I’m not sure if it’s the narrator’s voice, the slightly vintage but also strangely anti-capitalist message, or that it’s for my namesake beer, but I find this ad clever and awesome:

By the way, I’m also finding the Animal Planet show Whale Wars equally irresistible. Apparently, there’s something about a bunch of men on the open seas trying to save whales that really gets to me. Or else maybe it makes me miss my dad. Or something.

And, yeah, I know. It’s a riveting life I lead.

Self, listen. Purple beans, while aesthetically pleasing next to the usual green:

…Will continue to cook up to a very disappointing shade of muted green.

Now, let’s make that super clear – no cooked purple beans! Yellow wax beans stay yellow, yes. Super! The odds, however, of purple beans staying purple when cooked are slightly less than the odds of Sarah Palin giving an interview that doesn’t reference: 1) Alaska, 2) soccer moms, or 3) the word “maverick”. In short – not very likely. Learn to eat them raw, or go back to the day before you realized Mother Nature made purple beans in the first place and got all excited.

Four words:

Oh. My. God. Yes.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 8, Free Concert in Golden Gate Park
October 3-5, 2008

Now if only I could get over my allergy of festivals and festival-goers. This could be so very awesome.

I have a bit of a confession. When I first moved here, I did a lot of feigned gushing about how much I just loved the Bay Area. And in truth, maybe momentarily, I did. But the honeymoon period has most definitely waned. I think I wanted to love it because everyone wanted me to. And because they loved it. And because I know how much everyone just wants me to be happy, etc. etc. But, in truth, I still don’t feel like I belong here. And it’s hard to know how much of that is because of my father’s death, or my mother’s falling apart, or just my own recovery from the last couple of years. I’d like to believe I can be one of those people who feels grounded and at home just about anywhere, but the fact is that I’m just not right now.

I’ve lived far from home before. I’ve traveled pretty widely. But there’s something very dispiriting about feeling so out of place here, and fearing like it’ll be this way forever. Plus, there’s this stupid Nina Nastasia song I can’t get it out my head. It starts, “It’s high time to make a move. It might not get better. There. I saaaaaid it.” It’s like on auto-fucking-repeat in my head. And every time it starts, I’m all, “Shut up, Nina!” And then Nina’s all, “Last time you were feeling like this/You left with a light coat and near froze, to death.” And then I’m like, “this is SOOOO different, Nina.” And then Nina’s all, “Why don’t you stay home where you’re loved?” And I’m like, “Okay, Nina, now you’ve stopped being applicable to the current situation. Stop speaking to me, please.”

And then when I’m done having imaginary play fights with folk singers, I feel only slightly better.

So then. I’ve decided to make a deal with myself. I’m giving this thing a year. One year. I’m playing the same trick I played on myself in Tucson. I have a lease till next May. I know I can do anything for a year. So I’m giving myself that long. If I still don’t like it in a year, I’ll leave. To go where, I don’t know yet.

I don’t know that moving again will solve anything (and I DO know that it won’t solve everything), but the knowledge that I can leave if I want to makes me hopeful in a way that I’ve just not been the last few months. I just have to give myself that freedom right now. As much as I love my coworkers and my work, I just can’t feel as trapped as I’m feeling right now and have anything close to a joyful life. And I’m tired of living my life for, or in opposition to, what’s expected of me. I think that trying to do that, in general, is what’s fucked me up most.

So, a year. Until then, I’m trying to live every day as if I’m already planning my departure. Like study abroad. Only in California. And I happened to have brought my furniture. I think imagining this move as more finite will make me more appreciative. And less hostile with tourists and other such people who walk too slow. Good things, all around.

I gotta tell you people, this hurricane business is making me a little nervous. Growing up on the Gulf Coast, hurricane tracking was often light-hearted family entertainment. Whenever a tropical storm was imminent, you could find one or the other of us checking the Weather Channel every hour on the hour for updates. My grandfather had — actually, still has — a framed magnetic map of the Southeastern U.S. with tiny ‘hurricane magnets’ strategically positioned. Then, with each new update, you could reposition the ‘hurricane’ by longitude and latitude.

Other kids had board games and alphabet refrigerator magnets. I had the hurricane game.

But for me, Katrina completely changed all that. There were serious hurricanes before Katrina, surely. And much destruction and loss. But, really, I feel like the national response to Katrina, and everything exposed in its aftermath, has made my reaction to storms so much different. I just can’t watch the approach of Gustav tonight and tomorrow and not think a little more seriously about the potential consequences. And, of course, of my family and my friends still in the area. From southeast Texas all the way up to the Florida panhandle, I just have to say that I’m wishing the the best for everyone on the Gulf Coast in the coming days.

Oh, and actually, I meant to post this sooner. I’m not sure how many of you saw this NY Times article, but I found it really inspiring. I was at work when I first read it, but it made the quiet little activist inside me sit up straight and yell “yay!” I e-mailed the activist profiled, Karen Gadbois, via Flickr to send my praise and kudos, and she actually emailed me back. Twice!

So, to push the point further, my heart goes out especially to everyone along the coast who’s already faced the loss of homes and lives, governmental incompetence and apathy, and three difficult years of rebuilding. And who now can do nothing but sit and wait. I wish you all Godspeed through the next week.

In true haphazard blog posting fashion, a few random thoughts for the day:

- On my walk to work every morning, I pass a massive construction zone with eight foot walls all around it. Posted at random on these walls are warning signs with the directive: DANGER. DO NOT WATCH ARC. And every morning I think to myself, WHAT. DOES. THAT. MEAN. Maybe if I knew I could squelch the insatiable desire I have WATCH THE ARC. Just because they tell me not to.

- After three consecutive Friday nights, I think I can say pretty definitively which of my neighbors smokes the good pot. I think it’s been far too long since I made baked goods for a neighbor.

- The old 1920’s mirrors in the lobby of my apartment building are constructed such that they make me look wide as a river boat barge. This is especially problematic because I don’t yet have a full-length mirror in my apartment. Thus, the first look I get of my outfit (with shoes!) every morning is in said mirror. It is not helping my self-esteem one bit.

- To the dude on OkCupid who messaged me with the single line, “when was the last time u had great sex????”: Sir, I can assure you that the answer to that question is none of your business. And furthermore, if you’re the kind of person who believes that’s an appropriate opening line in ANY setting, I think I can safely say that you’re the last man on Earth who could give me any.

- I have a bit of a crush on the blue-eyed man who sells bread and granola at the Old Oakland Farmer’s Market every week. Last week I confessed it to my coworker, who caught me and the bread man exchanging glances. She had the audacity to suggest we go buy a cookie so that I could talk to him. I quickly set her straight. “Oh God no, it’s so much better this way. He can be whatever I want him to be. Like the kind of guy who’d make me soup when I’m sick. And wouldn’t flirt back with all the women who come past here wanting samples. And, you know, straight.” She conceded my point, and I am pleased for now. I think crushes are so much better for me than the real thing. Mostly, guys just keep pissing me off. Maybe because they’re so not like my dead father. Or either they ARE so like my dead father. And really, that’s a pretty big group of men, the ones that are and are not like my dead father. So, yeah, I think I’ll stick with the blue-eyed bread man for now.

- My apartment is located on the border between semi-sketchy and semi-trendy neighborhoods. It’s also about a mile from a BART station and about two miles from two others, both of which are in fairly nicer neighborhoods. On occasion, I get home late from the city and have to decide: shorter, scarier walk or longer, slightly less scary walk home? The fact that I even make this choice leads one of my coworkers to start breathing shallowly and lecturing me, “Now, I’m not going to tell you what to do, BUT…” If I so much as breathe in the direction of the city, she’s glances at me sideways with that, “And you’re driving to the BART station,” look. I understand her cautiousness. I’m new to the city, single female, all that, blah blah. But it’s my fucking neighborhood! And I refuse to be cowed by stereotypes and other people’s hyper-vigilance! And anyway I’m cheap and need the exercise! So, for the most part, I felt pretty self-righteous about my choice to walk. In the dark. On my city streets.

Yeah, for the most part.

And then last weekend, leaving a station downtown and walking up a fairly well-traveled city street, I was followed by a man in a late model Chrysler who beckoned me to his car for a mile and half, stopping at random, pulling ahead of me, stopping at random again, etc. The whole while he kept shouting, “YOUNG LADY YOU DON’T NEED TO BE OUT HERE BY YOURSELF. IT’S LATE. YOUNG LADY. YOU COULD GET HURT. THERE’S BAD PEOPLE OUT HERE.” Bad people, huh? Oh, you mean like the nutjob who’d follow a complete stranger down the street yelling at her like a crazy person? Like that kind?

I’m half convinced it’s the same guy who sits at the corner of 14th and Broadway at lunchtime. While waiting for the cross-walk sign, you’re almost always bound to get a hefty dose of sexist moralism. I made the mistake once of making eye contact with him, and he pointed at me and said, “You! You need to keep your legs shut, baby. You need to be a virgin on your wedding day. God don’t want no sloppy seconds.” I laughed a little, mumbled “too late,” and carried on.

See? There’s so much to love about Oakland, even when I’m all homesick and such.

Julie just mentioned something in a comment that I’ve meant to write about before. It’s still amazing to me how much the people I’ve met here define themselves by their neighborhood. I know it’s likely because there are so many people crammed into such a small space. But it still boggles the mind to observe how charged with meaning every street crossing is. And the East Bay-West Bay thing! Good Lord. I have no problem hopping on BART to travel into the city, but it seems like many of the city people I’ve met are loathe to do the reverse. And when I ask how often they make it to the East Bay, it’s like I’ve just asked them how often they visit Antarctica. Like, what could there possibly be there for me to see? Umm, lots people.

Oh, and good God, don’t get me started on people who, when they hear I live in Oakland, give me this troubled look that says, “scary. bad. why?” And then, in case that doesn’t drive it home, I’ve gotten several, “You be careful!” and “Are you safe there?” and “Do you carry mace?” Jesus H, people. You act like I’m every minute on the verge of getting jacked. In reality, I feel like I fit in far better in the East Bay than the city anyway. For whatever my level of over-education, I grew up working class. I also make a pretty modest living and have at least a decade worth of student loan debt to pay off. Plus, I work on issues of poverty and homelessness and domestic violence. If there’s any place I belong in this area, it’s here. Right where I am.

Oh, I just remembered this: How Berkeley. A word: if your idea of someone taking up too much parking space is friggin Berkeley, then you probably need to get out of the city more. Try Texas.

Please, stop whatever it is you’re doing, and go read this: Cafe Platitude

I have just two words to say in reply: Yes, and yes.

I tried explaining this place to my friend Betty in the card I sent her for her birthday (everyone say Happy Birthday to Bettina!). I included a little bag of their almonds in her birthday care package, and told her with all my gusto, “BETTY, YOU ARE SPIRIT.” I’m not sure, however, that I accurately conveyed what it took for me to purchase four ounces of “spirit” for her birthday.

Thankfully, Evany did it for me. Hoorah. I am elated. And by that, I of course mean that I am the enchilada special of the day. (You’re welcome.)

No word yet on what “cynical” and “jaded” will buy you.

Late this afternoon I went for a walk/run around Lake Merritt here in Oakland. The lake part is a lie, actually (it’s salt-water), but whatever. That’s what people call it. There’s a three or so mile paved loop around the perimeter of the lake, and it’s generally a good place to unplug and breathe in the salty air. People rent paddle-boats and gondolas and generally splash around a bit in the water. I was actually just thinking today that twenty years ago I might have been falling all over myself to join them. Only now I just think how ick that water is and damn if I’d want it splashing up on my face.

Anyway. At one corner of the lake today, dozens of people were camped out at intervals on blankets and were blaring boomboxes. It was like scanning through some crazy time-warped, global FM dial. As I passed, the music flipped from 80’s girl pop, to French hip-hop, to club, and beyond. I was mystified. Like, did all these people decide en masse to simulatenously revive sitting around on blankets listening to music machines? Random.

Oh. Flavorpill explains. Apparently, it was the 3rd Annual Radio Regatta. Right. Of course!

As I type this, I’m sitting with my feet up watching some show that appears to be the animal equivalent of ‘COPS’ on the Animal Planet channel. I’ve become quite the connoisseur of melodramatic television programs lately, and this one fits the bill quite nicely. First, there’s the justice/catharsis element, and then, of course, there’s the significant ‘awww’ factor. I didn’t really grow up around animals, and really haven’t felt all that comfortable around them until the last few years. But now, well, let’s just say that I’m trying to think of creative ways to get around the no-pet policy at my apartment complex.

One great thing about working with so many lawyers is the fact that they know more ways to bend the rules than the average American. And when I mentioned to one of my colleagues that I wanted to get a cat but didn’t know how to get around the no-pet policy, the words had barely left my mouth before another coworker had replied, “Emotional support animal. Your landlord has to provide reasonable accomodation.” Then she turned on her heel and went off to solve even more people’s problems. It turns out that I’d just have to prove that I have a ‘mental disability’ (and really, is that so hard?), and that having a pet would ameliorate the condition. Apparently, there’s even a legal precedent to back her up.

Suffice to say that I’m not *actually* going to go to all the trouble, and that the burden of proof might be pretty high. I am, however, planning to start volunteering at the local SPCA with the intent of adopting a cat near the end of my lease here. God knows I don’t want to move again, so I’m thinking I may wait till the end of my lease and then tell my landlord I want to get a cat but that doing so would require her to find a new tenant. And if she balks, I’ll move (ughh, God, I hate even typing that). And if she’s desperate enough, she’ll cave and make an exception. Hm, yeah, we’ll see. In any case, I’ll be volunteering soon. And until then, I drag one of my coworkers with me every Friday lunchtime to go stare at the kittens in the window of the City Center SPCA. That’ll do for now, I guess. Well, that and LOLCats.