This is the kind of car that scares me. It’s hard to make out every single sticker here, but rest assured, they’re all a little frightening.
Under normal circumstances I would have moseyed on around the front of the car to see if they actually did have a handicapped placard. The parking lot was so full I didn’t get a chance to.
My car was making this infrequent shudder, even after I put 3 new quarts of oil in it a week ago. This was causing me no end of frustration and anxiety…what could possibly be wrong? When it comes to computers and cars, I’m completely and totally helpless. I can barely diagnose the problem on my own, let alone solve it. This was, like, weighing on me heavily.
Finally today, I took the car to the oil change place (which, btw, is across the street from our apartment…what was my excuse for not going earlier?). While sitting in my car, in line, I realized I was feeling intense anxiety pangs. Akin to those felt right before a visit to the lady-doctor. No, not even that. Because at least when I have had to sit in the waiting room at Planned Parenthood while I wait for my appointment (which is guaranteed to be at least 45 minutes late), I know that they’re not going to find anything wrong. No, this feeling was more on par with a long-overdue visit to the dentist, when you know you have a cavity and no insurance.
So the first thing the guy did was say, “Come out here, I want to show you something.” This is when my heart drops to my stomach, because you don’t want them to have to “show you something.” (I debated whether or not to admit here in writing that last week, when I put more oil in, I left the oil cap off – again. So that explains the shuddering.) Humiliated, even though he was very nice about it, I got back in the car.
They changed the oil. They checked the pressure on the tires. They checked all my lights. (When he asked me to turn on the right turn signal I definitely turned on the left one, and three guys laughed at me and said everyone does that.) They filled up my wiper fluid. They gave me a list of things they recommend I get done, but no one pressured me to do it today.
Definitely less painful than I was fearing. And in the tenth of a mile I had to drive to get home, the car did feel better. And knowing that I have a list of things I should try to get done in the new year is encouraging. Especially because the most expensive of them is a little over $100…not the $3000 I was terrified of.
So all in all, it’s been a good day.
I’ll be revisiting the New Year’s Resolutions concept in a little bit, but for now I’m off work until January 4th, so I’m doing…old-year resolutions. End-of-the-year resolutions. In the 2 weeks I have off work, I am determined to accomplish the following:
-Hit the gym 6 times. It sounds pretty reasonable, but I’ve also booked myself into seeing everyone who’s back in California for the holidays, including 3 overnight trips in Lakeport. So basically every day I’m not on the road, I’m at the gym.
-Do some deep cleaning of the apartment. Specifically I want to clean out the fridge, scrub the bathroom, and organize all the stuff that’s just been floating around. Tonight I unpacked and shelved two boxes of books, so there’s my head start.
-Write another short play to submit to the Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Play Festival. Then assemble my applications and send ’em in.
-Organize my iTunes and sync up my iPod. Since I got my new laptop, I’ve managed to transfer all my music, but I haven’t really done anything to clean it up. So I’ma tackle that. Also, I have a list of new songs I want to download, just to make sure I’m up to date with Bruno Mars and Pink.
And tonight I added to that list:
-Manage to make a dinner that makes Drew go, “Mmm! This is DELICIOUS!!” He’s been pretty complimentary about the stuff I’ve been making lately, but I want to really impress him. (At least I know he won’t fake it on me.)
New Year’s Resolutions are being crafted. Also a confessional post.
Merry Christmas!
Molly and I were talking about seeing Giselle or Coppelia at the SF Ballet.
Me: I know the story of Coppelia, but I don’t actually know what Giselle is about.
Molly: It’s…basically like Swan Lake, but she’s a nymph. And she drowns herself at the end.
Me: Spoiler alert!
Molly: What, they all end with the main character killing herself! Except The Nutcracker, which you find out at the end is all Clara’s dream.
Me: SPOILER ALERT!!
Drew and I saw The Nutcracker last night and loved it. I know that kids are a given at The Nutcracker, but I still got a little annoyed when the little boy behind us explained every “magic” trick to his grandma in a loud kid-whisper. I know it’s not really magic, because this is theatre. But please tell your Nana at intermission. But you know who was adorable? The little little girl who I could hear somewhere in the grand tier, who, when the ballerina dancing doll came out in the first act, cried, “Look, mommy! A ballerina! A ballerina!” Awww.
After we were home, Drew and I were dissecting the show. He decided that when ballerinas walk, all turned out and pointy-toed, they look like ducks who are trying really hard not to walk like ducks. Then we cracked ourselves up saying, “Not like a duck, not like a duck, walk like a person, walk like a person…remember, they’ll never let you in the restaurant if they suspect you’re a duck. Make eye contact and don’t fumble with the money.”
Then Drew went to sleep while I read Eclipse, and at one point I noticed he was making a lot of noise rummaging around his pillow. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was checking his pillowcase for money. I said, “…What?” and he said, “The pillowcases are full of money.” “Yeah,” I said, “that’d be nice. Go back to sleep.”
Today we went to the Dickens Fair and almost right off the bat saw this random chick dressed like a ballerina. One of her arms kept fluttering around. I think she thought it was bewitching. She did get major bonus points when she went en pointe for someone to take her picture. But every time we saw her (and if you’ve ever been to the Dickens Fair for a day, you know how often you see the same people), we looked at each other and both thought, “Not like a duck, not like a duck…”
Otherwise, the Dickens Fair was Dickensy. And fun. And busy. Erin’s dad does single stick fighting and was doing several demonstrations during the day, and asked Drew to come take pictures of him. I took video. So we would meet Tom at 2:20, then go wander around the Fair, then meet up again at 3:30, etc. I actually think it’s the only way to see the Dickens Fair. No one can just meander around and look at things for six hours. The structure was nice. I wanted to buy a mop of curls to wear over a bun, but Drew wouldn’t let me. Also, we couldn’t find where they were being sold. I also wanted to buy a nightlight, a Christmas ornament, a feathery head ornament, some fudge, a gyro, some popcorn (by the late afternoon we were both starving), and a flowery circlet headpiece thing. Luckily we only had $10. Because what do I need with any of those things?
Finally, here’s a nice thing I do. The Opera offices are on the 3rd floor of the building (which is the top). Basically no one on the 2nd floor uses the elevator, but in the morning Opera people will use it to go up. I always do because I’m usually always carrying my purse, my lunch, at least one water bottle, and a cup of coffee, and I’ve just walked from Bart and don’t want to take the stairs. But the elevator is super slow. So whenever I take it to the 3rd floor, I always press the button for 1 to send it back down for the next person. That’s a nice thing I do. I just wanted to mention that.
In November, the Village Voice published 50 Reasons To Be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live In New York City. I’m not arguing with them – God knows I miss NYC – but I immediately started thinking about a similar list for San Francisco. I haven’t been here too long, and my activity in the city is limited, so this is just one person’s very specific list.
(I gladly welcome input on this, especially when it comes to something I’ve left off, which will probably be because I just haven’t experienced it yet.)
“San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.” -Jefferson Airplane
50. Apartments come stocked with dishwashers. Not necessary, but very convenient.
49. It’s easy to avoid Starbucks and patronize independent coffee shops. (But it’s also easy to find a Starbucks if you need that peppermint white mocha.)
48. The carousel at the San Francisco Zoo.
47. There is always someone crazier than you. Always.
46. The view from the Golden Gate Bridge.
45. The many views of the Golden Gate Bridge.
44. Cable cars: the city’s moving landmarks.
43. Driving around the city and realizing you’re on the street where Full House was filmed…or Mrs. Doubtfire…or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You know, any of your childhood favorites.
42. You don’t have to be a kid to love the Exploratorium.
41. Or, for that matter, the California Academy of Sciences.
40. That sense of superiority when you get to tell someone, “Don’t call it ‘Frisco.’”
39. Because the city is not strictly a grid, the feeling when you conquer the streets of San Francisco is one of invincibility! You are now unstoppable!
38. I’ve never seen curved escalators anywhere else besides Westfield Mall.
37. Some people are into tea. Those people love Lovejoys in Noe Valley.
36. “It’s an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world.” -Oscar Wilde
35. I’d rather have a spider or two in the corner, than a kitchen full of roaches (yuck).
34. Just south of San Francisco is Colma, where dead people outnumber the living.
33. Watching the fog creep in. You know it’s ruining the sunny day but you can’t stop watching.
32. Baker Beach (under the Golden Gate Bridge) is “frequented by clothing-optional sunbathers.” Our very own nude beach, so close to home!
31. Napa Valley and its myriad vineyards and tasting rooms are but a short car trip away.
30. The Crème Brûlée Cart: food always tastes better when you’ve had to hunt it down.
29. The other day, I saw a homeless man with a cat carrier. And he opened the door and a chicken walked out. And the chicken was on a leash and pecked in the grass while he smoked a cigarette. This was at 8:30 in the morning, and set the tone for the rest of my day: bizarre and wonderful.
28. Spending a summer afternoon browsing the boutiques. Even if you don’t spend anything.
27. There are streets, where you can look up, and even though you’re within the city limits, you’d never guess it.
26. On paper, it sounds kind of pathetic to take a number and wait in line for a half hour for an ice cream cone. Yet at Mitchell’s it’s worth it.
25. Descending into SFO through the fog and over the water…always takes my breath away for a second.
24. You gotta love friendly small talk with your Target cashier.
23. Checking out the pre-Broadway runs of shows that will be Tony winners in just a few years. Oh, to be able to say, “I saw it when.”
22. The Stairway Walks.
21. How many cities have built their own island, just for entertainment purposes?
20. The Giants winning the World Series – if you were in the city that night, you really felt like part of a 1,000,000-person family.
19. Can’t afford tickets to the SF Opera? No problem. They perform for free in Golden Gate Park, and simulcast certain operas to the big screen in AT&T Park.
18. Who needs Missed Connections? We’re not afraid to just talk to each other.
17. Visit the Dickens Faire at the Cow Palace in December, to get your 19th-century-London fix.
16. Sourdough bread is everywhere. Often scooped out, with soup in the middle.
15. If someone says, “How are the reviews for that show?” a valid answer is, “The little man is sitting up straight and clapping.”
14. If you don’t mind battling the tourists…a hot fudge sundae at Ghirardelli Square sure hits the spot.
13. San Francisco is like a thumbnail version of all the things that are awesome about the state of California.
12. Having the choice between taking public transit or driving yourself. San Franciscans love choice. You might even say we’re pro-choice.
11. Even the homeless people are friendly. San Francisco has some of the most polite homeless people ever.
10. You gotta give this city bonus points for springing up on those crazy hills.
9. I love me some shopping in Union Square. Especially at Christmas time!
8. The BART platforms have marks on the ground where the doors will line up. Make prewalking even easier.
7. Right across the Golden Gate Bridge from the bustling city, you can visit ancient, immense sequoias in Muir Woods.
6. This week, State Sen. Mark Leno introduced legislation that would require history classes to teach LGBT history, in an effort to increase awareness and thus reduce bullying.
5. 60 degrees year round, with a week of summer and a week of winter. Just enough time to enjoy the heat or the rain, and then back to regularly scheduled programming.
4. Drinks and dancing in the Castro.
3. After the 1906 earthquake and fire, Jack London said, “San Francisco is gone.” Well, we certainly proved him wrong. We are a resilient city of tenacious people.
2. I mean…I’m here. : )
1. In fact, lots of people leave the Bay Area…but lots of people come back home. There must be a reason why. I suppose it’s because it’s awesome!
Outside of my apartment building, in the front (the prime parking area), there are 8 parking spots. If those are full you have to go all the way around the side (which is all of 30 seconds further away). In the prime parking area, one of the spots is twice as long as the other spots – allowing you to park two cars in it. The person who holds this parking spot is guaranteed room for an extra car, plus the assigned parking spot that comes with your rent.
For the past 6 weeks or so, that spot has been held by the same trio of cars. For the first 4 weeks, it was a mini-SUV parked there that never moved, while a silver car that was always unlocked and a pale green car rotated parking behind it. This irked me, as I thought that it was greedy. Also, the fact that they have three cars, all with parking permits, means that there’s no way they live in a 1-bedroom apartment, and all of the apartments in our building (all 6 of them) are 1-bedrooms. Also, I sort of know everyone in our building (5 occupied units and 1 unoccupied) and I’m 98% sure that that trio of cars doesn’t belong to anyone in Bldg K.
One night, the complex’s security people came around and tagged all the cars without permits, warning them that they would be towed. They do this every so often. The mini SUV and the silver unlocked car were okay, but the pale green car had an orange sticker on the driver’s side window. Delighted, I read the sticker (nosey!). The car had a permit, but the registration was expired!
The next day I noticed that the SUV was gone, and the pale green car was now parked in the front of the spot, reversed in, and pulled all the way up to the fence. No one will spot its expired registration now! That day I burst in the door after work, saying, “The mystery deepens!” I googled the car’s license plate and nothing came up. (I was secretly hoping I would find out that they were villains, and then I wouldn’t have any problems reporting them to the office.)
The pale green car hasn’t moved. The silver car comes and goes. The registration remains expired.
I lay awake at night sometimes (only rarely!) going back and forth: Who cares about these cars? I think. Then I think, They can’t just sit in the Big Spot like that, it’s selfish and not sharing. Then I think, Their registration is expired, that’s against the law. Then I think, What if they’re a poor single mother who is just trying to make enough money to feed their children? Then I think, They have three cars, they can’t be that poor. Then I think, Seriously, I need to get a life. Then Drew says, “Parking can’t rule my life. I can’t live like that.”
Then Molly was supposed to come hang out with me on Friday, but she called and said she didn’t want to drive too far because she hadn’t put her new registration on her car yet. I wondered if that was a sign to Do The Right Thing and leave this pale green car alone.
When I realized the registration scam that was being run, I sternly told Drew I was giving them an ultimatum – if there wasn’t an updated registration by Jan 1, I was tattling. Then I thought, Surely they won’t still be sitting in that spot in 3 weeks. But now chances are looking good that that’s exactly what will be going on.
Right at this second, I’m on the “Who cares?” end of the pendulum swing…but I know that can change. I’m just curious…WWYD?
Update 12/14: Well, thanks for your votes, guys, I’m glad I know I can trust you to tell me the truth.
On that note, Drew got home before me today and he called to tell me the good news. “I’m parked somewhere that will make you very happy.” I shrieked with joy (in the middle of Target) and we gleefully debated whether the pale green car had been towed, without any anonymous note from me. Hence, no bad karma! (Or should I say carma? I couldn’t resist.)
I think there’s an epidemic afoot.
Yesterday, two of my best friends each brought up the same concern: a feeling of failure or being tried and found wanting, compared to other people of our same age and background.
One referred to herself as suffering from the “never enough” syndrome. She suggested that this was the fault of the feminist movement: since now women can “do it all,” now we are required to do it all. (This is actually what Lucinda Coxon’s play Happy Now? is about.)
My other friend just started a chat with me out of nowhere, saying that she needed to get off Facebook because all she could see was high school friends getting engaged and having babies.
They both speculated that maybe Facebook is causing the problems, and maybe the answer is just to stay off of it. (What’s funny is that each of these conversations happened on Facebook. Hm.)
Having two of my best friends bring this up – in the same day, no less – really made me think. After all, who doesn’t Facebook stalk and then envy other people? That’s the great thing about Facebook: the low-key keeping in touch with people. It just means that you get to see every time someone makes good, gets married, has another baby, gets another promotion.
Both friends seemed kind of bleak about it though. Which I get. We’re 26 years old and all three of us feel like we should by all rights have our careers, our relationships, and our lives in order. None of us have managed to go 3 for 3, although none of us is doing too badly. But there are people out there with houses, careers, marriages, kids, dogs, cats, car payments, iPads, vacations, gym memberships, and 14-foot Christmas trees.
They’re not the only friends to ever have this conversation with me, which makes me think that it might be a much more widespread thing (hence the “epidemic”). There’s pressure on us to be amazing, because we’ve been told our whole lives how awesome we are. Then at some point each of us ends up leaving our small pond and realizing that we’re not really the giant fish we thought we were.
I think that one reason that I’m a lot more comfortable with my “ordinary” life, is that during my freshman year of college, I lived in a dorm with a bunch of smart geeks – we’re talking math, physics, computer science, engineering, hella smart geeks. I was one of two English majors in the entire dorm (and the other girl changed majors). So I figured out pretty quick that I wasn’t going to impress everyone anymore.
(This is the part where I tell the story about the guy in college who, while telling me about his plans to get his physics PhD in the next couple years, said to me, “You’re not smart enough to get a PhD in physics…I mean, I’m sure you’re smart in English or whatever.” We did not end up dating. It may have had something to do with that conversation.)
So I’m not having to learn, post-college, that I’m not a unique and perfect extraordinary snowflake. I figured that out already, and I know how to own it and be happy even if I’m not rich or famous. I think all my friends who are learning that now are having a harder time with it.
The funny thing is that I have a pretty healthy level of self-esteem. I know I’m pretty cool, and I know that if we hadn’t gone to New York for 3 years, I could have set up a career for myself in California by this time. But the time out there, and my adventures and experiences, were totally worth it to me. I also would rather spend the extra years scraping it together now, while I’m still only 26, than be trotting along in my mid-30s and have everything suddenly swept out from under me.
Both my girlfriends are the same way. They’ve each had kind of a bumpy time since college, with graduate schools and moves and relocations and other graduate programs. Give us a few years and we’ll all have things figured out…or at least more figured out than they are now.
In the meantime, I told each of them, maybe staying off Facebook is a good idea if it’s bothering you so much. But what’s even more fun (and doesn’t require limiting your social networking) is just to practice making fun of other people instead of envying them. Hey, I too stalk other people’s pictures and feel jealous of how pretty they look or how nice their vacation was or how big their new house is. But the percentage of people I envy is only, like, 25. The other 75% of people on Facebook is just begging to be mocked.
Where I work there’s a series of volunteer front-desk greeters (they might not actually be volunteers, but in my head they’re the people who made it through the volunteer usher boot camp and this is their reward). Weeks ago as I was leaving work, I happened to glance at the computer screen that one of these women was using, and I couldn’t help but notice she was on the Yelp page for the Make Out Room, which is a club in the Mission. I found this hysterical.
This week I just happened to glance at the screen again…and she’s now on a website listing sex offenders. I know it might not be a funny story…but that’s still kinda funny, right?
I just love these things…
The Cameraphone Diaries 
