Sniff, sniff

And so we come to the end. After a whirlwind few months—we went to Paraguay! We saw Iguazu Falls! We bought tickets home to New Zealand!—we leave the city by the bay just when spring appears to have arrived, durnit. The packing guys are here, wrapping up our memories in layers of fish and chip paper. The sleek neighborhood dogs are passing below our windows with their sleek owners and the women at the nail salon across the road are sitting in the big cushy pedicure chairs waiting for customers. I will miss this city.

A few final San Frantastic moments:
* I went and ate sushi with a couple of the interns at this funky no-name sushi place that is somewhere between the Mission and Noe Valley—more Mission than Noe I think. I got there before they arrived and when a typically hip SF guy asked to look at my teapot, I shrugged and passed it over. This set off a stream-of-consciousness prattle that did not end when the rest of my party arrived. I was told about some amazing dance event in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Portugal and told to get in before all the tickets sold out, man. I was advised to write a story about Mayor Hunky’s (Gavin Newsom’s) recent treatment of the homeless in the Tenderloin (according to Mr Hip, one young drunk homeless guy hassled Hunky for money and Hunky has had the police on patrol down there ever since). And I learned that Mr Hip likes to refer to himself as “a sassy little bitch” which I found quite endearing.
* Our friend Megan from London came to stay and we did all kinds of fun SF stuff. The capper was a cocktail at the dear old Carnelian Room, where we watched the sun set and pointed happily at Alcatraz and Coit Tower and Fisherman’s Wharf and the seals on their platforms bobbing in the oily water. Both M and I had a funny experience when we used the restroom. A small Chinese woman was stationed by the door. She welcomed each of us to her restroom, showed us to a stall and when we were seated began to sing and whistle. I wondered if this was to make the situation less awkward—we were peeing in her office, after all—or to help us conquer potential stage fright.
* After dinner at Tommy’s Mexican restaurant where I had the best-ever margarita, Tim gave me a wooden sign reading ‘San Francisco’. He announced that every day until our departure I would receive a San Francisco present. After the sign came a baseball cap, some old-style postcards, kiddies books about the city, a map of wine country, and today my favourite of all, a reproduction of a map of the city drawn in 1909, three years after the earthquake.

New Year, oh dear

Actually, I'm looking forward to 2008. We have some big plans and I am all about action, so that's good. Besides, 2007 has been a herky-jerky ride at the fair--I have spent much of it feeling nauseous and wondering when I can get off. Even now, having reached the end of the ride, I am clutching my stomach and staring at the ground trying not to chuck.
So to make myself feel better, I have been thinking about what I want to accomplish in the next 12 months, besides the big ones like figure out career, find new home, make some kind of difference in this world etc. They are too stressy for my current state of mind. Plus, I don't really like New Year's resolutions because they tend to be all about guilt and self-loathing, neither of which I am willing to play host to for very long. So I have some spiffy new goals instead. Such as:
1. Get a pound puppy. Finally.
2. Learn how to cook three decent meals. Just three. I will find the Nigella inside and I will enjoy her company.
3. Eat more vegetables. Refer to #2.
4. Make a new friend. It would be very easy as we are slipping back into the lives we left in Auckland in 2005, to just hang out with the same people all the time. While I am very excited to be close to my lovely friends again, one of the cool things about 2007 has been new friendships.
5. Wear heels more often. My bung knee is almost up to the job and heels just look better with jeans.
6. Read more worthy books. I have read some great stuff this past year (and some utter pap) but I have refused to read any of Tim's books about democracy, the Middle East, the global economy, or Christianity. I can't expect him to delve into Joan Didion if I won't do Thomas Friedman.
7. Cut down on the reality TV. It is making me stupid. I have had two guilty pleasures this year: Tori and Dean: Inn Love and Bridezillas. And lately there has been a new one called My big, fat fabulous wedding about people for whom there is no budget when it comes to wedding planning. They will spend, for example, $2,500 on seashells to decorate their tables, or $240,000 on jewels for the wedding day, or $50,000 for flowers. It makes me feel like a better person.
8. Stay on top of the housework. Tim's dropsy tendencies (he'll drop his junk on any flat surface) have squelched my will to tidy, but in 2008 I will fight back.
9. Take more and better photographs.
10. Make albums of the photographs, so I can appreciate all the wonderful adventures we've had and will continue to have.
Happy New Year!!

Best of times, worst of times

Top 5 books
* The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion. I had been avoiding it for fear of getting too upset, but I found her descriptions of the grief of losing someone essential to be comfortingly familiar.
* No one belongs here more than you, Miranda July. July is so hot right now! And now I see why. Loved it.
* Lucky, Alice Sebold. I have been avoiding this one for years although I adored The Lovely Bones. But after hearing Sebold speak as part of the City Lights and Lectures series I decided to dive in, and it was actually oddly funny and life-affirming.
* Hibiscus Coast, Paula Morris. She is so clever. Made me miss NZ.
* Plan B, Anne Lamott. Another of Lamott's books that I will read over and over.

Top 5 San Francisco
* Hearing Anne Lamott speak at the Jewish Community Center. One of my absolute favourite authors and she is so funny and wise.
* Sailing on the Bay on a gorgeous sunny autumn day. Magic.
* Sipping a margarita while watching darnkess fall on the city from a cozy table at the Carnelian Room.
* Watching the Blue Angels streak across the city from our roof.
* Riding the cable car up California St on a wet and windy night.

5 Most ridiculous
* Winchester Mystery House, San Jose. Is it really so mysterious that this disturbed woman (heiress of the Winchester rifle fortune) would incorporate the number 13 into her home? Or spider web patterns? What is truly mysterious is why people would buy any of the crap they sell in the gift shop.
* Paying $9 to motor down 17-Mile Drive in Carmel. Puh-lease.
* Paxton Gate, Mission St. I go to visit the taxidermied mice dressed like punks and popes.
* Adults dressed like sexy nurses and sexy superheroes and sexy vampires going to the office on Halloween.
* The guy who disguises himself as a bush (he holds branches in both hands and fixes branches to his back and head) and scares people at Fisherman's Wharf. Then they give him money.

I can think of other highlights and lowlights but that's enough for now.

Happy Holidays!

Good will towards men, etc. The holiday season has had the desired effect--I've lost track of the days and have a seemingly endless supply of chocolate and jellybeans to hand. Lovely. I felt only vaguely guilty when I went to the gym yesterday and spent 50 minutes squeezing a weird spiky ball between my thighs (it was Hello Kitty pink, folks, which made it almost palatable) and realised I would instantly undo all of my good work with the gobbling of just two chocolate coins.
We spent Christmas with my brother and family after catching a Christmas Eve performance of the Nutcracker. Love that ballet, and I don't care how ubiquitous/cheesy it may be. The music is beautiful, the costumes are beautiful, and I have been watching the SF Ballet do it since I was 5. So there.
Other Christmas season highlights:
* Admiring the giant swan in the window of Marc Jacobs on Fillmore St. Bizarre fun.
* A quick burger and bloody Mary at Harry's after picking up some fabu gifts. I love giving good gift.
* My third-ever manicure. I finally broke down and went to the little nail studio across the road that I have been spying on for the past year. I picked a pale pink polish called Bubble Bath.
* The twinkly snowflake lights on the side of the Sak's building. So pretty.
* A verrrry strong Margarita in the Carnelian Room, at the top of the Bank of America building. The view is gorgeous--the bay and city laid out for you as if you were a despot. I felt teary, jubilant, nostalgic, and slightly giddy all at once.
After bidding adieu to the family the day after Christmad we headed to Carmel, a cutesy little seaside village that has turned into a caricature of itself. Dad lived there and practiced medicine when he first moved to the US. Every shop smells like vanilla cupcakes. And it costs $9 to do the 17-Mile Drive made famous by the Pebble Beach golf course and US Open. And if that weren't enough to turn you off, the first ever Thomas Kincaid gallery opened in Carmel 15 years ago. If you're not familar with him, he's the most collected living artist today. He depicts ideal chocolate box-style cottages and village scenes and is known for his technique with light--everything looks all twinkly and elf-like. He designed a whole housing sub-division in my birth city, Vallejo. He makes me feel nauseous but I couldn't stop myself from diving into his gallery and having a giggle. If Santa had known about that, I'm pretty sure I would have been left off the sleigh route. Ah well.

Sentimentality alert

Feeling nostalgic today. And sick. I have been sick all week--nasty flu-ey congestion and fuzzy head--and nostalgic for about three weeks. We finally made a firm decision about our future--we're heading back to New Zealand next year. I resigned from my job yesterday and that's all folks. I'm glad we have a plan of sorts because I am the original girl with a plan. If I'm not heading somewhere with some objective in mind I am pretty miserable. So that's good. But I love living in San Francisco. It's a childhood dream come true and while I always knew it was temporary I guess I figured it would be a more longterm move than it's turned out to be. We have been here a year. We flew into New York on September 1, 2006 and we moved into our chilly wee apartment last December. So we've experienced all the seasons here and watched our neighbors gorgeously OTT decorations change from St Patrick's elves to Easter bunnies and eggs, to summer flowers, to Halloween ghouls, to Thanksgiving cones of plenty, to Christmas wreaths--and all of it wonderfully American in scale.
Today is cold but sunny. I had to drop Tim off for his Saturday business class and then drove home along California St, past the Bank of America building (tallest in the city, home to our money manager), past two cable cars, past the Fairmont Hotel and Tonga Bar where we have yet to go, past Grace Cathedral where we attended an ANZAC service, past Fillmore St where I do so much of my window shopping and we do our laundry, past the Jewish Community Center where I work out, and finally past our block with its Edwardian apartment buildings and fancy home shops. It is all so pretty.
* * * *
Enough bellyaching--we went to the Dickens Fair last weekend. The Cow Palace, a huge South SF venue for bullriding competitions and monster truck shows, was transformed into ye olde London. Or, I should say, the area where they keep the cattle and such for the big shows was transformed into ye olde London. The big domed Palace itself was a happy place for me as a child. My family used to go for the bullriding and equestrian shows thanks to Dad's country boy roots. My favorite part was intermission when we would eat Mom's egg salad sandwiches while the rodeo clown entertained us. He had huge overalls and tiny dogs would emerge from his pant legs to jump through hoops. I think there may have been a tiny spider monkey too, or that could be a 7-year-old's embellishment. In any case, it was cool fun.
So last Sunday we went to the animal area, where 25 years ago I admired blueblood horses, and it was packed with costumed folks and jewellery stalls and food places, and more costumed folk doing skits and singing bawdy songs. We watched the Irish and Scottish dancers for a while and ate some fried oysters and tried on some hats (a Robin Hood cap for T and a floral wreath for me) and headed home.

Me and the young fogey

John Denver’s nana is on television. Umm-hmm. Tim was flicking around the channels and stumbled on a 90-minute John Denver special and I said, “No!” and he said, “Rock on!” My husband is a young fogey.

We had a moment

So I’m seriously starting to wonder if I have an executive-style ulcer cos my stomach has been misbehaving for a couple months now. It seems so 80s and unoriginal. I don’t even have a briefcase, and I don’t feel that stressed. But I have always been good at compartmentalizing and I think that’s my problem now. Nothing in our lives is feeling settled and stable and rather than meet this interesting challenge head on in an adult manner, I choose to deal with it on a sub-conscious level as I sit on the express bus and watch that one lady who applies her eye makeup as we skid down the hills towards the city—eyeliner, mascara, shadow, highlighter the works—and suffer the physical consequences of a burny tum and a bedtime that crawls ever forward. Soon I’ll be going nigh-nighs at 7.30pm.
Anyway, none of this means we’re not having a good time. We finally went to the Fillmore last week. It was tres funky—dark red walls with gold trim, chandeliers, opera boxes, and lots of pissed people in their 40s acting in the irresponsible way they hope their children won’t. There was one woman who fell on the floor and had to be helped up before the main act even bounced onto stage in their ruffled shirts and brocade jackets. It was the Waterboys, who Tim adores. I love Whole of the Moon and Fisherman’s Blues, so I was happy when they played those, and was deeply impressed with the brocade jacketed one’s fiddle playing, but I could have done without the dirty, skunky drunks.
I think that when you get to a certain age, and it varies from person to person, you simply can’t get away with public displays of drunkenness and general out-of-it-ness. Everyone around just resents you.
***
Oh-bama! Mayor Hunky was re-elected, which was no great surprise given his opponents were like cartoon characters, but he’s old hat now. I have a new crush—Senator Hunky from Illinois. We waited in line for an hour and half to see Obama at his SF rally on Wednesday. It seemed for a while that we weren’t going to get in at all because there were just two doors to the auditorium set up with metal detectors and there were over 6,000 people trying to squeeze in there. Just before 9pm everything stopped—the line halted, more police turned up, everything went quiet, and then whoop, whoop, the motorcade burst onto Polk St. We could see Obama sitting in the back of his Cherokee, waving, and then it stopped and he got out and I had my first-ever moment of celebrity worship. He conducted his own energy. As if he’d just jumped out of God’s pocket. It was extremely exciting. He’d been told we were the tail-end folks who might be foiled by the metal detectors and made an impromptu speech about closing Guantanamo and ending the war and other stuff that didn’t sink in because I was jumping up and down and trying to keep my eyes on him at all moments. He was just 10 feet away from us, and some of his energy clearly leapt across the crowd and into the tops of our heads because after he got back in his SUV and the secret service guys folded themselves back into shape (they did not seem happy about the unexpected pit stop) we joined the crowd who surged for the doors. The line unraveled like yarn—that someone had thrown acid on—and although some people tried to stay in formation, it was futile. We ended up getting ushered in a side door with no metal detector and no-one to check our tickets. We could have been very dangerous, I suppose, but like everyone else there that night we felt like Barack-stars.

Another one checked off

When I was 7 my life ambitions were as follows:
* Become super-duper speller.
* Adopt a shelter puppy.
* Aquire a Barbie townhouse.
* Coax my mother into the baking habit.
* Convince someone to build me a tree house.
* Pass beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.
* Learn to ride a bike already.
* Live in one place always like the Brady Bunch.
* I also, as I have mentioned before, wanted to become a singing secretary named either Linda or Stephanie, or perhaps both.
Few of these things have come to pass. I did eventually learn to ride my brother’s yellow banana-seated Schwinn (I will never forget looking behind me to see that Dad had let go and I was on my own. I immediately toppled over and felt such a sense of betrayal). I did acquire a shelter puppy, which didn’t turn out too well. I created a grand imaginary treehouse with many rooms including a reading niche and gourmet kitchen.
And then, guess what folks?
Yar! We went sailing on Saturday and it was lovely. We cruised beneath both spans of the Bay Bridge, down to SoMa and the AT and T ballpark, along the downtown waterfront past the ferry building and Coit Tower, skimming past Fisherman’s Wharf and Alcatraz. And I got to pass underneath the Golden Gate.

Not a morning person

Overheard on the bus:
Perky blonde commuter with bright pink lippy: “Do you mind if I open the window?”
Greying, balding commuter in grey suit: “No.”
“No, you don’t mind, or you do mind?”
“I do mind. I am cold all day at work.”
“Oh. Well, have a good day.” Muttered under breath: “Grump.”
“Yes. Sometimes I am.”

Joy Luck Crap

Finally. Fortune cookies for a chica like me. Read in the NYT today about a fortune cookie company in Queens that asked its writers to come up with some more contemporary fortunes. The results include:
“Your problem just got bigger. Think, what have you done?”
“Perhaps you’ve been focusing too much on yourself.”
“It’s over your head right now. Time to get some professional help.”
Love, love, love. Next time I get a fortune cookie I am going to be extremely disappointed if I get a crap fortune like “Don’t worry, be happy” or “Today is an auspicious day.”

The Iceman cometh

I feel guilty because I know the result of the France-NZ World Cup rugby game and the three men watching it in the next room do not. I don’t actually care except for the fact that this will plunge a small nation into a period of mourning, which is so counterproductive and lame I can’t bear it. Also, it will plunge my husband into a period of mourning which I would rather do without. At least he and the others had the joy of watching the Aussies get defeated first. There was fist-pumping and joy-jumping when that happened. Also lots of “shut up Gregans” and the delicious schadenfraude of knowing that was Georgie’s last game and, bum, it was dreadful.
This is Fleet Week in San Frantastic and there were air shows today and yesterday to celebrate. I felt quite sick yesterday watching four little biplanes puttering around the bay, barrel rolling and diving and tipping their wings. They would shoot straight up into the ether and keep going until it looked as if they were still and would surely stall, then barrel roll and head back down to earth. Amazing. Especially cool with the backdrop of Alcatraz, the TransAmerica building, Coit Tower, and a Bay full of sailboats. We sat at Inspiration Point, in the Presidio, with a bunch of neighbors, munching cashews and marveling. Today we went up on the apartment roof to watch the Blue Angels, a Navy sextuplet of Top Gun-style pilots who whizzed over downtown for 30 minutes or so. It was quite thrilling, and it was me who jumped up and down and clapped a few times—especially when they sliced through the sky just above our building. It was almost enough to make me feel patriotic. I have never been a particularly patriotic person—for NZ or the US—because, I think, of the shifting sands of my childhood. But seeing clever citizens doing cool stuff only made possible by the dedication of their government to building big, noisy, expensive stuff, well it makes a girl flutter.

Grumble grumble

Another work week vanquished, hurrah! Tim and I both feel like we just need to recover this weekend: sleep well, eat well, exercise, clean the apartment, hang with the hams. I have had a thoughtful week, in that I have been spending a lot of time gazing out the train window trying to identify my goals while listening to inspirational music. This week it's been the Dixie Chicks. Every couple of years I have a small crisis regarding my life direction. What do I really want, where do I really want to be, yadda yadda. I have no solid answers as of yet and have responded to the crisis by trying to present myself a bit better, in the hopes that my efforts would make me feel better. To wit, I have worn eyeshadow and liner every day--with red lippy-- and have been bringing pieces out of my jewel box that I haven’t worn in a while. Today’s arm candy: a blue plastic chain link bracelet with a seahorse charm.
I may stop in Fillmore St on my way home and check out the shops. I need a winter jacket. I found this adorable one at H & M a couple of weeks ago--grey with a little belt and just the right length, but not in my size. Of course.
The worst thing is I have not written a bean. In, uh, about six weeks.

Hillary

We went to Hillary Clinton’s rally in Oakland yesterday. It was exciting to see a little piece of history unfolding before us but she pushed our patience by making us stand in the street for two hours—with 14,000 other people—while one California politician after another made speeches and a gospel choir sang, I think, five songs.
There was an exciting few minutes when Mayor Hunky stormed on to the stage and shared a couple Bible verses (it’s worth noting that this is a man who slept with his best friend’s wife and when he got caught immediately went to rehab). I still think he’s dishy, though. A lot of people think he’ll be Governor of California before too long.
When Hill came on the crowd perked up but I still got the feeling a lot of the folks were fans of Bill and were making do with Hill cos they’re nostalgic for the mid to late-90s, when the US had low unemployment, cheaper gas, and we weren’t embroiled in a sticky oil war.
***
Coming home on the bus tonight I was victim to a sleazy jostler. I have experienced a number of these guys now. They use the movement of the bus as an excuse to lean against you, getting right into your space and lingering there without invitation. It is the perfect social crime—it takes you a while to figure out what they’re up to, no-one else really notices, and you feel prim and fairly ridiculous saying anything to the jostler. So these guys get away with it. Tonight’s guy stunk of cigarettes and BO. He kept checking his watch, really leaning down to see the face, and I noticed he had thick yellow fingernails, quite long, and a silver rose ring on one finger.
After he lurched off the bus, another creepy guy sat next to me. He wasn’t a jostler but he smelled like rotting peaches.

SoCal Sunday

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Tiring. I am especially tired today because I got up at 4am. This is not the sort of thing I tolerate well, being hamster-like in my personal habits and requiring large quantities of sleep and food, and, naturally, getting bitey if something comes between me and the sleep and/or food.
I was in LA this weekend and for once it was beautiful down there; the sky was blue, not the color of dirty snow. The air was crisp with the first hint of the winter to come and it was warm, but not too warm--I could drink a frappucino without getting cold, but I didn’t sweat while walking down the footpath. Ideal temperature. My visit had two purposes: 1. Visit my brother who was in a motorcycle accident and is in hospital feeling pretty miserable. 2. Interview a Kiwi celebrity for Next magazine. If you want to know who, you have to read the mag. (Note the shameless promotion, Brenda.)
Pulling off the two aspects of the visit required driving long distances on LA freeways in a borrowed black Jeep Cherokee, which was pretty terrifying/funny. To begin with I was nervous about taking up so much space, but I tell ya, sitting up high and looking like a badass is a tremendous advantage when everyone around you is driving as if they were escaping from an avalanche.
In the end, though, totally worth it. Caught up with the family, did my job, saw the Hollywood sign, paid a small fortune for empty carbs and coffee. I feel so American today.

My favorite kind of Saturday

Started the weekend gingerly with mugs of coffee, a bowl of toffee nut cereal and a couple episodes of Flip That House. I am just itching to tile a bathroom. We walked down to Fillmore St and did some browsin’ and lunchin’.
First up, Marc Jacobs, where I never buy anything, even though I lurve his clothes and if money was no object I would fashion myself after Sophia Coppola and never wear anything but cute Mary Jane heels on my tootsies. There are always bins of cool but fairly useless stuff near the cash register—-pens that look like lipsticks, mirrors inside clamshell compacts, leather bracelets, etc. Today there were also some fun little quilted wallets in metallic tones, so I swallowed my pride and took a bronze one to the counter where the beautiful retail people were perfectly nice although possibly a leeetle dismissive of someone dressed in Banana Republic and spending less than $30.
Then we had lunch at Harry’s Bar. Or rather, Tim had lunch and I had a plate of truffle-parmesan fries and a Bloody Mary. Well, it’s Saturday for frick’s sake. We checked out a sample sale further down the road but it had been pretty well picked over by the time we got there. I tried on a pair of Rock and Republic Jeans just for giggles—-they’re the ones Posh Beckham wears and supposedly helps design. My pair had pale blue sparkles on the bum. They were cute but the denim was surprisingly thin for something costing over two hundred smackers.
Tim took off to get his hair cut and I popped into Crossroads, a consignment store where every now and then you find a gem, and today I did. Hiding behind a pilled Ralph Lauren cardigan was a gorgeous little silk skirt by Marc Jacobs. It still had the tags on it—from Barney’s NY, thank you very much—and the original price: $258. I got it for $42. Ha! That adrenalin surge got me all the way home.

I left my crack in San Francisco...

Yesterday was our one-year American anniversary. On Sept 1 we landed at JFK, jumped on the subway and arrived exhausted and relieved at a hostel not far from Harlem. My first impressions of New York were of hugeness, a prickle of fear as we walked through a tenement neighborhood to get to our accommodation, and delight at eating my first proper bagel in years, topped with smoked salmon, cream cheese and capers. It seems like more than 12 months have passed because it’s been such a changing time. We have really struggled to get to where we are now—content in a cute little apartment in San Francisco, stocked up with books and sourdough bread, spending happy afternoons wandering the neighborhood and evenings watching episodes of Flip That House on our satellite television.
(Last night’s couple did up a crumbling cottage an hour out of LA, fitting it out with hardwood floors, a smart green and red exterior color scheme, brand new kitchen, and a low-maintenance garden only to have it languish on the market for six months before they gave up and rented it out. The wife was pissed and her man—who she referred to disparagingly as “my tubby hubby”—was oblivious.)
When we landed at SFO a couple days ago, we were pleased to be coming into a stable situation, with all the organizing—finding a car, jobs etc—behind us. We jumped on BART and zapped into the center of the city, avoiding freeway snarls and saving the environment at the same time (Go Us!) but made the mistake of getting off a stop too soon and had to wander through the Tenderloin—crack central. Tired and disoriented from the flight, we trundled along with our suitcase, carry-on bags, laptop, and bright yellow bag of duty free wine. We may as well have sat on the pavement and quacked. Luckily it was 2pm and the drunks and druggies and homeless folk were mostly sleeping/recovering. Even so, a woman with a city library ID hanging round her neck was concerned enough that she came up and gave us directions (in our own city; humiliating). “I’m sad to say, but this is a drug dealer’s paradise,” she said, pointing us towards a safer thoroughfare where we might catch a taxi to clean and manicured Laurel Heights. “Don’t come here at night.”

The singing secretary

First day of September and it’s a beauty. We have had a slow-as-cold-running-molasses start to the day due to lingering sickness and jetlag but after I have dyed my hair (my roots are such a boring ash brown now; I mourn my teenaged natural highlights) we are walking down to Clement for a bit of time at Green Apple, best bookshop in the Western World, and at Office Depot. I have a weird fascination for stationery shops. From the time I was about seven or eight, in the days when I dreamed of becoming a singing secretary named Linda or Stephanie, I have loved paper and paperclips, staplers and glue pots, stickers and post its, and notebooks and pencil holders, and all that jazz. I think it’s because all that fresh blankness speaks of promise. Well, that’s why I like stationery stores now. When I was seven or eight it was the pleasure of playing with paper and scissors and such, especially brand new ones. I am hoping to buy a board I can use to do some plotting for my newest project. Tee hee.

Are they whingeing again, or just brutally honest?

From one of the best time-wasters ever, ananova.com:

Brits hate workmates
Nearly one in three Brits quit their jobs because they can't stand their workmates, according to a new survey.

More than 40% dislike at least one colleague, 20% hate the boss and one in 10 can't stand the person they sit next to.

And more than 23% of 2,500 Brits quizzed hate their "desk buddy" so much they find an excuse to move seats.

The poll, by recruitment site www.jobs2view.com, lists the main reasons for not liking colleagues as "laziness, talking too much and cliques".

It found that 27% think of quitting every day, and that just 24% find work important to them.

82-year-old powerhouse

Just back in San Fran after a lightning trip home. Tim's dad had a massive heart attack two weeks ago and was on life support in the ICU when we flew back to Auckland expecting the worst, a horrible nervy, bumpy flight past Hurricane Flossie(then menacing Hawaii) with an unwanted Sydney stopover, making for nearly a 24-hour trip with minimal legroom and salty, lardy nonsense for dinner. Tim's passport had expired and while we managed to get out of SFO--Orange Alert be damned--we noticed our mistake in Sydney, as did security personnel who rang North Shore Hospital to verify Tim's story.
Tim's dad looked awful the first time we saw him (tubes from every orifice, pale yellow color, unconscious) and strangely small under his warming blanket and shiny metallic shower cap. But each day brought amazing progress. Soon he was breathing on his own, sitting up, drinking cups of tea, recognising family, remembering names, speaking in full sentences. Now he's just about back to normal and he gets tremendous satisfaction from hearing how he cheated death the day he went out for a new letter box and collapsed at the hardware store only to be miraculously revived by CPR-certified staff and a defibrillator salesman who happened to be in the store for a demo. When he hears that he had quite literally stopped breathing and was unresponsive on the concrete floor, he cackles with the joy of coming back to life. He is an inspiration.

Evil exercise genius

Day off work today, tra la, tra la, so I slept in a little bit, did a teensy bit of writing and then went to the gym, feeling pretty durned chipper. Until I saw that Batshit Crazy Lady was leading the 10am sculpting class. I stumbled into her spin class once a couple of months ago after a particularly grueling work day, and if I hadn’t been a spaghetti noodle by the end of it, I might just have dismounted and slapped her. She pretended we were racing a stage of the Tour de France and gave a running commentary on each hill and valley, complete with stats on the leaders and trivia from her own experience watching the Tour in person. So-and-so is very charming, some racers drink scooners of beer at the end of the day, she has autographed t-shirts from riders etc, etc. We had a competition to see who would win the imaginary green shirt for getting to the top of the highest imaginary hill. I stopped and had a pint of cider at an imaginary pub.
So today my nice gentle sculpting class began with a musical prelude to the 2008 Beijing Olympics—apparently they released one of the songs this week to get people in the mood. It didn’t get me in the mood for my class, however—I actually groaned out loud and had to pretend to be clearing my throat so as not to offend Batshit Crazy Lady, who apparently has no idea just how aggravating she is. We did seven sets of push ups, we had to do squats in time to that nasty song about ‘lady lumps,’ we waved big heavy bars around for the benefit of our triceps—which, we learned, are the size of a stick of string cheese—and got a lecture about skin elasticity. "You don't have to do everything I am doing," she said as she launched into another set of push ups. "I am your sculpting waitress; I am just making suggestions."
By the end I was thinking that perhaps she is some sort of evil genius, because she makes people so mad they keep lifting those weights just to concentrate on something other than her chirping commentary.
And then she tried to convince us to follow her over to the other studio for her spin class, starting in half an hour.
“Just consider it,” she said, as damp women with strands of hair flopping in their mouths openly groaned at the thought. “Well, maybe next week.”