement is that the solo dudes stand in between couples so that each man dances with a woman every other turn. When you do the math you will realize that this means that I was forced to dance with twice as many sweaty, lurching men as Eric with squishy, stinky women.**

We lasted until about 9pm and were actually dancing together when things kind of melted down. Eric's face got scratched by one of my nails during a turn*** and then a few minutes later another turn went horribly wrong and I was effectively punched in the nose by both of our hands. It has been a while since I've been punched in the nose and I was interested to learn that my eyes immediately started gushing tears and I was immediately ready to go home.

Next time I want to limbo instead.


*Dinner at their house and then watching Masterpiece Theatre's "Oliver Twist." Once I got over my disappointment that it was not the musical, I actually really enjoyed it.
**Actual words he used to describe the women he had danced with.
***Special thanks to passive voice for your help here

J O B

I got one.

I realize this is no longer really news since I have alluded to it several times, but I feel it is time to remove the shroud of mystery from my new job. I am now...a consultant.

OK, yes this is what I was before, too. But it's different this time in some very important ways. I swear.

The most important difference is that I am now focused entirely on environmental sustainability. My new job is with a company called Blu Skye, a sustainability consultancy based here in San Francisco. As sustainability consultants, we help large companies like Wal-Mart and Waste Management figure out what sustainability means for them and how they can incorporate it into their strategy, use it to identify cost savings, spur innovation and strengthen their competitive advantage. This is interesting.

Other significant differences include that it is a smaller, younger firm, it doesn't have a work on-site model which requires one to travel 4-5 days a week so I get to sleep in my own bed a whole lot more, and it is at the center of some of the most interesting action in the sustainability revolution.

This is the beginning of my third week on the job and so far I am feeling extremely successful: I think I've got everyone's name down and I haven't physically lit anything on fire yet.

So far, so good! By the end of this week I might actually have had an interesting idea relevant to the project I am working on.

Next slide please

I've been away for the last few days for a two-day client working session focusing on what their role might be in the transition to a more environmentally sustainable world. While attendees were mostly employees of the company, the first day also included a variety of external folks to provide a little spice to the conversation as well as an environmental luminary as a speaker.

This environmental speaker's presentation started as most environmental presentations do: with the unbelievably grim and hopeless situation around global warming and the fact that it really probably is too late and we're all gonna fry. It was extremely well done and in spite of "knowing" most of what she was talking about already, I was very affected by it.

After about 20 minutes of this gloom pummeling, she abruptly paused; she had been talking so fast and so intensely that the sudden silence felt like running into a wall.

She flipped to the next slide and there was: Gandalf.

Yes, Gandalf, as in The Lord of the Rings.

This is a big, serious client! And there's Gandalf on the screen, and below him was a poignant quote about his being a steward and a protector; how saving even just a little bit of what exists now is worth doing.

Next slide: Hobbits.

Ordinary people with an extraordinary task. Overcoming the un-overcome-able. Losing much, but saving much too.

I don't think I was the only one who teared up a little.

I guess if someone has to make me cry in a client meeting, Frodo isn't the worst possibility.

Double word score on "crabby"

Important information part 1:
I love Scrabble. It is one of my favorite games. I am good at it.

Important information part 2:
One's second week of work can make one particularly vulnerable to frustration and sensitive to meeting performance expectations.

Relevant aside:
A friend was recently telling us about how no one will play games with her mother anymore because she is both a bad loser and a bad winner.

Possibly relevant aside:
Mini-marshmallows are delicious and nasty at the same time.

Last night, also known as the third time in his entire life that Eric has ever played Scrabble, Eric gave me a run for my money at Scrabble. It was mostly fun, except for the parts where I forgot that it was just a game and not the key to my self-worth and all future happiness.

In the end, I think it was a tie. I am a good tie-er.

I was either relieved or disappointed

Jamaica, Eric and I did the hike from the Palomarin trailhead to Alamere Falls on Sunday, about eight miles roundtrip including an iffy, trecherous scramble down (and eventually back up) a shale-y cliff. It was a perfect, clear sunny (though chilly) day and a spectacular hike.

The last time I did this hike, probably about eight years ago and probably at a warmer time of year, I shared the trail and the waterfall with a large group of nudists.

The first clue that something unusual was afoot was when a young man wearing a large backpack and no clothing passed me on the trail. Even in California, this is not something you see everyday.

Over the course of the next 20 minutes or so, several more stray nudists went by on the trail, causing me to believe it wasn't simply one dude who was just really hot.

Upon arrival at the beach, where the falls spill over a cliff onto the sand and run into the ocean, there was a large group of extremely naked people. Men and women, all adults and mostly in their 40s and 50s. Likely because I was one of the few non-naked people who hadn't fled the beach almost immediately upon arrival at the nakedfest, they asked me to take their picture (with their camera, obviously). Being friendly and agreeable, I obliged. It was...uncomfortable. And I remember it vividly; I could probably paint it perfectly from memory, if I could paint.

For better or worse, the most exciting thing about the hike today was, well, the hike itself. And that Jamaica brought some really good cheese.

Friday morning on Clementina

[Setting: 7:30am, on the stairs going from our apartment down to the garage, where we store our bikes. Eric is walking behind me on the stairs.]

Ellie: I'm putting my hair up when I get to work.

Eric: Huh?

Ellie: Just in case you were wondering if I were going to work with my hair looking so messy, I thought I would mention that I'm going to put it up when I get there. I can't put it up now because of my bike helmet.

[pause]

Eric: Yeah. I can see now why I should have been wondering, but I wasn't.

[And then we each put on our helmets, walked our bikes out of the garage, hopped on them and rode off in different directions towards work.]

Miyagi School of Dance

Wednesday nights are salsa lesson nights with our dapper instructor Eric. He is a good teacher and works hard to put things into terms we can understand. He doesn't use fancy dance lingo even though I am sure that would make him seem smart and cool. Instead, he likens movements to things like stirring a pot or throwing a frisbee, which we can all relate to.

In the first lesson we took with him, instructor Eric immediately won student Eric over with a hand movement he called "wax on." This was a big hit.

Last night, we were learning a new salsa move that required a swift downward arm motion leading with the wrist. Student Eric lit up.

"Paint the fence!" he exclaimed.

Teacher Eric agreed that that was a great analogy and seemed mostly pleased about it, though I think I sensed just a hint of resentment that student Eric came up with it first.

Improvisationalizationorama!

I truly do not know where to begin in describing my new improv class.

The teacher is an energetic and possibly clinically insane woman named Gerri who reacts hugely to everything that her students do, which includes grabbing her boobs constantly. If you sit next to her while other students are doing a scene, you must be prepared for her to grab your arm, maybe your leg, and maybe literally throw herself completely into you as she experiences - intensely - the emotions that the improvisers on stage are working with. This is not hypothetical.

I think she is extraordinary and I am very excited to be in her class. And I would like to pledge publicly that, no matter how strong my natural tendencies towards mimicry are, I will not start grabbing my boobs constantly. Only intermittently. I promise.

A bump in the night

Awoke at 5am last night to a loud bang with breaking glass on the finish.

Eric leapt up and crept around but we couldn't figure out what might have caused the unsettling noise which had sounded like it was coming from inside the bedroom.

What could it have been? Leading theories include (but are not limited to):

• Metal folding chair getting blown over on the roof just above our heads (ruled out)
• Top shelf closet item transforming into bottom of closet item, with breakage (ruled out)
• Hallway window getting blown in (ruled out)
• Disoriented Santa Claus? Or maybe just a disoriented fat guy in a Santa Claus outfit? (ruled out)
• Spirit or specter (inconclusive)
• Shared dream (whaaa?)
• Malicious Sprinkler evolved to Malicious Smasher (unlikely...but possible)

Had to leave for work* this morning with this mystery yet unsolved. My money is on shared dream until some more likely prospect emerges.


*I have a job!

Not just for 30 year olds anymore

On Saturday we helped a friend celebrate his 31st birthday by riding roller coasters and a variety of other spinning, flipping and gyrating rides that are not recommended if you drank more than two glasses of red wine the night before.

In sharp contrast to the two-bit carnival we went to for my birthday this past year, with its rickety single roller coaster held together with bandaids and old chewing gum, this was the real deal: Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, about an hour from San Francisco. Saturday was Opening Day.

We had been expecting a chilly, rainy day and so were pleasantly surprised when it was merely a chilly, excessively windy day. There was almost no one but us there so we could go on the rides again and again and, well, usually two times was enough. My favorite coasters were Medusa, a long one with lots of twists and upside down parts that I would recommend riding in the front row, and Boomerang, which we are pretty sure is named after the Eddie Murphy movie of the same name but I will leave it to you to figure out how.

During one of the beer breaks, we noticed an older couple sitting nearby enjoying a beer and an overpriced corn dog. They appeared to be there by themselves; either that or there were completely unconcered that the small children they were supposedly chaperoning were well out of sight. I prefer to think that they were there just the two of them enjoying a day of roller coasters and shitty food. (Note to self: getting older doesn't have to mean you get unattractive and boring; you can avoid getting boring.)