On Sunday I needed to get over to Buena Vista Park from my house, so I walked over to catch the 6, which turns around at 14th Av and Quintara. I walked up Quintara, only to be met by a tiered series of stairways at 15th. Oofda! Huff huff huff I got some nice exercise getting up to this bus stop, and now I know why it stops at 14th Av. Eventually the bus showed up empty and I was the only passenger for a good while as it twisted and turned along a crazy route up and down a lot of really steep hills. Although there were electric wires along most of the streets serving the route, the wires were not everywhere, so my ride was a beat up old diesel bus.
I have often heard it said that women don’t dress for men but instead dress for women. But I live in San Francisco and so I dress for gay men. Clearly, they’re the only ones who notice and compliment accordingly. . .
A few things I enjoy about walking downtown include commuting by train, the fascinating architecture that changes through the day thanks to lights-and-shadows, and, the innumerable good-looking women hustling on their way too and from their jobs and classes.
Alas, I know little for architecture or fashion, so I wander down the street gazing in uninformed appreciation of the beauty around me. As far as the trains go, I have to admit that I recently read up on the history of the USSLRV, which Muni was plagued with in the 1980s and 1990s before they got the nice Breda trains they run today.
“Ohhh, darling, is that a Breda LRV3 you’re riding? I really like it! You’re running so quietly with a good maintenance record. That is so hot!”
Well, thank goodness for the gay men in this city, keeping the ladies motivated to heights of fashion that make me smile in uninformed appreciation.
Given that I recently took a new job at a higher salary, and I am no longer paying a bunch of money for someone else’s tuition, and I’m being exposed to new things, and well, just because, I’ve been on a bit of a spree lately. Fortunately, Amazon Marketplace helps me shop with some thrift. But, things in the mail to me:
1 of: Anthology [Audio CD] A Tribe Called Quest (Author)
1 of: Omnivore’s Dilemma [Hardcover] Michael Pollan
1 of: Late Registration [Explicit Lyrics] [Audio CD] West, Kanye
1 of: The In Sound from Way Out! [Audio CD] Perrey-Kingsley
1 of: The Victorian Internet [Paperback] by Standage, Tom
1 of: Souk System [Import] [Audio CD] Gnawa Diffusion
1 of: We Love Music [Import] [Audio CD] International Pony
1 of: 1999 [Audio CD] Cassius
1 of: Sexual Healing [Live] [Audio CD] Gaye, Marvin
1 of: Ultra-Lounge, Vol. 11: Organs in Orbit [Audio CD] Various Artists
1 of: Dreams To Remember: The Otis Redding Anthology [Audio CD] Redding, Otis
1 of: Absolutely the Best [Audio CD] Eric Burdon (Artist)
1 of: The Ultimate Tony Bennett [Enhanced] [Original recording remastered]
1 of: The Frisco Kid
As well, a Red Roomba with wall charger, and an iMac for the Living Room.
Stern Grove this weekend. (Contact me if you’d like to join, it’s near my house.)
Flying to Chicago next weekend.
Then, Burning Man.
The last three items are “San Francisco” themed media for a future housewarming party.
All the same, that spending is going to taper off quick, I swear! I can’t be this self-indulgent forever. I don’t want to be. But, anyway . . .
Ah, and yesterday I just started reading “The Soul of Capitalism” and it is rocking me thoroughly! Man, having a Muni commute is so fantastical!
It seems that famous people tend to visit San Francisco. A few weeks ago I was at a party and I saw Al Gore. I walked past him, nodding my head “yo, what’s up.” He nodded his head back at me, “my nigga.” The man was lookin’ sharp.
And just now, the ladies of our office came back making satisfied moaning sounds because they had met Dave Chappelle, who is having coffee at the Peet’s down the block.
I respect both men, but aside from the amusement factor, I’ll let others mob them.
The tomatoes are still green and I need a trellis for the beans . . . though, I am moving in a few weeks anyway. But, I picked the first beans from my garden. I look forward to the meal that will feature these!
So, a little while back, I got into dropping by the Barnes and Noble cafe and sipping on a Tazo tea whilst browsing / reading. Why tea? Well, coffee is best in the mornings, and a fruit drink, that’s nice for the afternoon or evening. Tazo’s the only stuff they have that’s made with sugar instead of corn syrup, so I figure, that’s righteous.
But I could not for the life of me divine the caffeine content from the labelling.
So, I asked the intarweb . . . . nada.
So, I e-mailed Tazo, and they wrote back:
We have 14 bottled tea flavors and four of them are caffeine-free:
Brambleberry
Lemon Ginger
Simply Red
Wild Orange
These four will also have a caffeine-free stamp on the front of the label.
So, if you were asking the Internet, there’s your answer.
My nostrils are enjoying the constant smell of somewhat-baked-Danny-plus-campfire-smoke that has been infused into my epidermis over the weekend. I love this smell! Makes me feel like a human hot dog! Sooo tasty! I need me a bun and some steak sauce! And vegetables!
Actually, that reminds me I need to get groceries.
I ate out last night. Overpriced but ginormous gyros sandwich. I skipped out on my morning muffin from the muffin lady today. I love to start the day by buying my muffin from her, and then heading upstairs to eat her muffin, but I had no appetite this morning. (Yesterday we did the chit-chat and I complimented her on her looks, thus, officially “flirted” maybe.) Darn you, gyros! But, instead of joining the work crew who headed to Whole Foods I visited the muffin lady for lunch, and consumed a bowl of chili and a fruit thingus. And read my book, Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog” and while doing so, noticed that there were attractive women checking me out as I checked out them. One read her own book, but what book that was eludes my memory. Oh man, I gotta get growing beyond the comfort of the muffin lady and into flirting with strangers. It will come.
I also gotta resist the urge to compare myself to a hot dog and talk about my muffin munching on the blog.
Well, things have been busy. Saturday Duncan took me out to a winery shindig in Mendocino. He had originally planned to go with a beautiful woman named Janey, but this beautiful woman had some personal sympathy for my present situation, and was happy to send me along instead. I have not yet retrieved my fedora from the city, I might do that tonight, and since Duncan’s ride is a Porsche Boxster, he grabbed me a hat at Long’s drugs. “Originally I was looking at the baseball caps, but then I remembered Danny’s style!” It was a good trip, tasting wines. I grabbed a couple at this one very off-the-track winery that Duncan loves, because the wines have such excitingly distinctive tastes!
Today, I walked down to church, wearing a new shirt I had bought at Target. The farewell sermon from the outgoing intern minister, Lisa Sargent, was off the hook and beautiful. The congregation gave her a standing ovation! It was about going “off the map” into uncharted territory, in life. This is something she has done in her life, something I have done in mine, and something a lot of us tend to do at the end of Spring. So, it was apropos for so many people. One of the important themes she described was faith, and what faith is. She said “belief clings, faith lets go.” And that is how I feel . . . I have faith in myself, in my world, in the people. I have faith in my own future, however unknown it has recently become. I have faith in Dad, and his recovery. And I have faith that Yayoi . . . she will live her life, and I hope in time she will better know herself. Too bad that one had to be let go. So, I can not cling to the life I had even a few months ago, but I have faith in the new life I am leading.
I stopped by the bookstore, and got what looks to be a very good cookbook “for two, or for one.” I look forward to trying it out and eating well, on my own and I hope, on occasion, with some company. I also grabbed a yoga video. Yoga? Well, I remembered reading on Hiromi‘s blog somewhere that she used to be like me: so inflexible she couldn’t touch her toes, but thanks to yoga, life’s a lot more “wow.” There’s a class at Heather Farm later in June I might go for, but I don’t know how long I’ll keep to living in the ‘Creek, so I figured a $15 in the DVD player is worth more than an $88 class in the uncertain future, let’s give it a shot.
I also grabbed an amplified radio antenna at Radio Shack, and after a bit of waving around, have found solid reception for KQED! So, I have some interesting human voices back in the house with me!
After seeing Jeff’s post, I decided I’d truck down to Los Gatos this weekend to take a little 10k walk. The big benefit should be getting to see Barry, who should be walking in his wheelchair.
I never got the point of raising money by asking people to give you money for walking–I walk for free. I mean. Well, so I’ll donate my own money, but if anyone wants to make a contribution, your generosity would be appreciated. Jeff notes that donations are acceptible after the walk has happened, if you are reading this after the fact.
If any of my 408 peeps want to get together Saturday afternoon / evening, gimme a shout!
Wow. I was so lazy this weekend . . . sleeping in, napping, not doing nothing, eating out . . . last night? We went out and I ate meatloaf! How sloth is that?
I did pack a dozen boxes full of books, though. Yay me. But the laundry is left for this evening.
Anyway, this weekend was so fantastically lazy that when my stuff started going ringy ding this morning during the 0600+ I was actually kind of glad to get my ass outta bed and have stuff to do.
And there are things to do, oh yes . . . but I gotta keep my priorities straight and blah blah blah on the blog first.
I am not at all on my game today. I went to kick the tape robot, right? Then I check on the backups server to see if it can see everything, and it seems like it lost its SCSI capabilities. Huh? Reboot the server, and get kicked off IRC. Stupid Sysadmin brainfart! I was on the wrong server.
I hope maybe my brain comes back soon, I got work to do.
Yayoi’s been working at the cafe, which tends to mean she’s out for the evening. I love spending time with her but a little quiet time to myself is good for non-work geek productivity. I’m worried if maybe my brain has a finite capacity to function and I used it all up last night working on my WordPress Flickr plugin. You can see it taking shape. I am very excited about that. And, no, its not that my brain has finite capacity, its just that maybe its too busy being excited about other things. The least of those being PHP code. (more…)
So, I discovered yesterday, that if one goes to Google, and types i am lame, then my web site is the first hit. Don’t that make me feel special?
But I didn’t drag you here for my inverse ego thing, here’s some cool videos that I have seen recently: Internet Musical — World of Warcraft Monsters praise the Internet, in song. Best. Video. Ever! Climbing Russian Kids — Man, talk about making good use of a post-utopian wasteland. Hollywood should steal these kids for stuntmen. Sushi Documentary — Everything you shouldn’t know about sushi. Devil Dogs — Lucian Reed went to Iraq to take photographs. This video is a valuable glimpse at how our folks are doing over there.
I have decided that Google Video is mostly tolerable. It’s not standard CODECs in files . . . probably they have some decent reasons, but unlike RealVideo, or QuickTime, they don’t require you to install spyware on your computer and watch the video in a little 2″ window. So, well, okay, maybe forcing you to stream . . . why? Maybe that is somewhat evil, but it is definitely less evil than “Video on the Internet” that has come before, and easier for the masses than Bittorrent . . . though it’d be neat . . . give it time . . .
It would seem that the dinner sushi buffet is back for Walnut Creek, on weeknights, for a limited time only. When it first opened, the dinner sushi buffet was a wonder to behold! Giant servings of raw, delicious fish. It was too good to be true, and indeed when they realized how much money they were losing, they stopped it.
Well, tonight I was thinking “spicy tuna roll” and found the buffet back in action. But it is a far cry from “too good to be true” . . . more like “dude, what do you expect from a sushi buffet? Fool!” Oh well. Maybe Gourmet Sushi will actually re-open soon. The sign says he will open before Christmas, but last I seen, the windows were still covered with newspapers and there was an envelope from the IRS sticking out of the mail slot. If he skips town . . . well, restaurants come and restaurants go, but that guy has this intense aura about him that kind of reminds me of Basil Fawly, except with inscrutable Asian powers. I’m going to miss that guy.
I’m not feeling too good . . . but if I survive the indigestion I get to fly to Chicago tomorrow, and see the fam.
Well, the holidays were nifty but they are chased with half a week on the East Coast redoing the install I did last month that needs redoing for a variety of reasons you don’t want to be burdened with. So, move from the uber-chill four-day weekend without a lot going on beyong setting Grandma up with her new Mac (early Christmas present due to the death of her old Mac) and enjoying family time, especially wifey time . . . and we’re back in the data center demonstrating our mastery of the Linux operating system. Nyahh!!!
So, just an anecdote, I caught sight of a baby breast-feeding. How wholesome, I felt, hooray for breast feeding . . . that must feel intensely wonderfully intimate . . . hey, without my notice, baby is on the other breast, and I had my SysAdmin brain moment.
