hey y’all!

Well, unfortunately, I’m a student now. I was planning on just plugging along, being a personal trainer, blogging like whoa.

Alas, I’m at a real school now. It’s only two weeks in and I can tell that I’m going to be much busier than I’d anticipated.

So. More decisions.

I’ll always have the knowledge and the study materials should I ever need to pursue PT in the future. However, now, I need a job that doesn’t involve record keeping, getting up at 4a.m., and that doesn’t use quite so large a percentage of my brain. It took some soul searching, but I’m comfortable with the decision. I can always chose to go in that direction in the future.

I have moved this blog over to BurnMyBiscuits, where I think it will stay. I get WAY more traffic here anyway (probably due to the frequency of my posts), so if this content is what you guys are after, THIS CONTENT, WHATEVER THAT IS, IS WHAT YOU’LL GET. Plus, I can have more fun on a .com than I can here, so I’m excited. I’m still in the process of updating all the links on the new site and polishing it up, so be gentle. For now, it works.

I will still post workout advice and recipes as I see fit. And please don’t stop asking me questions, because I still love helping and answering. But, for now, it’s easier for me to spew out a few hundred words about what I did today than to present balanced, factual articles that require references and whatnot.

Please update your bookmarks/links accordingly, and I WILL SEE YOU OVER THERE.

MWAH.

POLL

My mom hates my hair dark. I love it. Also, it’s extremely close to my natural color WHICH GENETICS AND GOD teamed up to decide I should have. Not that I am trying to sway your opinion in any way.

What do you guys think? This is very important, so please leave your answers in the comments. Thanks!

my serious face, let me show you it

-OR-

getting schooled

So it’s been brought to my attention that I’m a pretty negative person.

That said, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you that I love love love my classes/being a student again.

I’m not too crazy about French, but that’s only because it’s hard to jumpstart my synapses enough by 8 a.m. to speak a language I haven’t been comfortable with since 2002. But the professor is adorable – she giggles at all of our sloppy attempts at her native tongue, and never makes us feel retarded for all the butchering. The assignments are trite, but hey, you have to dumb things down a bit when you’re not familiar with the lexicon/vernacular.

Public Speaking rocks. I know there aren’t a lot of people who think that, but I’ve taken it before (sort of), and growing up as a performer, I’ve never been afraid of being on stage in a room full of people. In fact, I really enjoy it. My first day of the class was today, and she immediately made me get up in front of the room and answer a slew of questions about myself, and it was fun. I got to go on at length about my nerdiness, my dog, the places I’ve lived… and I think people were pretty entertained by me. I look forward to giving speeches – especially since the assignments are things like “Craigslist Credibility”, and “The first and last time you’ll ever cite wikipedia in class”, which is a speech about anything I so choose to learn on wiki (oh the possibilities), etc. It sounds so fun. And this is how she takes roll: Tell me your favorite breakfast cereal (etc). Then she calls your name and you have to give your favorite breakfast cereal. It rocks, truly. The professor should have been a model – she’s taller than me, she’s a beanpole, she’s got the most atypically gorgeous face I’ve ever seen – CHEEKBONES LIKE STARING INTO THE FACE OF THE BABY JESUS, as if she was chisled from marble – and she’s funny and talkative and I like her a whole lot. I can’t wait to post all my ridiculous speeches here.

As for my psych classes, I’m taking biopsych and child development, which is trippy because they’re polar opposites of one another. One is telling me that there’s a gene for my alcoholism, the other is telling me it’s my mother’s fault. Well, I’m kidding about that last part, but truly, they contradict each other 100%. In fact, I think the profs have a little rivalry going. My CD prof will say something like “Dr. [redacted] would say that this is heredity, but in this class we believe it comes about developmentally.” It’s fun to learn both ideas simultaneously.

And all around, I love thinking critically and writing papers and all that garbage. It’s a little annoying being so much older/having so much more life experience than everyone else, because I’m finding it a bit hard to relate to all these kids. (I heard one girl complaining about getting discriminated against because she’s too blonde and pretty [poor thing]. While I believe that assumptions are made about her, I think it might also have something to do with the fact that her outfit costs more than my couch, her makeup is so caked on she looks like a clown, she says ‘like’ 5 times in every sentence, and she’s only 17.)

I’m SO busy, too. I have no idea how I used to go to school full time AND work full time, but suddenly I’m amazed that my GPA was as high as 3.2 instead of embarrassed by it. I’m sitting outside of the laundromat with my dog writing this, and it’s the first free non-homework hour I’ve had in a week. Except for last weekend, which I guess is part of the reason I was so hellaciously busy last week.

One of the homeless kids has a crush on me. He’s always asking me why I never call him and today he complimented my freckles. Now we chat every time I pass and they all know my name and my dog’s name. They’re all really witty and funny, and they harass me with sarcastic comments as I walk by instead of asking me for change, which I like much better. I keep getting the urge to bake them cookies and bring them PBJ sammiches, only I haven’t decided if that’s a good or bad idea yet. All I know is that I kind of like them.

IN OTHER EXTREMELY EXCITING NEWS I had a SURPRISE interview today at a place that I won’t name so that I don’t jinx it. If I get the job I REALLY WANT THE JOB I will tell you the whole story. PLEASE DIRECT ALL YOUR GOOD KARMA WESTWARD THANK YOU.

CHEGG IT

Am I the last college student on Earth to learn about Chegg.com? Because, holy shit Eileen, you changed my life. I just got a $126 textbook for $11.99.

I’ve been out of the loop too long.

In other news, I miss my dog. And I think he misses me, too.

Outside Lands

I won’t bore you with the minutiae of every single band I saw over the last three days at Outside Lands. However, I WILL give a few honorable mentions of some bands I think are worth checking out if you’ve never heard of them. I don’t pretend to know anything about anything when it comes to music, these are just my observations.

DAY ONE

Los Campesinos!, The Dodos, Incubus, Tom Jones, Pearl Jam, Q-tip, Silversun Pickups

Los Campesinos!

These dudes were more than I expected.

Their music is so punky and frenetic and it uses so many weird instruments and sounds that I wasn’t sure how it was going to come off live. All I knew going in was that I was skipping Built to Spill for them (shame on you Outside Lands for putting these two opposite each other), and that they’d better impress me.

Well, they did. Front-man Gareth is so magnetic that you can’t look away from him. His antics are wild and unpredictable, and he truly puts it all out there.

It’s adorable and endearing to watch this fledgling band come into itself. They are all so eager and fresh-faced, while their stage shows are so spontaneous and discombobulated that they almost seem unrehearsed, and it’s a blast to watch. It’s amazing that, while everyone else on stage is focusing like mad and staring at their instruments and each other, presumably to avoid fucking up (and to their credit they didn’t fuck up, that I heard), Gareth can manage to drop percussion mallets off the stage, forget he’s supposed to be up front singing because he’s in the back banging on some part of the drum kit, get the mic chord tangled around equipment and knock stuff over, jump off the stage only to realize it’s too high for him to jump back up leaving the security guard struggling to hoist him up by his belt loops as the song ends without him, run into the crowd, and then try to throw the mic back to the stage but can’t make it and the mic crashes to the ground….

It goes on like that. But those moments were punctuated with instances like him chugging a heineken, eyes skyward, while blindly and expertly hammering away at his xylophone. It was a beautiful debacle. It was exactly as chaotic as it needed to be.

After their set, Gareth came around to meet the fans which was a DELIGHT. He is completely down to Earth, funny, charming. I will love this band forever.

why do i always look retarded in photos with awesome people? it's a law of fucking nature or something.

Album: Hold On Now, Youngster…

Sir Tom Jones

KILLING IT.

I probably don’t have to say much here. He’s legendary, he’s been knighted, and for an almost-septuagenarian, he’s got more machismo and charisma than any asshole a third of his age. If he ever comes near your town, DO IT. Get all your girlfriends, bring a BAG full of underwear (YES EVERYONE STILL THROWS PANTIES), scream the words to every song, put on your disco shoes and dance ’til there are holes in the floor. You’ll know every one of his hits – Delilah, Green Gren Grass of Home, What’s New Pussycat, It’s Not Unusual, Kiss (which you probably know as Prince – “you don’t have to be rich to be my girl…”)… Not to mention that he plays a slew of other great tunes everyone knows BECAUSE HE’S SIR TOM JONES AND HE CAN. Like Three Dog Night’s Mama Told Me (Not to come).

I mean it. Girls with BAGS full of thongs, and every time he mentions sex or women they just start screaming and hurling them. TOO FUN. Plus, even if the audience is mostly blase hipsters, you can find a group of fun people to rock out with. ESPECIALLY DURING DELILAH. Look at how enormous his crowd is! They put him on a little stage, and it got so bottlenecked you couldn’t move. AND it was during Incubus:

DAY TWO

The Dirtbombs, Raphael Saddiq, Dengue Fever, Bat for Lashes, Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band, Black Eyed Peas, Dave Matthews Band, Mars Volta.

The Dirtbombs

I’d never heard them, but I’d heard they rocked pretty hard. And they delivered. And might I add had a pretty epic lightshow for 12:45 in the afternoon.

No but seriously, they’re just enough of everything. Just enough driving blues guitar, just enough weird African drums contrasted by what I call “NoFx drums” during the choruses, just enough punk-rock shout-singing, just enough machismo stage antics (to include gymnast-style high kicks and playing the guitar behind the head), elements of funk, soul, ska… really enjoyable. And their set was all business – song to song, no nonsense. I like that.

At first his mic was WAY too low and it just sounded like he was mumbling, but eventually they replaced it. The first lyrics I heard, to my delight, were, “you’d better look in her eyes, cuz her eyes ain’t talkin’ to you”.

Bat for Lashes

I’d only downloaded her albums a week before the show, so I wasn’t really all that used to her songs yet, but I liked them so far. A reliable source has been screaming about how amazing she is for a while now, so I knew I had to see her set. Well, she blew my fucking head off. Blew it off my shoulders, I have no head. Truly, she was the surprise of the weekend.

They stuck her on a teeny tiny stage, and she was SO much bigger than her surroundings. She had set the stage up with silver garland, wolf tapestry, ravens, and other seemingly weird articles, but somehow it fit perfectly. She came out barefoot wearing an oversized cat t-shirt, a feather headdress, and electric blue leggings, looking like she invented fashion. The atmosphere she presented and the way she moved made it seem as if she was born inside her music – like it created her instead of the other way around. Like she moves inside it, instead of the other way around. She is a waif, but somehow she is so much powerful than her form, and older than her years. Her voice sounds like it has been around for centuries, just floating around and learning. If you close your eyes you can swear you’re listening to Bjork, and her range is just as impressive. Her songs sound melancholy at first listen, but once you see her dance and skip around, you can feel the undercurrent of pure joy. When she spoke, she was so modest and quiet, it was like another person.

I really can’t say enough wonderful things about her. My only negative comment is that she was a WAY pitchy on the high notes, but she kept complaining to the guys stage left about her earpiece, so I think it can safely be blamed on that. Seriously, if you like Bjork, even if you don’t, listen to this girl. Really.

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band

Conor is Conor is Conor. We all miss him being drunk and destructive, but his mellow side is not without it’s charms. I liked his new music better live than I did listening to it at home, but I think it’s because he’s … well, he’s distinctly Conor Oberst. He’s still the only guy who can make me so happy about being so depressed that I’m crying but I don’t know whether it’s because I’m enraptured by the beauty of life or I’m so miserably self-aware that I can’t bear it. And now that he’s sober he can only pull it off live, I guess.

But the reason I mentioned him at all, since I’ve seen him a few times before, is that his special surprise guest was none other than Jenny Lewis! That’s right, of Rilo Kiley fame! I’d never seen her, and they played Portions for Foxes, and baby I’m just bad news bad news bad news. It was great! I love her.

A quick note about The Black-Eyed Peas:

By the time I left Conor Oberst, they were already into their set, so we cheated and ducked inside the Intell tent to watch on the giant screen. We weren’t getting NEAR that stage, and they’re fun and I wanted to watch, even if it was from a tent. So that’s what we did.

And what did I see? This:

Jesus Christ, Fergie, you forgot to get dressed, how embarrassing! I can see ALL YOUR LOVELY LADY LUMPS. They’re like anti-chaps! And the icing? These hideously terrifying creepy child-molester gloves THAT ARE NOT FINGERLESS, BUT ONLY FINGERS:

Wow.

Anyway, moving on.

DAY THREE – Jon Vanderslice, Atmosphere, Dead Weather, Modest Mouse, Ween, M.I.A.

The Dead Weather

I was pretty fucking excited about this band. I have the biggest hard-on for Jack White of anyone you’ve ever met. I can’t put my finger on it, but everything that man does is gold. I’ll spare you the stories and hyperbole, I know I’ve mentioned this before.

So but so, the point is that I was really excited for the Dead Weather. The problem is that Outside Lands decided to put their show on at the same time as Modest Mouse, who I’ve loved for years but always miss seeing on tour. Of course, I had to see MM.

Well, I caught exactly two DW songs before I had to run, and the second happened to be the single, Hang You Up From the Heavens. Granted, I only got to see two songs, but I think I can say that the whole of this band doesn’t *quite* equal the sum of it’s parts. It’s so close to being mind-blowing, but it’s missing something, and I don’t know what it is.

Allison Mosshart (The Kills)’s voice lends itself so well to this sparse, grungy sound. Her voice completely contradicts the tiny pale girl you’re looking at onstage. I’m curious to see where they go.

Modest Mouse

I’ll spare you my lecture on Modest Mouse. This is a huge band for me, I was WAY THE MOST excited for them, they’re amazing and humble and businesslike, and very scientific in the way they perform. Just like I’ve imagined it all these years. They didn’t play Shit Luck, which is, for reasons I’ll never understand, my favorite tune, but they did play Parting of the Sensory, which made me freak out. The crowd ruined this performance a little bit. I felt like everyone was just waiting for M.I.A., and that there were like 12 actual Modest Mouse fans up front. Everyone else was sort of just bobbing up and down and not really interested. I, however, was dancing like crazy and screaming all the words. But whatever. Stupid hipsters go cry when they get hit with the beachball. Ugh.

M.I.A.

Good God, she blew me away. I knew she was gonna be amazing, but I don’t think I was prepared for the kind of energy she brought. It was a long three days of rocking, but somehow she got everyone fired up like she was the first live act they’d ever seen. She threw out BOXES of these horns:

The entire front of the crowd had them – I caught two, alone. Unfortunately they were deafening and if anyone within ten feet was blowing one you couldn’t hear anything happening on stage. But it was STILL SO AWESOME.

The closer for this day was supposed to be The Beastie Boys, but they cancelled when Adam was diagnosed with Cancer, so they got Tenacious D to replace them (really? okay, whatever.). Well, apparently she was sad about this, so she PERFORMED INTERGALACTIC PLANETARY AND SABOTAGE, which, really, almost killed the kids. Alan was afraid (amateur). So intense, and so fun.

And no, I don’t know what she’s wearing.

Overall, the festival was the best weekend ever. At first, I thought “wow, no corporate sponsors except Heineken”, but as the days wore on, I noticed more and more. My only major quarrel was with the scheduling conflicts – I missed Ween, Vanderslice, Built to Spill… they were all on top of each other. There was no way to see everyone. But hey, I guess it happens when you have so many amazing acts in one festival.

The atmosphere was really neat – they had a wine tent, and a tent where you could bring garbage you found on the ground and exchange it for prizes, a vaudeville-style circus tent, puppet shows, SO much fun stuff to do, tons of local art and food, free water refills, solar powered stages… all of it nestled Secret Garden-style in the fields deep within Golden Gate Park. And we could hear the music the whole walk home, right until we hit the traffic.

I really like the way the music scene has catered to our lack of attention span as a generation. Or maybe I don’t, I’m not sure. All I know is that you’re entertained (read: being advertised to) from the moment you enter to the moment the last chord fades away. And maybe it’s a coincidence that there are never any bands playing around 5-6:30? I dunno, seems pretty convenient. But at least at this festival they tried their best to keep the advertising low(er)-key than some other festivals I’ve been to.

I’ve been writing this post in between classes all day, so I’m going to go home and eat food now. Enjoy the rest of my photos!

MY EXCITEMENT FOR DAY 2 LET ME SHOW YOU IT

the crowd for Atmosphere

learnding

well, it starts. Already $500 on books and I have two more classes left to buy for.

Things are surprisingly just as juvenile as I remember them. No cell phones in class or I take them away, even though you have the information in your syllabus I’m going to write it on the board before it’s due, more than four absences will negatively effect your grade…. blah blah blah.

I dunno. Maybe I thought it’d be different.

At least in one of my Psych classes the level of debate is WAY above my head. I guess the material is fresh in their minds… me? not so much. Also the prof always starts sentences with “so, but, so”, which reminds me of Infinite Jest. She has the tightly wound high-pitched energy of a portly kindergarten teacher, and she’s just feminist-leaning enough to drive me bats. “I’m a doctor, but I only make my three brothers call me Doctor.” But the material is super interesting, and I get to stalk a child at a playground and write a paper on it. So that’s cool.

And French. Oh, French. I miraculously tested out of French 1, and French 2 focuses on speaking (as opposed to grammar and writing), which is FAR more terrifying when you haven’t been in a French class since 2001. Bon. Alors, je suis DROWNING ET FAIRE LE VOMIT. The workload for the class is UNREAL.

Other than that, not much to report. Alan stumbled into the best job IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE. He’d dropped off a resume at a local Military Surplus store a few weeks back, and they just had someone graduate and quit. So, they dug through their resume stack and called Alan in TO WORK, cold, without meeting him. He started last week, off the books, making an ABSURD salary for retail getting paid in CASH, and they gave him this week off to “get adjusted” to his school schedule. They were just like, ‘hey call us this week when/if you feel like working. cool! high five!’.

He has the best luck. Me? I finally broke down and called that gym that mixed up my application, and they were kind of like, ‘okay whatever come in tomorrow at four and talk with josh, we’ll see if we can stick you at the front desk.’

Well, I showed up yesterday at 4, and ‘Josh already left’, so maybe try back tomorrow. Never asked my name, never confirmed his calendar, didn’t offer to call him. NOTHING. Which I thought was marginally shady. I may or may not go back today.

I keep deluding myself into thinking that if I just keep my nose clean long enough I’ll stumble into some perfect job across the street like Alan did, but I don’t think I’m going to get that lucky.

So, onward. Internet got pushed back to Thursday IHATEYOUCOMCAST, so updates will be sparse until then. For now? Off to do 6 hours of French homework.

But really its just because i walk a lot.

Know what it is, blog? I’ll tell you.

Sneakers are giving me an identiy crisis. I don’t get to wear pumps or cute flats or shoes designed to make my legs look long and adult and pretty and self-sufficient.

And of course I can’t wear a blazer or nice jacket with them. I have to wear a sweatshirt or I’ll LOOK like im having a mother fucking identity crisis. I have to wear ratty jeans and a sweatshirt because that is the uniform for my station in life. I could wear a goddamned clown suit and nobody would bat an eye.

Ya know what? That’s exacty it. I came home to the mirror and saw the first pair of sneakers I’ve bout since 2005 and thought one thing: REMEMBER WHEN SOMEONE PAYED YOU TO SHOW UP LOOKING OFFICE HOT? REGRESSION.

Suddenly I’m in college again. Which means I’ll have to learn how to drink rum and cokes until I vomit again, and learn I’m half lesbian again, and get fat again, and be suspected of shoplifting everywhere I go again, and have to call my dad for money again, and feel like a cold dark lonely outcast with amazing hair again..

All this from sneakers. Have I mentioned I’m getting my period?

a boring post.

I halfway want to tell you a long, boring story about why I was dropped from all my classes. But I also halfway don’t want to talk about it.

Suffice to say that I’m stuck with the least convenient schedule imaginable w.r.t trying to find a job. It SUCKS OUT LOUD. I won’t tell you which days, INTERNET STALKERS, but I will say that two days a week I only have one class SMACK in the middle of the day, and one day a week I’m there from 8-10, then 3-5, then 6-10. I can’t do anything about it, because I really only need Psych Major classes to finish up, and I have to take them in a certain order. UGH. All the good times are taken because SCHOOL STARTS TUESDAY.

I don’t even want to be a psych major!

Whatever. Hopefully it will just fly by, and it’ll be Christmas before I know it, and nobody will get anything because I’ll never find a job to work around that schedule. Normally what I try to do is cram all my classes into two days a week, then I can go to an employer and say LOOK I HAVE FIVE DAYS COMPLETELY OPEN and I get to work lots of hours.

And as if to add insult to FRANTIC WORRYING, Alan got a call 3 hours ago about a job at a military surplus store. He thought they wanted him to stop by at 3 for an interview. TURNS OUT, they hired him over the phone, and he’s at work as I type this to you, dear readers. Just like that.

But that’s the kind of luck he has. When we were at the Artwalk, some guy came up to him OUT OF NOWHERE and said, “Hey, I was drinking my coffee in a cafe the other day and I saw you come in and drop off a resume. I work at a catering company, and we’re hiring. Email my boss your resume.” And walks off.

I keep waiting for my luck to turn, but even Alan, the world’s last eternal optimist, has conceded that I have the worst luck EVER.

But good, at least one of us will have an income. Also, I got to check out USF’s gym yesterday, and it’s unbelievable. I took some photos, which I’ll probably post on BMB shortly. It’s GORG and amazing and it’s the best $23,000 gym membership ever.

So, I took the opportunity to go buy a pair of comfortable sneakers, because I NEED them. Three of my toes don’t even look like a toes anymore because they’ve blistered so many times. Most days we have nothing to do, we just walk and walk… and all my shoes are A) from payless B) over 3 years old C) converse, which are too narrow for my feet but I can’t seem to stop buying them.

Anyway it’s killing me. This was a NECESSARY PURCHASE. Budget was $50, wound up the only pair they had in my size was $6o, so I bought them anyway, and as soon as I left the store with them I had PANGS of anxiety over spending the money. When I got to the internet cafe I had to sit and breathe.

And now I’m doing more inventory of my house in my head figure out what I can sell to make up the money. Do I have a job yet?

i really need to start school so I can stop thinking

Living here is doing something to me, you guys.

I had a really hectic day dealing with the school – as of this morning I was unregistered (deregistered, really), and class starts Tuesday. So I was panicked. I showed up to orientation anyway, spent 3 hours getting it straightened out, and left without attending any festivities. As I was walking home I started talking to Alan, but he wasn’t there, so I guess I was just talking out loud to myself, which under normal circumstances would be really embarrassing…

But I just laughed. I started giggling and it turned into belly laughs that sent me skipping down the hill back to Haight-Ashbury. Had this de-registration thing happened to me at my old school, I would still be crying.

I’ve begun saying hello to the homeless kids, deliberately. I decided that part of the problem – and the guilt – is that when I pass them and they mumble something about change, I just look away, down, at nothing. I shouldn’t ignore them if I feel guilty because I can’t afford to give them money. I should still exchange greetings, still treat them like people. So, I’ve started saying good morning, complimenting their dogs, making comments about the weather. And they respond without hostility. I’ve made dog-owner friends with one of them. I complimented his pit-mix, and he immediately softened. He told me a story about rescuing the dog that was dripping with sentimentality, and it was beautiful. I let Fry and his dog play while we chatted, and I wondered how often that happens to them. He’s cute, and charming, and in a different life I would have been smitten.

You never know when I’ll be stumbling home drunk. I’d rather them know me.

It also occurred to me recently that we have something in common. They came here for a reason, and just because they’re penniless and unbathed doesn’t change that. They chose this place to be homeless over the whole rest of the world, and I can appreciate that.

And then tonight I went to my market to pick up a pepper and some odds and ends for dinner. I felt completely in touch with the idea that this produce comes from local growers, who are real people supplying me with sustenance. I’m part of a community, instead of isolated from one. I carried my purchases home in my hands, without a bag, because I live around the corner.

Next weekend, when I go to Outside Lands, I will walk there. I’ll bring my dog and a blanket and delight in the music that is happening in my back yard, less than two miles from my front door.

Yes, it is expensive here. Yes, the job market is tight. Yes, the weather is wacky, yes there is fog in the summer, yes there are horrendous, calf-wrecking hills.

But there is also a soft-spoken black man who sits in a folding chair on my corner EVERY day with a typewriter clicking out poems for tourists for change. There is also a couple – one of them plays an accordion and the other a violin, and they spill their guts on Haight Street playing music that kicks any Long Island top 40 cover band’s ass any day of the week. There is also a beach 4 miles away in three directions from where I sit to type this, and most of them can be accessed by bike through the woods. There are also people who will stop to give you directions if they hear you talking on your cell phone about not knowing where something is. There is also a breathtaking school at the tippity-top of the biggest hill that I get to go to every day with my husband who I once worried would never come home from a warzone. There is also a cafe around the corner that has $2 happy hour from 5-10 where I can listen to the Flaming Lips and Bad Religion and what is basically my iTunes on shuffle while I type these blogs with their front picture windows wide open, unapologetically showcasing the splendor and filth that is Haight Street.

I can’t describe the elation I feel every time I leave my apartment, and, more importantly, every time I return to it. Each morning I wake at 7 to a cacophony of yelling and laughter two stories down, and it gives me a momentum that surpasses any rush caffeine could. Little has changed since Louisiana, really. I’m still unemployed, I’m still unsure of what to do about it, and I’m still waiting for everything to start happening. Yet as soon as my eyes open I can’t wait to get out there, see where the day takes me. In Louisiana, the only thing I truly looked forward to day to day was going back to sleep, which I sometimes did at 9p.m.

Now, after dark, I open my front windows as far as I can. Alan grabs a sketchbook and I grab a notebook or paintbrush or something else crafty and we sit, listening to the ubiquitous guitar somewhere, shivering and making crude depictions of this place. I suppose we are trying to capture this feeling, this energy, any way we can.

I failed at this when I lived in Philadelphia. I was too closed off, too shy, too young. I didn’t understand that I could just… go. I could just go out there and walk and enjoy the city around me, and that I’d absorb the city like a sponge, and it would become part of my makeup like The Simpsons or Algebra or how I order my coffee. I was terrified or depressed all the time, and I realize now how much I missed out.

/pensiveness.

and here we go again

gaudy

Up

danger

i can’t stop taking pictures of my school

this is where my mouse, Intrepid Reporter Anderson Cooper, lives.

lavender

arabic coffee... YUM

baba gAMAZING

spooky

belly dancers!

twirling. always twirling.

The Shah's Harem

popeye

mood lighting

furries

sic

Ng Ka Py - DO NOT WANT

Queen of MY hearts!

when in Chinatown..

The Fry, fresh from the Pacific

Ian and Cyn!

from the top

There we were...

ohwow

SAKESAKESAKE

whoa

send me stationery to make me horny

by some miracle of God, ladies and gentlemen, I will be attending this music and arts festival in Golden Gate Park next weekend.

The VA Hospital is, for some cosmic reason, giving my husband two free passes. I don’t know yet if they’re 3-day passes or 1-day passes, because he’s picking them up right now. All I know is that all week I’ve been inventorying my house deciding what I can sell to get into this festival (I mean, do we really need a couch?), and now I get to go FOR FREE.

Thanks, Army, for finally paying off bigger than 2 bucks off a movie ticket.

Becca, I will scream extra hard at DMB for you, even though I can’tfuckingstomach them since I was 16.

Sean, I will try to flirt with Bats for Lashes for you.

AND OMFG I’VE NEVER SEEN MODEST MOUSE I can’t believe I’m going to see Modest Mouse. And Los Campesinos. Wow.

But no really he is.

Alan’s applying for on campus jobs, and one professor emailed him a few questions to answer to narrow down his search. One was “what skills seperate you from other candidates?”

Like a good little soldier, he listed all the attributes: detail oriented, plays well with others, blah blah.

So I says: All true, but it really doesn’t make you stand out. I usually include some random tidbit or joke in there that makes me seem likeable or interesting. Also it should be relevant to the job so they can tell you take things seriously. Or, you could just say, “I’m a cross between Rambo and Mister Rogers.”

What does he do? Deletes the whole paragraph and writes the Rambo meets Mister Rogers bit AND CLICKS SEND.

Sigh.

I miss my couch.

Well well well. I’m pretty sure this is the longest I’ve ever gone without a post. Shame on me! I’m slapping my hand for you, dear readers.

Honestly, I haven’t seen the internet (save my odd phone update to twitter) since Wednesday. While I’ve managed to avoid keeling over dead from facebook withdrawals, I have finally put my foot down. We are getting internet in the apartment by the week’s end. The killer was yesterday afternoon when I slumped my sickly bedraggled form to the cafe down the street and bought a $15 meal only to discover that the internet was spotty and slow. I could barely get onto my email long enough to see that I had 167 items in my spam folder. Terrible.

Have I mentioned this cold? Carolyn, my sweet, seems to have brought it all the way from New York for me and Alan to share. As I sit here in the library shivering and sweating with snot running down my nose, I remember her visit fondly.

Actually this weekend involved NLT 6 visitors — 11 if you count number 6’s family. It’s feast or famine over here! I can’t even begin to describe how wonderful it was to be surrounded by all our old friends.

It started Wednesday afternoon with Ian and Cyn, my favoritest couple, who are old friends from my Borders days. Which pretty much all my friends are. We spent the night cafe hopping and laughing, and it was so wonderful I could hardly stand it. Cyn is a fellow food nerd, so go read her blog and love her as much as I do.

Thursday started with me giving them the boot immediately after pancakes so we could get lunch with Alan’s Grandparents, who he hasn’t seen in ten years and I’ve never met. Why, you ask? Because they live in an RV traveling around the country, which would be my ideal vision of my own future if only they also solved mysteries. Anyway, we lead them through a pleasant walking tour of golden gate park in the beautiful weather, and then enjoyed a few beers and a pub lunch. It was great to finally meet you both! Especially since you’ve been reading my blog forever, and I was afraid you might have formed a totally awful opinion of me and my shenanigans. I guess if you live in an RV you are probably pretty accepting people.

Thursday night was Carolyn, better known as Jeff’s sister, and the weekend gets blurry from there. Thursday night somehow ended with Alan inviting THE TWO MOST BORING PEOPLE IN SAN FRANCISCO to come party at our apartment. Normally I intercept this behavior before it makes it’s way into my living room, but I guess I was too busy hanging out with Carolyn to realize what was going down. Anyway, once they were in my house laying all over my couches with their disgusting feet, drinking my beer, and marveling OVER AND OVER AGAIN at the fact that I own both a cat AND A DOG, I started to realize we’d made a huge mistake.

But of course, it didn’t stop there. Alan called down to a couple girls on the sidewalk, who he insisted come up to our apartment. Well, darwin award to them, because they did. One of them, whose name was isweartogod Guinnevere, talked so much and so loudly that I still have a headache, and the OTHER girl was so tripping balls that I don’t think she realized she even made it indoors. When she came in she did about 3 laps of the apartment, slowly looking inside every room, only to find herself back in the living room asking where the bathroom was. After a chorus of YOU WERE JUST IN IT THREE TIMES, she found it, and disappeared inside for the better part of 40 minutes, leaving us all to take bets as to whether she was showering, stealing my birth control from the medicine cabinet, or taking a quick snooze inside the linen closet. When she emerged, she decided to leave, but forgot what she was doing, and wound up just standing there with my front door open. I had to walk over and shut it for her.

Sometime around 2a.m. I changed into pajamas, announced that everyone had five minutes to get out or I was calling the cops, and I went to bed.

Anyway, Carolyn and I nursed our hangover the next day at the Presidio, lounging in the sunshine and talking about how the only way to make everything more perfect would be for a rainbow to appear and Jesus to rappell down from it, walk across the bay to us, and then turn the whole shebang into wine. Seriously, though. Bubbles blowing, dogs playing, beautiful couples running, kites flying, the cutest boys I’ve ever seen playing soccer shirtless, all basking in the shadow of the golden gate bridge, and looking at the city scape and Alcatraz on the horizon. There aren’t words for how marvelous this place is. Later on, Ian Cyn and Alan showed up with some beer, and we stayed until it got chilly. We ditched the dog at home and headed for sushi, and it was a perfect day.

Saturday was Chinatown, where we purchased porno playing cards for some reason. Then, at a bar stop in Chinatown, Alan pointed to a mystery bottle on the shelf and starting grilling the bartender about it. In her mediocre English, she explained that it was a liquor from Hong Kong, it was 48% by volume, and it was called Ng Ka Py. I had a sip off the top of the shot and all my gums were numb. Shit was serious.

Anyway, we grabbed dinner at my favorite restaurant in San Francisco, Abu Marrakech, where we enjoyed ANOTHER bottle of wine and some belly dancing. Unfortunately, there was a bachelorette party happening, so when the belly dancer called some girls up THEY ALL WENT and it got a little crowded. There was a girl standing next to our table who was built like a cinder block on toothpicks, and in her drunken excitement, she put her stiletto, and by extension all the weight it shakily bore, through the top of my be-flip-flopped foot. I wailed in agony and grabbed my foot with tears in my eyes, and she pretended not to notice and walked away.

Good thing I had that tetanus shot a few months back.

Then, since it was only about 9 after dinner, we headed back to the Haight and went out on the street. Carolyn, Alan and I wound up in a bar playing Asshole with our Porno cards and herding strangers in to play with us. Good times. It’s the most fun drinking game ever. If you’ve never played, do.

It was about Sunday that I resigned myself to the idea that I was no longer “fighting a cold” but “sick”, and it’s been downhill. As I type, my eyes are watering down my face and the librarians are giving my dirty looks because I keep sniffing. I took about 200 photos this weekend, but I’m having trouble uploading them because there are a SHIT TON of people using the internet right now. It might have to wait until tomorrow.

BUT, Sunday night I met our friend Hino and his family down by Fisherman’s Wharf, LIKE A CHAMP, and Alan and I took him and his father out to apparently get way too drunk. I called the night early, after we drove back up to the Haight, because I was literally falling off the bar stool.

I have a couple of BMB blogs coming, too. They’re written, I just need to post them.

It was a fucking amazingly great weekend, you guys. I miss my friends so much that my heart aches, but it’s so refreshing to have them here in this incredible place. I’m having so much drama with the school and Chase loans right now that I might not even be registered for school WHICH STARTS ON MONDAY THAT’S RIGH SEVEN DAYS FROM RIGHT NOW, but I don’t even care enough to complain about it because I AM THE HAPPIEST. I’m confident, for some reason, that it will work itself out.

Oh oh, and news on the job front. How much does this suck for me? I got a call back from a gym I interviewed at saying I was a top candidate! So great wow! Except that they thought I was already ACE certified. Which I am not. And which I explained during the interview.  And I remember the guy’s handwriting was so tiny it looked like a squiggly line, and I thought, “nobody’s going to have any fucking idea about how I did.” Well, I set them straight, and I haven’t heard back since, even though they were hiring for SEVERAL other positions.

So yeah. There I am. Photos tomorrow.

Artwalk in the Haight

Well, we had a relatively calm weekend, much to my inner alcoholic’s chagrin. But we REALLY needed to sift through that mound of shit we’ve just been packing and re-packing and condensing without ever looking at… and we did. On Friday, Alan started about 5 different organizing projects all at once, spread every single item he rightfully owns all over every horizontal surface in the house, and then said LET’S GO FOR A RUN AND THEN AN ARTWALK, leaving yours truly in a neurotic, clutter-induced, anxiety-ridden heap on the bed screaming I CAN’T LIVE LIKE THIS CLUTTER MAKES ME A FAILURE.

I know, I know, therapy shmerapy.

The point is, we got through it all, repackaged it, donated two HUGE army duffel bags worth of crapola, rearranged all the furniture (after I dealt with the reality that I can’t buy ANY furniture, NO not even a little bit, so we have to make the space work with our OWN list, not my WISH list), and now feel generally cleansed and refreshed.

But anyway, we DID go to that Artwalk in the lower Haight on Friday night. It was fabulous. There are SO many galleries and boutiques down there. I feel like every time I walk up or down this street I see five new places I’ve never noticed before, and this was an excuse to drink wine in every single one of them.We brought the dog and everyone loved him, as always, because he’s SO LOVEABLE LOOKING until you realize that if he’s unoccupied for half an hour he eats babies and robs banks and chews completely through all your furniture.

Anyway, the boutiques are UNBELIEVABLY cheap here. I keep walking in and seeing something covetable and thinking “don’t even go over there don’t even look the tag will make you cry”, but boutique shopping here is to-die-for affordable. Skirts for $60, shirts for $20, giant rings for $10, all handmade and designed by local designers at reasonable, H&M style pricing. I can’t wait until I have a little income to throw around and I can support real people instead of faceless corporations raping children in Malaysia.

The larger point about this weekend is that we didn’t leave the house Saturday. At all. And Sunday, we didn’t leave until 5 p.m., where we went to the cafe on our street (WHICH IS RIGHT NOW PLAYING BAD RELIGION OMFG SWOON) to nurse a beer and mooch internets. The reason this is worth mentioning is that we’ve finally come out of vacation mode. Our apartment is finally a sanctuary. We finally live here.

widow panes

art walk

tubamaba

Philistine Fry

Trains

spin that record babe

baby mine

hipster art - also, free Pabst

fav, out of everything we saw.

love this one too

zomg i know where that is!

handmade african animals

SO CUTE.

doll house

beautiful!

bad photo, but it's a flute! you blow in the tail and there are keyholes!

can you smell it?

nap

rearranged

actually a tough box with a futon cover..

Alan the Artist

We went through EVERYTHING we own this weekend, tossing, donating, etc. We were leafing through Alan’s VERITABLE MOUNTAIN of art stuff, and we came across the comic he made while he was in Iraq, and I thought I’d post it here. Or, at least, the ones that are easy to understand if you’re not actually IN the Army. He assures me the rest are hysterical if you were there.

Anyway, I just think he’s hugely talented, and if the comic doesn’t prove it, I’ll post a drawing he made from some porn I sent him at the end. Click for larger images. (I’ll do some explaining, not because I think you’re dumb, but because I know I needed some explaining when I first read them.)

I like the idea there. It starts out and everyone’s all HOOAH, but as the hours wane, you get deeper and deeper until you fall asleep. First it’s innocuous – Superman, etc. – then it’s personal – marriages, etc… So good. Months worth of bonding in mere hours.

^^ That one’s my favorite. Hilarious. The box in the top corner says “Instead of walking this road, we’ll take this open field. The enemy will never detect us.” “Briliant, sir!”

They keep sending their son out to dig a well, but the Americans in the attic keep shooting at him because they think he’s a terrorist. I guess this one’s not HAHA funny, but I don’t know what else you can do there but try and find the humor.

NCOIC = Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge.

He says this one’s unfinished – the truck driving over the wire is supposed to be a HMMWV (“humvee”), he just never got to add detail. So basically the terrorist dude keeps trying to blow up HMMWVs but they moved the bomb. The last panel says, “Shoot him already!” “I wanna see his face when he finds out the bomb’s gone.” And yes, those boxes are labeled “Turbans” and “Camel Spiders”. Anyway. Here’s the Coup de Gras:

He keeps threatening to sit on a street corner drawing people for money. I SAY GO TO. I’ll play my flute, and Fry can dance like Snoopy. We’ll make BANK. Who needs higher education anyway? I LIVE ON HAIGHT STREET MOTHERFUCKERS.