Category: Awesome

Categories
"Other people" Awesome

Thanks, LJ

I am going through my old LiveJournal and saving the good pieces, since it’s really my only reliable journal from the New York Years. I’ve done 2009 and 2008, so tonight I’m working on 2007.

This little gem is from May 21st, 2007…hard to believe it’s already been four years. And so much has happened.

There’s a guy outside, right on the end of the block, warming up on bagpipes…or something.  He’s just standing outside of this hair salon, wearing jeans and a fleece, playing little pieces like he’s getting ready to go onstage somewhere.  At first I thought it was on TV.  It’s sort of beautiful.  I opened the window.

Categories
Awesome Drew

My crazy Saturday night

Today’s just been one wild party. It started with a visit to the Embarcadero farmer’s market, which is gigantic and awesome. We shopped for fruit, bread, and honey. The fruit is mostly for a salad we’re making for tomorrow night, when we’re having dinner with Drew’s parents, brother and sister-in-law. I expect it will be over the top and full of high jinks.

Then we upped the stakes by going to a matinee of Bridesmaids, using a gift card we got at Christmas. Afterwards we felt really revved up so we came home and washed dishes, and then made dinner: angel hair pasta with garlic, shrimp, asparagus, and mushrooms.

While we ate dinner we channel surfed, because we’re too young and unpredictable to commit to just one channel. Afterwards we broke out the board game Ticket to Ride, which is awesome. We played one game, and then decided for the second time through that we would each take twice as many pieces, so the game would last longer.

Now that we’ve cleaned up the game and are settling down from our wild and crazy Saturday, I just mixed up some chocolate milk and I’m stretching out in my snowman pajamas. Good thing we still have tomorrow to recover from today.

It’s been a really great Saturday. I wouldn’t trade a day like this. And I don’t care what that says about me. =P

Categories
"Other people" Awesome Dreams Friends Memoir

Dinusoars

One amazing thing about the internet is that you can put yourself out there for all to see. Then they all can look at you and pass you on to their friends. Their friends can also like you and pass you on. This is all free. The internet provides great opportunities for marketing and promoting yourself. However, when it comes time to get paid for things…not so easy.

For instance, I have started submitting these “guest commentary” pieces to the Lake County Record-Bee. Fun for me, fun for my family to see those words in print, and convenient to submit online. Hopefully some people – even strangers maybe! – will read that, enjoy it, and smile. Then maybe they’ll stop by here to see what else is up. But I’m not making any money off of this, and I’m also not really concerned about tracking where this stuff ends up.

The people who post the giant, bolded “copyright” text at the bottom of all of their blog columns…it just makes me roll my eyes. If someone wants to steal something from here and post it elsewhere, well, then I’ll deal with that when it happens. Until then, I can only dream of my biggest problem being that too many people are interested in what I’m saying.

The now-infamous Jonathan Amores is, in fact, dealing with too many people liking his work. When Jonathan took his hipstamatic photo at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, he never dreamed that one day, hipsters and yuppies all over the internet would be enjoying it…teal wash and all.

Jonathan’s photo somehow made it onto Reddit, Sad and Useless, and also The Daily What. All without his knowledge or effort. Also, unfortunately, without his name attached to any of it. The glories and the pitfalls of the internet.

But I’m here to set the record straight.

PS. This is a really great photo, I totally see how it spread all over the internet. Props, jamores!

Categories
Awesome Beauty Drew Exercise Nature

Waterfall Loop, San Pedro Point

I had a busy, cool weekend.
 
First, I went and cut off a bunch of my hair. Yeah, I’ve had those “It’s REALLY short” second thoughts, but overall, I think I’m happy with it.
carnage

Last night I made stuffed bell peppers for dinner. Yum.

Today Drew and I went hiking at San Pedro Point. He assured me it wasn’t “hard,” “terrible,” or anything like that. Then halfway through he apparently recanted. The words “I think I might be dying” may or may not have been uttered.

But it was a beautiful day and a great hike. Totally worth it. Maybe next time, if it’s that warm, I won’t wear jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.

At the top of the trail is a bench where you can sit and look at Pacifica and the ocean. There were three young, fit kids sitting on that bench. They noted our arrival, and then ignored us and kept passing around a pair of binoculars, while we panted behind them. Teenagers…psshh.

Then, without even having had a rest, we set off back down the other side of the mountain.

Going downhill is MUCH easier, and I talked most of the time down, about anything and everything that crossed my mind. Sometimes I think that’s why Drew takes me on these hikes – on the way up, I conserve my breath for getting oxygen to my muscles, so I can’t talk. But when the going gets easier…I don’t shut up.

Apparently this is a 2.2 mile loop, with an elevation of 200-840 feet. I think it took us a little less than an hour and a half. A totally fun and joyful way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

Categories
Awesome Endings

April’s End

Accomplishments from this week (based on the goals I set myself):

1. Go to the gym 4 times   I’ve gone 3 times this week. I’ll go tomorrow.

2. Finish Script Frenzy  Yay!

3. I want to start tracking on Weight Watchers online again.  Well…I tracked things. But I left plenty of room for improvement next week. On purpose.

4. Finish and submit a second guest commentary thing. Topic: How hard I think it would be to actually find a hidden duffel bag full of money in a strange house. Stay tuned.

So glad that April is basically done! Tomorrow will be a nice little normal domestic day, grocery shopping and watching Weeds Season 6. Can’t wait.

Categories
Awesome Beginnings Being a girl Drew Nonfiction

Female Driver

New Year’s Resolutions I have accomplished:

     – Get off unemployment
     – Get a real job
     – Submit at least one play to the Samuel French OOB Festival
And now!
     – Submit a “guest commentary” piece to my hometown paper

This isn’t my first appearance in the Record-Bee: In 8th grade I was the school “historian,” and wrote a little weekly piece about what was going on at the school.  Around Christmas I apparently got bored of seeing my name in print, and I started writing under the pen name Ginger Brett.  I had completely forgotten about this until I was going through some old stuff and found the clippings.  But if there was any doubt, the writing is undeniably mine…you can take that however you want.

I was the historian again during my senior year of high school, when my most noticeable column was about the end-of-the-year school trip that a bunch of the seniors were taking to Mexico.  I casually and thoughtlessly said something about how the drinking age in Mexico is 18 and I wondered whether the parents of all those students had thought of that yet. The next day I was accosted in the halls by tearful girls from the soccer team saying I ruined their senior trip.  I spent the whole morning waiting to be called to the principal’s office and reprimanded.

Now I realize that those girls may have overreacted, just slightly.

My latest column will hopefully not offend anyone. It will be printed in tomorrow’s paper (yes, I asked my parents to save me one), and it’s already available online.  But for your viewing convenience, it’s also right here.

===

FEMALE DRIVER

“I don’t think I’ve ridden in the car with you driving in a long time,” my husband Drew remarked casually the other day on a middle-of-the-day trip to Target.  And it was true; usually whenever we go anywhere I make him drive.  I like sitting in the passenger seat and commenting on things out the window, and I also like not feeling judged for my driving.  Not that he would do that to me.

But I have seen his foot touch the imaginary brake pedal on his side of the car, plenty of times.

“You’re right,” I said, “it has been a while.”

“I forgot how fast you drive.”

What?!  I don’t drive fast.  I drive the speed limit – particularly in places where the speed limit is 35, it kills me to watch those cars all cruise along at 30, all in their individual lanes, not giving me a chance to go around them.  Don’t they know the light’s going to the change and we’re all going to get stuck behind a 4-wheeler?

I put on my left blinker and try to move over so I can turn, but the crazy driver behind me seems intent on edging me out.  I speed up a little and manage to squeeze in.

“Just promise me,” he said, as we turned into the Target parking lot and were faced with 4 speed bumps, “that one day when you have a car seat and a baby in the back seat, you’ll take the speed bumps more gently.”

“Like this?” I asked, slowing to a complete stop in front of one and then very, very carefully guiding the front wheels over, and then the back wheels, both pairs in perfect harmony, and landing back on the ground with barely a thump.  The way I’ve watched the cars in our apartment complex do it when I’m sitting behind them, urging them to “Go, please, just go!”

“Yeah, like that,” he said.  “That’s actually the way people do it when they care about their car.”

Well, I care about my car!  I have been through a lot with this car – it was my first car, I got it for my senior year of high school, and it’s waited for me all the times I’ve been away: my first year of college when we weren’t allowed to have cars, and the three years we lived in New York when it made zero sense to have a car.  Always patiently waiting behind…and then allowing me to drive it the way I drive it when I come home.

On second thought, maybe it’s not patiently waiting.  Maybe it just keeps thinking (hoping?) that this might be the time I don’t come back.

I love you, car.  And I promise to treat you better.

I fulfill the first part of my promise when I finally – finally! – get around to asking Chuck, my father-in-law, to help me with putting on the new windshield wipers my brother gave me for Christmas, and to change the rear left turn signal, which I’ve noticed has been out.

(For how long?  Surely that’s the reason I’ve noticed drivers reluctant to let me merge left.  They weren’t the unrelenting jerks – I was the non-signaling lane-changer.  Sheepish, I tried extra hard to leave lots of room when I merged, between the moment I figured out the problem and the moment I got the light bulb changed.)

When Chuck pulled out the bulb he turned it toward me so I could see how black it was.  “Been out for a long time, hasn’t it?” he asked.

“Um…”  I’m divided between what’s a worse answer, “Yes, quite a while” or “I have no idea.”  I settle for “I guess so.”

He’s very nonjudgmental though, and the rest of the bulb changing passes without incident.  And now I have 4 functioning blinkers and windshield wipers that actually clear everything off the glass, instead of leaving two streaks across my vision.  Which is nice.

Actually, now that that’s done, it’ll probably stop raining in the Bay Area.  When this week brings spring and sunny weather, you can thank me!  And Chuck of course.

Categories
Awesome Dreams Drew

A grandiose celebration

I’ve been edging up on 10,000 views total over the life of this blog.  Well, actually, when I say I have been edging up on it, I mean I was at like 8500 and starting to think about what I wanted to do to celebrate 10,000.  I figured I should do something, I mean, that’s an accomplishment.

Me: I’m almost to 10,000 total views.
Drew: Wow!
Me: Calm down now. How many of them are you?
Drew: About half.

Nevertheless, I really was planning a party, like when you hit the 100th day of the school year in kindergarten, and all day is counting to 100, 10 sets of 10, and m&ms.  That’s how I remember it, at least.

Then this silly Guess Who? post got Freshly Pressed (yay!) and the count started climbing, and I didn’t even have time to plan anything.  Then I sat here with the page on 9,992, hitting refresh and waiting to see 10,000.  Then I got distracted by Facebook or some such nonsense and when I clicked back I had missed it entirely.

Not that I’m complaining about ANY of this, I’m just explaining why the party will be less anticipated and more hastily thrown together.  Like when your birthday’s on a Wednesday and your party is the Saturday after.  Just not the same.

I can definitely put something together for 25,000 views.  Start planning now.  What do you guys say?

Categories
Awesome Children Drew Endings

The Mystery Face Game

 

Drew has this old Guess Who? game that we used to pull out whenever we were home from New York and killing time at his parents’ house. They finally sent it back to our apartment with us today, in the last box of his old stuff, and so we sat down to play a game.

But it’s too easy.  I mean, the game is for 6-year-olds, and the box suggests questions like, “Does your person wear glasses?” and “Does your person have blue eyes?”  Which…I thought you’re supposed to ask second-person questions?  “Do you have a hat on?” and “Do you look like an escaped convict?”

So in the past, in order to give the game an extra twist, we’ve restricted questions about gender, and anything to do with color.  But the game still lasts all of about 4 turns each, or about 60 seconds.

So today we started a new rule: Only questions about their occupations. 

We played three games this way, and it does take longer. 
1) You have to study all the faces you have left and come up with a good occupation that would help you narrow it down: “Are you in fashion?” 
2) Then you have to interpret the other player’s response: “Um…yeah? Yeah, I guess so” is a very different response from, “OMG yes.” 
3) Then you have to apply that response to all the faces, and use your best judgment whether or not to flip that little person down.

It was actually much harder than regular Guess Who?  In fact, no one won any of the three games we played.  Every game ended something like:

“Are you Sam?”
“No!  I’m Max!”
“What??  Oh, I guess Max might be a waiter.”
This was our Guess Who? swansong, because Drew is going to donate the game to his work.  But I did like the 10 minutes of fun it provided this afternoon!
Categories
Awesome Drew

Judie’s Cross Stitch Designs

Drew always has the best ideas.

Also, I never knew you could just download free fonts.

Categories
"Other people" Awesome Books Memoir Sentiment Theatre Work

“I always wanted to be an expert at something.”

This morning I was thwarted – again – from getting my iced latte.  As I pulled up and parked in front of Starbucks (you park perpendicular), I watched this guy track in front of my car and then wait there for me.  I’ve seen him outside of Starbucks before* and he’s asked for money, and I’ve given it to him, but I wasn’t feeling it today.  I killed some time sitting in the car, avoiding making eye contact (easy because the visor was flipped down), putting on mascara and whatever.  Someone parked next to me, and he tracked in front of their car and asked for a dollar.  After a minute or so of debate I decided I didn’t really want to deal with this – I had $4 in cash, enough for a drink, not enough for a handout; I didn’t want to have to use a credit card so I could save him a dollar; etc. – and I just started the car back up and pulled out and went to work.  I drank my VitaminWater Zero and was sort of satisfied.

But tomorrow?  No one is standing between me and that iced latte.

(*One big difference between Mill Valley and Menlo Park/East Palo Alto…I liked the bourgeois atmosphere in MV.  I miss that.  Also it was so much easier to just “run out and grab some dinner” – at TW that involves getting in a car, and sometimes on the freeway, if you don’t have a hankering for Togo’s, Jack in the Box, or something from the Extra Mile, also known as Chevron.)

Tonight I worked front of house at Snow Falling on Cedars.  I was there partly for Patron Services, and indeed there were a few people who had tickets for the wrong night, or the wrong show (the curse of overlapping shows in different theatres).  I was there also to sell subscriptions and subscription renewals, which mostly entailed me sitting behind a counter smiling at people and telepathically instructing them to come renew their subscriptions.  I had two bites early on, and then another two bites, and I was like, “Yeah, four sub renewals!  That’s awesome!  Last night the person working got ONE.”  (No judgment, I know it’s all about the patrons there that night.)

Then the first act started and I got a sandwich, and I was going to read but instead I listened to Sarah and Vinnie because I’m still a week behind.  Then intermission happened and I majorly lucked out – a group was there and SIX of them wanted to renew their individual subs.  So there I was, filling out forms right and left and collecting credit card numbers.  Ten renewal forms altogether!  I’m pretty stoked.

So, the second act started and I’m half-planning on going down the street to the Starbucks, which I’m pretty sure is closed by now (when I get hooked on something it’s hard to let up).

Then this usher, Judie, starts talking to me.

[I just realized I totally slip into present-tense whenever I’m telling stories.  I’m constantly going back in my writing and just changing the beginning to present tense to keep it all consistent.  But whatever, it’s almost midnight and I don’t care right now.]

So Judie the usher starts talking to me, and then the second act of the show just slips away.  Because she is just talking and telling stories about growing up, and how she moved all the time because her father was a furrier and kept opening up new stores and getting them on their feet.

You know when you’re talking to someone and you’re just wishing you had a tape recorder?  I would have settled for a nice subtle way to take notes.  But there was no way.  For the next hour she and I just talked – I don’t want to imply that she talked the whole time, but she definitely held up the conversation.  But it was all stuff about how she worked as a shill at a carnival when she was a teenager…how she married her husband after 12 days…her college roommate asking her in a letter before they even met, “Who did your nose?”  She’s Jewish but she doesn’t “look Jewish.”

One day her mom met the rabbi in the street and the rabbi said, “Goldie, I didn’t see you in service this week,” and her mother replied, “That’s right Rabbi, you didn’t see me because I wasn’t there.”  …I mean, is she stealing that line from somewhere?

I just kept thinking, Judie, you should write a book.  She just had all these stories, but more than that, she told them really well.  Like, insanely well.  (One might say, as well as a certain famous Jewish writer?  She did remind me of him.)

OMG, Judie, I hope you come across this blog in the universe, and I hope you read it.  If you do, do you want to dictate all your stories to me and I’ll write them down?  I mean, you probably don’t even need me, your delivery is amazing and you clearly know how to tell a story, but I’d still love to be involved.  Thanks for saving me from spending yet another $4 on coffee I don’t need, as well as keeping me entertained for an hour.

I’m sure I’ll see her again – it sounds like she ushers all the time for TW.  So our paths will cross.  And I’m actually kind of excited for that.  (This is the first time, in all my theatre experience, that I’ve said that about an usher.)

Here’s to Judie!

(And also: more info about Snow Falling on Cedars here)